Black Friday represents almost 750 million euros in cumulative sales in France, with an increase in sales of over 127% compared to the average for October, the month that generally precedes Black Friday offers.
Do you run an e-commerce business and want to take advantage of this eagerly awaited period to end the year on a high note? Here are 3 ULTIMATE tips to help you do just that.
#1 Refined segmentation to hyper-target your customers
The aim here is to divide your customer base into homogeneous groups based on their purchase history, past interactions and browsing behavior.
Pro tip: do it over two periods.
First over the whole year (or more if your market doesn't fluctuate much), then only over November of the previous year (or years), to personalize the analysis to Black Friday.
With fine segmentation, you can launch hyper-targeted marketing campaigns and boost your conversions.
Let's take a concrete example: you have a general e-commerce business running on Shopify. Here's a possible scenario:
Step 1: Access your data. Log in to your Shopify account, then go to "Analytics", then "Reports".
Step 2: Data extraction. Export all your customer data in CSV format.
Step 3: Main segment - purchase history. Open your CSV and filter your customers according to their purchase history. This first segment will be made up of customers who made at least one purchase during the last Black Friday (filter by date).
Step 4: Secondary segment - product category. In this "Black Friday" segment, divide your customers according to the product categories they purchased (electronics, fashion, cooking, etc.).
Step 5: tertiary segment - frequency of purchase. Now, for each product category sub-segment (for example, "fashion lovers"), identify those who buy regularly throughout the year and those who buy mainly during events such as Black Friday.
Why? Because those who buy exclusively on Black Friday are bargain hunters. Target them with aggressive offers. For regular shoppers, we prefer exclusive benefits, such as early access to Black Friday offers or bundles (50% off the second product purchased, for example).
Step 6: Quaternary segment - purchase value. For each of the previous segments (for example, "Electronics fans who buy regularly"), divide them by the total amount spent. You'll have the high-value customers, and the occasional ones. This quaternary segment will help you refine the message of your email or SMS campaigns, for example. You can't talk to an occasional customer the same way you talk to a (very) loyal one.
Step 7: Launch hyper-targeted marketing campaigns. Create specific offers for each segment. For example, for "electronics fans who buy regularly and are high-value customers", offer two-minute access to Black Friday "electronics" offers an hour before the launch for the general public, taking care to limit the purchase to a single item and avoiding displaying very low stock products, for example.
#2 Use Black Friday to win the loyalty of new customers
Black Friday is eagerly awaited by 62% of the French, with an average budget estimated at €320(according to a Criteo study). So it's the perfect time to try to bring new customers back to your site and build their loyalty.
The overwhelming majority of e-commerce customers never return after their first purchase (around 70% to 80% according to a SmartBugMedia survey). So you need to seize every opportunity to re-engage them. A customer who has already made a purchase, especially recently (for example, in the month leading up to Black Friday), is likely to be receptive to a great offer on a complementary product with the Black Friday stamp of approval.
So we're going to seek out One-Time Shoppers and turn them into loyal customers... because loyalty is the shortest route to growth! Let's take the example of an e-commerce store specializing in home furnishings. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Identify new customers who bought just before Black Friday. Log in to your favorite ecommerce platform and go to "Orders". Filter by date to identify orders from the last 30 days. Export the data to obtain a list of customers.
Step 2: Sort by product purchased. In your spreadsheet, sort the data by product purchased. You'll then have a list of recent customers by product purchased.
Step 3: Import into your marketing tool. Log in and import this customer list. Create segments for each customer group based on the product they purchased.
For example: "Clients J-30 coussins", "Clients J-30 tapis", "Clients J-30 tableaux", etc.
Step 4: Email automation. For each segment, create an automated email flow. Write an email template for each segment, highlighting the corresponding complementary product. Some automation tools are connected to your ecommerce platform and can automate this process. The logic: generate an e-mail or an e-mail personalization based on the product purchased to offer the complementary product.
Highlight your special "Black Friday" offer on the complementary product. For example: " Did you like your cushion? Discover our matching plaid with an exceptional 30% Black Friday discount! ".
#3 Prepare your databases for Black Friday (and Christmas shopping)
In an e-commerce context, no marketing tactic makes sense without a healthy, reliable database:
- How can you cross-sell to recent customers if their email addresses are incorrect?
- How can you maintain the ROI of your email campaigns if you have duplicates in your database?
- How can you deliver your products correctly if your postal addresses are not in the right format?
E-tailers therefore have every interest in cleansing their databases before deploying pre-Black Friday campaigns. Email, telephone or postal address, be ready with a simple, fast and cost-effective data cleansing solution.
But it's not just about what's already there. If you've done your job right, the coming period will undoubtedly bring an influx of new customers, who will fill in your contact forms. To ensure that your database isn't further polluted by data entry errors, you'd be well advised to implement a "Live" solution that verifies and validates data entry in real time, including email - valuable data for your actions, but also for account creation.
With a clean database and contact forms designed for healthy data entry, your e-commerce business is well equipped to deal with bad data, and can be a huge success for Black Friday... and beyond!
Data Enso, the Data partner for e-tailers
A database polluted by inaccurate, incomplete, obsolete or poorly formulated information can undermine the competitiveness and even the long-term viability of your e-commerce business.
To help you harness Data for sales and profitability, Data Enso offers intuitive, 100% RGPD-compliant solutions. To prepare for your Black Friday and Christmas shopping season, discover :