It’s been just two weeks since the four day Black Friday, Cyber Monday event and between those four major shopping days, I received over 250 promotional emails. That’s a lot of email to shift through. Most of those emails I didn’t bother opening. However, I am a marketer and beside the emails lure of the incredible deals I am also incredibly interested in picking up design and messaging ideas and putting them in my back pocket to use for my clients. So, if an email's subject line peaked my interest either with the messaging or the incredible deal calling my name I opened it.
What did I find? Some really incredibly well done emails and some seriously mind blowing deals. There was one company that stood out, to me at least, they were catchy, they had their buyer personas on point and in no way did they phone it in. I'd say that J.Crew gave us a masterclass on a creative and effective Black Friday ecommerce campaign. Let's explore.
Subject line: 40% off your purchase = the perfect escape
To be fair, the subject line didn’t really catch me, I just wanted to see what products I might be able to score from J.Crew at 40% off but, when I opened this email I found this cheeky masterpiece.
American Thanksgiving was a huge topic in the news, we saw article after article posing ways to deal with your politically adverse family and this email played right into this dialogue. No doubt, many Americans were looking for an escape from their family more than any other year and this email definitely puts a smile on your face. We start with the hook, “Is your family driving you nuts” and follow it up with a directive, and then with another in-tune joke “Locking the door works too.” After that we’re straight into the sell with a well placed CTA begging you to shop now. I wanted to shop the sale just to applaud J.Crew for this email. Sometimes you don’t need your product to do the talking, just the relative offer of escape.
Subject: Shopping > sleeping. 40% off your purchase is ON.
This email was sent at 1 AM on Black Friday, it is specifically addressed to those who want to be first in line to shop the late night deals and in extension to those who may be up late and bored. It marks the official start of J.Crew’s Black Friday shopping and marks their first ever 40% everything campaign. This email is humourous, hooks the J.Crew fan in with the deal and then states this sales importance by indicating “this won’t happen again.” With a final CTA, this email has spoken directly to the audience it intended to and stands out from the standard product based emails that flooded my promotions tab.
Subject: Best Monday ever = 40% off your purchase (!), now with free shipping
Elbowing for position on Cyber Monday after a full weekend of deals is a difficult task. By Monday, we're all exhausted by sales, crowds and ads and for many our wallets have taken a huge hit. For these reasons, I think that this is a very successful email. It was Monday, we were back at our desks, feeling nostaligia, maybe a bit of regret for the weekend and J.Crew told us of one great reason to be at our desks on a Monday, 40% off AND free shipping. Happy Shop from your Desk Day! This could become the official slogan for Cyber Monday, why didn't we think of this first?