Mastering Black Friday: 3 Proven Strategies to Boost Your Shopify Sales

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It's no secret that Black Friday has this awesome potential to generate a huge amount of sales. But what few tell you is that the simple act of just giving discounts will not guarantee a successful season. 

So, what will allow you to achieve that sales goal that you so desire? 

The answer is simple, yet what it implies might be a little bit trickier: Great strategy. 

Implementing this strategy to your Black Friday season doesn’t have to be too complex as long as it’s well-planned and flawlessly executed. That’s why in this post we’ll share 3 proven strategies that, all put together, will allow you to achieve a successful Black Friday season.

 

Strategy 1: Pre-Black Friday Preparation

Make sure to succeed during this season by assuring your website is ready to manage the extra amount of traffic, having a well prepared inventory and letting your clients know that this is the best time of the year to seize the opportunity to get their preferred product at a very attractive price, by keeping in mind the following points:

Be sure to build anticipation. Have you noticed how, the busier we are, the more we tend to be disconnected from what season comes next? Suddenly we turn around and it's almost Christmas. This is why your customers are not necessarily always aware of the arrival of Black Friday.

To create a sense of excitement for this occasion, prepare some teaser campaigns, sneak peeks, and countdowns to generate interest before Black Friday in your audience’s mind.

Optimize website performance. In order to receive more orders than usual, make sure that your Shopify store can handle a significant increase in traffic by optimizing speed and performance. This way, you’ll be able to provide a seamless shopping experience.

Remember: the easiest it is for the customer to purchase from you, the easier it is for a purchase to be completed.

Reward your most proactive buyers by implementing early bird promotions. By encouraging early purchases, not only do you get early sales, but it allows you to extend the promotion season, benefiting your clients too.

Be sure to offer very exclusive and attractive deals to customers who shop before Black Friday, and that these promotions are not the same as the ones you offer by the end of the season.

 

Strategy 2: Strategic Discounts and Bundles

You’ll have to make sure that you’ll offering attractive deals and promotions. Consider that you’re not the only business offering deals, so how can you stand out from the croud? You don’t necessarily need to lower your prices more than the rest, you’ll just need to be smart on your offering by keeping in mind the following points:

If you have run previous Black Fridays, be sure to analyze your data. The insights from previous Black Friday sales will help you identify top-performing products and customer preferences, allowing you to be well-prepared to satisfy the demand and make sure that everything runs smoothly for those products.

Make sure to provide tiered discounts based on order value and loyalty. Here’s how they may look like:

Start by offering order value thresholds, for example, 10% discount on orders above $50, 15% discount on orders above $100, and 20% discount on orders above $200. A great app to achieve this is Bold Discounts, which will also allow you to run promotions with advanced scheduling. If you need help configuring it before the next Black Friday season, contact us.

Be sure to consider customer loyalty as well. For instance, offer a 5% discount for first-time customers, a 10% discount for repeat customers, and a 15% discount for loyal customers with multiple purchases. A great app to achieve this is Smile.io: Loyalty and rewards. Smile.io powers loyalty, referrals, and VIP rewards programs that help increase sales and repeat purchases, save on acquisition costs, and boost brand loyalty. If you need help configuring it before the next Black Friday season, contact us.

Don’t forget to clearly communicate the tiered discount structure on your website, product pages, and during the checkout process so there’s no confusion. You can use banners or pop-ups to inform customers about the potential savings, encouraging them to add more items to their carts to reach the next discount level.

Harness the power of bundle deals. When you purchase a product, there are additional products that can complement your purchase. For example, if you buy a printer, you will probably need ink cartridges. That’s a great strategy to increase the average order value.

Be sure to offer attractive bundles that combine complementary products at a discounted price. If you need an app to help you accomplish that, Bold bundles is probably the best option for you. Bold Bundles is the easiest way to sell kits, sets and bundles. Bundle a few products or an entire collection so customers can mix & match to get a discount. If you need help configuring it before the next Black Friday season, contact us.

Limited-time offers are your friends. By implementing flash sales or limited-time offers you’ll create a sense of urgency, driving customers to make quick purchasing decisions. Bold Discounts will help you create flash sales with no coupon codes required, daily deals or any automatic promotions you can think of. If you need help configuring it before the next Black Friday season, contact us.

 

Strategy 3: Targeted Marketing and Communication

Awareness is crucial for your success. It doesn’t matter that you have the best deals if clients and potential customers don’t know that you do. Spread the voice like a pro by keeping in mind the following points:

Start early your targeted email campaigns. Developing a targeted email marketing strategy to inform subscribers about your Black Friday deals and exclusive promotions, is one of the best way to announce your deals.

Keep in mind this will work better if you have created targeted campaign earlier during the year, since your customers will be used to receive and open your mails.

A great to tool to create and manage your email list and your targeted email marketing campaigns is Klaviyo. Klaviyo is an official Shopify strategic partner. Over 110k paying customers use Klaviyo to own their customer data while turning transactions into productive long-term relationships at scale. From the same platform, you can use Klaviyo’s suite of proven email and SMS templates to automate personalized communications like price drop alerts, friendly cart recovery reminders, and just-in-time recommendations––which means no more ineffective batching and blasting. If you’re ready to start testing Klaviyo, you can click here.

Take advantage of your social media engagement. By leveraging social media platforms you will create buzz around Black Friday. A few weeks prior this season run interactive campaigns, engage with your audience and share content relative to your preparations. This way, your audience will be mentally prepared when you’re ready to open your doors for this season’s deals.

Send abandoned cart reminders to your previous customers. Implement retargeting ads to remind potential customers about items in their abandoned carts or showcase products they previously viewed on your Shopify store. It’s highly possible that they’ll be inclined to seize this chance to finalize their purchase.

If you’re unsure how to accomplish this, there are plenty apps in Shopify’s marketplace to help you achieve it. You can take a look clicking here and if you need help configuring any of them, be sure to contact us.

Contact influencer’s to suggest collaborations. Must people respond better when a familiar face is doing the recommendation of certain product. That’s why you’ll want to partner with influencers relevant to your niche to expand your reach and credibility, encouraging their followers to explore your Black Friday offers.

 

Ready to succeed during this Black Friday season?

Using a single strategy during the Black Friday period might not be enough to really invite your customers to buy from you, wich is why we suggest looking at all these as a whole and implement systems and tools that will allow you to run all of them at the same time.

Here’s were apps might be your best friends, and we have recommend a few in this post that will make your life easier. Make sure to configure them correctly so they run smoothly during this season and you don’t lose a single sale.

However, if you think you don’t have the expertise to make the configurations youself…

 

We’ll be happy to help you

Hiring a Shopify Expert can help you streamline your store's development. Having the experience of working with hundreds of stores online, we have developed a systemized process to set up any new Shopify store by following e-commerce best practices that will work for your business and actually give you a competitive advantage.

Here are a few things we can do for you:

• Want to check out if Shopify is for you? Get a 14 days trial! 
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