Last year I wrote a straightforward ‘how to do Black Friday if you’re a small business and decide to go ahead with it’ post (you can read it here).
Black Friday isn’t for everyone, but I was seeing some small businesses leaving to late for their campaigns to have any impact, so I thought a step-by-step guide might help.
Why it’s more complicated now
This year it all feels more complicated. We’ve had another year for Black Friday fatigue to build up, where people are wise to businesses raising prices on the run up to Black Friday so they can give a fake discount on the day. And they are tired of the deluge of emails they’ll get, too.
How can you possibly cut through that as a small business?
Then there’s a growing concern about consumerism and the environment. Is it right to encourage people to splash out on things they don’t need? Shouldn’t we be buying less but better quality?
You may decide to steer well clear of Black Friday if it’s not a good fit for your brand or personal values. You may even decide to run an anti-Black Friday campaign this year – See Finisterre’s Blue Friday campaign for inspiration. Or you could spread the word about Citizen Friday.
Why you might choose to do it
On the other hand, I work with a number of small business clients who use regular and well-chosen discounts in their emails to keep up engagement. By well-chosen, I mean that they offer discounts which have been calculated to increase their profits by generating more sales, rather than deep discounts just to grab attention.
For these businesses, Black Friday can be just another event in the calendar, so they might have a back to school offer in September, a spooky Halloween offer in October and a Black Friday offer in November. Their audience expects an offer and if they don’t get one they might go somewhere else to buy instead.
Is it too late?
I follow a number of email marketing experts who say that if you’re starting to think about Black Friday now, you’re too late. Yes, even though there’s still a month to go. For a larger brand this is true because they may need to ‘warm up’ their mailing list to make sure sending those extra emails doesn’t cause problems with deliverability. Then they will need a campaign of at least several weeks in length to get the attention of subscribers amongst all the other Black Friday emails.
Small businesses have a much closer relationship with their customers, so it definitely isn’t too late to start working on Black Friday now, here in the last week in October. You need to do it pretty quickly though as your subscribers aren’t likely to pay attention to a single email on 29th November, you will need to plan, write and send a series of emails instead (more in my previous post here). It’ll be more effective if you can align it with your social media activity too, all of which will take some planning and prep.
Dig into your sales data and email marketing reports. What sold well at this time last year? Who is buying what right now? Then you can tailor your campaign to what is likely to sell best, and even better you can segment your list so that subscribers only get emails that are a good fit for them.
The bigger picture
As always, the bigger picture is more complex and nuanced than ‘Black Friday is dead’ or ‘if you’re planning it now it’s too late’. Do what’s best for your business and clients. And if you decided to let Black Friday pass you by this year, or you try it and nobody pays any attention anyway, don’t worry because the holiday season is just around the corner.
You really DO need to be planning for that now!