Black Friday Preparations Start NOW! (2025 Black Friday Email Marketing Guide)

0:00After helping over 95 e-commerce brands generating millions of Black Friday revenue all through email marketing, I have discovered something that separates the winners from the losers. The brands that crush Black Friday don't start preparing in October or November. They start in August. By the end of this video, you'll know the exact foundation that needs to be built months before Black Friday and why starting now will make the difference between crossing your revenue goals for this Black Friday and watching your competitors dominate while you're left wondering what went wrong. I'm going to reveal the biggest mistakes that are costing brands millions of dollars and the simple framework that sets you up for success

0:40and the biggest Black Friday season ever. So this video is for the e-commerce brand owner or marketing manager who wants to dominate the biggest sales event of the year. And if you want to follow along, I've put a complete document I'm going to walk you through in this video for free download in the description below. So click on the link in description to watch the same doc. Let's dive into it. So let's first talk about the hidden foundation that most e-commerce brands ignore, which is your email deliverability. So the first thing that you have to start off right now is fixing your email deliverability. And here's what get most

1:14e-commerce brands wrong completely about the Black Friday preparation. They all think about the creative, about the offers that they should use and the promotional calendar. But there's something way more fundamental that determines whether you succeed or fail with Black Friday, which is your email deliverability. And here's exactly what this means for you. During Black Friday, you're going to break every normal email marketing rule. So, you'll send multiple emails per day. You will email your entire list, including your unengaged subscribers, and you'll send daily campaigns instead of your usual two or three email campaigns per week. This aggressive approach can destroy e-commerce brands with poor email reputation. So, let me paint you two

1:56scenarios. So, scenario one, brand A has terrible email deliverability going into Black Friday. They blast their entire email list with amazing offers, but their emails go straight to the spam box. They miss out on open rates, on clicks, on sales while watching competitors succeed. And now imagine brand B who spends months building pristine email deliverability leading towards Black Friday. So when Black Friday hits and their email their entire email list, yes, their email reputation will take a small hit, but their emails are still landing in the primary inbox or in the promotion tab. So their open rates stay high, their emails get read and most importantly their sales are

2:37coming through while the competitor's emails are trapped in the spam folders. So of course which scenario should apply to your brand and which scenario describes your brand right now. So if you want to be brand B then of course you need to start building your email reputation now in August because you need that time to build up a good solid email reputation with inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook. And but first let's discuss what do we mean by email deliverability. So email deliverability refers to how well your domain's reputation is with inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook. So if your domain and IP have a solid reputation, your emails

3:16will land in the primary inbox or in the promotion tab. But if your reputation is poor, your emails are likely to end up in the spam folder. And this is how it looks like in the Gmail interface. So we have the primary inbox, we have the promotions tab. Both are okay. And we have, of course, the spam box, which is probably the folder that most people do not check on a regular basis or they have some skepticism to the emails that land in this folder. Your email reputation is based on your sending history. It's just that just based on

3:46what you have been sending in the past. So if a lot of your past emails have been marked as spam, low engagement, landed in the spam box, they will keep landing in the spam box. It's that simple. You need to break this cycle of poor email reputation to improve your email deliverability. So, how to improve your email deliverability before Black Friday this year? That's what we're going to discuss right now. So, the first step is to only send to engaged people. So, in Q3, you want to stop sending any emails to your entire email list. You want to focus on sending emails only to your most engaged

4:22audience. So stick to those who have interacted with one of your emails or with your website within the last 30 to 90 days depending on the size and the activity of your email list. And the goal that we have is that your email campaigns are having an open rate of at least 50%. If your open rates are higher than 50%, your email reputation will improve, which means that inbox providers like Google and like Outlook are more likely to put your emails in the primary inbox or the promotion step rather than putting it in the spam folder like they did in the past. What I mean with engage in the last 30 to 90

5:00days? Well, let me show you an example of an engaged segment of the last 90 days that we made in Claio. So we say person has opened email at least once in the in the last 90 days or has clicked email at least once in the last 90 days or placed order or has check out started has added a card has viewed product or has active on site at least once in the last 90 days and person can receive email marketing. So we're tracking both website activity and email activity. If they have been engaged with your brand in the last 90 days they fall into this

5:32segment. you can make multiple segments for 30 days, for 60 days, for 90 days, maybe even 14 days if you really have a bad deliverability. And um yeah, this way you can build up your way and see with what segment you hit at least a 50% open rate. Now, step two is to get rid of bounced emails and people who've marked your emails as spam. In Q3, we're focusing on sending emails only to engage subscribers. But when Black Friday is there and you want to send to your entire list, it's important to

6:02manage your email reputation carefully. So one way to protect your email deliverability is by suppressing two key segments. First of all, the bounced emails. With bounced emails, there are two types of bounces. We have hard bounces and we have soft bounces. Hard bounces means that those email addresses are permanently unreachable whether due to a typo, due to a deactivated account or an invalid domain. Also have soft bounces and those are temporary. So this could be a full inbox or a server outage

6:35at the inbox provider that they use. Soft bounces may resolve themselves over time since those are temporarily. You still want to clean up your email list regularly to avoid them piling up because it could be that a soft bounce keeps continuing of a couple of times and then of course you also want to get rid of them because bounce emails have a super negative effect on your email deliverability. This is a segment that you could make. So person has bounced email at least four times overall time where bounce type equals soft or person has bounced email at least once over all time where bounce type equals hard and

7:08person can receive email marketing. The second segment is the marked as spam emails. Self-explanatory. So these are people who have one of your emails in the past as spam. So the segment is simple. Person can receive email marketing and person has marked email as spam at least once over all time. So why does these two segments matter? Sending emails to people who flagged you as spam in the past will significantly damage your email deliverability. So, since we're already pushing our limits by sending to unengaged subscribers during Black Friday, the least that we can do is suppress those two critical segments, the bounce emails and the mark as spam

7:45emails. So, definitely get rid of them as soon as possible and do an extra check right before Black Friday and suppress the segments again. Step three is to send frequent emails. We're still talking about email deliverability. So, a common mistake, especially made by smaller e-commerce brands, is thinking that sending multiple emails a week will spam their audience. I hear this all the time when I'm on a call with an e-commerce brand owner. In reality, the opposite is true when it comes to your email reputation. To improve your email deliverability, you must send regular emails. Consistency is key. So, you want to aim to send at least three emails

8:22every single week, making sure that you operate stay above that 50% threshold that I mentioned earlier. So, not only will this boost your email reputation, but it's also the best way to keep your brand top of mind for your audience. So, people get a ton of emails every single day. So, you need frequent touch points

8:40to stand out from your competitors. Because if your competitors are emailing your emails, your email list three to four times a week and you're only sending one email per week, guess what? your audience will think of your competitor, not of your brand. So that's really important. You need to send at least three emails a week. Not only because of the competitors, by the way, but also when they see your emails less frequently, they may view them as spam simply due to the fact that they don't know your brand well enough. If you're only sending one or two emails a week, they're more likely to forget about your

9:09brand than when you're emailing them three or four times a week, of course. And plus, imagine what happens if you don't send emails consistently in the months towards Black Friday and then bam, it's Black Friday and you now send email campaigns every single day or maybe even multiple emails a day. Yeah, that's just not good for your email reputation as you can imagine. So, inbox providers are more likely to flag your your sudden burst of emails as spam. So, getting and maintaining a strong email reputation requires consistency, not just a few high open rate emails here and there. you really needed consistency and consistent high open rates. So keep

9:45your frequency up and your open rates high to build and maintain that positive email reputation heading towards Black Friday. Now let's talk about strategy mistake that's costing brands millions, your campaign strategy. So the second critical element that makes or breaks your Black Friday success, your campaign strategy leading up towards Black Friday. So here's what most people get wrong. They keep running sales and promotions right up until November and then wonder why their Black Friday offers don't feel special anymore. The winning strategy, what we notice is to make your Labor Day sale, your final sales event before Black Friday. So that means no fall sales, no Halloween

10:28promotions, no October discounts. And here's exactly why this works and why this is so important. So when you constantly discount your products throughout Q3 and Q4, your customers get trained to expect deals and by the time Black Friday arrives, they're used to seeing 20% off here, 25% off there. And the urgency is just not there anymore to buy during Black Friday. So when you hold back on discounts after Labor Day, you build anticipation and you build that desire for people to buy from your brand again and your audience starts eagerly await for your next discount that you're going to give away during Black Friday. When Black Friday finally

11:08arrives, they're primed and ready to jump on the offers that you will have, which I will talk about in a sec. So the strategy here is to focus on nondisccounted email campaigns that engage your subscribers without training them to expect constant sales, which is something that I always preach on this YouTube channel, of course, the nondisount email campaign approach. So you want to build anticipation so that when Black Friday finally arrives, your audience is excited and more than ready to buy from your brand. So how to build engagement with nondisounted email campaigns? Well, it's pretty simple. You want to focus on delivering value, entertainment, and keeping your emails

11:46short, sweet, and easy to digest. So remember, here's what's happening. What when people are opening your emails, and this is something that most ecom brands are not realizing. 43% of the people who are opening your emails are multitasking. So they're scrolling Instagram simultaneously. 31% of the people are on their phone while watching TV. So they're just watching their inbox while they're watching some bad series or something like that. 28% of them are between other activities. So, they're going to the gym, they're commuting, they're in the bathroom. And 22% are opening your emails by accident and they immediately moved on. And this is really important to understand this because

12:25nobody is sitting in a quiet room analyzing every word of your marketing. And I often times get the feeling that e-commerce brands think that it goes like that. No, people are really not caring about the things that you're sending your way. Their attention spans are super short. They're skimming at best. People are busy. Their inboxes are

12:45full. Their attention spans are short. So, you need to make your content quick, engaging, and valuable. So, here are a few types of email campaigns that you can send. Testimonials, user generated content, press mentions, media publications, blog highlights, article highlights, research highlights, uh myths debunked, uh frequently asked questions, trending products, bestselling products, new arrivals, staff picks, back in stock, uh bundles, essentials, gift guides, gift yourself, feature highlights, benefit highlights, the users versus them angle, the problem solution angle, the before after angle, behind the scenes, how to use your product, how is the product made, tips and tricks around product sneak peeks, recent developments, brand usage, brand

13:27story, the founder story, and meet the theme. So, there are a lot of different angles that you can hit to engage your audience without just giving away a discount all the time. And over here, you can see a couple of examples like forts, pumpkin spice with a twist, make your mocktail now. So, a super original email that you can send in October for a brand like this. Or here for take shots,

13:47it's National Rum Day. Let's party. Again, we just give like a short recipe and that's it. super engaging. Another example, crafted for comfort, wrapped with love with like a video about come pack and order with us. Super engaging with behind the scenes information. A spa evening just for you. So, as you can see, these are like super easy campaigns to make that build engagement, that build a relationship with your email subscriber without actually trying to hard sell them and without pushing with a discount. So, it's pretty simple. Just send out three to four email campaigns per week. Focus on the campaign ideas I just mentioned. Make Labor Day your last

14:23sales event before Black Friday. Send fun emails, educational emails, emails your audience likes to open. And when Black Friday is there, they have their wallets already open for you because you build that excitement in the last few months, now they're ready to buy from you. Now, let's talk about the last thing that's important for your Black Friday preparations, your offers. So this is the third element that separates the brands making six figures from those making seven figures during Black Friday, which is your offer strategy, but not in a way you think. So here's what most ecom brands do wrong. They wait until October to start thinking

14:59about the Black Friday offer. Then they panic and they just copy what worked for other brands or what they did last year without any real strategy. So the winning ecom brands are analyzing their data right now. So, here's exactly what you need to do. Look back at every sales event that you did this year so far. So, think of your Valentine's Day sale, your Father's Day sale, your spring promotion, your Memorial Day sale, your summer clearance, you name it. Just check what were the conversion rates of all of these different offers that you had. Which offers drove the highest average order value? What messaging resonated most with your audience? This

15:36isn't just about looking to your to your revenue numbers, but you need to dig deeper. So, did your buy 1 get one free offer work better than your percentage discount? Did your tier pricing increase the order values? Did your limited time flash sales create more urgency than your weekl long promotions? Here's the strategic play that most ecom brands miss, and that's using your Labor Day sale as your final testing ground. So, since Labor Day is going to be your last promotion before Black Friday anyway, treat it like a dress rehearsal. So test different offer structures, different messaging angles, different urgency tactics. Treat it like see what gets

16:14your audience most excited and drives the best results. And then you want to take those insights and scale them up for Black Friday. So if your audience responded better to buy two get one free than 30% off everything during Labor Day, guess what your Black Friday structure should focus on? And the brands crushing Black Friday aren't guessing. They're using their data from the entire year to build offers that they know will work because they've already tested them on their actual audience. And while your competitors are scrambling in October trying to figure out their offers, you already know exactly what is converting best for your specific customers. And that's truly the

16:52best and winning offer strategy that you can get. So your August action plan, do this. Here's exactly what you need to do this month to set yourself up for Black Friday domination. So action number one, clean your email list right now. Remove the hard bounces, the soft bounces, and anyone who has marked your emails as spam. These segments will destroy your email deliverability when you email your full list during Black Friday. Do this now and towards Black Friday. Action number two, start sending only to engaged subscribers. Then trick this tricks inbox providers into thinking your subscribers love your emails. So send at least three emails per week to

17:29your most engaged segments and maintain open rates above the 50%. Action number three, plan your Labor Day sale as your final promotion before Black Friday. Make it big, make it memorable, but after that shift to nonpromotional content that builds value and anticipation. Action number four. So analyze your sales data from this year. Go through every promotion you've run and identify what drove the highest conversion rates, the highest average overall value, and the highest customer engagement, and document what worked and what didn't work for your brand this year. Action item number five, use Labor Day as your final test case. So, since it's your last major sales event before

18:07Black Friday, you want to test out different offer structures, messaging, and urgency tactics. See what resonates best with your audience. And finally, action number six. So build your non-discount campaign strategy based on your findings. So focus on storytelling, behindthe-scenes content, product education, and customer spotlight. Keep your brand top of mind without constantly discounting your product. And start implementing these six actions this week. And by the time October rolls around, you'll have the strongest possible foundation for your biggest Black Friday ever. So your Black Friday success isn't determined by your November strategy. It's built on the foundation you create right now in August. And if you want the complete

18:50Black Friday framework that I've just walked you through, click on the link in the description to download this doc completely for free. And if you want us to handle your email marketing entirely, or just want us to implement a successful Black Friday strategy for your brand this year without having to do the work yourself, click on the link in the description to book a call with me so we can discuss your current situation. And that's all for this video. So, thank you for watching and I

19:14hope to see you in the next one.