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We've got the ultimate guide to the best black friday deal strategy, how to incorporate loyalty to amp up your results, and cyber monday sales mastery in 2023.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) aren't just days; they're phenomena. Every year, these events redefine the benchmarks for both ecommerce strategy and-commerce success, and as a Shopify merchant, you're right in the thick of it. But here's the catch: success during this period isn't just about the deals you offer; it's about the strategy behind them.
If we're considering the typical promotion length for BFCM is 1 week long (if not more), then this year Black Friday starts the week of November 20th through the 24th, peaking at Noon EST on Friday the 24th. Saturday and Sunday also see record sales with repositioned offers, and Cyber Monday sales peak around 4pm on Monday November 28th 2023.
As previously shown, Black Friday 2022 witnessed a groundbreaking online spending of $9.12 billion in the United States. Moreover, there was a noteworthy 12% rise in in-store consumer spending on Black Friday 2022, as reported by Mastercard. This emphasizes the significance of consumers still willing to spend more despite an economic uncertainty.
According to Adobe, Cyber Monday continues to dominate as the largest shopping day for ecommerce and online shoppers. In 2022, a whopping $11.3 billion was spent in the US, surpassing the $10.7 billion spent in 2021. This significant increase in Cyber Monday spending highlights its continued importance in the retail landscape.
According to a CNBC report cyber week, online sales in the US amount to around $2 to $3 billion on an average day. Amazon also experienced an impressive surge in revenue on Black Friday, with a significant increase of 128%. The only other comparable event in terms of sales is Prime Day.
Think of your sales funnel as the roadmap to your BFCM success. It's the journey you craft for your customers, leading them from mere awareness to loyal advocates. A well-structured funnel ensures that no potential customer falls through the cracks, and every interaction is optimized for conversion. But, like any journey, you'll end up lost if you don't know where you're going.
The early bird gets the worm, and in the world of BFCM, the early planner reaps the rewards. Planning ahead allows you to understand your audience, learn essential data skills refine your marketing strategies beforehand, and ensure everything runs smoothly when the big days arrive. Remember, during BFCM, every minute counts. A delay in an email or a glitch in a loyalty reward can mean lost sales.
Loyalty programs have long been a cornerstone of effective customer retention. When combined with targeted email marketing campaigns, they can be a potent tool, especially during high-stakes sales events like Black Friday. By rewarding repeat customers with exclusive deals, sneak peeks, or early access, businesses can create a sense of exclusivity and urgency. This not only drives sales but also fosters brand loyalty, ensuring that customers return even after the holiday sales are over.
In today's digital landscape, email marketing stands as one of the most potent tools for e-commerce businesses, especially in the wellness and beauty sectors. It's not just about sending out newsletters or product updates; it's about crafting a narrative, building a relationship, and guiding your audience through a meticulously designed sales funnel. When executed correctly, email campaigns can drive significant traffic, foster customer loyalty, and, most importantly, boost sales.
Email marketing, when done right, can be the bridge between your brand and your loyal customers. Segmenting your email list based on loyalty program tiers or points allows for more personalized and targeted campaigns. For instance, offering your top-tier loyalty members an exclusive Black Friday preview can drive early sales and reduce website traffic congestion on the big day. Furthermore, integrating these campaigns with our Flawless Funnel Framework can streamline the customer journey, ensuring higher conversion rates and increased customer satisfaction.
The key to a successful email marketing strategy lies in understanding your audience's journey. From the moment they land on your site to the post-purchase phase, every touchpoint matters. This is where our Flawless Funnel Framework comes into play. Designed with the modern Shopify merchant in mind, this framework provides actionable insights and strategies to optimize every stage of the customer journey. By integrating proven tactics from this framework into your email campaigns, you can ensure that every message you send out resonates, engages, and converts.
Email marketing, especially with a platform as robust as Klaviyo, offers unparalleled opportunities for personalized customer engagement. It's not just about sending emails; it's about sending the right emails. Combine this with a loyalty program like LoyaltyLion, and you have a recipe for success. Loyalty programs incentivize repeat purchases and foster a community around your brand. The synergy between Klaviyo and LoyaltyLion can amplify your BFCM results, turning one-time shoppers into lifelong brand advocates.
Preparation is key! Spend the first two weeks of September before diving into your Black Friday Sale by laying the groundwork and taking some time to understand your audience fully. Do this with site & email audits, brainstorming some loyal customer perks you can offer to build retention in your following, analyzing your audience's behavior, research a few different advanced strategies that could be implemented with your specific audience (a great resource is the Klaviyo Help Centre), prepare some audience segmentation for more targeted. The time and planning into your marketing strategy is future cashflow investment here will be an invaluable resource for a successful next holiday shopping season for your online store.
If you wish to be successful on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you should plan well ahead. Leaving it to October means you have little runway to execute on the minimum 14+ emails, landing pages, site turnover graphics and more you need to maximise online sales. Lucky you: LoyaltyLion (our preferred loyalty app for Shopify merchants) even has a guide on what kind of promotions your VIPS prefer based on their market research.
Keep it easy by picking your no-brainer best sellers, or even change your tactic with your overstock and offer mystery boxes or deeper discounts for out-of-season items. Or offer a limited time bundle, seasonally packages giftable products fit for influencers and more.
It involves updating descriptions and pictures, improving the search engine rankings, and creating blog content related to this product. How many different premutations of the sale will you have for loyalty members, VIP, early access, last chance, and cyber monday vs black friday variations? Will you be doing a shipping cutoff? All of these marketing messages add design demands to your different mediums like email, display, social, and paid ads.
Creating some content doesn’t end in September. You need to continue building that engagement through the month of October so your brand is top of mind for your audience come November and so you can continue collecting data about your audience's likes and dislikes. This will make your marketing campaigns, and promos a lot more efficient if you continue to look at your audience as a group built up of different users with different needs. Blasting a large group with the same content for three months is a recipe for disaster.
This is your opportunity to see what worked and what didn’t. Look at click rates, and open rates, and maybe look into gathering feedback so you can continue refining your content making it more and more of a return on your investment.
You are about to enter BFCM month (November)! Preparing and optimizing your November planned offers with all your emails pre-scheduled. Ensure your user journeys are clear and you reach the right segments of your audience with the most appropriate offers for their needs and likes.
For November, the focus should be on execution, monitoring, and maximizing opportunities. As we're in the thick of the sale season, the phases can be: Launch, Monitor, Close.
This is about rolling out all the strategies and campaigns planned.
Keeping a close eye on how things are progressing and making real-time adjustments.
Ensuring every opportunity is seized and ending the month with strong campaigns to keep the momentum going into December.
To scale your sales during Black Friday, you have three levers you can pull for your revenue growth without even needing to offer any deep discounts on your products.
More articles from the Arq team on Shopify, Wellness, Trends, email, and more.
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