5 Tips to maximise your Black Friday Cyber Monday

The countdown to Black Friday Cyber Monday is officially on. This event is only getting bigger and better every year, so if you haven't already done so, now is the time to get organised and set your eCommerce store up for success — making this holiday season your most successful one yet.

We've compiled 5 impactful tips that your team can put into practice to make the most of this upcoming BFCM campaign. Read on to learn more!

Tip #1 - Engage your audience with Email & SMS

Cutting through the noise of not only your competitors but most other retailers on earth during the BFCM frenzy can be extremely difficult, and brands risk having their amazing campaigns drowned out in the swell.

To get ahead and be heard, focus on three simple ideas:

1. Identify your most engaged audience
2. Start your messaging early
3. Use more personalised channels

With the costs of acquisition through digital advertising continuing to rise, particularly around BFCM, it's more important than ever to leverage your own first-party database of customers and subscribers. Shifting the focus to engaging your existing audience rather than clamouring for new customers (that generally have higher return rates) will form a core part of a successful campaign.

Use RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) segmentation techniques to identify your engaged audiences across your various channels, and begin messaging those customers early with enticing teaser-style content. The goal is to become your customers' first stop when the craziness starts, even if they happen to miss the notifications in their inbox.

According to Klaviyo, 60% of BFCM customers from 2020 had engaged with the brands in the year prior. So harness and nurture your existing customers to drive sales throughout this event.

If you haven't already, BFCM is a great opportunity to trial SMS marketing, which is now available in Australia for merchants using Klaviyo. Enable SMS opt-in at checkout and on your subscriber forms now so you can communicate with this newly-engaged customer segment and avoid the email inbox melee entirely!

To close the loop, ensure that your social media audience is encouraged to subscribe to your owned channels (such as email and sms), and consider running subscriber acquisition campaigns in the coming weeks to bolster your list before the big event.

Tip #2 - Prepare your back office for the influx of orders

With so much to plan and execute in so little time, it's easy to lose sight of the entire customer experience heading into a busy period. For an eCommerce retailer, the worst thing you can do is go live with great deals then let down your customers by not having the capacity to fulfill orders in a timely manner or having a site full of out-of-stock products.

Get prepared by speaking with your shipping provider now and ask if any arrangements can be made to cope with the surge. Examples include increasing the number of parcel collections each day or even onboarding a new carrier to divide the workload.

Lastly, don't forget about the warehouse! Coordinate additional warehouse staff ahead of time and have backup plans in place in case some staff members are unable to work and check that supplies are well-stocked such as shipping boxes, tape, and bubble wrap.

These items don't receive flashy headlines, but hiccups in this part of the experience can turn an amazing BFCM performance sour.

Tip #3 - Pre-empt customer questions through CX automations

During BFCM you'll see an increase in customer enquiries, so it's important to make sure your customer service game is stronger than ever throughout the event. Here are a few things you can do ahead of time to help eliminate customer frustration and increase satisfaction, ultimately leaving shoppers with a positive impression of your brand.

• Set up a live chat and a customer service help desk like Gorgias. Chatbots and centralised help desks are a great way to provide customer service and automation in one place, and Gorgias can help alleviate the workload by automatically responding to the most common questions such as "Where is my order?".
• Clearly communicate your returns policy on your website. Getting returns right through platforms such as Loop is essential for eCommerce brands to win long-term, repeat customers. Loop's self-serve returns mean fewer support tickets for your team and a better experience for your customers.

Tip #4 - Focus your marketing on the right products

BFCM is a great opportunity to sell with holiday gift buying top of mind, but it doesn't mean your business metrics need to suffer. Prioritising your campaign on high inventory and high gross margin products is a great way to exit the sale period with your top-line revenue and bottom-line profit looking healthy and strong.

Tagalys takes all of the struggles out of merchandising collection pages for even the largest Shopify Plus merchants with its highly-configurable, data-driven merchandising rules. With Tagalys, your team can easily create rules to promote high margin products, demote out of stocks, pin your best sellers — and so much more!

Lastly, remember to guide your customers to the right place. Make your promotions and offers easy to find from the home page, and consider using an announcement bar, header navigation, and other configurable elements of your site to help customers find their way to the best deals.

Tip #5 - Don't let your new subscribers go to waste

Your BFCM marketing activity is going to drive a lot of new customers to your site so it's a great opportunity to grow your community of long-term and loyal customers. Keep up the momentum from BFCM and nurture these new customers by setting up a tailored follow-up email automation series that is personalised with the products and categories each customer showed interest in during the promotional period.

Not all new subscribers will have been convinced to buy during BFCM — perhaps they were swayed by a competing offer, or their particular choice sold out too quickly. Consider creating a specific follow-up series to keep those customers engaged and interested in your brand during the lead-up to Christmas, where you have another opportunity to convert those hot leads into customers.

While these tips are great to reference and confirm your plans, a truly successful BFCM period is generally a months-long effort across multiple internal and external stakeholder groups.

If you, like many other brands, have found yourself scrambling in the final days to have everything prepared, you might not get the most of your BFCM efforts, and resort to reactive tactics such as heavy discounting in order to hit revenue goals.

At The Working Party, we work alongside our Growth Programme clients to provide ideas, guidance, and expert implementation to get the most out of their Shopify Plus store during this peak season.

If you'd like to be better placed for success throughout these peak buying periods, get in touch and learn how we can help.