Cyber Monday and Black Friday represent the biggest on-line shopping opportunity of the year for consumers. These key dates for businesses are around the corner.

Guess what drives the most amounts of views and purchases on these key dates? That’s right: EMAIL MARKETING.

The time to start planning your email marketing strategy whether you are an agency or a client is right now!

Email marketing is still the king of eCommerce promotion opportunities. That’s because where advertising and search engine marketing (SEO / SEM) work well, your existing and quality target consumer email lists drive the highest ROI.

74% of Consumers prefer to receive promotional material on email.

Yes, there are lots of digital options to reach your target market but why not chose the one that works best?

Your email marketing needs to be a key strategy for Cyber Monday and Black Friday.

Understand the Cyber Monday Calendar

Black Friday is, of course, the huge first “official” day of the holiday shopping season. It occurs each year on the day after Thanksgiving in the US and the conventional wisdom says that Black Friday is when everyone shops at stores in person, and then Cyber Monday is when everyone starts their online shopping. That’s not the way it works in reality.

All over these few days customers will be cruising social media, checking their emails, and thinking about their holiday gift-giving and purchasing for themselves. That means you need to break out of the artificial structured thinking that the calendar foists upon you. If you want to capture the biggest share of the online spend this year, treat Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a week-long chance to drive sales, because that’s exactly what it can be.

Basic Strategy Ideas

Create a special Pre-Black Friday email and send it out Wednesday morning. Include special “today only” promos. Then send another “Thanksgiving Day” email with a special offer – and make it your top-selling, most in-demand sales item. Make that deal ONLY apply to that item when purchased on Thanksgiving Day. Send it out Thanksgiving morning early. Then blast a Black Friday special offer on Friday AND a Cyber Monday special offer on Monday.

That’s four emails over six days. Importantly, make sure that each offer is unique because it adds credibility and urgency to your campaigns. If you use social media for marketing and/or as a sales channel, post identical offers on your social media platforms as well. And since the marginal cost of sending one more mail is almost zero, even consider creating a “Cyber-TUESDAY” promo too.

People Want Email and Offers

The rest of the year, people can get frustrated by too many poor-quality emails. But this week is different. This special week, EVERYONE is looking for great deals and the first/best deals that generate the most attention will get the sales.

Now that you will be trying out some new things, remember to keep track of which emails went out along with the open and click-through rates for each one. It is natural for email campaign open and click rates to decline a tad over time as a campaign rolls out. But aside from the slight trend, spikes up and down will tell you what kinds of emails worked – and which didn’t – with your particular audience. Maximise the value of your email marketing effort this year by learning what works for next time.