This November, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are back! Over the years, this sale weekend has become more known and an important weekend for retailers to participate in Belgium. The Dot Society shares some tips and tricks for being well prepared to be part of this period. 

In the Google Trends graph below, we see that people are already searching for Black Friday on Google in mid-October. It is important to be 360° prepared for the Black Friday weekend. Everything starts with well-planned preparations for this. 

Defining the proposition

What is the deals you want to communicate? Will you offer a discount on the entire website, or on some products? And how much will the discount be? These are things you need to consider carefully and communicate correctly to the customer. Important to definitely not make false promises like for example “today are the best sales” and then come up with even higher sales the next day. That’s how you will lose the customer’s trust.

In addition, it is also important from which date you want the promotion to apply. Do you want to participate only on Black Friday itself, or Cyber Monday or all week? In the chart from Google Trends, we see interest spreads out over a full week and so people search for deals until after Black Friday itself. 

We would like to give you some ideas of propositions during this period:

  • Free gift with a purchase during that period. This can be something you normally sell or items that you have a lot of stock of and can therefore get rid of faster. To be fair, though, people that period is really looking for discounts, a gift can be a nice extra for existing customers, however, you are unlikely to win over new customers with it. 
  • Discount on a package of different products. 
  • Free gift voucher with purchase. 
  • Not common discounts like e.g. 64% or 44% also appeal.
  • Highlighting a different product category every day with separate discounts. That way, you also keep the customer engaged for a longer period and they might even come back twice in a short period.  
  • Discount on the selection of products. Stuck here with just how much discount you want to give? Shopify has an interesting article about determining the discount. 

Owned media

Website:

To properly prepare the 360° communication, we start with the website, the place where everything will happen. The promotion should therefore be clearly mentioned on the homepage, with an announcement bar or even a separate landing page if the discount will not be applicable on the entire website. Here, we recommend creating a new landing page with all discounted products. The customer journey should be as optimal as possible for the customer.

Important to clearly state delivery terms & return policies on the website as well. In case these change during this period e.g. a longer delivery period, this should definitely be clearly stated. 

E-mail marketing:

The weeks before Black Friday, we see the cost per session increasing week on week. This is due to the increasing competition during that period. Retailers are increasing their media budgets to make the most of this sales period. It is therefore important to boost your email database the period beforehand by focusing on acquisition. Your new subscribers will then be approached via email marketing during Black Friday week(end), which is free and they are more likely to know about the promotion. 

Start early with teasing around Black Friday. For example, you could start in early November by announcing “pre-access”. When people subscribe to the newsletter, they get priority access to the promotion. This way, you gather a lot of new subscribers in a short period of time.

On the last day of the promotion, you could send out a “last chance” email to give people a last chance before placing a purchase. 

Consumers are more likely to make a purchase during Black Friday week. You may therefore increase the frequency of your newsletters during this period. Make sure your subscribers have multiple chances to see your promo without bothering them. For instance, you could resend an email to the people who didn’t open the previous newsletter. Extra advice for sending your newsletter during this period is to send out your mailings just after the hour or just after the half hour. That way, your mail is more likely to be at the top of the consumer’s mailbox.

Likewise, it can give an extra push in your abandoned cart mailing for adding extra emphasis on the Black Friday discount here, and therefore you should temporarily adjust the templates in this mail to your proposition. 

Social media:

In early November, you could start teasing around Black Friday on social media. Here, you could already convince people to subscribe to the newsletter to have “early access” to the Black Friday deals. 

To also give customers extra inspiration towards Christmas, you could create a gift guide on Instagram. People can then click through directly to the product on the website. 

Make your content fun and engaging by including interactions. For example, a “this or that” story where people can vote for a specific product, use shoppable stickers or link stickers to get people to click through to a separate landing page or product. 

Paid Media: 

Do you also want to support your Black Friday campaign through paid channels? Then be sure to start defining your campaign strategy and structure in time. As mentioned, it is important to focus on acquisition before Black Friday week(end). Thus, start teasing with your campaign in time to already warm up customers. This can be done through a lead gen campaign to collect e-mail addresses, a reach campaign to give as many people as possible a sneak peek or a traffic campaign to get people to click through to the landing page. Later, you could re-target these website visitors via a remarketing campaign where you can show more product-focused ads.

The importance of good creatives cannot be underestimated during this crucial period. High-quality creatives will ensure that your ads deliver more easily and grab the attention of your target audience. Using the same strong gifs/visuals across all your channels will ensure customer recognition. By using them in your ads, organic channels, and newsletters, people are going to start recognising your brand and proposition. 

Doesn’t Black Friday suit you and your brand? During this period, you can focus on your brand values to generate sales. However, we recommend using mainly organic ads for this and no paid ads. These will get lost among the discounts other brands are doing. 

Are you still stuck somewhere or do you have questions about a certain part of the customer journey? Don’t hesitate to contact the Dotters to discuss your strategy and maximise sales during Black Friday! 

Good luck!

This post is also available in: Dutch