Black Friday post-purchase campaign

Just because the Black Friday weekend is over it doesn’t mean your marketing efforts should be! It’s the perfect time to send post-purchase emails to keep your customers engaged and get them excited for the next major shopping period - Christmas!

In this article, we’ll run you through one of the two campaigns you should be sending your customers after Black Friday is over: a post-purchase campaign for Black Friday shoppers and a pre-Christmas campaign for your other customers. We’ll also show you the best way to structure, build and send these campaigns using the Carts Guru platform, so that you plan the campaigns well ahead of time, then sit back and relax as you boost your profits through the holiday period.

Post Purchase Campaign

To begin, here's a checklist of what you need to run a successful post-Black Friday campaign:

• 1 email to send to all contacts
• 1 email to send to VIP customers (these are contacts that spend over a certain amount)
• 1 SMS to send to VIP customers
• 1 SMS to send to non-VIPs
• 1 dynamic list with all contacts
• 1 discount code of 5% for VIP customers
• 1 Action trigger campaign

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The Black Friday weekend is a time when every e-commerce brand acquires many first-time buyers. It’s important to keep these new customers engaged with your brand after the holiday is over in order to retain them long-term. A great way to do this is with a post-purchase campaign.

This post-purchase campaign will thank the customers for supporting your brand during Black Friday, while also giving them some insights into what will be on offer in your upcoming Christmas sales. You should include a discount code as well to spread the love!

Before building your messaging templates you’ll need to head to the ‘coupons’ page on your Carts Guru app and create the discounts you want to offer. Once your coupon codes are created it’s time to build your Black Friday post-purchase campaign!

Step 1

Head to the ‘templates’ page on your Carts Guru app and create an email template. This template will be sent to everyone who made a purchase during Black Friday, so call it something like ‘Post-Purchase Black Friday - Everyone’.

The sections you’ll need to drag and drop onto your template are:

• A text box, where you thank your customer for purchasing during the Black Friday weekend and hope they’re enjoying the product.
• Three image+text blocks, where you will give three examples of products that will be available in the upcoming Christmas sale.
• A recommended products section, with three recommended products. Carts Guru selects these products for each individual customer using an algorithm that looks at their past purchases and browsing history.
• A ‘follow us on social media’ box, with linked icons to take your customers to each of your social media platforms.

Step 2

Now it’s time to create a template for the second email in your post-purchase campaign. This email will be specifically for your VIP customers and will include a 5% discount to thank them for their support over the Black Friday period. This discount is to be used during the upcoming Christmas sales period, so include some sneak-peek products that will be available over Christmas!

Head to the ‘templates’ section in your Carts Guru app and drag and drop the following sections:

• A text box, to thank your VIP customers for their ongoing support of your brand and tell them you hope they’re enjoying the products they bought during Black Friday.
• Three ‘image and text’ blocks, to showcase examples of products that will be going on sale during your Christmas holiday sales.
• A discount block, where you will include a link to the 5% discount you created earlier on the ‘coupon codes’ page. Find out how to create an automatic or manual coupon code.
• A ‘recommended products’ block, which will show three products selected for each individual customer automatically. Carts Guru selects these products with an algorithm that takes into account each customers past purchasing and browsing history.
• A section asking your customers to follow your brand on social media, with linked icons directing customers to each site.

Step 3

The next template to create is an SMS template for VIP customers. This SMS will get your VIP’s excited for Christmas with a 5% discount to be used during the sales period.

Head to the ‘templates’ page in you Carts Guru app and create an SMS template with something similar to:

“Hey <contactfirstname>! To thank you for your support over Black Friday, we’re giving you this <5% discount> for even better value over the Christmas holiday period!”

You should also create an SMS for your non-VIP customers. This SMS will be similar to the one above, but it won’t include the discount code.

When creating an SMS template it’s important to keep it short so that the SMS doesn’t get split into two messages. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know if you go over the one SMS word limit on our Carts Guru template builder.

An example of some short text for an SMS would be:

“Hey <customerfirstname>! Now that Black Friday is done, it’s time to get excited for Christmas with our special sales!”

Step 4

Now that you’ve created all your post-purchase templates, it’s time to build your workflow! To do this, head to the ‘campaigns’ page in your Carts Guru app.

First, you’ll need to configure your Black Friday post-purchase campaign. When configuring your campaign there are a few things to take note of:

• The campaign needs to be an Action Trigger one, as it’s triggered by the customer purchasing a product during the Black Friday period.
• Select ‘order confirmation’ as the action that will trigger the campaign.
• Set the start date for the campaign as 12:00 AM on the 29th of November (Black Friday) and set 11:59 PM on the 2nd of December (Cyber Monday) as the campaign end date.
• The re-enrollment criteria should be "never".
• The audience should be a dynamic list of all your contacts.
• The campaign goal should be conversion.

Once you have configured your campaign, switch from ‘configuration’ to ‘workflow’ and design the customer journey.

The steps to follow are:

• From the ‘start’ block, input a time delay of 10 days. This means that users will start receiving your communications on the 8th of December, after they have confirmed a Black Friday order and in the buildup to Christmas.
• After the time delay, select ‘action’ then ‘email’ and input the first of the email templates you created to send to everyone who made a purchase during Black Friday.
• After the email, select continue and insert another time delay, this time for 1 day.
• After this delay, add an SMS action. Select the SMS template you created for everyone.
• Following the SMS, select continue and add a condition based on contact properties. Select ‘average purchase amount = greater than or equal to $500’ - this amount depends on your specific store, so select whatever amount you consider as a VIP.
• After the condition, add another 1-day time delay, then add ‘action’ and SMS and select the template you created for VIP customers.
• From this action, split the workflow into "success" and "failure" by choosing success. From the success branch, insert the trigger ‘last message opened within 1 day’. Click on it and choose "False".
• Add another time delay of 1 day and finally, send the email you created with the discount for VIP customers. This means that if the customer did not open the SMS, they will receive the email.
• Going back to the VIP SMS, select the "failure" branch and add action -> email. Select the same template you created with the discount for VIP customers. This means that people who have not receive the initial SMS will have the chance to open the special email.

And that’s it! Your Black Friday post-purchase campaign is ready to launch!