The times are here, as we say the ‘winter’ is here.
As the festive season unfolds, there are multiple reasons that make us enjoy the times a bit more – as consumers, and as individuals. Right from the deals to the traction to the growth in numbers, footfalls, and revenues – there are instances that put the BFCM times at the top of the table in terms of significance. Arguably, the busiest shopping days of the year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, present a golden opportunity for businesses to boost sales and mullahs.
As per the reports, Black Friday 2023 online revenue reached over $9.80 billion, a 7.46% increase from last year. It was 188% higher than the average daily online sales and 179% higher than Q4’s daily sales. However, Black Friday’s revenue was 21% lower than Cyber Monday. From 2022 to 2023, online retail spending grew by 7.69%.
With the increasing popularity of online shopping, it has become crucial for e-commerce companies to develop effective Black Friday marketing strategies. In this article, we shall explore proven strategies to help you plan and execute a profitable Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion.
Define Your Goals
Build Your Email List
Schedule Your Popups
Craft Compelling Subject Lines
Leverage Social Media
Create a Landing Page
Retarget Shopping Cart Abandoners
Offer More Than Discounts
Tease Future Campaigns
Launch Flash Deals
Boost Product re-engagement with AI
Add New Products Just Before Black Friday
Define Your Goals
Before diving into the planning process, it is essential to define your goals for the Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion. By setting clear objectives, you can stay focused and measure the success of your marketing strategies. What do you want to achieve with the BFCM edition, what are your goals and where do you see yourself at the end of the sale? Well, some questions you should keep in mind while starting on the planning for the big day. Some common goals include:
- Increase sales: Determine the number of sales you aim to achieve during the promotion.
- Grow your customer base: Set a target for acquiring new customers and expanding your reach.
- Boost brand loyalty: Encourage repeat purchases and strengthen customer loyalty.
- Increase website traffic: Drive more visitors to your website and generate leads.
By defining your goals, you can tailor your Black Friday Cyber Monday strategies to achieve them effectively, eliminating any last-minute hassle whatsoever.
Build Your Email List
Email marketing is a powerful tool for driving sales during the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. Start building your email list well in advance of the promotion to gather subscribers who are interested in your offers. Consider implementing the following strategies:
- Create an email popup: Design a popup that offers exclusive access or discounts to those who sign up for your newsletter.
- Offer incentives: Provide additional discounts or free shipping for customers who subscribe to your email list.
- Segment your list: Categorise subscribers based on their interests and purchase history to send them targeted emails.
When you are able to build a strong and comprehensive email list, you give yourself a chance to seamlessly communicate your Black Friday Cyber Monday offers and drive conversions.
Schedule Your Popups
Popups are not just for collecting emails. Period.
They can also be used to guide visitors to your best Black Friday Cyber Monday offers. Come on, we live in an era where all the information we need is just a click away, literally. All you need is the right hook and the right timing (No pun intended). By scheduling your popups strategically, you can ensure that your messages reach the right audience at the right time. Consider the following tips:
- Create multiple popups: Craft different popups for various purposes, such as highlighting discounts, reducing cart abandonment, or providing information about delivery times.
- Experiment with timing: Stand out from the competition by adjusting the timing of your popups. Consider acting early or late to catch the attention of potential customers.
- Use attention-grabbing designs: Make your popups visually appealing and aligned with your brand identity to capture and retain visitors’ attention.
You can seize those leads with the right premise!
Leveraging well-timed and targeted popups is a foolproof way to maximize the impact of your Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion.
Shubham Kumar
Craft Compelling Subject Lines
Who loves chaos, anyway? We don’t and we are sure you and your customers won’t as well.
In a timeline that is largely dominated by ChatGPT ninjas and self-proclaimed experts – it becomes important to stand out. Inbox is where you’ll differentiate from others but you need to know the HOW! In a crowded inbox, it is crucial to create subject lines that stand out and entice recipients to open your emails. Avoid the typical discount-focused subject lines and consider these alternative approaches:
- Tease surprises: Create curiosity by hinting at surprises or exclusive offers in your subject lines. We don’t love chaos but yeah – surprises? Bring them on!
- Focus on benefits: Instead of solely flaunting discounts, highlight additional benefits such as free shipping, returns, or loyalty program perks. For the junta, the benefit is as important as the savings!
- Be creative and humourous: Use humor or clever wordplay to make your subject lines memorable and engaging. Learn from Fevicol, KFC, Swiggy, Zomato, boAt, Samsung. They are what they are for a reason!
With some magic in terms of words and the way you put out your value propositions, you can increase open rates and capture the attention of your target audience. EASY!
Leverage Social Media
I see something on Instagram, search about the founders on LinkedIn, Google the company up, check reviews on Facebook, and boom – bring it home! Who am I?
I’m your customer.
Social media platforms play a significant role in driving awareness, interest, and engagement during the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. To effectively leverage social media, consider the following strategies. Keep reading, don’t skip:
- Research about your audience: Identify which social media platforms your target audience frequents the most and focus your efforts there. It can be any platform based on your niche. What works the best for your business use case? A SaaS sells better on Facebook and Linkedin as compared to apparel, as they find their home on Instagram. Choose your audience!
- Use hashtags and buzzwords: Incorporate Black Friday-related hashtags and high-performing SEO keywords in your social media posts to increase organic reach. This little piece of magic still works and works incredibly well.
- Share engaging content: Content is the kingdom, not just the king and queen. Create visually appealing posts, videos, or interactive content to grab the attention of your followers and encourage them to share your content. Good content is more addictive than the finest of wines. It just keeps on growing.
The EASY Way To Create Facebook Ads That Convert (Black Friday Edition)
Engaging on social media should be a ritual for businesses during their campaign, as this can help them amplify the reach of your Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion and drive more traffic to their website.
Create a Landing Page
Your customers don’t want to land on a rock from 1300 BCE while looking for you online or via an ad. This is where a landing page becomes imperative. A dedicated landing page for your BFCM goals can significantly enhance the customer experience and drive conversions. Follow these tips when creating your landing page and you’ll be good to rock:
- Design for simplicity: “When I’m looking for a refrigerator, I need a refrigerator. Don’t walk me through a washing machine and land me up on a refrigerator.” Your UI/UX should be simple and interactive. That’s it. Keep the layout clean and user-friendly, ensuring that visitors can easily navigate and find the information they need.
- Highlight your best deals: The hook is important and what’s more effective than flaunting the best, upfront? Showcase your most postcard offers prominently on the landing page to capture visitors’ attention immediately.
- Use persuasive copywriting: Copy sells, Apple pushes. The right copy can make or break one’s prospects. So, craft compelling headlines and descriptions that communicate the value of your offers and encourage visitors to take action.
By inculcating a well-designed landing page, you can create a seamless shopping experience for your customers and increase the likelihood of conversions.
Retarget Shopping Cart Abandoners
It stays in the cart until it dies. Well, customers and business owners – both can relate to it for contrasting reasons. After all, Shopping cart abandonment is a common challenge for e-commerce businesses. However, it also presents an opportunity to re-engage potential customers. Implement these strategies to retarget shopping cart abandoners:
- Create retargeting lists: You need to be in control of who’s at what stage of conversion, in order to convert them. It is always a nice idea to segment visitors who have abandoned their carts and target them with personalized ads or emails.
- Offer incentives: Provide exclusive discounts or free shipping to push abandoners towards completing their purchases. A little push goes a long way.
- Create a sense of urgency: Use countdown timers or limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency and prompt action. Well, urgency breeds sales for businesses.
The right strategy can help you minimise cart abandonments, and help you generate more revenue.
Offer More Than Discounts
Discounts are our sweet spot, no denying! But there’s more. While they are a major driver of BFCM sales, one can consider going beyond traditional discounting to offer additional benefits to their customers. Explore these alternatives, instead and see how it goes:
- Free shipping: Indians love freebies or simply anything that has something ‘free’ associated with it. Provide free shipping for all orders or incentivize customers to reach a specific purchase threshold to qualify for free shipping.
- Loyalty program perks: Offer additional rewards or exclusive access to loyalty program members during the promotion. Loyalty goes a long way!
- Bonus gifts: Include free gifts or samples with purchases to increase the value proposition for your customers. We said it again. Free!
When you offer more than just discounts, you can differentiate your brand and provide added value to your customers during the celebrated sale period.
Rishi Mundra
Tease Future Campaigns
Like all good things, when BFCM comes to a close, continue to build momentum by teasing your next big campaign or event. This tactic keeps customers engaged and encourages them to revisit your website or subscribe to your email list for future promotions. Consider these approaches:
- Promote upcoming sales: Tease your Cyber Monday, Christmas, or other holiday sales to maintain customer interest and generate anticipation. Excitement initiates easy sales.
- Offer exclusive previews: Provide sneak peeks or exclusive access to upcoming product launches or limited-time offers. This can be done in creative ways to uphold the mystery and excitement.
- Highlight unique selling points: Showcase what sets your brand apart from competitors and emphasize the value customers can expect from future campaigns. When you are vocal about your perks and what you bring to the table, the world takes notes.
It is always a good idea to keep your customers guessing and curious about what waits for them, next. With the right kind of strategies and followups – your revenue pipeline shall always be filled, irrespective of the sale.
Launch Flash Deals
Surprising customers with exciting deals every hour is a great way to keep them coming back. Offering flash deals creates urgency and excitement, encouraging quick purchases. It also helps brands build buzz and stay ahead in the market.
Boost Product re-engagement with AI
A smart Black Friday marketing strategy is to suggest products based on what visitors have viewed. Instead of showing these suggestions only on product pages, display them on any page, with a list of recently viewed items at the top.
By using a machine learning algorithm, the tool can arrange the items, putting the ones most likely to be purchased at the top of the list.
Add New Products Just Before Black Friday
Customers love new arrivals! You can use this excitement by adding new products to your store just before or during Black Friday. This will make your store more attractive to shoppers looking for great deals. Be sure to promote your new products on your website and in emails before the event starts.
Conclusion
Well, no brownie points for guessing – this is a BIG, BIG DAY for businesses all around the globe. Doesn’t matter if you’re running an online store that sells Gua Sha stones, or the one with funky founder t-shirts or you’re someone who is building that beautiful piece of software that’ll take the internet by storm in 2030 (we understand your vision), there’s something for everyone during the sale. Businesses can go big or go home and the only thing that can stop them is their own goals, and how they perceive their business in the first place.
FAQs
What are the strategies to retarget shopping cart abandoners?
The strategies to retarget shopping cart abandoners are to create retargeting lists, offer incentives, and create a sense of urgency.
What are the Email marketing strategies that can be implemented during the Black Friday Cyber Monday period?
Email marketing strategies that can be implemented during the BFCM sale period are creating an email popup, offering incentives, and segmenting your list.
Why having a dedicated landing page is important during the BFCM sale period?
A dedicated landing page during BFCM can significantly enhance the customer experience and drive conversions.
