The Small Brand’s Guide to Black Friday Email Marketing

Why email marketing?

This marketing tool has a plethora of benefits, but let’s focus on why it’s particularly effective during Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Once someone is on your email list, it’s free to send them an email. So, while growing your list can cost you in ad spend (or time), email marketing is virtually free!

2. Email gives you an intimate touchpoint with your subscribers. You can nurture your relationship with them if you send them emails they enjoy opening and consuming.

3. Emails have a higher engagement rate than social media. Moreover, those rates are declining on social media. In 2023, Instagram's engagement rate was only 0.47%, down from 0.67% in 2021. In contrast, email marketing boasts a 36.59% open rate and a 7.16% click-through rate for ecommerce, making it a more effective channel for engagement.

Consider the difference in engagement for that last point. Even if you put aside the privacy updates that distort email open rates, the average click-through rate for ecommerce being 7.16% is still staggering compared to the abysmal 0.47% engagement rate of Instagram.

Yes, your email list is likely much smaller than your big-box competitor’s. But a small list can be an advantage if you know how to leverage it.

How to build an effective Black Friday email marketing strategy

Feeling overwhelmed with getting started? Follow this step-by-step Black Friday email marketing strategy tailored for ecommerce brands with smaller budgets.

1. Double down on list-building at least one month ahead

If you're already growing your email list, intensify your efforts at least one month before Black Friday to maximize your reach.

For starters, you can revamp your email opt-in forms and create a bigger incentive to join your list, like access to VIP club perks or an early Black Friday sale:

You can display the form to every store visitor – or just those coming from specific channels. For example, if you’re running lead generation ads on social media, you can set up form targeting and only display to those coming from the ad.

Speaking of social media ads…

Increase your ad budget to capture more leads

If you’re running ads to acquire new customers or grow your email list, you can consider increasing your budget during this period, too.

You’re better off spending twice as much before Black Friday and turning off your ads during the peak of these events. By doing this, you’ll avoid peak ad cost surges and still add potential buyers to your list.

For example, you can exchange discount codes for email or host a giveaway:

Because the cost for ads before Black Friday will be lower, you’ll get to acquire customers at a cheaper rate. Then, when Black Friday rolls around, you’ll have these existing customers you can promote to via email.

Ramp up your organic social media activity

What if you’re not running ads? Then you’ll need to spend time instead of money. Hopefully, you’ve already started growing an organic audience on social media — if not, it might be difficult to pull off just a month or two in advance.

Ecommerce brands have been getting good traction with TikTok. But whichever social media platform you’re on, consider ramping up your activity or running a flash sale to get people to join your list.

Krave Beauty is a great example of a brand posting amazing educational content to build an organic audience on TikTok.

To start warming up your audience and growing your email list, you can post the following types of content:

• Memes and trends featuring your product
• User-generated content (UGC)
• Interesting ways to use your products
• Testimonials and case studies
• Giveaways
• Inspirational content
• Announcements and new product features

Here’s an example of Scrub Daddy using memes and humor to showcase their brand:

Then, to funnel people to your email list, post about your special offer from time to time. Whether it’s a coupon or a limited-edition product, give a reason for your audience to become customers or subscribers sooner rather than later.

For instance, Crocs announced a collab collection and made it clear that the stock would be limited.

Additionally, you can use your social media platforms to get people hyped up for what you’ve got planned during the holiday season. Give them hints on what’s to come so they have more reasons to join your email list.

2. Re-engage past customers with a win-back email sequence

Do you have people on your list who made a purchase in the past, but who haven’t bought from your store or engaged with your emails in a while?

If so, it’s time to write and send a win-back email sequence.

Win-back emails are exactly what they sound like — their purpose is to win back existing customers and get them to purchase new products.

Your past customers are some of your biggest assets. It’s fully worth the time and effort to reach out to them and try to win them back.

In addition to telling your old customers about new products or promos, you can let them know you’re preparing a special VIP-only event for Black Friday — and that they’re the first ones to know about it.

Additionally, you can automatically customize this email if you have the existing data in your email marketing tool. For example, if you know what products they’ve purchased, you can make an offer based on their purchase history.

Let’s say, for instance, that you sell training equipment and have customers who have purchased resistance bands. You can send an email to these people to promote different levels of resistance bands that they don’t have – or other products that would round out their workout routine, like a jump rope or foam roller.

3. Warm up audience with a pre-sale or new collection

You can also increase engagement before the Black Friday sale by running a Pre-sale or even launching a new product collection.

Let’s look at the examples.

Pre-sales come in different shapes. Some brands announce VIP sales and send exclusive coupons to subscribers only; other brands run Pre-Black sales available to everyone.

For instance, Adidas enticed subscribers to join their loyalty program to get early access to discounts.

Other brands launch flash sales available to everyone. For instance, last year James Michelle, a jewelry brand, ran a 4-day sale right before the actual Black Friday.

The goal of a pre-sale is often to re-engage customers, get your products at the top of their minds, and encourage them to start loading their carts.

The launch of a new collection triggers a different type of emotions. People love freshness and exclusivity. Sometimes exploring brand-new pieces can be more exciting than getting a discount.

Besides, if you only provide access to the new pieces to your subscribers or offer them early discounts on the new collection, they’ll be happier about being a part of a VIP group if that group gets unique deals.

4. Send valuable content in your nurture emails

Want to warm up your subscribers and get them ready to buy? You don’t have to send a promotional newsletter every day. Instead, add some nurture emails into the mix.

Some examples of nurturing emails can include:

• New ways to use your products
• Gift guides and ideas
• Behind the scenes on the creation of your products
• Education about a cause that’s important to your brand and your audience
• The story behind a product launch

For example, here’s a newsletter from Dorsey, a jewelry company, featuring style ideas at the beginning of November – just before the Black Friday rush.

It’s also a great time to announce a popular product restock, launch of a new product, or your gift recommendations – since many wait for the Black Friday deep discounts to start their holiday shopping spree.

5. Host a live sale event

Live sales are unique events that are ideal to nurture a sense of community with your customers.

Remember the VIP list you built previously? Now it’s time to execute on your promise and surprise them with a fun, unique event they can attend live.

It’s up to you whether you want to make your live sale your main Black Friday marketing event or not. For example, you can host this promotion as a bonus to reward your loyal VIP customers. This will prove that it does mean something to be part of an exclusive group.

Rewarding customers who commit early on will encourage them to do the same every time you launch a new promotion. You’re showing them that it’s worth it to open your emails and click on your links… which will help you generate more revenue for your future Black Friday events.

6. Pick your own date for Black Friday

If you don’t want to compete against everyone else during Black Friday, then don’t. Launch your own Black Friday event before the actual Friday.

You can launch your campaign several weeks in advance, as long as you take enough time to warm people up first.

The earlier you launch your campaign, the easier it’ll be to stand out — but too early may also not gather as much interest. After all, people use Black Friday to do some holiday shopping — and there’s no urgency to shop for the holidays in the middle of August.

For instance, Click and Grow ran their Black Friday sale in early November last year:

This limited-time promo email got sent out on November 5 – over 3 weeks before Black Friday.

Another option is to host a sale just a few days early. If you’re using this strategy, make sure to maximize your VIP list beforehand.

In the screenshot above, you can see how this brand added a ton of value for their members. Their instructions are crystal clear — only members get access to the website during the early-bird phase of their Black Friday event.

7. Add upsells and cross-sells

To maximize the revenue you’ll make even with a small list, you need to boost your average order value. You can pull this off by adding upsells and cross-sells to your most popular items.

Purchase upgrades make it easy for your customers to improve the quality of their order while they’re already in the mood to shop. You can set these up once and automatically increase your AOV for every single order.

8. Be specific about how much customers save

Whether you’re offering a 30% or a 70% discount, you can be even more specific about how much your customers will be saving by showing a comparison of prices before and after the discount.

For instance, this email from James Michelle explains how much exactly some of the brand’s bestsellers cost with the Black Friday offer:

You can also use a tiered discount offer, which is a very common sale practice for brands who can’t afford equally deep discounts on everything. The idea is pretty simple: the larger the order, the deeper the discount.

This tactic entices customers to consider purchasing more, therefore helping you boost your average order value.

9. Sprinkle elements of urgency into your campaigns

Every time you promote a sales event to your email list, remind your subscribers of the time they have to take advantage of the offer.

One way to add urgency directly inside your emails is with a countdown timer.

Some email marketing platforms allow you to do that without any special knowledge. For example, in Getsitecontrol, you can add a countdown timer and adjust it to match the style of your email within a couple of clicks:

Countdown timers are especially effective with short-lived sales. There’s not much urgency to a timer that’s set to expire 7 days from now.

10. Use cart abandonment sequences to convert more customers

If you don’t have abandoned cart emails set up yet, Black Friday season is the perfect time to do so.

Your customers will have a ton of distractions fighting for their attention. So it’s highly likely they’ll get distracted before they can complete their purchase on your website.

Win back the sale by sending them a sequence of emails that remind them to complete their purchase.

Craft cart abandonment emails that reflect your brand's tone, whether playful or serious, stand out in a crowded inbox and encourage conversions. Remember people will get bombarded with emails during this time of the year, so it’s worth the effort to stand out in the inbox. That’s why I love Whisky Loot’s example above!

11. Launch a Small Business Saturday promo

Have you heard about Small Business Saturday?

Lodged right in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday is a sales event specifically meant for small businesses.

If you have small business supporters in your email list, you have an advantage with them compared to larger brands. You can let your subscribers know you’ll run a promo for Small Business Saturday instead of Black Friday.

To switch things up, try offering something different than a discount. For instance, you can offer additional points on your loyalty program for all purchases made during the event. Or you can double (or even triple) the referral bonus you give your subscribers if you have such a program!

12. Get personal with video in your emails

One of the benefits of having a small email list is the ability to get more personal with everyone.

Here’s one last tactic to try with your VIP list — depending on the size of the list, consider making a custom video for those who haven’t purchased yet.

You can customize the video based on the previous purchase history and pair it with a tailored promotion. For example, you can offer an additional 15% off fall boots to customers who purchased footwear from you last year.

Feel free to get creative depending on the way you’ve segmented your email list.

13. Offer a gift

If you can’t pull off the huge price slashes in the 70% range, why not add value instead of making your products cheaper?

You can do this by offering a gift with qualifying orders in addition to any special prices.

For example, Wool and the Gang offered 30% off their entire store last year. 70% reductions don’t make sense for a business that sells high-quality yarn.

However, they did offer a free scarf pattern for anyone who bought a bundle:

The free gift works well because it complements the purchase – it adds value to it. Customers can use the free pattern to create something awesome using their yarn bundle!

14. Showcase your favorites

Black Friday sales can be overwhelming.

You mean, EVERYTHING is on sale? What should I even buy?

I like how Four Sigmatic called this out directly in their promo email. Not only do they call it out, but they offer a solution by showcasing some of their favorites as a suggestion:

They also suggest holiday bundles for anyone who’s looking for gift ideas:

This means that in a single email, the brand can serve people looking to shop for themselves and to buy gifts – all without being too overwhelming.

15. Try a pattern interrupt email

One of my favorite ways to close off an email marketing sales sequence is the pattern interrupt email.

As the name suggests, this type of email differs from the rest of the sequence in some way. It’s designed to stand out not only from competitors, but also from your own emails!

For example, Knix sent out several regular promo emails about their Cyber Monday sale. But during the evening, they sent out this last email:

This email feels different for several reasons:

• It’s text-based instead of relying on graphics and designs
• It’s signed off by a real person instead of being from the brand itself
• It’s super short and to-the-point, making it easy to take action

So don’t be afraid to try something different and interrupt the pattern your subscribers are used to.

How often should I email about Black Friday?

Not sure what your email schedule should look like? Here’s a sample email promotional plan you can try out.

Feel free to play around with the dates and events in this sample Black Friday schedule. Make it 100% yours.

Make the most out of Black Friday with email marketing

Black Friday is a cutthroat competition between brands of all sizes. But if you can double down on community-building and leverage your small list, you can still come out of the holiday season in the black.