Black Friday and Cyber Monday—the biggest days for your ecommerce sales—are just around the corner and you’ve probably spent a huge chunk of time getting ready. At some point, you might have hit and wall and searched  “Black Friday tips for ecommerce stores” on Google.

You wouldn’t be alone if you did.  

And, if you did, Google wouldn’t have disappointed. There are more than three million blogs offering tips and strategies on how to make the most of your Black Friday sales.  Every ecommerce tool you use will have some sort of “17 strategies” for you—including us!—we created three blog posts (so far that is…), just to help you with your BFCM sales!

It’s not just articles… the Twitter gurus are out in force with a bevy of thoughts and threads if you’re looking for quick nuggets of helpful BFCM strategy and advice.

‘Tis the season for gifting subscriptions! Just ask our friends at Smartrr. Dropping some seriously helpful knowledge on positioning your subscriptions as gifts. MAJOR retention strategy. We’re into it!

Sometimes keeping it simple is truly the chef’s kiss . Check out this reminder from Klaviyo on the value in reaching out to your holiday customers via SMS:

And it’s not just your favorite tech stack companies dishing out the advice. There are individual marketing operators delivering the hacks too. And sometimes it’s the “what not to do” that we all need reminding of:

There’s no shortage of awesome advice all across social and the internet.

And if you’re in search of “the perfect” checklist for your ecommerce store, you’re also not alone. There are some excellent tips out there by so many industry leaders, each offering a unique perspective. But the sheer volume of such blogs can lead to information overload and confusion.

So, to save you time and give you the best of all worlds, we’ve created (yet another) list, but it’s a little bit different this time.

We’ve handpicked the best Black Friday strategies from industry-leading experts and summarized them in one place, leaving you free to focus on the implementation.

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1. Peel: Retention Is the New Acquisition

Okay, yeah… it’s us first. We’re all about retaining your Black Friday customers in our BFCM blogs.

The main takeaway is to optimize your store based on your data to maximize profitability. Ad costs will shoot skywards during the holiday season and you need customers to return to your store to make higher profits. You can do this during the Black Friday sales by collecting and analyzing data to optimize for the best post-sales results. 

Here’s an example. Based on the purchasing journey of existing customers, you can determine a pattern of second-purchase products. After the first purchase, you can segment and personalize customers’ emails with relevant product recommendations. 

Here’s what it looks like in action:

The second important piece of advice is to nail your outreach by balancing timing and personalization. This might sound like a lot of work, but in reality, it isn’t. All you need is hyper-targeted segmentation of your customers, which you can do in a few simple steps with Peel.

Adding just one step of segmentation will result in recurring customers. Why? 

Your customers don’t want to be bombarded with emails immediately after they make a purchase. You need to find the sweet spot when your customers are ready to make their second purchase and then send a perfectly-crafted email just for them.

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2. Shopify: Prepare, Plan, and Start Early

Shopify, the go-to ecommerce platform, talks about the need to plan and start early, while also making sure the technical details are on point.

The ecommerce industry is still struggling with supply details, inventory, and shipping issues. In fact, 20% of shoppers planned to complete their holiday shopping before Black Friday itself. Based on this trend, your store can benefit from starting early, and extending the sale, if possible.

Start your inventory preparation as early as possible, especially if you rely on third-party manufacturers. Suppliers are already working above capacity and last-minute orders might not be possible, leading to sales loss for your business. 

To tackle this, take a look at the store’s past data and understand what products sell best to forecast demand. You can either use Shopify Reports for this or use Peel to analyze what products and bundles have performed the best for your store.

Next, get the technicalities right. A site crash can potentially lose thousands of dollars for you. So, check the following early on:

• Site speed and performance with heavy traffic
• Mobile-optimization
• Seamless checkout experience including one-click purchase

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3. Klaviyo: Learn from the Tried-And-Tested Tactics

Klaviyo, an email and SMS marketing automation tool,  focuses on the strategies that worked last year that you can replicate this year. This is important as consumer behavior has shifted post-pandemic. 2021 was the year that showed what works and not.

The main takeaway is to be honest and communicate clearly with your audience. While clickbait email titles and an all-capital “FREE GIFT” work to get your audience to open the email… is that the goal?

You want your customers to make a purchase from you AND have a nice experience doing so. When you create fake urgent sales, only to extend it a day further, or when you promise a 30% additional discount with an asterisk hidden at the bottom of the offer, customers lose trust in you and your brand. You want to be clear in your communication, and if possible, over-communicate. 

If you’re expecting a delay in delivery, put it up front on your website, or if you’ll be ending your sale early. Tell your customers what to expect upfront. This way, you’re not making one-time sales but rather creating an audience that’ll return once the holidays are over.

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The next important takeaway is to create special offers for your recurring customers. When a customer has been loyal to you in past, you want to give them a bonus for shopping with you. An extra 5% discount or a special gift can go a long way.

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4. Yotpo: Build Systems Now for Long-Term Retention

Ecommerce marketing platform, Yotpo, gives an interesting point of view on customer retention: Create a loyalty program for your Black Friday sales.

BFCM is one of the lowest resistance times to get shoppers to sign up for your loyalty programs because shoppers are primed for their first purchase. You can then create incentives for their next purchase, going beyond points, like early access to upcoming sales, access to limited bundles, an extra 10% discount, and more.

The next important takeaway is to create subscription models. The goal is to keep in touch with your consumers and have them recognize your brand. Even if you don’t have a product that’s regularly consumed, you can create access or curation models of subscriptions. 

For example, Pela, a phone accessories brand created an access subscription that gave the members exclusive benefits like additional discounts and free credit every month.

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5. Hootsuite: Lean on Social Media

Hootsuite, a social media management platform, explains how you can use social media ads and organic reach to get shoppers to check your store out (and make a purchase). 

One of the biggest takeaways is to not ignore TikTok when creating your social media strategy. Hootsuite’s 2022 Social Trends report suggested that TikTok is the most effective social media platform for 24% of businesses.

Next, to increase your organic reach, create gift guides on Instagram to help shoppers decide what to purchase. Focus on creating niche guides like “sustainable products” or “skincare gifts” like Sephora:

You can use the same concept to create video guides for TikTok and Instagram Reels.

And, if you have to pay for ads, you can lower the costs by increasing engagement and creating interactive creative ads like Ikea’s #BuyBackFriday: 

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Make This Year Your Best Black Friday/Cyber Monday Yet

With all these creative and data-backed techniques, implementation will be key to moving forward. Along with increasing revenue, use this holiday season to build long-term customer relationships by leveraging data.

With Peel, you can use and connect data from multiple sources to get a comprehensive insight into your upcoming sales. Take a free 7-day trial to get started.

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