#71. How to Write Black Friday Subject Lines that Convert | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

So today’s topic is fun one. We will be discussing some good and bad Black Friday Cyber Monday subject lines.

Alissa: 0:48

Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Email Einstein. Da da da da. I feel like we need like a jingle whenever we talk. As always, Vira and Alissa here we are, two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service, e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode today. We appreciate it. The saga continues.

Vira: 1:39

The saga. Yeah, I like how you call it. Yeah, it is a saga because it’s already been what, like episode number four, Four or five about Black Friday. And we have like three more to come. So you guys, you’ll. By the time the Black Friday comes, you, you’ll know everything about it. Yeah. That’s amazing.

Alissa: 1:56

I love it.

Vira: 1:57

So today’s topic is fun one. So we will be discussing some good and bad subject lines. So every year online spending during the holiday season reaches the new heights. So last year, for example, 116.5 million emails were sent on Black Friday. When I’m saying emails, I don’t mean like an email from your, like mom or grandma, like marketing emails. And that’s basically more than any other single day of the year. 117.5 million emails. This number is insane. And I think in reality it might be even higher. 106 million emails were sent on Cyber Monday. So almost as much as on Black Friday. Slightly less because not everyone is doing Cyber Monday. And 95 million emails were sent on Thanksgiving.

Alissa: 2:47

Holy cow.

Vira: 2:48

Yeah. But out of this like three events, Black Friday email saw the highest number of open opens and links clicked. So out of this like three holidays, Black Friday was the, the, the biggest one. And I Mean consumers are going to be receiving hundreds of emails on the day they will be scanning hundreds of sales, hundreds of different messages from different brands. Meaning that your subject lines have to be really, really good to convince them to open your campaign. Sort of like grouped different types of subject lines and like little, little groups. Group them in groups. Good job Vira. Yeah, just like to give you some like ideas. What exactly can you say in your subject and preview and like what’s the good and what’s the bad of the subject lines world? So Alissa, I know you’ve prepared something fun for the sneak peek category.

Alissa: 4:09

Yeah. So here are some examples. Exclusive Black Friday deals Sneak Peek Be the first to shop our Black Friday deals. This sale is secret. Why wait till Black Friday? Access our sale early or access our our sale early, exclamation mark. So one of our favorites was from Dell a few years ago, which was you were chosen for our early Black Friday flyer.

Vira: 4:37

I like the wording.

Alissa: 4:38

Yeah, I do too. And it’s kind of a tongue twister too, which is always fun. So let’s talk about why this subject line actually works. So first of all, Dell delivers this email four weeks before Black Friday, like the actual sales started, which is interesting because we’ve talked about this in our previous episodes about Black Friday sales getting earlier and earlier and earlier. And this subject line leads into a very clever tactic which teases Dell’s audience and shows them a sneak peek of Black Friday deals that are to come and also upcoming Cyber Monday sales to come. And the cool thing about what Dell did is they use every word carefully to make it look like the subscriber specifically was selected for an exclusive first look. Now if you have 200 subscribers on your list, right. You’re not going to go through and comb through every single one of those 200,000 people. You’re probably going to create a segment that’s going to kind of auto generate and then you’ll send to that list. But the way that the wording is used in this subject line is very specific. It makes the customer feel very exclusive, like they were hand selected for this particular sneak peek. So and the use of the words you were chosen, it makes the message exciting, very personal. And as a result, Dell subscribers used this opportunity to open the Email campaign and then they take a look at the deals that are just waiting for them specifically. So it’s a combo of things, right, that are being used in here. So it’s that early bird kind of aspect of like, hey, you can get in and get involved in what we’re going to be doing in four weeks time early. But also the exclusivity and like the hand selection of you as a customer. Like I am choosing you as my special customer to come into my store before everyone else can to see what we’re going to be offering. And that’s always nice, right? You always want to feel like you’re special.

Vira: 6:26

So good job. I like, I like that subject line a lot. Yeah, I like it so much that I will literally go and change the subject line for one of my campaigns that I’m like sending on Saturday to this one because it’s so good. I’m sure it’s going to work really well. Yeah. Wow.

Alissa: 6:40

Very good.

Vira: 6:41

I like it because I already started sending some early bird campaigns for my clients so like literally three weeks before the sale. But they do perform so well. I’m like so excited about it. It’s a good subject line. Thank you, Alissa. Yeah. Cool. So the second group is Tried and True. True and Tried. Tried and true. Right?

Alissa: 7:00

And True. Tried and True.

Vira: 7:01

Tried and true. Yay. Percentage discounts. Percentage discounts. They remain classic for Black Friday campaigns. I mean some people love them, some people don’t, but the subject lines, they do perform really well. Perhaps the easiest way to make your store more like attractive to your customers is to give them some sort of like discount through like a dollar disc percentage discount. And really effective way to make your customer open that email is to be very direct and very clear about what you will offer in that email. Tell subscribers exactly what you have for them in that email. What percentage is your discount? Maybe if you’re offering a free shipping, mention it in subject line and preview text as well. What like specific, I don’t know, like products or brands. If you’re like a multiple brand store, what are you selling? Your offer itself, it will do all the heavy lifting to attract the attention. And here are some like subject lines. They are from back from like 20, 19 and 20. But here are some subject lines that performed really well. Black Friday warning. 999 deals selling out quick.

Alissa: 8:11

I love that.

Vira: 8:12

That campaign actually had 50% open rate.

Alissa: 8:15

Wow.

Vira: 8:16

Well, probably because of that like warning, like word and like aspect. Right. And also they were very like direct and clear about like what you have for Your customers in that email, 999 deals are selling out quick. And also that, like, sense of urgency, right? Like communicating that your stock is limited, that you have to buy something really quick. Also like this classical subject lines, like, less chance to save up to 50% off this also have amazing open rates and click through rate. Or like, if you are combining your promotion with some of your, like, newsletter or something, you can say something like December newsletter and 25% off coupon. So that’s a good subject client as well. In fact, I’m gonna make myself a note here as well. I love research. I love researching those episodes. No, like, seriously, so many good stuff. I want to try them, try them all out. I usually like when I send some sort of campaign, I usually have like two subject lines and I do the. You know, when you can basically test out, do the ab test on like a smaller group and then send the winning variation to the rest of your list. That’s something that I’ve been doing lately a lot and it’s been working really well for me, especially around the holidays. Yeah. So here are a few more that I like from that same category. Shop small and save 30% off. Or like, reminder, Black Friday, 40% off is closing. Or like, how about 40% off? So basically anything where you can clearly communicate your discount code, it will help you with your open rates. Your offer itself will do all the heavy lifting for you. One thing, though, if you are offering something small, like, for example, one of my clients, he’s selling this, like, really expensive equipment for the cars. So the discount code is only 5%. It sounds like it’s not a lot, but in his products it can be like tens and maybe like hundreds of dollars saved. Right. But 5% doesn’t look very attractive in the subject line. So maybe if your offer is not that, like, attractive or that enticing, try to do something different. But if you’re offering something crazy, like 25% or more, definitely brag about it in your subject line.

Alissa: 10:31

Yeah, for sure.

Vira: 10:32

Yeah. So here is one more subject line that we really liked from, like the same category. Door busters one day only offer$400 of the hybrid plus two free pillows. Those, this is actually the mattress company, but I really like that they use the strategy, the door buster strategy. It’s actually the strategy that a lot of brick and mortar stores used in the past. And yeah, I like the use of word door buster. It’s a very common tactic used by retailers to promote different goods in the past. It makes this campaign almost like Irresistible. And of course, the$400 off and the gift also sound very attractive. Right? So which makes this Black Friday email campaign a must open. So, yeah, percentage discount. They are the classic. Try them. People love them.

Alissa: 11:22

I love it. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love it. So the next group of subject lines that we want to focus on are using the subscrib subscriber’s name in subject lines. I actually just recently ran a test within the abandoned cart flow for one of my clients. So I have the statistic here. This is not from my own test, but I found the same thing, which is that email subject lines that are personalized by including a name boost your open rates by 10 to 14% across industries.

Vira: 11:50

Wow.

Alissa: 11:50

This is true. I can confirm this. This is absolutely true. There was like, I think like 7 or 8% difference between the subject line and the subject line was pretty much the same one. We just added the name and the other one, we just didn’t have the name. And it increased by that much over the course of like, I think it was seven days or something, which is nuts. So this is definitely one that I would recommend. However, including your subscriber’s name is only one way to make your subject lines more personal. So you don’t have to just be that weird person who’s like, Vira, hi, Please open this email. Vira, I’m sending you another email. Vira, check out my email.

Vira: 12:27

I’ve seen those emails.

Alissa: 12:28

I’ve seen those emails where it’s like the same brand just using your name all the time and you’re like, okay, we get it. You know my name. Like, calm down. Do you know anything else about me?

Vira: 12:38

So, but remember you, you mentioned this. Like, I forgot the name of the brand. Who actually put your name in the hero image or something.

Alissa: 12:46

Yeah, yeah.

Vira: 12:46

That was like, so cool. And now you can do that with like new Klaviyo feature.

Alissa: 12:52

Yeah. So it’s a cool. What’s the name of the brand? Third Love. It’s actually a very popular, like, women’s intimates brand. And in the hero image, they wrote the Alissa collection. And I was shocked because I was like, there’s no way they made a collection with my name on it. There’s no way. And then I clicked on the email and it actually just brought me to a page that showed me like recommended favorites.

Vira: 13:18

Oh, so good. And also you have a unique spelling too, so. Exactly, exactly.

Alissa: 13:24

That’s the other thing is the unique spelling. I was just shocked, like, what the heck? My name. What? So they got Me, they got me.

Vira: 13:31

So cool.

Alissa: 13:32

It is only one way. It’s a really good way though. But the other thing that you can do to add more personalization to your subject lines is using casual language, sharing something personal, or using copy that implies familiarity or friendship. So like, hey friend, remember that time we hung out? So here are some really, really good examples of personal subject lines that actually get your customer’s attention. So you can say, so this was by brand guess. So they put the customer’s name comma, check out these handpicked looks, which that gets your attention, right? Or Harry’s is another brand. Two razors for your friends in parentheses on us, which I like as well because you’re trying to get some level of connection with your customer, right? Like, oh, like here, grab two razors for your friends and it’s on us. Don’t worry. Like, we got you, you got us. We’re all friends. That’s a nice attitude to have with your customers. Or another, another subject line. So it has name. So you’d insert the customer’s name comma, I like you better than my nephew right now. That’s actually so funny. I love that one.

Vira: 14:36

That’s so hilarious.

Alissa: 14:37

It’s so funny. And then this other one, name comma, swipe right on us this Black Friday, which is also pretty funny. It’s a play on some dating apps, so that’s a fun one as well. To include this IKEA subject line however, is worth mentioning specifically and giving a little shout to. So it says name comma, escape the Black Friday chaos. So I love this line. I think it’s great. And why does it work so? A few different reasons. IKEA has a slightly different approach to the Black Friday madness. Instead of adding a discount or using fomo, their brand opts for a personalized subject line to boost its open rates. So they use the subscribers name and through that they managed to catch the recipient’s eye, offering an escape from the Black Friday chaos. Because everyone knows that when you go to ikea, it is always chaos. Oh yeah, not in a bad way, but it is chaotic. Always in there, there are always so many people. It’s a great place. I love ikea. Most of our furniture is Ikea, but it is chaotic. So along with beautiful visuals and really great copy, their subject line delivers on its promise and gives the subscriber a break from the holiday season madness. So it enables them to sit from the comfort of their own home and shop online at home where they are safe from the chaos us.

Vira: 15:54

So it’s Great. And they usually deliver it sooner too. They. I don’t think they do any, like, Black Friday, Black Friday promotion. They usually, like, deliver it like a week before for the holidays or like two weeks before the holidays, which is, like, great. I love that. I love that. Well, right now, I don’t know if you’ve been to IKEA lately, but in Canada anyways, they don’t have anything available. You have to wait for everything for, like, literally everything. They do have, like, some small stuff available in stock, but if you’re, like, looking for, like, a specific couch or like a. I don’t know, like a chair or something, you. You have to wa for months sometimes. So they are out of stock on everything. So it’s more like a museum. Right now you’re just like, come and you. You like, take a look, but you, like, don’t buy anything. There’s like, nothing. Nothing to buy. Right. So. But I mean, I, I still, I still love ikea. That’s my happy place. I like, go there to get some. Get some break from my busy life, you know, that’s what we’ve been talking with you, Alissa, before the call, right? So, like, how the adult fun looks like these days. Like, going to chiropractor, grocery shopping fun.

Alissa: 17:01

I know I’m going to the chiropractor today and then I get to go grocery shopping after, and I’m like, wow,

Vira: 17:34

like, the best day ever.

Alissa: 17:35

Yeah, like an hour and a half of, like, me time. This is so fun and nice and everyone’s like, are you on drugs? Like, possibly.

Vira: 17:46

Well, well, the fourth group of subject lines, and that’s like one of our favorites. We use this kind of subject lines all the time. It’s finding subject lines for Black Friday. If your subject line makes your subscrib vibrant laugh or like, smile, they will simply have to open it. And I mean, after all, I’m sure you’ve seen those subject lines in your inbox as well, and I’m sure you loved it as well. Being humorous requires a little bit more creativity, right? A little bit more thought, but it can really pay off in terms of your open rates. So I really liked this one last year. I forgot the name of the brand, but the subject line was better than they are deals. Like, whose deals? Whatever. Better than their deals.

Alissa: 18:26

I think it’s funny.

Vira: 18:28

Or like, my money. My. My favorite one. It’s like a classic. I mentioned it like this billion times. Like, deals that make us proud. Unlike our nephew Steve. I mean, I think it’s genius for one.

Alissa: 18:39

So he’s like, steve, Rip Steve.

Vira: 18:41

That’s sad.

Alissa: 18:41

But it’s funny.

Vira: 18:42

It’s always nephew who gets laughed at the subject line, right? It’s like, I like you better than my nephew right now. Same. Or like boom shakalaka. Let’s get started. I just like the subject line. It says nothing. It’s not very informative, but it’s so fun. Boom shaka laka.

Alissa: 18:59

That is very funny.

Vira: 19:01

Even know where this sound comes from?

Alissa: 19:05

It reminds me of Finding Nemo. You know, like a shark bait. It’s not quite the same, but that’s what it reminds me of when I hear boom shakalaka.

Vira: 19:13

I think it’s like from the 80s songs or something. Probably all the crazy things come from the 80s, right? Or like this one. I think it’s so cool. Come on, it’s Friday and you’re killing time anyway. I mean, technically it’s true.

Alissa: 19:26

This is true. So this is true. This is true.

Vira: 19:29

Or like, your mom’s gonna love this.

Alissa: 19:31

This.

Vira: 19:31

This is like my favorite one too. Or like last year, Cards Against Humanity did this like crazy email which actually did not include any promotions or discount. The only objective was like to keep in touch with the customer base during this like holiday season. Right? So the subject line was nothing. They like literally typed in the word nothing. And then, I mean the branding of the cart Cards Against Humanity is like different. It’s very funny. So you need to understand what the game is about. But I really like their email. The email was like, was saying, dear horrible friends, as you know, Cards Against Humanity is crazy about Black Friday savings and we never fail to mark the occasion with incredible door busting deals. This year we’ve taken down our entire store and we are announcing a one day only Gift Cards Against Humanity$5 sale. The deal is simple. You give us five dollars, we give you nothing. CTA was like, give us five bucks. So yeah, obviously the objective of this sale is not to make any money. I wouldn’t even call it a sale. It’s more like to keep in touch with the customer base during the holiday season and just like to make them smile. And it was very like on brand for them as well. So I liked it a lot.

Alissa: 20:46

It’s refreshing. It’s very refreshing. I’d be very curious to know what that give$5 to us linked to.

Vira: 20:53

I don’t think it was linked to anything specific unless they did have a product or like just like a fake product page where can like literally buy something for$5 and receive nothing. I don’t Know, I just think it’s. It’s funny. It’s funny. It’s different, that’s for sure.

Alissa: 21:08

It is very. Yeah, I love it. Okay, and the very last one, subject lines with emojis. So a major factor when you’re deciding what emojis to use and whether or not to use them at all is who is actually receiving your emails.

Vira: 21:22

Oh yeah, yeah, that’s a big one.

Alissa: 21:23

So if you have a younger demographic and you’re selling a fun, light hearted product, then using emojis definitely makes sense. If you have an audience though, is made up of some older folks, we won’t call them old people, just an older generation or highly professional people, like sending emails to like tort law attorneys or if you’re selling B2B oriented services, emojis in your subject lines probably won’t land as well or stick as well with that audience. So just think about it before you do it. Right.

Vira: 21:56

Right.

Alissa: 21:56

And there was actually a study done on New Year’s campaigns. So the overall average open rate for a New year’s promotional is 18%. But subject lines that included the champagne bottle or the confetti ball saw an average open rate of 22%, which is interesting. And subject lines that included fireworks or that little like megaphone with the confetti exploding out of it all.

Vira: 22:21

Is this a megaphone?

Alissa: 22:22

I don’t know what it is. It’s like a little cone of love.

Vira: 22:25

It’s like a party cone or something. I was thinking it was like the birthday hat, like turned upside down. So the confetti and everything. I don’t know.

Alissa: 22:33

But you guys know what with confetti.

Vira: 22:36

Ye, I wonder what’s the name of that?

Alissa: 22:40

I don’t know. I wonder if you can. Hold on, let me try to hover over it.

Vira: 22:43

I’m going to Google it right now. How do I Google it? Okay, the confetti cone, it’s called, it’s called the party popper. Oh, potty.

Alissa: 22:50

Party popper. Potty popper.

Vira: 22:52

Oh my gosh.

Alissa: 22:52

Party popper. Okay, so if you included fireworks or the party popper, you also saw an open rate between 19 and 21%, which is really cool. However, emoji emails had an increase increased complaint rate, which is not so cool.

Vira: 23:07

Yeah.

Alissa: 23:08

So another thing you want to consider, whenever you’re using emojis, different email clients are going to use one of the few different emoji keyboards based on the device’s operating system. So for example, if the Samsung Android keyboard is missing a brand new emoji set that is on the Apple iOS keyboard. Everyone is reading your subject line on an Android device and they will not see the emoji. It’s going to look like a big ugly square box block. So you just gotta be careful about

Vira: 23:36

this happened to me before.

Alissa: 23:37

Yeah, it’s not a cute look. Like not even in the slightest. So you just have to be careful with what you’re doing. Emoji wise, don’t use like those brand new multicolored crazy Apple emojis. Just use something generic like a heart or the party popper.

Vira: 23:51

Right.

Alissa: 23:52

So here are some examples of some prime subject lines that we love that use emojis. So finally, exclamation mark. A decent reason to wake up early on Monday with the little clock emoji. Or this is actually a megaphone.

Vira: 24:08

I like it.

Alissa: 24:09

The megaphone emoji just announced our Cyber Monday deals.

Vira: 24:13

That’s a cool one too.

Alissa: 24:14

The biggest day for online shopping has arrived with like a little like delivery truck. I love that.

Vira: 24:20

I think that’s cute.

Alissa: 24:21

A free gift for you with the little present emoji. I love that emoji because Cyber Monday or get your Cyber Monday bargains shipped free. And it’s a little cargo ship which I love. That one’s really cute too. Monday plus online deals with a package or like the little, little cardboard box or cure your Mondayitis Monday itis. Yeah. With these travel deals and a little airplane. Check out these hot entertainment details with some cool headphones. And the last one, get your sporting goods delivered free with a baseball and then like a little like a hole in one for golf with a little flag. So those are just some examples. You can get more creative if you want to. Again, if you have like a cheeky audience audience that you’re working with, you can actually make a subject line that’s primarily comprised of all emojis. So you can do like an emoji plus an emoji equals another emoji however you want to do it. You can get creative with emojis. Just remember who your audience is. But the emojis definitely add a little pizzazz to your subject line. So if you can get creative with it and use them. Yeah, I love them. I love emoji subject lines. I think they’re fun.

Vira: 25:32

Yeah, we use them all the time. Time and even for like older generation, for like brands for older people. We use them in the past and they do work really well. They just like makes your email stand out among those like hundreds of different emails. But that would interesting that you said that. It has like higher spam complaint rates. I wonder why.

Alissa: 25:51

Yeah, I think my guess is it probably happens whenever there’s like the big empty box. Like if the emoji isn’t rendering correctly and then the box comes up and then people are like this is spam. Spam. People get neurotic about spam all the time. All the time.

Vira: 26:08

It’s funny. Well guys, I hope it was helpful to you this list of different fun subject lines. Definitely be creative. Make sure your email stands out because this is like your chance to shine. Consumers are going to be scanning hundreds of different like sales and your subject lines has to be good enough to convince them to to open your email. So put some thoughts into it and definitely come back next Tuesday. But in the meantime don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. And if you are interested to getting on getting more advice on how to establish like a solid email marketing strategy for your e commerce store, visit flowium.com/contact and sign up for a free consultation. So that’s something that we do. I mean this consultations are awesome. They are super helpful. So let us know if you need help with your email marketing. And also if you want to get our very special Flowium socks.

Alissa: 27:08

They’re amazing.

Vira: 27:10

Make sure to leave us a review, screenshot your review and send it to us. Alissa, do you remember the link?

Alissa: 27:16

I think it was flowium.com/socks it’ll take you to a type form. You can add in all the info there and we will immediately send you your socks because they’re important. Yay.

Vira: 27:27

Yes, we’re gonna have Flowium socks. Just I’m like still waiting for mine. But yeah, that’s fine.

Alissa: 27:33

We’re gonna paint the world in Flowium socks. We got this. We got this.

Vira: 27:37

They’re super cute. They’re super cute.

Alissa: 27:38

And next week guys, our episode, the saga continues. Continues, continues. We’re going to be talking about a last minute checklist for your Black Friday Cyber Monday emails. So make sure that you come in, check us out, listen to what we have to say because we will be giving you all the insights, all the scoop right before the holiday kicks off. So we’ll see you guys next week and thank you as always for listening.

Vira: 28:03

See you next week. Bye.