With BFCM right around the corner have you checked all of your boxes to make sure your sales strategy is ready for your customer's eyes? We have created an easy checklist for this weekend.

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Let's talk about some must-haves that will make it easy for you and your customer to navigate this weekend's events:

  1. Abandoned cart emails set up:

    If you have sales running chances are, you’ll boost traffic and that means, more abandoned carts as well. Setting up an abandoned cart campaign is key to encourage that purchase even after a customer left your cart.
  2. Are there other conflicting sales?

    During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you are likely to have special sales. It is important to make sure they don’t conflict with your other sales. Are you giving a 10% discount to new buyers but also 40% for Black Friday? Are you ready to provide that 50% discount? Make sure other ongoing sales are either turned off for the time or be ready for some really big discounts.
  3. Easy sales process.

    Ask yourself this question, is your sale offer easy to understand? A simple percentage or dollar amount discount works well enough, 2 for 1 or BOGO should be your go-to for massive sales during this time. If you make them too hard for a customer, you risk losing their attention during one of the biggest holiday sales.
  4. Auto-reply support emails

    More customers and more sales mean one thing, more support. Be sure your team, whether it is a ticket system or a call center is ready for that extra influx of calls or emails. Are they even working during Black Friday? Make sure you give your customers clear instructions in case they need to contact support and set realistic expectations for response times.
  5. Black Friday vs Cyber Monday: are you treating them as 2 separate things or one big weekend sale?

    Whatever you chose, make sure your customers understand it. If you are going to have other products for sale on Monday, brand your Black Friday sales in a clear and distinct fashion. Do the same for Cyber Monday. If you are going to have an entire weekend of one big sale, make sure your customers are as well. As merchants we can recommend treating these 2 unique concepts as 2 sales tactics, this way you could get two sales boosts during one weekend, but there are exceptions. Are your sales going to be different enough, apply to different merchandise, products? If they won’t, maybe one long sale is enough for you.
  6. Do your weekend plans have an interactive component?

    By that we mean rewarding behavior this weekend. A sale is likely to bring people in but there are all sorts of extra boosts you can give them to buy. A free sample or product for a certain amount of purchase, loyalty points, a coupon for a discount after Black Friday, an extra discount in their next purchase.
  7. You will be bringing in a lot of potential…are you ready to nurture it?

    Think about it like this, a lot of new customers will be coming to your site attracted by your sale, and maybe they will buy something from you. What happens next? Do you let them go? Now the game is to keep them and provide value so they become consistent buyers, first step is a second purchase in the future, do you have campaigns set up for that?
  8. Get to know your customers!

    Many will be new this weekend but through a form, it would be easy enough to know a little about them and maybe next time, send them a unique offer catered to them, a discount on the product they liked, or a refill.
  9. Objectives: Do you have clear goals?

    It is really as simple as setting your mind in one objective you want to accomplish. It could be as simple as cleaning inventory of products that are not moving too much, introducing a new product or a bit more complex getting a bunch of new qualified customers or even increasing average sales ticket. Whatever it is, this is your north star and what will define if you were or not successful with your sale.
  10. Measure performance!

    This weekend will go by super-fast, and measuring performance of your sales strategy will be the next step. You have your goals; do you know what specific data will indicate success? Are you able to measure that data with your current resources? If a sales increase is what you wanted, do you have a benchmark for regular increase so you can compare this weekend to it? Data is your number one asset and this weekend will be a gold mine for gathering that so be ready.

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We hope you enjoyed our short checklist for this Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. While this weekend may feel like simply a sales effort it could be so much more for your brand, use it as an opportunity to bring in new customers that you will nurture, to analyze your current data base, to provide old customers with some extra value and to put your brand out there.

We know you’ll do great!