Originally from the United States, the famous Black Friday (that is actually the weekend after Thanksgiving) has slowly made its way to other parts of the world as well. This mid-season sale period is the ultimate opportunity for shoppers to score a great bargain, and equally it’s an opportunity for businesses to reach those sales targets. In fact, it’s one of the biggest dates in the e-commerce calendar.

This year, Black Friday will fall on Friday 23rd, with many sales running until Monday 26th of November (also known as ‘Cyber Monday’). Remember these dates and start preparing your marketing campaigns so you can benefit from this highly anticipated sale.

Get noticed

Events like the Black Friday need a bit more creativity than your average campaign because many emails are sent over the Black Friday weekend so you’ll need to make an effort to stand out from the crowd!

In this case, the subject line is your best friend.

A good subject line must catch your recipient’s eye and entice them to open your email. First of all, personalize your subject line with the recipient’s name or nickname. This is an important step to get your email noticed.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to use emojis so your email can be seen and understood in just a glimpse.

Furthermore, create a sense of urgency by pointing out the promotions are for a limited time only.

Be convincing

As customer’s inboxes will be flooded with Black Friday promotions, your message must be convincing.

The email design will be crucial to attract your recipients’ attention at the very first sight.

Logically, black is the most popular color-theme for promotional emails on Black Friday. Play with the contrast to highlight your deals.

Choose the right headline, personalize your email marketing content and make your promotions instantly noticeable so your recipients understand right away what’s in it for them.

Avoid full-image content

The full image is a sloppy trend many companies follow by creating a marketing email with Photoshop and send them as one single image.

That’s right, you may be able to do absolutely everything you have in mind without any restriction as opposed to creating an HTML email or using an email marketing tool.

However, an email only composed of a single image causes a few problems:

• It’s not responsive so it’s not suitable for mobile devices. More than 50% of the emails in the world are now read on a smartphone, it would be unfortunate to miss that opportunity.
• It might end up in the SPAM folder. Email providers hate the full image. On average, an email should consist of 40% images and 60% text for optimal deliverability.
• Some recipients won’t even see it because many inboxes don’t display images. Hence, some will open your email but won’t see a single thing.

Instead of the single image, go for an optimized format by creating the HTML yourself or by using an email editor like Mailify’s EmailBuilder.

This way you’ll have a professional email that optimized to insure your campaign efficiency.

Prepare your campaigns

The best way to approach events such as Black Friday is to prepare a campaign as much as you can in advance.

Send a first email to inform your prospects about the upcoming promotions they will benefit from on Friday. Send it on tuesday or wednesday to nurture their curiosity.

Then, send the email on Friday for the beginning of the promotions, and another one on the last day convey a sense of urgency and the imminent expiry of your offers.

Don’t forget to announce it at the same time on your social media channels during the course of the weekend. Focus your posts on highlighting a particular  product so you can emphasise the deals you’re offering to your community and remind them that there is discount up for grabs.

Combining email marketing campaigns and social media, and even SMS, is essential for an effective digital strategy, especially in B2B.