As an ecommerce business, you know that upto 80% of your annual sales come in during the Holiday season. (the classic 80:20 Pareto rule!) It’s the month when Thanksgiving kicks off Black Friday – the Olympics of ecommerce – followed by Cyber Monday, and a plethora of spin-off events to ride on and sell more. Deals come in thick and fast. Social media is flooded with “craziest” offers, and hunting the best deal becomes the Olympian sport of the season. The good news is: That Black Friday still works. Despite all the clutter, it’s not a Zero Sum Game. In fact according to a report released by Adobe, 2020 is going to be the biggest Black Friday sales, because, and not despite Covid.  The report says “Online sales will surpass $2 billion every day between Nov. 1-21 and increase to $3 billion a day Nov. 22–Dec 3.”

Every ecommerce player can have a piece of the pie. But we’re here to tell you that you can have a bigger share of the pie if you do it right

Offline’s loss is ecommerce’s win 

With the Covid19 pandemic still looming large in the USA and most parts of the world, a chunk of those brick and mortar sales are going to be passed off online.  Millions of ecommerce retailers are going to be vying for the same customer’s wallet, and mind share. How will you break the clutter?

Good marketing will set you apart from the competition

Your marketing will absolutely need to up the ante. Black Friday and the sales season that kicks off with it cannot have a room for error or slacking. 

But are you relying simply on a Facebook blast or an Insta campaign, some influencer marketing perhaps. You will spin your wheels on making those ads and put in a couple thousand ad spends and hit go. Spray and pray, if you will.  You will hope that your ads will manage to break the clutter, or you will sell your products at a loss almost just to not miss out on making those extra sales during the Big Sale Season. In doing so, you will end up ignoring the ONE asset that you can milk without a single dollar in ad spend. Email marketing.

How you go about your email marketing this sales season will really make or break your Holiday sales.

Email marketing is not about spamming their inboxes

You don’t need  “Email all you can” or “Flood their inboxes” with a bigger promo offer than the last email strategy. You need a strategy that is smart, intuitive and iterative. And it’s not about how many emails you send.

It begins from the time you collect those email addresses, from the time the customer makes their first entry into the website, and continues well past their purchase from the website. Email marketing isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. Knowing how, to whom, when, and how much to send is really the crux of email marketing.

More often than not, ecommerce companies get so caught up with navigating their ads, promotions, content, and also managing all that traffic, that email marketing gets left behind as a “hygiene activity” rather than something that should’ve been right at the top of the priority list.

We mean, those customers are there for the taking, given the right and timely communication! Contrast this with the Facebook ads that chase those who may never even click on the ads and lose you thousands in ad spends.

But we get it. Black Friday season is crazy enough without you also needing to step up your email marketing game. It’s where an email marketing agency comes in. They have the experience, the stats, the strategy, and most importantly the resources to get the job done.

Our experienced account managers have documented their collective email marketing goodness in the below articles, check them out:

9 Ways To Be Email Marketing Ready For The Biggest Black Friday Sales Yet

Our clients made upto 60% of their store revenue from email during Black Friday month 

Yes, we have vested interests in hyping up email marketing, but then numbers don’t lie, do they? Last year alone, between a 2 month period of Oct-Dec, we helped achieve our clients an extra 60% of their store revenue from email alone.

Blendjet, one of our premium partners, earned over $600,000 in store revenue from the Black Friday month. Check out this case study on one of the biggest success stories of email marketing till date.  To rake up $600k in 30 days is no easy feat on Black Friday, when customers are inundated with emails!   But we had a masterplan, and the right skills and experience to execute it.  We optimised the hell out of our client’s email flows, created some stunning emails, and iterated the strategy every step of the way. We knew we had a good thing going when we clocked over $26,000 in sales in a single day – but it was no flash in the pan, as by the end of the month, Blendjet was taking home a sweet $300k from email marketing alone.

Why you need specialised email marketing services during the sales season

Email marketing can help any ecommerce business Blendjet their way to supercharged revenue too. But more often than not, email also ends up being an underused, over-used or even abused medium during the sales season.

Yes, you may have your digital game on point, but email marketing is specialised skill, part science, part art, that is unlike paid ads or SEO. 

Let this sales season be different. Hire an email marketing agency that is well-equipped to take the job head on instead of grappling and bumbling your way about everything out of FOMO. 

The email agency will optimise your existing lists, grow it more, and capture the leads right from a page visit, a cart abandon till much after the sale is completed.  Black Friday season is all about constant and regular nurturing content rather than one big blast. For your email engine to work optimally this time, you will need the agility and the bandwidth to churn quick, but great emails. The email marketing agency is powered by a strong design team that is experienced in creating beautiful emails and copy and churn them at scale and at  a much quicker rate than your in-house creatives.  

So, for all these reasons, email marketing is non-negotiable during a time as crucial as this. Whether you crank up your in-house email marketing resources or decide to hire an email marketing agency, what matters is that you get it done, and get it right. 

And if you decide to give an email marketing agency a chance, we’re right here. Give us a call for a quick and free email marketing audit so that we can come up with a tailored plan for you, and make your email marketing work for you.

Happy Holiday sales!