6 Ways to Convert More Shoppers This Holiday Season

By Mary Bonczkiewicz

KEY TAKEAWAY

When it comes to converting shoppers during the most wonderful time of the year, online retailers need to do everything they can to make their Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales stand out. This is especially important this year with the fear of a recession changing consumer’s buying habits.

As the holiday season kicks off, it’s essential for retailers to make the most of mega sale days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). But it’s no longer enough to simply offer great deals and discounts and assume shoppers will come your way. In today’s overcrowded digital landscape, brands must power their BFCM sales with innovative and engaging strategies to capture consumers’ attention across multiple channels.

Brands must also take in to account how consumer’s spending habits have changed in the last few years; from worries about a recession to the concern of inflation and supply chain issues. To make sure your business stands out and succeeds this season, here are six proven tactics for boosting your BFCM sales and getting holiday shoppers to convert.

Start Your BFCM Campaign Early

In the last two years, two-thirds of consumers had already started their holiday shopping by the beginning of November. This trend is expected to continue in 2022, which means retailers need to get a jump on promoting their BFCM discounts and events — in other words, start now!

Launch a BFCM Preview Campaign

October is the perfect time to begin teasing your BCFM deals. By sending preview emails to subscribers and posting sneak peeks to social media, you’ll create anticipation and build momentum for your upcoming holiday sales. You’ll also give your customers ample time to familiarize themselves with the types of deals you’ll be offering so they can incorporate them into their holiday shopping plans. Offering sales before BFCM will help tackle fears of limited supplies on those days. For example, Costco offers their customers price matching on their products for 30 days after the date of purchase. That means that customers can buy items in early November, and can return to price match the BFCM deals. Allowing consumers to buy ahead will benefit brands that are fearful of a limited supply. Still reeling from covid-related supply chain issues and longer delivery times, consumers can make sure that they will receive their items in time by buying ahead and going back to price match.

Bulk Up Your Email List

Now is also the time to amplify your reach for BFCM for SEO purposes by making sure you have a robust list of email subscribers. If your email list is thin, you still have time to capture leads by boosting your data collection efforts. Offering special discounts and early access to upcoming BFCM sales is an excellent way to get shoppers to participate in data-rich surveys and questionnaires.

Leverage Last Year’s Data

Lastly, you can use this pre-season time to pull valuable insights from data yielded during last year’s holiday promotions. Which targeting strategies produced the best results? What types of content drove the most traffic? Which keywords were used most frequently? Diving into data from the 2021 holiday season can help you strategize smartly for the one that’s ahead. Additionally, take a look at Amazon’s 2022 Prime Day to garner insights on consumer spending this year.

Choose the Right Channels

We’ve previously discussed the importance of omnichannel marketing in the modern landscape and how to optimize your audience targeting strategies for the impending endemic market. Both of these tactics can help increase conversions during the holiday season, especially if you segment your BFCM campaigns based on your customers’ channel preferences:

Both of these tactics can help increase conversions during the holiday season, especially if you segment your BFCM campaigns based on your customers’ channel preferences:

Mobile

Another sales-boosting channel you should consider incorporating into your BFCM campaigns is short messaging service (SMS). Stats show that these simple text messages create a sense of urgency that motivates shoppers to take advantage of time-sensitive sales. In a recent survey, 53 percent of consumers* said that being granted access to early sales and new releases was their top incentive to sign up for SMS. You can use SMS marketing to alert your subscribers to all kinds of limited-time BFCM discounts and deals, including flash sales, exclusive offers, sale exertions, and more.

Text Messaging

Another sales-boosting channel you should consider incorporating into your BFCM campaigns is short messaging service (SMS). Stats show that these simple text messages create a sense of urgency that motivates shoppers to take advantage of time-sensitive sales. In a recent survey, 53 percent of consumers* said that being granted access to early sales and new releases was their top incentive to sign up for SMS. You can use SMS marketing to alert your subscribers to all kinds of limited-time BFCM discounts and deals, including flash sales, exclusive offers, sale exertions, and more.

Capitalize on Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment rates always spike during mega sale days as online consumers bounce around from shop to shop to compare prices and score the best deals. While there’s little you can do to deter this behavior, you can conduct tests to uncover what went wrong in the consumer’s journey from search to checkout to fix those issues for the future. You canalso capitalize on it by sending out BFCM emails to users who still have items in their shopping carts. When targeted abandoned cart emails include information about limited-time promotions and sales, they’re made all the more engaging and persuasive.

Additionally, you can reinforce the limited-time nature of your BFCM sales by adjusting the language in your cart abandonment emails. Subject lines such as “Your cart total increases tomorrow” or “Complete your purchase before our big sale ends” will heighten feelings of urgency and motivate subscribers to take immediate action.

Personalize Your Deals

Personalization has become an essential marketing tactic for online retailers in their continuous quest to engage and convert customers. In addition to taking advantage of data-driven strategies such as dynamic creative optimization(DCO), you can enhance your BFCM strategies by personalizing the deals themselves.

For example, you could offer shoppers limited-time discounts on specific products they’ve clicked on multiple times. Or you could provide special one-time BFCM promo codes that feature shoppers’ names, such as JENN21 or ANDY76. And contrary to popular belief, personalization doesn’t have to be a tedious, heavily manual process. Use automation and collected data to personalize deals for the right price and product for the right consumer (here’s how).

The bottom line is that shoppers love feeling special (77 percent say they’re more inclined to shop with brands that personalize their online shopping journey), and they’ll be thrilled to receive (and more likely to take advantage of) holiday promotions that take their interests and shopping behaviors into account.

Establish Loyalty

We know that loyalty programs make shoppers feel valued and appreciated — 78 percent say they’re more likely to buy from a brand that has a loyalty program. But loyalty programs can also be very helpful when it comes to the challenging task of retaining one-and-done holiday shoppers. In fact, 70% of consumers admit they’re incentivized to buy from a brand when given discounts, coupons, or points toward their next purchase. It is especially important this holiday-season to establish loyalty, as about 90 percent of consumers are comfortable switching brands and retailers for lower prices this year.

You can also leverage loyalty programs to motivate existing members to partake in your BFCM deals by offering them exclusive discounts and early access to sales. Or you can gamify various member perks to help boost engagement — consider creating a holiday advent calendar that offers a new loyalty benefit each day or a holiday prize wheel that can be spun for additional bonus points.

Get Influencers to Promote Your BFCM Deals

To keep up with today’s trends, adding an influencer to plug your BFCM campaign will likely gain more customers and boost engagement and ROI. In a survey done by Meta, 29 percent of people were inspired to buy gifts from brands and products recommended by influencers during the holidays. To the left is an example of an influencer promoting Amazon’s second Prime Day deals. If you are considering adding influencers to your BFCM campaign, Influencer Management Platforms like Affable can help you create a plan.

To Wrap It All Up

When it comes to converting shoppers during the most wonderful time of the year, online retailers need to do everything they can to make their BFCM sales stand out. In addition to offering enticing deals and discounts, this requires research, strategic thinking, and the willingness and ability to leverage multiple marketing channels. If you’re worried about taxing your resources or disrupting your existing online strategies to accommodate for BFCM deals, you can relax. It’s not hard to prime your digital presence for the season’s mega sale days.

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