This week’s insider download of Email+ strategy has some encouragement for you, to guide your Black Friday preparations this summer.
If we haven’t met yet, I’m Gabrielle. Client Services Director and resident Klaviyo Champion.
Planning for Success
Marketers think 3 steps ahead, anticipating how the next promotion will come together. The best marketers strategize with a focus on customer retention.
With each round of new customers and prospects gained by a promotion, consider how you retain them over time. After all, how you follow up after the sale makes nearly as much of an impact as capturing the sale in the first place.
We see this all the time in ecommerce.
Brands put significant effort towards boosting sales in Q4. We spend months preparing for the ecommerce SuperBowl that is Black Friday.
It’s become Black-ish end of October to end of November. Cyber Monday now extends to “Giving Tuesday.” Yes, it’s a thing.
It’s come a long way in the years since our agency’s founder sent his first Black Friday email in 2001.
We’re Discussing BFCM in June?
Yes, we are.
I myself can sometimes feel bemused exasperation as I walk into Target and see Valentine’s Day decorations hung through the store as soon as January 5th, but this is the nature of marketing.
Let’s anticipate the opportunity now so there’s time to prepare your list for success.
Otherwise, you’re left scrambling at the last minute. Then it looks like a Hail Mary discount offer the week of Thanksgiving. Then, disappointed, you hustle the remaining weeks until Christmas.
Then, exhausted by that last-minute stress, maybe January to February feels like the time to take a breather. “My list doesn’t want emails now anyways, right?”
Nobody wants to “burn” their list. But the burn could be avoided altogether by preparing now.
How you communicate with your prospects and customers now lays the foundation for the good results you want in Q4.
What you do this summer to nurture the health of your list (or repair an untrustworthy sender reputation) will make all the difference. Building up delivery to the inbox, reactivating cold people, pruning emails that are no longer worth keeping…
This process can take months.
Prioritize Your Q4 Profit in Q3
Want a profitable Q4? You’ll want a budget that plans for this in Q3.
That’s why Patrick and Sam Hill of Ecom CFO taught a workshop in Austin today. It was designed for those who want to plan “Like a CFO” so they can be profitable before BFCM! Then you can avoid the pressure of a haphazard holiday promotion that boosts sales but kills profit! (Our friend Drew Sanocki of PostPilot sends warnings about this every year.)
The email / SMS / postal mailing list responds powerfully when you have a marketing strategy that can take the whole year into consideration. One of the ways this manifests is sending targeted emails for the 4th of July.
It might be discounts to winback precise segments of your list. For others, it might look like a relevant curation of products that customers will appreciate as they celebrate that holiday.
Not all of our clients are doing this. The 4th of July is not relevant to every brand.
Sometimes they find that weekend yields better results than all of BFCM.
We see this pattern play out in our clients, too, depending on their product niche.
Will Your BFCM Offer Make it In the Inbox?
Here’s your insider heads up: Klaviyo’s launching their BFCM training hub in July. Last week I delivered a strategy article that will be published there.
I can’t share the details yet, but there is one important preview I can give you now. September is the last window for you to start the process of reactivating your list before BFCM.
Many brands have cold segments that range from 15-30% of their entire list, at minimum. This is one reason why your sender reputation matters so much.
Imagine you put time into organizing special offers for the holiday season, get your creative put together, and fire off your emails.
Then your emails are sent straight to spam, or buried in the promo tab. Yikes!
Even DTC Twitter has the first few BFCM rumblings starting up.
So yes, we’re thinking about it. And no, it’s not too early for you to start making plans now.
Here’s to you feeling like running your business is easier, because you have your automations dialed in to support your team as you scale, and your offers are battle-tested and ready.
Poised to strike where your brand has the most leverage with your unique audience of prospects and customers.
