Black Friday emails continue to surge every year. According to Responsys.com there was a 67% increase in Black Friday emails in 2010 from previous years.
Black Friday shopping starts very early in the day, so if you're planning on sending an email that day you need to send it out at 3AM or 4AM local time so shoppers are reminded of your deals and include you in their shopping schedule.
Here are some suggested subject lines for Black Friday, a few of which come from Responsys.com.
"Wake Up! Don't Miss BLACK FRIDAY DEALS"
"Black Friday Deal Buster Specials on Jewelry"
"Black Friday Only - Free Necklace with every Pendant"
Naturally that last suggestion of a free necklace would be a loss leader. Take a look at yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget for some recommendations on low cost suppliers.
Within the body of the email you will need to include your store hours and a photo of the Friday specials with prices. In this email, make sure you include images and text. In fact, for this email and all your Holiday Season emails you should have both images and text. Some people will not see the images immediately in their email program so make sure your text is descriptive.
For example, if you are offering a black pearl necklace in your email you should say:
"This elegant sterling silver Cultured Black Fresh Water Pearl Necklace is available for $39.99. Includes FREE Matching Earrings. While supplies last. Shop early."
Words like "elegant," "stunning," or "beautiful" are subjective from everyone's point of view and someone will want to view the images to judge for themselves.
Whatever Black Friday special offer you provide via email should have matching content on your website somewhere. The email you send should link to that web page announcement, or your home page announcement for that day.
Remember, your customers will be out and about all day long on Black Friday and the only way to keep in front of them is through internet marketing via Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
On Facebook, we'd like to see you publish a few Wall messages reminding people of your offers. You can publish these messages from your computer in the store.
Twitter will be a little trickier. We would like to see you send a few Tweets, but every Tweet is geo-targeted to a longitude and latitude and most of the time your computer's location (i.e. your store) will not show up correctly. There are two solutions for this. First, you can Tweet from your smartphone. Second, you can use the service HootSuite which allows you to set your location.
Geo-targeting through Twitter will allow your message to appear in hundreds of mobile apps that scan Twitter for local events and messages, for example, Foursquare.
Now let's step up the game a little more. Google+ launched business pages just 2 days ago, so let's add that service into the mix. You will need your personal Google+ account to set up your Google+ Business Page. Publish similar, but not exactly the same, messages on the Google+ page as you did on Facebook. You could mention a different option within your offer, and you could post different photos.
You will have post to your Google+ Business Page from your computer because the mobile app doesn't have a business feature yet. However, we still want you to post a social update with your personal profile and your smartphone using the Google+ app. Every time you post something on Facebook or Twitter you should also post it to Google+.
Even if you only use Google+ for personal communications, the Circles feature allows you to publish something to the public, which is exactly what we want. Again, you need to do this from your smartphone to capture your geo-targeting because every message you publish will appear on the smartphone other local Google+ users. The Google+ phone app has a "nearby" option to view all public messages from those nearby, even if they are not in your Circles.
So what are you pushing to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ anyway? We suggest continued eye-candy, as in photos of those Door Buster Specials. You could say "This is the last pearl necklace Black Friday door buster special left. I'll hold it aside for the first person who asks."
The ideas for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ should be followed throughout the entire season. If you pick a different item every day, you will continue to maintain top of mind awareness with the variety you are offering.
