# Steal My Entire 2026 Black Friday Masterplan (Emails, Offers & Calendar)

Channel: Emiel Dingemans | eCommerce Retention Marketing
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beo-2CFNf4Q
Duration: 1 hr 10 min
Language: English
Words: 14125
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Beo-2CFNf4Q

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[0:00] Most e-commerce brands run Black Friday like this. So they pick a discount, they blast it from early November until Christmas and somewhere around week three, the sales just die and they never figure out why. So this year I'm handing you the exact planet we use instead. So five separate sales events from November 1st all the way to your shipping cutoff date, each with its own offer and its own reason to buy. So, the person who ignores your first sale gets a brand new

[0:28] reason to look again in week four. [music] And in this video, I'm walking you through the whole thing. So, the offers, the calendar, the emails, the SMS, and by the way, you can download the entire plan in a free document in the description below. So, definitely check it out so you can use it with your own team. And a quick word on why you should listen to me. So, my name is Emil. I run magically, which is an email and SMS marketing agency for Equinis brands. We're running this agency for over seven years now. We've worked at more than 150 ecom brands and we've generated them more than $300 million in

[1:00] email and SMS revenue and we got over 35 star reviews on our Trust Pilot page. So yeah, we've run more Black Fridays than I can count and this document is exactly how we are approaching the 2026 seasons for our own clients. So let's get into it. Cool. So the 2026 Black Friday Cyber Monday email and SMS master plan. And so your plan for a bigger better holiday

[1:24] season in 2026. So my approach for this year is to split the season into five separate sales events. So each event has its own job, its own offer, and its own reason for a customer to come back and buy. So this gives us just more chances to generate sales without simply making the discount bigger every week. Because that's what I see go wrong every single year with a lot of the ecom brands out there. And no, we're not just stopping after Cyber Monday because December will get its own holiday sale with short flash offers, shipping deadline, and uh a plan for what happens after Christmas, too. So,

[2:01] we're going to turn this into a plan that you can actually use. And uh yeah, you won't finish this thinking, okay, but what should I actually send? You'll have the offers, the calendar, and examples right in front of you. So, let's get into it. first of all with the structure and the offers. So we don't get into the email stuff immediately because first we need to set the foundation on what kind of events we're going to run and why we're going to run it and what kind of offers make sense for your ecom brand. So first of all the five sales event framework. So first of

[2:32] all I want you to stop thinking about Black Friday as like one long sales event. So, I split the season into five separate sales events where every event has like a different job to do with different offers and also a different reason for the customer to buy. So, we're hitting like every customer group within your target audience. So, the plan in general is like this where we would start on November 1st until the middle of the month with like a November kickoff sale event. Uh, of course you can name this in like a different way, but the job that this sale will do is basically open the season with like a

[3:07] useful offer without using your biggest broad discount and it's already helps you generate some revenue early on. And uh, also it helps you to just spread out the amount of offer that you will get. So also your fulfillment team will probably will be happy if you can spread it out a little bit more than just the usual Black Friday week. Then from November 16 until November 22nd, we're going to have like an early Black Friday sale, an early access sale, whatever you want to call it. And this just gives shoppers a different reason to buy before the main event starts. Then of course, we have the Black Friday sale

[3:39] from November 23rd until 29th. And this is of course where you're going to run your main offer and you're going to put it in front of your prepared audience. Then we're going to switch to a S Monday sale from November 30th until December 2nd. So we're not going to end on the Monday. we're going to continue for a couple more days. Uh, which just helps with like um generating more sales because the inbox will be less crowded after Cyber Monday. So, that's why I like to extend the C Monday sale with

[4:06] like a new offer with its own deadline. And then finally, we have a holiday sale which is going to run from December 3rd until yeah, your shipping cut off date. So, this will be different for every ecom brand. And the goal is that we're going to switch from like the Black Friday style deal to more of a gifting angle with a new main offer. Plus, optionally, what I would recommend as well is run 24 or 48 hour flesh sales in this period as well. And yeah, this five event structure is really the backbone of the entire plan. So everything we do from here, the campaigns, the forms, the

[4:37] flows, the SMS, the frequency, deadlines, it's all built around these five events. And in case you don't know, Black Friday itself is November 27th, Cy Monday is on November 30th, and Christmas is December 25th, of course. So after the delivery cutoff then we're going to switch to what you could still deliver. Again this also depends on what kind of ecom brand you are and then we'll decide whether like a post Christmas campaign makes sense or not for your brand. Um but these are like the phases that we have. So definitely make sure to keep that in mind throughout this video. Now before we get into the offers I first want you to do

[5:16] some calculations. This maybe sounds a bit like the boring part, but it is super important because I see a lot of issues with ecom brands when they're running the Black Friday sale. So, take a product that you actually want to sell and work out what you can collect after the discount and what it cost to fulfill the order. So, for example, let's take a hypothetical $100 uh product that you have. Let's say that you're running a 20% Black Friday sale on this, which means that your revenue collected is $80, right? And let's say you have $40

[5:50] for product and variable order costs. And there's no extra gift and handling costs, which means that your contribution before ads and over ad is $40. If you give 20% off, if you do that with 30% off, the revenue collected is now $70. you still have $40 product and variable order costs, which means that your contribution before ads and

[6:12] overhead is now dropped from 40 to $30. Now, let's say you go with a 20% off plus a gift. You still have the $80 revenue collected, still the $40 product and variable order cost, but now you have $6 for extra gift and handling costs, which means that your contribution before ads and overheads are now $34. This is just to give you a couple of examples, and I really want you to calculate this for your main items as well. The reason why I'm showing you this is that going from 20% off to 30% off might not sound like a big change, but in this example, you're left with $30 per order instead of $40

[6:51] before ads and other business cards, which you also have, which means that you need about 33% more orders just to make up for that difference. So, keeping the discount at 20% and adding a small gift leaves you with $34 per order instead and the customer gets something extra and you keep more money than with a bigger discount. So, for example, in this case, it could make sense to instead of rather going with 30% off, go with a 20% off plus a gift. That's the example that I want to show you. So, before you compare offers, include the less obvious costs, too. to things like payments fees, packaging, any shipping

[7:27] costs that you cover and what returns are likely to cost you. Just make sure that you don't count the same cost twice and sometimes it's worth like earning less on the first order just to bring a new customer. Uh we see this all the time in certain niches like supplement brands and stuff like that. Uh it really depends on your business model and how important this first order is for your business model. Um so yeah, just decide beforehand how much you are willing to give up. So do this now. Pick your main product and compare two offers. Subtract the cost from what the customer pays and

[8:00] how much is left with each offer and what's the minimum that you're happy to keep. A very important step in this whole process. Because again, I see this go wrong all the time where ecom brands think, yeah, we need to give like the highest possible discount ever because otherwise people are not going to buy. But then when they actually do the calculations, they see they have to make so much money before they're even profitable. And um yeah, then in the end they notice that yeah, Q4 was like a high season in terms of revenue, but they're left with no money at the end because they didn't make any profit. So

[8:32] super important to make this calculation. Then the next step is to decide which products you actually want to push, right? So you don't just want to fill your Black Friday campaigns or with your normal bestsellers. So before November, you want to make a short list of the products that you actually want to sell the most. And you want to look at four things. The first of all, of course, the margin after the discount, as I just show you, how much stock you have, also really important, how often the product gets returned, and how easy

[8:58] it is to fulfill during the Q4 season. So, a product can be your best seller and still be a terrible product to push hard during Black Friday if the margin is thin or if you're almost out of stock, right? And on the other hand, like a high margin product with plenty of inventory might deserve much more space in your campaigns than it normally gets. So you basically want to create like three simple buckets. First bucket is the push hard bucket. So good margin, plenty of stock. Then the support bucket with still useful but you don't want to build the whole campaign around it. And then you have the don't push bucket with

[9:34] the products with low stock or weak margins, high returns or fulfillment problems. And then you want to use that list when you build your product emails, your bundles and your flash sales. So the goal with this Q4 peak plan is not just to sell more products, but it's to sell more of the products that you actually want to sell. And that's a big difference. Now, let's get into the next step, and that's give customers a new reason to buy. So different customers,

[10:00] they buy for different reasons, right? So one shopper might respond to a simple 25% discount, while someone else might care more about a bundle that makes gifting easier. So another customer might come back for a free gift. a low price product or a deal on a specific category that they actually want. So that's why I do not want to run like the exact same offer throughout the whole Q4 season. But I also don't want our only way of making the next sale more interesting to be increasing the discount because that's also something that I see go wrong all the time. They start with 10% off, then before Black

[10:35] Friday it's 15%, Black Friday is 20, Cyber Monday 25%. but instead you want to give customers like a different reason to buy during each sales event. So, for example, the November kickoff sale could make a few selected products more attractive. The early Black Friday sale could introduce a special bundle. The Black Friday sale could be your strongest broad discount. Time Monday could switch to a spend and save offer or use a completely different offer mechanic. And the holiday sale can be built around gifting with short product or category flesh sales on top of it. So again, the goal isn't to make the same promotion feel new, but the goal is to

[11:11] put a generally different buying opportunity in front of the customer. And that also means that someone who already bought early in November during the November kickoff sale, that this person can have a real reason to come back to you and buy again during this time sale, for example, without you simply making their uh exact previous order cheaper a week later. So that's really the system that you want to think about before you come up with like the exact offers for each sales event. The next step is that you do want to choose

[11:40] like the offers that fit your product. So you don't need every option here, but a couple of the options that you can go with. So of course we have the typical percentage of. So that's like a clear sale across eligible products. And what you need to check, of course, is the margin on the weakest eligible product because that's again something that I see go wrong all the time. You can do a up to x% off. So up to 20 30% off. So then you have like a catalog with different markdowns. And yeah, the headline saving is genuine. It's available. It's easy to find. So that's

[12:11] why I'm a big fan of this type of offer. Uh you can have like a bundle price. So products that make sense together. And what you check of course is like the contents, the saving, the stock, and the packaging cost. Give a purchase. Super interesting as well during Black Friday. Uh so a useful extra with manageable costs. Um, you do need to be aware of like the threshold, the gift stock of course, the handling, the extra postage, a BOGO deal, so buy more, save more, so multiple item orders or gifting, the dollar off incentive, the product or category flesh sale. These are all different type of offers that you can

[12:44] run throughout the Q4 season. And of course, keep in mind that if you have like a new product drop or a new color of a certain item, it can also give people something new to buy without having another discount. So, for example, if you have like a certain Black Friday sale, you can extend it during C Monday, but then mention, yeah, we now have it available in three new colors. So, here's a full offer plan for one example brand because I can imagine if you hear all of this information, it might sound a bit abstract and you're like, okay, how can we make this into

[13:14] like a full offer plan for my own brand? So, I'm going to give you like a full example and we're going to use a brand called Nordline, which is a fictional travel accessories brand and its product include like a $100 weekend bag, a $30 wash bag, and a $25 passport wallet. So, what we're going to do for this fictional brand, the November kickoff sale, it's going to be 15% off selected wash bags and passport wallets. Then, during early Black Friday sale, all three products in a gift wrap set for

[13:44] $115. Black Friday sale going 25% off eligible full price products. Cyber Monday sale, spend $150, get $40 off eligible products. And then holiday sale, a gifted box weekender and washback set for $119. Then we're going to have two flash sales 24 hours selected password wers for $20, normally 25. And for 48 hours, 20% off selected wash bags for $24 where normally it's $30. That's like the offer plan for a fictional brand like this. So in this example, the bundles and gift cards are excluded from the percentage discounts. Really important. Time Monday, the $150 minimum is based on eligible merchandise before shipping and tax. And the $40 discount doesn't stack

[14:32] with other offers, of course. And the holiday sale on purpose is not the same Black Friday 20% 25% off or the Cyber Monday uh deal with the Christmas banner because that's what a lot of ecom brands are doing, but it's like a special offer just for this holiday sale and the flesh offers. They sit along the holiday sale that we have. So, it's on top of the holiday sale that we have. That's important. And uh yeah, they do not discount that set again, of course. So, this is just like an example of how you can run like an offer sequence during Q4. Of course, this is just like an

[15:05] example. You do not want to use this exact model for your own decisions. You do need to check your margins as I mentioned before. And throughout the rest of the video, I will go a bit deeper into why I came up with these offers for this fictional brand. This is just like a quick overview of like the offer plan that we have. Now, let's get into know what exactly changes between events. So, there are three different

[15:29] ways to keep the Q4 season interesting. So, first of all, you can change the offer, right? So, 25% off becomes $40 off when you spend $150. You can change the product. So, introduce a holiday color or a different bundle. Or you can change the message. So, explain who the product suits, answer hesitation, or recommend a basket. And you need all three available. And you don't need a new discount for every single that you're going to send out in the key for season. So, for example, at the launch of a sales event, the campaign job with your emails and SMS is to show the deal, the eligibility, and the deadline. In

[16:05] the middle of the event, you want to help people choose and answer the questions uh that are stopping them from buying. At the end of a sales event, you want to explain exactly which benefit is ending. And with the next event, that's when you want to show what's new and who this is useful for. So before you're approving each sales event, so all the five sales events that you're going to run, you basically want to finish this sentence for yourself. So someone who ignored the last offer might care about this one because super important to do offer example that just gave you for not line during the holiday sale, a targeted

[16:39] flesh offer can answer that question without changing the storewide plan. So, someone who doesn't need like the $119 gift set might still want a $20 password wallet, for example. Next thing is that you do not want to make early buyers regret buying. I already mentioned it, but this is something that I see go wrong all the time. So, you want to check the same basket across your faces before approving the offers. So, in our example, the bag, the wash bag, and the wallet are in total, they're $155 individually. During the early Black Friday sale, the complete set sells for

[17:14] $115 and then give wrapped as a bundle. So, buying those same products during the Black Friday sale where they get 25% off, then it cost them $160.25 without early wrapping benefit. So, the early buyer got a good reason to act, but the later buyer gets more freedom to choose the individual products. So, that's how you want to think about it. So in the end the discount is kind of similar but with the first sale it was like a bundle so it was only interesting for people who wanted to give it as a gift or wanted all products while during the Black Friday sale there's no freedom

[17:49] for the person to decide okay do I want all these products or just one or two you know but in the end if they would buy the same exact same product the discount would have been almost the exact same so with this example the early buyer won't regret buying it at the first place So the November kickoff

[18:08] sale is like a different type of sale. So it's a smaller, more selected accessory promotion. So you don't want to call it like the lowest price of the year, of course, when a broader sale is coming up later. So you don't have to make every offer equally good for every basket, but you do need to keep up your promises. And this also applies to like the flesh sales that you might going to run in December. So you don't want to advertise Black Friday as the lowest ever price on every product when it contradicts themselves like two weeks later. So you don't want to lie to your

[18:40] audience basically. So in the Nordline example, the December 20% off deal with individual flash offers are less deep than the Black Friday 25% discount. So it's not that if people have bought on Black Friday, they get a better deal later, which you can do, but then you have to be honest about it and transparent about that. That's basically what we want to say here. So, you want to give the customer service, the offer comparison, and a clear answer for price questions. And you don't want to leave them discovering the next promotion. Uh, yeah, through angry replies because that will happen. Trust me, I've seen this a

[19:10] couple of times with with some brands that, yeah, the audience is just not happy if they bought a certain product saying it's like the biggest discount ever, and then a week later there's like a better offer for them. So, this might sound like a lot of information on offers and you might think, okay, is this even interesting? We just want to give you like a quick summary of what we just discussed. So if you remember one thing from this section, remember this and that's that you do not want to run

[19:37] one sale with five different banners. You want to build five separate sales events each with its own reason to buy uh with these periods. During the holiday sale, you could also run 24-hour or 48 hour flash sales on specific products or categories. and the main holiday sale keeps running around them and it doesn't automatically mean stacking another discount on top of everything. And remember these three things. So different doesn't have to mean cheaper. Super important. You want

[20:04] to check what you're actually keeping. So work out what's left from each order after discounts and your costs. And you want to keep your promises. You don't want to lie to your audience because it never works out the way that you want it to work out. So do this now. Write down your offer for each sales event, which products qualify, and when it starts and ends, check the cost, and get the plan approved before anyone starts designing any emails. Now, let's get your audience ready to buy. And by the way, I already mentioned at the beginning, this full document, you can download it for free

[20:36] via the link in the description below. So, if you want to check it out, definitely download this guide yourself. One quick alternative, because with this plan, we're talking about five different sales events. For some brands, it doesn't make sense to have like five sales events throughout the Q4 season. So, if you want to keep it lean, there's like an alternative where you can just go with three main sales events. And yeah, the full plan gives you more opportunities to create more buying moments. So, I'm still a big fan of like the five sales event approach, but it also means that there are more offer changes, there are more email campaigns,

[21:08] and just more things that your team has to keep in sync, right? So if you want to simplify the execution, you can reduce the number of times that you change the main store offer. And then for example, you can just go with like a three event framework where we have the early Black Friday sale from early November until November 22nd. Uh the Black Friday sale from November 23rd until 29th and then a cyber week sale from November 30 until the end of the cyber week. all the way through the Friday or even including the weekend and then you can stop if uh the December month or the gifting angle for your

[21:41] brand is not that important. So that's like an alternative that you can go with and then I would still recommend since now the sales events are a bit longer to go with a couple of flash sales as well for like 24 hours on the bestseller, 48 hours on a specific category or like a free gift for one day etc etc. So you can still keep the sales events themselves more interesting. So this is like a good alternative. Still I'm more a big fan of like the five sales framework. Now let's get into the preparations. Good stuff. So September and October. This is really the moment where you want to get ready without

[22:17] starting the sale. So we're not going to run like an October sale uh in this plan. A couple of weeks back I already posted a video about preparations for Black Friday Cy Monday. And uh if you've seen that video, then you probably know I'm not a big fan of running sales events in October. I think October should be your month where you can still collect full margin uh on all your products. And this is the month where you have to warm up your audience so they have like a good reason to buy from you in November and December. So the focus for now for October really is on

[22:46] improving your email deliverability, growing your email SMS list, and getting the work ready for November 1st. So the first thing is that you really want to focus on list growth. You don't want to wait until November to start building your Black Friday audience. So in September and October, you can often reach your shoppers at a much lower advertising cost than during the November and December holiday rush, especially around Black Friday, of course. So this gives you an opportunity to get people interested before the most expensive part of the season. We all know if you're running meta ads or Google ads that CPMs are just way higher

[23:23] in November and December. So in October and in September, this is a good moment to get more traffic to your store and to yeah really focus on the list growth of your email list. So that means that when November does arrive, you're not starting from scratch or yeah, you're depending on another paid ads to bring every visitor back. Uh you already have like an audience that you can email, right? So here's how I would approach it. So, first of all, you want to give people a reason to actually sign up for your email list. So, for example, first access to your deals, right? So, as you

[23:54] probably know, subscribe to our newsletter that yeah, that doesn't give people a reason to get excited to join your email list, right? So, that's definitely not something that you want to do, but I know a lot of the ecom brands already have like some kind of incentive for their list growth. So, a 10% off or whatever. But starting from October, I would make it a bit more specific with something like, "Hey, do you want first access to our holiday deals during email list and shop our upcoming sales before we announce them to everyone else and then people can get early access." So that's like an example

[24:22] of a pop-up form that you can run in October and u yeah for ads where you specifically promote early access. You can send people to a simple landing page of course with the same promise and uh yeah, you just want to keep it easy. So explain the benefits, ask for the email and confirm that they're on the list. So you don't need like a long form or five different questions at this point. So just simply collecting signups in September, October and you're not launching your sales prices early. And then you can use your ads to build an audience and not just to chase like an immediate order. So you want to keep

[24:52] promoting your products, of course, and you bringing relevant shoppers to your store. But the early access offer gives visitors who aren't ready to buy another useful next step. Of course, you can also test dedicated ads where you invite people to get first access. Um, that's also something that you can test. Although, yeah, then you do have to see if it's like a profitable system for your brand. Of course, the goal for this period is really is to build like a cheap email list with people who are ready to buy from your store in November and December. Of course, you do not just want to collect the email address and

[25:26] then disappear until November. You still want to keep emailing them throughout October. So, for example, you can send a welcome email where you say like, "Hey, you're on the email list. We'll email you when the first sales event is starting. In the meantime, here are a few of our customer favorites." And some people will buy at full price, which of course is great, but that isn't like the main goal at that point. You do want to keep emailing them to generate some full margin revenue for your store. And of course, really important when November is there, you do want to give this audience like the head start that you

[25:57] promised them, right? So let the email subscribers shop through a subscriber only link or with a code in the morning uh before launch and then you want to open up the offer later like publicly. Um so that is like important to keep in mind if you promise them early access you do want to give them early access to the first sales event. Next step is to

[26:17] optimize your email deliverability. Sounds boring. I already talked about it in like the previous video about Black Friday. Just want to give you like a quick summary. You can have like a great offer during Q4. You can have the most beautiful emails and your entire calendar is ready to go, but if those emails end up in your spam folder, a lot of that work goes to waste, right? So that's why email deliverability is super important. And you want to use September and October to optimize your email deliverability. And um yeah, in case you don't know, email deliverability is about getting your emails into people's inboxes, whether that's the primary

[26:49] inbox or the promotion tab. And you want to make sure that your emails are not landing in the spam folder. And one of the key factors that are that's like determining your email deliverability is your sender reputation. So yeah, you can basically think of it as like a track record that's attached to your brand's emails. So email providers like a Gmail or an Outlook that look at your sender behavior and how recipients respond when

[27:13] deciding to do with your next message. So yeah, a strong reputation gives your emails a much better chance of reaching the the primary inbox or the promotion step while a poor reputation can mean that yeah, more of your messages are going to spam or getting blocked altogether. And of course, the reputation doesn't suddenly reset because you've put Black Friday into your subject line. Uh you do need to do the work before the sales start. So that's why it's super important to focus on this in September and October. And it's even more important during Black Friday uh because yeah, we're starting

[27:45] our November kickoff sale November 1st. We'll increase the campaign frequency, spoiler alert, as the month progresses. And um yeah, from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, we're even going to send multiple emails a day. So that means that we're going to hit the inbox a lot of times during November and December, which means your sender reputation has to be really good. Otherwise, those

[28:05] emails will just land in the spam box. And it's just a very different sending pattern from like a couple of campaigns a week, which we normally recommend, like three, four email campaigns a week. So imagine two brands heading into November where brand A has been preparing. It's been emailing interested subscribers consistently, checking its results, cleaning up problem addresses, and crazily expanding its end. While brand B has barely emailed for months before Black Friday. it hasn't reviewed it email list or check its deliverability problems and then just suddenly start sending daily promotions to every address that it can find. Yeah, I'd rather much rather be running brand

[28:42] a black Friday campaign. I can tell you that. So that's also the approach that Google with Gmail recommends. So start with engaged recipients, increase the volume gradually and avoid sudden spikes without an established sending history. And yeah, a healthy email account gives you a much stronger starting point and not just permission to ignore the warning signs of course. So for our calendar, the deadline to get this under control is before November 1st because that's the moment where we start with our first sales event, right? So what we're going to do from now on only send to your engaged audience. So the first thing that I would change is to receive

[29:18] your regular email campaigns in October. So in September, October, you do not want to keep sending everything to your entire email list just because those email addresses are in there. You want to start with subscribers who are still showing interest in your brand. So for an established account, I'd usually look at an activity within the last 30 to 90 days. So people clicking your emails, visiting your stores, uh placing orders or opening your messages within that time frame. So this is an example of a segment that you can make in Claio. The person has opened email or clicked email has placed order check out started add

[29:51] card view product or active on site at least once in the last 90 days for an engaged 90 days audience. And of course if your account already has like deliverability problems you can be more strict. So for example you can go with 30 days instead of 90 days. If your account is already pretty healthy you can stick to a 60 days approach or 90 days approach. goal really is to keep the engagement as strong as possible when you rebuild or protect your send reputation. So yeah, I personally like to see operates of around 50% or higher on these engage segments. But u yeah, of course, you don't want to treat that

[30:24] number as some magical deliverability benchmark. That's kind of like the ballpark number that you want to aim for. And you also want to look at your click rate, your spam complaint rate is important one, your bounce rate and uh yeah, whether the engagement stays healthy as you gradually expand your audience. So that's really the main thing for September, October. Just stick to this engaged segment. Next step, get rid of bounced emails and marked on spam emails. So you want to get rid of the the hard bounces, the soft bounces, and people who've marked your emails as spam. And um yeah, that's just super important because sending emails to

[30:56] people who've liked your spam will significantly damage your email deliverability. Same for if you send to people with email addresses that have bounced in the past. So super easy to uh suppress those segments. You just make the segment. If you download the doc for free, you can see the exact conditions and then you just hit the three dots next to the segment and you hit suppress current members. I won't go too deep into this uh subject because I fully laid it out in like the preparation video on Black Friday that I posted a couple of weeks back. So definitely check out that video if you want to go a

[31:29] bit more in depth on this subject. Last step, uh send frequent emails. So, another mistake that I see is that people are barely emailing in September and October and then they just suddenly go crazy in November. You don't want to do that either. If you already email regularly, I would aim for at least three to four useful email campaigns per week in the months leading into Black Friday. They don't have to be promotional, of course. You can just send product recommendations, reviews, comparisons, educational content, gift ideas, and other useful campaigns. And if you currently barely email at all, you just want to build it up gradually

[32:03] rather than yeah, suddenly jumping from one email a month to five a week for example. So the goal is simple. You want to create a consistent sending history now. So the increase in November doesn't come completely out of nowhere. And I know a lot of ecom brands are for example have a lot of seasonality to it. So for example, September is not that interesting for them or even October and then November they start ramping up and then it goes all wrong. So even in that case, if seasonality is a big thing for your brand, I would still recommend to warm up the audience and yeah, at least

[32:35] send like two campaigns a week in September and October to warm up the audience just to prepare your audience and your send reputation for the November and December season. And that's basically how you can prepare your brand in the best possible way before Black Friday. Now, if you want us to handle your Black Friday campaigns, so if you're reading this and you're like, "Okay, this is great, but I don't want to build all of this by myself." Then of

[33:00] course, we can help you at Magicianly. Yeah, we plan, we write, design, build, and manage the Black Friday and Cyber Monday email and SMS campaigns for e-commerce brands. So, you can book a call via the link in the description below. And yeah, we also just do Black Friday, Conda. So, if you just need help for the Black Friday season, so click on the link in the description below to book a call with me. Now, let's get into the email and SMS strategy. So, first we're going through a couple of um key things that are applicable to every sales event that you're going to run. Um so, every sales event of course has a

[33:34] different offer as we discussed before, but the execution behind it stays pretty consistent. So, I don't want to repeat myself, so we're just going to cover this right now. For every sales event, we have four jobs to do. So, we want to make the offer match everywhere. Want to get more reach without creating three times the work. Want to reach further into the list where it matters and want to stop pushing the same offer once someone has already bought and get those four things right and running the the calendar becomes a lot easier. So, let's go through them before we go into the actual sales event. So, the first thing

[34:07] is that you want to make the offer match everywhere. Sounds logical, but I see this go wrong all the time. So, for every sales event, you want to replace your regular signup forms with a form that shows the current offer and connected to a matching welcome email. So, here's what to do. You turn off your regular signup forms. So, if you're running 25% off for Black Friday, your pop-up shouldn't be still offering off your first order. No, it should run that

[34:32] same Black Friday deal that you have. You want to activate a form specifically for that sale. And then of course you do want to make sure that that new signup form is attached to a new welcome series that shows that Black Friday deal and not your regular 10% off your first order deal. And of course if the discount applies automatically you say so if they need a code make sure to include that. Uh and make sure that those subscribers that they don't also receive your regular welcome emails promoting a different discount. And uh yeah, you want to prepare a form and a matching welcome email for all five

[35:06] sales events. So when the next sale starts, you can switch both together and that way someone signing up during Monday receives a Monday offer and not and not the last week's Black Friday deal, of course. So super important to do. It's a bit of preparation, but it does help with the consistency of your whole system. Next thing is that you want to keep the same offer in your other flows as well. So, someone joins during Black Friday sale and immediately

[35:31] receives a welcome email for 10% off. That's not what you want. So, that's why I already covered that in the previous section. Or what if they abandon their card and then they get 50% on top of your Cyber Monday sale? Because in your regular card abandonment flow, you get 50% off. That's also not what you want, right? So that's why you want to make sure that you make sales specific email and SMS welcome series flows but also site browse card and check out

[35:57] abandonment flows for each sales event. It's a bit of a work but it is important to do because otherwise it will cost you a lot of margin if people will still receive your regular uh discount emails of your card abandonment flow for example. And of course during Black Friday, it's a Monday because these sales events are pretty short. You can just keep those flows short and move faster than a more than the regular multi-day sequence. So here's a starting plan for your welcome series. You just want to give one email with the deal of that moment and where to shop. Super easy email. With the site abandoned

[36:31] flow, you can just send one email after about an hour with like a useful selection and you highlight the current offer that you have. With the browser bend flow, you can send one email after 45 minutes and then 6 hours later again. You show them the product that they viewed and you can help them out with like a buying question. So, it's basically your regular B flow, but then just two emails and you just highlight the sales event that's going on. And same for the card and check out abandonment flow, but then I would send it already after 30 minutes and after 4 hours. The most important thing is that

[37:00] you don't want to give your regular discount that you give in your abandoned flows, but you just want to really focus on the sales event that is going on at that moment. And um it will help you save some margin and it also helps with conversion if you just continuously highlight what the sales event is and for example that it's expiring soon. And for the longer November kickoff sale and the longer holiday sale, of course, you don't need to force everything into a few hours and then you can just spread it out over a couple of days. But especially with a Black Friday sale and Simon sale, I would be a bit more

[37:33] aggressive like in these examples. And really important, you don't want to make the flows too long. So if your regular card and check out B flow is four or five emails, I wouldn't recommend that in Q4. Uh because of course people will also receive like a bunch of email campaigns. So you don't want to send them a lot of flow emails as well. Just one or two emails. Flow is more than enough during Q4. Next thing is that you want to make the offer obvious. So for sale emails, I want three things in the above default section. So the above default section, if you don't know what

[38:05] it is, it's the first thing that people see when they open your emails, whether it's on desktop or on mobile, it's the first thing that people see without having to scroll. In this above default section, there are three things that you want to highlight. the deal, the deadline, and a button. For example, Black Friday 25% off sitewide use code Black Friday 25 and Sunday at 11:59 p.m. ET shop the sale. That's it. And then you can show like a few useful products. And I would typically recommend three to six products max. You not want to highlight your whole catalog. And of course, a reminder email could feature the best sellers. And

[38:41] another one might answer like a sizing question. Another email might show gifts under $50, etc., etc. So, every email can have like a different angle, but above fault section should always highlight these three things. So, the offer stays clear, but the reason to click changes with every single email that you send out. So, yeah, you can basically build like a small set of layouts with like an announcement, a product selection, a short reminder, and you can just reuse them across the five

[39:09] sales events that you're going to run. Do make sure to check the emails that you make on your mobile phone as well. So can you understand the deal and tap the button without zooming in? I see this go wrong all the time that on desktop when they make an affigma the email looks great but then if they check on a mobile then they see yeah it's actually not that clear and um yeah that definitely hurts your conversion. So that's really the test and not just how impressive the design looks on your designer monitor, right? So the reason why this is so important and this is always important throughout the year but

[39:42] especially during Black Friday um your audience gets bombarded with emails during November and December. So they decide in a split second if your email is interesting or not. So readability and above the fold section optimization is key during this period. So that's why I'm really focusing on this right now. Don't want to create super long emails. People won't check it. It has to be short, sweet, and just super clear on what the offer is and how people can act. The next tip is to use plain text emails to increase the frequency. If you're a follower of this channel, then you know that I'm a big fan of plain

[40:20] text emails. They work extremely well as a nice pattern interrupt to all these designed emails that you're sending. So, no, I'm not recommending that every email should be plain text, but it is like a nice way to throw in the mix as a nice pattern interrupt. But during November and December, I'm even more a fan of plain text emails because it's an easy way to increase the frequency. So, not every sale email needs a design. So, I like mixing product emails with short messages from the founder or someone on the team. And yeah, it just gives the campaign like a whole different feel and doesn't require another round of design

[40:54] work, right? So, it's a nice pattern interrupt. It's good for conversion and just saves your designers a lot of work, right? Uh, so here's an example of an email that you can send. So, hey, just a quick heads up, our Black Friday sale ends tonight. You still get 25% off with the code Black Friday 25. Still choosing a gift. I've put our pics here. And then you can send them to a landing page with gift pics. And then gift bundles and gift cards are excluded. Reply if you're stuck between two options and will help you choose. This is a good one because reply rate is super important for your

[41:24] email deliverability. So, if you can boost that during Black Friday, that's like amazing thing to do. So, this is just like a super short, sweet email where it's clear what this email is about and um yeah, super easy to make, right? You can do this in a couple of minutes. So, that's a big tip and an easy way to increase the frequency, especially during the Black Friday week and the Black Friday weekend and in Cyber Week. Next tip is to resend good emails instead of creating more. This is also something that we've doing for years now. Normally I'm not the biggest fan of resending emails, but during uh

[41:56] Black Friday, yeah, I definitely think there's like a time and place for it. So, so yeah, you can give a good email another chance to be seen without creating it again simply by resending your emails. So on Black Friday, on the Saturday and Sunday, so Black Friday weekend, and on Cyber Monday, for example, this is like a schedule that you can go with. So 9:00 a.m. in the morning, you send the original designed email. 2 p.m. you send an original plain text email and then at 7 p.m. you resend that 2pm email but now with a new subject line and new preview text. So now you have three emails on one day

[42:29] where two emails are original and one recent and you only have one designed email. So over those four days that means that you have 12 cents from eight original emails. So, it's like a super nice way to again increase the frequency without without adding a lot of extra work for your team. And by the way, you can send the resend to your recent most engaged recipients uh of the original who haven't bought. So, you don't just have to send it to non-openers. It's also a strategy that you can go with, but yeah, we typically like to send it to your engaged audience even if they opened the first email. Then one

[43:02] practical uh setup check that you need to do uh a lot of eco brands have smart sending turned on in Clavio which means that if within that time frame you send another email then that person won't receive the second email that you send. So during Black Friday I would recommend to turn off smart sending especially if you send multiple emails a day because then it automatically typically it will be within your smart sending time frame that you have selected. So that's why we typically turn off smart sending during the heavy sending days because otherwise you're only reaching like a super small um part of your email list if you have

[43:35] smart sending turned on. Also don't overthink the resent. So during Black Friday again your audience is getting flooded with emails and most people aren't keeping track of every message that you sent earlier the day. So a resend just gives a good email another chance to be seen without creating another campaign from scratch. Think about it. If it's Black Friday, do you remember the email that you received in the morning? No, you already forgot about that email like probably 5 minutes later, right? So, it doesn't matter if you resend the same email like hours later during Black Friday. Again, normally I'm not a big fan of it during

[44:08] Black Friday and Black Friday weekend, same Monday. I would definitely go with this strategy. The next thing is to keep the segmentation simple. You don't need like a complicated segmentation setup for the Black Friday season. And yeah, the regular email marketing rules, they don't apply during November and December. So basically my tip for the launch emails and for the closing emails of each sales event, you want to send it to your entire email list. So yeah, to everyone. These are the moments where you want to reach everyone on your email list. That's why it's so important to improve your email deliverability and to boost your sender reputation before

[44:44] Black Friday. Now you get the point because during Black Friday with your launch and closing emails, you want to send to every single one on your email list. For the emails in between those emails, you want to keep sending to your engaged audience. But I want you to go broader than your usual engage segment. So usually I would recommend to email

[45:02] your 60 or 90day engaged audience. During Black Friday, I would go and expand your engage 180 days or even engage 365 days segment. And what I also would do is include your last year's Black Friday Monday buyers even if they haven't engaged recently. So what you can do is make a segment of the last year's Black Friday Monday buyers. You can unsuppress them if you uh suppress them yourself and then add them to the list. And uh trust me this will generate a nice amount of revenue as well. And for the recents then I want to keep the segmentation a little [clears throat] bit more tighter. So for example then I

[45:37] would go with engage 90 days for the recents. There are a couple of important exclusions that you want to do. So, exclude the bounce emails, you want to exclude the people who marked your spam, and you want to exclude the people who already bought during that same sales event. I'll talk about that more in a second. So, if you're like, okay, this sounds like super extreme. Won't this hurt my company? And yeah, can I even do this? If you spend September and October building a healthy sender reputation, as I recommended in the video a couple weeks back and also in this video, you don't need to panic when your engagement

[46:12] drops a bit in November. Yes, operates will be lower, but that's completely fine. You're going to send more often. You're going to reach further back into your email list. You're going to email people who haven't engaged recently. So, yes, your open click rates, they will come down. And yes, you probably get like higher spam complaint rates, but it's totally fine if you just do it for

[46:32] a couple of weeks throughout the year. The goal in November is not to protect your perfect open rate or your perfect in deliverability. The goal is to get your offers uh in front of as many real customers as possible while your account is healthy enough to handle this extra volume. So that's exactly why we prepare early on, right? So if you've been sending consistently, you want to focus on the engaged subscribers and cleaning up the office problem addresses and then you've put yourself in a much better position to be aggressive this

[47:01] aggressive when Black Friday arrives. And yeah, after the holiday sale, then you have the rest of the year to return to your normal selling rhythm. And November is really the moment to use the reputation that you've built up throughout throughout the year. Now I already mentioned this uh slightly but you want to also stop pushing the same offer after someone buys. So for all the regular reminders you want to exclude the people who have already ordered during that sales event. So if someone buys after the morning email they don't need to receive the afternoon email or the evening email which still haven't shopped, right? So when the next event

[47:34] starts then you can include those previous buyers again because then you have a new offer that might be interesting for them as well. But you don't immediately pile up more messages onto someone who just ordered. Again, this is something that I see go wrong all the time and that just yeah frustrates people who just bought from you. If you run flesh sales during the holiday sale, that's slightly different because yeah, someone who bought the back and wash bag set might still want a passport wallet for example, but you don't need another promotion for the washback if they already own one. So in short, exclude the buyers from that sale

[48:07] same sales event throughout the emails that you send during that sales event. Then one thing that we haven't uh um talked about yet is SMS. Of course, I'm a big fan of using SMS during Q4 season. You can use it for the launches for relevant reminders and just the the closing deadlines that you have. And uh yeah, you don't just want to repeat like every email in the calendar, but you just want to send a couple of short text messages like, "Hey, our Black Friday sale is live. Get 25% off with code Black Friday 25 through Sunday with a

[48:37] shopping link." That's it. Super easy. It just includes the offer, the deadline, and the next step. Don't make it too complicated. Don't focus too much on branding, especially November. I prefer SMS to be extremely direct. People should be able to understand the offer, the deadline, and next step within a few seconds because then they're gone and they already received the next message. Right? So, that's definitely what I recommend to include

[49:01] SMS into your strategy plan or WhatsApp. If you're based in Europe, I would focus even more on WhatsApp. Now, let's get into the fun stuff, the campaign calendar. So, we've got the offers, we've got the preparation, we've got the execution rules. Now, let's all put it together and go through the season sale by sale. So, we'll start with the November kickoff sale and work our way through Black Friday, Cy Monday, and then the holiday sale. So, the first sales event that we're going to run is the November kickoff sale from November 1st until November 15. Right, you'll see it on the calendar right here for Nordline, the example brand that we're

[49:36] using. The example offer was 50% off selected washbacks and passport wallets. So, this is intentionally a smaller offer than what we will run during Black Friday. So, we want to start generating sales, but we do not want to use our strongest offer on November 1st. Makes sense, right? So, an example uh of emails that we can send in the first week, November 1st, in the morning, we launch the sale. In the afternoon, we send a short plain text reminder explaining the offer. 2 days later, we sent an email with gifts under $30 from the sale. 2 days later, we want to show the products in more detail. 2 days

[50:12] later, want to help people choose the products with an SMS reminder as well. Super simple. So, we don't want to email every single day at this point, just every other day. As you can see on the calendar right here, the first email should be extremely clear. So, this could be like your hero section. Super easy for people to understand. So, then use the following emails to sell the products rather than endlessly repeating 50% off. So, show what they're used for, who they're good for, show review, show product comparison, show gift ideas, etc., etc. Be creative with your emails and don't just say the same exact thing

[50:46] all over because then it gets annoying for your audience. The second week, November 9th, you can, for example, do product recommendations for different types of customers. Two days later, a customer review. Uh two days later, you say that it ends this weekend. One day later, you send a plain text email saying, "Hey, it ends tomorrow." And then on the day that it ends in the

[51:06] morning, you have like a closing email. In the afternoon, a plain text last call. and in the evening you resend the afternoon email also like an SMS and then you actually end this first sales event because tomorrow we're launching something different. So this is an example of how you can run your November kickoff sales event. So not too aggressive yet, just a slow start to already generate a good amount of revenue for your store. Now we get into the early Black Friday sale which runs

[51:33] from November 16th until November 22nd. So, uh, basically the week before Black Friday. So, it's time to switch up the offers. So, for Nordline, the example brands, we now go with the week in the back, the wash bag, and the password wallet for $115 gift wraps. Normally, these products together will cost 155. So, it's a $40 discount. And yeah, this gives customers a completely different reason to buy compared with the former kickoff sale where we had 50% off. So the schedule what I recommend November 16 in the morning we launch the sale. In the afternoon a plain text email explaining the bundle and of course we also send an

[52:14] SMS today. One day later we show exactly what is included in the bundle. One day later who is this bundle a good gift for one day later answering a common gifting objection. Plus we sent an SMS reminder. One day later a customer review, a product demonstration or social proof. One day later we say that the sale ends tomorrow. And then one day later we go with the three email approach again with a closing email in the morning, a plain text email in the afternoon and in the evening we retend that same email and of course we also sent an SMS that day. So super easy and you definitely notice

[52:45] that this is a sales event. We're ramping up the volume that with daily emails as you can see and even three emails on the launch day and on the closing day. And of course really important you're not telling customers that this is the last chance to buy anything but you're just telling them that this specific offer ends tonight. Yeah, that's important because yeah, the next day we have our main event starting which is our Black Friday sale from November 23rd until November 29th. Black Friday is over here on the 27th of course, but we already start Black Friday sale on the Monday and uh we're going to run it throughout the whole

[53:17] weekend, so up until the Sunday. So, the main Black Friday offer for Nine, we're going to use 25% off eligible full price products. And this is yeah, the strongest broad offer of the season. So yeah, you want to keep the messaging super simple and repeat it often because this is really the moment where the inboxes will get super super crowded. So yeah, these emails will be a lot shorter during this period from Monday till Thursday. So until Black Friday, want to start a sale Monday and want to use the first days to build the momentum. So send one to or two emails a day depending on how aggressive you want it

[53:53] to be. So, good angles that you can use. Launching the offer, of course, your best sellers, give recommendations, products by budget, reviews, product comparisons, and um yeah, [clears throat] answering common buying questions. You want to send an SMS when the sale launches and potentially another reminder later in the week. And yeah, the most important thing is that every email doesn't need a completely new concept because yeah, the the offer stays the same. You just simply want to give customers a different reason to shop with every single email. Then Black

[54:20] Friday and the Black Friday weekend. This is where we're going to increase the frequency even more. So from Friday till Sunday, this is really where I want to become much more aggressive. So three emails a day throughout all these days. In the morning, a designed email, in the afternoon, a plain text email. In the evening, a resent of a plain text email with a different subject line and preview text. So this gives you three cents without having to create three completely different emails from scratch that your designer needs to create. And of course you can change the angle throughout the whole weekend. So on Friday you can just focus heavily on the

[54:54] Black Friday offer itself. On Saturday it can be more product focused and on Sunday it becomes much more deadline driven because yeah the sale actually ends that day right. And of course you want to use SMS throughout the weekend for the bigger moments especially on the Friday during Black Friday and on the final day. Do make sure to keep exclude the customers who already bought during the Black Friday sale from the repetitive sales reminder. So if someone bought on Monday, you don't want to keep emailing them because then it becomes annoying for them. The main idea is that you do not want to be scared of the

[55:27] frequency during this weekend. You spend September and October preparing your email list for exactly this moment. People get a bunch of emails. They won't even notice that you're sending them emails multiple times a day because they get so many emails and they simply forget about you immediately after they close your emails. And if they haven't bought, then we go into the Cyber Monday sale from November 30th until December 2nd. So on the Monday of Monday, but

[55:52] also on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. So um I would definitely extend the sale a bit longer and not just keep it a one day sale. So again, want to change up the offer again. of Nline now going to spend $150 get $40 off eligible products. Uh so yeah, that change is important. So someone who ignored your Black Friday discount now sees a totally different reason to buy. If they were like, "Okay, 25% off doesn't sound interesting." Then this offer might sound interesting to them. And it can also be interesting for some Black Friday buyers uh who also come back if this new offer is relevant to them. So

[56:27] treat Cyber Monday itself like an RP day. So three emails in the morning, afternoon and evening and also an SMS of course and you want to make the minimum spent extremely clear. So for Nordline again the products normally total at $155 and uh if they get a $40 discount it brings the order down to $115 which is kind of similar to like the offer that we had before but now it's just packed in like a different way and it's not

[56:52] like a bundle that we create for them. So, it also means that someone who bought that exact same set during the early Black Friday sale still get the better deal because yeah, they had it for the same price, but they had it including the gift wrapping. So, that's important that um yeah, those audiences of people who already bought earlier that they're not angry because of your new sales event. On December 1st and second, I would continue the offer because the inboxes are just a lot less crowded compared to the Black Friday weekend and Sam Monday. So, I would definitely continue for a day or two extra. And then, of course, you can use

[57:24] different angles and focus a bit more on the gifting angle already. And um yeah, on December 2nd, I would end the Cyber Monday sale with again three emails on the day and a final SMS reminder. And then you actually end this offer and you switch everything over to the holiday sale, which is starting one day later. Now before we get into that, if this sounds like a lot of work that you need to do, which is like the case, you can probably see like how quickly the workload adds up. So if you want our team additionally to run your Black Friday campaigns, you can click on the

[57:58] link in the description below to book a call with us and uh yeah, you can just handle your Black Friday campaigns and after that you can handle it on your own if you want. So definitely book a call with us if you want us to handle your Black Friday campaigns. Now, let's get into the holiday sale, which is going to run from December 3rd until your shipping cut off date. So, this will be different for every brand depending on your shipping details. In this example, we're going to start, of course, on December 3rd, and we're going to run this until like the the 13th, which I

[58:26] think is a pretty reasonable date for a lot of brands in terms of shipping cut updates. And December is not going to be an extension of Cyber Monday. This is something that I see go wrong all the time where ecom brands just continue the same offer of Black Friday during Cyber Monday and then also throughout their holiday sale. It's really an own sales event with an own different offer that you want to have because once Cyber Monday ends, the customer is solving a different problem. So they're not just longer asking themselves, okay, what is the deal, but they're now asking what should I buy? How much do I want to

[59:02] spend? And will it arrive on time? So on December 3rd, we switch to a separate holiday sale with its own gifting focused offer. And then throughout the event, we can layer in a few short flesh sales on specific products or categories to give people yeah fresh new reasons to come back. So for Nordline, our main holiday sale offer is a gift box

[59:22] weekender plus washback set for $190. So yeah, this offer is built around gifting instead of simply running another sitewide discount. Uh so it's definitely not the best deal that we had, but because we're focusing on the gifting angle and we're yeah, we're promoting this as a gift boxed uh bundle. Basically, it does work extremely well to use this type of offer. And of course during this period of the holiday sale, you can focus on a lot of gift guides on products with budgets, gifts for specific types of people, bestsellers, bundles, reviews, social proof, uh what should a buy style uh and recommendations. And of course, you really focus on your shipping

[1:00:02] deadline. And the closer that you get to Christmas, the more your messaging should move from the offer that you have to ordering in time. That's really important to keep in mind. And then yeah, on top of the main holiday sale, you can also run short flash sales on specific products or categories. For example, for 24 hours, you can have like one hero product at a special price or for 48 hours, 20% off like a specific category that you have or for the whole weekend, buy more, save more on selecting products. And this is like alongside the regular holiday sale that you have, but the goal is to create new

[1:00:34] reasons for people to come back without changing the entire store offer every few days. So, couple of rules for this. Keep the flash sale focused on specific products or categories. Make the start and end clear. Don't automatically stack it on top of your main holiday sale offer. You only want to promote products that you actually have enough enough stock for. And you don't want to overdo it. So typically, I would say one to maybe two or three strong flesh sales are enough. And this also depends on your shipping cotton date. If it goes to the week before Christmas, three can be good. If it's like early on, then maybe

[1:01:08] one or maybe two flash sales is more than enough because yeah, if you run them constantly, then it just stops feeling special to the audience. How to run these flash sales? So, for a 24-hour flash sale, I would just treat it like some kind of a mini Black Friday. So, a morning email where you launch the offer, an afternoon email with a reminder, plain text, and in the evening, you resend that afternoon

[1:01:28] email, and then you also send an SMS. For a 48 hour flash sale, you can go with like day one you launch the offer and then on day two you do the three-part sequence basically and then you actually end the offer. So you don't want to turn like a 24-hour sale into a 3-day extension. That type of fake urgency, yeah, just doesn't work that well anymore. Uh the short deadline is part of what makes the offer interesting, right? So now a simple holiday sale calendar. So your actual dates will depend on your shipping cutoff dates of course, but the structure could look something like this where on December 3rd we launch the

[1:02:03] holiday sale. December 5th we have like the product flash sale. December 7th a gift guide. December 9th bests seller gifting by budget. Then another flash sale on December 10th and 11th. December 13th gift recommendations or a shipping reminder. And then the final week before the cutoff. This is where we're going to increase the shipping deadline messaging a lot. And again, you don't want to blindly copy the date. It depends on your cut off date. And talking about your shipping cutoff, you can turn that into a sales event of its own. Uh so this is one of the most important parts of December. So you want to find out the

[1:02:36] last day that customers can realistically order and receive the package before Christmas. And then you can build a small campaign around that deadline. So for example, a week before your shipping cutoff, I would introduce the deadline. A few days before you want to remind people that it's getting close. The day before a strong reminder and then on the cut off date you do a final day email and SMS. And yeah, the messaging should become increasingly simple. So you don't need like a clever concept for this. It's just like you want to answer like the worry that people might have that if I order today, will this gift arrive in time? So you

[1:03:09] want to make deadline obvious. And you do want to be careful with words like guaranteed delivery before Christmas because yeah, if your warehouse or carrier can't guarantee Christmas delivery, you can rather say something like last recommended order date for Christmas delivery because otherwise your customer support will have some issues down the line. Then after the shipping cutoff, yeah, once you can no longer confidently deliver the physical products before Christmas, you stop

[1:03:35] promoting them as Christmas gifts. Really important. You want to switch the focus to things that customers can still receive in time. And depending on your brand, this could be like a digital gift cards, like a digital product, a local pickup or same day or local delivery or other last minute options that you can generally fulfill. Um, so yeah, December 23rd and 24th can still be useful selling days. A lot of times we see like the gift card angle that works extremely well. Uh, but yeah, the message has to

[1:04:03] match to what you can actually deliver. So if a fiscal order is likely to arrive after Christmas, you do want to be transparent about it. Then let's talk about the period of December 26 until the end of the year. So you do not want to stop on Christmas Day if you really want to maximize the revenue of Q4. So this is optionally for the more aggressive brands and the week after Christmas can still be worth planning for uh because yeah, the buying angle is changing again. So the buying angle is going to be a lot more different compared to early November. So people may now be shopping for themselves and

[1:04:38] they're spending the gift cards that they received during Christmas or buying products that they didn't receive for Christmas. So the buying angle is a lot more different and you can use that in the type of emails that you send. So you can either go back to regular sending or you can just run like a one a final year end offer that you that you have. So this is optionally, but if you want to truly maximize your revenue, this can be like a good way. So for example, for Nordline, this might be a buy one, get the second 50% off. So like the travel accessories and then during these days,

[1:05:09] yeah, you can send a couple of emails. I wouldn't go with like multiple emails a day during this period because typically, yeah, between Christmas and the new year, um, inboxes aren't that flooded anymore and people are just chilling. So spamming them with like three emails a day, yeah, generally is not a good idea. But still, again, if you want to maximize your revenue, this can be like a good additional angle that you can use for people that they're gifting themselves basically. So again, this is optional. If your stock levels are low, if your margins are always stretched or your audience has more than enough, you don't want to force another

[1:05:44] promotion just because there are days left in the calendar. Now, this is the general framework that I would recommend for an ecom brands, but you still throughout the season want to keep an eye out on what is happening. So, during the busiest days, I don't just want to schedule everything and you walk away. You want to check what's actually happening with your emails, right? So, for example, if people aren't opening or receiving emails, check your deliverability. If they're opening but not clicking, you want to look at the offer, your subject line, your products, your CTA. If people are clicking but not buying, check out your website. The

[1:06:17] shipping costs, the stock levels, the discounts, the checkouts. Is your website actually functioning the right way? If sales look great, but you're barely making more money, check your margins again. You should have done this before, but yeah, still you want to keep an eye out on everything that is happening throughout the season. And if something changes, you want to update your campaigns. So, if a product sells

[1:06:40] out, stop featuring it in your emails. If the free gift runs out, remove it from your emails. If a discount breaks, fix it before the next send. So, the goal isn't to just stare at desk watch all day, of course, but it's just to catch the obvious problems before you keep sending more people into them. And once the holiday rush is over, there's one more thing to do after the holiday rush, your recovery plan. So, don't just finish December and leave your account in Black Friday mode, as we call it. So once your final sale ends, turn off all your holiday offers. So remove the sales

[1:07:15] specific signup forms, the banners, the welcome emails, the flow messaging, and put your normal customer journey back and return to your normal sending rhythm. So you've just spent weeks emailing much more often and reaching further into your email list. So bring your campaigns back to your usual frequency and focus on your engaged subscribers again. So go back to the

[1:07:38] three or four email campaigns a week. And then of course you want to focus on the customers that you just acquired. So a lot of people may have bought from you for the first time during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. And now the goal should be to get them back to your store. So your emails should focus more on product education, how-to content, reviews, complimentary products, replenishment, second purchase offers where they make sense. The Q4 sales season got you the first order, but retention is what makes the customer really valuable. And that's really what you want to focus on in Q1 of the new year. And finally, of course,

[1:08:14] this is also a good moment at the end of the holiday rush that you review the season while it's still fresh. So, okay, which offers work best? Which product sold best? Which sales event made the most money after the discount and the cost? Which emails actually drove the clicks uh and the orders? What went wrong? So, write it all down because next year you don't want to start from zero again. And this is super useful information for next year's Black Friday, but also for the other sales

[1:08:41] events that you might run in 2027. And yeah, that's the plan. That's the full holiday season. So, not one discount running for 6 weeks, but just a full sequence of different offers, campaigns, deadlines, and reasons to buy from the beginning of November all the way through the end of December. So, you now know what to do before Black Friday, during Black Friday, and after Black Friday. And yeah, the only thing uh left is actually getting all of this done, right? So if you want us to run this for you, again, this is where we come in at Magis because yeah, knowing the plan is one thing, but actually writing,

[1:09:17] designing, building, testing, scheduling, managing all of these campaigns is another thing. And while you're still running Black Friday, December already needs to be ready. So, yeah, we take full ownership of your email strategy and execution. So the campaigns, the copy, the design, the flows, segmentation, the testing, ongoing management. So you work with us on things like the offer, the structure, the stock levels, the shipping deadlines, and we handle turning all of it into the campaigns that your customers actually see. So if you rather spend Black Friday running your business instead of living inside Clavio, you can book a call with us via the link in the

[1:09:53] description below. book a call with us and see how we can help you during Black Friday season with all email and SMS marketing related. So again, the link is in the description below. And with that being said, I hope this video was super useful to you. If you want to download this full guide for free, there's a link also in the description below. So you can download this full guide if you want to handle it yourself. And um yeah, good luck with the Black Friday season and I hope to see you soon in the next

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