In British culture, Boxing Day has always been the biggest day for bargain hunters and Christmas sales. But it doesn’t leave much room for customers to snag a deal before the festive season. Thankfully, in recent years the American phenomenon, Black Friday, has migrated over into the UK, allowing for pre-Christmas purchases.
But what is Black Friday?
Traditionally in America, it’s always been the first Friday after Thanksgiving, marking the official start to holiday shopping with many retailers offering exaggerated discounts to customers. However, it wasn’t until 2010 that Black Friday came to the UK, with Amazon leading the way offering increased sales and discounts. According to Citizen, “the first [Amazon] sale was so popular that customers complained items sold out too fast, and traffic volumes crashed their website.”
Since 2010, the UK has adopted Black Friday (and later it’s counterpart, Cyber Monday) into their culture with 2022 seeing consumers spending a record of £9.42 billion over that weekend, with 61% of this being spent online. Retailers are now getting ready to send out marketing campaigns for Black Friday, but how can you prepare for such a mad rush for deals? We share 5 top tips retailers and eCommerce businesses can implement to ensure they are ready for the big day.
1. Improve Marketing Accuracy with Clean Data
Make sure your current customers are receiving marketing communications about Black Friday deals and codes. Cleansing existing email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses within your CRM system is essential before a large promotional campaign, ensuring your message is seen by the right audience/customer. Contact data is no longer considered ‘fresh’ after around 90 days, with an average monthly decay rate of 2.1%. You can find out more about how to prevent data decay in your CRM here.
2. Segment Email Addresses Before the Day
Once your contact data has been cleansed and standardised, it’s important to understand who your target audiences are for Black Friday. Are they bargain hunters, present buyers, window shoppers or impulse spenders? Do they need nurturing to encourage a purchase, are they ignoring/deleting emails, or perhaps adding items to their basket which they never buy?
Customers who receive and purchase from email promotions typically spend 138% more than those who don’t receive any communication. These segments allow retailers to understand what content to send out and to who. Narrowing down how your consumers engage with your campaigns will lead to higher clicks and conversions. To avoid wasted marketing spend verifying email addresses for Black Friday is crucial for retailers.
3. Simplify Checkout Experiences
During Black Friday, website traffic can double with new and existing customers wanting to find a bargain. More demand and website traffic can result in lots of out-of-stock items. Anything that prevents a smooth checkout may stop consumers getting their hands on the bargains. Allow customers to smoothly checkout items with no hassle and fewer keystrokes by using a predictive address/data validation service. Our predictive address service uses intelligent type-ahead technology to reduce address entry time by 80% without compromising on quality.
4. Recover Abandoned Carts
The average cart abandonment rate over Black Friday in 2022 was 76.15%. With such a high rate, it’s important to recover these customers with nurture campaigns designed to persuade and engage. Ensuring entered email addresses are valid and free from spelling mistakes allows retailers to send communications, such as further reductions, on items consumers have viewed or placed in their basket to alleviate cart abandonment.
5. Reduce Failed Deliveries
In the craziness that is Black Friday, people are more likely to make mistakes when entering delivery information. Receive correct and standardised postal addresses to reduce the number of failed deliveries. Address Validation saves retailers time and money whilst enhancing customer satisfaction with correct and scheduled deliveries.
Black Friday is a major event for retailers and the eCommerce industry, so preparation is key. For a seamless weekend, data cleansing beforehand and data validation during are a must to prevent human error and incorrect data from affecting the customer’s experience. Find peace of mind amidst the mad rush of Black Friday by using Data8’s services, which can be found here.
