The countdown has already started and despite sending your weekly newsletters or promotions, you can’t ignore that voice in your head that keeps saying “Pssst, you know? Black Friday is coming.” So, it’s time to prepare for it and start setting up your pre-send checklist.

COVID-19 has changed consumers’ daily life and shopping habits, too. This will be the first (and hopefully the last) Black Friday season during the pandemic period, so the “standard” Black Friday rules are not going to be enough to make your campaigns perform as expected. This year, Black Friday happens on November 27, 2020. It’s the day after Thanksgiving in the US.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (and Christmas) are the days where eCommerce generates the highest revenue in the year. Senders carefully prepare a list of quick tips to keep in mind while setting up Black Friday campaigns, in order to perform well in terms of revenues and email deliverability – which can have a direct impact on the bottom line.

Why is that? 

1. First in the Box, First Sale

Get your recipients prepared with countdown newsletters or reminders in anticipation of what is going to come or grant early access to promos. Once engaged this way, they’ll become addicted to your offers. Break the rules and be the first to start the discounts season. More than ever before, retailers need recipients to keep up their shopping habits while, at the same time, providing the savings their shoppers highly desire. Try to be creative and brave in your promotions and you’ll get rewarded properly.

2. Profiling is Key

If you did your homework in the past months and profiled your subscribers, you’ll have the chance to send them promotions that they really care about, at the right time. Try to avoid mailbombing your subscribers with the same promotion for all. The more the campaign is tailor made for subscribers, the more chances you have to sell. This will encourage recipients to interact with your messages which will increase domain and IP reputation. ISPs reward good behavior by delivering messages to the inbox rather than into the spam folder.

3. Let your Reputation Survive

I know what you’re thinking… You’re planning to use every single email address in your database (your relatives’ ones, included)! It’s not always a good idea when you have inactive users in your mailing list. Maybe your Black Friday campaign would perform well but, in the meantime, you will burn your reputation with ISPs. If you plan to also send Cyber Monday campaigns or any other commercial sendouts in the next couple of weeks, you’d better focus only on your good openers. If recipients haven’t interacted with your messages for more than 6 months, there must be a reason… so don’t stress that mailing list too much. Otherwise, you’ll get complaints and hit spam traps, which will lead to fewer messages being delivered to the recipient’s inbox. Don’t forget: ISPs also take in consideration when a recipient deletes your message or even ignore it! The most active part of your list can generate almost all your possible revenues. Sending campaigns to inactive users to try to bring something in, is not worth it.

4. Avoid o’clock scheduled Sendouts

A habit of marketers is to schedule sendouts the first minute of the hour. On the other end, ISPs are suffering, because every single hour they have a sudden increase of incoming emails in the first minutes. You can easily skip that by postponing the start of your campaign 10 or 15 minutes and avoid or reduce queued emails.

5. Set up your BIMI Logo

During promotion days, recipient’s mailboxes will be literally invaded with messages similar to yours. Of course, creating a good subject line is a good idea, but your message would be lost between many others anyway. Lucky you! This can be fixed by implementing your BIMI logo in order to be better recognized by recipients, even in a crowded mailbox. Discover more about BIMI here.

Need help? Find out more about Email Deliverability services and get in touch with our team to boost your revenue this holiday season.