In this post, we gathered the best examples of Black Friday campaigns so that you could follow the best practices while crafting your own campaign this year.
Origins of Black Friday
Before we embark on a journey of the best Black Fridays, let’s investigate its background to understand the reasons behind its appearance. The term “Black Friday” originated in the 1960s in Philadelphia, when it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that occurred on the day after Thanksgiving. It wasn’t until the 1980s that retailers began using the term to refer to their efforts to turn a profit or move out of “the red” (losses) and into “the black” (profits) during this shopping extravaganza.
What started as a single day of sales has now transformed into an entire weekend of deals, with many retailers extending their discounts beyond just Friday. The advent of eCommerce further expanded Black Friday’s reach. Black Friday eCommerce has become widespread in the global landscape. In recent years, Cyber Monday has also gained popularity as an online counterpart to Black Friday.
Why Black Friday is so important?
Black Friday is an important event for both consumers and businesses. It marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season and offers significant discounts on various products, making it an ideal time for consumers to save money on their purchases. For businesses, especially those in the ecommerce sector, Black Friday presents a golden opportunity to boost sales, clear out inventory, and attract new customers. Many online retailers heavily depend on this time of year for a substantial portion of their annual revenue.
Black Friday Statistics
Just see the figures below to understand the importance of this annual marketing event for online and offline businesses.
Best Black Friday Campaigns
Let’s see what campaigns can be considered as exemplary at all times.
Steve Madden: early-access email campaign
Distribution Channel: emails
Steve Madden succeeded with their Black Friday email campaign. They gathered email addresses of potential buyers with the early news about upcoming deals. A wise-written email with early offers is the golden standard of today’s promos as these messages make recipients feel their exclusiveness. Besides such letters add a fear of missing out as they always contain a date when the special offer goes public. Emails have a 4.29 percent conversion rate. It is the biggest channel to promote your Black Friday deals.
Apple: teasing emails
Distribution Channel: emails
Apple typically runs a one-day shopping event on Black Friday, offering discounts on select products. This campaign creates buzz and attracts customers to their stores and website.
To ignite interest in their audience, Apple launches their email teaser two weeks before the holiday season. The second email was sent a week before the Black Friday and explained exactly what the offer was. You can also borrow this catch to attract attention to your Black Friday specialty.
Kopari: lists composed by influencers
Distribution Channel: Instagram
It’s a good idea to cooperate with influencers on TikTok or Instagram to share their pieces of advice with your products in the spotlight. That was exactly what Kopari brand did. They shared their influencer-composed gift list mentioning Kopari’s products. Must-have items bring both values to your customers and promote your brand.
MeUndies: online event
Distribution Channel: Facebook
A peculiarity of MeUndies’s campaign was an exclusive online party on Facebook. The audience started with 300,000 people who were invited on Facebook. But the show quickly went viral as people were sharing the event in their feeds. Finally, the campaign got 660,000 followers, gathered +13,000 views with a conversion rate of 25%, and attracted extra +300,000 followers to the platform. Live events or concerts have become especially attractive due to COVID-19 lockdowns.
Foot Locker: partnership with influencers
Distribution Channel: Instagram
The company has wisely selected the hottest shopping week of the year for their Week of Greatness in 2019. All week long a new limited collection was announced through their social accounts. Its success can be explained by quality video content, quality social posts on Instagram, and collaborations with stars and influencers.
Ivory Ella: charity-driven campaign
Distribution Channel: Instagram
Ivory Ella gambled on Giving Tuesday to raise the interest to their other campaigns for Black Friday / Cyber Monday. The brand promised their customers who bought a hat on Giving Tuesday to donate 100% of the proceeds towards purchasing coats for children in need. As a result, happy buyers shared their photos on social networks to show their contribution in a charity campaign and helped the Ivory Ella to reach a wider audience. The user-generated content with a social event-driven hashtag can promote your brand organically.
Kohl’s: engaging content
Distribution Channel: YouTube
Kohl’s offers “Kohl’s Cash” during their Black Friday sale, where customers can earn store credit for every dollar they spend. This encourages customers to make additional purchases and return to the store to redeem their earned Kohl’s Cash. Kohl’s focuses on social engagement when promoting their Black Friday deals. In one of their campaigns, they made polls to communicate with followers and get traffic. The other year, they shot a video with a head-sticking Rebecca’s song to advertise their offer. Both ways are simultaneously fun and engaging.
AussieBum: fun promos
Distribution Channel: YouTube
Attention grabbing fun ads are a frequent strategy to advertising Black Fridays. AussiBum created a promo with a mix of the 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Marvel logos.
EA Sports FIFA: limited editions
Distribution Channel: Twitter
EA Sports Fifa released a limited edition of cards and announced it on Twitter. The pack gathered the most demanded Fifa Ultimate team players. Packs were available in a limited number and were quickly sold out.
Urban Outfitters: BOGO campaigns
Distribution Channel: Facebook, Instagram
Urban Outfitters made use of ‘Buy One Get One 50% Off’. They launched their Facebook and Instagram BOGO campaigns and offered free shipping on orders over £50. Although two techniques are as old as the hills, these are very efficient methods to promote a sale.
Amazon: bundles
Distribution Channel: website
Amazon often starts their Black Friday sales early with their countdown timer to Black Friday. They offer daily deals and discounts leading up to the main event, creating excitement and encouraging customers to shop early.
Amazon’s Black Friday / Cyber Mondays are always marked as record shopping days. For a holiday season, they redesign the website putting the emphasis on Groupon-style and “lightning deals.” They also back up their own products – Echo, Kindle, and Fire – with bargain prices. Recently, Amazon’s Echo 3rd Gen was bundled with Smart Plug and Amazon Music Unlimited free for four months.
Argos: Black Friday landing page
Distribution Channel: website
Argos’s campaigns also include discounts across all departments. They additionally build a Black Friday specific page that hosts all their current promotions and the Crazy Code offers.
HP: gift lists
Distribution Channel: website
HP reduced prices for a range of their products, offered free shipping, but not only. In 2020 the company composed its gift lists for Black Friday placed as a separate page on their official website. The page gathered the products buyers can purchase for Christmas to their relatives. It’s an easy and very strong offer that most companies are familiar with. If you’re launching a pre-Black Friday campaign, you can also craft a special page with gift lists for Thanksgiving Day that will also work well to whet the appetite of your customers before the Black Friday November.
Target’s “10 Days of Deals”
Target has run successful Black Friday campaigns with their “10 Days of Deals” promotion. They offer different deals each day leading up to Black Friday, creating a sense of anticipation and encouraging customers to check back regularly for new offers.
Best Buy’s “Doorbuster Deals”
Best Buy is known for their doorbuster deals, where they offer limited quantities of heavily discounted products. These deals are available in-store and online, creating a sense of urgency and attracting customers to their stores on Black Friday.
Walmart’s “Black Friday Ad”
Walmart releases a highly anticipated Black Friday ad that showcases their best deals and discounts. They often offer a wide range of products at competitive prices, attracting many customers to their stores.
These campaigns demonstrate different approaches to Black Friday marketing, including sustainability, exclusive deals, early promotions, and incentives. The key to a successful Black Friday campaign is understanding your target audience, aligning your messaging with your brand values, and creating compelling offers that drive customer engagement and sales.
Anti-Black Friday campaigns
Alongside with Black Friday, there is an opposite movement that also affects the sales on this day. Opposition to Black Friday has emerged in recent years. Some critics argue that the consumerism and materialism associated with Black Friday promote unsustainable consumption and contribute to environmental issues. Others criticize the long hours and stressful working conditions for retail employees during this period, as well as the incidents of overcrowding, stampedes, and violence that have occurred in some cases. It is important to note that while there is opposition to Black Friday, many people still participate in the event, attracted by the significant discounts and deals offered by retailers. Some retailers use the rebellious nature of Anti-Friday to attract customers’ attention and stand out from competitors.
Pieminister: donation-driven campaign
Distribution Channel: Twitter
Pieminister cooperated with a homeless charity ‘Shelter’ to donate pies to shelters on Black Friday and attract an audience to its brand with a hashtag #BlackPieday. This is an upcoming trend to promote charity with an anti-Black-Friday campaign. If your brand is prosocial, you can make use of the Black Friday counterbalance.
Just Eat: social responsibility as a driver
Distribution Channel: social media
The company partnered with TopCashback to provide a free £15 refund for new members to the site. They also collaborated with the charity FoodCycle, a company preventing waste and serving meals from unwanted food. The company donated 50p to the charity for each Just Eat order made on Black Friday and raised over £250,000 last year.
Patagonia: anti-consumerism to promote brand values
Distribution Channel: New York Times
The brand known for its ethical consumption values declared a war against consumerism on Black Friday. In 2011, they were among the first who launched an anti-Black-Friday campaign under the aegis “Don’t Buy This Jacket”. The ad encouraged customers to think twice about their consumption habits and consider the environmental impact of their purchases. This campaign generated significant media coverage and sparked conversations about sustainability and responsible consumption. In fact, either pro- or anti- Black Friday, both methods work well to promote your brand and gain traction.
Deciem: adherence to the Gen Z values
Distribution Channel: website
Deciem is a brand that rebels against Black Friday and consumerism. Instead, they are focused on ethical shopping and sustainability, all the values of their Generation Z audience. In 2019, this fashion brand closed its physical shops and the website for Black Friday. It was a wise trick as the rest of November they offered a 23% discount for all the assortment. They called it “slow shopping” as the buyers had enough time to make informed decisions and not grab everything on sale
Hubbub: brand mission fidelity
Distribution Channel: local event
Hubbub is one more brand protesting against Black Friday. It is not a surprise actually for a charity company creating environmental campaigns. They did their own study revealing that: “two thirds of people don’t enjoy taking part in Black Friday and half feel uncomfortable with the concept. The pressure to take part is highest for the under-35s with four in ten feeling pressured to join in and half saying Black Friday encourages them to buy things they don’t need”. Hubbub organized a number of events in Brighton to show people an alternative Black Friday campaign. The event attendees were offered to recycle their old outfits and create new ones, borrow and swap instead of buying a new cloth. If not a sale day, its Black Friday became an engaging local event.
Cards Against Humanity: prank campaigns
Distribution Channel: website
The company launched a series of pranks to draw attention and demonstrate their hate to consumerism. Their campaigns included:
- a 99% off sale on its inventory;
- Taking down the whole product range from its online store to offer a literal poop instead;
- Increasing prices by $5 instead of discounting;
Raising donations ($100,000) for a ‘Holiday Hole’ project to dig a hole in the ground for no reason.
Black Friday Ideas
We’ve just examined the best campaigns ever for your inspiration. Now, it’s time to summarize and highlight some common Black Friday promotion ideas you can apply for your business:
- Doorbuster Deals: Offer a limited quantity of heavily discounted products to attract customers to your store or website. These deals are usually available for a short period or until supplies last.
- Bundle Offers: Create special bundles by combining related products and offering them at a discounted price. This encourages customers to buy multiple items and increases the average order value.
- Flash Sales: Run short-term sales with significant discounts on select products. This creates a sense of urgency and encourages customers to act quickly.
- Exclusive Discounts: Offer exclusive discounts or promo codes to your loyal customers or email subscribers. This makes them feel valued and can help build customer loyalty.
- Free Gift Cards: Include a gift or bonus item with purchases above a certain threshold. This adds value to the customer’s purchase and can incentivize them to spend more.
- Early Bird Deals: Start your Black Friday sale a day or a few hours earlier than your competitors. This gives customers a head start and can help generate buzz and attract early shoppers.
- Buy One, Get One (BOGO) Offers: Offer a “buy one, get one” deal where customers can get a second item at a discounted or free price. This can help increase sales and clear out excess inventory.
- Loyalty Rewards: Offer additional loyalty points or rewards for purchases made during the Black Friday sale. This encourages repeat purchases and builds customer loyalty.
- Social Media Campaigns: Run contests or giveaways on social media platforms
Black Friday Marketing Campaign Strategy
Once you made up your mind about the concept of your marketing campaign, it’s time to draft an overall marketing strategy. It requires creativity and strategic planning. Here is a list of activities to plan the campaign successfully:
- Set clear objectives: Define what you want to achieve with your campaign, whether it’s increasing sales, attracting new customers, or promoting specific products.
- Create compelling offers: Develop exclusive discounts, bundle deals, or freebies that will grab customers’ attention and encourage them to make a purchase.
- Design eye-catching visuals: Use high-quality images, videos, and graphics that align with your brand and effectively communicate your offers.
- Personalize your messaging: Tailor your campaign messages to different customer segments based on their preferences, purchase history, or demographics.
- Utilize multiple marketing channels: Use a combination of email marketing, social media advertising, influencer partnerships, and paid search campaigns to maximize your campaign’s reach.
- Create urgency: Incorporate limited-time offers, countdowns, or flash sales to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action.
- Monitor and analyze results: Track the performance of your campaign using analytics tools. Analyze the data to identify what worked well and areas for improvement in future campaigns.
Remember, the success of your Black Friday campaign depends on understanding your target audience, offering compelling deals, and effectively promoting your offers through various marketing channels.
Popular Black Friday hashtags on social media platforms
As today social media marketing is the loco of any promotion activity, pay special attention to hashtags, the signs from which you may be discovered by your potential followers.
Season your social media campaign with hashtags: #BlackFriday, #Deals, #Sales, #Shopping, #Bargains, #Discounts, and #HolidayShopping. Using these hashtags in your posts can help increase visibility and reach a wider audience during the Black Friday period.
How to Prepare your eCommerce site for Black Friday
Creating an overall concept and strategy of Black Friday is important, but what is mission-critical is to prepare your website that will highlight your creative Black Friday marketing campaigns and bring you the revenue from attracted buyers. To prepare your eCommerce website for Black Friday, consider the following steps:
- Stock up: Ensure you have enough inventory to meet the increased demand during Black Friday. Analyze previous years’ sales data to estimate the quantities needed.
- Optimize your website: Ensure a seamless user experience, easy navigation, and clear product descriptions.
- Offer exclusive deals: Create attractive discounts, bundle offers, or limited-time promotions to entice customers. Highlight these deals prominently on your website and social media channels.
- Plan marketing campaigns: Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes email marketing, social media advertising, and paid search campaigns. Tailor your messaging to emphasize the value and urgency of your Black Friday offers.
- Leverage social media: Engage with your audience on social media platforms by posting regular updates, teasers, and countdowns to build anticipation. Encourage user-generated content and run contests or giveaways to increase engagement. Season your posts with popular hashtags.
- Optimize for mobile: With the increasing use of mobile devices for online shopping, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and offers a seamless mobile shopping experience.
How to prepare for Black Friday from the server side
There is a joke dedicated to Black Friday campaign. The “Black Friday Hold” meme originated from a viral Reddit post in 2018. The post humorously suggested that programmers should add a line of code to their software to prevent it from crashing during the busy shopping period of Black Friday. The code suggested was:
if (today == "Black Friday") { hold(); }The idea behind the meme is that the “hold()” function would magically prevent any issues from occurring on Black Friday. It gained popularity as a lighthearted way to address the challenges faced by programmers during high-traffic events.
But all kidding aside, preparing your server for Black Friday is crucial to ensure that your website can handle the increased traffic and provide a smooth shopping experience for your customers. Here are some steps to take from the server side:
- Perform a load test: Conduct a load test on your server to determine its capacity and identify any potential bottlenecks. This will help you understand how many concurrent users your server can handle and if any optimizations or upgrades are needed.
- Optimize your website: Review your website’s code, images, and content to ensure it is optimized for performance. Minimize file sizes, enable caching, and utilize content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute your website’s content globally and reduce latency.
- Scale your infrastructure: Consider scaling your server infrastructure to handle the increased traffic. This can involve adding additional servers, utilizing load balancers, or implementing auto-scaling capabilities to dynamically adjust resources based on demand.
Read more:
How Can You Prepare For The Holiday Season From Server Side
By taking these steps, you can ensure that your server is prepared to handle the increased traffic and provide a seamless shopping experience for your customers on Black Friday.
Highlights
So, we examined the best Black Friday case studies, highlighted “working” Black Friday ideas for eCommerce and gave tips on how to prepare your marketing strategy, website and server for the biggest promotion of the year. There was a lot of information, let’s summarize the key points:
- Always follow your brand identity. If you are a prosocial brand, team up with a charity to make your customers feel like heroes and build strong connections with them that will last longer than the festive season. If your company positions itself as a rule-breaker, don’t stop! Make your holiday season campaigns as crazy as your brand is. Your goal is to surprise and get attention.
- A good practice is teaming up with influencers, asking them to make gift-idea lists. You can also try making a standalone page collecting your Black Friday gift lists.
- Emails, social media marketing is still leading the game in the Black Friday rush. Launch an early access campaign, make high-quality content, and add wise call-to-actions there.
- Don’t underestimate online events. After the pandemic, people get accustomed to remote communication with brands.
- Contact your hosting provider to resolve any server issues beforehand!
