Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are just around the corner. Are you ready? Last year, online shoppers in the US spent $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday alone. That’s 5.8% more than in 2021. And 2023 is projected to drive record revenue - $12 billion for Cyber Monday and $9.6 billion for Black Friday.
If you’re not ready for BFCM, here are five things you can do to prepare for the biggest shopping event of the season.
1. Get Your BFCM Email Campaigns in Order
Before you do anything else, get your BFCM email campaign in order. Open rates increase by 6% during the shopping season, so you better be ready to take advantage of this opportunity.
Start with email capture.
- Are you making it as easy as possible for visitors to subscribe? Use targeted sign-up pop-ups and add forms to store pages.
- Make sure you’re collecting high-quality email addresses and getting consent to send promotional emails.
If you want to boost subscribers leading up to BFCM:
- Offer new subscribers early access to sales.
- Hyper-personalize your capture forms with dynamic offers for specific categories or products.
After optimizing your email capture process, you can focus on the most critical components of your Cyber Monday and Black Friday email marketing strategies: segmentation and content.
Segment Your List
Targeted email messages can skyrocket your click-through rate to 41%. To maximize the power of personalization, segment your list based on:
- Purchase history
- Personal preferences
- Engagement
- Geographic location
- Demographic information
- Customer loyalty
With a Digioh quiz, you can segment your list based on quiz results and send messages tailored to each subscriber’s preferences.
Create Targeted Email Content
Now that your list is in order, shift your focus to creating targeted email content for each segment.
For example, if you segment your list based on purchase history, recommend products similar to ones they’ve already purchased.
In the days leading up to BFCM, consider sending:
- Emails teasing your sales or promotions
- Exclusive offers to your most loyal customers
Bonus Tips to Boost Clicks and Open Rates
Personalization is awesome. But it means nothing if no one is opening your emails. Here are some tips from the Digioh team to boost your open rates:
- Make your subject lines short and sweet – most users are on mobile
- Use emojis and the person’s name in the subject line to draw attention
- Use buttons instead of text links
Email continues to be a heavy driver of sales during BFCM, so it’s worth investing the time in optimizing your campaigns for this year. In fact, Klaviyo’s 2022 BFCM Aftermath Report found that brands generated $2.2B in revenue from their email campaigns over the holiday weekend.
2. Create Black Friday Pop-ups and Banners
Pop-ups and banners are great ways to promote your BFCM sales and offers. Take advantage of them!
Keep your copy short and simple. Convey the value you’re offering, and create a sense of urgency to entice shoppers to buy now.
Need inspiration for your creatives? Check out the examples below.
BFCM Pop-Up Examples
Pop-ups are a great opportunity to get your brand’s messaging in front of buyers. And during BFCM, visitors to your site won’t mind pop-ups because you’re offering amazing deals. If the shopper does leave your site - and they have something in their cart - an abandonment email can recapture the potential lost sale.
Let’s see how.
3. Craft Cart Abandonment Emails + Offers
Cart abandonment is a major problem for e-commerce companies. Nearly 70% of carts are abandoned, but there’s so much opportunity to recapture these sales.
You’re competing to capture a portion of the $281 billion in global sales during Cyber Week. You can recapture some of these potentially lost sales due to cart abandonment by creating:
- Cart abandonment emails sent to customers who leave your site with items in their carts.
- Emails that offer special discounts on products and promote your sales.
Imagine this scenario:
- On November 21st, someone adds your coffee product to their cart.
- The consumer is ready to click “buy,” but they realize Black Friday is right around the corner.
- Black Friday comes. They search for a deal on the same coffee product and buy from a competitor.
You could send out an abandonment email on the Thursday before Black Friday that reminds them of their abandoned cart with a special BFCM discount code to buy the product now.
By strategically sending cart abandonment emails and adding a nice deal into the mix, you’ll make a sale that may have otherwise gone to your competitor.
If you’re selling apparel or items that may cause customer friction during the purchasing process, a fit finder quiz may help you convert lost sales. Add a link to the quiz in your abandonment email.
4. Prep Your Site for a Seamless BFCM Experience
Black Friday marketing - or the entire holiday season - can be derailed by a poor customer experience through your sales funnel. If you’ve ever shopped on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, think about the frustration of:
- Adding items to your cart, and the website goes down.
- Trying to check out, but the page keeps failing.
- Missing deals because the website cannot handle the spike in traffic.
Retailers have even adapted to these hiccups by extending their sales from one or two days to entire weeks. Some retailers are now offering their deals on Thursday rather than Friday to slow the rush of people to their sites and avoid losing sales.
You should perform a quick test of your site and sales funnel by:
- Assessing mobile-friendliness with tools like Chrome Lighthouse
- Running traffic surge tests on your website to see how it operates under heavy traffic
- Setting up live chat, chatbots, and other forms of customer support (more on this below)
- Going through the purchasing process (from landing on the site to checking out) to identify opportunities for optimization
- Verifying that your pop-ups and analytics are working
If you prep your site ahead of time, you’ll increase your odds of a seamless customer experience. You might even want to consider payment friction. Adding a financing option for larger purchases or adding “buy now, pay later” options may be something to discuss.
Before the sales start rushing in, you’ll want to work on one final thing: customer support overload.
5. Empower Your Customer Support Team to Handle the BFCM Surge
Your Cyber Monday and Black Friday marketing strategy must focus on customer experience and support. Consumers are gearing up for great deals, but if you fail on the support end, you may lose a long-term customer.
Salesforce found that 88% of customers believe that experience is as important as the products they buy.
You’ve prepped your website for a seamless customer experience, but you need to ramp up your service in a few ways:
- Live chat or chatbots: Add a live chat or chatbot to your website. Chatbots are a popular choice because they use AI and machine learning to understand your business. You can even use bots that will upsell or cross-sell your items. Live chat options are great if you have the resources to keep wait times to a minimum.
- Email support: Strong email support is another great option during BFCM. You can integrate AI into email to answer simple questions and keep customers informed while a live support agent provides a more in-depth reply.
- Phone support: Work to outsource some of your call center support and negotiate deals to scale support during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Knowledge databases: Detailed knowledge bases allow your customers to find answers to their questions on their own. Your knowledge base will also help customer service agents find answers to questions that potential customers have, so they’re worth creating.
- Quizzes: If customers often have trouble figuring out what they need, a product recommendation quiz can ease the burden on your support team by guiding shoppers to the right product. This can also mitigate returns, which your customer support team will probably appreciate!
Spending the time and resources to improve your customer support is an investment in your company’s future, too.
Automation and AI are crucial in customer service because you need resources to reply to calls, emails, and chats. If you don’t offer fast responses, you risk losing a sale to competitors because shoppers want to take advantage of BFCM deals.
Is Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy Ready?
Preparing your BFCM marketing by solidifying your quizzes, marketing materials, and support channels will help you provide the best customer experience possible. If you’re still prepping for the hottest shopping week of the year, be sure to follow our five recommendations above.
