A few hours ago (November 18, 2019) I was informed of a data leak from a misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket by a security researcher at Upguard. That means the file reports we email to users and were housed on Amazon S3 were publicly exposed and readable by anyone with the link. The files contain email […]
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Need Black Friday Email Marketing Ideas? If so, you've come to the right place. Read this article on Black Friday Email Marketing Ideas to get more out of your Black Friday Email Marketing.
The post Black Friday Email Marketing Ideas appeared first on mailfloss.
Black Friday falls on November 29th this year, and you don’t want to sleep on this tremendous shopping holiday. If you’re looking for low hanging fruit to kick start your sales you’ll want to take advantage of this day.
The holiday started in Philadelphia, where there was a ton of traffic on the day after Thanksgiving. It had nothing to do with shopping. Retailers started using the term Black Friday because it helped get them out of the red (and into the black).
It’s all about what you know, right? Anyway, enough with the boring history lesson. Let’s talk about some ideas and examples you can use in your business to get some more sales this year.
First things first, let’s talk about why Black Friday is an important day to focus on if you’re in online sales. Whether you sell physical products, digital products, courses, programs, imported cheese, or whatever.
You need to focus a considerable portion of your energy on Black Friday, here’s why.
Online sales are up 23.6% since 2017. The average order value increased by more than 8% as well. Cyber Monday is also one of the biggest online shopping days of the year, with $7.9 billion dollars in revenue.
It’s only getting bigger and bigger folks. 2019 is projected to be the biggest sales year for Black Friday so you’ll want to make the most of these email marketing ideas. Or else you might watch your competitors bask in the glory that is "the holidays".
If you’re anything like me, you love the holidays but hate when people start putting their Christmas lights up in October. That said, it’s never too early to start promoting your deals. You want to be the first in your subscriber's minds and the last that they see before they hit the buy button.
That means you should be sending out awesome emails to your list at the beginning of October. You could even go so far as to push “Early Black Friday Deals.” How many times have you seen that from a retailer?
We see it all the time. Retailers will push deals for people who want to get deals before the deals even start. Did I mention deals?
Start now!
$7.9 billion, yes with a B was spent on Cyber Monday last year. Out of those billions came $2.2 billion from smartphones. You should be creating separate emails to reach your Cyber Monday shoppers. You never want to ignore these people because they might have a bad taste in their mouth over Black Friday.
When you think of Black Friday, you think of some lady drop-kicking an eight-year-old to get the latest and greatest TV.
Cyber Monday has a lot more chill associated with it, so it helps to create separate campaigns for each. Some people will have zero interest in your Black Friday deals simply because you called it that.
Those same people will eat up the same deals if you approach them differently and promote them as “Cyber Monday” deals. We would suggest using different graphics, colors, and copy to push your Cyber Monday deals. Start promoting them as early as possible.
This time of year is your best opportunity to boost your sales and catch a little windfall before the holidays kick in. If you’re not marketing to your audience using the best email templates and CTAs, it won’t matter how great your offer is. Let’s be real for a second, we’ve seen so many bad email templates, and we mean most of them.
Last Black Friday, we saw many people use a circus of colors, fonts, and images without having any rhyme or reason behind them.
Here’s the deal with your email template:
Similar to our last point, you need to stay real with your Black Friday email marketing. Some people have a bad habit of making their deals seem too good to be true. If people don’t believe you, they won’t buy from you.
Don’t just highlight all the deals you’re offering. You want to make sure to show your subscribers some real products. Keep in mind that a lot of these subscribers might not even remember you or when they subscribed. And now you’re hitting their inbox with all these “spammy looking” deals.
Do your best to appear like a real person at all times.
Did we ever say we’re the greatest at creating segways into different paragraphs? Hear us out here. While we don’t mean spam a million deals to every subscriber on your list, there is a right way to do this.
For example, you could start promoting your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals in October. You could tell your list that you have a deal an hour sale on Black Friday. This is a great way to drum up some attention. You’ll separate yourself from people who are simply offering a percentage off their entire store or product.
Offering a deal an hour pushes your list to keep coming back to your store to see what you have going on. In addition to this deal, you’ll want to offer a percentage off the entire store, so it’s like a double whammy. Not only do you get people coming back, you get that high volume you need to cover the price reduction.
Another great example of doing something different with your Black Friday emails is offering a free gift with a purchase. We see this happen a lot during the holidays as well.
For example, you could send out an email to your list suggesting they can swing by the store to claim their free gift. You’ll want to use a product or offering that has free shipping and doesn’t cost you much.
If you’re selling digital products, you could offer an ebook or something like that. If you sell physical products, you could use something with free shipping and give it away for free with a promo code.
A great example that Taco Bell uses is during the Major League Baseball World Series. Have you ever heard of this one? It’s awesome.
If a player steals a base, Taco Bell offers a free taco to anyone who comes into the restaurant. Who in their right mind will walk into a Taco Bell and only eat one taco? Show me this person because they must have more discipline than Mark Wahlberg.
It’s a huge marketing strategy that anyone could see through, but it draws people in. Everyone wants to get their free taco, and they end up buying a few chalupas, some nachos, and a few drinks as well.
Boom, marketing.
If you sell beauty products, you could offer a complimentary item that goes really well with something else in your store. During the checkout process, you could upsell them on a paid product. Your customers will already feel like they’re getting something for free. PLUS, it’s Black Friday, so you’re offering a huge percentage off that paid product anyway.
Trust me, it works.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great days to start adding in some new products and testing things out. You could send an email out to your list telling them to check out your “Black Friday Exclusive List.” You could even make these special products only available to email subscribers to make it seem even more exclusive.
If you’re re-targeting previous customers (hint: good idea) this is also a great chance to bring them back by giving them new offers.
For digital products, you could tell them that you added some new stuff to a previous course, or you’ve beefed something up.
Regardless of what type of business you’re in, this is an excellent chance for you to tell people to come check you out again.
You could have the greatest deals, have the best offers in the world, and have amazing content and graphics inside the email. All of that doesn’t matter if your target never opens the email.
Think about your subscriber's inbox. Especially around Black Friday, it will be chock fulla retailers and marketers trying to do the same thing as you.
Get the sale.
You need to stand out more than the new kid in class. That’s not easy to do.
Here are a few tips to make sure your email gets opened:
Remember that in most email services like Gmail and Yahoo, the first sentence of your email will display before the target even opens it. You need to make sure you get to the point quickly and don’t miss this opportunity. The key to success with Black Friday email marketing is grabbing attention and holding it long enough to secure the bag.
You need to make sure you’re testing your headlines, graphics, gifs, deals, and everything else. You’ll never know what works best unless you test everything. This reason is why it’s important to start early, so you have time to test before people start shopping.
You’ll want to make sure to A/B test every single aspect and have a tool to use to make this process simple. Most email marketing tools will come with A/B testing capabilities; you’ll need it.
You don’t want to sleep on Black Friday and Cyber Monday email marketing. This time of year is a great opportunity for you to boost your sales before the holiday shopping season kicks into first gear.
Here are some final points to remember before we go our separate ways:
Good luck!
Looking for some email marketing best practices to help guide you through your email marketing campaigns? We've got 10 tips to share with you to ensure you're following best practices to get the most out of your email marketing.
The post Email Marketing Best Practices: 10 Tips for Success appeared first on mailfloss.
Email marketing is a powerful tool when used correctly. It’s all about giving your audience something different than what everyone else is doing. We live in a world where the consumer is savvier than ever, so you can’t market to them as you’ve done in the past. We need to get more creative and spend more time on our emails.
Here are some email marketing best practices to help you get more out of each email that hits your sent folder.
There is nothing more important to an email marketing strategy than your value proposition. Ask yourself:
If you’re not offering more to them than the other guy, you’re toast. Burnt toast.
What do we mean by more? We mean, you need to give users something extra if you expect to ask them for something. If you want someone to opt-in to a landing page or start a free trial, you need to give them something in return.
We don’t mean a silly PDF swipe file or an ebook you wrote in five minutes (we know who you are, we’re watching you). No, we mean something of serious value that makes the person on the other end say, “Whoa, this is exciting, let’s go!”
Offering someone something awesome through an email is a great way to get them to open more. How many times have you opened an email to find nothing of value on the other side? When that happens, do you think you’ll continue to open emails from that person?
Probably not.
Kevin Lee from Buffer told a great story once. He talked about Dropbox giving him 10x his original storage space for the same price through an email. He got so much incredible value from that email that he’ll probably have butterflies the next time he sees Dropbox in his inbox.
There is nothing worse than an impersonal email. The “to whom this may concern” style of email marketing DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE. Stand up from your couch right now and scream to the world because we all could use a hard lesson on email personalization.
There is a real person on the other side of that email who is likely very busy with their own life. If they’re kind enough to open your darn email, the least you can do is treat them like a human.
Put your research into understanding your audience and having variables in place to make a personal connection with them. Alex Berman from Experiment 27 has a great cold email marketing strategy. It mentions the importance of personalizing your emails and including points that show you know who the person is.
On another note, you want to humanize your emails and show your audience that you’re a real person, as well. It’s so great that we live in a world where brands can share their struggles and triumphs with their viewers. Years ago, a brand was simply a word about a product. But today we see brands connecting with people and stepping out from behind the curtain.
Headspace does a great job of sharing communication with their audience. The meditation tool talks about how they appreciate their customers and how fortunate they are to have them. That type of connection is so valuable to an audience, and it helps with customer retention.
Have you ever received an email that went something like this:
“Hey Mike, I just wanted to reach out today and talk to you about this great offer I have. I’ve been working on this offer for three years now, and I assure you it will change your life once you see it. Before I get to that, let me tell you a little about myself. I’ve worked in the industry for eight years, and I have a ton of experience with email marketing. I’ve helped countless business owners...BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH…………..BLAH.”
Don’t do that! Do not carry on about everything other than what the person is supposed to do with your email. The best way to never convert your emails is to drool over your qualifications and expertise right off the bat.
This person doesn’t care. Unless they are a hot lead, they don’t care about that. All they want to know is what you can do for them. You need to be super clear about it immediately, or else they’ll close the email or even unsubscribe if you piss them off enough.
Another essential thing to remember is that you have to tell your audience what to do. Be as clear as possible about what they need to do if they’re interested. Don’t send them through this endless funnel of pages because they’ll bounce. Make the process from “email open” to “conversion” as seamless as possible.
If we go back to the personalization factor, not everyone wants the same things. Each subscriber won’t want to receive emails twice a day, while others may not mind it. Some might want one email a week. You really need to cater to the specifics of your audience if you expect to have the highest conversion rate.
Hubspot does a great job of this by allowing its subscribers to choose how often they want to receive emails. Subscribers can also pause their subscription without having to unsubscribe.
You should always offer that as an alternative when someone chooses to unsubscribe.
Clickfunnels also has a similar process they follow where they let you freeze your account at a much lower price without losing your funnels. If someone loses their funnels after they’ve spent countless hours on them, the chance of them coming back is slim.
But, if they can save all their work but cut the cost of the subscription down to almost nothing, they’ll likely return.
You need to cater to the individual rather than the audience as a whole. Everyone wants something different.
Let me give you a scenario. You’re sitting and having a nice dinner on a Friday night with your family. You’re unwinding after a long week of work and enjoying yourself.
All of a sudden, your phone starts blowing up with emails reading, “URGENT: OPEN NOW!” You might be thinking, “Holy crap! Is my business collapsing? Have I lost all my money? Are they bringing back the McRib?”
So you open that email to find a slimy sales pitch from that guy you unknowingly subscribed to four months ago and forgot about.
This is a sure-fire way to get yourself thrown into the spam folder for all of eternity, and you don’t want to do this. Sending false alarms, fake urgency, and misleading content is the quickest way to go to spam jail. And once you’re there, your open rates will drop to nearly nothing.
Not to mention the fact that it’s not a cool way to operate your business. If you’re in this for the long-term put the real work in to bring your audience value. That way they will open your emails and connect with you on a personal level.
We’re in the age of “clickbaity” advertisements that draw people in but offer nothing on the back end. Make sure you add a physical address to your email and always give them a way to unsubscribe. Ignoring these two points is against anti-spam laws.
Overall, you should spend more time on your subject line than you do on your email. These headlines are essential to getting people to open your emails, and once you’ve gotten that far, you’re in the clear.
You want to test a variety of subject lines to find the best one for you. Here is a template that works well for most people:
If you can mash these three points into one subject line that is not longer than 50 characters, you’ll be good to go. Something like, “Tom, smash that button for three free days of BLANK.” While that strategy won’t work for everyone, it’s worth testing it against something you’re currently having success with.
Never use spammy words like win or urgent. Do not write your headlines in uppercase letters, and never promise something that you can’t deliver.
Email marketing is all about building trust in your audience. The last thing you want to do is get someone to open your email if you can’t deliver on what you promised.
You want to ensure your first touches on a potential lead are as personal as possible. Once you’ve established that initial trust, you can start to play around with more automation. Drip campaigns are a great way to automate your email marketing without sounding canned.
Start out with a welcome email with an offer. Throw in some additional information later on. Hand out another free offer and repeat this process for every lead that lands in your funnel.
There are many different email marketing software out there that will help with this process. The key is to know and understand your audience before you start automating. If you’re sending the same offers to everyone, you’re not reaching your full potential.
You should have segmented audiences, so you ensure you’re giving the exact person what they need to feel valuable.
Grammarly sends you weekly updates about how much content you’ve written, and they basically tell you how awesome you are. These updates are a great way to remind customers if they’ve fallen off the wagon or haven’t used your service in a while. If you offer SaaS, you should be utilizing this strategy.
From these emails, you can draw people back into the software to get them using it again. For example, you could send an email telling the customer that you’ve made some recent updates regarding an issue. You could also let them know what they’re missing out on by not using your service. Many businesses use this for customer retention and engagement.
The ultimate key to success with all forms of digital marketing is testing. You want to test a variety of email templates, headlines, content, videos, and so on. You’ll never know what can work if you’re not testing it against something else.
Many people enter an email marketing campaign with the intention of getting everything right on the first try. When it doesn’t work, they grumble and grouch about how email marketing is dead, and it doesn’t work.
Email marketing still has the highest rate of engagement, and so many marketers still consider it their most important avenue for reaching their audience.
Don’t sleep on email and make sure you’re testing a variety of different variables to find out what converts the best.
Finally, we’ve come to the last point. Here you have all this data that you’ve built up over time. You have segmented lists of leads. You’re getting conversions, and things seem to be going well so far. What do you do with all this data?
You need to find a way to use it and translate it into dollar signs, right?
Take all of your leads, all your email templates and variables, and all your conversions and see what works best for each particular audience.
When you’ve determined the best action plan for each audience, you can then create robust campaigns that you can scale. Once you start scaling your email marketing efforts, the sky's the limit.
We hope these email marketing best practices were useful for you and you can use them in your business right away. Be sure to understand how to treat your audience the right way and learn who they are before you start throwing yourself onto them.
Email marketing is a lot like picking someone up at the bar. You can’t expect to take them home without wining and dining them a little. Keep that in your mind when you’re creating your email marketing campaigns, and you’ll never have a problem converting!
