Black Friday is an annual milestone in the retail calendar. It falls the day after American Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, and marks the start of the holiday shopping season. This year, Black Friday falls on 25th November.
How did Black Friday get its name?
As the story goes, US consumers would often take the day after Thanksgiving off work to enjoy a four-day weekend. As a result, hundreds and thousands of people would take the opportunity to start their holiday shopping, and this influx of shoppers led to traffic jams, accidents and an increase in crime. A huge headache for Police, the name ‘Black Friday’ was coined.
While the name ‘Black Friday’ has negative connotations, retailers decided to give it a positive spin, spreading the word that this busy shopping day boosted profits from the red to the black.
Today, Black Friday continues to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year, where retailers promote their products and services with attractive discounts. Moreover, it’s become a worldwide event, with many retailers extending it beyond Friday, with Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
Some larger retailers start their sales even earlier. Last year, Black Friday was on 26th November, but Amazon began its sale as early as 8th November. And it wasn’t the only one! Other big retailers like Argos and John Lewis started early too.
Black Friday Statistics
According to a new study by Emarsys, one in five UK consumers will increase their Black Friday spending from 2021 levels, despite the cost-of-living crisis. The study also found that 1 in 10 people will use the occasion to complete most of their Christmas shopping.
The average UK consumer is expected to spend £283 over the Black Friday weekend, a 25% increase from £226 in 2021.
Travel Deal Tuesday
For airport marketers, it’s worth honing in on the Tuesday after Black Friday, which is often referred to as ‘Travel Deal Tuesday.’ This day hits the sweet spot between the holidays when people are likely to book their winter travel.
Known as the best day for travel deals, consumers expect money-saving discounts on flight, hotel and holiday bookings. So it’s worth capitalising on this captive audience and unlocking even more revenue for your airport.
Get creative with your offers, use your data to provide personalised discounts and create a buzz with your airport marketing. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of new flight routes and destinations and ensure everyone knows they can book directly with your airport.
10 Black Friday Marketing Tips for Airports
Make the most of Black Friday at your airport with Rezcomm. Below we’ve shared some of our top marketing tips to help you increase conversions and boost revenue through your airport’s ecommerce platform.
1. Review your airport ecommerce website
Before marketing your airport’s Black Friday offers, you must ensure your tech is working correctly. Test your airport website to ensure it can handle a massive influx of traffic during the Black Friday weekend and Travel Deal Tuesday.
It’s also essential to ensure that your homepage and any dedicated Black Friday landing pages contain working links, banners and enticing call to action buttons. There’s little point in sharing fantastic offers if your airport website is slow or links aren’t working correctly. Make it easy for customers to book flights, holidays and hotels with your airport, and ensure that your Black Friday discount codes work before you share them.
2. Create a Black Friday content marketing plan for your airport
Don’t let your airport’s amazing deals get lost in the Black Friday rush. Start your Black Friday marketing campaign early and ensure you know exactly what you will post, where and when. Build anticipation for your airport’s Black Friday deals using a variety of content types, including marketing emails, SMS and push notifications and visual social media posts.
User-generated content and partnerships with travel influencers and micro-influencers are great for boosting engagement and trust with social media users. What’s more, video content on TikTok and Instagram reels is hugely popular and well worth experimenting with if you haven’t already.
Don’t hesitate to reveal your airport’s Black Friday offers and deals a little early. Offering customers a ‘sneak peek’, and teasers of your upcoming deals is great for piquing their interest and getting them excited. Plus, you might consider offering exclusive Black Friday deals to email subscribers to help build your airport’s email list before the big day.
3. Optimise your content with Black Friday keywords
Any airport marketing content you create for Black Friday needs to feature relevant keywords to help boost your ecommerce website’s search engine rankings. Naturally, there will be a lot of competition for keywords like ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday,’ so consider other niche long-tail keywords and phrases people will search for. For example, ‘Black Friday flight deals’ or ‘Travel Deal Tuesday holiday discounts.’
It’s also worth looking at the previous year’s data and keyword research to see what customers typed in to reach your airport website. Then, use relevant keywords in your airport’s Black Friday landing page content, blog posts and advertisements to increase your online visibility and drive traffic to your website.
4. Use customer testimonials & social proof
Trust and credibility are always important to ecommerce shoppers, even more so during Black Friday sales. Consumers want to feel confident in booking flights with your airport and will look for proof that what you’re offering isn’t too good to be true.
Leverage customer testimonials and social proof to increase prospective customers’ trust in your airport. Display reviews on your airport’s homepage, in your marketing emails and on Black Friday landing pages with a clear Call to Action. Encourage new customers to join your existing loyal customers in booking the best flight and hotel deals with your airport. Use language that induces feelings of FOMO (fear of missing out) and time sensitivity to encourage customers to book now rather than dwelling on their purchasing decision.
5. Personalise your airport’s Black Friday deals
Create a positive customer experience by personalising your Black Friday marketing content and deals. Draw valuable data about your existing customers and email subscribers from your airport’s CRM and use it to send customers the Black Friday content and offers they’re most likely to be interested in. Rezcomm’s Drag & Drop Email Builder makes it easy to create personalised marketing emails quickly.
It’s also worth evaluating the best way to segment your airport email marketing list for Black Friday offers to ensure you drive traffic and increase conversions from new and existing customers. If you have an airport loyalty and rewards scheme, consider offering double points on Black Friday bookings or a similar offer to keep loyal customers engaged and increase their lifetime value to your airport.
6. Write a killer subject line for Black Friday emails
Around 645 million promotional emails are sent out every Black Friday, so your airport’s emails must stand out in people’s inboxes. We’ve already mentioned the advantage of getting in early and offering sneak peeks of your Black Friday offers, but it’s also essential to write killer email subject lines.
You need to find the balance of making it more exciting than the boring ‘Black Friday Offers’ email subject and something that’s too ambiguous. Test different subject lines for different segments of your airport’s email subscribers and personalise it for them.
7. Optimise social media content with Black Friday hashtags
It’s wise to ramp up your airport’s social media efforts in the run-up to Black Friday to drive as much traffic as you can to your ecommerce website. Extend your reach and increase visibility by using relevant Black Friday hashtags. Use a mixture of generic and high volume hashtags like #BlackFridayDeals and niche low volume hashtags like #BlackFridayTravel. Hashtags are particularly important on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Use Rezcomm’s handy Social Media Scheduler to efficiently plan, review and publish your Black Friday marketing content across all networks.
8. Inspire customers with a holiday gift guide
With 76% of consumers saying they’d rather spend money on experiences than material items, creating a holiday gift guide to promote your airport’s flight, holiday and hotel bookings is a good idea. Feature your holiday gift guide on your airport’s blog or create a landing page for it. Either way, it’s essential to make sure it is optimised with your Black Friday offers and enticing Call to Action buttons.
Share your holiday gift guide on your airport’s social media platforms and within your marketing emails. It’s also a great opportunity to partner with airport retailers, restaurants and experience providers to market their products and services in return for a share of the profits.
9. Make use of Cart Abandonment emails
With so many online shoppers looking for the best travel deals on Black Friday, there’s a chance you’ll see an increase in cart abandonment. Prepare for it with email marketing automation.
A cart abandonment workflow will ensure that if a shopper adds flights, parking or a reservation to their basket but doesn’t complete the purchase, they are reminded to do so via a personalised email. Once someone triggers the abandoned cart workflow, your email system will fire off an email that encourages them and tempts them to return to your airport ecommerce website and complete their purchase.
If the first reminder doesn’t work, you might want to consider offering another product recommendation or even an extra discount to gain that all-important conversion.
In 2019, Black Friday cart abandonment emails had a whopping 42.6% conversion rate, meaning that nearly half of the people who received an automated message returned to complete their purchase.
Cart abandonment emails for Black Friday are easy to set up with Rezcomm’s Email Sending Service.
10. Don’t forget in-terminal marketing for Black Friday
While it’s great that you’ve got your Black Friday digital marketing campaigns ready to go, it’s important not to forget about offline marketing. Capture more conversions over Black Friday by creating dedicated offers for passengers passing through your terminals. For example, use attractive marketing displays in arrivals with QR codes that passengers can scan with their smartphones to reach a Black Friday offer page.
In terminal marketing can help you to:
- Generate conversions from passengers who have just returned from their holiday and are desperate to book another one.
- Increase awareness of your flights, holiday and hotel bookings amongst passengers who are flying from your airport but didn’t book with you.
- Encourage passengers to make additional purchases while at the airport (in your restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores.)
- Increase the chances of customers booking several services with your airport next time (with an offer like buy flights & get 50% off parking).
Create a Black Friday Email Marketing Campaign for your Airport
Now we’ve looked at some airport marketing ideas for Black Friday, let’s focus on creating that all-important email marketing campaign. After all, email still has the highest ROI of marketing efforts.
As we mentioned earlier, your customers are likely overwhelmed with Black Friday marketing emails, so a captivating subject line is vital.
It’s also important not to treat Black Friday as an isolated event. By this, we mean it will take more than just a single marketing email from your airport on the day to gain conversions. We’d recommend putting together a series of automated Black Friday emails for your airport customers. Here’s an example of what it should include:
Announcement Email – Get in early on Black Friday and announce when your sale will start and how it will work. Include a button that customers can click to ‘add to calendar’ so they will be reminded of your airport’s Black Friday event.
Preview Email – Make sure customers don’t forget about your upcoming Black Friday deals. Pique their interest with a sneak peek of your discounts and offers. You might also want to consider offering email subscribers exclusive early bird access to your Black Friday sale to reward them for their loyalty to your airport.
Offer / Sale Email – How you email customers during your Black Friday event will depend on your available offers and discounts. For example, some airports might want to create a series of ‘daily deals’ marketing emails that go out to all subscribers or various segments. Others might want to create more personalised Black Friday emails with offers based on customers’ previous bookings and interests.
Cart Abandonment Email – As discussed earlier, it’s wise to set up a cart abandonment email workflow to engage with prospective customers who have shown interest in a product or service but have not completed their purchase.
Last Chance Email – As your airport’s Black Friday sale winds down, send out a reminder email to your customers. The time sensitivity of your offers will likely drive even more traffic and conversions.
Thank You Email – Don’t forget to thank customers for their Black Friday bookings with your airport. Use the ‘thank you email’ to remind them how to manage their booking and include relevant cross-sells and upsells that encourage them to spend more money with your airport. In addition, ask customers if they would like to sign up for your airport’s loyalty scheme and consider an incentive like ‘double points’ for Black Friday customers.
Sale Extended Email – Fancy one last attempt to unlock revenue from Black Friday flight bookings? Send customers a ‘Sale Extended’ email giving them a final chance to make the most of your offers and discounts. Include a visual countdown timer in your airport marketing email to create a sense of urgency.
Expert airport marketing support
Enjoyed reading through our Black Friday marketing tips for airports? Feel like you’ve learnt something new? There’s more where that came from!
Discover our industry-leading marketing modules for airports and Book a Meeting with our airport marketers to improve your campaigns and build your airport brand long-term.
As Director of Communications Sarah oversees project management at Rezcomm and works with clients to deliver their ecommerce projects efficiently, on time and on budget.
