4 Ways Brands Can Prepare Their Email Marketing Program for BFCM

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, and many brands are planning for another uncertain year. Finding every last opportunity to increase profits during the busiest time of the year is critical for brands.
It doesn’t mean that email marketing can’t be improved for a better chance of conversion There are four ways to increase your email marketing performance.

1 Key automation should be the focus. Email marketing sales can be increased by using behavior-based automation. More than 30% of email marketing orders were automated last year. The welcome series, cart abandonment, and browse abandonment generated the most automated email orders.

The holiday season is filled with high-intent shoppers and these messages target them. If brands don’t send these messages, they will miss out on converting new subscribers interested in making a purchase, online window shoppers and those who already carted products.

To make your automations more meaningful, use splits to send different messages based on their shopping cart total or purchase history.

2 Your order confirmation message needs to be adjusted. Order confirmations are great for increasing repeat orders. The highly read emails converted more than 2000% last year.

To make them effective, include product recommendations, top-rated gifts, purchaser-only special offers, call outs, and anything else that may be of value to your brand.

3 There is a plan for the cyber ten. A short sprint around tentpole days has turned into a two-month marathon. The Cyber Ten is a 10-day stretch that begins on the Sunday before Black Friday. The entire holiday shopping season is expected to make up 20% of the sales.

In spite of a decline in holiday sales, brands sent more emails and generated more orders. There was a 39% increase in promotional text messages and a 21% increase in automated text messages that resulted in a 9% and 23% increase in orders.
Don’t hold back. The Sunday of Thanksgiving week is when you can start your sales. If you don’t, consumers will flock to your competitors to get those early deals.

4 If your email template is not optimal for the holidays, what will you do? The perfect holiday email can be sent with some tips.

The shorter side of the subject line is where you should keep it. The highest open rates can be found in subject lines up to seven words. Preheader text is the best way to say more. When used in subject lines, the phrases “chance to save” and “coupon” have better open rates than “free shipping” or “bogo”.
Emails with visual content. Emails with 2 to 3 main CTAs and showcasing multiple products garner higher click rates compared to those with too few images.
It’s a good idea to discount strategically. Those between 10% to 25% had better click rates.
Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. The word “Thanksgiving” has the highest open rates compared to other days of the year. One of the biggest online shopping days of the year is Thanksgiving Day.

It is possible that making adjustments to your emails will help you increase your profits this holiday season, but it is only one part of the puzzle. All channels work. There are fewer paid retargeting costs when an abandoned cart is recovered or a new subscriber is converted. Email is one of the lower cost channels and brands that stand out will find ways to complement it with other channels.

Optimizing messages and allowing your marketing channels to work together can mean the difference between capturing a larger or smaller share of consumers’ wallet.

Greg Zakowicz is an expert in e- commerce. He has over 15 years of experience in email, mobile, and social media marketing and has helped over 100 companies around the world maximize sales through their email marketing and mobile programs. Zakowicz has been published and quoted in top media outlets, has been retained as an industry expert witness for trial, and is a one-time award-winner and two-time host of the ecommercePodcast.