This year has been full of twists and turns but it’s sure to be a strong end to the year for many eCommerce merchants. Black Friday 2021 is on its way and now is the time to get your marketing strategy nailed!
In this blog we’re going to cover how to build your email marketing list and segment your database leading up to BFCM. This will allow you to:
- Capitalise on the biggest sales event of the year
- Put the right offers in front of the people most likely to convert
- And make this your best BFCM sales season ever!
Let’s get started.
Take advantage of the BFCM hype and build your database
There’s always a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding BFCM, which makes it the perfect time to encourage new customers to sign up to your email marketing list.
Implement a BFCM themed data capture form.
We suggest creating a data capture form that uses BFCM messaging to get your customers excited about the upcoming sales. For your data capture form, you can use any number of messaging techniques. The most effective tend to be messaging that captures the attention of people interested in deals. Some examples of great headlines include:
- “Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when our Black Friday sale begins!”
- “Want to get the best deals this season? Sign up for exclusive access to our Cyber Monday sale.”
Be sure to make customers feel that they are getting some sort of exclusivity out of signing up. For instance, they could be the first to access the sale. Another option is to give a certain number of people who signed up before a setdate a gift with purchase (perhaps for the first 100 customers who sign up). You can, of course, adjust this number to fit your business and how many GWPs you can accommodate within your budget.
Include an option to opt-in to SMS.
If you’ve already implemented an SMS strategy but haven’t included an option for new customers to opt-in via your data capture form, BFCM is the perfect time to set this up. Collecting email addresses along with SMS at the same time streamlines the process not only for you, but for your customers too. SMS marketing is highly effective and it gives your customers another avenue to experience excitement for your business.
If you haven’t yet started building your SMS marketing list, it’s not too late to implement an SMS strategy leading up to BFCM. Be sure to check out our blog about SMS here and our recent case study here. Stay tuned for the third installment of our BFCM blog series where we cover all things SMS.
No Loyalty Program? Build an exclusive early access form.
If you don’t have a loyalty program in place, you should consider implementing a data capture form that promises exclusive early access to the sale. This should be targeted at existing customers as well as new customers, to create hype and exclusivity among your customers.
If you decide to use this tactic, make sure you set up a BFCM specific email list in your email marketing platform. You can add these customers to your regular newsletter list after BFCM. This will help to build hype leading up to the sale.
Segment your audience to elevate your engagement and conversion rates
What makes for good segmentation? Gone are the days of relying on customer demographics to segment your audience. Behavioural segmentation is generally far more effective in driving up conversion rates. Segmenting your email and SMS lists based on their engagement level and past behaviour will allow you to put the right offers in front of the right people when BFCM rolls around.
Some examples of great segments for BFCM include:
- Segmenting based on product range:
- Homewares
- Jewelry
- Clothing
For BFCM, you can send different audiences different deals based on their past purchase behaviour. For example, for merchants who sell both protein powders and activewear, it can be helpful to separate these audiences. i.e. some people will strictly purchase protein powder, and never activewear, and vice versa. Segmenting these customers based on their purchase behaviour will help you to put the right offers in front of the right audience. Targeting offers to your audience makes sure they see what they are interested in and are more likely to take action.
- Segmenting based on levels of engagement:
- Highly engaged
- Have made 5+ purchases over all time
- Have opened 3 campaigns in the last 90 days
- Moderately Engaged
- Have made 3+ purchased over all time
- Have opened 2 campaigns in the last 90 days
- Somewhat Engaged
- Have made 1 purchase over all time
- Have opened 1 campaign in the last 90 days
- Disengaged
- Made purchase 0 times over all time
- Opened 0 campaigns in the last 120 days
- Highly engaged
Creating segments based on the level of engagement your customers have will help you identify your most loyal customers. Use this information to focus the majority of your email marketing efforts there. The suggestions made above are a great guideline, however the definition of an engaged customer will change from brand to brand. Sending a campaign to your whole list all of the time can be counterproductive. Creating campaigns that are made for specific sections of your audience feel more personalised and are generally better received.
For disengaged audiences, you might want to look into sending this list a smaller amount of campaigns during the BFCM period. If they still don’t open emails or make a purchase during BFCM, look into adding them to a Lapsed Customer series. If these customers still don’t engage, you can add them to your suppression list.
By segmenting your audience, you are bound to see better conversion rates and lower unsubscribe and bounce rates. This means your audience is connecting with the material they are seeing and are more likely to engage with your emails in the future. The customers that are most interested in what you are offering are being sent the messaging they like to respond well to.
Want more tips to succeed this BFCM?
Did you know here at Andzen we are the Customer Journey experts? Segmentation is one of our favourite things to work on with our clients. Our team is ready to help you improve your conversion rates and customer experience.
Check out how we can help create unique data capture forms here.
Read more about times when we brought our ‘A’ game to the segmentation world here.
Contact us today to see how we can help you reach your goals during the biggest sales event of the year.