One of the highlights of the year for eCommerce store owners is Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). In the US in 2022, Black Friday alone generated a record-breaking $9.12 billion in sales. Naturally, online retailers need to do what they can to maximize success during this period that offers such rich potential for additional revenue and customers.
196.7 Million People Shopped on Cyber Monday 2022
National Retail Federation
The sales you can generate over the BFCM period (24-27 November), however, are only part of the equation, as one-off buyers can be nurtured. Using Yotpo's many post-purchase features, you can turn a single purchase into a loyal customer with a much-increased lifetime value (LTV).
So, come with us now as we look at how the platform can be used to guide your strategy before, during and after BFCM. We'll start by looking at Yotpo and how it works.
Yotpo Helps to Increase Both Trust & Sales
Yotpo is an established platform that offers advanced solutions for SMS and email marketing, as well as referrals and loyalty, reviews, subscriptions and user-generated content (UGC). These winning features help brands to accelerate growth while maximizing LTV.
With Yotpo, eCommerce operators can also:
- Engage shoppers via top channels
- Create customer advocates
- Boost recurring revenue
Applicable to brands of all sizes, Yotpo allows users to create a winning post-purchase experience while driving retention, promoting subscriptions and leveraging feedback.
How to Prepare Before BFCM With Yotpo
In the lead-up to the BFCM period, eCommerce store owners must use this time to prepare for success. There are a number of ways in which this can be accomplished.
Work on Conversion Optimization
The Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO as it's otherwise known, plays a big part in the minds of potential customers, particularly when the excitement of Black Friday is approaching. As such, marketers should see this as an opportunity to work on optimizing conversions.
That means using YotPo to send time-sensitive ‘limited-time-only’ messaging that presents a certain sense of urgency. The platform's own figures show that engagement rates tend to be 59% higher when urgency is conveyed, as compared to regular messages.
This urgent copy can include:
- Countdown Timer Calls to Action (CTAs)
- Easy-to-obtain, exclusive offers
- Click-to-copy coupons
Customers understand the fervor that exists around BFCM weekend, and these messages help to speed up the time to purchase and reduce the overall sales cycle.
Try Leveraging New Channels, Like SMS
If you're not yet enjoying the benefits of SMS marketing as part of your overall strategy, then you could be missing out on yourself - in interaction and sales. Offering an incredibly high average opening rate of 98%, Yotpo allows you to use this channel to offer perks and time-sensitive offers.
SMS Marketing Offers a 98% Opening Rate
Forbes
Leveraging the fact that shoppers are most likely to sign up as SMS subscribers before buying, marketers can use the channel to deliver impactful, urgency-creating messaging. Again, Yotpo's own statistics show that over 50% of shoppers love getting early access to sales discounts and new product releases.
Create a Retention-Driving Loyalty Program
Customer loyalty programs represent a powerful engine that eCommerce operators can use to drive retention. That's not the only benefit of loyalty programs either, as they also serve to boost CLV, increase average order value (AOV) and deliver more cross-selling/up-selling opportunities.
Other advantages include:
- More frequent customer purchases
- More acquired customers
- Increased engagement
Again, marketers can use Yotpo to offer loyalty messages - which we already know are very likely to be opened and read. Not only can a loyalty program encourage customers to join for BFCM incentives but also for post-holiday rewards.
How to Drive Retention During BCFM With Yotpo
Thanks to social media, shopping experiences have become much more impulsive and serendipitous. With more than half of the planet's population regularly using platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok, the potential audience is massive.
Harnessing Those Impulsive Moments
Yotpo allows you to easily showcase discounts and offer quick ‘click-to-purchase’ and ‘swipe-up’ CTAs that harness those impulsive moments that customers have when viewing social ads for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers.
61% of organizations engaged in social selling report revenue growth
HubSpot
Your efforts to build connections during the BFCM holiday period can be made that much more impactful on social media channels, particularly when you leverage your brand identity and tell great stories.
Responding to Customers in Real-Time
If you're looking to send the most impactful messages to your customers, they need to be both highly-personalized and sent at just the right moment. When is the right moment? Well, it happens to be directly after a shopper has taken a revenue-lost action, i.e. they fail to buy.
Yotpo SMS marketing flows can be set to send a message when a customer takes that action with a view to encouraging a return to complete the sale.
Those prime moments include:
- Browsing abandonment after clicking on your promotion/offer
- Shopping cart abandonment
In order to get fully prepared for BFCM weekend, a great move is to engage in lead-generation campaigns in the weeks leading up to the holiday. That should give you a wealth of data with which to prepare your SMS and email lists.
Capitalizing on Shifting Brick-and-Mortar Store Experiences
Another opportunity that shouldn’t be missed by marketers looking to maximize their BFCM sales is the opportunity that brick-and-mortar shopping presents. Despite the convenience of online shopping, many consumers still prefer the in-store experience.
Yotpo’s features allow you to offer a range of in-store checkout options to deliver shopping convenience and enhance the overall experience. Those options comprise:
- Incorporation of loyalty & SMS within the POS system
- Contactless checkout & returns
- Buy Now Pay Later Options
- Subscriptions
These are experiences that drive loyalty, and Yotpo integrations make set-up and implementation a seamless and stress-free process.
How to Encourage Loyalty After BFCM With Yotpo
After the chaos and furor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have subsided and customers have got their hands on some awesome deals, the work to create loyal customers must continue.
Again Yotpo is exceptionally useful in this regard, as the platform allows marketers to engage customers post-holiday across all of your sales channels. An effective way to engage customers is to offer a reward or incentive for taking a specific action that isn’t a purchase, such as:
- Recommending your loyalty program to friends and family
- Following your brand on social media
- Leaving a review for the product they bought
- Participating in an event in-store
The platform also allows users to leverage the power of user-generated content (UGC) via online influencers and purpose-built UGC landing pages. This opens your brand up to new communities to your loyalty program, and the virtuous cycle continues.
Use SMS Marketing to Carry On the Conversation
One of the most appealing characteristics of SMS when it comes to marketing is the feeling of exclusivity it offers to the reader and the hyper-personalization that's made possible.
So, what better way to carry on the conversation with customers in the weeks and months after BFCM than with a targeted Yotpo SMS campaign? Send texts about hot sales, new product drops, or even request customer reviews.
Then there’s information about shipping, polls and more. The whole post-sales experience becomes one long conversation, at the end of which a connection has been made - something that increases the chance of repeat purchases greatly.
Enjoy Maximum Returns This BFCM Holiday With Yotpo
Black Friday and Cyber Monday represent two of the biggest shopping days in the US each year, so the potential revenue for eCommerce retailers is huge. However, there's a lot of competition out there, so if you want to maximize your performance during this period, a precisely targeted strategy is required.
Yotpo allows eCommerce marketers to prepare the ground before, during and after this sales-focused holiday and makes light work of creating loyalty that turns an impulse buy into a long-term customer.
By employing the methods described above with the power of Yotpo, brands can enjoy maximum returns during BCFM and increase revenues thereafter. In anyone's book, that's a compelling argument for taking this marketing approach.
