The Black Friday crunch is no time to be battling a bot to get your email marketing moving
The growing importance of Black Friday in South Africa has exposed two changes at the same time: the cost of unreliable marketing infrastructure is increasing, while AI is changing how consumers process the messages that do arrive.
“Black Friday is when you find out how good your email platform partner really is,” says Zane Green, CEO of Everlytic. “When something needs urgent attention, you want somebody who knows the platform and can help you sort it out. Nobody wants to be stuck going back and forth with a chatbot while a campaign deadline gets closer.”
Green says it is always best practice, but especially when planning head for high-volume periods, for businesses to ask their provider three important questions:
- What is its uptime record and how does the platform handle large email campaigns? Ask for the stats.
- Support should not be an afterthought. Direct access to someone who understands the system can save a lot of time, and in crunch moments, time quite literally becomes money. Ask: If something goes wrong, who takes responsibility for sorting it out, and how quickly can the problem reach someone with the necessary expertise?
- Ask the provider about its expertise in deliverability, to ensure what you intend to send, actually lands in the inbox.
However, despite this, the stark reality is that a retailer can get the timing right and ensure the mail is delivered, and still have its offer overlooked. With AI helping people search and summarise emails, businesses also need to think about what happens after the message arrives.
This is because the inbox is changing
According to Google and Ipsos research, 70% of South African adults surveyed online reported using an AI chatbot in the previous year. That’s what they consciously do. However, AI is also finding its way into everyday services. In January, Google said three billion people rely on Gmail and introduced new Gemini-powered features designed to help users search, summarise, and work through the information in their inboxes. The company positioned this as part of its effort to make a more proactive inbox assistant.
Musa Kalenga, Group CEO at Brave Group, explored the implications at Everlytic's recent The Inbox Effect event. He believes marketers need to pay closer attention to how easily recipients can understand and act on their communications.
“People looking through Black Friday offers want to know what they're getting and whether it's worth their money,” says Kalenga. “If AI is helping people sift through their emails, marketers need to make sure the important information is easy to find.”
For Kalenga, a Black Friday offer should leave little room for confusion.
- Customers need to know what they are getting, and
- how long they have to take advantage of it.
It needs to be clear. They need to be able to gather this information without having to hunt through the message for the details. More importantly, this vital information must resonate with people and the AI reading it first. Kalenga recently presented an event called The Inbox Effect that took marketing teams through best practice in the age of AI reading your emails.
Green says that in addition to this, businesses need to understand what happens after a campaign has been sent. These insights will help them identify problems and improve future communications.
The value of having a human to call
As a South African email and multichannel communication platform, Everlytic gives businesses tools to manage audiences, run automated campaigns, and review results. Its local teams also offer technical assistance and practical guidance on using the platform.
“We work with South African businesses every day, so we understand the difficulties they run into with email deliverability and automation. We know our platform, and we know the environment our customers operate in. That makes it much easier to give them practical support. It was critical for us to build a business on reliable technology, useful insight and knowledgeable human support because these pillars are fundamental when communication is business-critical,” says Green.
Support should not stop once an email has gone out. If campaign reports show a sudden increase in bounced emails, businesses need to find out why before the next send. A team that knows email deliverability can help them understand what they are seeing and where to look for the problem.
Everlytic offers different levels of assistance, including priority email, chat, and phone support on applicable plans, as well as access to training and specialist services.
Black Friday is an immediate test, but the platform a business chooses will have to support its communication objectives long after the festive promotions have passed. With 2027 fast approaching, businesses would do well to ask whether their communication platform is delivering as effectively and reliably as it should.
Contact an Everlytic expert today to discuss your current setup and how to get more from your email communication.
