By now, you may have read about the six factors affecting the deliverability of Black Friday emails. You might have ticked the boxes of our pre-Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) email deliverability checklist.

But before you even start building your first email campaign, there’s a lot of prep work to do to make sure you’ll get the most engagement and revenue out of your marketing efforts. But once you’ve informed yourself on current protocols and boosted your deliverability, you can focus on building a campaign that engages your customers. 

To have a successful BFCM email campaign, you have to PLOT before you send:

1. Plan: Build a strategy for your content and sending cadence.
2. Optimize: Make sure your emails are readable and deliverable.
3. Test: Set yourself up to track key metrics to test email performance.

Step 1: Develop an engaging BFCM email marketing plan   

A hugely important part of going through the deliverability checklist was updating your email lists. Having done so, it will be a lot easier to segment your audience. Now, you can target customers based on past purchasing behavior and engagement levels as well as geographic and demographic information. You can approach this many different ways, and brands see almost 8x more revenue from campaigns built off clean, well-segmented email lists.  

Establish a timeline for your email sends to build anticipation. Keep in mind that you want to maintain as much consistency as possible in your timing and volume throughout the year Start ramping up email traffic early in November to improve deliverability during the busy holiday period.   

When building your Black Friday email campaign, consider sending teaser emails, offering early access to loyal customers, and issuing last-minute reminders. You can integrate behavioral triggers — like alerts for items customers have viewed—into your content in creative ways. BFCM is the perfect time to dig into past user behavior and find engagement opportunities.   

Step 2: Optimize email content for delivery and engagement   

There’s also no better time than BFCM to try to pack a punch with your brand. You’ve made sure the people on your Black Friday email list are loyal customers and followers, so come in strong with your visual and written brand. Combine your email content with some data-driven personalized recommendations, and it will be a recipe for success. 

As always, make sure your emails are visually appealing and mobile-responsive. Use high-quality images, clear layouts, and well-designed CTAs. These make it easy for recipients to understand and act on your offers. Well-designed emails always increase the likelihood of conversions.  

Personalization is super important. It increases your sender reputation, and it’s also key for engagement. Personalized emails have an 82% higher open rate and lead to a 52% increase in sales compared to generic emails. Done right, personalization is more than just inserting the recipient’s name into the subject line—it’s using strategies like intelligent AI-powered segmentation and dynamic content. You should also consider cross-channel engagement opportunities to get the most out of your efforts. 

The goal is to anticipate your customers’ wants and needs and meet them with the right offers at the right time. When an email is exactly what a customer is looking for, they’ll engage with it positively. You’ll make more money and you’ll increase your ability to reach even more people by building your sender reputation. 

Step 3: Test and monitor your Black Friday email campaigns  

Before launching your campaign, test to make your emails render correctly across devices and email clients. Track metrics like open rate, clickthrough rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate and use these to optimize future campaigns. If your campaign is diversified, you’ll see which subject lines, product categories, and offers generate the most engagement. 

Testing shouldn’t stop once you hit send, though. Use the insights you gain to refine your email content, timing, and personalization strategies throughout the year. This will allow you to craft more targeted and effective campaigns for the next Black Friday and Cyber Monday and beyond. Over time, your customers will come to appreciate your predictable, personalized offers and engage with them reliably. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are important times of the year for ecommerce brands to take advantage of. People anticipate lots of sales—and a well-planned and personalized Black Friday email campaign can help you stand and gain some seriously loyal customers. 

Want to see how Maropost can help you create personalized, engaging Black Friday email campaigns? Get a demo.