When Black Friday rolls around, retailers have a lot to get excited about. According to a study last year, over 137 million Americans plan to shop over Thanksgiving weekend. That can translate into huge traffic and sales for retailers across the country. It is by far the biggest retail day/event of the year. This means that brands and marketers should be planning well in advance to take advantage of this big date. One aspect of the preparation involves setting up the right campaigns, workflows, and tools to maximize sales from the holiday traffic. In a previous post, we covered the step by step marketing guide to get ready for Black Friday & Cyber Monday. In this post, we will uncover some of the top Black Friday marketing automation scenarios for you to try in order to be a star this sales season.
Why Black Friday Marketing Automation, You Ask?
The answer is simple. Marketing automation is one of the best, and often the most cost-effective, ways to engage with your website traffic and customer base. It allows you to target the right customer at the right time in order to deliver a near personal shopping experience for your customers. Furthermore, the automatic nature of the solution means that it’s super scalable. Whether it is 1,000 or 100K visitors per day, marketing automation will deliver results without any incremental effort from your end. This way you can focus efforts on producing the best content instead of having to stay on top of emails all the time!
So, without further ado, here are the top Black Friday marketing automation scenarios you should include among your marketing arsenals.
Marketing Automation Scenario no1: Back in Stock
Automated emails are a great way to notify a customer when an item is back in stock. It’s possible that during the holidays your stock will sell out quickly. You can set up notifications to email customers as soon as you get more inventory. That way, they will be reminded to log back in and purchase the item they originally wanted to buy.
It’s easy to set up a back-in-stock alert so that customers can just head back to your site as soon as it is available. This is helpful because it’s unlikely that they will continue to check and re-check the site over time to find out when you have more inventory in. One way is to combine Back in Stock with browse abandonment, where you notify customer who browsed the items that are out-of-stock. You can also offer to extend the Black Friday sale even though the inventory might not come in until a later date.
Marketing Automation Scenario no2: Repurchase Reminder
If you have items that need to be replaced frequently, you can set up a repurchase reminder that will notify them when it has expired or when they might be interested in replacing the item they originally bought. Black Friday is a great time to do so because people will already be in a shopping mode and be looking for great deals on items they love. Customers are usually compelled to repurchase certain items if they are happy with them – especially if they can do so at a discounted price.
Setting one up with ContactPigeon is easy, just following this step by step guide for repurchase reminder.
Marketing Automation Scenario no3: Abandoned Cart Reminder
A lot of shoppers leave abandoned items in their cart and then don’t get around to purchasing it on Black Friday before the deadline you have set. You can use abandoned cart email reminders as a push for customers to revisit your site and complete the sale. Instead of writing out a standard email telling them that they forget items in their cart, you can spice it up with a few Black Friday offers! You can even make them redeemable on Cyber Monday so they don’t feel they have to rush or shop over the weekend. Cyber Monday is another huge event for retailers and you can use Black Friday to leverage more sales on Monday. If you are not yet using an abandoned cart reminder for your e-shop, it should be your top Black Friday marketing automation to try!
The abandoned cart is a pre-defined automation scenario in ContactPigeon. To set one up with custom workflow, check out this guide here.
Marketing Automation Scenario no4: Special Deal Countdown
Everyone loves a great deal and will feel more compelled to use it if it only lasts for a certain amount of time! A limited time offer plays on multiple consumer psychologies such as the timed urgency and FOMO factors. You can create a special deal countdown and use marketing automation to schedule a series of countdown to drive a sense of time urgency for shoppers. This could start as early as 1 week prior to Black Friday in order to prep the promotion well in advance and get shoppers excited about your offers. You can follow it with a 3 -2 – 1 day countdown to the day that the sales will start. Then, send a final email one hour before the sale starts so that shoppers have an urgent reminder to get online and make the purchase.
Marketing Automation Scenario no5: Onsite Personalized Offers
If you’re trying to attract new visitors to the site, make sure that you have on-site messages for them when they visit your online store. You can use a personalized discount code of your choice to try to nudge them to complete their purchase at a discounted rate. The extra incentive might be enough to compel them to purchase. If a visitor browses a few products and is then ready to leave your site, you can also generate personalized messaging that offers an extra deal or amount off on the items they were interested in to gain his or her attention.
Other useful Black Friday resources for eCommerce
- 7 Creative Black Friday Strategies for Retailers
- 9 Black Friday Ecommerce Hacks to Skyrocket Your Sales
- 150+ Black Friday Email Subject Lines that convert
- Top 5 Black Friday Marketing Automation Scenarios for Holiday Success
- The Black Friday Wiki for eCommerce
- 9 (creative) Black Friday ideas to nail your Email Marketing
- The 30 best Black Friday campaigns of all time
- Cyber Monday Statistics: 70 Stats Every Retail Executive Should Know
- Black Friday statistics: The 80 most important stats for retailers
Wrap Up
Don’t miss out on your chance to make the most of Black Friday – the biggest shopping day of the year! Make sure you spend some time to properly set up your Black Friday marketing automation scenarios and to finetune your marketing plan. This will help you execute the scenarios with minimal issues and have maximum impact on your sales. Happy sales!
