There is a funny saying “What do Black Friday shoppers and the Thanksgiving turkey have in common? They know what it’s like to be jammed into a small place and stuffed.”
Years ago, after Thanksgiving night, people would rush to their favorite stores and wait at the front door for the doorbuster time to grab the products they wished to buy before but waited for the Black Friday deal. The sales usually start on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, and end on Friday as 3 days of deals.
Now, Black Friday is not just a couple of days. It is a season as online retailers have brought this trend of celebrating it with weeks of exciting deals and offers. It is switched to starting the deals from the beginning of November, like ‘12 days of November deals’ before black Friday, and continues in the name of ‘Christmas deals’ after black Friday.
Many customer experience elements underpin customers’ choice over a brand, even during the offer time and sales. Some customers go for a brand that gives the maximum deal without considering their regular brand, but at the same time, some customers stick to their favorite brand during these times even though they don’t offer many discounts compared to other brands.
Additionally, this is the time when brands can nurture customer loyalty and increase retention rates with a strategic approach. For that, there are some additional factors brands need to consider besides the deals and offers. We will discuss them later in this article.
Top 5 Tips For a Better Customer Experience on Black Friday
There is no doubt that exciting deals and offers drive customers to any store. But there are some additional efforts brands must take to amplify sales. Check the below tips:
1. Use Customer Insights
Customers won’t buy everything you sell on offer. They buy what they want now and will need in the future. And your target customers might have some specific requirements and buying patterns. If your product and service don’t resonate with those requirements, they won’t buy your products even if you offer the maximum discount.
To offer what your target customers need, you can use customer insights. Instead of simply copying your competitors and selling products as per your gut instinct won’t give you a competitive edge and a high return rate.
To offer what will sell in the market, check customer insights to know what is the current trend, what customers feel positive as well as negative about your product, what are the top delighting factors and concerns of the customers in your niche market, who are your competitors, what gives them a competitive advantage over you, etc.
Capturing all these insights and analyzing them deeply will help you find a great strategy to improve the customer experience and generate excellent results in the bottom line.
2. Personalization is the Key
Personalized products and services are a great way to capture more audience attention. Every customer is different, and their needs and preferences will be different.
During Black Friday, some might be buying products they have put on their wishlist for a long time to get a discount; some might be buying a gift to loved ones, some might be shopping for the upcoming vacation, and so on. Curating the search results, messages, and campaigns for each customer segment separately will help in more conversion.
Checking the price band at which the customers usually buy will help you know how much they will spend. According to that, you can make an offer appealing to the customer segment.
For example, if a customer has abandoned their cart with a product for a long time, there is a chance that the customer left it due to the product's price. In such cases, you can push a personalized notification as the product's price in their cart dropped x% in the Black Friday deal. This will redirect the customer to the cart page, and they will definitely purchase this time!
3. Improve Customer service
Customer service is always essential, not only during the Black Friday season. But, there are some reasons your customer experience may go wrong during this time.
Usually, the busy seasons are prone to delayed deliveries, and thousands of customers connect with customer service for this reason. Delayed delivery is one of the main factors that frustrate customers.
Because their gifting can’t be done on the exact date of festivals, the dress they planned to wear might be stuck with the delivery agents; some people won’t be there at their delivery address if the delivery date gets delayed, etc.
In such cases, the customer support team should clearly communicate the reasons with the customers, pick up all calls, reply to all messages, and respond to any inquiries on any channel. Also, it will be better if you proactively communicate the delivery delays and issues with customers during the time of their checkout, like showing a message like the delivery might get delayed during the festival season. This will help the customer to know the issue at the time of their purchase.
This type of communication will avoid the surge of customer complaints about delayed delivery.
4. Exciting Loyalty Programs
Brand loyalty is connected with all aspects of the experience you offer. If you offer interesting and special offers to new customers and provide instant and responsive customer service, they will become your new loyal customers.
Giving more special offers to your loyal customers will enhance their connection with you. For example, sending personalized notifications to your loyal customers multiple times and reminding them when a new offer is live will help them to choose your store over and over, even after the offer ends.
Also, giving them loyalty points and giving exclusive deals they can grab with the loyalty points is a great way to grow brand loyalty.
And offering rewards on their purchases will help build an emotional and positive feeling in customers when they do business with you. This positive emotion will convert into loyalty, and if they are loyal to your brand, then they don’t worry about how many more offers other brands are offering. They will stick to your brand irrespective of the offers and discounts you provide.
And giving gifts for purchases is a great way to make the connection stronger.
Loyalty programs increase customer engagement, especially in eCommerce stores; this engagement will really help to acquire new customers and rank better on their search results.
5. Before and After Sales
As we have discussed earlier, extended sales are the new trend. You can start the deals from the beginning of November and extend the offers in the name of Christmas or the new year after Black Friday.
Doing this will help in acquiring early bird shoppers, and there is a chance of their retention since the offers are extended to a long duration. Also, you can cover a large audience who are late to buy gifts and products.
Furthermore, this is a great strategy. You can start the offers even before your competitors and extend the offers after your competitors stop the offers. So people who missed the offers from your competitors will shop from you.
If you are into the eCommerce arena, Cyber Monday is just after 2 days from Black Friday; you can even boost sales with proper marketing campaigns.
In addition to the tips, you can establish a marketing strategy to improve the customer experience and convert more sales in this Black Friday season.
Get Ready!
It’s not too late to start. Strategic execution of plans, exciting offers, loyalty programs, and personalized experience can contribute significantly to your bottom line this Black Friday. Customer insights are a treasure trove for planning personalized Black Friday deals. Hence, understand your customers with real-time insights and beat the market! This will help in building a solid pack of loyal customers henceforth.