How to Plan a Black Friday Campaign That Actually Sells

Picture this: you’ve just completed your Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, and it was a roaring success. Now ask yourself...what does that success look like? Did you increase your revenue by a certain percentage, or did you recruit 10,000 new subscribers to email and SMS lists?

Before you can launch a successful Black Friday marketing campaign, you need to set goals so you know what that success will look like. Make sure they’re measurable and specific. Example: increase revenue from last year’s Black Friday by 10%. And then craft a winning marketing strategy to make 👏 it 👏 happen👏.

1. Create an unbeatable offer (and share it everywhere)

Your offer drives everything you do. It’s your hook, it needs to differentiate you from the fierce BFCM competition of other online stores, and it needs to be something your customers are going to be excited about. But if your customers don’t see that offer, your efforts will be wasted.

Make that offer as visible as possible by blasting it out on every channel possible. You want to give your consumers all the information they need about your Black Friday offer in multiple places.

And you don’t want to wait until the day of to market your deals. Be intentional with your marketing and give your audience time to get excited about what's coming. Some of the most effective ways to boost your Black Friday offer visibility include:

• Create a social media campaign: Advertise your most appealing discounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other channels. Just make sure you're creating content for each channel. Short videos are great for TikTok. Use fun, vibrant photos for Instagram and Facebook. And test out hashtags for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to boost your reach.
• Create an SMS marketing campaign: 39% of customers who sign up for text messages want to hear from those brands 2-3 times a week, so use that to your advantage during BFCM. Send special offers to your VIPs, include a sense of urgency so they’re compelled to click, and make sure you don’t text too often.
• Send emails: Use emails to create hype about your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, too. Make sure to write compelling subject lines that grab the reader’s attention.
• Use paid ads: Create a Google Ads campaign that will display your offer to your target audience. Set this up within the Google Ads platform and make sure you’re also blocking out any keywords you don’t want to show up for. Take advantage of paid ads on Facebook.

2. Make it easy to find the offer on your site

Now that you have your offer and the plan to broadcast it to your audience, it’s important that you also make it incredibly clear when visitors land on your site.

Black Friday is a busy day for customers as well since they’re shopping for the best deals — and that’s why they’re on your page, right? Don’t make them click around to find the offer. Make it front and center, accessible throughout the entire experience that day. If customers have to dig for it, you’ve lost them.

Think about your customer’s onsite experience. What tweaks do you need to make to help visitors have a great BFCM experience? Some ideas that work well for our retailers during the holiday shopping season include:

• Use welcome popups: Build a popup that will display after a certain amount of time on the homepage and use it to show off your Black Friday deals or to offer a free gift as an incentive.
• Advertise free shipping incentives: A free shipping bar (/free-shipping-bar) that shows at the top of the page lets shoppers know how much they need to purchase to earn that promo.
• Show off cross-selling promotions: Are you offering a discount if customers bundle products together? Or maybe you just have products that pair perfectly together. Use a cross-sell popup to show off the products you want to feature.

3. Prepare for cart abandonment

You should expect an increase in cart abandonment during this time of year. Usually, it’s around 70%, but last year during Black Friday, we saw it jump to around 85%.

Luckily, cart-savers and cart abandonment emails and texts will help you dramatically improve that.

Those popups, emails, and text messages should include your Black Friday discount or offer to entice the customer to come back and complete their purchase.

4. Go big with your Black Friday emails

This is literally why you’ve been building your email list all year. It’s email’s time to shine. Use the next couple of weeks to build hype and get your customer list excited. Almost 60% of shoppers expect to see holiday shopping deals starting at the end of October, so this is your moment. Seize it and get to planning.

Don’t be afraid to increase the frequency of your sends leading up to the holiday and the day of. No one’s going to remember how many emails you sent, but you’ll definitely miss out on revenue if you’re not sending emails.

And if you’re sending emails at different times of the day, then you can reach different segments of your audience (not everyone checks their emails at 3:00 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon!). And you don’t want your emails getting lost in the 'Promotions' tab. Types of emails you can create for your Black Friday campaign include:

• Black Friday promotions preview: Send an email in advance to show off your best discounts and prime your audience to shop with you once the day arrives.
• VIP perks: Want more people to join your VIP program? Create an email that shows the perks your most loyal customers will get on Black Friday, like early access or an exclusive shopping event, and urge people to join before BFCM.
• Gift guide: Build gift guides for moms, dads, spouses, and best friends that showcase your ecommerce store’s products and send them right before Black Friday to help your customers plan their shopping experience.
• Last chance reminder: Tell people they only have a little bit of time left to snag the awesome sales on your site.
• Cyber Monday sales: While you’re setting up Black Friday emails, make emails for Cyber Monday, too. For online businesses (and online shopping!), it’s the biggest sales day of the year.
• Post-purchase follow-up: Set up a thank you email that goes out to everyone who purchases from you during the Black Friday weekend. To continue building a relationship with them, give tips on how to use your products or ask the customer to join your loyalty program.

5. Have live chat and support in place

And lastly, have live chat and support in place.

The faster you respond during the holidays, the more likely it is that you land the sale. So, make it easy for current and potential customers to get in touch with you. Place a chatbot on your page to answer the easy questions, and then have it send the tougher questions straight to you. If you don’t have the manpower for a full support team, consider sourcing out to a call center that can handle those calls for you.

If you get the same questions over and over, make sure they’re easy to find on your site with an FAQ page! That’ll help you stay sane by pointing people in the right direction on your site before they come to you.

Key takeaways: How to prepare for BFCM

Preparing for the biggest selling season of the year is no joke.

So you can create popups that drive visitors to your BFCM offers, save more abandoned carts, and send all your emails.