Is Your Email Campaign Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

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Key takeaways

• Prioritize mobile: use a single‑column layout, reduce image clutter and place your CTA front and centre so emails render quickly on smartphones and tablets.
• Make emails shareable: add single‑click social sharing links and follow buttons to grow social reach and boost redemptions.
• Create urgency without spamming: use time‑sensitive offers, limited‑opportunity codes and visible countdown clocks to drive action.
• Recover abandoned carts quickly: send personalized reminders about 20–60 minutes after abandonment, try again after a few days and consider a promo to close the sale.
• Avoid overload: reconnect with potential shoppers but don’t bombard them, balance follow‑ups with restraint to protect deliverability.
• Use the data: mobile and social were major drivers during past Black Friday/Cyber Monday periods and should shape your approach.

Introduction

There’s snow on the ground and the aromatic smells of holiday food wafting from the kitchen through the rest of the house, so that can only mean one thing – it’s time for some serious shopping. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner, your business needs to get a smart plan together to make the most of these massive sales opportunities. To help set you on the right track, here’s a few powerful tips that can pump up your email contact list and get these consumers ready for all that fun that comes during two of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Make Mobile a Priority

The first place to start your planning begins with putting mobile at the forefront. As ClickZ’s Liva Judic explains in her look at the upcoming shopping season, mobile viewing accounted for 29.7 percent of all traffic on Cyber Monday in 2013, exposing a massive upward trend of over 58 percent from the previous year. If this move continues, optimizing your messages for mobile viewing takes on even more importance in your campaign.

Thankfully, getting your messages dressed to impress on smartphones and tablets doesn’t require a completely new approach. By reducing image clutter and sticking to a single column design, you can develop simple, straightforward messages that renders quickly on these smaller screens. Additionally, putting your call-to-action (CTA) button front and center makes clicking and visiting your mobile landing pages a simple and convenient affair.

Going Beyond Standard Social Interactions

Obviously, the impact of social media in modern marketing of any form can’t be overstated. However, there’s truly something special when it comes to the connection this digital community has with the world of marketed inbox messages. In her look at this bond and its implications in the build-up leading to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Lili Boev points out that socially shareable content in the inbox goes a long way toward improving your brand’s fortunes.

During last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday season, 55 percent of social activity occurred on a mobile device, with more than $150 million in revenue tracing its origins to referrals via shareable content. To capitalize on this powerful platform that grows even stronger when the sales start firing up, consider adding single-click social sharing links to your email templates, in addition to follow buttons. By doing this, you’ll give your sales content a great opportunity to go viral, which helps boost redemptions and grow your social media presence.

There’s No Time for Sitting Around

Boev goes on to point out that there’s no time like the present to get your campaign in gear. While it might seem a little early to start promoting the limited time offers that come with this shopping season, building a sense of urgency goes a long way toward creating a digital replication of the “doorbuster” frenzy associated with brick and mortar store offerings.

Whether you’re sending out time sensitive emails or inbox promotions that offer limited opportunity redemption codes, instilling this “act now” mentality helps give your conversion rate a healthy boost without dipping into spam tactic territory. If you’re looking to get a little more creative with your email content, consider adding a countdown clock to the message or on a relevant landing page. This approach brings your concept of urgency to life with a stunning visual that keeps customers aware that the savings won’t last beyond this shopping holiday.

Build a Strategy for Cart Abandonment

Speaking of boosting conversions, no great email marketing campaign – either during this frantic time of the year or a more standard cycle – is complete without putting an emphasis on reducing cart abandonment. As Eddy Swindell of Media Post explains, going out of your way to reconnect with these potential shoppers goes a long way toward increasing sales now and building a strong relationship for later.

By sending out personalized messages to these visitors, often 20 minutes to an hour after they ditch their carts, you can cut down on missed opportunities and keep your brand in the conversation. In some cases, trying again after a few days and including a discount or promotion code can help seal the deal as well. Naturally, you’ll want to avoid bombarding these potential consumers with email overload, but it can’t hurt to take a few extra shots at building toward a conversion. When combined with the rest of what you’ve learned here, there’s no doubt that you’ll be ready to take the inbox scene by storm when the Black Friday and Cyber Monday frenzy kicks into high gear.

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