In years past, the Adobe Digital Index has predicted a 16.8% year-over-year increase in sales, totaling an estimated $6.58 billion in one day
Source: Adobe Holiday Predictions
Consumers are ready to buy, but they’re going to be bombarded with emails and other deal-based marketing from every online store they’ve ever visited. You have to find a way to make your Cyber Monday campaign stand out to attract buyers to your sale. Animated video and GIFs can engage your Cyber Monday shoppers quickly and powerfully. Unlike a static promotion, an animated video or GIF uses subtle motion to attract customers. More specifically, animation comes with unique visual elements—colorful backgrounds, fun effects—that are perfect for grabbing buyers’ attention. We created this guide to break down how you can attract Cyber Monday shoppers with animated video and GIF marketing. We’ll cover how to craft your messaging, create your animation, and distribute your campaign to encourage as many purchases as possible with your video.
How to Frame Your Cyber Monday Video
To decide what your Cyber Monday campaign messaging will be, you have to think about what will motivate your shoppers to participate in the sale the most. A straightforward sale announcement might attract shoppers who are especially discount-driven, while a product-demo ad will encourage shoppers through education. We’ll break down how four different campaign messages drive customers to shop your holiday sale so you can decide which one is the best fit for your audience.
A simple sale announcement
For customers who are especially discount-driven, make your Cyber Monday promotion crystal clear with a simple sale announcement video or GIF.
What’s the best format for this message? GIF. There isn’t much content to share, so you only need the short, slight motion of a GIF to attract buyers.
A thank you video
Your customers are humans, and humans like to feel appreciated—so why not package your promotion as a “thank you” card?
Instead of sending a straightforward promotion, create an animated video or GIF that thanks customers for their loyalty and offers them a Cyber Monday discount as an appreciation gift. Framing the discount as a thank-you gift is more memorable than a typical promotion ad, and it makes customers feel happy and acknowledged.
What’s the best format for this message? Animated video or GIF works. Opt for a video if your thank you message is longer, or use a GIF for a shorter, one- or two-frame thank you animation.
A family-focused message
Spending time with family is what makes the holidays special. With a Cyber Monday event, you give customers more time to spend with their families during Thanksgiving week—they can easily shop online instead of spending Black Friday in crowded stores.
What’s the best format for this message? Animated video. While this message could fit into a GIF, a longer animated video gives you enough time to depict the idea a bit more. You can show characters spending time with family and shopping online for Cyber Monday.
How to Create Your Cyber Monday Video
You can create your Cyber Monday promotion video in minutes using Vyond. Our Studio allows you to create either a playable animated video or a GIF of your video that plays automatically.
Below, we’ll break down the top Vyond resources you need—templates, webinars—to quickly create an engaging Cyber Monday animated video or GIF.
Create a video in Vyond
An animated video is ideal for your Cyber Monday promotion if your message is going to be longer than 15 seconds or include audio. Besides being longer and including sound, a video gives you the opportunity to showcase more scenes and characters to illustrate your idea further.
People getting started with Vyond can quickly learn how to make a Cyber Monday video, even if they have zero production experience. Start learning with our introductory resources page, which includes webinars, tutorials, and FAQs.
With these resources, you can learn the very basics of creating your Cyber Monday video—check out the “How to Make a Video in Vyond” tutorial—and gradually advance to more complex topics, like scene transitions.
After you’ve learned the basics of navigating Vyond, the quickest way to create your Cyber Monday video is to use a template. Each one is prebuilt with backgrounds, characters, props, effects, and more, so you don’t have to spend much time editing. This post includes five video marketing templates for you to add to your own account and modify.
You have access to over 1,500 additional scene templates across all three styles in Vyond Studio.
With our “Getting Started” resources and Vyond templates, you have everything you need to quickly create your Cyber Monday promotion video, regardless of your film production background.
Create a GIF in Vyond
GIFs are the perfect way to grab shoppers’ attention for a brief Cyber Monday message. They have enough subtle movement and are short enough to engage customers without losing their focus.
One easy way to create GIFs is with Vyond Premium, Professional, and Enterprise plans. Once you’re done creating your video, simply export it as an animated GIF.
Keep in mind that a high-quality GIF is typically only 5 to 15 seconds long, so aim to keep your Cyber Monday clip this short before exporting. GIFs are also limited to 256 colors per frame, so it’s best to limit the number of colors you use and avoid gradient backgrounds.
How to Distribute Your Cyber Monday Video
It doesn’t matter how great your Cyber Monday video is—if you don’t distribute it well, it won’t encourage your customers to participate in the bargain event.
There are three main places to share your Cyber Monday videos with customers:
- Your website
- Email campaigns
- Social media posts and ads
We’ll cover the best ways to feature your Cyber Monday animation on these platforms to grab customers’ attention and lead them to your products.
Website
The best place to feature your Cyber Monday video or GIF is your homepage. With this prominent placement, your customers are more likely to see your bargain event and make a purchase.
The fashion brand Charles & Keith, for example, included this sale-announcement GIF on their homepage. The subtle motion and dramatic, large lettering grabs shoppers’ attention before they dive into the site.
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Email
An email campaign is one of the most common ways to tell customers about your Cyber Monday promotion. You can reach customers directly from their inbox and lead them straight to your website with backlinks in an email.
Emailing a GIF of your Cyber Monday video is fairly easy. GIFs are supported across most email clients (excluding Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013), and you can link the GIF to your product page or homepage.
For example, Radio Shack emailed a Cyber Monday sale-announcement GIF of a countdown clock to the promotion. The subtle motion catches shoppers’ eyes, and the timer clock creates a feeling of FOMO that makes customers want to participate in the sale.
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If you’re sending a full animated video, we recommend emailing a thumbnail image of your video that links to a landing page on your site, where the video immediately plays. This method is better than embedding the video to play in the email for a few reasons:
- Most email clients don’t support embedded HTML5 videos.
- You can’t link embedded videos to outside sites, so it’s more difficult to lead customers to your website from the email.
To learn more about emailing your Cyber Monday promotion, check out our simple guide to emailing a video.
Social
A fast way to share your Cyber Monday video with your top customers is through social platforms. With social, you can target shoppers by their gender, age, purchasing behaviors, and more, so your Cyber Monday video reaches your top customers.
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To promote your Cyber Monday video through social, you’ll need a Business Account on the platforms you want to use. Here are links to set up Business accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
With a Business account set up, there are two main ways to promote your Cyber Monday animated video or GIF:
- A Facebook ad: Directly promote your product as a labeled Facebook ad. An ad allows you to have greater placements beyond News Feeds, such as the right sidebar.
- A promoted Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram post: Instead of creating a separate ad, you can boost a post with your Cyber Monday video or GIF to be placed higher on customers’ feeds.
You can learn more about promoting your Cyber Monday video or GIF on social with this helpful AdEspresso guide.
Attract Cyber Monday Shoppers with Animated Video
Cyber Monday is one of the most competitive shopping days for online brands. To stand out to customers, your company needs a visually compelling way to grab their attention and get them excited to shop during the event.
As one of the most engaging mediums, animation quickly and powerfully draws shoppers to your Cyber Monday sale. After using this guide, you can quickly create an animation that reaches a wide range of shoppers and motivates them to make a purchase during your sale.
About Vyond
GoAnimate is now Vyond. Learn more about the changes.
Vyond allows people of all skill levels in all industries and job roles to create dynamic and powerful media. With features that go beyond moving text and images, you can build character-driven stories or compelling data visualizations that engage audiences and deliver results.
Start making your own videos today. Sign up for a free 14-day trial and attend our weekly tour of the Vyond Studio.
