Uh-oh... Black Friday isn't going so well. What do you do?

One central trend this year has been getting an early start on not only offering free shipping and slashed discounts, but also featuring "It’s Black Friday" promotions when the day has yet to arrive. I discussed various ways to prepare for the big day in a previous blog post "Black Friday & Cyber Monday - How to Plan for the Unexpected," and today I want to focus on what happens when you and the team gather for your mid-day rally on Black Friday to cheer your success... but wait! What's this? Open rates are low... Click rates are even worse... and those conversions? Oh man, what do you do!

Data, Data, and more Data

Another tip from my previous post is to know how to get to your data with ease and speed before Black Friday. You should be able to not only access the top level performance data but also be able to take a deeper dive to see if there are trends based on various segments of your subscribe population. Identify any patterns that may exist.

• Are your messages being delivered?
• Are open, click, and conversation rates skewing off from your expectations?
• How are your most loyal customers interacting with your messages?

Determine if there is one key contributor that could be responsible for negatively impacting results and focus your efforts there. For example, knowing that your click rate is down can help you to focus on improving calls-to-action, changing your product mix, and modifying the overall email composition.

User Experience

You and your team should make sure you are set up to receive your emails in various email clients and not just your work account. Go to those accounts and review the entire user experience:

• Is the email in your inbox or spam folder?
• Is the subject line displaying properly?
• Does the email render correctly when opened?
• Are links functioning properly and clicking through to the correct page? Check all of them!
• Once on your site, are you able to cart the product and check out?

Repeat this exercise in multiple web browsers. You may have the right offer and the right products, but something breaking down in the user experience is taking the subscriber out of the purchase path.

What’s the Buzz?

Review your Facebook page and Twitter feed to see what your fans and followers are saying. This could provide insight into any functional issues they are experiencing, enthusiasm about your Black Friday deals, and what your competitors are promoting.

Also, do a quick Google search for your email subject line restricting results to the past 24 hours. Black Friday deals are more aggressively posted on various deal and coupon sites and you will want to see what people are saying about you in these communities as well.

Remail Strategy

You may have messages scheduled to deploy throughout the day. Take the insights you have gained from the exercises above to determine if the planned messages are going to help you overcome the poor results of the first part of the day. If you do not have additional messages on the calendar, then you should consider a remailing strategy. For both of these scenarios, you should plan around the following areas:

Segmentation: Considering the increased volume during this peak time, remailing to all of your subscribers may not be a wise choice. This could result in increased abuse complaints and unsubscriptions which could negatively impact delivery of future emails. Instead, segment based on subscriber engagement, customer profiles, or purchase activity for the day. Additional information can be found in my previous Black Friday post.

Subject Lines: How can you translate your findings into a strong subject line strategy and overcome the obstacles you saw in the first part of the day? If you experienced delivery issues that could be attributed to the content of the first message’s subject line, then shift your approach. If the first message was heavily promotional and featured multiple brand names, dollar or percent signs, or multiple instances of the word “free,” then try a subject line with a softer sell.

Creative: Adjusting your email creative under the gun can be a challenge. Minimal changes such as adjusting your pre-header text can be done with little effort. If you have resources available and clicks are low, consider featuring a different mix of products, shifting from a product focused email to postcard style that relies on copy rather than product shots, or you can always add a dotwhack that reinforces urgency.

Divide and Conquer

At this point, you shouldn’t have to prepare the troops. You and your team should know who has the ability to quickly dig into specific areas of your program. If you aren't sure, take 5 minutes now to put yourself in panic mode, write down who on your team could quickly and effectively tackle each of the tasks included in this post. Who can crunch data and provide analysis with ease? Who can review and interpret your Facebook page and Twitter feed? Now, take a few minutes to calm down and review your choices… Do they really make the most sense? Making course correcting decisions in the middle of a rough Black Friday should be calculated and you should be prepared to be accountable for the results.

Hopefully this post will be completely useless for you because your Black Friday will be a tremendous success and your mid-day rally will be filled with high fives and a sense of relief!

Jim Davidson
Manager of Marketing Research