Black Friday and Cyber Monday eCommerce Tips – MCMC, Tiki.VN, and Netsmartz LLC

It’s time to start planning your marketing campaigns for the holiday season. We’ve collected tips from MCMC, Tiki.VN, and Netsmartz LLC on the best ways to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Take another look at your review strategy. Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals can draw people in, but if you’re relatively unknown, your reviews will seal the deal. Online sales require a degree of trust, and if you’re not one of the national names that everyone knows, reviews from other customers who have bought that product are the key to securing that trust with potential customers (and increasing your conversion rate!). Now’s the time to assess how you ask customers to review your products and make tweaks to that strategy. Look at the words and imagery you use, incentives you give and your subject lines to make sure they’re optimized to get the most reviews possible from your customers.

Julianne Guy – Director of Digital Marketing
MCMC

My absolute top tip for the Black Fiveday weekend is to have everything planned, prepared, and tested well in advance of the shopping period. Get all of your custom labels, assortments, data quality fixes and account strategy decisions completed at least a month out. This will allow you enough time to do some testing with your campaigns or fix anything you may have missed without adverse impacts. You do not want to be explaining to your clients or manager why your campaigns did not perform as well as they should have because of something that should have been solved earlier.

Ryan Wilber – Senior Director of Performance Marketing
Tiki.VN

Marketing Campaign Tips
-Segment your audience
-Invest in your site experience – Announce in an obvious way “Black Friday Sale” on your website/landing page.
-Keep a 20%-30%% of your budget for targeting a new audience as well – According to Think with Google, more than 8 in 10 shoppers of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) are either considering multiple brands or have no brands in mind at all when shopping.
-Personalized email marketing campaign
-Explicit campaign for “Shoppers that Abandon Carts” through email marketing and Google Shopping (you can expect more juice here)
-Create Remarketing Lists and launch dynamic re-marketing campaigns
-Social Campaign should not be only product-centric, but it should have an emotional connection (30 seconds video)

Communication Tips
-Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) – Create a sense of urgency by sending out Black Friday emails like, “Free Shipping till 5:00 PM” or “Flat 50% discounts for today only.”
-Calls-to-Action (CTAs) and if you have a local Store then include a local-friendly CTA to help orient subscribers and make their visits smoother to store
-Free Shipping

Ensure all the data is being tracked so that it can be analyzed later which will provide a good foundation for future campaigns.

Last but not least, don’t forget to keep a check on your online reputation (star ratings) and your website load time on mobile devices (AMP).

Amit Doda – Vice President, Digital Marketing
Netsmartz LLC