6 + 1 killer ideas for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday eCommerce campaigns
Who can deny that 2020 is the year of many challenges, in every aspect of life, health, and business-wise? Regardless of the industry that your business is activated in, you need to keep the sales revenue coming in.
You have to maintain a healthy cash flow that will enable your business to move on, not only to get past this challenging period but also to build healthy future perspectives for your business that will eventually boost your performance and build on your business growth.
You need new customers. You need to maintain your existing clientele, you need to engage and trigger inactive customers, you need prompt and actively converting solutions.
We at Routee know that the right communication channels and tools exist, we have already developed most of them after all. Our focus is to help you put in action the most efficient communication tools that can enable your business to maximize its potential during high selling seasons, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
To begin with, as a best practice, centralize your Black Friday campaign to a dedicated page for your seasonal offers and promotions. Begin the journey to Black Friday conversions with a landing page dedicated to Black Friday and place it as a regular page on your website all year long and not just as a one time deal. This way, you will also give an extra boost to your SEO ranking by helping your website show up in Black Friday searches.
Keep the Black Friday landing page free from any other distractions. Leave out links to any other pages or sources that can pull the attention of visitors away from the focal point of interest.
Be aware that users who visit your Black Friday’s landing page are interested in these seasonal offers and deals, so it is a sound opportunity to build your Black Friday e-mail list, as you will keep this page active all year long. You can add a “Subscribe" button to notify visitors about your deals and discounts.
Here is the list of 6 + 1 killer ideas that we have prepared for you to intelligently use the most efficient communication channels and boost your Black Friday conversions.
1.SMS
SMS enjoys an exceptional 98% open rate, so objectively speaking, it has a premium place as one of the ideal communication channels for instantly reaching your audience. Stand out from the crowd and create an engaging interaction with your audience that will make them long for your next Black Friday SMS.
Create an advent calendar of offers and promotions, counting down the days to the actual Black Friday or Cyber Monday date or any date within this shopping spree season. Create a series of SMS messages to send to your contact list, wherein you will notify them about the time-sensitive offers or deals valid only for a specific period (i.e., only valid until the date that you plan to send your next offer by SMS). This way, you create anticipation in your audience and trigger the fear-of-missing-out effect.
Use the hyperlink feature of the SMS and lead your audience directly to the shopping cart of your eshop with the specific product in place or provide them with a coupon code to add the Black Friday discount upon their checkout.
In case you have more than one offers and deals related to the time-sensitive period, then you can direct your audience to a landing page with a preview of the deals and perhaps any Black Friday free perks you have for them.
Always provide the opt-out option in your SMS to show your audience that you respect them and that your intention is not to spam them but to provide them with messages relevant to their interest.
2.VOICE
Voice is not a new communication channel, yet industry experts have only recently realized that millennial consumers are more familiarized and comfortable with voice-enabled services, mainly due to the ever-evolving digital world and the rise of personalization.
Within the framework of consumers being more engaged with brands, products, and services that offer them tailor-made experiences that they can relate to, voice has gained momentum and started evolving as a highly engaging communication channel.
You can personalize your Black Friday campaigns and communicate tailor-made Black Friday offers to prospective customers combining a voice broadcasting service with an efficient marketing automation platform. The automation platform will help you to effortlessly segment your audiences to groups of people with similar traits and preferences. You can then create and dispatch mass yet personalized automated voice broadcasting Black Friday messages with your offers and deals to targeted groups of people.
3.EMAIL
Email marketing is always in fashion as one of the most converting channels to promote your deals. To create a compelling Black Friday and Cyber Monday email, make sure you include these five vital elements:
– Segment your users. Not all people are alike or have the same preferences. Classify your email list based on your user demographics, location, and past purchases.
-Personalize your emails. User segmentation will enable you to create specific and relevant Black Friday messages to better approach your target audience with offers that are specific for the users, their location, or preferences.
-Mind the subject line. Consumers will receive tons of Black Friday emails. Create a subject line that draws enough attention to make users open your email. Be transparent, not misleading. Read through your user data analytics and see what your users like most, and draft a relevant subject line for every set of segmented emails you will send.
-Call-to-action (CTA). Your primary goal for Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to sell more products or services through your Black Friday offers, so you want people to act on your email message. Trigger your email readers to proceed with an action. Place a “BUY NOW" button, or a “SUBSCRIBE" button, depending on what your conversion goals are.
-Be aware of time zones. If you are planning to send out an email campaign globally, or if you target users in geographical locations with different time zones, you must consider the local time zones when sending out your emails.
4.FACEBOOK MESSENGER
With 1.3 billion Messenger users globally and a growth expectancy to 2.4 billion users by 2021, Facebook Messenger is certainly a communication channel you have to include in your Black Friday marketing strategy.
Use the rich functionality that messenger provides and create a chatbot flow to inform your audience of your Black Friday deals in a conversational way.
A very effective idea that you can use in combination with Facebook messenger is to communicate an upcoming live Facebook video via messenger, during which you can showcase products and services related to Black Friday to your audience. This way, you can create a unique experience for your audience that does not necessarily include a deal or discount. Follow the example of major brands like Amazon that dominates the Black Friday season with its live videos, generating thousands of views and engagement. Be aware that brands that use live Facebook videos get 300% more engagement compared to those that don’t use live videos.
5.VIBER
Viber is one of the most popular instant messaging apps in the world, with over 7 million interactions happening every minute. Leverage Viber’s incredible popularity and enriched design abilities to create memorable Black Friday messages for your audience.
Create branded Black Friday stickers to colorfully express your offers and promotions. Add to the mix a set of Black Friday product bundles of your best selling products or services and communicate them on your Viber Business page.
Also, you can utilize the popular tactic of the “mystery box" and create a branded Black Friday Mystery Box with several product items that you can communicate on your Viber Business page. The mystery box has a retail value higher than the offer price, providing value for money with the element of surprise. The playful nature of your branded mystery box may urge some of your customers to buy one or more boxes on impulse.
Remember to add a call to action button in your Viber Black Friday message, such as “Buy Now", to trigger your audience’s prompt conversion.
6.WHATSAPP
WhatsApp does not allow direct promotional messages to consumers who are not already customers of a business or who have not initiated a conversation with your business via WhatsApp. However, this does not mean that you cannot use this channel to engage with your current customer database and notify them about your Black Friday deals.
You can use the “Catalogs" feature available in the WhatsApp Business app to build a virtual storefront. Worry not about whether your customers have the business version of WhatsApp or not, as customers can browse your product catalog using the standard version of WhatsApp they already use.
With the Catalogs feature at hand, you can include lists of photos, prices, and descriptions of your Black Friday products and services. Your customers can then browse through your products and once they have chosen what to buy, they can contact you directly through WhatsApp to place their order.
Although the Catalogs feature was initially designed with small businesses in mind that do not have their own websites, it is a very effective way to showcase your Black Friday campaign to your customers who already use WhatsApp, as you provide them ease of purchasing and you reach them at their preferred communication channel.
Besides, you also enhance the customer experience, as you can still stay in touch with your customers with useful WhatsApp tools, such as automatic replies to common questions they may have about your offers and deals.
7.PUSH NOTIFICATION
Use the power of web and mobile push notifications to alert your audience about the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals before these shopping spree days and on the big day.
As a best practice, also use push notifications to send abandoned cart messages during these high selling seasons to boost shopping cart recovery.
Another creative idea is to start a countdown until Black Friday starts and remind users how much time remains until the end of Black Friday or whenever your Black Friday deal expires.
You can add visuals and calls to action to your web and mobile push notifications to enhance the user experience and trigger conversion. Try to build short but meaningful interactions within your push messaging, as push notifications sent with images have a 9% higher click-through rate than those sent without images.
If you have an app through which you send your push notifications to your app users, you can use data tags to personalize your recommendations on deals for the users and send them highly relevant offers. Be aware that push notifications sent by applications that utilized data tags have a 16% higher click-through rate.