Case Study: Building a Successful Black Friday Marketing Strategy for Essential Jewellery

Essential Jewellery (ESJ) is a family-run business with a chain of successful brick-and-mortar stores accompanied by a strong ecommerce presence. Swanky previously supported the company’s migration from Magento to Shopify, applying our jewellery ecommerce expertise to create a new store and refreshed visual identity for this growing brand.

Following on from this, ESJ engaged our ecommerce growth services, with a particular focus on marketing. Our in-house specialists have delivered a range of services as part of this engagement, including email marketing, Google Ads, paid socials, conversation rate optimisation and data insights.

In this article, we’ll explore how Swanky’s marketing team optimised customer acquisition and engagement over Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2024 – a key trading period for this ambitious jewellery brand.

Our work combined digital marketing and email marketing – a particularly valuable channel for ESJ – to create a 360-degree approach that engaged and nurtured customers through to purchase.

Ecommerce marketing strategy for BFCM

Paid advertising

Google Ads and Meta are the two primary channels for ESJ’s paid marketing.

Ad spend was deployed strategically throughout the year to allow ESJ to significantly scale budgets and make the most of the high-traffic, high-purchase intent throughout the BFCM and holiday gifting periods.

In November and for BFCM itself, we ran an integrated multi-channel campaign across paid search, paid social and email marketing channels. Here is a snapshot of what this entailed:

• Ads were launched early in November on Facebook to allow customers to sign up for exclusive early access to the BFCM sale. This helped generate excitement and momentum leading into the weekend.
• Lead generation from these ads fed straight into Klaviyo, which powered the email marketing efforts for BFCM. Email marketing is a vital channel for ESJ and continued to drive revenue throughout peak season – something we will explore in more detail later in this article.
• Over the BFCM weekend, compelling and creative paid social and Google PMAX ads promoted ESJ’s 15% sitewide discount offer.
• ESJ invests in high-quality ecommerce photography and this was used throughout the marketing channels to present a visually cohesive and desirable brand to customers.

    
Screenshot of sign up form for exclusive BFCM discount. 

The results of the above speak for themselves – by 12pm on Black Friday, ESJ had already beaten their total revenue numbers from the previous Black Friday.

Paid marketing results

ESJ’s preparation and strategy saw great success over BFCM; by 12pm on the Friday, ESJ had already beaten their total revenue numbers from the Black Friday 2023.

The overall performance for November and December 2024 compared to the previous year was as follows:

• 29% revenue increase
• 18% order number increase
• 12% conversion rate increase

Additionally, the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for Google Ads and paid social was 1017% and 632% respectively – with the brand’s average ROAS falling between 400%-700%.

Email marketing

Swanky’s email marketing team implemented Klaviyo into ESJ’s tech stack during the initial migration to Shopify. At this first stage, our Klaviyo experts helped create automations and flows designed to build trust and retain customers.

Over the following year, our Klaviyo support (accompanied by other traffic acquisition marketing efforts) led to the brand’s email subscriber list growing by 145% YoY and has provided a strong foundation to engage users with campaigns throughout the year.

Black Friday is a prime example of this and in 2024 our email marketing team used some simple, but effective, techniques to optimise the revenue opportunities of ESJ’s email subscribers.

Three campaigns were executed for the Black Friday season, each building upon the last and being sent to engaged users only. These led up to the final BFCM discount being released on Friday to all email subscribers.

The first campaign advertised an exclusive, subscriber-only discount that would be shared over Black Friday. A holiday gifting guide accompanied this campaign to engage users further with product recommendations.

Screenshot of first email campaign.

The second campaign was sent out one week before BFCM titled ‘Get Ready for Exclusive Offers!’. This was designed to tease Black Friday offers again and encourage subscribers to look out for an email in their inbox. The email was only sent to engaged subscribers (those who opened or clicked an email in the last 60 days).

Screenshot of second email campaign.

The third and final campaign was again sent only to engaged customers and was a final reminder of ESJ’s discount. This included a countdown timer to increase anticipation and ensure the brand is top-of-mind over the BFCM weekend. Personalised product recommendations were also included in this email, based on the recipient’s recently viewed items.

Screenshot of third email campaign.

Finally, a blanket email was sent to all subscribers sharing the exclusive 20% discount with newsletter readers.

Screenshot of blanket email with exclusive BFCM discount.

Four more campaigns followed over the weekend to serve as reminders and increase urgency to buy before the sale ended. Campaigns were served to readers based on their engagement levels; more engaged users received more emails to encourage purchases, whilst less engaged users saw fewer emails so as not to fill their inboxes unnecessarily.

Email marketing results

ESJ’s overall Klaviyo performance was excellent in November 2024, generating 37% of total business revenue (an increase of 103% YoY compared to November 2023).

More specifically, Black Friday campaigns accounted for 34% of total email revenue for the month. This also marked a 44% increase in campaign revenue compared to the same period last year.

Additionally, the Black Friday period had a positive impact on flow performance, driving 160% more revenue than the same period last year.

Encouraging shoppers to subscribe to email to access exclusive BFCM deals meant ESJ grew their subscriber list by 8% in November alone. We were then able to campaign to these new subscribers over the holiday season, ESJ’s peak period, and thus maximise email revenue.

ESJ’s successful peak season for email was largely as a result of the list growth that preceded the BFCM period itself. This again highlights the importance of preparation and a 360-degree marketing approach, where different channels support each other to execute a shared goal.

Building momentum throughout peak season

For many ecommerce brands, BFCM is followed by a dramatic drop in revenue. We wanted to avoid this and instead use the weekend as a way to increase momentum into the Christmas gifting period.

Once again, this required preparation because creative assets and copy were key to success. We used the same paid ad structure (to build on the learnings we’d gained and optimise spend) and refreshed both imagery and copy to seasonal alternatives.

Revenue increased by 63% from November to December 2024, confirming that we had built momentum throughout the holiday season and maximised the potential of this entire shopping period; not just the BFCM weekend.

Looking to boost the ROI of your marketing efforts?

With a data-driven, multi-channel approach, we create thoughtful marketing strategies that build on a brand’s strengths and adapt to requirements. Our teams can help you optimise marketing for both BFCM and week-to-week campaigns.

Start a conversation with our team today to hear how we can help scale your digital marketing efforts.