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. The movement debuted in 2020 and 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. 

The “big guy” retailers traditionally dominate Black Friday, a mega-shopping event that pulled in $9.12 billion in 2022 (second only to Cyber Monday’s $11.3 billion). 

That’s why Pink Friday 2023 is slated for Nov. 17, exactly one week before Black Friday. It encourages collaboration among the small boutique community to advance the #shopsmallfirst mindset.

According to Boutique Hub data, more than 15,000 small businesses across the United States have participated in Pink Friday over the past three years. 

“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.    

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The Boutique Hub provides free assistance such as advice, a press kit, and inclusion on a map listing for any boutique that registers for the Pink Friday small business event; extras come with becoming a paid member of the hub.
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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 official 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 whichever marketing tools make sense to form a solid Pink Friday game plan for your boutique: 

1. Create an exclusive Pink Friday collection: The Boutique Hub suggests curating a unique collection of limited-edition 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 and make it 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 store site 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. And share your small business story to inspire audience support. Include the hashtag #shopsmallfirst for greater exposure.
6. Email your subscribers. Email marketing reigns as the channel with the most bang for your buck. Craft great content, employ email design best practices, and polish it with an intriguing email subject line. Remember, Pink Friday’s relative newness means many customers aren’t familiar with it, so simply referencing it in the subject line will captivate some subscribers.

6 Pink Friday email ideas for your Shopify store 

While the Boutique Hub is stocked with advice for planning and promoting your Pink Friday sale, we’re reaching into our wheelhouse to inspire complementary email marketing ideas.   

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?” 

Don’t assume. Explain the movement, as Rivers & Roads Boutique does. 

Bringing attention to the “support small business” mantra makes your message more meaningful and can differentiate your brand. Did you know that people believe small companies make higher-quality, low-tech products and are more willing to buy from them?  

Aside from a brief education, we like how they: 

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

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.  

We also like: 

• 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 
• A helpful menu that encourages visits to targeted pages
• Copy that succinctly states the promotion 
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3. Pique curiosity 

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

We like how the brand: 

• Fully commits to the textbook definition of a teaser email; all we know is that something big is coming, and we can sneak a peek
• Pulls subscribers in with a compelling subject line (one word does all the work): 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. 

We like how the brand: 

• Uses large and bold typography to capture attention; it screams, “You don’t want to miss out on this!”
• Strays from the standard scarcity tactics by offering multiple first-come, first-served chances at saving money
• 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 of cultivating interest that leads to preference. 

By design, each campaign newsletter relates to the others through consistent colors, graphics and messaging. 

KaylaHairCo uses three Prink Friday marketing emails to reinforce its endeavor.  

We like: 

• The initial “countdown to Pink Friday” email with fitting graphics, including an alarm clock and countdown timer* to build excitement
• Attention-grabbing hero image in email No. 2 with correlating text (‘Are you ready to upgrade your crown?’) that shows off the brand’s personality
• Straightforward promo for email No. 3 with a prominent ‘Shop now’ call to action (CTA) button
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6. Reward in-store and online shoppers differently

If you’ve got a physical location in addition to your Shopify store, appeal to both types of shoppers with separate offers.

For example, consider a limited-time offer for in-store shopping, as it’s more effective than promoting it as an online deal. You could send a unique coupon code — for a smaller incentive but extended timeframe — for online shopping. 

Klassically Kute Designs’ Pink Friday shopping playbook is a little different. 

We like how they: 

• Infuse personalization by using the recipient’s first name in the intro and the CTA (Helpful to know: 90% of U.S. consumers say marketing personalization is very or somewhat appealing)
• Specify the online versus in-store deals to a T 

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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.