In our latest download, ‘The Black Friday Survival Guide’ we go into depth about the importance of preparation for the Cyber weekend, and how it makes all the difference. When it comes to deliverability, having all your inbox ducks in a row is equally key to success during one of the busiest retail periods of the year.
We’re all familiar with one of the mammoth struggles – creating all your multiple campaigns, but the next hurdle is making sure they’re actually received (because your competitors will also be flooding their inboxes during Black Friday). So, how do you ensure the campaigns you’ve worked so hard on actually meet the gaze of your customers?
Here at Ometria, we see deliverability as an integral part of the overall campaign execution. This blogpost is going to give you a concise breakdown of the essentials you need to have in play ahead of the retail mayhem.
We’re going to address the important basics; getting your emails into customer inboxes.
Here are two things to keep top of mind when preparing to send emails:
- Consistency in sending patterns and behaviours
- Making sure your contacts are engaged and want to receive the mail you will be sending them
- Pick your send timings strategically
This should always be the case, but especially so during the Black Friday build-up.
1) Consistency in sending patterns and behaviours
- Start building up your sending volume slowly and early. Building your volume before the big event prepares your customers and the Mailbox Providers alike. You can do this by sending an additional campaign a week, or sending to your more active customer that don’t normally engage with your messages.
- Mailbox Providers will be more receptive to your messages as they have seen you sending more volume over the last few weeks. Your Cyber Weekend volume won’t be a sudden surprise and so they will be more comfortable letting the volume in. Let’s face it, who really likes a surprise? That being said, don’t overstretch too much before Black Friday. We want Mailboxes to be prepared for your messages, but not already annoyed at how much you’re sending.
2) Making sure contacts are engaged and want to hear from you
- Tease your shoppers; re-engage with both active and inactive customers to warm them up. We all love a discount, but we especially love a discount on something we already want. Personalisation is a sure-fire way of fostering engagement; and teasing your customers by getting them engaged in your products early will help with the open and click-through rates of your campaigns once Black Friday arrives. This initial engagement with your campaigns can make or break where the rest of the messages end up; so ensure customers are going to want the deals you’re sending because they’ve already seen the perfect purchase.
- Be selective about your audience. It’s better to admit you might not get someone to purchase than miss the chance to contact someone who’s desperate to hear from you. When deciding on your audience, especially moving outside of your usual active base, it’s important to think about who you are sending to. You can’t go wrong sending to your occasional or sale shoppers, but the contacts you messaged two black Fridays ago who still haven’t purchased? Maybe not…
3) Pick your timing well; avoid sending peaks, and test timings with your warm-up emails
- Try to send outside of ‘peak periods’: Mailbox Providers will be receiving hundreds of millions of messages across the weekend, and their filters will have a capacity limit on what they can handle. Try to do your mail-shots outside of the likely ‘peak periods’ to avoid congestion, so your messages don’t get delayed or rejected before the mailbox has reached capacity. However you should still send at times when your customers will engage with their email. We all love a shopping break at lunch; or why not see if sending while they’re having an afternoon tea break would work, leading to a premium response.
- Get the timezone right: Make sure you’re sending to contacts in their own timezone, breaking down your mail by region is an easy way to spread the volume out through the day and get to your contacts at the right time. A simple but easy-to-forget must do.
The key to Black Friday success is preparation, and deliverability an important step in said success. For a more in-depth step-by-step breakdown of where to start and how to make sure your strategies are Cyber Weekend ready, read our latest download ‘The retailer’s Black Friday survival guide’.
