Hi everyone and welcome to the e commerce impact podcast. Today I've got a very esteemed member of the Webtopia team here to talk to us all about email marketing for Black Friday. Mo Magdy is our lead email marketing strategist, our resident Clavio expert, and he's here to talk you through everything that you need to have in place.

To ensure a really successful black, black Friday and peak period this year, 2023, which is going to be an interesting one. So Mo, welcome along to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

So first question for you, I guess we were chatting off air just before the episode about how brands, probably think, you know, they're going to send an email teasing the offer and maybe an email on the day that the sale launches, maybe an email on the last day and that's the email strategy in a nutshell.

And you believe that there's actually a lot more that should go into an email campaign for black Friday in order to ensure a real success with it. So do you want to break it, break down for us what you. Would be doing if you were in full charge of the email campaigns for a brand in the lead up to Black Friday,. Sure.   Most brands kind of think of it this way. The thing is that it's more than that because it's not a one time event.

It's actually A marathon, not a sprint.   It Should start as early as October. But since we're kind of launching this episode, probably in early November. So maybe you think that you don't have the time to complete all of the stuff that we'll be talking about.

But if you have. That the opportunity to start as early as October. Because it's going to make sure that you leverage Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, and all of that holiday season 

like your biggest sale at this time at the year next year and the year after. So it actually creates repeat customers as well. So we would start actually by thinking of that  more than 65 percent of shoppers tend to  shop before Black Friday. So the first step would be actually creating a campaign to shop early before the rush of Black Friday.

To enjoy the holiday season, maybe stress free with your family so you can frame it this way. But yeah, this is like the most important step. Start as early as possible, even before saying anything about Black Friday deals, just make like a small offer. Doesn't have to be huge for people who want to shop before the holiday season.

So This is the first step and actually would be you can take this campaign as an opportunity to kind of offer an option for all subscribers that you'll be sending this campaign to, to opt out of other future BFC offers because it makes sense?  So how are you,  allowing them to do that? Where's that prompt or trigger coming from? Is that an email you're sending offering to opt them out? Or is that a pop up on the site?  Sure. So the option to opt out would be within this campaign.

Probably you will be, you want to be sending this campaign to all of your subscribers. Of course, try as much as possible to exclude bounces and people who have been unengaged lately or people have purchased in the past kind of maybe 15 days. Because it's not, it doesn't make sense to send them a campaign and say, buy again and you just bought in the last 15 days.

So it, this would not be a section at the, at the campaign, maybe at the mid or at the end maybe with a headline. Do you not want to receive any BFCM offers? And they may be a body text and then ACTA, which ACTA would direct them to a subscribe page. And the subscribe page should be to a list.

And this list should be BF cm, opt-outs. And then you can exclude this list from all the, your future campaigns once you opt into this list. This is radical. So what are the benefits to the brand for doing this? Sure. So one of the biggest benefits of Black Friday's revenue, big revenue, like more revenue than other months.

But also there is a advantage because you're sending too many emails to too many people. So your deliverability. May be at risk at this point,, so doing this actually ensures that during this time. People who receive your emails will not unsubscribe or kind of report you as spam and stuff like that. And actually shows your subscribers that you care about them. You care about their inbox. And so even if they don't want, want to opt out, it will give them like the expectation.

Hey, they're not rushing me. They're just trying to show me the deals. Even I didn't opt out myself. So why would I unsubscribe even if I received like 10 emails in Black Friday? They, they told me before they were trying to kind of be honest about it. And yeah. So that's awesome. So you're suggesting just to recap on that.

So we're sending  a small offer that goes out, like maybe it's 5 percent off or 10 percent off certain lines maybe around the 1st of November. So a  two or three weeks before the biggest sale happens, offering people the opportunity to shop.

Before the, the actual event happens and where the kind of urgency, I guess you're creating around that something like, while all the stock is still here, get an early, so before we run out, that kind of thing. And then around that time as well, you're sending out an email to all your subscribers, which has the sole purpose of giving them the option to opt out of black Friday.

 Yes. And it can be both can be in one campaign. It doesn't have to be separate campaigns actually, because it makes sense to have them with the same messaging. This is the offer for people who want to chop before Black Friday. And here's the option also to opt out if you want to.

Yeah, cool. And you mentioned deliverability. So I just want to touch on that super quick. So In the lead up to dropping your major offer, you know, your Black Friday weekend offer, what are you doing kind of around this period to ensure you will reach people's inbox later on? Is there anything brands can be doing to ensure better deliverability further down the line?

Sure. So better deliverability comes with better engagement. So the way you kind of Warm up your reputation to be kind of ready for blasting an entire list through Black Friday. You need to make sure that like let's say in October and September and October, make sure you're sending your campaigns to the most engaged.

Segments only. So engaged maybe in the last 90 days, last 180 days. According to the brand, sometimes some brands have like long sales cycles. Some have short cycles. So I would suggest last 90 to last 180 days.  Clicked or opened or active on the on the site. And This is kind of the most important thing you can do before Black Friday during Black Friday and those sending those campaigns, just make sure that you're not sending also all emails to the entire list.

Maybe if we're going to talk through other campaigns, but maybe just the first campaign Always entire list and then a couple of other campaigns after that to the engaged. And then if you have another thing coming up, maybe cyber Monday, then one to the entire list and the other campaigns to the most engaged.

So think of it as this way, always the most engaged gives you the best engagement, but some of the unengaged people who kind of received emails will engage at some point. So what you, you kind of, you're hoping that a mega deal like black Friday or a cyber Monday can get them off this kind of wagon from unengaged to engaged.

 So that's why you kind of want to make it sure that you have an entire list or at least 1 month. And is it, is it worth doing things to kind of engage your list that aren't to do with like shopping or sales, more like getting them to like fill out a poll or guess the offer or respond to you with telling you what  what they want to go and offer, anything to.

 Get them to engage to improve deliverability, or is that, it's, it's not a bad advice. Actually, it's, it's it's called kind of finding other ways to engage your subscribers, but this depends on the brand. So there is no one size fits all for some brands, their own products can be engaging if they are framed in a better way.

For example, if you have like an educational. Books kind of thing, and you want to kind of send an engaging campaign. It doesn't have to be purely content. It can be like, you can talk about maybe game based learning at first, and then just feature the books. This would kind of get the engagement to be higher.

So we've sent the pre campaign, we have engaged the list. We've got the hopefully hitting the inbox. We've got people excited or up to doubt or those who don't like brick Friday. What's next? So right now you need to set the stage for the Black Friday. So we've sent to people who don't kind of want to shop through Black Friday.

So let's set the scene for Black Friday. First step is kind of having, changing your signup forms to kind of reflect Black Friday. Sign up forms, meaning this pop up that you have on the website that's collecting emails, which may be has an offer of 10 percent off or maybe a free guide or something like that for, and you're offering this for exchange for people's emails.

So it would be wise at this point to change the messaging. And the C. T. A. And kind of the image to be all about Black Friday. So maybe it would be our biggest sale ever is coming sign up for early access or something like that. So why do we do that? Because you're gonna be having a traffic spikes at this point, and you don't want to kind of just leverage it for kind of The revenue side, also the email list size, and you're going to be collecting emails anyway.

So a better hook of course would be leveraging what's going on right now, which is Black Friday, not just having your regular thing going on and then the other stuff going on. So it would. Not be congruent. So a good way also for to kind of implement this, having two versions, one for your non subscribers and one for your subscribers, because you have people who have been on your list, but they also want to join the early access thing.

And people who don't know, who are not on your list, who will not be joining your list for the first time. So for people who are your subscribers, make sure that you are adding them to the early access as well, giving them this advantage because it's not fair to just offer this for only one time buyers.

It's actually, it's fair to offer them this first, the loyal ones. So it would be also wise to send a campaign at this time for your just customers, not subscribers, not for people who bought from you before at least once, just send them an email saying, Hey, I just want, we wanted you to be the first to know that this is the early access kind of a list if you want to sign up to it.

And here is that benefits. Now this benefits can vary from a brand to another. Some can offer kind of Early offers, like maybe 50 percent of what they will offer over Black Friday, or maybe they have some brands have like 10 offers through if they can offer through this time. So we choose like two for this period and maybe five for Black Friday and other three offers for Cyber Monday.

So to spread them across, but anyway, just make sure that there is an incentive for people to kind of join this early access. It's not just having kind of this. Adding the email list, adding them to the email and just sitting there for until black Friday. No, just give them at least one incentive before black Friday, like an early offer or something like that.

So that's number two. Yeah, I love that. So we're actually kind of like, it's a way of teasing people, getting people sort of like to get, it's, you know, we think of in the sales process of getting lots of yeses before the big year. So by then kind of opting in now, psychologically saying. Kind of I'm opting into shop with you, even though they're not actually promising that I can see how psychologically it makes them more committed to the process.

So that's really smart. That's awesome. And you're kind of teasing them, getting them excited. Okay. What next? So next we want to be thinking out of the campaigns area. You want to be thinking about flows because um, Also, one of the kind of biggest mistakes that brands make during Black Friday is not updating their flows to reflect Black Friday deals.

So you don't have to make major updates. It's actually small updates. One of the most important updates is just kind of keep away any discounts that you have on any flow. Some people have discounts on the checkout flow, a checkout abandoned flow. Some have on the site abandonment and also the welcome series.

Just make sure that to replace any offer at this time with a black Friday deal. So what you need to do, just duplicate those flows, like for example, abandoned checkout site, abandonment post purchase and I will come series and the duplicated version. will be used during black Friday. So after black Friday, you can get back to normal.

But this duplicated version should be kind of do not have any other discounts other than your black Friday. Like for example, if you have a 10 percent off on your welcoming series, Take that off, even if it's gonna, if you think, Hey, I should keep the 10 percent off while everything is going on. No, it's going to kind of make it kind of, it's going to make everything a mess.

So you will find people reaching out, Hey, what's the discount code for this? What's the discount for code for that? And we tried using two discounts because it didn't work. And as much as you can. Make that clear in your messaging, but it's not actually clear in terms of strategy. So it will make some problems for you in the long run.

So update your flows first, like remove the offers and also. One other thing for updating flows shorten the time delays because people have high intent at this time, so try to catch them as soon as possible. So, for example, abandoned checkout, first email usually goes out after one to four hours, make it 30 minutes.

And the same for the other emails. So, yeah. That's the problem. Love that. So I had a little tip to add to the mention about offer discount codes. I would, I would recommend brands to disable all of their discount codes that they might have kind of, you know, in Shopify, you often have a whole lot of legacy old ones, ones that might be sitting on voucher sites, et cetera.

So you don't want any code to work apart from the discount that you have live. Otherwise people will try and double dip and either there'll be successful in double dipping or there'll be annoyed that they can't. So. Better to just not have them working. And then, yeah, I had a tip to add on the the post purchase the, sorry, the flow speed.

I totally agree with that. The other thing I was, an advice that I've always given people is like the post purchase flow that you're running around the holiday period should also be kind of shorter and quicker because. Say someone, someone could conceivably buy with your Black Friday deal for the first time as a test, and then they might decide to buy a whole lot more for their family.

So the post purchase flow should kind of prompt that repurchase at this time of year, and also could be, you might agree, or maybe you have something to add. More focused towards gifting versus self purchase. So where the rest of the year you're assuming most people are buying for themselves at this time of year, it's more likely you want to plant that seed of like, why don't you buy this for your auntie?

Or why don't you buy multiples and give them to all the families? So planting that seed for people about gifting, but also changing your flow to have that gifting focus at this time of year. So beyond black Friday, kind of post black Friday, trying to get people to buy again before the end of the. The peak season, would you add anything to that?

Do you agree? Yes. I totally agree. And it would be great if you, in the post purchase sequence, just mention last days for delivery to order, to receive the orders before Christmas. Do not tell them to order, just mention the deals and the upsells and the cross sells that you have from the BFCM deals and let them know the times of the last day delivery.

That's it. They would know when to order and they would feel like you're also kind of respecting their wish to kind of, if they have something to gift for someone else, then you know what time to kind of what's the due date for this. So um, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And okay. So, and now we've, we've sorted out the flows.

We've cleaned up the codes. We've got everything sped up and everything's ready to go. Are we now into the actual Black Friday weekend? What's the strategy here? So it's Black Week. So it's, it's, it's not now. It's not like before, it's not like just Black Friday. So we'll have Black Friday, Thanksgiving and the weekend between them and then Cyber Monday.

So it really depends from a brand to another. I want to kind of stress this as much as I can, but um, if you have like more than one offer, not just a single offer, then you have an opportunity to be kind of different in each email and have something new, more new to say. But if you have a single offer, then you will be kind of.

A little bit limited if you're, if you're probably your product catalog is not that large so you wouldn't have too many things to say. But here is the most essential dates that you need to think of at this time and think of your brand and what you can do because it's, it actually depends on the brand itself.

But the dates are the day before Black Friday and during Black Friday send two campaigns, one in the AM and one in the PM. Don't just think about it. I'm going to be sending just one email per day for this week. No, for Black Friday, send two emails, one in the AM and one in the PM. Yes. And the day before Black Friday, this is the day to send the early access.

So maybe the same Black Friday email that you will be sending to people, but for people who signed up to the early access or to your VIPs as well. And, here you can also, if you ask a quick question, about the early access how do you, what's the mechanism with that with Shopify? Is it usually like a code that works from that day or is it a separate?

Part of the site where there's a discount, how do you typically advise brands to execute the early access? Sure. So early access should be with a discount code for sure, because you can actually decide who kind of know, can know about this discount code and who shouldn't know. So it's all about the segmentation in this campaign.

So you made sure to send this email to people who just signed up for the early access or from your VIP kind of segment VIP here, you can define it whatever way you want to place an order more than three times, or just as a value of orders, maybe more than 1, 000 or whatever your kind of benchmarks for VIPs.

But yeah it's, it's all in your segmentation. So within this campaign, you tell them, Hey, Here is the early access discount code. And you know that only those people received it now. So if they bought it this day, it's coming from them.

Awesome. And then you, you need to kind of think about Cyber Monday. So also early access to Cyber Monday, two campaigns at Cyber Monday day, and then a Cyber Monday last chance. Or it could be a. A holiday season last chance and not just cyber Monday. The thing is that it depends on your offers, but you don't have to be always discounting, you can be leveraging others.

areas of your business to kind of empower Black Friday. How, for example, if you have a loyalty points program, you can say, Hey, for only that, and you just have a single offer. So you're just stuck on the number of campaigns and the, the, how you can differentiate the campaign. So on Black Friday, you just laid out this single offer like for four times, and you think people are sick of it and you want something new.

on Cyber Monday. So you can just tell them on Cyber Monday, instead of getting one point for every dollar you spend, maybe get three points for every dollar you spend and just lay out what this, this could be in terms of like just one item of your catalog. Just show them the value. This could be your offer.

Your offer could be Okay, during Cyber Monday, we're going to be donating, instead of just one planting one tree for order, we're going to be planting two trees for order. And if you want to help us kind of do it this way, all orders happening through Cyber Monday will having this kind of contribution. So you can be different and you can be kind of you can kind of stand out.

But you're gonna have to be discounting all the way to the end. So , that's a great tip. Yeah. I think being creative about, you know, whether it's buy one get one free or sorry, or gift with purchase or some kind of other benefit. The, the key is to just have something that, that spurs people to take urgent action.

Just one last thing, just to kind of close the curtains. So there is this campaign that you can send early December, which can have the last. day for delivery, but can also be mentioned as did you miss black Friday?

Cyber Monday, just have like a medium offer, not huge, not small. And make sure that in this campaign you're sending to people who received black Friday emails, but did not buy. So if anyone bought during black Friday, do not send them this campaign. This is not good to send them this one. So just make sure that you are segment those people out.

It can be, did you miss BFCM? It can be framed as that's day for Christmas, but make sure that you're mentioning both in the campaign, but the main frame can be whatever fits your brand best. Amazing. Yeah. That's such a great idea. And the beauty of a system like Clavio and like, you know, we're not being paid to say this, um, is that ability to segment so definitively and, you know, whether people have opted in or out of iOS 14, et cetera, when people buy from you, you have their contact details.

So you're able to then segment your list accordingly and decide what to send people and ensure that you get the most sales you can out of your list. Making people annoyed who have kind of thought they got the best offer. And then now the offers kind of arrived again. So really smart. Yeah. Love all those tips.

So actionable and so doable. So everyone got your work cut out lots more to do. So. Especially I think what I found most interesting is that idea of like speeding up your flows, thinking about all of those emails that you're sending prior, the opportunity to have people opt out as well is such a smart move because some people really do just find Black Friday really offensive and they really don't like it.

 And two emails a day during black Friday weekend, don't be shy. I was recently signed up to a list of a big Chinese E com brand, and I was getting three emails a day, every single day, not for black Friday, just every day. So that not saying we should all be like that, but we're allowed to on black Friday be a little bit more aggressive because all the other brands will too.

So we believe in our products and we want to make sure we get them to people. So. Don't be shy on Black Friday or Black Friday weekend. Yeah. And one last thing, if you have an SMS, use it for last minute call reminders or the early access VIP kind of campaign that we kind of set. So if you have an SMS list that you've been sitting on the entire year, now is the time to use it, but don't overuse it, just.

Maybe two SMSs through the entire period of the holiday season, one maybe for Black Friday and maybe one for the end of it, like the last school reminder for the holiday. That's it. Yeah. SMS as well. It's really important. If you've been collecting it, you might as well use it. Love that. And I guess one, we don't usually kind of plug webtopia too much on this podcast.

We just want to educate and give value, but we do have a great email marketing team at webtopia, which is headed up by Mo. And so if you are interested in having some help with some of your campaigns, then by all means, go Drop us an email. You can find us on our website, webtopia. co and we do offer free mini audits as well.

So if you want us to take a look at what you've got set up and give you a few pointers, we can do that. So get in touch and let us know what you thought of the episode too. Thanks for coming along, Mo. Thanks for having me, Jessie