When it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) in eCommerce, we’re talking about choosing a strategy that has the power to entirely transform your business.
The reason for that is because last year alone, the BFCM weekend in eCommerce saw as much as $6.3 billion in sales with the average cart value being over $100 and at its peak, over $3 million dollars in sales were being made every single minute.
So whether you’re an eCommerce BFCM newby or a veteran when it comes to online sales, deciding on the appropriate strategy for your eCommerce store as early as possible is the right thing to do.
There are many rewards up for grabs, but there will be also a lot of competition so you want to make sure that you’re prepared and make the most out of it.
A note about BFCM eCommerce deals
Something to note is that being part of the BFCM weekend in eCommerce doesn’t always mean that you have to discount your products, your heart and your soul.
It’s true that on average we see a 37% discount across the board during the BFCM weekend in eCommerce, however, that does not mean that you necessarily have to discount your products as many of you might be selling boutique sustainable products that don’t really go well with discounting.
You’ve got to be in it to win it with the right BFCM eCommerce strategy
The first thing you need to be aware of when it comes to the right BFCM strategy is that your customers are waiting for you to market to them. Yes, you heard me right, they’re waiting for you to offer them something.
So if you’re still on the edge and deciding whether to do something special or not, the answer is that unless you at least communicate to your customers, someone else will and they’ll love them for it and forget about you.
I’m going to repeat this again – you’ve got to be in it to win it.
Keep your eCommerce costs in check over the BFCM weekend
The second thing you’ve got to pay attention to when it comes to the right BFCM strategy in eCommerce is that everyone else will want to market to your customers and hence, if you’re running ads, costs will dramatically increase.
This means that even if you’ve got well-running ads with a great ROAS, it might not make commercial sense to be running ads to cold expensive audiences during those few days.
Instead, you want to be marketing to a warm audience and essentially just run retargeting ads if you’re using a paid traffic strategy for the BFCM weekend.
One thing you don’t want to do during that busy period is start exploring new audiences because that will really not serve you that well.
Prepare an effective email marketing strategy for your eCommerce store
Email is crucial for BFCM success in eCommerce so what you want to do is make sure that you’re inviting customers to your offers at the right time and most importantly stop worrying about unsubscribes.
Because just like I mentioned in the first point above, if you won’t market to your customers someone else will.
For the most effective strategy, I typically recommend sending a minimum of six emails, starting on Wednesday, pre-warming your audience that a great offer is coming or even giving them early access and then communicating each day until the end of Monday.
There is no need to overcomplicate this, just keep your emails simple, with a simple message and a tag line.
Be ready for the comparison
One of the very common consumer habits during the BFCM eCommerce weekend is that consumers tend to compare products and deals across different companies because they know that everyone has an amazing deal on.
Therefore, you will see a higher than usual rate of abandoned carts inside your eCommerce store. To tackle this and make sure that customers are buying from you and not your competitors, you want to use a BFCM strategy that will increase the frequency of the abandoned cart email from whatever it is right now, to essentially twenty minutes.
Yes, you are reading right. If someone leaves products in cart and you’ve got their email address, you want to be emailing them more often and more frequently reminding them of the amazing deal that’s about to go away.
On top of that, one of the things that will help you convert more traffic into sales is adding a timer inside the add-to-cart stage of the checkout process and clearly communicating that the product is in high demand. Typically, giving your customers seven minutes to complete the checkout process is just enough to keep them engaged without stressing them out.
Get ready for your business to double and more
Whether you’re just starting out or have been running an eCommerce business for a while, getting the BFCM sales in eCommerce right can mean doubling, tripling or even quadrupling your business over a very short period of time.
For entrepreneurs, it’s a super exciting period of the year but it can also be super stressful as there are many variables to think about including having enough product and be ready to ship it as fast as possible.
If you’d like more information on the right BFCM strategy and how to prepare for the holiday season in eCommerce, you can watch this replay to help you prepare the right strategy for your business and reach your goals.
As always, let us know what you took out of this blog post and I’m looking forward to hearing how you’re crushing it out there!
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