The opportunities to acquire new customers during Black Friday are immense. Since shoppers online are already bargain hunting, you can easily fall on their radar, allowing you to capture them as customers through your large discounts and enticing products. But, you don’t need to run large ad campaigns to make this possible.
Building subscriber lists within your owned marketing channels is the best way to acquire new shoppers that you can later send your Black Friday promotions to, without bearing large costs.
We want to help you understand why subscriber lists are the best way to acquire customers, especially during Black Friday, and give you a few actionable ways you can capture web push subscribers.
Importance of Building Your Subscriber List for Black Friday
You may be planning to run a brand awareness ad during Black Friday to acquire new visitors. But, with more merchants setting up ads during this time, the costs of running ads is sure to skyrocket. You need an alternative method to reach your target audience instantly without having to spend large ad budgets to do so.
Building your subscriber list before your Black Friday sale can help you save ad costs. By focusing on building your subscriber list in the weeks leading up to the sale, you can promote your Black Friday deals to your extensive subscriber list during the sale with ease.
With ads, your target audience is only going to see your promotions when they are actively browsing a social media platform. However, if you’ve already captured your audience prior to the sale as web push subscribers, you’ll be able to reach your audience instantly within their device screens.
Unlike a more generic ad campaign, you can personalize your web push notifications to the different kinds of subscribers you have— based on how frequently they shop, where they are based, etc. This detailed level of targeting can help you cater to your shoppers and their needs, helping you sell better. Learn more about segmentation.
3 Ways to Build Subscriber Lists With Web Push For Black Friday Marketing
In the weeks leading up to your Black Friday sale, you can hype your upcoming sale across your social media channels and even run ads so that more visitors land on your Shopify store to learn more about your brand. While on your Shopify store, you can get these store visitors to become subscribers with these 3 practices listed below.
1. Add context with your overlay
You’re sure to attract a large number of visitors on your Shopify store. Since these are usually new visitors, they may not be familiar with your upcoming BFCM sale. You need to give them a reason to subscribe to your web push notifications.
Let these visitors know about the perks they will get as web push subscribers. Add an overlay with your browser prompt to add more context and explain the benefits of being a subscriber. You can add an overlay message like “Get access to BFCM deals 5 hours early!” or “Unlock our 50% Black Friday discount early!”
This short message along with your browser prompt will entice your store visitors to join your subscriber list.
Note: Don’t forget to change this overlay message a week before the sale as well as when the sale begins.
For instance, if you are unlocking the sale early, your overlay message a week prior to Black Friday weekend can be ”Our Black Friday deals are live, but only for our subscribers. Unlock the secret code now”.
You can then appropriately change the welcome notification to include this discount code so that subscribers can access it.
2. Integrate with Wheelio to capture subscribers via a pop-up
You can make your web push subscription even more exciting by adding a more interactive element to it. Shoppers love winning rewards and you can set up these offers with a spin wheel pop-up, in an attempt to get them to subscribe.
These pop-ups allow shoppers to win prizes when they subscribe. When shoppers enter their email or subscribe to web push, they get a chance to spin a wheel that features different kinds of prizes, from free shipping to a 15% discount.
The integration between PushOwl and Wheelio allows you to capture subscribers through a spin wheel pop-up. Set up this integration to start collecting web push subscribers through this exciting subscription experience.
3. Give more context about your exciting notifications with a custom prompt
The overlay within the browser prompt has very little space to explain why your store visitors need to subscribe. Some merchants want to explain the benefits of subscribing in more detail or want to set the context to store visitors before showing the browser prompt. This is where the Custom Prompt helps.
The Custom Prompt is a widget that is shown (by default) at the top center of your Shopify store. When shoppers click on this prompt, they are shown the native browser prompt through which they can subscribe to your web push notifications.
Unlike the browser prompt, this widget is customizable. You can edit the Custom Prompt’s placement, timing, design, and copy to match your brand tone and style.
If you are using the Custom Prompt to explain your Black Friday deals to your store visitors, don’t forget to add emojis to your message and use urgency tactics to build hype around your sale. 
Pick up tips and best practices on how you can write your custom prompt copy.
Post-Subscription Experience— Set up a welcome notification that greets these shoppers and hypes them about BFCM
Just capturing your visitors as web push subscribers won’t do. You also need to greet them warmly and set expectations, helping these new subscribers understand when they can expect the early sale or learn how they can prepare for the sale. This can be done with a welcome notification.
Set up your automated welcome notification to inform your shoppers about when the sale will be live and even nudge them to wishlist items.
Be Black Friday Ready With a Web Push Subscriber List
It’s crucial to invest in your owned marketing channels so that you have leaner marketing costs and higher revenue through your marketing efforts. We hope this gave you an idea on how you can turn store visitors into subscribers with web push notification opt-ins.
To help you make the most of Black Friday, we’ve set up an extensive Black Friday checklist to so that you can put your BFCM plan to action and ensure you don’t miss out on even the smallest details.
The toolkit includes—
- What you need to do before, during, and after your Black Friday sale
- Essential apps you need to set up for better design, marketing, and planning
- Deals and discounts from select Shopify apps to help you solve specific requirements you have during the sale weekend.
This article originally appeared by our friends at PushOwl.
