Black Friday is the biggest shopping event of the year in North America, occurring (officially) on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
If you’re an e-commerce company, it’s one of your biggest sales days of the year, if not your top-grossing day.
Below we cover a process to help you create a close-to-perfect Black Friday offer.
1) Create a three-tiered deal structure
Build it based on Black Friday through Cyber Monday’s average order value (AOV) data of the last year:
- Low value, high frequency.
- Middle value, some frequency.
- High value, low frequency.
2) Test the efficiency of different deals
Do so in the run-up to Black Friday. For example, over Labor Day weekend or in early October.
- Straight amount discounts.
- Percentage discounts.
- Gifts with purchase (GWP).
Make the sales event last 24 hours to simulate real holiday urgency. And use email and paid social ads to promote the deals.
3) Send your page with an early access coupon code
Do so in chronological order to different customers a few days before Black Friday:
- Loyalty members.
- VIP Customers.
- Customers who haven’t ordered in the last 21 days (or whatever is logical for your business).
Note that gifts and discounts need to increase at each level.
For instance, for percentage discounts it would be:
- Spend $100, get 25% off – Low value, high frequency.
- Spend $150, get 30% off – Median value, some frequency.
- Spend $300, get 40% off – High value, low frequency.
It also depends on your niche.
If you’re in the luxury segment you probably rarely give discounts as that goes against your brand.
If you’re in the non-luxury clothing industry, providing large discounts will likely matter more.
4) Apply the winning offer sitewide without codes on Black Friday
Send email subscribers and paid visitors to landing pages with pre-built bundles.
Bonus
Really win over your Black Friday shoppers by implementing these four things:
- Default to free shipping. But if free shipping eats up your margins, set it from the second tier (median value, some frequency). If free shipping is not an option, use GWP at the second range.
- Downsell “mystery” gifts and upsell “Also bought with” at the cart level.
- Offer shipping insurance or expedited shipping at the checkout.
- Offer buy-now-pay-later (e.g., through services like Affirm or the like).
Other pricing strategies
Here are three more of our favorites:
Buy more, save more
This encourages customers to “save” when they make long-term or bulk purchases.
Example: Save % when you buy 3 or more.
Bundle complementary products
You can bundle products by use-case.
Example: If you sell oral hygiene products, you could bundle a toothbrush and a toothpaste.
Trojan horse
Although this technique may sound fancy, it’s been around for a long time. You’re giving a product away that will generate revenue in the future.
Example: Spotify offers a free Google Home Mini if you join their premium membership. The Home Mini includes a speaker and voice commands, making Spotify even easier to use and increasing the likelihood that you will renew your Spotify membership.
And just like that you’re ready to dominate your sales this holiday season.
Also… don’t forget to re-target your cart abandonments to recoup would-be sales.