3 Black Friday marketing automation workflows that create lifelong customers

Black Friday is just around the corner, and that means you're about to be very very busy.

Anything you can automate to make the process smoother is going to save your precious minutes for more critical fires to be put out.

What if those automated processes could even earn you extra revenue on top of doing the things you don’t have time to do?

Enter marketing automation, and with these three automation workflows, it's going to be your biggest lifesaver this holiday season.

And though many resources on marketing automation focus on email automation, today we're going to focus on how you can leverage several channels in your automation workflows to transform visitors into lifelong customers.

#1. The Welcome Series: Your Bread and Butter this Holiday Season

If your SEO and paid campaigns are doing their jobs, there are going to be a ton of new customers flooding into your site during the week of Black Friday. A great welcome series is going to be a make or break factor in your holiday marketing strategy.

Combined with a great incentive, your welcome series is what's going to transform them from customers for a season into customers for the reason.

This will allow you to add an SMS campaign in with your welcome email series. Why would that be interesting to you?

During Black Friday 2018, we had reports of over 2000% ROI from marketers using SMS campaigns during Black Friday weekend.

Here's how you can leverage SMS in your Black Friday marketing automation workflows:

Collect a phone number and opt-in for SMS contact
Send SMS campaign with the discount code/incentive offered
Follow up with an email with the discount and more information on your best sellers
If no purchase has been made in 12 hours, follow up with a text reminder citing urgency for the extra discount/incentive
Follow up with an email campaign

This way, you can capitalize on the immediacy of an SMS message, while following up with the full information via email.

See how this worked for a birthday campaign, you can take the same kind of style and apply it to your Black Friday welcome campaigns:

#2. Cart Abandonment Workflows: Recovering Potentially Lost Revenue

Cart abandonment is going to be your best friend during Black Friday: with customers discovering your deals and shopping around for even better ones, you’ll probably have a high rate of cart abandonment.

Indecisive customers who get distracted at the last minute in the frenzy will need to be pulled back in.

This is where abandoned cart comes in- and many customers will expect some kind of discount for abandoning their purchase. Instead, play on urgency and use discounts as a last resort.

Try something like this:

[Wait 10 minutes] An SMS or web push notification (if you have permission) reiterating the urgency of completing purchase: "Is your size still available?" "40% off until midnight!" "Only 4 hours left to secure this deal!"
[Wait 1 hour] Follow up with an email showcasing abandoned products with reiteration of urgency in the more immediate message.
[Wait 12 hours] Follow up with another email to call customers back to complete purchase
[Wait 24 hours] Follow up with one last email or SMS with an extra discount to incentivize the customer, but with a time limit.

In this way, you can use email marketing automation to pull indecisive customers back in to purchase, and by adding more channels into the mix, you'll be able to use more immediate channels to express urgency.

Why use both? Because SMS and web push notifications express an immediacy and urgency that email doesn't normally achieve. Email follows up with the information, photos of the product, and support tone that you won’t have space for in SMS and push notifications.

#3. Confirmation Workflows: Instilling Trust in New Customers, and Driving Retention

An order confirmation message instills trust in your customer that their purchase has been received and is being processed. How upset would you be if you didn't have a confirmation message after a purchase?

Now, you can give your customers the power of choice. Where would they prefer their shipping and order updates? Offer something more immediate on your order confirmation page, like a web push notification, SMS message, or Facebook Messenger updates.

This gives your customer the ability to choose the channel they're most comfortable with, and you'll be able to give them instant updates when their package ships.

Try it like this:

SMS/push/Facebook Messenger notification with confirmation of purchase and follow up email
SMS/push/Facebook Messenger notification when products have been shipped and follow up email
SMS/push/Facebook Messenger notification when products are out for delivery and follow up email

Confirmation messages also give you the opportunity to offer a discount for the next purchase. If everything goes well with the current purchase, chances are, your customer will be back for another.

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The holidays are a busy time for everyone, and if you're smart, you're already preparing right now. Luckily, with the right marketing automation tool, you'll be able to get these Black Friday automation workflows set up in a matter of minutes.

Because a few minutes of your time now can earn you quite a bit of revenue in the future, and save you one extra headache during the shopping holidays. Not to mention, you’ll be nurturing brand new relationships with your customers on autopilot.