Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend are approaching at a rapid speed. At Blend, we know it’s never too late or too early to prepare for this particular weekend. If done right, your business can expand and remain sustainable. But, like with any project, you need the right tools. LoyaltyLion did a study on consumers for BFCM 2022. While last year's stats didn’t measure up well, this year is very different. They found the following:
- 62% of customers are looking forward to the 2022 BFCM shopping period
- 68% of customers are waiting for BFCM to make certain purchases
- 67% of customers are more interested in BFCM due to the cost of living crisis.
We’ve all been hit with high prices lately, including your customers. From petrol to housing to everyday food items, it has caused customers to hunt for the best products at the best prices.
BFCM is the perfect place to drive revenue and grab customers where they need to stick around for the long haul.
Here are your top five apps for your BFCM tech stack.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is always our go-to for the perfect marketing preparation. Not only does it make marketing easy with its overall functionality and gorgeous aesthetic, but they also integrate with just about every app you could think of.
You can push SMS this BFCM with their SMS functionality to maximise revenue with multi-channel campaigns. 73% of eCommerce sales happen on a mobile device, and more customers rely on SMS in the post-purchase part of the customer journey. You’d be able to stand out from the competition and engage with your customers on a new level.
Klaviyo allows you to create beautiful sign-up forms that will appear on your eCommerce store and make an excellent first impression while targeting specific customers, such as non-subscribers or those not subscribed to SMS. All the data from these forms will feed into Klaviyo and allow robust zero-party data-driven segmentation. Work backwards when designing these sign-up forms by deciding the essential information you want to know about your customers before creating the content.
The data you collect during BFCM can serve as a basis for retention in 2023. You can set automated messaging for the post-holiday rush and integrate reviews and UGC, loyalty, referrals, and personalisation apps, allowing you to leverage your tech stack further.
To help you prepare for BFCM, Klaviyo has a quick BFCM checklist for when you’re about to head into the weekend. Keep these in mind towards the end of November so that everyone knows what to do and when to do it:
- Implement your planned campaign and flow changes so you can view your BFCM deals.
- Ensure that your lists and segments are built, depending how you plan to send your marketing.
- Set up Social and Shopping Ads.
- Create your coupon codes using Klaviyo’s unique coupon code option.
- Monitor the performance of your campaigns and flows throughout the weekend to ensure that Open Rate and Revenue are trending where anticipated. If needed, make corrections.
LoyaltyLion
To market your business sustainably during this holiday season, you’ll need to think of how the customer is feeling and focus on how you can drive long-term loyalty from these new and potential customers and increase loyalty for current customers.
Using a tool like LoyaltyLion can assist in boosting your repeat revenue by encouraging loyalty with incentives and community-like mindsets. And there are a few ways to push this strategy in the best way possible.
Remember that timing is everything. LoyaltyLion’s study, mentioned earlier, found that 41% of customers would prefer the sale to start 1-6 days before BFCM, while 23% said they would prefer if sales last just for the BFCM weekend. The reality is that customers get bombarded with promotional sales during this period. It would be wise to think about how this weekend looks for your brand and your customers and how you want to play out the timing.
Ensure to communicate appropriately with your customers through avenues like email and SMS with personalised promotions and offers. But on this note, you don’t just need to throw 20% off at them and hope for the best. LoyaltyLion found that 76% of customers are motivated by discounts but that the price wasn’t the only driver for sales. 76% of customers are inspired by early access.
Using this type of method in your marketing, encouraging them to sign up for your loyalty program to receive early access to promotions over BFCM will give them a taste of what being loyal to your brand feels like, and from there, you can encourage them to move further up your loyalty tiers to receive even more incentives. Incentivise referrals to go a step further in pushing loyalty while creating an easy method of customer acquisition at the same time.
Delivering the right experiences at the right time will drive long-term loyalty. And with the correct tech stack, messaging, and timing, you can boost your long-term repeat revenue with a tool like LoyaltyLion to push you over the precipice of ultimate success.
Okendo
Reviews can be an affordable and easy way to drive potential customers over the edge at the pre-purchase stage. Incorporating UGC (User Generated Content) in an ad is an innovative way to engage with customers, both active and potential. Using a tool like Okendo will elevate your reviews, bringing in more conversions this BFCM and beyond.
Your customers love talking about themselves, and they love being heard. This will be your opportunity to leverage that for customer acquisition. Okendo allows you to use product and customer attributes so that potential customers can search for reviews based on their needs. It also allows you to push customer photos, encouraging potential customers as 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual (just a sciency tidbit for you).
Remember that negative reviews can have a positive impact. While purchase likelihood peaks between 4.2 and 4.5 stars, negative reviews can also be a chance to show off your brand's loyalty to its customers and allow you to resolve issues in a timely, respectable, and endearing manner.
The social proof you gather with Okendo can be integrated with your Klaviyo abandoned cart emails to encourage potential customers that your brand can be trusted. You can also incentivise customers through LoyaltyLion to leave a review on a recent purchase. This way, you’ll convert happy customers into brand ambassadors. Whatever route you choose, always ensure that you include a marketing opt-in so you can connect with your customers.
Rebuy
While customers are more aware of privacy concerns, it’s interesting to note that retailers' data collection is getting closer to the tipping point of Netflix, where customers expect the proper recommendations based on their preferences through algorithms and data collection. Rebuy focuses on bringing extra personalisation to your eCommerce marketing strategy. Their AI, integrated with Klaviyo’s, will surely increase your relationship with your customers and how they feel about your brand.
You need to ensure to deliver a stellar post-purchase experience with one-click post-purchase upsells. Recently converted buyers show a higher chance of repeat purchasing as their buyers' intent is at its highest, and if you can keep it up, you’ll have a loyal customer and increase your repeat revenue.
You can implement order-tracking pages with personalised product recommendations and boost your CLV by delivering a branded order-tracking experience that includes specific messaging and product recommendations.
Gorgias
We’ve saved one of the best for last. Gorgias will nurture your customers throughout their journey while empowering them to find their answers. This tool seamlessly integrates with Klaviyo and allows you to collect critical data to find exactly what your customers want for this BFCM.
Additionally, the app can sync with your social media and enable you to prioritise comments based on a positive or negative impact for easy responses. This will boost the community environment you’ve worked so hard to create and show that to potential purchasers before you’ve even entered the beginning stages of BFCM to create an irresistible pre and post-purchase experience.
Let Your Tech Stack Converse
The most critical part of all these apps is that they work together. Integrating these apps so there are no stones left unturned in the customer journey will create a coherent experience for your customers, whether they’re active, new, or potential.
If you’d like to boost your customer journey this BFCM and create the most innovative tech stack combined with an engaging marketing strategy to knock customer socks off, get in touch with us at Blend.
