Grab customers’ attention during Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns

This year, Black Friday falls on November 26th while Cyber Monday on November 29th. So it seems that there are 7 weeks left to prepare well for the battle of subscribers’ attention and handle an increased order volume during the pre-holiday time. Research prepared by Techcrunch states that 20% of website traffic throughout this season comes from emails. What is more, customers who make a purchase after receiving an email campaign spend on average 138% more than those who won’t receive Black Friday offers*. But how can you stand out among dozens of emails your subscribers receive that day?

Here are some tips on how to boost your audience engagement and improve results from your Black Friday and Cyber Monday email performances. You’ll implement all of these tips effectively with EmailLabs team before shopping season begins.

1. Make your emails hit the inbox and avoid SPAM

When your sending reputation is 90%, do you think it’s a guarantee that you’ll reach the inbox? Nothing could be further from the truth. Studies show that it’s getting more and more challenging to get emails delivered successfully. In 2016, less than 20% of Black Friday emails had 90% of inbox placement**. Transactional and marketing emails should be sent from separate IP addresses using different subdomains. Each type of communication has its own reputation and cannot be mixed. As promotional emails often contain a lot of words typical for offers, deals, have more images, links, etc., they will automatically land in the Offers tab. The same thing could happen with transactional messages while sending from the same infrastructure. What else should you avoid in transactional communication to ensure main folder delivery? Ask our experts. If you want to check whether an email is considered SPAM, try MailChecker.net.

2. Find out who else is sending from your infrastructure and is it REALLY dedicated ONLY to your sends?

We often analyze email deliverability issues of senders who want to verify their current vendors for providing them dedicated infrastructure. Surprisingly, the vast majority of them use shared SMTPs. This means that sender’s email reputation doesn’t entirely depend on his sends, but on tens, sometimes hundreds of senders sharing the same infrastructure. What can you do if you’re not sure of your situation? Our advice is to check with EmailLabs whether you use dedicated IP addresses. If you don’t, you should definitely consider building your own sending reputation. Good anti-spam practices are worthless when ISPs view you through the prism of „neighbors” mass mailings sending from the same SMTP servers.

3. Warm up IPs before Black Friday

If your mail servers haven’t sent any large or regular mailings over the year or your email infrastructure usually gets dusty rather than handling heavy email traffic, chances are that during Black Friday you’ll encounter problems with sending limits. Due to email limits imposed by mailbox providers, messages are being queued and their delivery is delayed. In some cases, these emails will be delivered the next day or not at all. Therefore, if you are planning larger Black Week campaigns, warm up your servers at least a few weeks prior. If you don’t know where to start, talk to our experts. Now is the right time to test and prepare.

4. Make your logo stand out in the inbox, boost your OR by 39%

During busy Black Friday each of us usually receives hundreds of emails in our inbox. Apart from an interesting subject, sender can also draw the recipients’ attention by displaying his brand logo on the listing. On Gmail and Yahoo it’s possible thanks to BIMI identifier. By presenting your logo in the inbox, you will improve Open Rate by 39%, increase brand awareness as well as email conversions***. If you’re interested in implementing the BIMI standard until holiday shopping season, reach out to us today.

5. If you don’t know where to start, just contact us

We are offering free of charge onboarding during Black November with EmailLabs for everyone who has encounter any problems with email communication and wants to prepare for Black Week and holidays with us. Contact our team and we’ll guide you on how to change SMTP address, authenticate emails, set up DKIM or DMARC, separate transactional and marketing traffic and many more.

* Source: Wordstream, **Source: eDataSource.com, *** Source: Red SIFT & Entrust w US i UK – 2021