Although Black Friday is a major day for e-commerce vendors, it can pose a considerable challenge as satisfying such a vast influx of patrons is a daunting task.
Black Friday eCommerce Strategy
One of the largest shopping days of the year is Black Friday, which occurs the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday. Consumers anticipate discounts and sales from their preferred vendors, and as a result, they spend generously. In 2021, Americans spent $9.03 billion on Black Friday.
The emergence of eCommerce led to the birth of Cyber Monday as a successor to Black Friday, where online merchants roll out their top deals. In the previous year, Cyber Monday outperformed Black Friday regarding expenditure among US consumers, raking in sales of $10.90 billion.
A substantial amount of online traffic is generated by those significant figures. To cope with this, it is advisable to have a well-planned eCommerce strategy for Black Friday.
This implies creating a marketing strategy prior to Black Friday in order to attract your clientele and generate enthusiasm for your online discounts. Additionally, you must anticipate a surge of shopping cart orders and customer inquiries on the day itself, necessitating a robust customer support plan.
Black Friday eCommerce Tactics
1. Optimize your website for SEO
Improving your search ranking can be beneficial for businesses selling anything from lip gloss to jet skis. It can give you a competitive edge and enhance conversion rates. You can begin by analyzing your rank with a free SERP checker, which refers to Search Engine Results Page. If you find scope for betterment, there are some strategies you can implement.
Improving your site’s loading speed is crucial for better search rankings. Google offers a free tool to assess your site speed and determine if it needs improvement. Compressing images and upgrading hosting services are effective tactics to enhance loading speed.
Improving the names and descriptions of your products can enhance the discoverability of your items during searching and smooth the user experience. Utilizing Google’s free tools can aid in identifying the optimal keywords for your product pages.
We conducted a few years ago a test which revealed that a lively, involved social media profile can positively impact your search results ranking. Furthermore, it is vital to publish excellent content on social media.
2. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
According to Shopify’s 2021 report, 79% of Black Friday Cyber Monday purchases occurred on mobile devices, surpassing desktop shoppers since 2014 and continually increasing. Don’t lose out on mobile shoppers – conduct website testing and implement necessary improvements.
3. Start your campaign early
It is important to keep in mind that all other stores will also be participating in Black Friday sales. To avoid last-minute hustle, begin engaging your social media and email followers months ahead of time. By doing so, you will have an attentive and interested audience ready for your promotions when they are launched. These suggestions can help:
Email subscribers can enjoy exclusive early access to Black Friday deals. It’s advisable to encourage customers to join your email list so that your offers can gain wider reach, and you can reap benefits long after the Black Friday Cyber Monday sales event is over.
Don’t wait until the day of the marathon to start training – the same goes for testing your ads. Take time to enhance your creativity and run A/B tests on your campaigns beforehand, in order to determine what resonates best with your audience.
Generate excitement by giving a sneak peek of your Black Friday sales in advance. Inform your customers that you will reveal the particulars through social media and email. This strategy will increase your audience and benefit your committed followers, ultimately enhancing the customer experience.
4. Make sure all stock information is accurate
At this juncture, it would be beneficial to replenish your top-selling products and devise exclusive promotions or bargains to clear out slow-moving inventory.
On Black Friday, it is anticipated that there will be a surge of fresh clientele. Thus, to prevent perplexity or hesitation, the shopping process must be straightforward and user-friendly. Inclusive of specifications such as measurement, mass, and composition, product pages should be comprehensive.
Make certain that all products feature top-notch pictures and videos and incorporate customer feedback on the website— even a single review can boost sales by 10%.
5. Have customer support at the ready
If you have ever roamed a department store, feeling more and more desperate to locate a staff member who can assist you, you understand the frustration of waiting for aid. And if your clients become irritated, they will leave!
Investing in a retail chatbot like Heyday can help you cope with the large number of shoppers on Black Friday by providing prompt customer service. With the ability to answer up to 80% of customer inquiries, Heyday’s chatbot can allow your customer support team to focus on responding to the remaining 20% promptly.
It is particularly advantageous during Black Friday and Cyber Monday when there will be new customers who are not well-acquainted with your store and merchandise. In fact, Bluecore reports that in 2020, a majority (59%) of Black Friday sales were attributed to initial buyers.
Utilizing a chatbot can aid your customers in discovering their desired size, color, and style of product. Additionally, they have the ability to create tailored product suggestions, encouraging upsells and cross-sells, ultimately increasing the average order value. This can lead to an even greater boost in profits, particularly considering that 60% of purchases made on Black Friday are unplanned.
6. Work with influencers
Utilizing influencer marketing can be highly effective. According to a recent study, 8% of shoppers made a purchase in the last half-year due to influencer promotion. This percentage rises significantly to almost 15% for shoppers between the ages of 18 to 24. Working with an influencer for your Black Friday plan can assist in attracting fresh customers and growing your profits.
For those unfamiliar with it, we offer a guide to influencer marketing that will help you achieve success. Keep in mind that it’s crucial to choose the appropriate influencers. Rather than focusing on the largest following, make sure your values and target audience are aligned.
7. Create BFCM promo codes
Providing promotional codes and coupons for Black Friday Cyber Monday generates a sense of urgency that motivates customers to capitalize on the substantial price reductions you have on offer.
It is important to ensure that your customers can easily locate and utilize the promotional codes, or else they may become frustrated and abandon their shopping carts. Shopify provides helpful tips on how to guarantee that your discount codes are noticeable.
- Use a pop-up on your eCommerce site. This will announce the discount code, and give your customer a chance to apply it at check out with a single click.
- Ask customers to enter their email address to receive the promo code. This helps with your email marketing and remarketing efforts, too!
- Add a floating bar at the top of the page with the discount code. This makes it too obvious to miss.
- Apply the code automatically at checkout. This is the simplest solution for your customers. Sephora used it for their 2021 Black Friday sale. Customers received an automatic 50% discount at checkout.
8. Run deep Black Friday deals
According to Chase Fisher, the founder and CEO of Blenders Eyewear, it is not effective to simply offer discounts of 15% or 20% on Black Friday and hope to have a successful sales event. The key is to create an irresistible offer that will not compromise the brand’s reputation, as Black Friday is the only time of the year when prices can be lowered without sacrificing brand integrity. Therefore, it is crucial that businesses ensure that their offer is compelling and attractive to customers.
Blenders is famous for delivering substantial discounts during Black Friday, such as a 55% reduction on all sunglasses. During previous Cyber Mondays, the online store has also decreased the price of snow goggles by 40%. As a result, the business reported a revenue surge of up to 10 times compared to the previous year’s performance during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Greg Zakowicz, Senior Commerce Expert at Omnisend, suggests that instead of providing discounts for the whole store, retailers should follow Blenders Eyewear and provide sales for specific categories. Zakowicz notes that retailers face heightened pressure to meet the customer expectations they have fostered as sale events start earlier and earlier.
There are a number of benefits to utilizing sales that are specific to certain categories, which include:
- Generating incremental sales with higher margins
- Engaging email subscribers and visitors for longer
- Helping you better manage your inventory, ordering, and future promotions
9. Go all-in on VIP customers
Do not hesitate to offer more significant discounts and deals to your top clients. Baublebar beauty brand’s Black Friday sale involved sending various offers, including a 35% discount on all in-store items, to their VIP customer email list.
Klaviyo’s benchmark report reveals that VIP emails, which are highly segmented, may constitute only 3% to 5% of your entire email list. Nevertheless, these customers spend three times more per recipient than other clients in your database.
By utilizing the copy “12 Hours Only” and including a call to action to “Shop Now”, the example above merged the concept of exclusivity with a sense of urgency, encouraging shoppers to make a purchase promptly. These two strategies working in tandem have the potential to result in a substantial number of conversions and sales from a solitary email send.
10. Create a master plan for Black November
To ensure effective promotions, it is crucial to spread them out within the period known as “Black November,” which starts about a month prior to Black Friday, as it is when most retailers begin advertising their sales. As a result, here are some essential dates to consider adding to your schedule:
- Singles’ Day (China’s biggest shopping day of the year): November 11
- Thanksgiving: November 28
- Black Friday: November 29
- Cyber Monday: December 2
According to DTC expert Nik Sharma, he prefers to take it easy on Thanksgiving Day and suggests expressing gratitude to your active customer base in a manner that aligns with your brand’s identity.
Your MVC category generally includes your subscribers, loyalty or reward program participants, brand representatives, customers with high lifetime value (LTV), or even your initial 1,000 patrons. By utilizing tools such as Yotpo, Klaviyo, or Postscript, you can personalize these emails to make them feel more intimate with minimal effort on your part.
It is important to remember that those significant dates are crucial if your clientele includes both North American and Chinese individuals.
- Black Friday may be known as the biggest day for discounts, but you should begin your promotions much earlier because many retailers start “leaking deals” through advertising in late October and early November, then nurture through email and social media to drive sales
- Alibaba, China’s largest ecommerce retailer, generated $84.5 billion in sales on Singles’ Day alone. Remember to develop a separate strategy for that day too.
Your plan must incorporate comparable tactics as the mentioned strategy, particularly:
- A Black Friday buzz-building campaign with a countdown, deals, and specials, using ads, email, and social media leading up to the event.
- Sneak peeks on door crashers and other amazing sales that will go live during the weeks leading up to and on Black Friday.
- A coordinated promotional strategy across all online channels—websites, emails, and social—to maximize impact on the day of your sales.
- An influencer and micro-influencer engagement strategy to boost word of mouth about special offers.
- Post–Cyber Monday deals (e.g., extended sale offers) for last-minute shoppers, emphasizing shipping dates and gift wrapping, throughout December.
Afterward, we will examine the process of incorporating your sales and marketing plan into Black November.
11. Build anticipation through social media
Before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, utilize motivating visuals and promote positive feedback on social media to establish an emotional bond with your clients. Subsequently, when Black Friday arrives, employ email marketing to generate immediate outcomes.
Blenders generated excitement for their Black Friday sale by promoting it through a hashtag #blackfriday and conducting an Instagram giveaway ten days ahead of the event. Two days preceding the giveaway, they built hype for the sale by billing it “the biggest Black Friday Sale. EVER.”
Blenders employed a multi-channel strategy by creating a buzz on Facebook and dropping hints about the enormous discount on offer. This enabled them to reach out to both their followers and potential customers across various platforms and effectively build anticipation for the impending sale well ahead of time.
12. Optimize for mobile-first buying
On average, American individuals utilize their smartphones for approximately five to six hours every day. If your mobile site performance is subpar compared to your rivals, they will likely spend this amount of time on alternative platforms.
Although certain customers continue to utilize desktops for checking out and browsing through mobile devices, Shopify Plus merchants observed that mobile transactions constituted 69% of all sales during the 2022 Black Friday and Cyber Monday, while desktops only accounted for 31%.
Your probability of achieving success in mobile shopping can be enhanced by enhancing your website speed and site navigation, as well as providing mobile-first customers with one-click purchasing options.
