Put Social Lite’s Proven Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sales and Marketing Playbook Into Action

Black Friday / Cyber Monday is coming up fast!

Black Friday / Cyber Monday (BFCM) is the next opportunity to ramp up sales for your online store before the busy Christmas rush. 

But beyond its immediate sales potential, it’s essential to also understand the significant role BFCM plays along your customer’s journey:

• Our mantra is “The money is in the list!”. More than a seasonal sales event, BFCM is also a customer acquisition strategy, where you convert first-time buyers with irresistible offers, who you can then offer your higher-priced products to later. By building your customer list, you can continue to monetize the lifetime value of these new customers for many years to come.
• BFCM is also a customer ascension and retention strategy, where you generate new sales from your existing customer list, which helps to capture lifetime value and build brand loyalty. 

Because BFCM is such an essential acquisition and lifetime value initiative for your online store, you need to plan to maximize success.

You can’t depend on brand new customers for holiday success, you have to maximize your existing relationships; people who know, like, and trust you.

Did you know that 80%-90% of your holiday sales will come from shoppers who already know who you are (e.g. website visitors, subscribers, fans and followers, repeat buyers, etc.)?

This means you can’t depend on advertising to new, cold, prospects the week of BFCM and expect great success. Instead, you must maximize your appeal to warm and hot customer relationships. 

There will also be considerable demand for “online advertising real estate”, and this competition for ad space on Facebook, Instagram, etc., ensures that ad costs will go through the roof. This is yet another reason to mine your existing customer list with great holiday offers, as the cost to get in front of them is significantly lower.

Even though the money is in the list, you will need to start warming and nurturing these audiences at least three months before BFCM; September is the magic month to get started.

And because of the pandemic, the shopping behaviour of customers during this holiday season will be different than in previous years (cue empty malls), which means more online shopping. 

What’s the takeaway?

You need to get a jump on things now so you’re prepared as you can be for the holiday shopping season.

Here’s your timeline of priorities to make your BFCM campaign successful:

Phase 1: September and October

• Begin warming up your audiences with cold ads.
• Start building your email list using an enticing offer, such as a discount or “gift with purchase”. This can be any kind of purchased-based offer.

You want your email list to consist of high-intent purchasers, not tire-kickers. In other words, your email list should consist of people who are ready, and most likely, to buy. If you pay $1 to acquire a new lead on your mailing list, that’s really good! You may be inclined to run a contest to grow your emails, but remember: many of those people are only in it for the prize. They’re not necessarily real purchasers.  

Don’t just focus on the people who purchase, but also on the number of people signing up to your mailing list as a whole.

The below merchant had 52 people purchase this offer (great!), but they also had 471 people sign up. That’s almost 500 people who are high-intent purchasers!

PRO TIP: Spend as much time as you can on building your list! It will come in handy soon. You’ll see why. 

Phase 2: November

• Focus on building a Black Friday email list.
• Incentivize people to sign up to receive early bird access to your massive BFCM sale (we recommend offering at least up to 50% off) using cold and warm audiences to run retargeting ads. We like using lead forms on Facebook to capture these emails.
• You want existing customers to re-subscribe to this list too. 

PRO TIP: If you usually have a fly-out on your site promoting some sort of sale or discount, turn it off for now so you don’t cannibalize potential sales. There may be people visiting your site who are able, and willing, to pay your regular price.

Phase 3: Holiday Season

• Plan to send at least 5 campaign emails per “event”  (i.e., 5 promoting BFCM, 5 promoting Christmas, 5 promoting shipping deadlines, etc.). 

• Use BF email list you built in Phase 2.
• Use cold and warm lookalike audiences to run ads promoting your BFCM deals.

PRO TIP: Remember to email all your lists, not just your BFCM list.

How we can help you succeed this BFCM season:

Social Lite is on a mission to help Shopify's merchant community thrive this season, which is why we have specifically created a few programs to help with your success.

Here’s what we’re offering you right now:

1. Shopify Meetup Vancouver & Edmonton | BFCM Special

Sign up for free and join us virtually for our special BFCM Shopify Meetup Vancouver and Edmonton on Wednesday, August 19th! We will hear from Shopify, merchants, and leading apps to discuss what they’re doing for BFCM this year. 

2. BFCM + HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN COURSES FOR SHOPIFY STORE OWNERS

We’re offering a number of different BFCM courses starting in September through our online training centre for Shopify store owners, Merchant Mastery.

Attend live training sessions with group coaching calls to make this your most successful season yet.

CLICK HERE for more information on our do-it-yourself, merchant-friendly courses and weekly coaching programs.

If you’re looking for more hands-on help with campaign execution and implementation, we have advanced, hands-on programming available through our team at Social Lite where we’ll work with you every step of the way to help you plan and implement your holiday campaign. 

CLICK HERE to download our price guide.

To ensure the best possible results for our clients, we’re only taking on a limited number of new online stores this holiday season. We strongly encourage you to get in touch with us if this sounds like you!

3. Book A Free Strategy Review Call

Still not sure what’s right for you?

Book a free, 30-minute BFCM strategy review call with one of our Shopify experts to discuss steps you can take to help you succeed this holiday season. 

About Social Lite:

Social Lite is a Shopify Partner sales and marketing agency that has helped hundreds of Shopify merchants around the globe scale their revenue with Facebook Ads, Google Ads, email marketing, and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). 

As certified Shopify Experts, Social Lite has hosted Shopify Meetups in cities throughout North America, and virtually to global audiences, where we teach ROI-driven eCommerce strategies alongside experienced store owners and renowned Shopify partner apps.

Social Lite has been featured on Shopify Academy and Shopify Compass, and most recently on stage at Digital Agency Expo in NYC. In the summer of 2020, Social Lite’s Managing Directors, Scott and Simon, are teaching a course on eCommerce sales at the University of Alberta. Scott is scheduled to present at DigitalMarketer’s Traffic and Conversion Summit in December 2020, one of the most influential digital marketing conferences on the planet.