Embracing Black Friday

Brief

We worked with AkzoNobel to produce a Black Friday email for their Dulux Trade customers by offering 50% off Dulux Academy courses. With customers already on the hunt for deals, Black Friday offers a great opportunity to drive customers to your site and increase spending.

Dulux Academy is a niche extension to the Dulux Trade brand, which caters to both decorating apprentices and tradespeople. With that in mind, there were two key objectives: to improve upon the current brand awareness of Dulux Academy. But more importantly, to uplift AkzoNobel’s overall sales of their Academy courses.

Approach

Due to the competitive nature of Black Friday, it was obvious that if we were going to produce the desired results for AkzoNobel, we had to cut through the clutter. So, we kept the email’s design simple with a clear message.

Taking a closer look at the email’s design, one of the key features of the postcard sized send was the inclusion of an animated GIF that rotated the 50% off offer. Our copy was direct with a sense of urgency and the subject line was concise, promoting a clear offer ‘Black Friday price drop ⬇️ 50% OFF courses’. Finally, by using an exclusive discount code we could easily track the email’s performance.

Conclusion

Overall, the results were impressive! The open rate stood at 24.64%, meaning that almost 1 in 4 customers who received the email opened it. The Black Friday send also generated a remarkable 19.66% click through rate. 

Jenna Keating, CRM Manager at AkzoNobel confirmed that “a combination of pre-awareness and on the day comms led to us achieving the most successful month ever!”

This proves that with the right offer, it is possible to play the Black Friday hysteria to your advantage. This was certainly the case for Dulux Trade and Dulux Academy.