Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a fabulous opportunity for your DTC or Ecommerce business to use the biggest shopping extravaganza to reach more sales and delight your customers.
In 2021, Shopify merchants made a whopping $6.3 billion in sales during BFCM from 47 million shoppers.
To make the most of BFCM 2022, getting your marketing in order and complete preparation beforehand is extremely important. This guide on BFCM strategies for businesses of all shapes and sizes delves into the strategies before, during, and after the BFCM festival extravaganza.
Pre-BFCM Strategies
Detailed planning at this stage will prepare you well to cash in on the holiday season and drive sales.
1) Focus On Optimization
a) Conversion Optimization
In the build-up to the BFCM festival, creating urgency and rarity of offers increases sales. Most BFCM sales are on impulse and are driven by discounts, promotions, timed offers, and limited-time deals that build a sense of urgency and lead to more sales.
Launching strong buzz-building countdown campaigns that incorporate urgency attracts potential customers and increases revenue.
Your homepage, product pages, and email campaigns can have:
- Countdown timers about deals expiring soon with a CTA to avail
- Discounted product prices when the deal is in progress
- Stock available at the discounted price
- The number of people actually viewing the deal right now!
In addition, create click-to-copy coupons and promote them online and through coupon sites.
If you promise next-day delivery, ensure that you promote it heavily. FOMO is real. Make use of it.
A classic example of timed offers is the American Ecommerce fashion brand Zappos which has a time-bound free shipping offer on its website and leverages shoppers’ fear of missing out to drive sales.
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b)Checkout Process Optimization
Your BFCM strategy should also include checkout process optimization in your website and mobile apps because the busy BFCM festival is bound to witness a spike in sales.
- Streamline and simplify the user interface both on the website and mobile
- Offer multiple payment options like PayPal and Buy Now Pay Later
- Simplify the checkout experience by consolidating pages
- Set up abandoned carts email sequences
c) Shipping Optimization
If you haven’t optimized shipping and delivery, your BFCM strategy can go haywire. Offer a number of delivery options to choose from like pick-ups from brick-and-mortar stores, local pick-ups, or home delivery. A key Ecommerce shipping best practice is to clearly state the expected delivery time.
Don’t set unrealistic delivery expectations like next-day delivery if logistics don’t allow as it’s difficult to do that during the BFCM festival.
Thinking about free shipping? Go for it if possible as 85% of customers prefer free shipping in comparison to fast delivery.
Set up an automated information flow for your logistics and fulfillment teams.
d) Mobile Optimization
Thinking mobile first is no longer an option, but rather a must-have for your DTC business. A staggering 79% of Shopify traffic belongs to mobile devices which makes BFCM Shopify sales crucial. Optimize your website speed and responsiveness for BFCM sales via mobiles. Choose a mobile-friendly theme.
A few questions you need to answer:
- To make checkout seamless, have you implemented one-click checkout?
- Does it provide your customer with a stellar mobile experience that is intuitive and easy to do shopping?
- Is the checkout process hassle-free on mobiles?
Tip: The autofill saved information feature reduces clicks to make purchases.
e) Website Load Speed Optimization
Website load speed is also an important factor in the shopping experience. The BFCM strategy for website load speed optimization is:
- Keep page load time down by avoiding cluttering the page with useless information that only distracts the customer. Use only the information that is the bare minimum to help make a purchase decision.
The Feed, a nutrition and wellness marketplace for all types of athletes, has significantly optimized its website load speed to improve the purchasing experience for its customers. This keeps visitors on the site longer and entices them to explore further.
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- Don’t show all the imagery at once. Instead, display it as the visitor scrolls through the page.
- Don’t ask to create a login at the first click as it requires data validation and processing. Leave login for later.
- Perform regular load testing to optimize your site or apps for peak days.
- Optimize images to reduce file sizes. Google PageSpeed will help you to do this.
2) Try New Channels (like SMS)
If you are wondering what to do with browse abandonment and abandoned carts, consider implementing the SMS channel for both new and repeat customers. The urgency of text messages encourages shopping, especially when shoppers are primed to purchase.
You can try the click-to-buy in your SMS messages that send shoppers directly to complete purchases. The text-to-buy enables them to complete their shopping through a series of text messages, without the need to visit your website.
SkinTe, a sparkling tea brand makes good use of this SMS strategy.
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Also, start growing your SMS list as it allows you to communicate with customers throughout the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping season and later on too.
Koyal Wholesale is one of the largest wedding and event supplies companies that used SMS marketing as a BFCM strategy to give a sneak peek into the Black Friday offers that had up to 80% discounts.
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3) Build A Loyalty Program
Shoppers who are incentivized by heavy discounts are attracted to the BFCM festival. Using DTC customer loyalty programs, retailers can turn these first-time buyers into lifelong customers. Build a loyalty program to offer customers exclusive deals, incentives, early-bird discounts, free gifts, and a personalized experience that they crave.
According to Yotpo, over 83% of global shoppers prefer buying more from a brand whose loyalty program they have joined. Introduce the loyalty program before the BFCM. Reward them with points for their purchases, email subscriptions, and SMS sign-ups.
Send them timely loyalty messages via SMS and emails about BFCM deals prior to the BFCM Black Friday launch.
Aggressively promoting your loyalty program through on-site banners, BFCM campaigns, as well as email, and SMS campaigns encourage prospects to join your loyalty program. Another BFCM strategy to increase sign-ups is to reward instant points for joining and increased points for BFCM purchases.
A prime example of a loyalty program is Lively which runs a points-based tiered-loyalty program.
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4) Create Flows, Segments, And Campaigns Beforehand
Invariably, shoppers add products to their carts but leave without purchasing. The biggest pet peeve for Ecommerce and DTC brands is cart abandonment. To counter this, setting up triggered abandoned cart emails and SMS campaigns to bring them back works.
Whenever a shopper abandons a shopping cart, an automated and compelling email with a limited-time discount coupon code or free shipping can be sent to make them complete their purchases. To make this possible, revamp your email flows to bring back shoppers to abandoned carts. More retailers are investing in segmenting email and SMS lists for sending personalized and targeted ads and promos to increase sales. Setting up triggered web-push notifications also helps.
According to research, targeted and personalized BFCM emails result in 5.8% higher opens.
Setting up retargeting ad campaigns for bringing shoppers back to the website is also a great BFCM marketing strategy.
The American shoe designer Vince Camuto for example sends out simple emails reminding the customers to complete their shopping.
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5) Smart Lead Generation for BFCM Email & SMS Lists
Creating your email lists is crucial in the build-up to BFCM sales. Sending emails beforehand is a great way to build anticipation.
Send announcement emails, pre-sales coupons, and promotional codes exclusively for email subscribers. To get more people to join your email and SMS lists, develop a lead generation landing page that makes it easy for shoppers to join.
Here’s an example of a dedicated landing page promoting a Black Friday Subscriber Exclusive.
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When given an incentive, shoppers will willingly submit additional information about themselves like their names, emails, contact numbers, and product category interests – all valuable assets for devising your Black Friday strategy.
The audio equipment brand Bose has a last chance email example with a persuasive offer combining a time-limited offer and customer testimonials.
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At BFCM Strategies
There are certain moment-based BFCM strategies that you should employ when you see the BFCM sales trend in real-time.
1) Increase your social media ad budget
On Black Friday, people frantically search for deals and promotions on social media platforms.
Create a solid BFCM marketing strategy for increasing the ad budget in real-time, based on the trends and searches for brands and products on various platforms.
- By selling directly on social platforms like Instagram, you’ll reach a global audience and your BFCM sales will soar.
- Make sure your ad campaigns focus on cities and states which have outperformed others in previous BFCMs. You can also remove places where you don’t ship to, and save on ad spends.
- Create Black Friday Cyber Monday hashtags and reach a wider audience who are interested in finding your products and services.
- Share exclusive deals and countdown timers to drive people to your store.
- As people are hunting for deals on social platforms, entice them with limited-time juicy deals and steep discounts. Free shipping on orders above a certain order value, personalized discounts, and promo codes with customers’ names can make them feel special.
- Leverage platforms like TikTok to tell great brand stories through videos and engage the audience as almost 75% of TikTok audiences shop on the platform if they find interesting stuff.
The DTC brand Finn expanded on TikTok by leveraging UGC and building credibility.
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2) Collaborate with Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers can boost word-of-mouth publicity and promotions about your BFCM deals with small but highly engaged audiences.
Partnering with creators on TikTok is also highly effective. The content and quality of the videos drive massive engagement on TikTok and this provides the perfect opportunity for DTC brands to utilize influencer marketing without burning a hole in their pockets.
Micro-influencers and creators on social platforms can:
- Create product videos, photoshoots, product demos, and unboxing videos.
- Create massive User Generated Content (UGC) for DTC brands that are perfect for the BFCM festival and later on.
- Create trust among shoppers as 49% of customers rely on their recommendations rather than yours.
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For example, the grocery delivery app GoPuff roped in influencers to create relatable content that would motivate people to download their app and place orders.
3) Respond in real-time
During the peak of the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping season, customer support requests shoot up by 65% which makes DTC and Ecommerce sellers very concerned about providing customer support.
Here’s how to be prepared for addressing customer support issues in real-time and providing exceptional experiences.
- Stores can create a special banner or a website popup that directly connects them with sales.
- Installing automated chatbots on your website that streamlines customer support by handling FAQs via canned responses, and later a support executive can take up the specific queries.
4.Enhance in-store experience
a) Create BFCM landing pages
Consider creating a Black Friday landing page. As a part of your BFCM marketing campaign, it can increase brand awareness, drive traffic and increase sales.
Here are some ways to optimize your landing page for Black Friday and Cyber Monday:
- The landing page should build a sense of urgency in BFCM deals by telling customers about limited-time offers
- Show countdown timers for deals or flash sales
- Landing page copy should use words like ‘limited’ and ‘hurry’
- Imagery can convey urgency like an empty hourglass
Landing page CTA buttons should be prominent with contrasting shapes, font, and color. Incorporating social proof like customer reviews, testimonials, and influencer endorsements builds trust.
A good example of a landing page is from the auto parts retailer Autozone which used a countdown timer for their flash sale.
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b) Offer checkout options that suit varying shopper comfort levels
More than 70% of surveyed customers voted for the checkout experience as their primary pain point in brick-and-mortar shopping. For DTC and Ecommerce brands, innovating the payment experience to suit shoppers’ comfort levels becomes important.
Some options to bring convenience, safety, and technology to the checkout payment options are:
- Offering self-checkout at a store where you scan items and pay without any cashier’s intervention.
- Credit card reader technology enables the acceptance of contactless payments (customers wave or tap their cards over the contactless card reader) that are safer and reduce checkout time. The same procedure can be used for returns
- There are other tech-intensive options that may not be suitable for many BFCM merchants but simple solutions to reduce the checkout time like going paperless and floating POS systems are other options.
- Many brick-and-mortar stores can implement QR codes for contactless payments. Display them at prominent places like windows to first shop online and later scan to pay and collect the merchandise from the stores.
The high-end makeup brand Charlotte Tilbury offering customers to break down their purchases into three payment installments is an example of providing checkout options to suit them.
bfcm-marketing-strategies-charlotte-tilbury 
Post-BFCM Strategies
What you need to remember is that your job does not end with the end of the shopping season. The post BCFM strategies are crucial for the long-term success of your business.
1) Maintain interest among new members of the loyalty program
Your loyalty program customers deserve to be acknowledged and rewarded with exclusive deals and discounts since they would help build repeat business even when the BFCM is long over.
What’s important to know is that customers acquired during Black Friday, Cyber Monday have a lower lifetime value (LTV).
How will you keep your DTC brand on top of buyers’ minds, giving them a reason to return and spend more with your business?
Send thank-you emails, and post-purchase surveys, and ask for their feedback. Take prompt action based on their feedback. Encourage them to follow you on social media and build engagement.
Involving them in referral programs in which they refer your business to their network works well. Incentivize them by offering gift cards, discount codes, and free trials.
The online beauty products store Feel Unique, for example, sent a discount email to its loyal customers for recommending its products to friends and family.
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2) Leverage UGC
Leverage User Generated Content (UGC) including photos and videos in your marketing content to make your brand more authentic, trustworthy, and relatable. And that does not mean roping only influencers. Showcase reviews and testimonials from genuine customers.
Use the reviews across all your product pages. Make leaving reviews simple and you can even incentivize customers to give reviews. Even some negative UGC can help as 95% of customers will doubt if all the reviews are positive.
If you’re looking for a brand example that encourages UGC on their Instagram feed through a designated hashtag, then check out the outdoor brand clothing and campaign brand Rei.
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Pro tip: 40% of shoppers post pictures of their BFCM purchases, when they come in great packaging. Something you can consider to amp up your UGC content.
3) Create channel-specific content
Reach the newfound customers at their preferred channels. Engage them with channel-specific content. During the BFCM campaigns, many brands must have bombarded customers with promotional messages. Your post BFCM strategy should be to go by the more conversational approach with SMS marketing.
Gather data about your customers and segment them as per the messages you want to send them. Use playful copies of SMS. Be innovative by automating quizzes for product recommendations and creating abandoned cart workflows to bring customers back for completing purchases.
Keep email subscribers engaged by sending them useful product recommendations and announcements. Add visuals and large CTAs to help grab attention. Involve urgency messaging also in emails to boost conversions.
An example of brands using SMS marketing to recover abandoned carts is Legends, who through a series of two-way conversations, was able to recover an abandoned cart.
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Takeaways
BFCM has always been a busy time for DTC and Ecommerce brands. They need to do everything to drive sales at this most wonderful shopping time of the year.
Effective BCFM strategies covered in this article will ensure that you are well prepared to reap the maximum out of the BCFM festival.
