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Six Tips For Designing Black Friday Emails

Six Tips For Designing Black Friday Emails


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SaleCycle’s Lead Designer Luke Nokes has some valuable tips on email design for Black Friday….

With Black Friday rapidly approaching, the Design team here at SaleCycle HQ are harnessing all of their creative ability to ensure every email campaign we create has the maximum impact it possibly can. 

It’s by no means our first encounter with the season – we have many years of experience of preparing for it now, so have decided to share what we’ve learned, best practices and ideas before we truly get started.

Every year the market seems to be more competitive, with larger efforts and more innovative campaigns fighting for the attention of consumers, so hopefully, the below tips and tricks can help you get the edge over your rivals. Good luck, fellow creative minds!

Theme Your Creative, but Stay on Brand

All too often, we see brands create incredible emails that look visually stunning and give the impression that there’s a seriously good deal on offer.

The problem? They’ve been themed so heavily that it’s gone too far away from the brand and lost immediate recognition.

It’s critical to retain consistency throughout the holidays. It’s an exciting season that entices creatives to use every font, colour, and image in existence, but don’t fall into the trap – many brands are doing this, and you risk ending up filtered into the category of “Yet another email with good offers….”, rather than “Brands I’ve always loved, with offers running.”

Here’s some great examples of the mid-point between brand consistency and theming:

Pretty Little Thing

Codeschool

Design and Build for Mobile

Black Friday is a Friday…… Yes, obvious. Duh. But think about it. It’s key to realise is that in many countries it’s a normal working day, not a holiday.

People are on-the-go as usual and trying to access deals in their inbox while juggling their commute, school runs, working day and everything else. 

It makes accessing mobile content critical, and with email mobile opens at over 55% globally, if you’ve neglected responsive design up until now, it’s time to fix it.

Add Urgency with Countdown Timers

Countdown Timers in email are a tried and tested method of generating urgency and excitement about your sale/offers.

They work exceptionally well, particularly during short but critical sales windows. Consumers are all too aware that the sales around Cyber Weekend may never come around again (at least until next year), so remind them of it! 

If you’d like to know more about SaleCycle’s Countdown Timer features, we have more information here.

Clear Calls to Action

Raise your hand if you’ve ever made a compulsive purchase on Black Friday solely because the deal was pretty good and you had gotten into the buying mood. Those endorphins just feel amazing, don’t they?

*lowers hand back down*

These things escalate quickly, and as a brand hoping and expecting this of your consumers, you want to capitalise on it as much as possible.

It’s never been more important to ensure that the calls to action in your emails are crystal clear. Make it as quick and easy as possible for a customer to return to their abandoned purchase. 

Jeff decided he wants his brand new 6-speed waffle flipper after all, who are you to get in the way of that?

Don’t Be Too Nice

With SaleCycle being UK-based, this tip has not always come easy to us overly-polite Brits. Simply put – it’s just not the time to be too nice about the reason behind your email – get to the point!

Consumers in their frenzied, sales-maddened state just want to know what your glorious deals are. You’re short on time and you’re competing for attention in the inbox.

Drop the “please” and “thanks”, and add in extra big red -% signs at every opportunity (roughly speaking… You get the idea). Then have a cup of tea – obviously.

Just as these great examples from Boohoo and BoohooMAN do:

Segment and Personalize

Even though you’re likely to want to send the all-important Black Friday messages in one go and to your total customer base, it can be worthwhile to segment and personalise, rather than batch and blast.

Your VIPs and super-engaged contacts can’t hear enough about you and are loyal to your brand, so treat them that way!

Pre-sale, VIP-customer-only access campaigns with dynamic imagery and offers tailored to them will not only reap rewards when it comes to sales, but you’ll also build that loyalty further for benefits long-term. Who doesn’t want a BFF for life?

Luckily, Unique Promo Codes are just the ticket when it comes to making your best customers feel like superstars. Find out more here.

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