For months now, you’ve been hearing all the hype leading up to the big shopping spree that now envelops the Thanksgiving weekend, like a fog rolling in off the bay to surround the buildings of San Francisco. And you might think your work here is through because your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails were done and sent out in a timely fashion, generating some serious revenue as a result.
But just as the feasting of Thanksgiving can stay with you as leftovers that need to be cleverly concocted into new meals, so too should your Black Friday and Cyber Mondays have some follow-up. You can build on and even sustain that holiday weekend momentum with a post-promotion email marketing campaign.
First, a recap: Why is the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend so critical?
To understand why maximizing your traction during this critical shopping time matters as much as it does, lets look at the numbers from 2017:
- Although the National Retail Federation had predicted 164 million Americans would part with their money during Thanksgiving weekend last year, in reality, it was 174 million who shopped in person and online from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. .
- Last year’s Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day ever. Shoppers spent $6.59 billion online that day, an increase of 16.8% over 2016. And more was spent using mobile devices: Mobile sales were $2 billion over a 24-hour period, a new record.
- In 2017, Black Friday sales generated $5.03 billion and sales on Thanksgiving totaled $2.87 billion.
And what can we expect for 2018? The National Retail Federation says consumers plan to spend 4.1% more this year than last year.
With all the marketing and buying going on during those critical days, you’ll probably increase sales—but why stop there?
Build some momentum with post-promotion email marketing
If you can shift your thinking from a focus on just the weekend to realize the black friday deals period lasts for weeks, you can see the value in taking a programmatic approach when you send emails on the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And with the right technology, you can use segmentation, smart testing, and journeys to scale your success this holiday season.
To help, here are 4 tips to slow the revenue decay curve after key traffic days like those served up by Thanksgiving weekend—and keep customers buying after the boom.
-
Focus on your most engaged customers.
While this time of year is a numbers game when it comes to email marketing, this is the best time to make special offers for your most engaged customers. With real-time insights into engagement by channel, you can quickly target and remarket to these customers, to reward their loyalty and deepen their engagement with gifts, discounts, free shipping, or other bonuses.
-
Test downstream.
Your customers’ inboxes will be full and your customers will be fatigued because they’ve been emailed by plenty of other retailers besides your brand. It will be hard to get attention, especially if you use discount and promotion language that reads like everyone else’s. Instead, try testing cheeky, fun, humorous soundbites to get attention. With the ability to do smart testing, you can quickly test to see which kinds of promotions and messages are working—and adapt your campaigns accordingly. Refer to the 14 Best Black Friday Email Subject Lines Examples guide.
-
Create post-promotion customer journeys.
Many digital marketers take advantage of the Thanksgiving weekend time to push hard, yet few are programming after the event. in 2019, only 20% sent a post Black-Friday email and only 26% sent a follow-up to Cyber Monday. And that means more opportunities for you. With a plan for Black Friday & Cyber Monday post-promotion customer journeys, you can get high returns from residual buyers and last-minute buyers that missed the promotion. This is the time to program an automated email engagement message series that separates openers, clickers, and those that convert, and to speak to them all differently.
-
Use mobile notifications to reach non-engaged email audiences.
Admittedly email doesn’t always work, especially when the inbox is far too bloated for your email to get noticed. When that happens—as it probably did during the Thanksgiving shopping sprees—it’s the perfect time to re-engage non-responders using mobile with intriguing and value-based language.
Yes, the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday trifecta can (and does!) generate plenty of sales. But the savvy marketer is going to keep that momentum going, with a programmatic approach to email marketing that makes that weekend into a much longer and more profitable sales opportunity.
