Black Friday Promotion: 5 Ideas For eCommerce Success

As we prepare for the holiday season to look a bit different this year − with the majority of shopping done online − there's one thing that may make or break your sales: holiday planning. We encourage all of our clients and eCommerce businesses across the board to create a Black Friday promotion plan in advance.

Black Friday Promotion Ideas

In addition to the strategies we shared to help prepare for last year's holiday, we're sharing 5 more Black Friday promotion tips to help drive eCommerce sales this year:

1. Offer more than one discount code
2. Use gamification to increase engagement
3. Create an email marketing campaign
4. Up-sell and cross-sell products
5. Leverage influencer marketing

Offer More Than One Discount Code

During Black Friday and other holidays, your eCommerce store may run several different discounts codes and gift card incentives to encourage website visitors to purchase. When it comes to managing multiple specials on your site, having the right tools put in place can be a lifesaver.

Think through your campaigns and consider how you want to use these discount codes. For example, if you have day-to-day sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, you'll want to set up parameters that don't allow previous discount codes to apply to that daily special.

Setting up specific parameters is crucial. You can configure discounts codes to be active by weeks, days or hours, product or category, first time visitor, repeat buyer and more.

Be sure to develop unique codes for specific discounts, and keep track of them all in a discount code library. Having a list of which codes are active will make it easier to design parameters for new codes and campaigns as you go.

Discount codes are key drivers towards purchases on Black Friday (and throughout the weekend into Cyber Monday.) Plus, they encourage first-time visitors to convert.

Use Gamification To Increase Engagement

If you're not using gamification elements on your site, your Black Friday promotion plan is a great place to start. Increase revenue and build customer loyalty with this marketing strategy.

RetailDive defines gamification as "elements of play and common game mechanics such as points, badges, and other incentives in nontraditional contexts in order to affect behavior." This strategy helps to engage users and increase the time spent on your page.

Gamification is more prevalent than we may realize. A simple example involves when brands use eCommerce loyalty programs to retain customers. The progress bar throughout the checkout process is equivalent to unlocking an achievement in a game and encourages shoppers to complete a purchase.

We recommend rewarding users who participate with incentives that are valuable to your targeted audience, such as unique discount codes or promotional offers like BOGO.

Create An Email Marketing Campaign

Drive Black Friday sales and improve conversion rate by creating and optimizing one (or several) email marketing campaigns. Follow email marketing best practices to ensure your emails are reaching your targeted audience's inboxes at the right time.

When creating your Black Friday promotion emails, keep a few things in mind:

• Consider benchmark data from last year to determine which KPI to focus on
• Brainstorm ways to automate emails and engage your audience early and often
• Segment your list based on user behavior prior to Black Friday
• Personalize emails to target shoppers with specific discounts based on shopping behavior

With an influx of shoppers adding items to their carts during the holidays and − at times − abandoning them, we strongly suggest using an abandoned cart email strategy a few weeks prior to Black Friday to convert more visitors.

After a few weeks, evaluate your offers, messaging, layout and design to see what inspires your customers to convert. There, you'll see what works (and what doesn't) and can adjust accordingly.

Remember to include an engaging subject line, product images and a clear call-to-action in all abandoned cart emails to ensure shoppers return to purchase the items they left behind.

Up-Sell & Cross-Sell Products

Optimize your eCommerce site design for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and beyond to help guide customers to the products they're searching for. Generate more online sales and increase average order value by up-selling and cross-selling products.

Up-selling involves encouraging customers to purchase a more expensive version of the item they originally intended to buy. Spotify's premium account offerings are a great example of this. Though users can sign up with a free account, Spotify offers a variety of other premium options as well where customers must pay monthly fees to use the premium features.

Cross-selling, on the other hand, is the action of offering users other products − in addition to their primary product − that they can easily add to their order during the checkout. For example, if your eCommerce store is offering a great discount on a professional camera, consider cross-selling an inexpensive item that complements the product, like a camera bag or SD card.

Leverage Influencer Marketing

Grow your followers and expand your customer base by leveraging influencer marketing. Well-known influencers are highly active on social media and are relevant in your industry. They create engaging content, similar to user-generated content, that caters to their audience's preferences, resulting in a large following.

Partner with an influencer to aid in your Black Friday promotion by asking them to share a real-life application of your product and why they love it. This tactic helps to instill trust in your brand − because their audience trusts them and their product recommendations.

Influencer marketing is very prevalent throughout social media, as we see a variety of influencers across Instagram, Snapchat and more sharing sponsored posts. We recommend getting a head start on partnering with the influencers that you have in mind, as Black Friday and following holidays are one of the busiest times of the year for influencers.

Conclusion

Creating an eCommerce marketing strategy during the holiday rush is no simple task. That's why we recommend implementing these 5 Black Friday promotion ideas in advance, so your eCommerce store has a leg up on the competition and drives more revenue this year.

Have additional questions about your eCommerce store's Black Friday promotion or planning? Discover how partnering with an agency, like Groove Commerce, can help prepare your store for the holidays and help your business grow.

Contact us through the form below with any questions or concerns, and our team will be in touch soon.