The Procrastinator’s Guide to Black Friday Cyber Monday

For many merchants, Black Friday Cyber Monday planning started months ago.

While you don’t need to let the rush pressure you into a bad decision—BFCM is just the start of the rest of the holiday shopping season, after all—you can still participateasan independent merchant by employing a little creativity.

From one last-minute junkie to another, a tight deadline is a great motivator.

Here’s your 3-step guide to planning and executing a last-minute Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion.

1. Plan

Are you ready?

Is your store in agood stateto handle a surge in sales? Shopify has your back when your store floods with traffic, but the rest is up to you.

Do you have theinventory? Do you have the infrastructure in place to handle an uptick incustomer serviceinquiries? Can you ship everything on time?

If you answered “yes”, let’s get rolling!

What’s your offer?

While customers expect steep deals, you are not Wal-Mart. Drastically slashing prices just isn’t feasible for most small businesses.

还有其他有意义的参与方式BFCM and still reward your customers without making a huge dent in your bottom line. Win-win.

How much will yourdiscountbe? Will it apply to everything or specific collections or products? Are there other ways to reward your customers without killing your margin?

There are several options, including:

• Unique coupon codes for specific customer groups
• Site-wide sale with a universal coupon code
• Sale products or collections (no code required)
• Gift or gift card with minimum purchase
• Free shipping

Implementation

You can implement and communicate your plan in a number of ways. If your offer itself isn’t a “door crasher”, yourapproachcan still create some buzz. Make it creative and interactive,inspire urgency or anticipation, and consider exclusive loyalty offers.

Here are some ideas (with real examples from other retailers) to inspire your own campaign:

Gift guide or gift-giving themes: Remind your customers of the impending holiday season, and the urgency to start shopping. Link to holiday-themed or gift-giving collections. Studies show thatconsumers are eager for holiday contentas early as Halloween.

Timed deals: Create excitement with new deals released every hour or at different intervals throughout the weekend.

Sneak peek or pre-sale: Allow social followers and email subscribers early access to view or apply the deal.

“不速之客”,早期访问或限量promotions: Reward early birds and create a sense ofurgency, exclusivity, or scarcity.

Extend your sale: Catch the procrastinators or anyone who missed the buying frenzy, and extend your deals through or past the weekend.

Release a new or seasonal product or collection: Give current customers a reason to come back for new products that are also on sale.

Gift with purchase:Add the element of suspense by offering a "mystery gift" with minimum purchase.

image:Ulta

Gift cards as gifts-with-purchase: Give a $10 gift card (valid only after January 1st) to customers who purchase over $100, for example, to extend the relationship with the customer through the holidays.

TIP: Now might be the right time toupdate the look of your gift cardswith seasonal themes.

Run a contest or giveaway: Use Shopify’s integration withGleamto generate anticipation for your promotion and build your email list

Establish terms

What are the terms and conditions of your offer? How will you communicate terms clearly to your customers to avoid disappointment or customer service nightmares?

TIPS:

• Establishclear start and end datesand times for each offer.
• What is the discount? Is there aminimum order valueto be eligible for the deal? Set conditions on theDiscounts page.
• Are there anyexcluded products? Clearly identify these terms in your fine print.
• Is the offerexclusive to certain customersor regions? Targeted email communication is best for this type of deal.
• If you’reoffering free shipping, are any countries excluded? This is also a good time to set up yourshipping calendarwith order-by dates to receive products in time for Christmas.

Schedule

Create a content calendarfor your campaign that accounts for every step. When will social posts and emails deploy? What will be scheduled automatically and what tasks will be implemented manually. Do you have a team? Who is responsible for what?

Set up your sale collections tolaunch on timeusingFuture Publishing.

Be sure to schedule email and social communication throughout the campaign—teasers, reminders, and “last chance” notifications.

2. Execute

Assets and copy

Create and schedule all of your emails, blog posts, and social content upfront to free up your time to manage the influx of sales and customer service inquiries during the busiest shopping season of the year.

What assets do you need to create? Consider:

• Website:home page, landing page, banners, pop-ups, collection headers
• Email:template and banners
• Social:network-specific posts

If you’re not a designer (or don’t have the budget to hire one), there areplenty of free, beautiful graphics and photos,再加上tools to quickly put them all together.

Layer type overfree stock imagesfromBurstusing a tool likeCanva, and create graphics from scratch using a free Photoshop alternative likeGimp.

TIP: Keep your imagery and messaging consistent across all channels, but optimize copy to suit each social audience or customer group.

Free stock photos byBurst

Create social graphics withCanva

Set up your store

Todiscount only certain products in your shop(with no code required),set sale pricesby adjusting the regular and “compare at prices” of those products, thencreate a Black Friday Cyber Monday collection with automatic conditions. Alternately, you canuse an app likeBold Discountsto easily apply deals to products by brand, type, or collection.

For a site-wide discount, you can opt tocreate discount codesthat customers apply at checkout.

If your deal isfree shipping, eitheradd a free shipping rate or create a shipping discount code.

What other apps can you integrate with your store to help your campaign? Check out11 Shopify Apps to Help You Sell Your Best This Black Friday Cyber Monday.

Install alive chat appto help alleviate the customer service crush, and respond to support issues in real-time.

Set up your email marketing campaign

Email marketing has thehighest conversion rateduring BFCM weekend. As a small business competing for sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, email is a powerful tool.

It can get expensive to stand out in the noise of BFCM. Why not focus instead on repeat business from a captive audience: your customers and subscribers? Use BFCM as an opportunity to reward existing customers, maintain relationships, and improve loyalty.

TIPS:

• Install an email marketing platform andBulk Discountstosendunique codes to each customer
• Segment your listto send exclusive gifts to repeat/loyal customers or re-engagement deals to lapsed customers
• Schedule emails by timezone toreach your customers at optimal times
• Simplify the design processby using predesigned or drag-and-drop templates
• Get inspired by othersuccessful email marketing campaigns

Subject lines on an average day are critical to email marketing. They’re even more so as email volume hits its holiday apex. Take a minute to remember your own inbox last year.

TIPS:

• Use keywords like “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” to appeal to customers looking for deals in their inboxes, but remember that these terms are saturated, so you’ll need to be creative to stand out
• Use segmenting to make subject lines more personal/relevant to each specificcustomer group
• Personalize subject lines with customer names, location, etc.
• Split test your subject lines throughout your campaign and tweak as you go

Promote it on social media

Consider both organic (loyalty offers for existing fans) and paid content.Remember that the paid space is competitive on Black Friday Cyber Monday, so be sure to target your campaigns wisely to get the biggest bang for your buck.

TIPS:

• Ask customers toshare or tag friends.
• As with email efforts, schedule posts throughout the campaign.
• Remember: customers use social media as a customer service channel. Stay on top of your mentions and DMs throughout the weekend.
• Designcatchy but on-brand graphicsthat don’t cheapen your profile—especially important for lifestyle brands.

Additional reading:

• The Beginner's Guide to Marketing on Instagram
• Facebook Ads: The Beginner's Guide to the Facebook Pixel
  5 Powerful Tools for Growing Your Business on Pinterest

Deploy

即使你自动从上线ale prices to social posts and emails, make sure you’re on hand to check that everything deploys smoothly and on time.

Shopify 24/7 Supportis ready to help you through the busy weekend.

TIP: Submit your offer todeal aggregator siteslikeSlickDealsorRetailMeNot.

3. Reflect

Before executing your campaign, be sure you understand how you will track its success. Results will help inform future marketing efforts.

Split testemail subject lines, track the success of discount codes, understandShopify Analytics, anduse UTMs to track referral sourcesto your sale collection or landing page.

When your deal expires, look at the results. Was it worth it? What worked? What didn’t?

Additional reading:

• Google Analytics for Ecommerce: A Beginner's Guide
• 32 Key Performance Indicators for Ecommerce

TIP: Have a follow-up strategy tokeep existing and new customers engagedbeyond BFCM.

Anti-Black Friday campaigns

Many merchants elect to not participate in Black Friday or Cyber Monday in a traditional way or even at all. Whenwe visited merchants across North America, we discovered that small businesses approached the weekend much differently than their massive chain counterparts.

Here are a few ways to (not) participate:

Small Business Saturday

This Saturday focuses on supporting small businesses—almost the antithesis to the winding lineups outside of Best Buy. Appeal to consumers looking to support small and local businesses for their holiday shopping. Tell your brand’s story in your campaigns.

Giving Tuesday

While everyone’s suffering buyer’s remorse, this is the time to draw customers to your store with the promise of regaining a little good karma. Typically on Giving Tuesday, “offers” are in fact in the form of donations to charity or 1-for-1 campaigns.

Charity partnerships

Outside of Giving Tuesday, extend the good-deed-doing through the entire weekend by partnering with a charity in line with your business or values. During a past BFCM weekend,Goods Shopfound that their customers embraced the donation-over-deals approach and "no one left empty-handed".

Opting out

Probably the most famous example of Black Friday Cyber Monday push-back is Cards Against Humanity’s annual stunts—in 2015,they sold “nothing” at $5 a pop.

Outdoor gear retailer Rei gained massive press attention with their#OptOutsidecampaign, in which theyclose their storesand encourage their employees and customers to spend the day, err, not spending. While the chain may not be generating a cent that day,the hashtagyields 1.8 million Instagram results—valuable brand reach that keeps on giving beyond BFCM.

Planning ahead

You may have been late to the game this year, but there’s still time to change your feet-dragging ways. Use your learnings from your 2019 efforts to start planning for next year.

Don't let it creep up again! Another year will pass quickly for a busy entrepreneur.