This stance on November holiday email marketing strategy could get me blackballed from the email community.
But then, I’m not sure that I’m really IN that community. I’ve also never really heard of anybody being blackballed from it, so you know what? I’m going to risk it.
The holiday email marketing strategy I’m going to recommend for November?
#optoutofcybermonday
I’ve spent much of the last week putting together a post on the best pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday email marketing campaigns for my planned November deep dive. I searched my personal archives for campaigns to share that would be interesting or delightful or strategically stunning or simply against the grain.
I found THOUSANDS of emails offering deep discounts.
I found a handful of pretty predictable strategies that were replicated by numerous companies across verticals – B2B, B2C, but none of them H2H (human to human).
I found nexttoNOTHING that felt like human-centric marketing.
Humanize marketing, please!
And that’s what I’m about here. I want to advocate for putting the customer experience at the center of all marketing programs. I want to inspire businesses to take a look at their email marketing campaigns through the customer lens. My goal is to uncover opportunities for businesses to delight and over-deliver and serve while preserving their unique brand values and voice.
A postcard-style email with a giant percentage discount doesn’t do any of that for me.
Over the nearly 10 years that I’ve worked in the email marketing space, the ratchet on holiday email marketing strategy has gotten ever tighter. Time was, you put together your Cyber Monday offer, maybe a holiday catalog, and you were set. Then, brands start putting together Black Friday offers for their online shops to accompany whatever they had going on at their physical location. When that real estate got crowded, Thanksgiving became the new Black Friday, and Black Friday marked the launch of Cyber Weekend.
And don’t get me started on “Black Friday previews” and “Cyber Monday Extended”.
Next thing I knew, the week before and after Thanksgiving could be counted on as an all-out email blitz.
Going the total opposite direction…
In 2015, REI decided to close their stores on Black Friday (basically the busiest shopping day of the year), and paid their employees to take a day off and #optoutside. Other companies joined them, and three years later they have created a movement much larger than the day after Thanksgiving.
What if we could create a similar movement in the digital marketing world?
What if the Monday after Thanksgiving was no longer a day spent trolling the internet for deals? Could it become a day for us all to make a face-to-face human connection with somebody on our Nice List?
What if we as marketers spent so much time delivering value the other 364 days a year that we didn’t need to invest thousands of advertising dollars in a digital shouting match dominated by hourly sales, deep discounts, and disclaimer text?
If you are in the people business, I want to invite you to #optoutofcybermonday with me. Spend those marketing dollars on giving back to your team or your customers in a different way, face to face if you can. Or simply save those marketing dollars all together, and reinvest them in creating incredible, human-centric content for your audience for the year to come.
I also invite anybody who takes the time to read this post to join me in taking an inbox sabbatical on November 26.
What you miss out on in savings, I’m confident you’ll more than make up for in the inestimable value of human connections… if only you choose to look up from your screen.
Hi Erica,
I enjoyed reading this article. Your assertion and call-to-action make sense. As a consumer, I can only confirm how overwhelming and annoying it is to get numerous emails multiple times before and during the actual day.
I like your suggestion to organize face-to-face human interactions through an event, as an example. Another way to think about this that makes it a win-win is for the businesses to choose to focus on their long-term brand promotion versus the actual sales on one given day (short-term or tactical measure). In the end, customer experience should not only mean “the best deal of the day”. There are so many opportunities that businesses can explore creatively to delight their customers.
Thanks again, Maria
Hi Erica,
I was intrigued to read this post based on the title! And enjoyed reading it. I thought you set up nicely – that this post was not going to be your typical November holiday email marketing strategy.
To me, it jumped around a little bit and it wasn’t clear who your audience is – you talked about your marketing business values in the humanize section (I would think for your clients) and then you talked about creating a movement in the digital marketing world (I would think for other marketers).
A lot of the things you wrote resonated with me – though I’m not sure you 100% convinced me that businesses should forgo marketing/sales on the busiest day of the year. 😉 I loved how you dared to veer from the conventional post to try something new!
Lovely post,
Terumi
“Cyber Monday Extended!” emails are the worst. Tactics like that break down trust between the buyer and the brand.
But Cyber Monday itself is a godsend for people like me who would die in the Black Friday madness but want (and kinda need) to get good deals on holiday presents. [Insert tangent post here about making the holidays less about presents and more about people]. Until my family values change, I have to give them presents. And until my schedule frees up, I have to *buy* them verses make them or source them. So for me, Cyber Monday is essential.
Given this, I’d caveat that opting out of Cyber Monday isn’t right for every brand or every person. But for the brands that do choose to participate, perhaps you could provide 3-5 tips for them to do so in a really helpful, customer centric way.
As a customer, I want one really good email with the best deals. I want to know for sure that this is the best deal I’m going to see on this product, on any site, on this day. No gimmicks or trick extensions! And I don’t mind a Cyber Monday Preview – that helps me prioritize my shopping.
If a brand did that, I’d be really happy. And I’d maybe even open the next email the sent me – even if it didn’t have a coupon inside.