Black Friday and Cyber Monday are by far the biggest shopping events in the US.
Last year, online spending on Black Friday surged 21.6% to hit a new record $9 billion while Cyber Monday grew 15.1% to reach almost $11 billion, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
To make the most out of these two events, you need to prepare your store properly. Here are five proven methods that will help you break your own sales records in 2021.
Everybody loves discounts. No matter what industry you are in or where your store is located, giving discounts will make your customers happy.
In the US, 93% of shoppers use a coupon or discount code throughout the year. A study by Blippr found that online shoppers who use coupon codes spend 24% more than those who don’t use them.
Discounts sit at the base of Black Friday and Cyber Monday’s power. It’s why so many people buy in those times—they know they are getting steep discounts for only one day a year.
However, discounts can also lower your profit margins unnecessarily. Remember that a discount lowers your selling price, which is one half of what defines your profit margins. Lower your prices too aggressively, and you will lower your profits equally so.
One solution that can overcome this dilemma is to make your discounts exclusive.
The goal of this method relies on excluding people who don’t qualify for a discount. Who would you want to exclude?
- Anyone who’s purchased under the average AOV
- Anyone with a high return rate
- Anyone who’s not participated in a giveaway or survey
- Anyone who’s not in your loyalty program
Why will you target loyal customers only? Because you want to reward them.
When you reward a customer for buying from your store, you make them more likely to purchase again in the future. In this sense, a customer loyalty program becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: your company rewards its customers, and these, in turn, keep buying from it, ad infinitum.
Bain & Company’s research found that companies with strong loyalty programs grow revenues 2.5 times faster than their competitors and generate 100-400% higher returns to their shareholders. That’s the case of a B2B plumbing online retailer that increased its AOV by 319% after implementing a loyalty program.
