The Black Friday Sale is a huge event, renowned for steep discounts. You might think that Black Friday is a single-day event, with sales sure to drop off immediately.
But that’s far from the truth.
In fact, Cyber Monday sales figures in 2022 were slightly higher than the 2021 numbers. And the number of orders generated through marketing channels like email, SMS, and push notifications increased last year. This indicates that these channels are reliable for driving more sales during the Cyber Monday sale.
So, how can you leverage Cyber Monday emails to drive your sales this year? To help you, we’ve put together this guide that highlights the different types of Cyber Monday emails you can use to give your sales a boost.
The significance of Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday takes place on the Monday right after the Thanksgiving weekend and is among the biggest sales periods in a calendar year. It’s wildly popular among businesses that want to drive sales and this can be evidenced from the fact that it’s just behind Black Friday when it comes to email sends. A staggering 118 million emails were sent for Cyber Monday in 2022—marking a 29.65% jump over 2021 numbers.
Cyber Monday accounts for over 11.7% of all Cyber 10 orders, making it an important day for your business if you sell electronics or any other digital products.
Add to that the fact that it accounts for over 5.72% of all November orders and you’ve got a combo that can help you drive your revenues higher.
But the cut-throat competition during this period means you have to pull out the all stops to market your products.
Cyber Monday email conversion rates
To showcase how well email marketing is utilized, we simply need to look at the stats—and nothing spells success like high conversion rates.
Cyber Monday emails have been enjoying a steady increase in conversions. The largest leap was from 2019 to 2021, seeing conversion rates shoot up from 5.48% to 12.29%. Naturally, COVID will have affected these numbers, which we have also explored with our COVID marketing research .
However, this increase was clear even before COVID. From 2016, conversion rates for Cyber Monday emails have been increasing.
The question is, how have these increases been achieved? Some may point to the best practices for subject lines in Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails. Others might attribute success to the effectiveness of automated emails .
Both are good answers, yet it’s the latter that showcases real promise. This is plainly shown with our breakdown of conversion rates from automated emails:
As our research shows, among two billion emails, welcome emails and cart abandonment emails enjoyed healthy conversion rates.
These stats show that there’s still a healthy amount of conversions throughout Cyber Monday. Black Friday might be the star of the holiday shopping season, but the full weekend presents opportunities to ecommerce merchants if you can find the best time to send Cyber Monday emails.
You might expect customers to be fatigued after Black Friday, yet the stats show that customers will consistently engage with marketing during this period. Sometimes, they’ll hold out and wait for even more enticing offers—something the overall stats show here.
For example, while Black Friday saw a 75.24% conversion rate for Welcome emails, Cyber Monday saw a 63.38% conversion rate. This may put Black Friday above Cyber Monday, yet the overall conversion rates for Cyber Monday were higher—reaching a campaign conversion rate of 12.29% over Black Friday’s 11.98%.
If there are success stories and tips to take away from this, it’s that focusing on automated abandonment emails can lead to great conversion rates.
7 Cyber Monday email examples and tips for 2023
To help you get set for your Cyber Monday email marketing campaigns, here are some tips and Cyber Monday email examples you can use as inspiration.
1. Stay on topic
Remember, your email campaign is focused on Cyber Monday—ensure it remains related to Cyber Monday.
Your customers will expect sales, discounts and good offers. This is hardly the time to promote a newsletter or share company news—there’s a time and a place for branding your campaigns .
Whether it’s before the holiday season or after, you should set apart time for campaigns not offering sales and discounts. However, during Cyber Monday, your customers expect the kind of offers that made Cyber Monday worth paying attention to in the first place—don’t let them down.
Here’s a great example of a Cyber Monday email from iKhokha. It doesn’t beat around the bush and directly offers a discount on the product to the receivers.
2. Respect your customers’ time
As aforementioned, your customers expect Cyber Monday deals to be worth their time. This includes limited-time offers that make your other discounts seem paltry. If at all possible, they should also make the competition’s discounts unworthy of your customers’ time.
Remember though, discounts have their pros and cons . As is the case with any offers, you should approach Cyber Monday with a clear discount pricing strategy .
Here’s a good example of a brand respecting the customers’ time. Note how Lifesum auto-applies the discount code to make the entire checkout process hassle-free for its customers.
3. Write a compelling subject line
Your email’s copy might be great, but to get recipients to open your email, it’s essential to catch their attention in their inboxes.
And that’s where subject lines come into the picture. A compelling subject line can make a huge difference to your open rate and this could directly impact your email conversion rates too.
So, how can you write a powerful subject line?
Use Omnisend’s Subject Line Generator to come up with impactful email subject lines and test them out using A/B tests to figure out which ones drive more clicks.
Case in point: note how the below email from Teachable has a prominent subject line that attracts people by highlighting that they’ll save money by opening the email.
Subject line: Cyber Monday starts now! Check inside for savings ✨
4. Cyber Monday emails as part of Cyber 10
A good merchant should focus not only on one series of emails, but how they work with the campaign as a whole. Consider how your Cyber Monday emails work with the likes of Black Friday emails.
Make things as clear as possible for yourself and lay out them in the timeline. “Cyber Week” means that you’ll have to consider Cyber 10, as Chad White commented:
“Deals have been released a day early on what’s been called “Cyber Sunday” and have increasingly been extended into “Cyber Tuesday.” More than that, the percentage of retailers sending email to their subscribers during the three days following Cyber Monday are almost exactly equal to the three days preceding Black Friday. So there’s nice symmetry going into and out of the critical Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend.”
Chad White , Research Director at Litmus
Here’s a great example of a Cyber Monday email that’s positioned well as a part of Cyber 10. Note how Etsy has highlighted Cyber Week in the email instead of just mentioning Cyber Monday.
5. Make sure your emails are mobile friendly
Mobile-friendly emails are an essential nowadays. Year by year, more customers are using their mobile devices to make online purchases. Non-responsive emails are quickly becoming even more off-putting to customers—so much so that it might totally prevent them from engaging with any marketing.
It might seem obvious to make emails readable for all of your subscribers. However, it’s worth keeping this in mind when designing your emails and crafting your campaigns.
Here’s a good example of a Cyber Monday email from Code Academy with a mobile-friendly design. Note how it has a vertical design, which makes it easy to scroll. This delivers a great reader experience.
6. Keep social media in mind
Running a successful business, you should value every customer’s touch to your brand. Since they have engaged with your email, invite them to connect on social media and to follow you. If they do, you’ll have even more channels to reach them.
The evolution of social media networks creates a direct selling channel for your customers. Don’t miss the opportunity to put the big social buttons on your Cyber Monday emails.
This email from EmailTees gets the social media angle right. Note how it clearly asks recipients to follow them on Twitter and Instagram with links to their social accounts.
7. Keep the email structure solid
Above all else, remember the essentials—creating a solid email that makes it easy to engage with your store. Think about the email structure and ask yourself some important questions. You can opt to clearly display your promoted products, showcase your offers and deals, or aim for a combination of the both.
Note how the below email from Desigual has a solid email structure. It has all the clothes categories neatly laid out at the top. Additionally, the offer appears right in the center.
Best time to send Cyber Monday emails
Getting your timing for sending Cyber Monday emails right is critical for the campaign’s success. You want the emails to hit the receivers’ inboxes when they’re likely to open them. For the last few years, the peak time for sending emails has been from 12-1 p.m. EST.
However, remember that there will be many Cyber Monday deals to compete with. With this in mind, you should weigh the benefits of sending them at this popular time or sending them earlier, and if you already have data on your audience’s preferred time to open an email, use it here.
Wrap up
There are many ways you can innovate during Cyber Monday. These tips can help you with this, but we also know that there’s plenty to contend with during the Cyber 10 period. For example, Black Friday needs its own special type of email campaigns.
However you handle Cyber Monday, remember that you can make life easier and your conversion rates better with Omnisend. Try Omnisend for free today and supercharge your sales.