Is your E-Commerce Business Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Here we are in our favourite festive season! No, we are not talking about Christmas, even though the decorations have already been put up by some holly-jolly enthusiasts; we are talking about the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday, celebrated both by consumers and brands. Who can blame them with the remarkable impact of these famous discounts on brand turnovers; and for consumers, sales are always something to celebrate.
So when Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, what should – especially e-commerce- brands consider in order to generate a significant customer engagement and needless to say; income?
Here we are in our favourite festive season! No, we are not talking about Christmas, even though the decorations have already been put up by some holly-jolly enthusiasts; we are talking about the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday, celebrated both by consumers and brands. Who can blame them with the remarkable impact of these famous discounts on brand turnovers; and for consumers, sales are always something to celebrate.
So when Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, what should – especially e-commerce- brands consider in order to generate a significant customer engagement and needless to say; income?
1. Go Omni Channel
As a brand, you might have a user-friendly e-commerce website. You might have a great customer service on your call centre, or in your physical store. However, providing your consumers with a seamless omnichannel shopping experience through all your channels is as important as providing a multichannel service. This means your mobile app should be able to integrate with your e-commerce website providing the same shopping experience or support your customer service at your physical store.
In order to execute the most effective Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, you should have an omnichannel strategy. Your customers need to know that the opportunities are accessible from all your sales channels, with the same experience. They should be able to check an item on your website, purchase the item via your mobile app and pick it up at your physical store, hassle-free. All of your channels represent your brand and they are more related than you think. In fact, according to a Deloitte study, digital experiences influence 56 cents of every dollar spent in physical stores.
2. Glorify Mobile
Any brand should put mobile at the top of their priorities at this digital age, especially when you are an e-commerce brand around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Why? Well, why would you want your dear consumers to wait in the queues for hours, and fall into that tragicomic chaos in stores, right?
Of course, that’s not the only reason. According to Adobe Analytics, 75% of millennials are more likely to shop on their smartphones than on desktops. And Facebook declared that during Black Friday, mobile transactions account for 51% of all conversions on Facebook.
However being mobile is not only having a mobile website. In order to provide your customers with the best experience and execute personalised campaigns, a native mobile app is a must. You can take really cool personalised actions with native apps, here are some examples:
Segment, Target, Go!
If you haven’t segmented your customers yet, this is the perfect excuse to determine your segmentation strategy. You can segment your customers based on their demographics, behaviours, locations, lifestyles and channel preferences to name a few. Building the right segmentation and targeting strategy enables you to personalise your communication to meet every customer group`s needs and create campaigns that suit them.
Why not giving your loyal customers a heads up a couple of days before the real sales start and provide them with an extra discount, or please your tech-savvy customers by letting them know the TV they added to their wishlist will be on sale on Cyber Monday?
Location-Based Campaigns
The success of your campaigns lies through personalised communication and location-based campaigns are the best way to do it. They enable you to reach your customers at the right place, at the right time.
You can send location-based push notifications when a customer is nearby your store and invite them with a welcome message. Want a more cheeky approach? You can redirect your customers to discounts on your own online/physical stores via location-based push notifications when they pass by your competitor’s store.
Smooth Checkout and Payment Process
When over 90% cart abandonment happen at the payment stage, we can easily say that this is a major setback for the brands. Even when you are offering a great discount, your customers might not complete their purchases as they don’t desire to re-enter their information, fill out long forms each time.
Mobile apps come to the rescue with some solutions or features such as using mobile wallets (such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay), automatic logging in from social media, scanning credit cards or thumbprints etc.
3. Be Humorous
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many brands will also try to communicate with your customers, so you need to attract their attention. Being witty always makes you remarkable and give your consumers a smile. You can send a funny text and let your customers know that they don’t need to be run over by the crowd in the shops, and tell them to just use their apps.
You can also add rich media (images, videos, emojis) to your push notifications in order to enrich your messages, and sometimes 3 emojis can tell a long story!
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