Back from summer and you know what that means, it’s time to get back to prepping Black Friday 2023! Make it a stress-free one this year with this checklist.
How are you going to stand out this Black Friday and peak season? Perhaps you want to promote certain items to those who only shop from you on sale and other items to your full-price shoppers? What’s your approach to sustainability? Will you have a teaser campaign etc.
This is not the time to promote the wrong items. Make sure you segment your data based on product interest, purchasing history, location and more. When everyone and their dog is trying to sell something, you need to stand out by only offering what the customer might like.
Take this time to truly optimize your website for increased traffic and smooth user experience and ensure your online store can handle high volumes of visitors and transactions on the day. Perhaps you want to try something eye-catching, like a countdown timer and calls-to-action for Black Friday deals this year? And don’t forget the merchandising. Now is the time to optimize for conversion.
With customers bouncing around from site to site, don’t lose out on your abandoned carts to a competitor! Emails with a reminder of what they left behind have a high open-rate of 50% (!) and at least 10% of the customers who open it will go back and complete the purchase.
Take inspiration from sports brand Björn Borg. They send their SMS “from” local stores and an individual salesperson to create a personal dialogue with the customer when they come to redeem the reward voucher or whatever the SMS has promoted. Utilize SMS in a relevant and personal way.
Not ready to start charging your customers for returns? We get it; why not try to make it free for members, or only charge for uncollected packages for example.
Don’t miss the opportunity to gain more members this peak season! Promote your sneak preview early to get as many new members on board as possible. We probably don’t need to tell you how much more valuable your loyal customers are than one-time buyers?
Engage with customers on social media platforms to answer questions and build excitement before and during Black Friday to really build up the hype! Once Black Friday is in full swing, offer live chat support to assist customers with inquiries in real-time.
Make sure you don’t work in silos, every day but perhaps most importantly in the run-up and through peak season. This way, your offers, communication, stock balance and site performance are all aligned. This will also enable you to be agile and monitor trends so that you can create ad-hoc campaigns based on site traffic.
Have you goals and KPIs set up and ready to measure when it’s time. That way it’s easy to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement for next year. This time next year you’ll thank your past self.
We hope you’re as excited as us for Black Friday this year! If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to get in touch to see how Voyado can help, every step of the way!
We love all things customer and product data, and would love to chat about your brand’s individual challenges, and how our solutions can help.
