I think you can all agree with me on this:

It's REALLY hard to stand out in your customers' inboxes during the Black Friday sales rush.

But is it really?

What if I told you there's a way you can make sure that your emails not only get opened 20%more than your competitors' emails...

...but that you'll also get a click rate that's 15% higher than average?

In today's post, I'm going to show you exactly how you can get those same rates using real-life data from actual ecommerce stores.

That way, you can prepare yourself for super sales this Black Friday.


What's the data?

Look:

I know you're smart, so I'm not going to beat around the bush here: you probably want to know what data I'm using to back up my claims.

At Omnisend (previously Soundest), we really love to dig into the data and get the answers to our customers' burning questions.

So I took a little trip down memory lane and checked out the Black Friday campaigns from last year for emails sent between November 25 - November 28, 2016.

Specifically, I looked at 1,447 subject lines from more than 900 merchants using our email marketing platform.

I looked at what words were used most often, and which words or phrases led to the highest open and click rates.

(With better click rates, you get more qualified subscribers to your store and more people to buy your products.)

These are the words I looked at:

  • Black Friday
  • Cyber Monday
  • Holiday
  • Sale
  • Off
  • %
  • Free
  • Now
  • Soon
  • Save
  • Don't Miss

And the results were pretty eye-opening. I saw that with the right combination of keywords in your subject lines, you can make sure your emails are highly converting.

Let's look at the results.


The most popular terms: Black Friday and %

When I looked at these Black Friday subject lines, I wanted to see first of all what the most popular terms were.

Omnisend data shows merchants used the term "Black Friday" in almost half of all their subject lines (44.7%), while only 7.8% used the term "Cyber Monday."

That's logical, seeing as most customers know the entire weekend by the term "Black Friday" and only a few use "Cyber Monday."

You can also notice that the second-most popular term is the percentage sign (%), coming in at 32.8%.

Now:

How do these phrases actually work?

We now know that the most popular phrases are "Black Friday," "%," "Sale" and "Off."

But now we want to know how effectivethey are. That means we'll need to look at the open rates and even the click rates.


The best open and click rates: "Free" and "Holiday"

But wait: what do subject lines have to do with click rates?

You know that they affect open rates, but your subject lines also set your subscribers' expectations for what they'll get in the actual email.

If you promise something in the subject line that the email doesn't deliver, they won't click anywhere, so you'll get a low click rate.

(And if your subject lines set low expectations, then no one will even open your emails in the first place.)

In the Omnisend merchant data, you can see that what the best performing terms are for Black Friday subject lines:

As you can see, the top 3 are:

  • Free
  • Holiday
  • Black Friday

"Free" is the best performing term for subject lines, with a 20% higher open rate and 15% higher click rate compared to average open and click rates.

But you should take this with a grain of salt.

Only 5% of all emails I looked at used "free" in their subject lines, so that means I ended up with a smaller sample size for that term.

"Holiday" has a similar story. It has a great open rate (23.6%) and fine click rate (4%), but again the sample size is small:

Only 1.5% of all subject lines used this term.

Finally, we come to the star of the show: the term "Black Friday." It has a strong open rate of 22.1% and 4.5% click rate (the average campaign open rate is 19% with a 4% click rate).

You can see why "Black Friday" is the most popular term to use in Black Friday email campaigns—it leads to a great amount of conversions (and sales).

Looking further, you can see that "Sale," "Cyber Monday" and "%" come in at the top as well.

But there's one important thing to note here:

Don't disappoint.

Your customers are expecting great deals, so give them great deals. And then tell them they're getting great deals with good subject lines.

Your subject lines should probably include at least "Black Friday," "Sale" and "%" in any combination.

You can also throw in "Off" and "Free" in there.


8 great Black Friday subject line examples

Look:

Like I said, I know you're smart.

But I know you also are wondering:

So what's the best subject line?

From the Omnisend data, we've come up with these terms that have great conversion rates:

  • Black Friday
  • Sale
  • %
  • Off
  • Free

So now you need to figure out which terms, or combination of terms, most applies to what you're selling.

Depends on what you're offering.

#1 Free shipping

If I were you, I would make sure that I have some sort of free shipping for my ecommerce products.

So, for that reason, my perfect subject line would be:

Free Shipping on Black Friday Orders Above $20

Get free shipping this Black Friday on everything over $20

You can adapt it to make free shipping for everything—whatever your offer is.

#2 Huge discounts

If I'm doing huge discounts on most or all of my products, I'd go with:

Black Friday Sale. 50% Off Entire Store.

Black Friday weekend - save 50% on EVERYTHING

#3 Urgency

You should use urgency in your subject lines closer to Cyber Monday, but you can even use it before Black Friday.

Huge Black Friday sale—last chance for massive savings!

50% Off Everything. Get Yours Now—Sale Ends Monday

#4 Mix and match

Of course, if you have a lot of great offers, you can mix and match these concepts as much as you need.

Massive Black Friday Sales + Free Shipping On Everything

Black Friday Weekend - 50% Off Sale + Free Shipping Ends Monday


Should you use CAPS or lowercase?

When it comes to subject lines, try not to overdo it.

Your subscriber's email service will throw you straight into the abyss known as the Spam folder.

In order to avoid that, it's probably not a good idea to use ALL CAPS.

But that doesn't mean you can't use any caps.

At most, just use one word to caps in your entire subject line. Even better, do it only for a few of your emails, and not for each email.

For the question of cases, you should be consistent.

If all your subject lines have always been like this (known as the title case):

This Is a Subject Line

...use that same system in all your emails.

If your subject lines are sentence case:

This is a subject line

...then keep that system.

Be consistent (don't use both in the same subject line) and give your subscribers irresistible offers.

Then, with these data-backed, power-packed subject lines, there's no reason why you can boost your sales this Black Friday weekend.

That's the key to huge sales for the biggest shopping weekend of the year.

Listen, I want to know what's worked for you in your past Black Friday campaigns. Did you use these tactics, or do you have some other great tips to share with our readers?

Send me a tweet, @bernardgmeyer, and let me know how it goes!