5 Steps To Take in July To Make Your Black Friday/Cyber Monday Campaigns A Success

I worked on about a half dozen Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns in 2022.

For one client, we sold out inventory, closed sales early, and blew out last year’s sales.

And for another, we revived the list after going dormant over the summer and almost doubled the amount made from email in 2022 over 2021.

Our success was a combination of great promotions, great products, and solid email strategy.

But what could have made it even better?

More planning…

See for all of the accounts that I worked on last year, there wasn’t any forward planning done.

I jumped into the accounts in October and November.

And threw together the best email strategy that I could.

This year is going to be different.

Better

Because the planning process starts now.

Here’s what I’m doing NOW (in July) to prepare for BFCM 2023.

Step 1 – Plan

When I ran cross-country, my coach would always plan our work outs so that we peaked right around the regional meet.

That meant we would do specific work outs on a specific schedule to optimize our performance.

And damn it worked. I remember running my best times and feeling like my legs were brand new… even though we were at the end of our season.

Our work started in July and August, and culminated at the beginning of November.

With that same idea in mind, Quarter 3 is where we are going to lay the foundation for a successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) this year.

A standard, 30-day campaign calendar is a non-negotiable for the clients that I work with.

But as we get closer to BFCM, building out a 90-day campaign calendar becomes more important.

That is because we want to PEAK when we hit the middle of November.

A successful promotion is all about making deposits with your email subscribers.

How do you do that?

Sending emails that are fun to read, provide educational value, or inspire your subscribers.

The more that you can focus on sending “value” emails, then the more successful your next promotion will be.

So as we lead up to BFCM, I want to have 3-4 email “themes” that we can use to provide value to our subscribers.

For one client (a loose leaf tea company) these themes include lifestyle emails, recipe and pairing emails, and educational emails (how to brew, history, etc.)

For another client (a high end footwear brand) these themes include lifestyle, adventure, and exploration.

As we get closer and closer to BFCM, we want to fill our subscriber’s emotional banks so that when we present our “best sale of the year” they are ready to buy and feel a connection to our brand.

Step 2 – Segment

To do step 1 right, we need to segment our list.

Batching and blasting your way to BFCM is a death sentence.

If you are a beginner when it comes to segmenting… check out my 5 Day Klaviyo Segmentation Mini course. It’ll lay out everything you need to know.

But honestly, it goes a little more in depth than you really need.

See you only need a few segments to really maximize your email strategy. (At least to start).

Make sure you have these segments set up…

-Engaged

-Unengaged

-Prospects (no purchase)

-Single Customer (1 purchase all time)

-Multiple Purchases

-VIPs

That’s all you really need.

If you’ve been collecting data and segmenting already, you could get a little more granular. But if you’ve been emailing your entire list… start here.

Step 3 – Re-Engaged As Many Subscribers As Possible

So while we want to email our engaged segment as much as possible, we also want to try and re-engage the other part of our list.

Ideally you’ll have a sunset flow set up to do this automatically… BUT if you don’t you can send a few one off campaigns to your unengaged segment to try and re-engage as many as possible.

Here are some things to consider

Don’t email everyone at once unless your deliverability is impeccable. Sending to 50K+ unengaged subs can have some serious negative effects on your sending reputation.
Do email small portions of your unengaged list. Klaviyo can randomly select certain groups to email. Start with 3-5K.
Make sure you subject line is curiosity based without being spammy or clickbaity
Have some fun with it, but stay within your brand voice
Be real and be honest. Write like you are sending the email to ONE person.

With the new privacy measures in place with Apple I would only add people back to your engaged list if they click on your email.

So my last thing to consider… have a strong call to action.

Step 4 – Clean Up Your List

Now that you’ve tried to re-engage as many subscribers as possible…

It’s time to clean up that list.

Manually suppressing subscribers who aren’t engaged with your brand is a must.

It saves you money on your monthly ESP bill from Klaviyo (MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, etc).

And it helps with your sending reputation and deliverability.

It’s something you should do at least twice a year if not every quarter.

Step 5 – Check All Automations

Finally, check your automations (or flows).

These aren’t “set and forget” parts of your email marketing.

Yes, they “make you money while you sleep” but if you ignore them for too long they can grow old and stale.

I’ve seen automations that haven’t been touched in 2 or 3 years…

Some automations are probably fine with limited upkeep.

But high touch automations like your welcome flow or post purchase flow need to be updated regularly.

Because if the first email that someone receives from you feels like it was written 3 years ago… your company will come across as dormant.

And while people are more and more trusting of online stores in 2023…

They are still more likely to turn to Amazon or Walmart to get what they need if they don’t trust your messaging.

So update your flows. Check all of your links. And make sure that customer experience is on point.

You’ll have more and more people coming through your email systems in Q3 and Q4… make sure they are dialed in.

Summary

Here’s the TL;DR If you scrolled all the way down here.

The five steps to optimize your email marketing ahead of BFCM 2023…

Plan out your campaigns
Segment your list
Re-engage as many subs as possible
Clean up your list
Check all automations

What Should YOU Do Next?

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If you need an email list manager for your brand or business, send me an email at ben@henkenmarketing.com or fill out this form and I’ll be in touch.