The 2019 holiday season is fast approaching and businesses have already released their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as part of their holiday season strategies, and for good reason too.

Considering the opportunities and the potential revenue available during the holiday season, it should come as no surprise that a great amount of effort has been coordinated for every stage of a campaign. 

 Last year, holiday shoppers hit a record in spending, crossing the 1 trillion dollar mark during the holiday season for the first time, this includes both retail and online shopping. Digital sales, in particular, hit a record of $123.6 billion, up 32.6% compared to the previous year.

Ideally, businesses should have their holiday campaign ready at least 3-5 months in advance. The importance of being prepared for the holiday season can add a lot of pressure for online businesses, especially since most  eCommerce businesses retain 40% of their revenue for the holiday season during Cyber week.

However, close to 40% of shoppers begin their holiday shopping well before, as early as Halloween. If you haven't started yet, you're not at a complete loss, you will need to focus on the avenues that will bring you the most reward, requiring you to focus on data from your consumer behavior, best selling products, and the offer you are providing.
 
When it comes to your Black Friday & Cyber Monday campaigns, there are a few areas you will need to focus on in particular to optimize your revenue. In this blog, we will outline the specific areas to focus on, not only for the Holiday season, but for on-going revenue optimization throughout the year. 

To start, you need to ensure the foundation of your campaigns are secure. Without these essential check-list items optimized, your efforts towards your campaign will be severally impacted. 

• Improve Your Traffic Through The Product Pages 

When it's festive all round, your main site must be ready for the BIG DAYS, especially when your potential audience is diverted through re-targeting strategies. The secret lies in a festive feel - it helps the psychology of your visitors to take action.

You can find hundreds of Black Friday templates in the market. But, getting the most suitable is the crucial part. To attract more traffic to your store, you must take care of well-responsive themes and icons.

Your theme is only one crucial aspect of your conversion goal when it comes to your site. Here's a checklist that you will need to implement for your website, not only for the holiday rush but as a best practice all year-round.

• Site-Speed: 

It should be evident by now that your site-speed directly impacts your sales. Not only do you lose customers to slow load times, but you also get penalized by platforms such as Adwords if your experience is not optimal, making ads cost more. If your page load time takes longer than 5 seconds, you lose 60% of traffic right off the bat. A case-study for the Walmart website showed an increase in sales of 2% for every second they decreased their page load time. 

• Mobile Optimized: 

Not only are shoppers buying more online, but they are buying more online using their mobile. Mobile shopping during the holiday season increased by approximately 32.2% in 2018, compared to the year before. But there's a catch, which eCommerce businesses should pay close attention to. You have LESS time to convert a mobile shopper compared to a desktop shopper. Mobile shoppers spend approximately 163 on a site compared to 239 seconds for desktop users. 

Now that you have the essentials, such as site-speed and checkout experience in mind, you can work your way to finalizing your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers.

5 Steps to Outlining Your Black Friday Campaign 

Identify Your BFCM Offers 

You will need to determine which deals or discounts you need to run on which products. To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

1. On which products you can offers discounts

2. Are there products you can bundle - If you're are selling a jacket, do you have something that can perfectly go with that. You can offer a warm cap, gloves, pants or anything relatable. Offers can also come in forms of add-on or up-sells.

3. How much discount percentage help you earn a profit - let's suppose you are selling jackets, and your purchasing cost is $50, and your listed price is $60 then if you offer a 30% discount, indicating you are selling that jacket for $42. You are in an evident loss.

Additionally, here is what convinced holiday shoppers to make a purchase:

Try offers that involve free shipping, sale promos, and free gifts. For example, the family-owned Holabird Sports has promoted a wide selection of limited-time offers during its Black Friday sales

You can also incorporate a countdown timer in your holiday offers will create a sense of urgency.

•  Keep Your Emails Simple & Smart 

Are you getting stuck with low conversion rates and a weak ROI ratio? Well, it’s the right time to make a smart move with email marketing. So, things that make your emails get opened can be hyper-targeting of personalization,  segmentation-triggered automation, helpful reminders, automating customer service, and coupons. For detailed insight about email marketing read - (Aligning Your entire online presence with your brand (EMAILS EDITION) - blog link) 

•  Referral Programs Are Best For Holiday eCommerce

Be it black Friday deals or Cyber Monday sales, you can implement referral programs in your marketing list. In many black Friday marketing strategies, many marketers believe to include referral points as deals and discounts. Not only that, many include gift cards as a digital gifting medium from their eCommerce platform.

So, plan your shopping strategy wisely! 

• Track & Measure Performance With Analytics  

During your BFCM sale, it is recommended to track and measure your black Friday marketing strategy continually. It will reveal things that, in return, help you analyze where you are, the mistakes you've made, and the successes you've made. In simple words, the lessons you'll learn will help you improve in the future.

One of the easiest ways to analyze and track your store metrics is by integrating Insightful into your store back-end. Insightful helps you quickly understand your customers by providing detailed data and heat-map of their shopping journey on your store. By looking at the real-time data, you can find the hottest opportunities to grow sales and optimize conversion rates from all stages of your funnel.

Apart from insight, you can also utilize eCommerce analytics to build and grow your traffic, conversion, and customer retention, so that you will have a better crafted Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Rounding Up Thing 

Consumers' online spending looks strong for 2019's Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As the world is ready to shop online, your eCommerce store must start planning as early as now to anticipate the sudden influx of holiday shoppers looking for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Black Friday marketing strategies we discussed today covered almost everything you need to get you set, engage with your holiday shoppers, build incredible momentum, and start your BFCM selling successfully!