9 Black Friday Email Marketing Campaigns to Drive More Sales

Black Friday is just around the corner and Q4 traffic levels are about to peak.

To secure sales in this lucrative period, marketers and retailers must capitalise on the opportunities that lie ahead. 

In 2022, Black Friday remained popular as savvy shoppers searched for festive savings and seasonal discounts. When we look at the data from Trends, we noted a 13.37% YoY increase in average conversion rate and a 2.72% increase in average order value YoY.

We always expect high traffic levels and increased visitors for this key date, but the proof is in the data. Customers are not only browsing more, but they’re also converting and building bigger baskets every year. 

In this article, we’ll delve into how you can outline strong email marketing strategies to recover lost sales, upsell further products to high-intent shoppers, and recover valuable revenue during Black Friday.

Suggested watching: Learn how to thrive this Black Friday with our ‘Golden Quarter Bootcamp: The Ultimate Guide to Q4 Success’.

The current state of Black Friday email marketing

Black Friday is a highly competitive time for eCommerce retailers, with many brands taking a similar approach to promotions and discounting, leaving shoppers with a wide range of options at similar price points.

As a result, you’ll find that on-site browsers will have a high intent to purchase but may be enticed to abandon their carts in search of a better deal. 

To secure sales, retailers must cut through the Black Friday noise with an engaging email marketing strategy.

The data from 2022 shows that 116.5 million emails were sent on Black Friday, this is more than any other single day.¹

With an influx of emails hitting inboxes on this day, it’s essential you craft campaigns that drive sales and gain attention in the lead-up to Black Friday,

Despite never-ending to-do lists for eCommerce retailers during Q4, your approach to email marketing does not have to be excessively time-consuming. 

By making use of email automation, pre-planning your Black Friday campaigns and considering buying behaviour, you can let data-driven email campaigns do all the heavy lifting.  

What you can do: There are solutions you can adopt to assist with your approach.

Email Sequences is a re-targeting tool that can help you make the most of your email communications, optimising each touchpoint with influential campaigns driven by customer data. 

Black Friday email campaigns to drive sales

So let’s take a look at some of the campaigns that can play a critical role in your Black Friday success.

1. Sneak peeks

For many brands, an important goal of their Black Friday marketing strategy is to build suspense around their upcoming promotions and discounts. 

This is a great way to ensure your shoppers are prepared for your sales and put your brand at the front of their minds when they come to make a purchase.

To achieve this, consider sending sneak peeks or early previews of limited-time offers to your subscriber lists through an email newsletter or Black Friday-specific email marketing campaigns.

Retailers who do this can expect to: 

• Boost loyalty amongst their subscribers: Email subscribers will feel valued by your brand, as they get to see your sale before anyone else.
• Build anticipation for upcoming sales: By showing them a sneak peak you can create excitement about the discounts and promotions you will be offering.
• Inspire gift ideas: Give shoppers time to create their wishlist for gifting ideas and increase the likelihood of a purchase.

By getting your shoppers ready for your Black Friday sales, you give them time to consider the products they want to purchase from your brand whilst setting yourself up for successful sales on the day.

Pro tip: Black Friday campaigns need to engage and inspire purchases. 

To achieve this, consider putting together holiday gift guides and curated promotional materials to make your email subscribers excited to purchase with you. 

2. Countdown timers 

When sending your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails it’s essential to make use of FOMO (fear of missing out) in your campaigns. 

Capitalising on this feeling in your emails with the presence of a countdown timer allows you to benefit from a potential 8.6% increase in conversions. 

Using countdown timers allows you to communicate that your Black Friday deals won’t be around forever.

This factor alone will encourage shoppers to quickly move through the customer journey and checkout smoothly.

What you can do: To extend this urgency to your site, you can introduce countdown timers at multiple touchpoints throughout your site. 

Salesfire offers a free Sales Acceleration Kit to increase scarcity-based sales. 

Timers available include:

• End of Sales Countdown:  Shoppers don’t want to lose out on the discounts they’ve had their eye on. By including an end of sale countdown timer across your site, you increase the urgency in completing their order.
• Free Delivery Countdown: Offering an incentive such as free delivery might be the final push your shopper needs to make their purchase. You can signal the end of your free delivery offering to entice your shopper to purchase. 

With the help of timers, you can drive your shoppers through the buying process and effortlessly boost sales. 

3. Limited-time and exclusive offers

Now is the time to make the most of your existing email lists and appeal to your most engaged shoppers.

Consider rewarding your loyal subscribers by sending them exclusive offers or providing early access to your sales.

Send discount codes and promotions directly to their inbox to make it as easy as possible for your customers to purchase.

Giving shoppers such opportunities can strengthen the retailer/customer relationship and secure their loyalty throughout Q4 and beyond.

4. Browse Abandonment

Send targeted emails to shoppers who may have started browsing on your site, but didn’t complete their purchase.

With this type of customer behaviour commonplace during Black Friday, it’s essential that you have a robust retargeting strategy to recover distracted shoppers.

With Email Sequences, you can deploy the Browse Abandonment campaign to send your shopper an email reminding them of the products that caught their eye whilst they were browsing on-site. 

This campaign is a great one to utilise this Black Friday as it uses behavioural data to entice shoppers back into their online shopping journey.

5. Re-engagement emails

To maximise Black Friday revenue, it’s vital that you re-engage the shoppers who haven’t interacted with your brand for a while. 

Q4 is the time to pull out the stops for both new and existing customers to boost engagement. 

Consider sending re-engagement emails that feature: 

• Incentives: Include a discount or free delivery offering that’s too good to pass up to tempt browsers to make a purchase. 
• Personalised Recommendations: Including personalised Recommendations within your campaign content works to invite shoppers back to your site by highlighting products they may be interested in.

Deploying this strategy will allow you to effectively re-engage high-intent shoppers, and inspire them to purchase from your store this Black Friday. 

6. Save my basket

During the festive period, consumers are faced with many different sales and promotions, making it inevitable that some shoppers won’t be ready to commit to their purchase there and then. 

An effective email strategy to combat this is the ‘Save My Basket’ campaign.

By allowing your shoppers to save the basket they have built, you gain the opportunity to send a series of emails that will entice them to pick up their on-site journey where they left off.

Making it as easy as possible for highly engaged shoppers to check out when they’re ready will allow you to unlock a stream of Black Friday sales.  

Pro tip: Within these emails, you can also create urgency to encourage customers to return to their baskets.

We recommend that you highlight time-sensitive deals to motivate browsers to successfully check out on-site.

7. Abandoned orders

During Black Friday 2022, the online shopping cart abandonment rate was 77.74%.²

From this, we can conclude that one of the most important email sequences for Black Friday is your abandoned orders campaign. 

This campaign is essential throughout the entire festive season, a time when distracted shoppers are frequently abandoning their baskets.

However, hope is not lost, as studies show that cart abandonment campaigns have a 34% email open rate and a 9% click-through rate during Black Friday. 

This really highlights the importance of putting engaging, automated cart abandonment emails in place for Q4. 

Within this campaign, you can:

• Offer extra incentives: Deliver personalised discounts to give your shoppers that push to purchase.
• Remind shoppers of their basket: By including the items they left in their basket you can put your products in the forefront of their mind.

By setting up this email campaign before Black Friday traffic levels peak, you take action to re-target and recover lost revenue, catapulting your conversion rates for the long run. 

Pro tip: Throughout all your Black Friday email sequences, you should undergo A/B testing for your:

• Email design
• Text layouts
• Email subject lines

Doing so will provide vital insight into what your subscribers react positively to for future optimisation. To continue to get the most from your campaigns it’s important to remain reactive. Delving into your email analytics and monitor customer engagement to ensure that your email strategy is on track.

8. Mailing list voucher confirmation

With the influx of new online shopping traffic during Black Friday, now is the time to build up your subscriber list with new customers. 

You can deploy an Email Sequences campaign that prompts abandoning shoppers to subscribe in return for a discount code.

Display an incentivised sign-up Overlay on-site to gain the data of high-intent shoppers and follow up with a confirmation email to secure future sales. This is an excellent way to capture the email addresses of brand-new visitors whilst increasing sales.

9. Post-purchase recommendations

Your shopper may have completed a Black Friday purchase, but your email campaigns don’t stop there. 

You now need to think about how you can nurture your shoppers after their purchases to create additional sales opportunities. 

We recommend deploying a Post-Purchase Recommendations email campaign to serve them additional product suggestions, that complement their most recent order.

By deploying data-driven personalised Recommendations within your campaign, your shoppers can feel like your brand understands their tastes and needs. 

This campaign focuses on introducing Black Friday shoppers to products they’ll genuinely love in order to drive future sales.

What you can do: Personalised content throughout your campaigns is a great way to encourage shoppers to click through and interact with your site. 

To do this, you could test out:

• Personalised subject lines: Capture your shopper’s attention with personalised subject lines to increase open rate. 
• Mobile-friendly emails: It’s important to make sure your email campaigns are optimised for both mobile and desktop users, to allow them to interact with your content no matter what device they’re using.

Catapult your Q4 success with Email Sequences 

Throughout Black Friday there are a whole host of valuable sales and revenue opportunities at stake, so you must ensure you’re making the most of every marketing opportunity and channel in order to thrive in Q4.

By using advanced Email Sequences and intelligent campaigns, you can tap into customer buying behaviour, recover lost revenue and drive all-important sales for your business.

  ¹ Holiday Email Marketing By Numbers | Campaign Monitor.

² Average cart abandonment cart Black Friday 2022 | Statista

³ Mastering Black Friday Email Strategies: Engage, Convert and Thrive | Rock Content