How to automate your way to a successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday season

During last year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping period, Texas-based premium Western outfitter Tecovas stepped up its email communications and was rewarded with a 30.5% year-over-year jump in revenue from the channel, an impressive gain for a startup. Heading into the 2023 holiday season, the company is ready to build on last year’s success by expanding from 20 to more than 30 brick-and-mortar stores and projecting more than $200 million in gross sales this year. Here’s a look at how they got their email marketing so right last year, and how they plan to outdo that success this BFCM. Tecovas’ 2022 recipe for success: abandonment automations and more How did Tecovas unlock email revenue growth in 2022? One major new revenue driver: They doubled the number of abandonment automations they had live, and grew their revenue from email automations 138.8%. They tested different content for their flows, too, including follow-up emails asking customers if they had left the site because they needed sizing help or a customer-service consultation, or if they might want to try on boots in-store. “We made sure to have those messages optimized, and then thought carefully about the timing—what, when and how often should we be sending them,” Edwards said. “This year we’re figuring that out now so that during Cyber Week they can just run. And we know they’ll be successful.” Josh Mendelsohn, director of product marketing for marketing automation platform Klaviyo, noted that two types of abandonment are both critical and easy to address. One is browse abandonment flows, that is, sending texts or emails to customers who browsed without adding an item to their cart. The other is cart or checkout abandonment flows, reaching out to those who created a cart but didn’t complete the purchase. “Abandonment flows are really important year-round, but even more so during the holiday season when people are incredibly busy and distractions are everywhere,” he said. “Even a very simple cart-abandonment email or text can bring shoppers back to complete their purchase, but the more personalized it is, the more impactful each message will be.” Mendelsohn said this means reminding shoppers exactly what they left behind by using dynamic images, making it simple to get back to the cart with clear calls to action, and for some brands offering discounts to help people complete the purchase. For Tecovas, last year’s big bump in email revenue was particularly rewarding. “Honestly, you work all year to optimize, setting up those emails for success, and then during those seven to 10 days watching the revenue come in, is so much fun,” Edwards said. Klaviyo’s Mendelsohn points to three other things the retailer did right last Black Friday. 1. A data-centric approach. In the four months leading up to Black Friday, the Tecovas team did a lot of “test and learns.” Priorities included optimizing campaigns and flows through A/B testing and growing the company’s lists, both online and in-person at the company’s retail stores and at events. 2. Benchmarking. Tecovas keeps an eye on overall email trends, and last year also began monitoring Klaviyo’s benchmarking data for a sense of how its campaigns were performing compared with the competition. 3. Segmenting and personalizing. At the beginning of the 2022 holiday sales weekend, the company’s emails spoke to its full list, but then began taking a more targeted approach. The brand wanted to make sure that a new customer felt just as special as a loyal customer. “We thought about which audiences we wanted to talk to, and how,” said Megan Edwards, email marketing manager at Tecovas. “Treating our audiences as individuals and trying to get personalized messaging to them is a huge thing we learned from last year.” Tecovas began using different imagery and pieces of content to make email recipients feel unique and special, “especially at a time of year when their inboxes are going to be crowded,” Edwards added. The big goal for BFCM 2023: use email to drive in-person shopping This year, the Tecovas team is ready to take it to the next level. The retailer said it will be working in particular to connect its online consumers with its stores, and to create hospitable moments in those stores. “We are really leaning into the complimentary services we offer so that if you have to shop on a busy Saturday, maybe we can reward you with something once you’re there,” said Robyn Wedgeworth, senior director of partnerships at Tecovas. “That might be complimentary beverages, gift personalization options or free boot shines as a small touch to reward shoppers.” And, of course, the team has its email calendar and abandonment-flow strategy in place for another successful selling season. “Our goals with our emails are not just conversion,” said Wedgeworth. “We want to grow awareness, we want to build an audience, we want to retain them as customers and we want to create a really great customer experience. Our email effort last year was a way to do all those things.” About Klaviyo Klaviyo (CLAY-vee-oh) powers smarter digital relationships, making it easy for businesses to capture, store, analyze and predictively use their own data to drive measurable, high-value outcomes. Klaviyo’s modern and intuitive SaaS platform enables business users of any skill level to harness their first-party data from more than 300 integrations to send the right message at the right time across email, SMS and push notifications. Innovative businesses like Dermalogica, Living Proof, Citizen Watch, and more than 130,000 other paying users leverage Klaviyo to acquire, engage and retain customers—and grow on their own terms.

How to automate your way to a successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday season

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