Every year it’s the same thing: retailers churn out email after email, desperate to get in on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday action and earn their share of the billions of dollars spent on the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season.
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Last year, according to the Shop.org eHoliday Survey, nearly 85% of retailers sent an email to their customers about Black Friday deals. For many retailers, this Black Friday email blitz signals the start of an email sending torrent – flooding inboxes to the point of bursting and resulting in shoppers hitting “unsubscribe” and maybe even a few Grinches filing spam complaints.
In the end, your company’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions are only going to be as successful as you make them. By honoring your customers’ experience with your website, your marketing efforts and their value to your brand, it’s possible to bolster your holiday sales by as much as an additional 30%.
Here are five ways you can revamp and restructure your Black Friday/Cyber Monday (or cyber week) remarketing campaign to make a big impact and turn some of that Black Friday effort into green for your company.
Abandon cart and check-out
Make sure your abandonment programs capture email addresses in real time and based on email click through. You may also want to differentiate between cart and check-out abandoners, allowing you to tune offer and message accordingly.
Know why visitors abandoned their purchase
People abandon for a reason! If a visitor left your website due to an issue with payment methods, sending an abandonment email with an offer will only frustrate them further. Last year, payment method abandonment was tracked at around 18% across several industries and in fashion, 30% of visitors who abandoned did so after having tried to use a promo code. Understanding why a visitor abandons will play a pivotal role in determining the best way to reengage them and complete a sale.
Go up the funnel
Remarketing to non-carting visitors can lead to some amazing success! During its 2011 Black Friday campaign, Footwear Etc. ran a collection of category and brand based remarketing programs to those who visited the site without carting any items. That campaign resulted in an open rate that was three times that of their normal marketing campaigns. Click through rates soared to ten times the regular rate and conversion rates went up by three times as well.
Launch marketing mop-up programs
Remarket to customers who engaged with your Black Friday marketing efforts. Just because they didn’t add an item to the cart doesn’t mean they can’t be converted to a sale! For example, woodworking supply retailer Woodcraft ran a mop-up program for customers who engaged during their Cyber-week marketing efforts with a “last chance to save” email extended the promotion as a “VIP extension.” The email garnered a very respectable 20% click through rate. The program also achieved a conversion rate nearly seven times higher than a secondary test list of cyber week purchasers from the previous year.
Understand your cost
A large volume of your website traffic came at a cost. If you paid for a visit that doesn’t convert there is added importance in recovering the transaction. Adjusting the initial timing of a remarketing email, modifying drip cadence, bolstering message and offer can not only increase recovery rates for “premium abandoners,” but also increases gross return on advertising spend. In essence, this will lift the entire marketing organizations’ success metrics.
Angel Morales is the co-founder and chief innovation officer for Smarter Remarketer.