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Small Business Saturday Email Ideas to Make Your Local Business Stand Out

Beefree team
Beefree team
Oct 22, 2020
Small Business Saturday Email Ideas to Make Your Local Business Stand Out
Small Business Saturday Email Ideas to Make Your Local Business Stand Out

Small businesses, are you ready to market yourself on Small Business Saturday? This is an important holiday for local businesses, so seize the opportunity to help yours stand out. Check out these Small Business Saturday email marketing ideas to help inspire your campaign.

Small Business Saturday is an important holiday for local businesses. Seize the opportunity to help yours stand out.

What is Small Business Saturday?

Small Business Saturday takes place on the last Saturday in November. This annual holiday is a chance to shop small, helping small businesses get the recognition and revenue they deserve. (Curious whether your business counts as a small business? Check out this size standards tool created by the U.S. Small Business Administration.)Coming right on the heels of the feeding frenzy that is Black Friday, Small Business Saturday is a welcome change. This holiday was created by American Express to celebrate the small businesses in your local community. It’s been around for the past decade and counting and produces extra revenue from holiday shoppers: In 2019, Small Business Saturday generated $19.6 billion in reported spending. There's an incentive for consumers to participate: American Express offers them cash back on purchases made at small businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.As a small business yourself, this is a day that you can’t overlook. This holiday is growing in visibility each year. And investing in some Small Business Saturday marketing is definitely in your best interests.Set yourself apart by creating a strong email campaign. Email marketing is a great choice for small businesses that want to make a big impact. Free marketing tools like the BEE email editor can help you design beautiful emails with no coding knowledge — helping your email ROI increase. Let’s take a look at a few Small Business Saturday email ideas.

Small Business Saturday email ideas

Don’t get lost in the shuffle between Black Friday and Cyber Monday — remind your customers that you have a lot of great deals and products heading their way!

Segment your audience

Segment your audience by geographic region to make sure people get the email that’s most relevant to them. If you’re a local business, this still applies: Segment people according to their specific zip code. This Tie Bar message uses clever copy to encourage readers to seek out their local Tie Bar store.Subject line: It’s Small Business Saturday! Grab your free socks. 

small business saturday email ideas

Offer a special discount

Small Business Saturday might be the perfect time to launch a new product, or create a special bundle of products that are on sale. That’s what Catbird did here, advertising a group of products that went on sale for Small Business Saturday. Think about which of your products you could bundle together to sell at a reduced cost. Then consider what would be the most effective way to advertise this promo in your Small Business Saturday email.Subject line: We made something small, shiny & new ?

small business saturday marketing ideas

Take advantage of neighborhood networking

Small Business Saturday is all about supporting the small businesses around you. So don’t be afraid to do just that! Try partnering with another local small business and creating a joint sale. A coffee shop and a bakery could team up, offering lattes and cupcakes at a reduced price for both. Larger brands can also get in on the fun. Brooklinen used its platform to encourage customers to #shopsmall.Subject line: Shop small with us

small business saturday partnership email

Give your customers context

While most people are probably familiar with the concept of Small Business Saturday, it never hurts to dive a little deeper. Use your Small Business Saturday email to further explain the idea behind this day. Otherwild describes just why Small Business Saturday is so important and how it helps community-focused small businesses keep their doors open.Subject line: Support small businesses 

small business saturday email example

Include catchy Small Business Saturday email subject lines

Judging from our inbox, most businesses marking the day mention Small Business Saturday in their subject lines. Others play off of the phrase “shop small.” We also recommend including your specific deal or promotion in the subject line; after all, that’s what people are looking for during the holidays. Their minds are still in discount mode the day after Black Friday. So adding numbers and percentages in the subject line could help increase your open rate.

small business saturday email ideas

Add a countdown timer to increase hype

Countdown timers have a lot of benefits. These dynamic, real-time elements are a great way to jazz up your email and create a sense of urgency. And adding a countdown timer to an email isn’t as difficult as you might think. While not a Small Business Saturday email specifically, this Lands’ End email has a great countdown timer that grabs your attention right off the bat.Subject line: Countdown’s on: 50% off 1 ends tonight

countdown timer in email

Wrap-up: Celebrate Small Business Saturday in style

Use the BEE email editor to bring your Small Business Saturday marketing ideas to life! BEE is a great tool for small local businesses. The editor is 100% free to use, with a template catalog full of 500+ professionally designed email templates available, including a set of Small Business Saturday email templates. Use BEE’s email editor to create your Small Business Saturday emails this year!

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two emails about small business Saturday

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Why use Beefree for professional email campaigns?

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of using Beefree, let's quickly go over why this tool is worth your time. There are a lot of email marketing tools out there, but Beefree stands out from the crowd for a reason. Let’s break down the unique benefits that make it an invaluable asset for anyone serious about email marketing:

Design made easy:

According to HubSpot, well-designed emails can drive open rates as high as 30%. Maybe you’re following up with leads from a recent webinar or you want to reach potential clients after a product launch. But you're finding yourself stuck because crafting professional emails and landing pages that capture attention is no easy feat.

With Beefree’s intuitive design tools and a library of over 1,700 templates tailored for various industries and purposes, you can achieve professional results without the guesswork. The wide variety of pre-designed options ensures that you can find a solution that aligns perfectly consistent with your brand.

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Time-saving features:

Speed is key, especially if you’re running time-sensitive campaigns. Beefree simplifies the design process with reusable content blocks, real-time collaboration tools, and the ability to transform emails into landing pages with a single click. These features enable you to produce high-quality materials in less time, allowing you to focus on strategy and content rather than struggling with technicalities.

According to a Beefree report, 82% of users report faster email creation. The ability to save and sync reusable content blocks means you can replicate what’s working without reinventing the wheel each time. Once you find a winning format, you can use it again and again with minor tweaks to fit the audience or campaign.

Maybe you’re following up with leads from a recent webinar or you want to reach potential clients after a product launch. With Beefree’s templates, you can get those messages out quickly and make sure your brand stays top-of-mind for your audience.
Using email cadence software like QuickMail ensures that outreach campaigns maintain a structured and effective flow, preventing overwhelming inboxes while keeping engagement high.

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Increased engagement:

A significant 64% of Beefree users report an 11% or more increase in click-through rates after using the platform. By enhancing the visual appeal and personalization of your emails, Beefree helps you achieve better engagement with your audience. The ability to test and iterate your designs ensures continuous improvement in performance.

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Getting started with Beefree templates

Alright, now that you know why Beefree is so powerful, let’s talk about how you can get started with their massive library of templates. This section will walk you through choosing and customizing a template that works for you.

1. Choose your template

The first thing you want to do is pick a template. Beefree’s catalog has templates for just about every sector—whether you're in retail, healthcare, SaaS, you name it. With a variety of options, you can find something that suits your goals perfectly, whether for a simple newsletter or detailed marketing report templates. Say you're promoting a webinar—just pick a template that’s built to highlight your CTAs, and you're off to the races.

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2. Personalize

Consistency is key to building trust, and when your emails have a cohesive look, it helps recipients recognize your brand. It is also important to follow a brand style guide for your email campaigns so that the audiences can associate elements like your logo, colors, and fonts easily with your brand.

When using a template, customization is key to making your emails and landing pages feel unique and relevant. With Beefree’s drag-and-drop editor, you can easily tweak templates to align with your branding. Adjust colors, fonts, and layouts, or add personalized content such as recipient names and company details. The flexibility ensures that your final output is as distinctive as your brand’s voice.

Plus, with so many people opening emails or landing pages on mobile devices, Beefree’s mobile design builder guarantees that they look great no matter what device they’re on. When your emails look good, people trust your brand more, and that makes them more likely to click through and take action.

Personalization isn’t just a nice touch; it’s essential for engagement. According to Campaign Monitor, personalized subject lines can increase open rates by 26%. By tailoring your designs to speak directly to your audience, you can create a more impactful experience. Furthermore, the platform’s collaborative features allow team members to provide input and make edits in real-time, enhancing efficiency and creativity.

1. Export

So, you’ve picked and customized your template—now it’s time to send those emails.

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For user these spam filters help ensure a smooth email experience, free of spammy and fishy emails. However, as email marketers, these filters lead us to be overly cautious out of fear that our emails are not accidentally filtered out.

Whether you’re employing a lifecycle email marketing strategy or simply confirming an order, we’ve outlined the basics of how spam prevention works, why it matters, and how to avoid running afoul of some commonly used triggers.

Why you need to avoid email spam triggers

Whether you’re an ESG reporting software or a travel company email spam triggers can email marketing performance and in turn hurt your business. For one, there’s the obvious reason that if your emails get sent to the spam folder, they probably won’t be seen. That's time and effort wasted.

Beyond that, being sent to the spam folder too many times delegitimizes your email marketing, which damages what’s known as your sender reputation. When just starting out, this reputation is effectively neutral. But if it gets too low, it could damage your marketing performance and even result in being blocklisted.

How email spam filtering works

As mentioned above, spam filters are implemented as a form of quality assurance and protection for end-users. Here's how ESPs determine content to be spam:

  • Sender reputation analysis: ESPs check sender reputation based on authentication, user complaints, bounce rates and sending patterns. They’ll also check the reputations of your IP address and web domain.

  • Content analysis: Content filtering uses triggers like keywords, formatting and error detection to distinguish spam from legitimate email marketing.

  • Blacklists: Along with sender reputation metrics, ESPs also cross-reference email senders against any of several blacklist databases. Being on even one of these means you’ll struggle to climb out of the spam folder at all.

8 common email spam triggers and how to avoid them

Now let's get to the good stuff. Prevention is generally the best strategy when it comes to avoiding email spam triggers. Here are seven factors commonly used by ESPs to filter spam emails, and the simplest solutions for dealing with them.

1. Lack of authentication

Missing authentication is one of the first red flags an ESP will pick up on. Authentication shows you’ve taken certain steps to establish legitimacy. It’s also used to prevent fraudsters from impersonating your brand online. There are three commonly used forms of email authentication:

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF): This means publishing a list of mail servers and IPs with permission to send messages using your domain. This is one reason it’s important to conduct email marketing through a branded business email, rather than a personal account.

  • Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): A cryptographic signature which shows a message’s original content has not been altered during sending. Think of it like the tamper-proof seal on a bottle of milk.

  • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): A way for you to establish how you want receiving platforms to handle authentication failures related to your domain.

2. Shady linking practices

Link placement and presentation play an important role in email marketing. Aside from engaging recipients and securing click-throughs, using links appropriately helps avoid your emails looking like spam.

Questionable linking practices include:

  • Links to domains with poor reputations
  • Excessive numbers of in-email links
  • Compressed, modified or obscured links, particularly when generic link shorteners are used

Only link to your own authenticated domain. Also, use an unlimited bandwidth VPS to help ensure your website access speed is always stable and fast. This will give visitors the assurance that your site is legitimate.

Don’t forget to make the purpose of any in-email link absolutely clear.  

3. Content

Although the reason for an email landing in a spam folder is often related to authentication, reputation, or poor formatting, content can at times be the culprit. Here are elements that you should look at if you suspect that your content is why your emails are not reaching their recipients:

  • Typos
  • Irrelevant content that doesn’t foster positive engagement
  • Poorly translated text
  • Partner content with poor reputation
  • Possibly offensive content
  • URLs or images with poor reputation

Another thing to note is language detection filters. Various words, phrases and tone choices have strong associations with scam emails. This includes certain buzzwords, vague or exaggerated claims, or excessive sales jargon. However, this is only really an issue when you already have a bad reputation.

Nevertheless, let’s say you’re beginning to build your reputation back up and are conducting Black Friday email marketing. While it’s important to use engaging language and strong CTAs, you should avoid terms like:

  • Limited time only
  • 100% free
  • Make money from home
  • Avoid bankruptcy
  • You have won

4. Bounce rates

A ‘bounce’ is when an email doesn’t arrive in the recipient’s inbox. This could be due to it being sent to a fake email address, an out-of-date email that is no longer in use, a full inbox, etc.

When a sender frequently experiences high bounce rates for their emails, this damages their reputation with ESPs.

But how do you improve bounce rates and, therefore, your reputation? The best way is to have good segmentation practices to ensure the right content goes out to the right people. You should also keep your list clean by regularly evaluating it and removing hard-bounce email addresses as well as inactive subscribers.

Moreover, ensure you send relevant messages that your audience actually wants to receive. Of course, always be mindful of the rest of the triggers on this list to make sure you’re protecting your sender reputation.

5. Misleading email subjects

Even if you’re not trying to do anything malicious, misleading subject lines can trigger email spam filters. For example, an email might claim to promote educational B2B content about internal audit controls. Then, instead, link the user to a landing page to sell them a product.

Always set clear topic sentences as email subject lines. Try to summarize the content and intent of the email. If you’re sending a welcome email for customer retention or promoting, say, a product or sale, make it obvious before the recipient clicks on it.

6. Poorly written and formatted emails

Poor formatting and low-quality writing are other important email spam triggers. Common writing triggers include:

  • Overly vague language lacking personal detail
  • Typos and spelling errors
  • Being too brief

A marketing email can trigger spam filters if it lacks formatting of any kind, or if there are inconsistencies. It’s also suspicious when marketing emails lack branded color schemes, imagery or the correct logo design.
Avoiding these email triggers is simply a matter of emphasizing professional communication standards in email marketing.

7. Poor engagement

Low engagement manifests itself through a lack of interaction with your emails from the recipients—low open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, as well as low subscriber count are all indications. 

Consistently low engagement will likely result in your emails being filtered into spam. To combat this, you should strive to deliver good and captivating content tailored to your audience. More specifically, you can:

  • Use segmentation to personalize your emails and craft the most compelling content for each segment.
  • Put together attractive subject lines
  • Make use of solid and clear CTAs

8. Getting blacklisted

Improving your sender reputation, also means you don’t run the risk of being blacklisted. Blacklists are a useful prevention tool, but if you end up on one of these lists, your email marketing is more or less guaranteed to end up in spam folders.

Aim for prevention with email security and compliance training, and don’t send unsolicited marketing emails. You can also use a blacklist checking tool to make sure your sender emails haven’t been compromised.

Maintaining your sender reputation is essential

Email spam triggers aren’t all bad, they ensure that your well crafted messages aren’t drowned out and that users are able to easily see the emails they’re interested in. 

To reap these benefits, you need to keep an eye on these triggers and protect your sender reputation. Don’t worry, though. It’s easy to deliver marketing copy that avoids email spam triggers once you know what they’re looking for.

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