Boost Your eCommerce Sales this Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Jairene Cruz-Eusebio on Nov 24, 2021 1:44:31 PM

It’s that time of year again—the time when retailers reap the benefits from a month-long spending spree. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching, promising to be bigger than ever before!

What are Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and why are they important?

If you don’t know what these events are, you must have been living under a rock for some time now!

Everyone is looking for the perfect time to buy electronics, clothes, and other goods. But what’s so special about Black Friday and Cyber Monday? These two days mark the beginning of the holiday season. The sales that retailers offer during this period are often geared towards items that weren’t able to be sold earlier in the year because of a lack of demand or because stores want to clear out inventory.

The exact days for BFCM are November 26th and 29th, but the sale promotions usually run from Friday through Monday and not just the individual days.

Tips to Boosting eCommerce Sales on BFCM

To help you prepare your eCommerce business for this exciting time, we have compiled a list of our favorite tips and tricks to guarantee success on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

1. Welcome your customers with a pop-up sale

If you are the owner of an online store, pop-up sales are your friend. There are multiple ways to trigger pop-up promotions, and these are:

upon scrolling;
upon landing on a specific page;
after the user has been on the page for some time (10 seconds, a minute, etc.).

You can also use the pop-up promotion when there’s exit intent. For example, if the user tried to switch to a different tab or wanted to close the window, the pop-up would show up as one final effort to convince the user to make a purchase.

But don’t use regular pop-ups! Use ones that engage users by asking them to spin a wheel or play a mini-game to get bigger discounts! The more involved the user is, the more likely he’ll make a purchase because he has already invested his time.

If you’re using Shopify, here are some Shopify apps that you can use for this purpose:

Discount Spin Wheel BFCM Popup– This app allows you to customize the wheel and split test between promotions to see which variation works best. It also has an anti-cheat shield to prevent the user from spinning over and over just to get the best discount.

Woo Spin Popups: Wheel Pop-ups– This app is similar to the previous one, except it generates unique coupons automatically so that each coupon can only be used once. It is also mobile responsive and has a countdown timer to induce urgency.

SmartPopup: Promotion Pop-up– This is an excellent choice if you want to highlight specific products or if you want to use a video to promote your products. You can even add a product with a buy now button to encourage a quick sale. Best of all, it’s currently free to use!

2. Create an SMS marketing campaign to promote BFCM deals and discounts

One thing that people love about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals is getting discounts by having a physical store in their neighborhood. However, this isn’t an option if you’re eCommerce-only. You need another way to reach out to your target audience and get them interested in your products or services!

Enter SMS marketing campaigns! These are cost-effective platforms with proven success rates because they engage users with information on promotions and discounts without any effort from the user’s end.

Use this opportunity to capitalize on the growing trend by optimizing your eCommerce website for mobile and seeking out an SMS marketing provider like WinBack. We offer a number of mobile marketing tools that will help boost your sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

Start sending promotional text messages regarding your upcoming sale at least two days before the start of the event. You can also send last-minute deals on the day itself.

However, since users are likely being bombarded with sales messages at this time, make sure your message will stand out by adding emojis and using images that will quickly capture their attention.

With the intense competition, you might be tempted to send SMS messages to just about anyone; don’t do that. You must make sure that you only send messages to people who have opted-in to your marketing messages. For more information on what you can and cannot do, read our guide on SMS Marketing Compliance.

3. Offer free shipping on all orders over $50

If you’re a retail company, this is a key strategy to capturing the attention of your users. Free shipping helps prevent your customer from seeking out a competitor at this very competitive time.

You don’t have to stick to $50; you can offer free shipping without a minimum, or you can increase the minimum if you like. Not only will this help fill more of your shopping cart with higher-ticket products, but it will also reduce abandoned carts which means more sales revenue!

However, don’t make the minimum amount too high, or else your customer will see through your intentions. Make it reasonable so that you will profit from the sale while making it enticing for the customer.

4. Send out marketing emails to increase awareness of the upcoming sales event

Reach your customers and draw them towards the event is by sending out emails. Even if SMS marketing beats email marketing by a long shot, you still should get all your bases covered. It is still an opportunity to gain more customers.

These emails should be sent out at least a week prior to the event and can be used to create awareness for this event. You should also use the email to offer coupons, discounts, and other incentives that may entice your target audience into shopping with you on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Another way you can use email marketing wisely is by sending out cross-sell and up-sell emails. You can offer these products during Black Friday or Cyber Monday with an email that straight-up tell the customer about it.

The benefit of doing this is two-fold:

1) The cross-sell and up-sell products are likely to sell better because they’re being highlighted in the email.

2) The email helps remind customers about your product while also promoting other items that may interest them.

5. Create engaging social media marketing campaigns

You can use social media to push your sales on this event and create buzz about it. Social media campaigns are an effective way of increasing awareness about the sale as it is being promoted across different channels. In addition, there’s no better way to get people talking about your brand than by posting updates that will catch the attention of users who are looking for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Use social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to reach a larger audience and promote your products or services that are on sale during this time of year.

If you want to have a strong social media presence, you have to have engaging campaigns. Engaging campaigns are ones that draw people in by targeting their feelings and emotions.

There are a lot of different methods and techniques you can use, but the main idea is that they’re going to engage your customers. Your posts must encourage clicks, shares, reactions, comments, and tags.

You can run a contest on your social media pages and offer an item for free, after which non-winners will be given discounts. Another good way to create engagement is by asking users questions. For example, you can ask people what they’re planning on buying during the event and offer discounts for the “best answer.”

You can even take it further than that by adding voting, live chats, or polls where your audience gets to choose their favorite products.

Video and photo posts receive the highest engagements on multiple platforms, so utilize them well. You can use Canva to make eye-catching image posts using their ready-made Black Friday templates.

There are thousands of options to choose from; you’ll have no problem finding the right one for your store.

Successful campaigns need three things: compelling copywriting, eye-catching graphics, and relevant keywords targeting the audience segment most likely to convert on your offer. Maximize these three factors by creating something unique, witty, and valuable for your audience to truly engage with!

6. Bundle products for better sales conversions

Bundling products is a technique that most businesses use during the holidays to boost their sales. It’s an effective way of getting customers interested in more than one product at once. You can offer any combination of products or services together for a discount, but be sure to make combinations based on what you think will sell well.

The benefit of bundling your products is that it’s a money-saving tactic for the customer while also giving them more value for their money.

For example, you can bundle a laptop with a power cord and an antivirus software package. This way, customers get three products for the price of one, which boosts your sales.

You should make sure that your products and/or services can be bundled in a way that makes sense and shows the value of the bundled item. Don’t just bundle things together because you think they might go well together, make sure there’s a good reason for them to be sold as one.

Another thing to keep in mind when creating your bundles is to add value to the bundle. Even though you’re getting three (or more) products for a price of one, it doesn’t mean that you should overprice each item. You still want it to be an affordable purchase for your customer while also making sure they get more than what they bargained for!

Bundling works well on Black Friday and Cyber Monday because lots of people are looking to buy more than one product, so it’s the perfect time to capitalize on the need for value!

7. Include a countdown to increase urgency

Add a countdown timer in your online store so shoppers know how much time is left before they can take advantage of these promotions. There are multiple ways to use a countdown timer:

Countdown to the start of the sale
People literally wait outside the doors of physical stores and count the time until the store opens and the sale starts. Why not do the same for your online store? You can increase urgency by limiting the number of stocks per product so that your customers know that if they want a certain item, they should be quick about it!
Countdown to the end of the sale
You can also count down the days and hours left on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This will prompt your customer to buy something before the time runs out and they lose the discount. Nothing is more painful for customers than feeling that they will be losing out on something.

(Image from Sales Pop Master)

Countdown to free shipping
If you’re offering free shipping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then it would be a good idea to count down the number of days or hours left until the offer ends.

Countdown to bonus deals
This is similar to Countdown To End Of Sale, but if there are bonus deals for your customers in their purchase (example: buy one product today and get another one for 50% off), you can count down the number of days left to take advantage of this offer.

Countdown to checkout
You can also add a countdown timer for the number of minutes left for customers to finish checkout. You can say that there are a limited number of items, and the item in their cart is reserved for them only for a few minutes.This is an effective tactic because people don’t like feeling hurried while they shop, but if there’s a race against time (or each other), perhaps they will make the purchase faster rather than procrastinating (or comparing the price against your competitors) until it’s too late.

8. Create a landing page for each product with the discount offer

You can create unique landing pages for each product that’s being offered at a discounted price on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This will help you to convert more shoppers into customers because they know exactly what to buy, where to buy it, and at what price.

You can improve the product page or create a unique landing page if the product page’s template is too limiting.

It also helps you to show off the best features and benefits of each product. This way, your customer can make an informed decision on which product they should be buying and at what price point.

Start Implementing These BFCM Tips Now!

The time is now to boost your eCommerce sales this Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness. Remember, BFCM just marks the beginning of the holiday season. This means the entire month afterward, people will have their wallets open, just itching to spend on almost anything that’s marketed well.

There are a few things to consider for this year’s season, including developing a strong mobile presence via SMS marketing and creating engaging marketing campaigns to capture the attention of users who are itching to grab a good deal.

If you’re looking for a good deal, why not sign up for a 14-day free trial of WinBack? It’s a win-win marketing strategy that you shouldn’t miss out on.