It's that time of year again when retailers spend months planning and preparing for those two peak days they’ve starred in their marketing calendars; Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
With an economy on the brink of recession and consumers becoming more conscious of how and where to spend their hard-earned cash, retailers are going to have to go the extra mile, or even two to get customers on their site and convert them.
So online retailers, what do you say we make every second of this consumer traffic count with 7 tips from Visualsoft to help maximise your Black Friday and Cyber Mondays campaign?
Let’s jump right in…
1. Offer buy-now, pay-later
It’s no secret that consumer wallets will most likely tighten this winter due to the impact of the cost of living crisis, but that’s not to say they won’t have the intention of not spending at all.
One option for retailers is to add flexibility and convenience to their customers' experience by implementing buy-now, pay-later options to their checkouts. With the proliferation of digital wallets, subscription services, and buy-now-pay-later options, consumers are sending a clear signal that they want more ways to buy your products or services. Payment solutions such as VS Pay enable you to offer these flexible ways to pay at your checkout.
VS Pay is a complete payments solution engineered for the growth of retailers. With all major local, international and leading payment methods such as Klarna & Clearpay available immediately right out of the box, meaning consumers have the flexibility to pay in the way they want. It’s designed for retailers looking to grow their revenue, scale globally, optimise their checkouts and beat fraud.
This way customers can spread the costs of their orders and comfortably manage their finances, whilst you still make your sales. It’s a win, win for everyone.
2. Personalised emails
It’s 2022, and customers are no strangers to personalisation. In fact, a lot of the time it’s expected. So you need to make sure you’re meeting the expectations of your customers, or better yet, exceeding them! If you get your email personalisation just right, your engagement levels could improve dramatically.
Personalisation in email can be used in both subject lines, by relying on information from data taken from preferences, previous purchase history and polling. Just like a conversation, addressing the person by name can pique their interest and engage them in what you’ve got to say. So stand out in a crowded inbox by adding that extra flare to your subject lines.
Tip: For help with adding a name to your subject line, follow the format: [FIRST_NAME_WITH_COMMA]
You could go a step further and predict what your customers want to see this Black Friday through dynamic polling. Sending out polls pre-Black Friday asking subscribers what offers they want to hear about for Black Friday will allow you to follow up with a tailored email with exactly what they want to hear. Showing your customers that you’ve listened to them, and are serving content that they asked for shows you value their interest and can help to build a loyal and lasting relationship.
An example question for dynamic content in the current climate could be to send a poll with a list of price points your subscribers are willing to consider this golden quarter, ranging from low to high. There are lots of things in life that consumers can find overwhelming and out of their control, so giving customers the ability to choose the content they’d like to see can feel like they’re getting some of that control back. If their budgets are tight this winter, choosing to see products at prices affordable for them in their sales email this peak season could make their shopping experience a lot more enjoyable.
Go ahead, make it personal this quarter!
3. Is your platform Black Friday ready?
This next tip could be a make or break for your Black Friday success and it’s all centred around the eCommerce platform used to host your site.
Many retailers spend a lot of time and money driving traffic to their site, only to find that when their customers are landing on their site, it’s slow, pages aren’t loading, and they’re quickly making a swift exit to a competitor site that works better. Ensure that your platform is fully prepared to receive high volumes of traffic.
To do that, start by looking at your previous Black Friday “peak traffic”, take into account (the highest point of the day) and add on your annual growth to calculate a rough “peak” for this year. Using this information you can be confident your testing is of a high enough level to simulate your Black Friday estimates and gauge whether you will need extra support in comparison to last year's performance.
Then take a look at your current infrastructure/platform and see how much headroom it has - taking note of the current traffic levels. Does it have enough resources to cope with your calculated peak traffic for 2022? If you have access to server metrics, look at the concurrent traffic / CPU & RAM usage last year and perform the same uplift.
Once you’ve done that, consider load-testing your site. This is when you test the performance of your site under different conditions so you’re confident it will survive under real-world scenarios and pressures. When it comes to load testing, this does come with a caveat but can certainly help you to ensure your platform will perform across this busy period. Load testing affects your platform setup so make sure to speak to your provider and run your testing at an appropriate time to not impact sales.
If you’re a retailer reading this and scratching your head, don’t worry! Mentioning this to your platform providers is a great place to start, and they’ll have experts who can help action the above.
The final takeaway from this tip is to expect the unexpected, make sure you can scale your solution should you need it, and watch your sales soar this Black Friday.
4. A social surge
Most of us are guilty of spending a significant amount of our days opening up social media apps on our phones. It’s almost become habitual for many. According to smartinsights.com, 59% of the world's population uses social media and an average daily usage sits just under 2 and a half hours. That's hours of potential marketing going to waste.
With that in mind, this is the perfect opportunity for product and sales placements where retailers can inspire and engage their followers. Occupying the spaces you know your customers are frequenting, simply, just makes sense.
Instagram is a global platform, which means you could acquire new customers all the time. And thanks to the multiple options available to display your content and promotions from video to stories, to reels and live videos, you have a world of potential at your fingertips.
You’ve also got the likes of TikTok, which allow creators to provide fun, fast and engaging video content to their subscribers. Another easy win for retailers to grab with both hands. And you don’t even have to think outside of the box either, jump on the latest trends, and use influencers to promote your products at their Black Friday Sale price, the possibilities are endless!
So grab your marketing calendar and prepare to amp up your social promo!
5. Countdown timers
Ever get ‘FOMO’ or ‘fear of missing out’? Guess what, so do your customers!
Countdown timers are a great tactic for Black Friday sales to allow brands to create urgency, influencing the user to purchase by using fear of missing out on the deal. Urgency can be activated in the shopper by both limited-time goods and limited-quantity products. But either way, the scarcity theory empowers sales. The rarer anything is in supply, the more attractive it becomes to the buyer.
Adding countdown timers to your store offers the potential to boost your sales enormously. A limited-time deal means that the discount on the units is only valid for a limited time, in this instance Black Friday, and if they do not act immediately, there will be nothing left for them to buy. Especially with the knowledge that there are high volumes of traffic that comes with Black Friday.
Try not to get carried away with adding countdown timers to every page, as this can dilute their effect. So, where to put the countdown timer on your website?
The best places for an eCommerce countdown are:
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Landing page (for promotions and when sales will end)
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Product page (highlighting the quantity scarcity)
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Checkout page (to reduce cart abandonment)
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Other website pages (to create a sense of urgency)
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Email marketing (with deals and time left to grab them)
Sound like something that would fit into your marketing strategy? Time is ticking! Add your countdown timers to your store today.
6. Break the rules!
Who said you need to limit your Black Friday sale to just Black Friday? For a lot of brands, cutting through the noise can be a challenge simply due to the number of online retailers all aiming to drive mass amounts of consumers to their site using the term ‘Black Friday’.
So why not do something a little different, whilst everyone else is ending their sale, why not stock up and allow for your sale to run a little longer? Or better yet, why wait until consumers have potentially spent up on offers they couldn’t refuse, and start a little earlier?
One major factor to consider this Black Friday and even Cyber Monday is that it falls around most people's paydays. So extending your sale this year could be a great idea for those people who were considering a purchase but didn’t buy. Once they’ve bought other bargains, they may come back if they realise your sale is still on!
The truth is, everyone loves a bargain, and if they can avoid even the virtual hustle and bustle of Black Friday. The key to getting this tip right is communication! Whether you’re starting earlier or extending your sale, ensure you have plenty of promotion to run alongside this; email, social, paid ads, you name it. After all, your customers can't read minds.
This is your opportunity to re-engage those shoppers who may not have made that purchase the first time around. Now's the time to excite, engage and convert by extending your Black Friday sale!
7. Optimise for mobile
The final tip we’ll cover focuses on the device we all frequent daily; the mobile phone. As we mentioned earlier in this blog, consumers are spending a significant amount of their day on their mobile phones, surfing the web, browsing social media, and shopping online.
Many online businesses are seeing a large increase in the number of purchases made via mobile phones. According to Content Square in 2021, 58% of all online visits came from smartphones. This means retailers need to go the extra mile to make those visits into conversions.
With a large amount of the population heading online through mobile phone usage, ensuring that your website is optimised for a user to enjoy their experience and potentially purchase something is critical.
But how do you optimise for mobile? Well, lots of factors can play a part in optimising for mobile including:
- Photo and video content - Providing visuals for your customers is a great way to allow them to engage with a product virtually before buying, but ensure that your image and video sizes are as small as possible whilst still providing a clear visual of your product. This is because large file sizes can affect your site's speed and load time, which could have a user making a swift exit from your site.
- Ensure pop-ups work for mobile - This one is important for Black Friday, if you have a pop-up offering a discount in line with your Black Friday sale, ensure this has been designed with mobile users in mind. Large-sized pop-ups can become obstructive to the user depending on the size of their screen, so keeping these as minimal in size and text as possible is key.
- Appreciate your customers' time - Can your customer find what they need in as little time and clicks as possible? Keeping the search bar above the fold is the most effective way to convert online shoppers into customers. Considering the position of the search bar on your site is vital, visitors that engage with searches are up to 5 times more likely to purchase from you. This type of shopper is much more likely to convert because they already know what it is they are looking for.
And there you have it, our 7 tips to maximise your campaigns this Black Friday. If you take away anything from this blog, it’s to be prepared as best as possible to engage your consumers in this peak period.
