Nailing your Black Friday email subject lines—and, in fact, all of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday messaging—is a fine line to walk.
You need to strike a balance between your own creativity with data-powered insights. You need to stand out in inboxes that are flooded with hot deals, special offers, and seasonal content. Now, more than ever, the pressure is on.
To help, here is a list of the top 10 creative trends we’ve discovered in marketing messaging for seasonal sales, Black Friday email subject lines, Cyber Monday promotions, and more. As Backstroke’s email subject line generator is trained on 10k+ email marketing programs, this analysis is a very thorough and highly accurate means of showing email marketers exactly what is being sent within their industries.
Whether you choose to hop onboard these trends—or totally buck them—is up to you. Either way, these 10 insights will help you develop the most effective Black Friday email subject lines and AI messages for email’s busiest day of the year.
10 Trends to Help You Write Your Best Black Friday Email Subject Lines
- We start to see Black Friday mentions in subject lines as early as the beginning of September. This means that many brands are already sending seasonal messaging right now.
Whether you’re already sending this email content, or need help to get started, you can check out our Holiday Email Marketing Guide, which has tutorials on how to generate AI messages tailored to fit your Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday promotions. - Send volume skyrockets the week of Black Friday. Black Friday itself is quite literally email’s busiest day! In fact, during the week of Black Friday, send volume increases 170%. And throughout the week of Cyber Monday, it’s up 107%.
With so much competition, it’s absolutely imperative that your messages stand out in inboxes. Whether you’re optimizing for text or email, here are 6 charts that show how to make that messaging stand out. - When observing these ongoing Pre-Black Friday promotions, data informs us that Title Case is most commonly used in email subject lines.
For example, it’s more common for a brand to send something like “It’s The Big Day” than “IT’S THE BIG DAY” or “It’s the big day!”
Despite the popularity of Title Case, there are a handful of ALL CAPS words that are popular. Some of the most common capitalized words are: NOW, EARLY ACCESS, and VIP. - On Black Friday itself, it is most common for brands to send messages without emojis. Black Friday email subject lines with zero emojis are sent 1,810% more often than subject lines that include an emoji. This means that, if emojis are on-brand for you, you have an opportunity to stand out in subscribers’ crowded inboxes!
We see that brands who do send Black Friday email subject lines that include emojis are most likely to include the 🖤emoji in their copy. You can explore other emoji trends that make for eye catching email subject lines in your industry in Backtroke’s Trends Lite Dashboard. - Pre-Black Friday messages tend to be very neutral within their emotional sentiment. As Backstroke’s AI understands emotions within copywriting and how audiences respond to those emotions, it has also uncovered that the second-most commonly sent emotional sentiment is positivity.
- When it comes to an analysis of specific emotions sent on Black Friday itself though, we see that the top three most commonly-sent emotions are anticipation, fear, and joy. This means that there is a greater variety of content hitting inboxes on the big day . . . and you can either hop on-board with it or try to generate AI messages with a totally different emotional charge.
- When it comes to Black Friday email subject lines, data tells us that partial caps are sent 244% more often than subject lines that are in ALL CAPS.
Interestingly, different generations have very different preferences when it comes to letter capitalization in subject lines. (BOOMERS LOVE IT.) Check out our guide “From Boomers to Zoomers: Personalized Subject Lines that Connect with Each Generation” to see how to take advantage of cross-generational email trends. - Looking at trends for Cyber Monday, we see that no emoji subject lines are also more commonly sent, compared to subject lines that contain emojis. In fact, Cyber Monday email subject lines with zero emojis are sent 1,893% more than subject lines with emojis. Consider this an opportunity to include them!
The most popular emoji to include in Cyber Monday email subject lines is 🚨. - Cyber Monday email subject lines tend to be long. In fact, subject lines that are longer than 6 words are sent 19% more often than subject lines that are shorter than 6 words.
- And finally, Backstroke analyzed which phrases are most frequently used within Black Friday email subject lines and beyond. We see several commonly used phrases and words trending across email promotions.
Across Pre-Black Friday email subject lines, the most commonly sent phrases include: Early Access, Biggest Sale of the Year, and Cyber Week.
For the big day itself, Black Friday’s most commonly sent subject line phrases include: Our Black Friday Sale, Black Friday Starts Now, and Shop Our Black Friday.
When looking at Cyber Monday email subject lines, we see that the most frequently sent phrases are: Cyber Week, Starts Now, and Cyber Monday Sale.
Considering the frequency in which these phrases are sent, we suggest you generate some stand-out subject lines in Backstroke’s email subject line generator! You can make them as spicy or buttoned-up as your brand requires—but no matter what—its outputs are predicted to perform.
Generate your most effective Black Friday email subject lines now!
