The long weekend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday has begun. Discounts have been going crazy online and in stores for days, and consumers have been hunting for the best deal for some time now.
Email marketing campaigns, ADS ads, social media activity, point-of-sale engagement: there are indeed many channels and tools to deploy for winning Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing strategies, but there are two key aspects on which it is crucial to maintain focus, profiling and personalization.
- Black Friday 2023: a look at insights
- Pre- and post-Black Friday profiling: the importance of real-time data
- Black Friday marketing: personalize to build loyalty
Black Friday 2023: a look at insights
Inflation and high living costs will not curb shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This was revealed by a recent survey published by Shopify, according to which for, the most anticipated weekend of the year, an increase in average spending is expected. According to the data reported, in fact, more than two-thirds of the sample surveyed say they intend to spend more than in 2022.
Greater willingness to spend, but not only that: new technologies applied to the sales and purchasing process (augmented reality, virtual assistant) and artificial intelligence will play a crucial role.
Returning to the study released by Shopify, in fact, 69 percent of respondents, believe that AI will facilitate the discovery of new brands and products, while as many as 74 percent believe that it will be able to be an important aid in unearthing more advantageous offers, as well as an indispensable tool for improving the shopping experience at the point of sale as well (40 percent of respondents).
Great deals, but also rewarding and valuable customer experiences: even on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers are not giving up personalized browsing, shopping and engagement experiences, and one in two customers are precisely hoping that artificial intelligence will help brands take this path.
Pre- and post-Black Friday profiling: the importance of real-time data
Timing matters..during particular promotions (think just Black Friday and Cyber Monday), but not only that.
The most anticipated shopping weekend of the year, in fact, is but the first event of a really intense period that contemplates Christmas shopping and sales. In fact, the periods of big promotions, for stores as well as for the eCommerce sector, are becoming more and more diluted so it is essential to think of black friday marketing strategies and activities that continue over time and allow to make the most of the great wealth that every brand and company can boast, that is, data and information about users and customers.
Biographical data, information on tastes and interests, buying habits and frequency, browsing behaviors and much more: online as well as offline there is a great deal of data that real and potential customers release in their interaction with the brand and its products/services. This data if collected and made available and accessible allows the creation of a comprehensive and updated user profiles in real-time, single customer view of each individual component of one’s audience, no longer plausible but real
It is on this data that activities of evolved profiling and segmentation and dynamics, the basis for marketing strategies to personalize the customer experience. According to James McCormick of Forrester Research, real-time data must be “fast enough to keep up with the customer“-this is where a brand’s ability to create engagement is at stake.
Black Friday marketing: personalize to build loyalty
If for consumers, the Black Friday long weekend is the time when they are most inundated with deals and promotions, for brands, this, is often an opportunity not only to ring up existing customers but to acquire new ones.
In either case, standing out from the noise and capturing the attention of consumers is crucial, and to do so you need to stand out through personalized messages and offers. Imagine being able to engage existing customers with product offers that take into account previously made purchases or data released such as interests, tastes. Or imagine being able to ring up a newly acquired customer right around the time of Black Friday by displaying personalized content, read messages and products, based on their recent purchase: the prospects for conversion and retention will surely be greater.
In the case of already acquired customers, the advice is to deploy personalization strategies that are based on their lifecycle. hero, lost, active or first order customers, just to name a few examples, need to be ringaged with different communication and business propositions across multiple channels and leveraging multiple tools from newsletters, behavioral messages, product recommendations to SMS to in-store recommendations.
In a strategic perspective that aims at customer retention and loyalty, even the black friday period, but especially the post-Christmas period, must be considered an opportunity to create offers and product proposals that are consistent with the expectations of its audience. This means not only generic discounts and promotions (e.g., 25 percent discount on the entire product catalog) but also promotions and product proposals that vary according to each individual user’s segment.
If you still need to plan some activities or if you have already put your strategy in place for Black Friday, don’t forget to focus on personalization. Increased engagement, boosted conversion rates, reduced cart abandonment rates, and revenue growth are some of the benefits that come from a personalized and valuable customer experience to be created and preserved even during times of big commercial deals.
