Black Friday and Cyber Monday are among the most significant factors in whether you make or break your annual revenue goals. According to the National Retail Federation, the holiday season makes up about 20% of yearly retail sales. And it’s no longer restricted to just Black Friday discounts. Businesses now fan their deals out to attract sales throughout the shopping season leading up to Christmas.
So how do you make sure that you make the most of these two days? Planning your offers to seem more appealing and profitable to your customers would be best. And it would be best if you promoted them by rising above other brands.
The problem with blanket Black Friday discounts
Let’s be honest: a site-wide discount is no longer enough to ensure maximum sales and spill-over traction. If you offer your customers a blanket discount on your entire store, it will be hard to drive continued interest in your sale after you announce it on the first day.
Brands that soar above the rest use multiple-tier offers. What does that mean?
They put together nuanced offers that ensure customer interest and increase their profit. Have a look at this brand’s offer during Black Friday:
Aromatik offers a discount on every second order. This helps encourage the customers to buy more than they had initially planned.
What to consider while designing your offers
Does designing multi-tier offers sound intimidating? We have come up with some pointers for you to consider:
Average Order Value
The best way to design offers is to understand how much an average customer is spending on your store. Many brands focus on the “buy more, save more” model from encouraging more orders.
One way is to offer a more significant discount on the quantity or cart value. We have curated these two offers to give you a better idea:
Analyze data: What worked before and what didn’t?
Data is one of the most powerful tools anyone can own. So make full use of yours. Analyze data from past sales to understand what motivated your customers to spend last season. Data can help straighten out your strategy by eliminating elements that didn’t work before.
Direct Line of Communication
How are you planning to communicate with your customers during the hectic weekend? Customers should be able to reach you quickly, so you don’t lose out on orders. And it would be best if you had tools to communicate your offers. Keep the 1:1 communication going through the Live chat box, push notifications, and social media messaging
8 Different types of Black Friday Discounts must
You will need to keep your offers exciting and enticing to appeal to your larger audience throughout the weekend (and after). These offers should add value to your customer’s cart.
Offering special deals will keep your customers curious and urge them to return to your site more frequently. Here are some unique offers that will help optimize your BFCM strategy:
Bundling
Bundles are the perfect way to target your customer base’s different segments. It takes understanding your inventory to determine which products would go well together. The different types of bundles are:
1. Bundle similar/complementary products:
Create a bundle of your products that go well together. Under offers like ‘Shop the look,’ you can motivate the customer to buy it with a discount on the bundle.
2. Themed bundles:
Explore different themes your products can fall under and form themed bundles. This can help you appeal to customers who are fond of a certain aesthetic or trend. One example would be a Y2 K-styled bundle in apparel-carrying brands.
3. Flash Sale Bundles:
A well-timed and promoted flash sale can help create a sense of urgency around your products.
4. Mystery Bundles:
Add a mystery element to create a bundle that lures your customers in. A mystery item elevates the excitement around your brand.
Hourly/Daily Deals
Deals limited to a specific period allow you to engage your customers. They also help to drive customers to your mobile app when the traffic is low. For example, you can offer an extra discount from midnight to 6 am as this period seems to experience the lowest traffic in most mobile apps.
Flash Sales
They are just another way of introducing time-sensitive deals to engage and drive your customers. Flash sales are a type of sale where products are sold at a highly discounted rate during a particular period. These sales are often exclusive to a brand’s mobile app users.
Create Coupons
Well-targeted coupons help bring existing customers back to the store. They are a great way to sweeten any deal or offer. They spark your customer’s interest in your products by promising huge savings.
Exclusive offers for loyal customers
Your loyal customers deserve an extra treat. Building a loyal customer base should always be one of the goals of any business. You get recurring sales, and they get better deals for sticking to one brand. These exclusive offers could look like giving a sneak peek into requests or a chance to buy exclusive products.
Offer a gift / free shipping.
Who doesn’t love freebies? A free product or free shipping keeps your customers invested in your brand.
Upselling/Cross-Selling
Have you ever noticed how, in brick-and-mortar stores, products are always kept next to the billing counter? This tactic encourages impulse buying. Cross-selling is the mobile app equivalent of that. After a customer has added a product to their cart, recommend an add-on product that compliments the original.
“49% of shoppers make impulse buys after receiving personalized messages.”
Read more on upselling here.
Experimental Offers
Customers are always looking for something new. These kinds of offers help your brand get noticed during BFCM. This could look like partnering with charities, using Virtual reality, or even a pay-what-you-want model.
Best ways to promote your offers
Your enticing Black Friday discounts won’t convert until you promote them to reach your target audience. Here are some tips to take your advertising game to the next level for the sale of the year:
Create urgency
Creating a sense of urgency is your customers’ extra push to make a sale. Some ways to do this are by putting a countdown timer, introducing time-sensitive deals, or highlighting items with limited inventory.
Push notifications
Using push notifications to reach your customer is one way to be heard over other brands’ noise. Push notifications can be hyper-personalized and tailored to your audiences. They also help alert your customers to all the different deals/offers you offer.
Want help developing a push notification strategy for BFCM? Please read about it here.
Social media marketing
Promote your offers on social media to attract new customers. Paid ads help your brand appear in front of large volumes of highly targeted users.
Abandoned cart campaigns
70% of e-commerce customers abandon carts. Brands lose $260 million from carts abandoned at check out. Abandoned carts campaigns help recover those orders by sending targeted push notifications.
Encourage user-generated content
User-generated content helps establish brand credibility. Reviews and feedback reassure your customers when they are skeptical. Encourage your existing customers to leave a review by asking them or even offer an additional discount/freebie or loyalty points.
Influencer/affiliate marketing
Collaborate with different types of influencers to reach larger audiences during BFCM. A study by Rakuten shows that 80% of consumers have purchased after it was recommended by an influencer they follow.
Want a hand in handling this sales season?
Plobal Apps is more than an app builder. We help our partners carry out the best mobile commerce solutions by guiding you through every step. Want help in strategizing for BFCM?
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