If you’re an ecommerce retailer, you’re no doubt already planning to take advantage of Black Friday this year. Odds are at least a part of your marketing campaign involves email marketing to your customers and subscribers. And the way to win the email marketing war this Black Friday is with your subject lines.
You need to craft your Black Friday emails carefully, consciously, and with the best subject lines possible to draw the attention of your target audience. Almost $10 billion will be spent online this year for Black Friday. You don’t want to miss out because of poor performing subject lines.
Not sure where to start? Today, let’s break down the subject line best practices for your 2021 Black Friday emails.
Short, Sweet, and to the Point
For starters, always keep your subject line emails short, sweet, and to the point. Naturally, your subject lines can’t be too long or they will drop off the screens of their recipients. This makes those recipients less likely to open your Black Friday email in the first place.
Don’t beat around the bush, either. If you’re sending a Black Friday marketing email, make that clear – otherwise, the recipient might think your email is just spam to be discarded in their trash folder.
All in all, keeping your Black Friday marketing email subject lines short and direct will improve your odds of getting the attention of your target customers. Here’s an example
- How to Use It: “50% off Black Friday sale for key merchandise! Don’t miss it!”
Simplicity is Strategic
Similarly, make sure that your Black Friday email subject lines aren’t overly complex and don’t use a lot of fancy language. Simplicity is king for most marketing, but that goes double for your email subject lines.
Always ensure that your subject line fits within a browser display box and that it’s easy to understand. If your target consumer doesn’t understand what your Black Friday email subject line is saying within a few words, they may just click away. People hate clicking on things that feel shifty or sketchy, after all.
- How to Use It: “Black Friday opportunities in TWO DAYS. 25% off select merchandise!”
Use “Command” Words
In marketing, so-called command words are any motivational or commanding phrases or terms designed to get people clicking! This isn’t the same thing as being aggressive, of course; you don’t want to insult your target audience.
Still, if your email isn’t forceful enough, you won’t inspire anyone to click through to your online store. To that end, you should use strong words including “now”, “take”, “grab”, “find”, or the holy grail “click” as much as possible. When crafting your Black Friday marketing email subject lines, use command words as the active verbs of the sentence like the example below.
- How to Use It: “Click HERE and get BIG savings this Black Friday!”
Add Some Numbers
One of the easiest ways to add value to your marketing email’s subject line is to throw a number in there. We all intuitively connected numbers with sales or prices since we’re surrounded by them all the time. You can use this to your advantage and tell people exactly how much they might save in your marketing emails’ subject lines.
This does two things. It prevents the subject line from getting complex, which is a bad thing as mentioned above. It also draws the eye of the reader to the subject line and to the body of the marketing email.
- How to Use It: “Get 20% off this Black Friday on select items!”
People Prefer Personal
It’s a truism of the marketing industry that people typically respond much better to ads that treat them like real people, not just nameless customers. Although you might think your subject line is too limited for personalization, you can make subject lines personal to your customers in a few key ways. For instance, you can:
- Use email marketing tools to include the recipient’s name in the subject line
- Use the recipient’s name in the body of the email, as well
- Use words like “special” and “for you” in the subject line to further personalize the marketing effort
- And more
All of this can do wonders for getting people to click on your Black Friday marketing emails when they might not otherwise. If they feel like you have put together a Black Friday deal just for them, they are much more likely to see what you have to offer.
- How to Use It: “CUSTOMERNAME, get 20% off your favorite items this Black Friday!”
Inquire to Convert
There’s one more thing you can do with your Black Friday email subject lines: ask a question. The trick here is not to make your subject line too long or too complex. But if you do it right, asking a question can increase conversion by a significant margin.
That’s because we all love to answer questions – it’s in our nature! When you see an email asking you a question, especially if it’s related to a sale, you feel obligated to answer it by clicking on the email and seeing what else it has to say.
If possible, integrate your question with the other subject lines as described above, like in this example.
- How to Use It: “CUSTOMERNAME, want to save 50% this Black Friday? Check out sweet deals here!”
Summary
You can put all of these subject line best practices together and create excellent, engaging, converting subject lines for your Black Friday marketing emails. Here are just a few examples:
- “CUSTOMERNAME! We’ve got a 20% Black Friday deal with your name on it; check it out here!”
- “Want to save 50% or more on your favorite items, CUSTOMERNAME? Visit us on Black Friday!”
- “BIG Black Friday savings – 20% or more on your favorites, CUSTOMERNAME!”
There you have it! Once you start taking these tips to heart, your marketing emails for Black Friday will be even more successful and you’ll get more people to check out your store.
Want to learn more about email marketing or other ecommerce strategies? Contact us today and check out our other guides on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and general online marketing here!
