It used to be the case that Black Friday actually started on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s not what shoppers expect anymore, and businesses have caught on, moving sales earlier and earlier each year. But starting earlier isn’t enough to get your sale noticed anymore. At least not on its own. That’s why we’ve put together a list of ideas that actually get customers’ attention, with tips for putting these campaigns into action.
Whether you’re an eCommerce store or a brick-and-mortar retailer, you can tailor these strategies to suit your needs. So, buckle up and get ready to maximize your brand’s visibility and drive those sales through the roof.
Setting Your Black Friday Strategy Up for Success
It’s tempting to dive straight into Black Friday sale ideas, but even the most innovative campaign can fail if you’re not set up on the back end and don’t have clear objectives.
Start by asking yourself what your primary goal is. This could be:
- Increasing sales.
- Attracting new customers.
- Maintaining a loyal following from returning customers.
- Building brand awareness in new markets.
Looking at Black Friday campaigns as part of your overall strategy instead of a one-off event lets you continue profiting off all the hard work you’re putting in now.
Here’s how to make sure your Black Friday ideas roll out smoothly and keep your sales momentum going after the dust settles.
- Inventory. One of the most critical aspects of Black Friday planning is inventory management. Both online and brick-and-mortar brands need to ensure they have enough products to meet the increased demand during the event. But it’s not just having stock on hand. It’s also about tracking and organizing your inventory so order pickers can keep up as sales flood in.
- Site speed and load time. You also need to ensure that your website and other online platforms can handle the increased traffic and have backup plans in case of any technical glitches. If you need to increase your bandwidth, Midnight on Black Friday is the worst possible time to discover that.
- Staffing and support. Be sure you have enough staff to handle the increased foot traffic in physical stores and customer queries or payment issues online. Don’t wait until November to increase your staff. Give yourself enough time for training so new staff can keep up and provide a consistent customer service experience that represents your brand.
- List management. With all the extra effort you’re putting in, it’s a good idea to clean up and organize your marketing lists before sending everything to everyone. Take time to review your email subscriber list, remove hard bounces and invalid email addresses, or organize users by engagement activity. AI-powered list segmentation tools can help speed up the process.
- Budget. When planning your Black Friday marketing campaign, use data to allocate your budget rather than guessing. Your marketing dashboard has a wealth of information that you can use from previous years’ sales to decide what to discount and where to allocate your ad spend for the most impact.
- Timeline. Your sale might have a set start date, but that doesn’t mean every task on your Black Friday checklist can wait until the day before. Set separate deadlines for each item on your to-do list so you aren’t stuck creating email marketing campaigns or writing copy for your pay-per-click (PPC) ads the day before Thanksgiving.
Top Black Friday Marketing Ideas
Without further ado, let’s dive into our top 5 favorite Black Friday strategies to maximize your marketing impact and drive sales.
Campaign Idea 1: Pre-Sale Win-Back Emails
Remember when you went through your subscriber list? You don’t have to wait until Black Friday to reengage your subscribers who never click or open your emails. If you have a large list of customers who haven’t shopped in a while, warming up the list before Black Friday can give you a larger active subscriber base before major discounts kick in.
Phase your campaign carefully to avoid offer fatigue and protect your sender reputation, which ultimately affects deliverability for your main sale email.
- If you haven’t already, make a segment for subscribers who haven’t clicked or opened an email for 90-180 days. It’s a good idea to download this list and run it through a third-party email verification system to make sure the emails are valid and active (most major email platforms don’t do this for you).
- After validating your inactive list, create a low-friction re-engagement email with a non-aggressive subject line. Offer an exclusive, low-effort perk that encourages them to click on a call-to-action button. If you’ve set up segmentation, clicking automatically adds the contact back to your active subscriber list.
- If the subscriber doesn’t engage with your warm-up email, suppress the email from your main Black Friday send list. Mail servers evaluate your email deliverability constantly, but it matters even more during peak sending seasons. Negative signals such as low open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints harm your sender reputation and can reduce deliverability, even to your engaged list.
Campaign Idea 2: Exclusive Deals That Actually Feel Exclusive
Customers’ inboxes are flooded with promotions during the Black Friday season, which is why many businesses have sales throughout November instead of just during Cyber Week.
That doesn’t mean you need to have a storewide sale for an entire month. Try these ideas instead.
Give Your Best Customers First Dibs
If you haven’t already, go through your subscriber list and make a segment that includes your most engaged customers (the people who consistently click and open your emails). Create a teaser email announcing exclusive early access and send it only to this list, followed by a coupon that’s valid 24-48 hours before the sale starts for everyone else.
The biggest pitfall is making an “exclusive” sale that feels generic. Customers who aren’t actually repeat buyers or email openers might still use a coupon if it’s sent to them. However, getting a “VIP-only” email can feel fake and impersonal to someone who reads your emails but doesn’t ever buy anything. Instead of trying to invent a VIP status, it’s far more personal (and effective) to send your less engaged customers a deal that encourages them to purchase for the first time.
Deal Drops Throughout November
Instead of announcing one giant sale and repeating the offer for weeks, try featuring a different product or category each week. This gives customers a reason to keep coming back to check out what’s on sale next.
With this strategy, you want to avoid creating increasingly better discounts on the same item. Customers who buy during an earlier sale can feel cheated if they see the same product at a deeper discount later in the month.
Campaign Idea 3: Influencer Collaborations
Influencer marketing can be highly effective for your Black Friday strategy. Keep in mind that popular influencers are selective about which brands they work with. Partnering isn’t always as straightforward as sending a free product and expecting free content in return.
Finding influencers doesn’t have to be complicated. If you’re on Shopify, built-in apps like Shopify Collabs make it easier to connect with influencers and get started with affiliate marketing.
The earlier you reach out, the better. Remember to establish clear goals and expectations when working with influencers, and allow them creative freedom to showcase your offerings authentically and engagingly.
- Consider hosting giveaways or exclusive discount codes through influencers to drive engagement and attract new customers.
- Encourage influencers to create content that showcases your products or services and drives traffic to your website or landing page.
- Monitor influencer campaign performance and analyze results to identify what worked well and what to improve for future collaborations.
Campaign Idea 4: Personalized Offers and Targeted Marketing
Analyzing customer data, behavior, and past purchases allows you to offer personalized discounts or curated bundles. This creates a sense of exclusivity and personalization, encouraging customers to purchase. But you don’t have to spend hours poring over your dashboard to decide what to discount and who to target. With the prevalence of AI-powered tools, you can create highly targeted offers with very little effort.
There are many apps and tools that can help you with dynamic sales. Look for apps in the category of:
- AI-personalized pricing
- Predictive discounts
- Yield management systems
When setting up AI-powered discounts, set strict boundaries and thresholds to protect your profit margin and prevent inventory shortages. Configure your tool with:
- Price floors that prevent discounts from reducing an item’s profit margin below a certain percentage.
- Suppression logic that excludes high-demand, low-margin, or low-stock items from being discounted.
- Frequency capping that ensures single IP addresses or logged-in customer accounts can only use an AI-triggered discount once during the sale window.
Campaign Idea 5: Give Every Marketing Channel a Job
As you can probably tell from the other campaign ideas above, you need to leverage your existing marketing channels to promote offers and engage with your target audience. That doesn’t mean every channel has to do every job. During such a busy time, you’ll spread yourself thin trying to promote everything everywhere.
- Use social media to build anticipation, tease what’s coming next, and make sales feel more interactive. Consider running a poll to let your followers vote on what discount comes next to make them feel like part of the process.
- Use email to create a feeling of exclusivity and build FOMO. Make it common knowledge that subscribers get access to deals before they’re announced to the general public.
- Use SMS for time-sensitive updates. If you use Shopify, the Shop App can also be a great tool for push notifications.
- Use paid ads to run retargeting campaigns so you can reach people who left your site without purchasing. Rather than showing everyone a generic Black Friday ad, this brings shoppers back to the products they already showed interest in.
Lastly, make your website the hub with a dedicated Black Friday landing page. Users flooding into your website shouldn’t have to guess where to go for deals. A sale landing page should have all the relevant products, sale terms, dates, and information in one place so there’s zero friction once users land.
Not only does this prevent confusion (and reduce customer service inquiries), but having one dedicated page makes it easier to keep things updated as new discounts start.
Tips for Analyzing Your Black Friday Marketing Efforts
Once Black Friday is over, it’s crucial to analyze the success of your marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement.
- Analyzing your sales data to determine the impact of your promotions and offers.
- Identify which products or services performed well and which ones fell short of expectations.
- Conduct a comprehensive review of your marketing campaigns to evaluate the performance of each channel and tactic used.
- For eCommerce, utilize web analytics tools to track website traffic, conversion rates, and customer behavior.
- Identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, then make the necessary adjustments.
Remember to gather feedback from your customers! Send post-purchase surveys or encourage reviews and testimonials to understand their experience with your brand. Use all this data to refine your strategies and make data-driven decisions for future Black Friday campaigns.
So, is your business ready for the big day?
Black Friday is probably your busiest time of the year. It can also be the most stressful, whether you plan ahead or not.
You don’t have to segment your lists, use dynamic discounts, run retargeting campaigns, find influencers, or analyze data on your own. That’s why we’re here. Brandgraphy becomes an extension of your team, providing the resources and expertise you need to have the best sale yet.
To learn more about our capabilities in helping eCommerce stores and retailers across the United States get the most impact from their Black Friday campaigns, schedule a chat with us today!
