What is Pink Friday, and how can it jump-start holiday sales?

Listen up all you Shopify stores that double as boutiques: Pink Friday is your time to shine.

Put on the sparkle. Cozy up to the pink. 

What is Pink Friday, you ask?

It’s a small business event that deserves a spot on your Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) email marketing calendar. And if you participated and ran a Pink Friday sale in the past, double down this year. 

Read on to understand what, exactly, Pink Friday is. Then, dig into the game plan basics and Pink Friday email examples to spur ideas for your Shopify boutique.
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What is Pink Friday, and when is it?

Q4 is loaded with ecommerce events to boost holiday sales. There’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with Small Business Saturday wedged in between.

Pink Friday is the newest arrival on the holiday shopping event scene, debuting in 2020. The movement is the brainchild of The Boutique Hub — the world’s largest boutique industry community connecting small businesses, ecommerce retailers, wholesalers, and industry services and experts. 

Sara Burks, director of education at The Boutique Hub, says the event formed out of “an abundance of need to support small business retailers during an unprecedented time.” Now, it complements Small Business Saturday.

“We believe that shopping small should happen first — before Black Friday and all of the big shopping days of the year,” says Ashley Alderson, CEO of The Boutique Hub, when explaining the Pink Friday event in a video. 

That’s why Pink Friday 2024 is Nov. 22, exactly one week before Black Friday. It encourages collaboration among the small boutique community to advance the #shopsmallfirst mindset.

“For many of these retailers, Pink Friday consistently ranks as their highest income-generating day of the year, both in-store and online, making it one of their top traffic days annually,” Burks says.    

The Boutique Hub provides advice, a press kit, inclusion on a consumer map, and exclusive wholesale deals to any boutique that registers for the Pink Friday small business event. Paid hub members receive access to extra perks.

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A Pink Friday game plan to anchor your holiday season sales 

Since boutiques traditionally have a brick-and-mortar presence, many Boutique Hub Pink Friday resources lean toward in-store promotions. But in today’s digital age, online sales can be just as important, if not more. 

Use the marketing tools that will form a solid Pink Friday game plan for your boutique: 

1. Create an exclusive Pink Friday collection: Curate a unique collection of items only available during the event, whether in-store, online or through a live-streamed sale. Offer competitive pricing as an incentive.
2. Run in-store sales as part of a Pink Friday event. Roll out the pink carpet and bust out the decor. Consider a deal your shop can absorb, whether storewide or limited to a product line. Ensure you have staffing to provide stellar customer service. 
3. Collaborate with local brick-and-mortar and online-only businesses in your community. As Burk suggests, “Collaborative promotions and cross-marketing can help both online and offline businesses reach a wider audience.”
4. Prepare your digital storefront. Update your Shopify site with a banner or popup to reflect Pink Friday sales or promotions. If you plan to promote your Pink Friday shop small event with paid advertising, build a landing page that features deals and bestsellers. 
5. Promote on social media. Whether you create a TikTok video or boost a Facebook post to expand reach, embrace social media to educate followers about the Pink Friday backstory and goals. Share your small business story to inspire audience support, including the hashtag #shopsmallfirst for greater exposure.
6. Email your subscribers. Email marketing reigns as the best channel for ROI. Craft great content and employ email design best practices. Remember, Pink Friday’s relative newness means many customers aren’t familiar with it, so referencing it in the subject line will pique curiosity.

6 Pink Friday email ideas for your Shopify store 

Pink Friday planning aside, let’s discover how some brands have catapulted their events with email marketing.   

1. Explain what Pink Friday is

This blog has educated you on Pink Friday. But we’re betting that many of your subscribers will ask, “What is Pink Friday?” 

Explain the movement to them, like Rivers & Roads Boutique does.

Aside from a brief education, we appreciate that they: 

1. Use a simple but eye-catching hero image to draw in the subscriber 
2. Run a promotional pricing strategy around one product line  

When you bring attention to the “support small business” mantra, you give meaning to your promotion and differentiate your brand. After all, people believe small companies make higher-quality, low-tech products and are more willing to buy from them. 

2. Run a Pink Friday pre-sale event

Pre-sales are a common Black Friday email marketing strategy. They can be an angle for your Pink Friday event, too. 

Boldly Blonde emailed subscribers with a one-day early access to its sale. The brand followed the next day with another Pink Friday marketing email.  

What works about this email:: 

1. A tiered discounting price strategy to increase the average order value (AOV); additionally, listing the restriction before the reward (spend ‘x’ amount to get ‘x’ off) is more likely to sell 
2. A helpful menu that encourages visits to targeted pages
3. Copy that succinctly states the promotion 

The brand By Charlotte takes a different approach to the early access angle: making subscribers sign up for it.

They prove the adage that simpler can be better. A basic gif grabs attention and a straightforward signup button motivates readers to take action.

3. Build excitement

No marketing email produces intrigue quite like the teaser email can. Case in point: PrettyLittleThing’s Pink Friday email example. 

How the brand creates anticipation: 

1. Fully commits to the textbook definition of a teaser email; we know something big is coming, but we don’t know exactly what
2. Pulls subscribers in with a compelling subject line: Our Pink Friday offers LEAKED 🤯

4. Instill urgency

A portion of any subscriber list can’t stand to let fleeting opportunities pass them by. They succumb to the power of FOMO (fear of missing out). 

Here’s where scarcity marketing with flash sales and limited-time offers hits the mark and motivates. Take the example from Sole Sisters. 

How the brand turns up the notch on urgency: 

1. Leans on bold typography, which screams, “You don’t want to miss out on this!”
2. Strays from the standard scarcity tactics by offering multiple first-come, first-served chances at saving money
3. Brings personality to the email subject line with ‘YEAH GIRL!!! ACT QUICK!!’

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Want to replicate Sole Sisters’ Shopify discount scheme? Create unique discount codes and set usage limits for each.

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5. Run a Pink Friday email campaign

It often takes more than one email to make a message stick with subscribers. Email campaigns — a collection of newsletters that share a common goal — play into the "more-exposure effect." The psychological theory contends that people are inclined to develop preferences after repeated exposure. 

Campaign newsletters need a consistent thread to have an impact — from colors and graphics to messaging. KaylaHairCo, for example, designed three complementary Prink Friday marketing emails for reinforcement.  

Here are the elements from each newsletter that attract eyeballs: 

1. Email 1: the alarm clock and countdown timer build excitement for the “countdown to Pink Friday” 
2. Email 2: Attention-grabbing hero image and correlating text (‘Are you ready to upgrade your crown?’) shows a glimpse of the brand’s personality
3. Email 3: A prominent hero image, CTA and concise copy get straight to the point
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6. Reward in-store and online shoppers differently

If you have a physical location and an online Shopify store, appeal to both shopping types with separate offers.

For example:

• In-store shopping: provide a limited-time offer, as it’s more effective than promoting a limited-time deal online
• Online shopping: send a unique coupon code for a smaller incentive, but extended timeframe

Or, drive foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar location with an offer for in-store shoppers only, like the example below. 

Sisters Boutique & Gifts pulls a few levers to encourage an in-person visit:

1. Offers a coupon to anyone who donates to its toy drive
2. Entices with free treats and drinks
3. Gives shoppers a chance at winning a gift basket raffle

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Kick off BFCM email marketing with Pink Friday

Standing out as the best choice for holiday shoppers can be a fierce battle, especially for Shopify store boutiques. 

Seize the opportunity to join a worldwide movement that amplifies brands like yours. The Pink Friday push to shop small is a chance for you to make noise in a cluttered landscape and reinforce the impact of small business on a community. 

So, craft a game plan that gets ahead of the heavy-hitting retailers of Black Friday. Use Seguno Email Marketing to drive traffic to your Shopify store and in-store boutique. 

This year, leverage Pink Friday as part of your BFCM strategy to boost your holiday sales.