Making a Great Black Friday Campaign 

Like it or not, Black Friday is now firmly established as part of the British retail calendar, having found its way across the Atlantic over recent years. It has merged with Cyber Monday, which also began in the US, to form a long weekend of discounts that see shoppers go crazy for the latest deals. The UK has become so obsessed with Black Friday that over 10% of all global Black Friday searches online came from the UK before black Friday even began! The expected value of total spending over Black Friday Weekend in the UK was £9.42bn, with Cyber Monday looking to spend £2.18bn.  

How to Plan your Black Friday Deals 

Focusing on the success of your Back Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns during this pre-promotional stage is the best way to be prepared for one of the busiest times of the year in terms of e-commerce.  

Grow your customer database now:

An increased number of contacts in your database will allow for larger email and customer match campaigns, allowing you to remarket to these contacts in prime promotional time.  

Make it easy to obtain the information needed: 

Think about your site’s user experience and how easy it is for a customer to input their email into the site. Think about incentives so that users will sign up, offer free delivery or discounts so that it increases the chances of valuable information being given. Also, you could expand on this; rather than just the basic information such as name, address, and email, why not ask about the visitors’ service or product preferences, which will allow for easier remarketing closer to Black Friday. 

Create a Black Friday marketing and promotional calendar: 

Be prepared for when your business will start to increase its visibility and promotions. Break the calendar down by channel: PPC, Social, SEO and Email for a better insight into how your business will be running over the promotional period.  

Synergy Between All Channels: 

Marketing messages work best when they sync up – maximising the impact. Make sure your keyword, ad copy and landing pages all match up. Keep those bounce rates low by delivering what potential customers expect – don’t make them think! Trial different messaging before Black Friday in an AB test, using different ad copy and assets to understand what resonates with your audience, ensuring the ads are optimised ahead of the Black Friday period.  

Remarketing During Black Friday: 

Remarketing is about targeting previous visitors to your website. You can create audience types (a way of grouping visitors based on how they behaved on your website on previous visits.) Example audiences may be Converters, Basket Abandoners, Non- purchasers etc. Now is the time to use this technique to build your audience in preparation for Black Friday: 

• Make sure your remarketing banners reflect the Black Friday messaging and include countdowns for the last few hours of the discount to push a sense of urgency.  

• Display (GDN) remarketing for your bestselling lines can also work well over the Black Friday period. Ensure your banners have really strong 

messaging and a call to action.  

• Consider dynamic remarketing to capture those people that abandoned baskets but are more likely to convert with a Black Friday discount.

Set Out a Budget Now for Later:  

Are you prepared to be able to increase the budget over this period? The ability to spend at a higher level will allow you to be in front of your competitors and not become swamped by competitor spend levels.  

What Products Are You Going to Push?  

Assess the hero products that will drive you the most sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Create promotions surrounding these hero products by putting them into their own campaigns and prioritising them as high. Make sure to review your strategies so that best sellers can be split out from the products with high margins so they can be optimised by budget.

Look for an Upsell:

Once a customer has added a product to their basket, that should indicate that they are interested in your product. This is the perfect time for a potential upsell to be introduced, offer a discounted price on a package deal related to what has been added to the basket or a bulk saving strategy. Upselling at basket and checkout is one of the easiest ways to increase the chances of more products being bought in one transaction. To take this to the next level, implement a strategy to send purchasers a follow-up email that features further deals or products that work well with the product that they had bought.  

Are you Ready for This Year’s Black Friday?

With Black Friday’s prominence in the UK, E-commerce needs to be ready for the expected competitive landscape. Be ready for this heavy sales period and get ahead of the competition with great Black Friday preparation and planning your strategies now!