Black Friday 2023, now! November 24 marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. And like every year, it starts with a weekend of crazy sales. But Black Friday is for retailers too: find out how to attract the maximum number of customers during this period of high in-store traffic, provided you adopt the right codes. Here are the 8 essential marketing tips to prepare your business for Black Friday!
Christmas 2023 promises to be a time of inflation and tight budgets. But there's no question of spending the holidays on the cheap: 43% of French people intend to treat their loved ones, according to a Yougov and Havas Market survey.
The trend is to spend more intelligently in anticipation of Christmas. 35% of French people plan to start their end-of-year shopping earlier. This includes buying during Black Friday, to make the most of the best deals.
In 2023, Black Friday's popularity will remain high, despite some mistrust of "false bargains". No fewer than 41% of French people plan to visit a store for the occasion, a figure that serves as a reminder of the importance of the date for stores.
With customers becoming more price-sensitive, retailers have the opportunity to put in place those much sought-after bargains. And above all, to capitalize on what could be a memorable weekend for you: discover 8 tips to make the most of it, for retailers and e-commerce alike.
Beyond Black Friday, it's the whole end-of-year period that should be targeted. Friday November 24 kicks things off, immediately followed by Cyber Monday (November 27). Then come the weekends of December, the high point of Christmas shopping, followed by the end-of-year festivities... But it doesn't stop there: in January, it's the sales period, and in particular Saturdays January 13 and 20, which are to be remembered.
For retailers, it's the whole period that's crucial for business. So you need to prepare your store with the whole period in mind, with offers that repeat and echo each other, and communication that builds to a crescendo. From Black Friday to the January sales, you can design offers, events, competitions, targeted communications and SMS campaigns to make the most of the end-of-year period.
FOMO stands for "fear of missing out". In Black Friday marketing, this translates into a set of techniques designed to create a sense of urgency among your customers. And FOMO is particularly effective during Black Friday, which only happens once a year.
But how do you bet on FOMO? You can propose one of the following mechanisms:
For example, you could offer a virtual gift wheel for your customers to spin for the duration of the Black Friday weekend. This type of FOMO mechanism can be applied to an e-commerce site (widget gift wheel) or to a physical store (virtual wheel on the smartphone via a QR code to be scanned in-store).
Black Friday is a great time to store, but it's also a highly competitive weekend. Customers are solicited from all sides with Black Friday bargains. Make the most of it by preparing your best offer! Design a real bargain as a loss leader, announce it in advance and communicate it through your online and SMS channels. With the flow generated in-store, the benefits will trickle down to all your products - and you'll be able to capitalize on the in-store flow thanks to tip number 7.
SMS is the best way to engage your customers. Our SMS messages achieve an average 98% open rate and 30% interaction! For Black Friday, you can mobilize your customer base using this highly engaging means of communication.
If you have a customer base, you can have your customers' phone numbers. And if you have a Hey Pongo customer base, you have enriched customer data that can be used to segment your SMS campaigns.
You can segment your SMS mailings by store, by favorite product, by genre, by personal taste... or even by a combination of criteria! A targeted campaign is much more profitable, especially for Black Friday. Rather than wasting time on emails that no-one opens, SMS marketing saves you an average of €10 for every euro spent.
With Black Friday, the crowds are swarming, and stores are vying with each other to offer the best deals... But you're the one who's going to catch their attention and win the jackpot! And how do you do that? With a Black Friday competition! It's the perfect way to create both FOMO and a wow effect, thanks to an exceptional gift with a low win probability.
With Hey Pongo, it's easy to set up a gift wheel-style competition for your store. Better than a physical wheel, the virtual wheel: every customer can play on their smartphone by scanning a QR Code displayed in your store or on your storefront.
Allocate a minimum win % for an incredible gift, and win easy gifts too: discounts and coupons to be used at the point of sale, to generate lots of in-store traffic. It's up to you! By distributing your Black Friday gift wheel on externally visible media, on social networks or via SMS, you'll generate a huge amount of in-store traffic.
Black Friday is also an opportunity to consolidate your relationship with your regular customers. Generate strong traffic in your store thanks to your loyal customers. They're the ones who come to your store all year round, and they're also the ones most likely to make purchases during Black Friday. After all, they deserve it!
You can reward your loyalty program customers with exclusive offers. Offering them your best deals will encourage other customers to join your loyalty program. You can reward your loyal customers in many ways: double loyalty points, early access, gifts for companions, gift vouchers... With the Hey Pongo loyalty program, you can easily target offers to them and keep them informed.
Black Friday generates a volatile customer base, for one day only? Not necessarily! Offer a Hey Pongo loyalty program: with its hyper-playful enrolment, it can easily attract 25% to 35% of your customer flow!
Set up a loyalty program that will convert as many customers as possible, so that this Black Friday 2023 is the start of long-term relationships. Once you've enrolled them in your customer base, you can follow up and re-engage them with SMS marketing, loyalty rewards, events (games, surveys, etc.), etc. In this way, you'll capitalize on Black Friday to boost your sales all year round!
With Black Friday, you can expect a lot of activity. This is the time to be 100% available for your customers in-store. On the other hand, you won't have time to answer the phone, and that means less sales.
To make sure you don't lose any of the customers who call you during Black Friday, set up an intelligent answering machine, with Hey Pongo. A customer calls? Better than an answering machine message, they'll receive an SMS message that you can personalize. Practical information, accessibility, opening hours, Black Friday tips, events, a link to a reservation or click & collect site... The intelligent answering machine communicates key information by SMS to your customer to prevent them from zapping you. So you can concentrate on what's happening in your store during Black Friday!
