Boost Your Sales with Email Automation on Black Friday!
In this guest post we will show you how even beginners can use simple automation workflows for their online store to increase their Black Friday sales.
It’s almost time: On November 29, Black Friday draws bargain hunters to shops like bees round a honeypot. Be clever and plan your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions now, to send them to your customers automatically via newsletter!
Both buyers and retailers can’t wait for the upcoming shopping days Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A look at the previous year 2018 shows that customers spend an average of almost 500 euros on Christmas gifts – preferably on Black Friday, in order to benefit from all the incredible offers. 2.4 billion euros were generated in Germany on Black Friday and Cyber Monday – 15% more than in the previous year. It is therefore worthwhile as a retailer to serve the shopping event with appropriate offers and to get customers to your shops. That’s extremely convenient with automated newsletters.
Black Friday Campaign – One email doesn’t count
There are no rules about when and how often you can send Black Friday newsletters to your customers. The timing for your Black Friday Sales campaign is completely up to you. You decide when the big sale starts in your shop and how often you send new offers to customers. In some shops, for example, there is a whole week full of offers before or after Black Friday, some retailers send the starting signal to their recipients punctually at midnight, while others offer new discounts on individual products every hour.
You have your Black Friday check list in front of you and are ready to create your campaign? Take a look at our examples and learn how to send the greatest Black Friday offers directly to your customers’ inboxes with clever Email Automation:
Example 1: Perfect for Marketing Beginners: Start-Mail with Reminder
This automation is easy to set up and suited for email marketing beginners. On Black Friday, an email is triggered that informs all recipients of a list of the start of your sale. For this purpose, a date is set as the starting point of the automation right at the beginning: In this example, the workflow starts on November 29, Black Friday. Recipients who do not open the mailing on Friday will receive a reminder mail on the following Saturday. Experience has shown that Saturday is a particularly popular day for online shopping. This way get the most out of your recipient list and recycle the same content you sent the day before in your reminder email. Just change the subject and the header picture in the mailing. This allows you to test whether the changes have a positive effect on your open rate.
Example 2: Use Data for Segmentation
As a store owner you probably already know a lot about your customers. You can use this knowledge in your automation to send more targeted – and thus more successful – Black Friday offers! This automation shows how cosmetics retailers can segment their newsletters according to male and female recipients. This enables them to simultaneously send gender-specific offers from their product portfolio to the right target group. The filter function starts a query for a certain characteristic within the recipient list (in this case: Is the data field “Salutation” filled with “Mr.”?). If the condition applies, the newsletter will be sent with products for men. If not, the newsletter for women’s fragrances will be sent to the recipients. You want to reach non-openers? Then add a reminder that is sent to recipients who have not opened the first mailing to your workflow, just like in the first sample automation.
Example 3: Responding to Customer Interests
A click on a link tells you something about the preferences of your customers. You can respond to this behavior by sending a suitable follow-up mail to your clicking customers. In the automation workflow, a furniture retailer with an example shop sends out a Black Friday email with offers on various product categories: Chairs, desks and sideboards. A click on one of these categories triggers a follow-up email on Cyber Monday in the automation.
At this point in the workflow, it’s tested whether a link from the category ”Chairs“ has been clicked. If so, an email will be sent on Cyber Monday with additional discounts on this product category. If not, it’ll be checked if the category “Desks” was clicked and then the category “Sideboards”. A corresponding follow-up email will be sent when clicked. If the customer has not clicked on any of the categories requested, a general newsletter with offers will simply be sent on Cyber Monday.
Design Your Own Campaign with Simple Email Automation
Even the simplest automation workflows can significantly increase your sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday through individual follow-ups and segmentation. The automations in the examples can be extended and individualized just as you need them to be: You can post an announcement before the actual sales event, send daily changing offers to your recipients or send a follow-up offer on Cyber Monday to all non-openers who missed your Black Friday Sale. Running an A/B test is also a good way to find out which discount offer your customers find more attractive!
There are lots of creative ways that lead to success on Black Friday! Use Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers to get customers into your store. With the right CleverReach plugin you can use all recipient data from your shop in the newsletter marketing tool and put your Black Friday ideas into action.
