Best Examples of Black Friday Emails To Inspire Your Own

Why develop Black Friday email campaigns

Black Friday follows Thanksgiving Day and is one of the key periods for a business to make money. With the right approach, you can get a month’s revenue in a few days, promote your brand, and expand your customer base. In 2020, the holiday season November 1–December 31 earned $188.2 Billion vs $142.4 Billion in 2019. And this is despite the pandemic.

A summary of Adobe’s 2020 Holiday Shopping Trends report. Source: Adobe

Not surprisingly, last year’s Black Friday saw an online spending increase of about 22% YoY to around $9 billion. Historically, Black Friday has meant miles of traffic jams, crowds, and even fights for products. Thanks to modern e-commerce technologies and because of the pandemic, shopping can be done in a couple of clicks.

It also became longer.

For example, University Tees had the Black Friday month sale last year and sent this email on 30 October, 2020. Source: MailCharts

Most likely, this tendency will continue this year which makes email marketing a great option for such extended sales.

Here’s why email marketing is a great sales channel for Black Friday:

• It allows you to tell about your campaign in detail in several comparatively big messages.
• You can create compelling visuals to further engage your customers.
• It’s very cost-effective compared to SMM and other marketing channels.

How to create good Black Friday emails

Let’s imagine you have already analyzed your stock and know what products you can give discounts for. You need to figure out how to tell about them in your emails to make them both beautiful and catchy.

Now picture this. You open your mailbox at the end of November and there are endless Black Friday deals on templates with black backgrounds (OK, there are tons of white, red, and gold also). What will you remember? Anything that’s different from the rest and holds some value. But to offer something valuable, you have to know your audience.

Analyze your audience

You know how important it is to build an email list. The importance of every email address increases dramatically in anticipation of the biggest sale of the year. By the way, we have a comprehensive guide on building email lists, be sure to check it out. And don’t forget to also clean up your lists, because it’s not quantity, but the quality that matters.

Then think about what you want to say to your audience. How can you surprise and attract them?

You don’t need to be a copywriting genius to write compelling copy. The most compelling and effective marketing copy comes from the audience, not the marketer. Here are some ways to get insights:

• Review mining — browse through customer reviews to look into people’s heads and get ideas of your products and features that you couldn’t come up with on your own.
• Qualitative surveys — gain detailed and descriptive information about opinions, beliefs, and values of a target audience.
• Interviews — find out your customers’ pain points, what solutions they’re looking for, and how you do compared to your competitors.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What did you do last year that really worked?
• What did your competitors do?
• Which items have been the most popular in the last few weeks?
• How can you segment your audience according to the findings?

Craft an attention-grabbing subject line

The task is to come up with a subject line that will definitely make the recipient read the message. This will help:

• Specify the discount
• Specify the categories of products with discounts
• Offer the maximum discount to the first customers
• Add information about additional free services or gifts
• Add keywords like “Sale”, “Now”, “Free” (don’t overdo it though and don’t look spammy to email services)
• Add a catchy phrase that resonates with your brand
• Add emojis
• Make it super short and intriguing.

What do the best Black Friday email subject lines look like? Here are some examples:

• 💥 20% OFF ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING💥
• A Better Black Friday Deal
• Black Friday Sale Live Now
• ⚫ BLACK FRIDAY JUST GOT BETTER.
• It’s here! Shop 30% off for Black Friday.
• A note about tomorrow…
• Why Wait? Fill Your 🛒 Now for Black Friday!
• Enjoy Black Friday Now
• Starts NOW: Exclusive VIP Stack Friday Offer 🌟
• Beat the Black Friday rush.
• VIP Black Friday Sneak Peek Inside!
• Free. Bundle. Gift.
• Flash Sale! Sweaters now $24.99
• SURPRISE‼️ Who says Black Friday has to be in November⁉️

Choose an appropriate template

We advise you to create a separate set of custom templates for Black Friday to make your campaigns look special on a special day. You might want to go with a different structure, design, or color scheme.

But you can always take ready-made templates prepared for you by email marketing services and platforms and use them as a starting point. The thing is, templates save time when you’re short on it. They are easy to edit and display beautifully across all email platforms and adapt to mobile devices. For example, you can try our free Black Friday templates right in your Selzy account and edit them in our email builder.

This is an example of our Black Friday templates:

You can also use services like Stripo that allow you to design beautiful templates and import them into Selzy:

An example of Black Friday email templates. Source: Stripo

Keep your content short and on point

OK, now that you’ve got a template to work with, let’s fill it. The main idea: be short and clear. People know you’re having a sale, so cut to the chase, tell them what it’s about, promote your best deals.

According to Litmus, subscribers spend an average of 13.4 seconds reading emails. They have this time to determine whether a message holds something interesting or not. It means that you have little time to get them to do what you want. Don’t overload your message with a lot of text. That’s your website’s job. There, you can tell in detail about everything you want to offer.

Some tips on making your Black Friday email on point:

• Be clear about the subject of the message and the preheader by directly announcing the discounts. You are not alone competing for customer attention. The winner is the one who formulates the most relevant proposal.
• Include in the body of the email a part of the landing page with discount items and a link to the full version of the web page.
• Place the most important information in the first screen area and highlight the most visually significant parts of the message.
• Tell that the offer is limited: the sale period will end quickly, and the goods may “disappear” even before the end of the promotion.

A short and sweet Black Friday email by Parachute Home. Source: MailCharts

Make sure your emails stand out

Many companies change their email design during the Black Friday period to emphasize its importance. But you need not only to be different from your regular mailings but from the rest of the companies. Typical Black Friday emails usually follow a total black and white design. OK, everybody knows it’s BLACK Friday, we get it. Why not change it?

Here’s what you can add to your message to stand out from the inbox clutter:

• Whatever colors you want, preferably vivid
• GIFs
• Countdown timers
• Interactive carousels
• Videos

Designmodo weaves in (like literally) a vibrant 60% off message into their black-and-white design. Source: Really Good Emails

Electric Objects inverts typical templates, transforming black into the main attraction. Source: Really Good Emails

A couple of points deserve special attention:

Put your best graphics forward

Don’t send Black Friday emails with the corporate design that you use in all other mailings. Sure, identity is essential for recognition, but a few times a year, allow yourself to deviate from the standards. It will look original and memorable.

Remember, the point of seasonal campaigns is that they are… seasonal. Using vivid color and fonts, combined with a cool proposition, will help increase your click-through rate and conversions.

Foot Cardigan’s emails are on the bright side at normal times but they went over their head with the Black Friday campaign by using super-trendy neon colors and gradients. Source: MailCharts

Add GIFs

GIFs are great for turning people’s heads because they are dynamic and simple, and get more attention than static illustrations. They make content come to life before our eyes.

If done wisely and tastefully, GIFs:

• Attract attention.
• Enliven the copy.
• Illustrate the idea.
• Are a great alternative to video.
• Simply look beautiful.

Frank and Oak gives readers the option to schedule their savings with this minimalistic animated calendar. Source: Emaildesign.Befree.

1-2 animated elements per email are enough, you don’t want to overload your subscribers, make your emails weigh a ton, and attract the attention of spam filters. Run a few tests, make sure your GIFs display OK before sending.

Pay attention to your CTAs

CTA or call-to-action is an element that motivates a user to take a certain action: go to the website, buy, sign up, subscribe, leave a request. There are different kinds of CTAs: buttons, links, images.

Whatever the kind, the main rule of CTA design in emails is to make them as clear and visible as possible for an easier shopping experience.

• Use bright or at least contrasting colors.
• Surround them with a lot of white space.
• Get down to business right away, place the main CTA on the first screen.
• Don’t dilute your main CTA’s impact with a lot of other buttons. It will confuse subscribers and they may end up not knowing what to do next.

Nice CTA placement job by GlassesUSA. Source: MailCharts

Read more about CTA placement and looks (and lots of other stuff) in our article about email design.

Use urgency in your emails

“What?” and “How?” are very important, but your customers are also interested in “When?”.

It might look overused, but the content of the lines of “Don’t miss this chance!” or “Buy now!” (or even “BUY NOW!”) makes people do things. Creating urgency is a psychological trick. It attracts attention by creating the FOMO effect (fear of missing out). Such a mechanic helps to stimulate demand and increase sales even at times that are unfavorable for the business.

There are several ways you can create the urgency effect:

• Tell that some products are limited in quantity.
• Offer big discounts but make them available to the first 10 customers only.
• Give 50% off for the entire stock but only for 24 hours on a specific day.

An example of copy creating a sense of urgency. Source: Really Good Emails

Timers deserve special attention — they are a simple but powerful tool. Looking at a timer, a person feels like time is running out. To avoid missing the opportunity, they click on the “buy” button, and the results can be impressive. Adestra describes a case study of how adding a timer to an email got it a 171% higher click-to-open rate and a 400% higher conversion rate.

Tick-tick-ticking away… Source: Really Good Emails

This one has it all 😲 Source: Really Good Emails

With urgency, it’s important not to overdo it. If all of your emails are “urgent”, then none of them really are. But major sales like Black Friday are perfect for it.

Don’t be afraid to use some humor

Humor can be an effective marketing tool that melts the ice between a company and its customer. A simple joke or a pun is a versatile thing:

• It sets an email apart from messages that only try to sell something.
• It increases sharing.
• It gets you closer to your subscribers, creating a dialogue that takes on a friendly tone.
• It makes a brand more memorable.

This cute pun and lil’ guys jumping for your attention are just adorable 😄 Source: Really Good Emails

Quip’s funny proposal is irresistible. Do your loved ones and partners have mouths? Source: Really Good Emails

Personalize it

Even though Black Friday is a massive sale, you can still offer customers something special. Take into account the interests and preferences of each person and make them personal offers.

Call them by their names, provide discounts on products that they are interested in the most.

The idea of personalized jewelry isn’t something special per se but it’s a nice touch. Source: MailCharts

Optimize for mobile

According to a 2021 Litmus study, mobile is the most popular environment for reading emails. It means that mobile versions of emails are a prerequisite for high conversions.

Email service providers like Selzy usually have responsive options in their email constructors that allow you not only to adapt your messages for mobile devices but to create separate versions for the purpose.

Black Friday email marketing ideas and strategies

Let’s go over some of the ideas that can make your campaigns perform even better.

Make a chain of emails

On the eve of discount sales, mailboxes will be filled with a variety of offers. If you send just one Black Friday email, your offer may go unnoticed.

A movie starts with its trailer, right? Same with a big email campaign — you need to announce it first and then reveal the details. Basically, there are 3 stages:

1. Announcement — 7-10 days before Black Friday. Describe what promotions and discounts you have but be careful. Subtly hint, but don’t reveal all the cards at once.
2. Notification at the start of the promotion — on Black Friday or just before your sale starts. Now describe all the conditions: what products are there, what are the discounts, how long the promotion will last, etc.
3. Last chance notification — send this message to those who have not bought anything yet.

Below is the 3-part Black Friday email campaign by Bose. Swipe to see all emails:

You can expand on this scheme with something like this:

• Sales announcement (start date, conditions) — 7-10 days in advance.
• Notification at the start of the event — a few hours before the start.
• A selection of interesting offers during Black Friday — after the start of the sale.
• Alert about the end of sales — 3-4 hours before the end of the discount period.
• Exclusive offer for subscribers (additional discount with a promotional code or offering products that don’t participate in the general sale) — a couple of hours before the end of the sale.
• “Last Chance” (unannounced offer for latecomers) — immediately after the end of the discounts.
• Announcement of Cyber ​​Monday — a couple of hours after the end of Black Friday.

Sounds complicated? We recommend using email automation to make your life easier. Create templates, choose lists, and set actions and reactions. For example, don’t send the Last Chance email to people who already bought something.

Explore different mechanics

There are several email mechanics you can explore to run your Black Friday promotion:

• Weekly promotion. Use a chain that reminds users about the promotion during the week and gives a promotional code to those who did not have time to make a purchase.
• Daily promotion. This option is suitable if you managed to collect a separate list of subscribers with the help of a landing page and you need to send them a message with a separate deal.
• The best products. This is a simple chain where you send all users 2-3 bestseller collections one after another.

Arrange a private sale for regular customers

Your loyal customers are your main asset. They generate significant revenue and often provide extra advertising. The more often they shop, the more your business grows. So why not single them out into a separate segment? Reward your loyal customers, show them that you care with a closed sale like this one:

Source: MailCharts

Create matching Black Friday and Cyber Monday email campaigns

Cyber Monday is a couple of days after Black Friday so these two events are very closely interconnected and are often perceived as one. Why not capitalize on it and make Black Friday and Cyber Monday email campaigns look alike for further brand promotion?

A Black Friday and Cyber Monday email by Casper. Source: Really Good Emails

Don’t do Black Friday

Say what? Yeah, you can do just that. If you don’t have the resources to arrange a super-deal for your customers, you can still be a part of the Black Friday hubbub by playing on the subject to your advantage. REI Co-op doesn’t promote anything directly but you’ll remember them:

Source: Really Good Emails

Ready for Black Friday?

So, here are the final thoughts:

When everything’s said and done… Don’t relax yet. You have Cyber Monday ahead of you.