Black Friday Email Marketing Toolkit

Black Friday Promotion Timeline

*This is a suggested timeline to help you generate interest from your readers and prime them to be ready to spend on your Black Friday promotion. However, there’s no need to follow exactly every single recommended step. Adapt it according to your own preferences and needs.

2 weeks before Black Friday Promotion:

  • Create a sales funnel for your Black Friday Promotion (Main Black Friday offer product sales page, upsell and downsell offer, if any)
  • Write your product launch promotion emails and schedule or set up automated email sequences.
  • If you intend to conduct a ‘live’ webinar where you promote your new product to be launched on Black Friday, you can start promoting your webinar now to get your subscribers to sign up.
  • Inform your affiliates of the Black Friday promotion details. If you have a lead magnet or a free webinar that you’re going to conduct that leads to promoting your product, inform your affiliates so that they can start promoting the webinar to lock in their cookies.
  • Briefly mention in your weekly newsletter that you are in the midst of creating an incredibly useful product for your readers that will help them solve Problem X. Hook their interest and get them curious about your upcoming Black Friday promotion.
  • Create a sign-up form to get subscribers to sign up to indicate their interest in your Black Friday promotion. Entice them with an exclusive early bird discount or a special bonus that’s only available to them if they sign up now to indicate interest and purchase during the sale. This will also give you an idea of how many potential buyers there will be.

1 week before Black Friday Promotion:

  • Remind your readers through your newsletter and social media accounts that your Black Friday is taking place in one week’s time and that if they want an exclusive early bird discount or special bonus, they should sign up to indicate interest now.

2 or 3 days before Black Friday Promotion:

  • Conduct your free webinar and promote your Black Friday Promotion. Include an exclusive early-bird bonus for fast-action takers who purchase the product in the next 48 to 72 hours.

****Typically, most of the Black Friday promotions will start on Friday and end on Monday, so that’s a 4-day promotion.

If you want your promotion to be longer, I’d recommend you to start earlier to capture early action takers, rather than end later.

You’d also want to secure more sales at the beginning of Black Friday before people get too swamped with the countless offers available.

This is also why priming your audience 2 weeks in advance can help them budget accordingly.****

If you decide to send an email every day to promote your product during the Black Friday Promotion, it’s best to include a link where your readers can choose to opt-out of your Black Friday promotion emails but still stay on your list for the regular newsletters.

This will help to maintain good relations with your readers while reducing unsubscribe rate.

It is also a good idea to fully automate your Black Friday Promotion emails so that you don’t have to scramble to piece together information during the weekend itself. You can then focus on addressing any issues or concerns that your readers raise regarding your promotion.

When you are quick and sincere in responding to any of your reader’s questions about the your Black Friday promotion, why it’s such a good deal, and how it’s helpful to them specifically, you are much more likely to convince them to make the purchase!

For a 6-day Black Friday Promotion including 2 days of early bird special discount/bonus, here’s the suggested email sequence.

Tuesday:

  • Last call on early bird discount/bonus.
  • Inform your subscribers that only those who sign up by today will receive the early bird discount or special bonus that you have. Sales conversion rates will be higher if you get your subscribers to indicate their interest. They will be more committed to actually paying because they are getting an exclusive early bird discount/bonus on top of your very awesome Black Friday deal!
  • If you have been mysterious about your big Black Friday offer, NOW is the time to unveil your offer and state exactly what they will get as the early bird discount/bonus.
  • Drop an email to your affiliates to remind them on the details of your Black Friday Promotion. If you have a free promotion previously, assure them that their cookies would have already been locked in and will be earning commissions as you open cart to the early bird sign-ups. Conduct an affiliate challenge with rewards to encourage them to promote your product more actively.

Wednesday:

  • Have a really BIG announcement for your Black Friday Promotion!
  • Bring up one major pain point that will be addressed with this awesome product you are offering.
  • Include two to three testimonials.
  • Remind your reader of the early bird discount / early bird bonus that is only valid for 48 hours (You can also have it as 24 or 72 hours)

Thursday:

  • It’s Thanksgiving! Many people might be away from their phones. Pop in with a gift, if possible, and send your well wishes.
  • Include two to three testimonials. Other than that, keep your email shorter. Get your subscribers to click onto the sales page instead of just reading your email.
  • Send a second email as a final reminder for early bird discount / early bird bonus.
  • Include countdown timer in your email to increase sense of urgency.
  • Tell them you have an exclusive FREE gift for them the next day to entice them to open up your email on Black Friday itself.

Friday:

  • It’s Black Friday! Offer a free gift or an awesome tip right at the beginning of your email.
  • Bring up one major pain point that you know your reader is facing and how your Black Friday promotional product can help them solve the problem.
  • Encourage them to take action NOW. Emphasize on the huge savings and added value they are getting because it’s a Black Friday sale.

Saturday:

  • Bring up one or two FAQs and address the common concerns your potential customer might have.
  • Include two to three testimonials.
  • Invite your readers to send in their questions about the product and that you will offer your honest opinion about whether your Black Friday product offer will truly fit their needs right now. Emphasize the point that you want to help them and make the right decision. And if this offer isn’t the right fit for them, you would tell them so. Also inform your readers that they won’t be hearing from you the next day so that you can take all their questions and answer them personally.

Sunday:

  • Cooling off day. No emails sent.

Monday:

  • Bring up one unique selling point of your new product. What makes this product so special and why your reader should get it from you TODAY.
  • Include two to three testimonials. If you haven’t collected that many testimonials, there’s no harm bringing up the same ones.
  • Send a second email to highlight to your readers that the Black Friday offer is ending in just a few hours. Appeal to FOMO (‘fear of missing out’) and tell your readers that if they miss this Black Friday offer, they will have to wait xx months for another sale or that you could never offer such a low price for the same product. Point out to your subscribers that even if they decide to wait for the next time you have a sale, the wait itself would be costly because they are wasting precious time fretting over the existing problem and missing out on potential growth in sales/income!
  • Include countdown timer in your email to increase sense of urgency.

One week after Black Friday Promotion:

  • Email your new customers to thank them as well as ask for a product review in return for a small gift (eg. discount codes for their next purchase in your shop). These testimonials will come in handy for when you conduct another sale for this product in the near future!
  • You also want to remind your customers to actually use the products that they have purchased from you because you do believe your products will help them. Customers who have used a product and actually benefited from it will more likely be happy to offer a review and return for more products!

Words of advice:

At the end of the day, there really isn’t a hard and fast rule on how to run an email marketing promotion.

This is only a suggested email timeline for you and would be extremely helpful especially if you are running a Black Friday Promotion for the first time.

You can almost always expect a spike in your unsubscribe rate during the such an intensive sale promotion but please don’t be discouraged by it!

In fact, you should CELEBRATE, especially if you are using a paid email service provider.

After all, we want people on our list to be truly interested and willing to pay for our valuable products and services!

If they are only interested in freebies, it doesn’t benefit us in the long run either.

So when people unsubscribe, your mailing list is actually getting streamlined and your audience is becoming more and more targeted!

Over time, your base of loyal fans will grow and your sales conversion rates will also increase!

Download Black Friday Promotion Email swipe copies here. (Word Document)

Download Black Friday Promotion Email swipe copies here. (PDF)