Black Friday Strategies: How to Leverage Data for Success

A major date in the e-commerce calendar is fast approaching. Black Friday represents a big opportunity for brands to engage with new and existing customers when they are more receptive to brand communications. However, to truly make the most of Black Friday, brands must be able to turn this short-term engagement into long-term customers.

Here are a few data-driven tips to take your Black Friday campaign to the next level:

Before Black Friday

Determine and measure KPIs

Before any major campaign, it is essential that the whole team – if not the entire company – is clear on the goals and expectations. Look back at past campaign data, analyze areas for improvement, and identify the data you will need to enhance them. Determine which metrics will effectively measure your new strategy’s campaign success and performance.

Build the Black Friday experience – not just the discount

Historically, Black Friday marketing campaigns have focused on the best price or the lowest discount, but it has the potential to be so much more. The discounts or offers may attract initial attention, but the overall experience will keep audiences returning once the weekend ends. When developing your Black Friday campaign, consider how the experience will stick in customer’s minds.

Your customer data will provide insight into incentives that may entice your highest-value customers. It could offer flexible returns or free shipping if these are known barriers to purchase. Or it could be increasing charitable donations from profits over this period if this is important to your customers. While it is a crucial sales period, Black Friday is an opportunity to showcase your brand values.

During Black Friday

Create customer feedback loops and react in real time

The customer feedback loop is a powerful element of any data-driven Black Friday campaign. In an effective feedback loop, each touchpoint with a customer will allow them to add more data to receive a more personalized experience. This could be indicating communication preferences or signaling purchasing intent. This data is collected and used to inform future touchpoints in a cycle that continually tailors the customer’s experience with your brand.

Black Friday offers are a key moment to determine which products and services interest customers the most and tie this back to future data-driven marketing efforts. The continual cause-and-effect process can greatly impact customer’s purchasing decisions.

Avoid data siloes

In all the excitement of a major marketing campaign, it’s easy for data to become siloed as new platforms come into play and new applications are built. Data siloes can prevent marketers from fully understanding their audience or having a holistic view of campaign performance. Centralizing and unifying data in real-time enables brands to have a truly omnichannel strategy so that customers can transition between platforms and still receive a seamless experience.

After Black Friday

Reconfirm consent

The first purchase should be the beginning of a long-standing relationship between customer and brand. The first step is to give new customers the opportunity to reconfirm their desire to connect with your brand and exchange information. This process highlights the high-value customers, lays the foundation for a trust-based relationship, and provides an opportunity to showcase the value exchange on offer.

Lay the foundation for an ongoing relationship

There’s a big difference between brands that use Black Friday to provide a spike in sales and brands that also use the weekend to enhance their customer data. To reap the benefits of Black Friday, brands must use it to elevate and improve their relationship with customers and deliver real value.

The Black Friday campaign can be particularly impactful as it comes in just before the holiday season – the most significant shopping period in the Western calendar. Brands that can quickly build relationships with an ongoing engagement strategy will receive rewards after Cyber Monday. To help boost ROI, predictive modeling can be used to assess expected customer lifetime value so that marketers are focused on high-potential customers.

Black Friday is just the beginning

An effective Black Friday campaign will not only see an immediate spike in revenue. It will also incentivize new audiences to return for more and deepen relationships with current customers. It sounds like a tall order, but it is more than possible with the right processes in place. This data-driven approach holds the key to active, happy customers and a consistent sales cycle throughout the year.