With Black Friday fast approaching, so commences the panic to couple together some hastily produced CRM. While our American cousins take it in their stride, outside of the US we tend to forget Black Friday, then remember it, prepare for it, then get blacklisted on Cyber Monday, cause those in the know know that Black Friday isn’t just a day it’s an extended period of high and heavy traffic.

So, what is it? Black Friday has now become one of those things that if you do not already know about it, you are too frightened to ask. Here’s your one line cheat sheet. Wikipedia take it away: “The day after the US holiday of Thanksgiving, regarded as the first day of the Christmas shopping season, on which retailers make many special offers. The day after the US holiday of Thanksgiving, regarded as the first day of the Christmas shopping season, on which retailers make many special offers.”

Right, here are the things that you need to do if you are hoping to raise your sales without raising the eyebrows of your ISP.

1. Put the shotgun down and step away with your hands up. “Let’s send to the entire database” said no one ever that actually valued their reputation. Sending everything to everyone is not a good game plan, it never was to begin with and has only worsened with age. One word, customer segments (ok that’s two), gather an idea already a month before of which customers would even be receptacle to an offer. Last login, propensity to purchase, geography. All of these things matter and will improve your open and CTR.
2. Start now. Not at 9am on Black Friday. Start gathering an overview on your actual customer stack. Who has done what so far in 2019? How are my bounce (soft & hard) stats looking, how has my unsub rate been for the last 6 months. Opening rates, CTR, all of this information should be at hand if you are planning on expanding your communication ahead of any seasonal event. Decent planning here will mean that you can start to widen the net somewhat already.
3. And the lord said, checketh the Transactionals. I don’t know how many times a company’s good marketing campaign has been let down by a Reset Password mail that would not render properly, or sent me to the wrong place, had wrong currency, thumbnail rendering badly or leaving off the damn Black Friday discount code that brought me there in the first place. If people are going to be coming back into your site’s ecosystem, test the infrastructure. Make sure all the flows work as they should. This step is so easy to forget while you squabble with the designer over how much drop showdown should be applied to the words BLACK FRIDAY.
4. Timing. Seriously, don’t send me a Push Notification at 4.12 am. I guarantee any semi-successful web based company will have at least 5 to 6 time zones buried in their recipient lists, these can differ considerably. The busy bee in London getting all that marketing material out the door by 11.00am, just possibly pissed off half of their North American presence. It amazes me that companies still do this, they bothered to collect my country during sign-up (extending the sign-up flow), yet seem to use that information for everything besides timing their sendouts.

Now if you’re still struggling with one of those tools that makes all of the above difficult, why not drop us a line and we’ll show you exactly how you can maximise your Black Friday efforts.

Paul | Symplify