Setting up for BFCM email marketing success: Checklist and Best Practices 

Dear eCommerce business owners,

You’re about to enter the most exciting (and competitive) time of the year—Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). With over 26.5 million online stores vying for a share of your customers' attention and wallets, this is your chance to stand out. But here’s the secret: the real winners of BFCM don’t wait until October to prepare—they start now.

We get it. From creating discount pages to sorting logistics, the to-do list feels endless. But your email marketing doesn’t have to be one of those last-minute tasks. Starting sooner means more time to nurture potential customers and boost your sales when it matters most.

Remember, BFCM 2023 was huge, with a staggering 21% increase in revenue for Shopify stores. And BFCM 2024 will only get bigger. 

This is the best time to participate in this global festival season sales and contribute to billions of revenue. 

But how do you kickoff your Black Friday email marketing campaign? 

Let’s go. 

4-Step BFCM Email Marketing Checklist for E-commerce Merchants 

Setting up a BFCM email marketing campaign doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s our four-step BFCM email marketing checklist to get started: 

Step 1: Audience segmentation, plus refreshing & growing your email list

The first (and possibly the longest) step in your BFCM email prep is audience research and segmentation. It’s important to begin this process early—like right now—to ensure you have a clear strategy in place and avoid any last-minute stress later on.

Here are the essentials of this step 👇

Understand your audience's needs

There are different ways to understand what your customers want from a BFCM email campaign. These include: 

• Analyzing past BFCM campaign performance to identify what worked and what didn’t for your customers
• Launching surveys to understand customers’ expectations (Like how Sightglass Coffee does it)

• Using social listening tools like Google Alerts to understand what customers are discussing about your brand. You might just find some folks discussing their BFCM deal wishes out in the open!

💡Pro Tip: Offer incentives like free shipping, free products, or special discount codes to encourage customers to participate in surveys. 

Set up campaign Goals ‍

Based on your audience insights and revenue projections, you can set clear goals for your Black Friday email campaign. These goals typically fall into three categories:

Revenue goals: To set these, find answers to the following questions: 

• What’s your total revenue goal from BFCM 2024? 
• What are the maximum and minimum order volumes expected? 
• How much increase in revenue are you expecting from last year, and what are the relevant product segments?

Customer experience goals: To set these, you might start off with:

• What is your store's average cart abandonment rate? 
• What is the typical ratio of existing and new buyers in a campaign launch?
• What was the average delivery time, cancellation and RTO rates over the last BFCM campaign?

Stock and logistic goals: 

• Will you be able to restock sold-out items? 
• Do you have the capacity to deliver all products within a broader location, or should you make your campaigns location-specific? 

Set up audience segments 

Now that you have some information in hand, you are ready to set-up audience segments for your campaign goals. While it is recommended to have multiple segments to be able to personalize for each segment, here are three ideas for segments that you can start with. (We’re using product screens from ZEPIC as examples) 

• High-value/loyal customers: These customers purchase regularly from your store and refer your store to others. Segmenting them distinctly and offering them special loyalty discounts can lead to more sales volume 

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• Recent, happy customers: The customers who recently made multiple orders and left 5 star reviews from their purchases are very likely to be fans of your products. You could create a separate segment for them, maybe offering an even more special BFCM deal if they bought and put in more reviews.

• Current prospects: These customers can be newsletter subscribers and social followers who frequently visit your website. They know about your brand but have not made any purchases yet. BFCM is an excellent time to convert these users!
  
  

Clean up and refresh your existing email list 

Before launching your BFCM email campaign, ensure that your email list is fresh and there are no inactive subscribers. Now that you have dedicated resources to this BFCM campaign, you might as well put some effort into growing your email list to make an even more impactful BFCM event. Here are some quick ways in growing your subscriber list.

• Running free giveaways over signup forms on the website
• Deploying intent exit popups in product and checkout pages 
• Adding referral bonuses or gifts into your current emails and notifications

Looking for real-world examples?? Check out our recent blog post that covers 8 great examples to grow your email lists via newsletters and opt-in forms!

Step 2: Plan your email flows and automation 

Think a single BFCM email blast is enough? It never is. We’ll need a series of emails and texts that will help attract, nurture and convert those emails into orders. Depending on what each customer does across the campaign, you will need to send appropriate communication. This is where you’ll need to use some automation. We recommend creating unique customer journeys for each audience segment that you’ve created for the BFCM campaign. 

Here’s a basic example of a journey flow for new signups to your opt-in forms. 

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• The automation is triggered when a new visitor fills out one of the opt-in forms on the website
• Next, the customer receives an email with a BFCM discount or offer
• The customer then receives a follow-up email if they’ve not used the BFCM discount in a set number of days

You can add more conditions and triggers to this workflow or even include other channels, like WhatsApp, to make it further BFCM-oriented. 

💡Pro Tip: Go to every single customer journey flow you have going in September and October to include a countdown to BFCM.

Step 3: Sharpen your email copies and design 

Email design ‍

Most email marketing platforms already have pre-built email templates. To make an email more interactive, you can edit these templates to add your own product images, videos, other media types, social links, CTA buttons, and other relevant design elements. 

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Email copywriting tips 

• Use everyday language: When writing your emails, try to keep the tone conversational and approachable. Speaking in a way your customers understand helps build a genuine connection and makes your offers feel more relatable.‍
• Keep it concise: The good ol’ KISS, Keep It Short & Simple, philosophy holds truest in this season of BFCM competition across brands‍
• CTAs are essential: Including a call-to-action is key. It gently encourages your audience to take the next step, whether that’s exploring a deal or making a purchase.‍
• One goal at a time: Focus each email on one clear goal. By keeping things simple and aligning the copy with that goal, you’ll make it easier for your audience to engage and take action.‍
• Add social proof: Including a bit of social proof—like reviews or success stories—can really help build trust and credibility. It reassures your customers that they’re making a good decision by choosing you during this busy season.

Looking for some real-world examples of email templates to inspire? Check out our post covering 5 great examples of highly converting email templates.

Step 4: Review past & ongoing campaigns’ performance, keep A/B testing

As you regularly monitor your campaigns, you will learn: 

• Which subject line, copy, and design is a hit, and which is a miss? 
• Which channels seem to get more results, Email, SMS, WhatsApp?
• Which CTA is most clicked? 
• Which customer segment is acquiring the most revenue? 
• Which campaign generated the highest ROI and why? 

With all these inputs, you can perform A/B tests with email subject lines, content, offers, and CTAs. Testing different elements allows you to find what resonates most with your audience. By keeping a close eye on these metrics, you can continuously optimize your BFCM email campaigns and boost conversions, ensuring every message hits the mark.

Let’s get cracking with some non-BFCM news from ZEPIC!

The BFCM countdown has already started, it is just under 78 days away! We hope you’ve got some inspiration to start or make a few improvements to your BFCM campaign plans. While you are at it, we’re here at ZEPIC building you a co-pilot to help you do these campaigns in under 5 minutes. Yes, under 5 minutes to create and launch a multi-channel campaign with our upcoming co-pilot! As we put out some teasers, we hope you will look forward to our co-pilot launch as much as you look forward to BFCM success.

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