How to prepare your e-comm for Black Friday 2021

Start early

Customers are already starting to look for interesting promotions for this year. This interest is partially created by more and more materials prepared by companies that put together the best promotions. An example is the material of the BusinessInsider portal, where you can find discounted products almost a month before Black Friday.

Black Friday is present in the advertising and marketing communications of the biggest players in the market, often more than a month in advance. Without breaking through this hype and connecting to the mainstream, the offer of smaller stores prepared for Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday can be completely missed by potential clients.

Launch all marketing channels

According to a study quoted by Wiadomości Handlowe, over 49 percent of respondents are looking for attractive offers on the occasion of Black Friday in social media, primarily on Facebook and Instagram.

For 32% of the population the main source of information is stores' websites and TV commercials for another 36%. This means that in order to effectively reach the audience, it is necessary to launch all marketing channels as part of a coordinated strategy.

Email marketing on Black Friday

Campaign Monitor data shows that up to 116.5 million emails are sent during Black Friday, significantly more than any other day of the year. Black Friday is also the day when the most emails are opened and clicked - probably because the recipients are genuinely interested in the biggest promotions of the year.

SEO on Black Friday

SEO is a channel that by its nature works over the long term. However, this does not mean that store owners should give up on it while keeping in mind events like Black Friday. A few well-written posts about the upcoming event and promotion can play a supporting role for other channels - this content can be shared on social media and linked across the site.

It is also worth including price comparison websites such as Ceneo or Google Shopping in the communication mix. In the struggle for every click, Black Friday comparison engines can be a crucial tool.

Make a technical audit of your website

According to a study by Nosto, during Cyber ​​Monday and Black Friday, stores have up to 21 percent. higher traffic and sales increase by 14 percent. From a business perspective, this is a tremendous opportunity, but for technology infrastructure it can be unbearable.

Mobile responsiveness

Adapt your webiste to the requirements of mobile traffic. According to Adobe data quoted by Forbes, about 37% of Black Friday 2020 transactions were made via mobile devices. The need to adapt your store to smartphones or tablets is also influenced by the popularity of social media as a marketing channel. Big chunk of transactions finalized on desktop has been done by clients that have been funneled via mobile.

Use the best creatives and don’t be afraid to reuse them again

With a traffic growth of 21%, optimization by as much as a 1% can have a huge impact on your ROI. For this reason, Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are a great opportunity to return to the best converting creations and promotional campaigns you have done in the past.

It is also worth remembering to start the campaigns with A / B tests early enough, so the advertising algorithms have time to optimize the results.

Don’t hesitate to go for cross-selling and up-selling

Black Friday sales usually involve discounts of 60% or more, but real price reductions are often much lower. A study by Deloitte indicated that the real level of reductions for the two days was around 3.4 percent.

From the perspective of a store that wants to offer a real discount on its product, the solution to cutting the margin may be cross and up-selling. Both of these e-commerce strategies involve adding products that complement the main traffic driver. However, there is no need for those additional products to be discounted as much as the base product.

McKinsey data shows that cross and up-selling are able to increase sales by 20% and revenues by up to 30%

Recover abandoned carts

During Black Week, many carts will be abandoned. The Barillance company survey shows that as much as 77.79% of carts is abandoned on Black Friday alone. Customers will wonder whether they will find better offers from competitors or if they really need the product they have in a cart already. Sometimes refraining from buying will be made at the last minute, before clicking "pay" at the cart.

The answers for this challenge can be improving the UX of the basket as well as retargeting. A Baymard report indicated that despite repeated testing and fixes, Fortune 500's baskets still offer a lot of room for improvement in terms of user experience. This applies even more to smaller companies that have much less resources for testing and developing their own tools.

Retargeting, on the other hand, is a great way to remind customers about not completed purchases. SignifiMedia data shows that retargeting has up to 10 times higher CTR than standard Google ads.

If a registered customer has left the cart it can be reminded by an email. Barillance indicates that even 10.7% of emails reminding about the abandoned carts ends with the purchase.

Summary

Promotional campaigns on the occasion of Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are a great opportunity to reach new customers and increase sales. However, it is worth remembering that increased traffic in itself and exposure are not enough to achieve success. It is important to have a strategic approach and successively convert traffic and interest into sales.