The Ultimate BFCM 2022 Guide For DTC Brands

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It’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, and you know what that means: it’s time for some deals!

If you’re like most brands, you’re probably scrambling to make sure your email marketing strategy is up to snuff in order to get the most bang for your buck.

We know that the holiday season can be hectic—especially for smaller businesses—but don’t sweat it! We’ve got some serious tips to help you make sure your emails aren’t lost in the crowd.

Make sure to warm up your audience before throwing them huge deals out of nowhere.

Having a popup on the website with

“SIGN UP TO GET EARLY ACCESS TO OUR BLACK FRIDAY DEALS” is a great way to create a list with potential buyers.

You can create a flow for the “VIP BFCM List” with a text only (highest deliverability) email, informing them about the details and benefits. Make them excited.

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BFCM Offer Examples

Our recommendation is to keep it simple. Be creative with your store-wide sales but don't try to reinvent the wheel.

Here are some offer examples you can use:

• % off
• $$ off
• Tiered Discount (spend x get %)
• % Off+ Gift With Purchase
• Price Change Offer
• Buy 1 Get 1 (BOGO)
• Buy 1 Get 50% OFF
• FREE Shipping
• FREE Expedited Shipping

Breaking Email Marketing Rules

Are you ready to break some rules?!

Dear online rebel, BFCM is the best time to do so. Here are four rules you are free to break during this time:

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Rule #1: Don’t send any emails to the unengaged segment…

🤫: As long as they’re not suppressed - let ‘em know about the BFCM promos.

Rule #2: Big discounts kill my profits - 15% OFF is a max…

🤫: Remember -> this is the time to acquire customers at scale. Go big or go home (it’s just once a year).

Rule #3: I send 2-3 emails per week…

🤫: Awesome! I grant you permission to send 2 per day (twice a year 😃).

Rule #4: Resending campaigns is a red flag pour moi…

🤫: Oui, mais… It’s BFCM and you need to tell as many subscribers as possible about your HOT deals.

Back To The Campaigns…

So, we’re warming up the crowd beginning of November. Don’t send any promos, sales, discounts in the first two weeks of November!

Instead, send gift ideas, fun facts, FAQ campaigns - anything but promos!

Why? Because you want them to take advantage of your BFCM offers.

Note: if a brand gives discounts/sales often, they need to go with a crazy offer.

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Generally, you need two different offers for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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• First, we start with a FREE SHIPPING the weekend before Black Friday craziness starts. [ Send this email to the VIP list a day before.]

• Next, we send a reminder that we’re dropping the deals in a few days:
  

Make them excited - they waited for these deals the whole year!

This can be a text only campaign (good for deliverability).

Option to add a countdown timer.

"Hey {{firstname}},

We’re few days out of releasing our Black Friday deals! If you can’t wait and want early access you can sign up here (only if you have a landing page with a the BFCM popup)”

• VIP segment gets the official Black Friday email first.

• Black Friday email launches:

AM - make sure to send it early enough, so it doesn’t get lost between hundreds of other emails

PM - create a ‘non openers’ segment from the AM send, change the subject lines and schedule a resend in the evening when people are leaving work.

• Small Business Day campaign/ Last Chance

• It’s a great time to ask your audience for support and to share a word about your brand and current BF deals

• It’s the last day to shop the BF deal

• Pre Cyber Monday - offer a sneak peak

• Cyber Monday email with a new offer launches
  

AM - early send

PM - resend to ‘non openers’ with a new subject line.

• Giving Tuesday campaign

• If your brand supports a non-profit organization – highlight it
• Encourage them to give back today
• Remind them about the CM deal

• Last Chance – Cyber Monday Promo
  

• This email is optional but people are still in the mood for shopping!

All together, it gave us 13 sent emails with the Free Shipping & BFCM offers.

Not bad!

If you need some ideas for the design, we created a folder for you here.

How Should You Structure Your Flows During BFCM?

As we mentioned earlier, you want to have a popup on your website for people who want early access to BFCM deals.

1. You can create one for your existing customers
2. You will have a lot of traffic with new people who just discovered the brand, so they need a proper welcome message

• Welcome Series

This flow should have around five emails. No PROMOS. Straight value and intro to the brand. Get them excited about the upcoming BFCM deals.

At this point they need a proper brand indoctrination. Share the founder-story, its mission, what are the best-sellers, reviews, social proof, introduce the team etc.

• Abandoned Cart

Tell the customer that a major sale is coming up, and you could potentially run out of stock if they wait too long. Tell them they can safely get it now, or they can wait until it’s heavily discounted. I'd say this can go live 2nd week of November.

• Browse Abandonment

We can turn off emails with promos.

• Site Abandonment

We can turn off emails with promos.

• Added To Cart

We can turn off emails with promos.

• Win-back

Needs to be updated by the end of October. Copy example below:

"Hey {{firstname}}, remember us?

We’re {{brand}}. It’s been a while!

We’re reaching out to you to let you know that we’ll be offering a huge sale for Black Friday & Cyber Monday real soon. If you’re interested in getting products from {{brand}} at

our lowest price ever, here’s all you have to do.

Click the button at the end of this email, and poke around for a bit. Do some window shopping, and take a look at what you think you might like! We need to know that you’re engaged in order to offer you this crazy deal.

Hope all is well. See you on the site"

Good Luck!

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We hope you liked this guide that Matt, Klaudia, and the rest of the Emailtize team put together for you.

You can share it with any brand owner who is preparing for BFCM 2022.

Tens of brands have used our team's help to reach 40% of their revenue coming from Klaviyo.

If you’d like to find out more about us click the link Find out how we can help you...

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