The holiday shopping season, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is a prime time for businesses to boost revenue. But success isn’t just about joining the rush; it requires smart strategy and execution.
This guide covers 20+ proven strategies, from early promotions to data-driven insights, all designed to help you maximize sales and stand out during the busiest shopping period of the year.
Ready to capitalize on Black Friday eCommerce? Start here and prepare for success.
What is Black Friday and why does it matter for eCommerce?
A Black Friday marketing campaign targets consumers looking for bargains on Black Friday.
Black Friday marketing should combine organic, paid, social media, influencers, and even TV and billboards. You may be able to increase your yearly revenue by 25% if your Black Friday campaign is done right.
Over the past 15 years, Cyber Monday has become the de facto continuation of Black Friday sales.
In the mid-2000s, Cyber Monday was created to encourage consumers to shop online. Especially when it comes to digital goods, it has become a very popular shopping holiday.
Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can take advantage of the entire four-day period. This means extending any sales and offers from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
Are Black Friday and Cyber Monday still a big deal in 2024?
Yes, they are. And here are the numbers to back this finding.
- U.S. holiday online sales: Forecasted to reach $240.8 billion in 2024, showing an 8.4% growth YoY (up from $221.8 billion in 2023).
- Cyber week sales: Expected to contribute $40.6 billion, representing 16.9% of total holiday online spend.
- Average holiday spending: For the first time, U.S. consumers are expected to spend over $1,000 on holiday gifts, marking a significant milestone in average spending.
- Early holiday shopping: Nearly 68% of shoppers plan to begin their holiday purchases before mid-November, highlighting a growing shift toward earlier shopping habits.
These statistics are just a glimpse of the insights available online, but they all point to one undeniable fact—Black Friday eCommerce is a game-changer.
How to prepare for Black Friday eCommerce? Predictions, forecasts, and trends for 2024
Times are changing. More and more people are opting for online shopping every year. So let’s find out how to prepare for Black Friday eCommerce stores.
Trend 1: Cyber Monday will last for a month
According to statistics, most shoppers want to start shopping early to avoid their preferred items being out of stock. Gone are the days when you had to wait for Black Friday or Thanksgiving to arrive to send out your offer email. The point now is to START EARLY.
What can you do?
- Instead of commencing your holiday sale on Thanksgiving and going up to Cyber Monday, start it at least a week prior.
- Once you start promotions, advertise your offer well so your audience is aware of it.
- Make sure you promote your sale online through social media, emails, deal sites, and the like.
Trend 2: Online shopping will boom more than before.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, people have started venturing outdoors. More people are choosing both online and offline shopping.
What can you do?
- Make your online presence more appealing to establish credibility and attract your audience.
- Revamp your site, work on SEO, invest in ads, add attractive product images, display testimonials, and most importantly, make your site mobile compatible.
Trend 3: Ride the YouTube wave
Since people are turning to online shopping now more than ever, they will also look up online reviews.
Over 70% of shoppers admitted that YouTube makes them aware of newer brands and influences their buying patterns.
New trends indicate that millennials and Gen Z are looking up reviews and unboxing videos online, making them some of the most-watched YouTube videos.
What can you do?
- Reach out to identify key influencers on YouTube who work in a domain similar to yours. Ask them to promote your product/deal through their content.
- Invest in YouTube ads.
- If you have a YouTube channel of your own, create some exciting product videos and promote them.
Trend 4: Get reviews on other online platforms too
Like YouTube, online shoppers also turn to reviews from other customers, especially those on review sites like Google My Business, Yelp, Capterra, G2Crowd, Trustpilot and more. In recent years, customers have started leaving reviews on brands’ social media pages, too.
What can you do?
- Find out which review sites your competitors are hosted on. Then create profiles on these sites.
- Ask your existing customers to drop a 5-star rating about your product or service in exchange for an attractive deal, offer, or discount.
- Check your social media comments and reviews for positive reactions. You can reshare/retweet these and thank them for the reviews.
- Make sure you respond to both positive and negative reviews as much as you can. A Harvard Business Review study found out that replying to reviews results in better overall ratings.
Building your credibility on such sites will have long-term benefits. So, it’s an excellent exercise to perform throughout the year and not just in the last 2 months when festival fever is at an all time high.
Trend 5: Promote your offer everywhere
The holiday season is busy, and your deals may get lost in the noise. The reason being, everyone is running offers across platforms and mediums. To break through this clutter, you need a relevant and appealing offer.
What can you do?
- Go to deal roundups and deal sites. Find out what offers your competitors are planning to run.
- Based on the findings, create an offer that will be irresistible to your audience.
- Another strategy is asking your existing customer base what offer or product they would love to have. Design something that a significant chunk has asked for and live up to their expectations.
- Lastly, make sure you submit your offers to deal roundups and sites. Promote it on social media, among your circle, among your affiliates, and other channels for added visibility.
These were a few trends and approaches to use to your advantage. Now, let’s look at how you can improve existing business strategies and take actions well suited for your audience.
Top Black Friday marketing strategies for eCommerce success in 2024
Every business is unique. Every business has different goals to achieve. Duplicating a strategy that has worked for others might not have the same effect on your audience. The best way to deal with this uncertainty is by looking at your data and taking action to bring about change.
Step 1: Analyze past data and set realistic goals for 2024
To better your future capabilities, you need to look at the past. Evaluate how your business performs during the holiday season. Don’t just look at a single timeline like the past year. Make comparison between different time ranges.
Putler’s Holiday Insight dashboard is a goldmine for this analysis. All you need to do is select the date range for the data you need and then compare it with another date range. It’s quick, easy and will give you insights at a glance.
Actionable tips:
Here are some actions you can take for your Black Friday eCommerce store from Putler’s Holiday Insight Dashboard.
1. Revenue during Holiday Season- Through this metric, you can identify which Holiday Season performed better. Take a look at the offers and emails from that period. Replicate the ones which performed the best.
2. Daily average – This metric tells you during which period ‘Holiday’ or ‘Non-Holiday’ days perform better. Based on the numbers, you can duplicate the promotional emails or techniques which brought you more sales.
3. Best Holidays – Make a note of which Holiday – Halloween / Black Cyber / Christmas – performed better and when using this metric. You can check what strategy was applied during the most profiting holiday season and replicate it.
4. Best Products – Take note of the top 3-5 products and then design exciting offers for the same products for the upcoming holiday season. You can also choose to showcase these products separately within your emails or on your homepage.
5. New vs Returning – This metric helps you decide how much energy you should spend on gaining new customers and servicing existing ones. Looking at these numbers, you can easily decide the amount of marketing effort you need to put in for the upcoming holiday season.
Step 2: Start planning early to maximize holiday sales potential
Timing is everything, and especially during offers like Flash Sales, which run for a limited period, it is essential to pick the right time of the day and the right day of the week to run such offers.
Being available and visible when customers are online will get you more recognition and sales.
Putler’s Sales Heatmap will help you analyze which day and what time your eCommerce store gets the most sales so you can create maximum impact.
Actionable tip:
- Select the date range of when you held your last holiday season sale and spot the days and times with the darkest dots.
- Plan a flash sale during these days and times.
- Share posts and stories on social media during these peak times.
- Hold a live chat to engage with your audience and get them interested.
- Online creators regularly track their peak times. They know what post works when. Use this to your advantage and tie up with relevant influencers to promote your product for you.
Step 3: Offer bundles and exclusive holiday discounts
Don’t you love when salespeople offer you just the right products or give you helpful advice?
Now, what if your online store does the same for your customers? What if you pitch products that go well together rather than just randomly selecting the ones for sale?
Better even if you offer these products in bundles at a discount. Right?
Don’t know how to find relevant products?
Here’s something that will help. Putler’s Frequently Bought Together feature lets you do this based on past data and zero-guess work.
Actionable Tip:
- Scan through your products and spot the ones that are frequently bought together.
- Once you’ve spotted them, create bundles of such products and sell them at a discount.
- Find customers who have purchased product A and haven’t purchased product B (you can do this by using Putler’s custom segment feature and exporting the list). Send them an email offering product B at a special discount.
Step 4: Segment your customers and personalize email campaigns
The holiday season is the best time to send targeted emails because customers are looking for offers that meet their needs. With Putler, the possibilities of segmenting your customers have become endless.
Putler allows you to segment customers based on various parameters, as you can see below.
Actionable tip:
- Segment customers based on geography and send out offer emails: For instance, Halloween is a holiday celebrated widely and popularly in the US. Create an offer and send out an email to your clients only in the US.
- Segment customers based on the product they purchased: Suppose you have complementary products in your store. Split up customer segments based on the product they purchased and send them an email offering the complementary product at a discount.
- Segment customers based on their shopping behavior: You can offer loyal or champion customers attractive discounts. Meanwhile, for segments like ‘Lost’ and ‘At risk’, you can offer store credit and encourage them to make a purchase.
Step 5: Target price-sensitive shoppers with discounts and flash sales
Price is the final factor that determines if a customer goes through with a purchase or not. What if you could offer a price that a customer would always approve of?
Wouldn’t that be just great?
With Putler, it’s possible.
Actionable tip:
Putler divides your customer base according to the price ranges of purchases they make in your store. Based on these ranges, you can export the client data and send them products that fall in their preferred price range or offer them discounts that add up to the same prices.
Step 6: Re-engage lost customers with targeted campaigns
The holiday season is the best time to revive old customers. Since prices are low and the time is joyous, customers who have previously churned out of your business will be more likely to reinvest in your products or services.
Actionable tip:
The trick here is to showcase your product in a new light. Present its best-selling features, tell the audience why they need it this holiday season , show them how it can change their lives this time around and hook them in with a discount/deal.
Using Putler, you can filter customers who have asked for a refund in the whole year and then reach out and revive them.
Step 7: Use smart ad campaigns to capture late shoppers
Paid ads have a ton of potential, both to make and drain money. So it becomes crucial to invest smartly.
Using the Putler Audience dashboard, you can make some Black Friday eCommerce strategy:
Actionable tips:
- Countries to invest in: Look at this metric to find the top 5 countries that bring in revenue. Target your ads to just these countries.
- Platform: Check which platform brings you high-quality traffic. Choose only the best-performing ones to run your ads.
- Device: Like the platform feature, analyze which device pulls in quality traffic and target your ads to the ones that bring you the most revenue-generating customers.
Must have tools to boost your Black Friday eCommerce performance
Tool 1: Putler for advanced analytics and insights
Putler is a multichannel business analytics tool. It aggregates data from multiple sources to give you a big picture of your entire business. Putler provides you with detailed reports on products , customers , orders , and website traffic. In addition, it offers growth insights, forecasts, goal tracking, segmentation, and more.
Tool 2: Smart Coupons for personalized discount campaigns
Smart Coupons is the official WooCommerce coupons extension and complete solution for discounts, gift cards, store credits, advanced restrictions, bulk generation, URL coupons, BOGO, and auto-apply coupons.
Tool 3: Icegram for capturing leads and boosting conversions
Icegram is a WordPress plugin that helps eCommerce store owners during holiday sales. You can set up exit-intent popup campaigns, action bars, badges, stickies, inline options, fullscreen overlay, ribbons, sidebar panels, and more in no time.
It is easy to use and helps to increase sales by providing a way to promote products and services to customers.
It comes with different types of lead capture widgets and readymade holiday templates to showcase eCommerce offers without any hassle. You can convince and convert raw web visitors into potential customers to a greater extent during seasonal days.
Some of the notable Icegram features are:
- Responsive popups
- Compatible with popular themes & page builders
- Unlimited campaigns
- 100+ high-converting customizable templates
- Popup animations
- Multiple display rules and targeting
- Campaign reports
- GDPR Compliant
You can create a holiday sale campaign with Icegram very quickly and drive more sales. It is fully compatible with WooCommerce and integrates with popular WordPress plugins to extend its capability.
Tool 4: Automate Woo for streamlining holiday campaigns
Automatewoo is an automated marketing solution for WooCommerce that helps to increase conversions and retain customers. You can grow your business and make more money by using its tools.
AutomateWoo automatically emails customers who purchase specific products and asks for a review or suggestions for other products. Automatic emails are sent at set intervals to customers who have left items in their shopping bags.
Automated email marketing campaigns can be used to target inactive customers. Don’t forget to include special offers and recommendations. By offering discounts for reviews, you can send SMS notifications to customers or admins for any of AutomateWoo’s triggers.
Tool 5: WooCommerce Buy Now to simplify the checkout process
WooCommerce Buy Now: Add a quick buy button to skip the cart and redirect users to checkout or complete their order in one click. No cart, checkout, or payment screens.
Conclusion
Here’s hoping these Black Friday marketing ideas, trends and strategies help you make this holiday season the best one ever. If you’re already a Putler customer, try these Black Friday strategies to maximize your sales. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me via mail or leave a comment, and I will schedule a one-on-one session to answer your queries.
If you are not a Putler client and like what you’re seeing, you can still leverage everything our platform offers. Take Putler’s 14-day free trial and get all these personalized insights for your business.
FAQs
1. What is Black Friday in eCommerce?
Black Friday is an annual eCommerce event where businesses attract customers with significant discounts and appealing deals. It enables customers to buy desired items at reasonable prices while helping businesses boost sales and profits.
2. How can you increase sales on Black Friday?
There are a few techniques you can use to increase sales:
- Give a sneak peek into your Black Friday theme to create enthusiasm.
- Offer attractive deals and discounts to your customers.
- Offer an early bird discount for your customer base.
- Introduce the new customer discount.
- Create attractive Black Friday exclusive ads on various social channels.
- Collaborate with industry experts and influencers for promotion.
3. How do you run a successful Black Friday campaign?
To run successful Black Friday campaigns, create personalized Black Friday eCommerce marketing strategies. Ensure your plan aligns with your brand policies. This article includes all the profitable marketing ideas you can use in your Black Friday campaigns.
4. What are the best days to run Black Friday ads?
Black Friday falls in the last week of November. So begin your marketing journey right after Halloween. The first week of November is the right time to release your first targeted ad. It will build excitement among your customers. As you get closer to Black Friday, offer more custom deals and discounts to your customers and let the momentum go on until after Cyber Monday.
5. Which social platforms drive the most sales on Black Friday?
Numerous social media platforms can help market your products and drive sales. Some of the most popular platforms for Black Friday promotions include Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Discord, X, Pinterest, etc.
6. How can small eCommerce stores compete with large brands on Black Friday?
Small eCommerce stores can attract customers in numerous ways, such as by reducing prices, offering higher quality, focusing on niche areas, targeting local customers with tight budgets, delivering excellent customer experience, etc.