This upcoming fall, brace yourself for the craziest Black Friday in decades.
As the world still battles with COVID-19, more and more people are doing their shopping online. In fact, last March, eCommerce sales were already higher than last year’s Black Friday levels 😱.
So imagine what things will look like in November as customers still feel reluctant to enter retail stores!
However, if you want to win big this upcoming Black Friday, time is not on your side. You need to start preparing yourself right now to make sure you drive the most revenue once the big day comes.
So without further ado, here are ways you can get ready for Black Friday and crush your goals:
1) Plan Out Your Offers
You can’t just depend on website traffic to drive sales on Black Friday. You also need to structure your offers in a way that not only gets the customer’s attention, but gets them to pull the trigger and purchase.
It’s going to require a bit of creativity, but there are many different tactics at your disposal. Here’s how you can create epic Black Friday offers that will skyrocket your sales:
Use Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to Your Advantage
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a powerful trigger when it comes to boosting your sales. After all, no one wants to feel like they’re missing out on something big.
Scarcity is going to be your best friend to drive Black Friday sales. By letting customers know there’s a limited time to benefit from your promotion, they’re more likely to make an impulsive decision.
It all starts with your copywriting. You can include power words in your offer that inspire urgency, such as:
- Now or never
- Limited-only
- X hours left
- Be one of the few
Check out this great example from audio equipment company Bose:
The copy starts with “Only a few hours to save big” to entice the customer to purchase. They go even further by including customer testimonials for social proof and including product recommendations.
Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO)
Another great way to promote your Black Friday sales is through Buy One, Get One free offers (BOGO).
As the name suggests, customers who use your BOGO offer get to win an extra product for free on top of their original purchase. It makes customers feel like they’re getting more value for their money.
Rifle Paper Co is a lifestyle brand that sells desks, planners, and accessories. In the example below, the customer gets to potentially win a gift on all orders above $25:
Offer Product Bundles
This upcoming Black Friday, you can assemble complementary products and promote them for a limited time only.
Product bundles benefit both the customer and your business. It simplifies the customer’s buying process and gives them more value while you get to win more sales. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Lime Crime is a vegan makeup company that frequently uses product bundles as part of their strategy.
Offer Free Shipping After a Certain Order Size
Free shipping is a great way to boost sales. 91% of customers are ready to ditch an eCommerce store if there’s no free shipping.
While it can increase purchases, however, free shipping isn’t always profitable. It means that you’ll have to cover shipping costs, which can make you lose money in the long term.
Instead, what you can do this Black Friday is offer free shipping after a specific order threshold. It invites customers to buy more so they can qualify for free shipping while making sure you’re not hurting your profit margins.
Need an example of what that looks like in action? For Black Friday this year, Milk Street is offering free shipping on all orders above $50.
2) Finalize All Creative Before The Week Of Thanksgiving
During Black Friday, you should be putting all of your focus on sales — not on other aspects of your business.
It’s why once you plan out your offers, you want to take care of website design, segmentation, and discounts before thanksgiving so you can put all of your attention on Black Friday.
Here’s what you’ll need to prepare:
Optimize Your Landing Page for Black Friday Traffic
Your Black Friday landing page is going to play a vital role in conversion. You need to make sure to optimize its design so that customers are compelled to make a purchase the second they land.
There are various ways you can go about this.
A simple yet powerful landing page tactic is to include a countdown timer. It drives urgency and lets customers know that time is running out if they want to benefit from the sale.
CTAs on your landing page need to be simple and straight to the point. First-time visitors should be able to know what actions to take without overthinking.
Lastly, your landing page must emphasize the benefits that come with your offer. Let visitors know what sets your brand apart from the rest, and what perks you’re offering (free shipping, same-day delivery, etc).
Get Your Email Templates Ready
Next, you want to prepare all of your email templates before thanksgiving.
The templates you pick will depend on each different step of your Black Friday campaign. These include:
- Email templates for building presale excitement
- Retargeting emails for customers that don’t respond to your offer
- Email templates for last-minute deals as Black Friday comes to a close
Using email marketing software such as klaviyo goes a long way when preparing your emails. You’ll gain access to countless templates for different steps of the customer journey.
Prepare Your Discount Codes
After you figure out which email templates you’ll use, think about how you’ll be structuring your discount codes. For example, do you plan to create special discounts for specific customers, such as students or veterans?
Another aspect to consider is how you can reward loyal customers. After all, they’re the ones who purchase the most and frequently. You can offer them exclusive promo codes to early sales to make them feel valued and excited for Black Friday.
Segment Your Email List
The key to driving more sales during Black Friday isn’t to send more emails. It’s segmenting your email list correctly.
Segmenting ensures that you’ll be sending the right message to the right person each time.
Various factors determine how you should be organizing your email list. For example, you want to segment your email list based on the customer’s purchase history. That way, you’ll be able to target them with promotions on related-products for Black Friday.
Demographics is also another factor that you can’t overlook.
Let’s say that you’re an apparel brand with a significant portion of your customer base that is female. You’ll want to segment those customers and target with promotions on relevant products, such as heels or skirts.
Set Up Your Facebook Audiences & Ad Types
Running ads on Facebook is an excellent way to spread the word about upcoming sales. That is if you’re targeting the right audience.
Facebook has a feature called Custom Audiences that uses your customer data to target users who’ve shown interest in your brand. You can get this data from newsletters, website visitors, and even your app users.
For Black Friday, you can use this information to target potential customers and drive sales. It ensures that you get the best results by putting your ad in front of the right people.Make sure you set this up beforehand on Facebook so you can be ready to launch your ads once the big day comes.
3) Test Your Systems During Pre-Launch
It doesn’t matter if you’re running the best Black Friday sales of the century. If your store is fault, glitchy, or too slow, you’ll drive away customers and not make a single sale.
You want to make sure that each aspect of your website is on point for a better customer experience. Here’s what you need to test before you launch your Black Friday sales:
QA Your Website
Website QA (quality assurance) consists of testing your website to discover any mistakes that may have gone unnoticed during web development. It makes sure that there are no bugs and that it functions correctly.
Test Orders
When you place an order, you make sure that your checkout progress goes smoothly and that other factors such as shipping and inventory work as well. This way, you can be sure there won’t be any issues when customers make a purchase.
Test Pixels
Pixels are essential to track your Facebook ad campaigns. To verify that your pixels are working, go to your store and load a web page. In the “pixel” tab on Facebook ads manager, there should be a green dot that shows you when the pixel was last active.
Page Load Speeds
Slow load time is the #1 conversion killer that could sabotage your online store. According to Google, 53% of visitors will ditch your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Verify that your website loads fast so you don’t lose sales over low speed.
Cart Abandonment Sequence
Running a cart abandonment sequence is crucial to not lose out on potential sales. Keep in mind that during Black Friday, abandoned cart rates can go up to 80%. Test your cart abandonment sequence by adding an item to your cart and not finishing your purchase to see if it works.
Upsells and Downsells
Upselling consists of persuading customers to buy complementary products with their purchase. It’s an excellent way to boost your average order value.
Downselling, on the other hand, involves offering customers an alternative item when they initially decline your offer.
If you plan to include these strategies into your Black Friday campaigns, make sure to test both sequences and that they run smoothly.
4) Optimize Your Black Friday Campaign With the Right Tools
Lastly, if you’re a store on Shopify, there are various tools you can use to make your life easier during Black Friday. Some of the best solutions we recommend include:
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an email marketing tool that allows brands to send personalized campaigns to customers. It does this by diving into the mind and behavior of your customer.
It’s the most complete email platform out there. You can set up email sequences for virtually any situation: when customers abandon their cart, browse through your store without purchasing, etc. The sky’s the limit!
Klaviyo is free to install for up to 250 email contacts. From there, pricing starts at $20 per month depending on your email list size.
Carthook
Carthook is an upselling tool that makes it easy to boost your average order value through product recommendations.
Right after your customer purchases your product, Carthook offers three upsell items to choose from. It auto-fills the page with the customer’s payment details, so they don’t have to manually enter their information again.
You can style your upsell offers with countdown timers, trust symbols, customer testimonials, and more. As a bonus, it includes a one-page checkout for a better and faster customer experience.
Countdown Sales Timer
As mentioned earlier, urgency is a powerful motivator for Black Friday. To create real-time scarcity on your landing page, you can implement the Countdown Sales Timer tool by Pixel Union.
No code is required to set it up on your page. It also comes with a basic plan that’s 100% free for your business.
Rise: Gift Cards & Loyalty
Rise uses the power of gift cards to boost sales and drive new customers to your store. Customers can send their gift vouchers directly via mail to their friends and family.
With its workflow, you can easily set up rules on how you want to increase loyalty and retention. It includes integrations with some of your most favorite tools, such as Klaviyo, Recharge, and more.
Rise’s pricing starts at $16.99 per month for up to 100 monthly store orders.
Smile
Smile is a platform you can use to turn customers into brand advocates. It’s used by companies such as Polaroid, Steelseries, and Inkbox.
You can reward customers for various actions in your website, such as purchases, social shares, leavin reviews, and more. Its simple to use interface allows to create beautiful loyalty programs without writing a single line of code.
There’s three ways that you can style your loyalty program with Smile: loyalty-points, referral, or VIP rewards. The choice is yours!
Four Ways to Prep for Black Friday: Final Thoughts
Preparing yourself in advance is key to Black Friday. This blog post should give you a roadmap to follow so you can take your sales to the next level during this holiday season. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and get busy 👊!