Cut these subscribers before your Black Friday sendBlack Friday is November 27th, and that week youâll send more email than any other week of the year. Gmail and Yahoo decide where all of it lands by watching what people do with it: who opens, who scrolls right past, and who hits the spam button. Most of the time the offer gets three meetings, the calendar gets a color-coded spreadsheet, and the list goes out as one big segment called All Subscribers. Thatâs fine when everyone on it wants to hear from you, and itâs a problem when a chunk of them stopped reading back in April, because they drag your best customers down with them. If you did the August cleanup from Ed 398, youâre already ahead. This is the next step: who gets which email in the one week it actually counts. Sort your list into three groups this weekBlock out an hour this afternoon and build three segments in your ESP. Skip opens for this (Apple Mail Privacy Protection has made them pretty unreliable) and use clicks, site visits, and orders wherever youâve got them: Engaged: clicked, visited, or bought in the last 90 days. They get the whole Black Friday run. Quiet: nothing in 90 days, but some sign of life in the last 180. They get one shot (more on that below). Gone: nothing in 180 days or more, plus anyone whoâs bounced. They sit this one out.
Then look at how big each one is. If Gone is more than about a third of your list, every full-list send youâve done this year has been hauling around people who were never going to read it, and cutting them will do more for your inbox placement than any subject line test. Send to your engaged group firstYour engaged people get everything: early access, launch day, the reminders, Cyber Monday on the 30th. Send to them an hour or two before anyone else each day, so the first opens and clicks Gmail sees come from people who actually wanted the email. BaubleBar did a version of this with âHey VIP! Black Friday starts NOWâ: 35% off everything with the code VIP35, and a 12-hour window just for VIPs. You know who itâs for before you even open it, and it gives the brand a reason to hit its best customers before the rest of the list. 
Verified send: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/hey-vip-black-friday-starts-now PIONEER took it a step further with âMembers Only Black Friday đâ and kept the whole sale for subscribers, with a personal code promised on the Friday. If youâre already running early access, youâve basically built this segment, and the people who get in first are the same people whose opens set you up for everything after. 
Verified send: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/members-only-black-friday Give the quiet group one chance, not fiveThis is the group everyoneâs nervous about cutting, and fair enough, because some of them really will buy on Black Friday if they hear from you. Send them all seven of your BFCM emails, though, and youâll find out pretty fast that the rest wonât (usually via the spam button). Send them one email this week, before the sale starts, with a real reason to come back. AILLEAâs âWeâve missed you.â is a good model: it reminds them theyâve bought before, asks how itâs going, and points them at the new collection, no discount in sight. Move anyone who clicks into Engaged before Friday the 20th so they get the full run. Everyone else gets the launch email and thatâs it. One send on the big day, and they skip the reminders.
Verified send: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/weve-missed-you Take these people off the send completelyGone comes off every BFCM send. Move them to a suppression segment so theyâre still on file if they wander back in January, and while youâre in there, add these to the same list: Anyone whoâs bounced in the last 90 days, soft or hard. Role addresses like info@ and sales@. Thereâs almost never a buyer behind those. Giveaway and contest signups from the last month who havenât opened anything. They were there for the prize, and a week of sale emails is the fastest way to get a spam complaint out of them.
Yes, your send count is going to look smaller on Black Friday morning. Your revenue per send goes up, though, because the people you cut werenât going to open it anyway. Check your spam rate an hour after you hit sendGoogle and Yahoo want spam complaints under 0.3%, and you really want to stay under 0.1%. Black Friday is when a lot of brands blow past it, because itâs the day send volume and half-forgotten subscribers both peak. Your ESP will show complaints on the campaign report within the hour (Google Postmaster Tools catches up about a day later). If that first send on the 27th comes back over 0.1%, pull the quiet group from the afternoon reminder and send it to Engaged only. Get it all set up by Friday the 20thBuild the three segments this week, get the quiet group its one email by the weekend, and lock your suppression list a week before Black Friday. That gives you time to double-check the counts and fix whichever segment came out wrong (itâs usually Quiet, because someone set 90 days in one filter and 180 in the other). | 
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