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In the world of commerce, there's a pivotal window that holds the key to unmatched sales – the acclaimed Black Friday Cyber Monday, or BFCM. It's that golden opportunity when businesses have the potential to achieve remarkable sales milestones.
Yet, harnessing this potential requires more than mere aspiration; it demands a well-structured strategy.
In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the heart of BFCM sales, uncovering the trends, tactics, and tools that can amplify your success this year and beyond.
What is the BFCM sale?
Black Friday and Cyber Monday, collectively known as BFCM, represent the high tide of the annual shopping season. Every year, post-Thanksgiving, businesses and shoppers alike dive into this whirlpool of enticing deals and unmatched savings. While rooted in American tradition, these twin titans of retail have evolved into a global shopping juggernaut, drawing millions with the promise of unmatched deals.
This year Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales start from 25th November 2023 to 28th November 2023
BFCM 2022: A Deep Dive into Numbers
Let's delve into some key insights from the 2022 Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) global highlights:
- Unprecedented Shopping Volume: On Black Friday, sales soared to a staggering $3.5 million per minute at precisely 12:01 PM EST on November 25. A vivid testament to the overwhelming pull BFCM exerts on the global retail pulse.
- A Global Embrace of Independent Brands: A staggering 52 million consumers worldwide demonstrated their affinity for independent brands powered by Shopify, representing an impressive 12% increase from the previous year.
- Elevated Consumer Spending: BFCM catalyzed a remarkable rise in consumer spending across diverse countries. Global shoppers exhibited an average order value of $102.10 throughout the weekend, or $104.80 on a constant currency basis.
- The Mobile Momentum: BFCM is undoubtedly a digital affair, with the majority of sales driven by online transactions. An impressive 73% of sales were conducted via mobile devices, while desktop purchases accounted for the remaining 27%.
Get set to double your Shopify store BFCM sales
After having worked with thousands of brands online, here's a detailed breakdown of actionable steps we recommend taking to double your BFCM sales:
1. Set Up a BFCM Landing Page
As Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) approaches, businesses need more than just enticing deals. A dedicated BFCM landing page offers a laser-focused goal, presenting shoppers with streamlined offers, free from the usual site distractions. These pages also give you the opportunity to build an email list before BFCM to create a list of interested buyers.
Moreover, with specific landing pages, businesses can effortlessly track performance, refine real-time strategies, and amplify the efficacy of their paid campaigns by ensuring cohesive user journeys.
To craft an impactful BFCM landing page:
- Use a bold headline that clearly conveys the core message.
- Integrate consistent visuals, drawing from festive themes or adhering to brand colors, to resonate with audience emotions.
- Prioritize a compelling call-to-action (CTA) button strategically positioned to seize attention and guide visitors toward the intended action.
- Recognizing the surge in mobile online shopping, thoroughly test and optimize the landing page for mobile compatibility, ensuring a seamless experience across all devices.
2. Pick Your Discounts Wisely
The allure of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) lies heavily in the enticing discounts that brands offer. Here's a guide to help you pick your discounts wisely:
- Segment Your Inventory: Group products based on popularity, inventory levels, and margins. Offer deeper discounts on overstocked items or older inventory, while being conservative with popular or high-margin items.
- Tiered Discounts: This strategy encourages higher spending. For instance, offer 10% off on purchases above $50, 20% off on purchases above $100, and so on. By doing this, customers are incentivized to buy more to save more.
- Dynamic Bundling: Instead of standard discounts, bundle complementary products together at a reduced price. This not only increases the average order value but also helps in moving products that may be slow-selling on their own.
- Exclusive Discounts for Loyal Customers: Reward your regulars with special deals. This not only drives sales but reinforces customer loyalty.
- Limited-Time Offers: By creating a sense of urgency, flash sales or hourly deals can drive quick purchases. Ensure these are well-publicized in advance to generate excitement.
3. Craft Enticing Product Bundles
Product bundling, a strategic sales tactic, involves combining multiple items into a single, attractive package, often at a discounted price. To create irresistible bundles this BFCM:
- Value Proposition: Ensure the bundled offer genuinely provides value to the customer. Highlight the savings made from purchasing the bundle compared to buying each item individually.
- Theme-Based Bundling: Categorize bundles based on themes or occasions. For instance, a 'Winter Care' bundle for skincare products or a 'Tech Enthusiast' pack combining a tablet, headphones, and a portable charger.
- Limit Exclusivity: Offer certain products only within the bundle during the BFCM sale. This exclusivity can enhance the bundle's appeal, urging customers to grab the unique deal.
- Simple Pricing: Make the savings evident. If a customer can instantly recognize the value they're getting, they're more likely to purchase.
Recommended read: Types of product bundling strategies for Shopify stores
4. Formulate a Promotion Plan
A well-orchestrated promotion plan ensures your BFCM offers reach a wide audience. Here's how to map out a plan that maximizes your outreach and conversions:
- Create a Content Calendar: Draft a detailed BFCM Calendar that pinpoints when and where each promotion will be launched. This includes pre-BFCM teasers, the main event promotions, and post-sale engagement.
- Diversify Your Channels: Don't limit yourself. Harness the power of social media, email marketing, influencer partnerships, and paid advertising to ensure a wide reach. Each channel should complement the other, offering a cohesive brand message.
- Teasers and Hype-building: Prior to BFCM, drop hints or showcase 'sneak peeks' of top deals. This creates anticipation and ensures your audience is primed and waiting when the sale goes live.
- Optimize Messaging: Your promotional content should be clear, concise, and compelling. Whether it's an email subject line, a social media post, or an ad banner, ensure it grabs attention and urges action.
- Engage and Interact: Foster a two-way communication. Respond to comments, hold live sessions, or conduct Q&A sessions about your BFCM offers. This not only boosts visibility but also builds trust.
5. Customize the Look and Feel of Your Store
The ambiance of your online store plays a significant role in shaping a visitor's buying decision. As Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) approach, it becomes imperative to adapt the design and feel of your e-commerce platform to resonate with the festive fervor. Here's how to achieve this transformation:
- Seasonal Themes & Color Palette: Start by introducing a color scheme that echoes the BFCM spirit. Shades of black, gold, or silver can convey the essence of Black Friday, while incorporating elements of red or green can allude to the holiday season that follows.
- Engaging Banners & Visuals: Feature captivating banners on your homepage highlighting your key BFCM deals. Use high-quality imagery of products, perhaps with a festive backdrop, to visually entice visitors.
- Responsive Design: With an increasing number of users shopping on mobile devices, ensure that your updated design is responsive. It should offer a seamless shopping experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
- Interactive Elements: Introduce interactive features such as hover effects on product images or a festive animation when items are added to the cart. These can elevate the user experience and make shopping more delightful.
- Branded Packaging: If feasible, offer special BFCM-themed packaging for orders placed during the sale. This added touch reinforces the exclusivity of the shopping event and can delight customers upon unboxing.
6. Incorporate Countdown Timers
Harness the power of urgency with countdown timers on your online store. When shoppers witness the ticking clock, it evokes a sense of scarcity and limited time, prompting faster decision-making.
Place these timers strategically on special deals, limited stock items, or exclusive promotions to drive immediate action.
A well-positioned countdown timer not only heightens the shopping experience but also reduces cart abandonment rates, encouraging customers to finalize their purchases before time runs out. Utilize this tool to create excitement, increase engagement, and accelerate sales during peak shopping periods.
7. Set Up Gift Cards and Cashback
Gift cards and cashback incentives are powerful tools to enhance your customer's shopping experience and foster loyalty. During peak shopping seasons, offering gift cards can serve a dual purpose:
- Firstly, they act as a perfect gift option for those uncertain about what to purchase.
- Secondly, they ensure future visits to your store when the recipient redeems their gift card.
On the other hand, cashback offers reward customers for their purchases, providing them an incentive to spend more. By offering a percentage of their total spend back as store credit, you're not only encouraging larger purchases but also ensuring they return to redeem their earned credits.
Recommended read: How to use gift cards during the BFCM sale
8. Optimize Checkout for Speed and Conversions
During peak shopping events like BFCM, shoppers are often in a race against time to snag the best deals. They have little patience for sluggish or complex checkouts, and every second can mean the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.
A rapid and seamless checkout process isn't just a convenience; it's a necessity to capitalize on the urgency-driven nature of such events. Reduce the number of steps needed to finalize a purchase and simplify form fields to capture only the essentials. By offering options like guest checkout, you further expedite the process for those eager to clinch their deals.
For an enhanced speedy checkout experience, consider installing apps like Checkout Wizard on your Shopify store. The app can help you customize the checkout journey - hide or reorder payment modes, delivery options, upsell and cross-sell promotions, content and more, that can get the buyer to not just complete the purchase faster, but also buy more from you.
Your checkout customization should include upsells, payment and delivery customisation, banners and text on the checkout page. We also recommend branding to match BFCM for better conversions during the sale period. Read more about checkout customizations here.
9. Offer Exceptional Customer Support
In the bustling BFCM shopping environment, exceptional customer support sets you apart. Proactively addressing customer queries can be achieved through automated FAQs.
By anticipating common questions and providing instant solutions, you ease the load on your support team and expedite customers' shopping experiences. Chatbots emerge as invaluable tools, directing shoppers, resolving common issues, and even aiding in the purchasing journey, all without human intervention.
However, while automation effectively handles a significant portion of customer interactions, a trained support team should be prepared to tackle more intricate queries or concerns that automation might not fully address.
By offering a blend of automated and human support, you ensure that every customer feels valued, heard, and assisted, regardless of the complexity of their issue.
10. Automate Multi-Channel Communication
Customers interact with brands across multiple channels. By automating multi-channel In a world of diverse customer interactions, automating multi-channel communication guarantees consistent messaging, time savings, and an optimized customer experience. It enables a seamless presence throughout the customer journey, offering pertinent information and nurturing brand loyalty.
Here's how to leverage automation:
- Recover Abandoned Carts: Automated emails or SMS can re-engage potential customers who abandoned their carts, reminding them of their chosen items and offering incentives for completion.
- Tailored Recommendations: Utilize browsing history and past purchases to automate personalized product recommendations via email, SMS, or WhatsApp, enhancing the shopping experience and boosting sales.
- Order Updates: Keep customers informed with automated order status updates using emails, SMS, or WhatsApp to share information from order confirmation to delivery.
- Channel Flexibility: Automation ensures effective communication on preferred channels, whether it's email, WhatsApp, or SMS, accommodating individual preferences and broadening your reach.
11. Prepare your store for gifting
BFCM is also the one time when online shoppers make all their gift purchases for Christmas and New Years. So remember to also get your Shopify store ready for gifting. This includes adding the ability to help shoppers request gift wrapping, sending gift cards, messages and voice notes to their friends and family.
Alternatively, you can also use these gifting strategies to enhance customer experience. For example, adding free gifts on purchases above a certain cart total or on volume purchases, or even selling gift cards as a separate product - join in the festivities!
12. Automate Ads and Retargeting
Amidst fierce competition and fleeting consumer attention during BFCM, maintaining brand visibility is challenging. Enter automated ads and retargeting – powerful strategies to keep your brand in the spotlight.
Automated ads ensure optimized campaigns, targeting specific audiences without manual intervention. They analyze behaviors, preferences, and shopping habits, delivering ads when conversions are likely. This enhances ROI and frees you from campaign micromanagement.
Retargeting targets users who've engaged with your brand before. Automated solutions track these users and present tailored ads on various platforms, guiding them back to conversion.
For Shopify users, tools like Sixads can be invaluable, offering automated ads and retargeting. Its user-friendly interface and AI algorithms simplify ad processes, consistently reaching your target audience.
Pro Tip: Begin early! Whether a festive sale or a new product launch, starting ad efforts ahead of time lets you grasp audience behavior, refine strategies, and gain a competitive edge.
Post BFCM: Sustaining Momentum for Ongoing Success
The buzz of the Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) event may have subsided, but the potential for your business to soar is far from over.
Here's how you can strategically leverage the aftermath of BFCM to grow your ecommerce sales even more:
1. Leverage Customer Reviews and Ratings
You've delighted your customers with BFCM discounts. Now, encourage them to share their experience by leaving reviews and ratings for the products they purchased. Request them to even post pictures of their buys, generating authentic user-generated content.
Use Shopify apps like Loox to streamline this process. Display these reviews on your product pages or Facebook feed to enhance your store's credibility and ultimately drive more sales.
2. Uncover Insights from BFCM Analytics
Your BFCM sale might be over, but the data it generated is a treasure trove of insights. Dive into this data to understand your shoppers better - who they are, what they like, and what prompted their purchases.
Armed with actionable insights, personalize your marketing campaigns, curate your product inventory based on customer preferences, and strategically plan your upcoming sales initiatives.
3. Sustain Customer Engagement for Ongoing Sales
Don't let BFCM shoppers slip away after their purchases. Keep them engaged and connected with your brand through consistent and value-driven communication. This communication should remind them to explore your Shopify store and continue shopping, even after the BFCM discounts end.
Employ various channels like web push notifications, emails, Facebook Messenger, and SMS to remind customers of ongoing deals. For instance, a well-timed web push notification a week after BFCM can inform them about available discounts or upcoming sales.
4. Convert Latecomers Into Customers
Latecomers to the BFCM party can still become valuable customers. Ensure your store is welcoming to these shoppers by showcasing your live discounts and offers. Consider adding a signup form to transform them into subscribers, enabling you to keep them informed about special deals.
Follow the example set by industry leaders like Amazon. Create a coupon window to highlight your live offers or guide these visitors to your homepage, where your best-selling products are prominently displayed.
Recommended read: List of the best Shopify apps for BFCM sale
Key BFCM Sale Trends to Keep on Your Radar
As we gear up for the BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) frenzy, it's essential to be aware of five pivotal trends that are set to shape the landscape of BFCM sales in 2023. Staying attuned to these trends can equip businesses with the tools to stay ahead in this bustling sales season.
1. Early Shopping Surge
Brace yourself for an early surge in shopping activity during BFCM. Consumers are eager to secure the best deals, prompting them to start shopping well before the official event begins. Statistics show a significant increase in online traffic and purchases even before the main event kicks off.
2. Proactive Customer Support
Shopping in the digital world is all about the experience, and modern shoppers demand top-notch customer support. Just think about how you'd like quick help when you're shopping online – that's what your customers want too. Brands that offer timely assistance are scoring big points in customer satisfaction and conversion rates during BFCM. So, gear up with a responsive support team, whether it's through chat, voice, or whatever works for your shoppers.
3. Rise of Mobile Commerce
The ease of shopping on mobile devices is driving a surge in mobile commerce. It's like having a mini shopping mall in your pocket. People are making purchases on their phones like never before. So, ensure that your online store is a smooth and inviting place for mobile shoppers. Get ready to tap into this growing trend and make your store mobile-friendly.
4. The Power of Brand Value
Brand reputation holds substantial influence during BFCM. Shoppers are drawn to brands that radiate trustworthiness and quality. It's not just about the deals; it's about the brand values that resonate with your customers. A solid brand narrative and a strong reputation can significantly sway purchase decisions during BFCM.
5. Strategic Planning Yields Results
Strategic planning can make all the difference. Brands that gear up with a well-thought-out BFCM strategy enjoy higher sales and more engaged customers. It's like preparing for a grand performance – you need to have your inventory managed, your marketing campaigns on point, and some personalized offers up your sleeve. Getting ready ahead of time pays off big time!
Ready to Elevate Your BFCM Strategy?
It's clear that the BFCM annual shopping extravaganza is more than just discounts and deals. It's an opportunity for businesses to strategically engage with their customers, boost sales, and lay the foundation for sustained growth.
With the right approach and informed decisions, you can make this BFCM a turning point for your business—one that propels growth, forges enduring connections, and marks a triumphant leap into the world of sales success. By aligning with these trends and insights, your Shopify store can thrive in the competitive landscape of BFCM and beyond.
Remember, the key lies in early preparation, customer-centric strategies, adapting to changing preferences, and embracing innovation. As the BFCM season approaches, it's time to put these insights into action. And that's where SkaiLama comes in. We have prepared a detailed BFCM 2023 Calendar to help you plan for the biggest holiday season. It includes everything from examples to guides that will make BFCM a breeze.
With our expertise and tailored solutions, SkaiLama is your partner in preparing for a successful BFCM.
Whether it's crafting engaging pre-BFCM campaigns, optimizing your customer support, fine-tuning your delivery options, or aligning with your brand's core values, we're here to help you navigate the dynamic BFCM landscape. Let's work together to make this BFCM your best one yet.
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