How to create a successful Black Friday email marketing campaign 

Why should you care about Black Friday? 

Black Friday is not important for every business but it can mark the start to the holiday season for many brands and is a great chance to capitalise on the number of customers who are actively shopping around and are in-market for your products or services. 

Here’s just a few stats to convince you that you should care about Black Friday and your email marketing: 

• In 2023, it’s predicted that Brits will spend around £3 billion when shopping on Black Friday 
• The average spend per person is predicted to be around £113 
• Email is responsible for 20% of online holiday site visits 
• Email marketing is the preferred marketing channel by 73% of digital marketers 

Convinced yet? 

Let’s have a look at how you can make your emails as successful as possible. 

Top 8 tips for successful Black Friday email marketing campaigns 

Here are our top tips on creating successful Black Friday email campaigns for your business.

1. Get your mailing list ready 

If you want to send emails out, you’re going to need a list of email subscribers prior to the Black Friday weekend. These could be existing loyal customers, newsletter subscribers or previous customers who haven’t made a purchase for a while. 

Reminding your loyal subscribers of the Black Friday discount you’re going to be offering in the lead-up to the weekend and over the weekend, too, will increase your chances of clicks and conversions. 

2. Write appealing subject lines 

Your Black Friday email subject line is one of the most important parts of your Black Friday email campaigns. If no one opens your emails, they’re not going to be very effective! 

Customers are going to receive a huge number of emails before, during and after the Black Friday weekend so your emails will need to stand out from the crowd.

Intrigue and entice your customers with fear of missing out (FOMO) and create urgency to encourage your customers to click through and find out more. 

Include a countdown or information on your offers to entice them in. 

Make sure you’re not promising something that you then don’t deliver in the body of your emails. If you’re promoting ‘50% off all products’ but the body content of your email doesn’t provide them with the same Black Friday offer, they’re not likely to stick around and will likely delete your email and won’t click through again.

3. Create a sense of urgency 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are focused on time-sensitive deals and the fear of missing out on a good deal. 

The most successful Black Friday emails use copy and images to drive a sense of urgency and anticipation to improve open and click-through rates.

Tell customers how long your deals will be live for or when they’ll be going live to drive them to make a purchase before they miss out. 

You could consider adding a countdown timer to your emails so customers can see how long they’ve got left to take advantage of your offers. We also recommend adding the number of days left of your deals in the subject lines of your emails too. ‍

4. Include clear call to actions 

The call to action (CTA) in your emails is another one of the most important factors in your emails. This will lead your readers to take the next action and to visit your website. 

These are the most important elements to consider when creating your email campaigns: 

• Copy - use actionable language to promote clicks through to your website where customers can make a purchase 
• Placement - make sure the CTA is above the fold to increase click-through rates 
• Colour - your CTA button should stand out from the rest of the email to encourage your customers to click through 

For the best results, trial copy such as: 

• Click to shop 
• Shop all deals 
• Get x% off today 
• Show Black Friday deals now 

5. Showcase your products or services and offers 

You need to show your customers exactly what you’re offering in your emails. If they can’t immediately see what you’re selling or your email content doesn’t match the subject line, they’re likely to close the email and move on. 

If you can, provide personalised product recommendations to encourage customers to buy. This could be based on products they’ve viewed or bought before and is a great way to increase conversions. 

6. Send a series of emails

Consumers start looking for deals and discounts well in advance of the actual Black Friday weekend. Make sure you have a schedule for your emails so you can build momentum before the sales and remind customers of your deals throughout the entire weekend. 

Your customers will be receiving a huge number of emails over the weekend so make sure your email doesn’t get lost in the crowd. Sending more than one will help to get your message across and make sure customers see your emails at least once. 

Think about sending three batches of emails, including pre-Black Friday, Black Friday Day and post-Black Friday (send a Cyber Monday email too), to get as much coverage as possible.

To save time over the busy weekend, create and schedule your emails beforehand. Then all you need to do is sit back and wait for the sales to come in. This saves scrambling around at the last minute to send an email and means you can send it at the optimal time. 

7. Get your email design right 

Again, you’ll need to stand out from the many other emails your customers are going to get over the Black Friday weekend. 

Spend some time getting your Black Friday email designs just right so that they stand out and provide the information you want to get across quickly and clearly. Your customers want to know exactly what you’re offering, what the cost is going to be and how they can buy it. 

Here’s a few tips for the best emails: 

• Use high-quality images 
• Use a clear font size and colour 
• Make sure it’s clearly branded and the design is consistent with your website 

8. Find the best send time

The timing and frequency of your Black Friday emails can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. The best time will depend on your audience, your market and the offers you have available. 

Have a look at past emails, the times you’ve sent emails in the past and the engagement rates and choose the best times for your audience to drive the most conversions from your campaigns. 

Key takeaways…

When creating your Black Friday email campaigns, just remember how many emails your customers are going to receive in the lead up to Black Friday, over the weekend and on Cyber Monday. As a result, your emails are going to really need to stand out, whether it’s the subject line, the products you have on offer or the offers you’re providing.

Think about what’s going to make your emails stand out from your competitors and what you can offer that they can’t. This will be key to success over the Black Friday weekend. 

If you’d like to know more about how email marketing can help you grow your business, why not request a free digital marketing audit from our team?