Are you getting ready for Black Friday? Then you need a Black Friday checklist to keep your e-commerce store firing on all cylinders. Preparation is key with the biggest shopping event of the year just around the corner. Think of it like this: Black Friday Cyber Monday is a marathon, not a sprint, and the last thing you want is to trip over the finish line because you forgot to optimize your website or created discount offers at the last minute.
A solid Black Friday checklist ensures your store is ready for the surge in traffic, your Black Friday promotional ideas are designed to convert, your Black Friday marketing messages are hitting the right notes, and your inventory is fully stocked. So, buckle up, and let’s ensure your store is ready to shine when the sales frenzy begins.
Step 1: Start Your Preparations Early- Use Your Black Friday Checklist as a Guide
As per Tapcart, 60% of shoppers intend to start their holiday shopping in October. They do this because they are on a budget and keep deal hunting to get value for their money and they need to get the best value for their money.
Start your Black Friday planning as early as July
Review last year’s performance, campaigns, inventory & offers
Start laying groundwork tasks that have higher lead time such as email & sms marketing, sourcing, A/B testing, etc.
Consider starting an early and longer sale period. Some stores start as early as Amazon Prime Day. Some others capitalize on the pre-thanksgiving period. A Black Friday week has also become commonplace.
Create early access sales to extend your sale period and distribute traffic to the site evenly.
Step 2: Segment your Customers for Black Friday
Most e-commerce businesses leave money at the table by mass targeting their customers. Make sure you don't skip this step of the Black Friday checklist. Use the Black Friday Cyber Monday preparation period to identify, segment, and target your customers. Use tools like Google Analytics, Shopify customer segments & Putler to do this.
Segment by Purchase Behavior-Group customers based on their order frequency, value, or recency. Prioritize key segments like highly engaged or low-engagement shoppers and create campaigns that speak to their habits. Identify your VIP shoppers.
Additional Segmentation Approaches- Use browsing behavior, generational cohorts, geography, engagement levels, or lifecycle stages to send segment-based personalized offers.
Step 3: Plan your Black Friday Inventory
‘Stockout costs’, cost businesses up to 1 trillion dollars in revenues, last year. Analyze your last year’s inventory plan versus performance. Identify top-selling products. Coordinate with suppliers in advance regarding limited edition supplies. Ensure timely delivery and keep a buffer for contingencies.
Step 4: Brainstorm Your Black Friday Promotion Ideas
Evaluate your business financials to understand your bandwidth for discounts, promotions, and special offers. Remember, Black Friday marketing offers don't have to simply be deep discounts. There are ways around this. Review historical performance to uncover trends, understand customer behavior, and gauge product popularity. Develop customized discounts and promotions based on these insights.
Step 5: Make Plans to Engage Shoppers Post Black Friday
Remember, you will be spending considerable resources to attract customers during Black Friday Cyber Monday. How do you ensure that you retain them and increase their lifetime value? By making sure they come back post Black Friday Cyber Monday
Post Black Friday Offers- Offer customers gift cards and cashback during their Black Friday purchases, which can be redeemed post BFCM. Put a time limit. Discounts on long-term subscriptions is another way to ensure retention.
Reviews & Surveys- Post-purchase feedback is key. Ensure you have mechanisms in place to encourage customer reviews. This not only helps you evaluate yourself but also doubles up as social proof for the next Black Friday Cyber Monday season.
Step 6: Prepare your Shopify Website for Black Friday
Your Shopify store is your final moment of truth during Black Friday. Optimizing your store is a crucial part of your Black Friday checklist. Start A/B testing any changes you intend to make in layout, navigation, and flow, way before Black Friday.
Evaluate your Shopify theme in the context of Black Friday Cyber Monday. Give your site, a Black Friday makeover in terms of design. Optimize your pre-BFCM landing page, BFCM landing page, category page, product page, checkout, and post-checkout pages.
Remember to optimize your site to be mobile-responsive. Lastly, don't forget technical optimization so that you can handle the traffic surge during Black Friday Cyber Monday.
Step 7: Streamline Shipping & Payments
Dissatisfaction with shipping methods is one of the top reasons, customers abandon carts during Black Friday. Prepare to offer customers a variety of shipping options. Decide pricing for various shipping options. Tie-up with more courier services as a backup to avoid shipping delays during the holiday season.
Make sure you offer a variety of payment options. Have at least one option of each- credit card, debit card, digital wallet, and buy now pay later. Both shipping and payment preparations are important aspects of your Black Friday checklist. Dont skip them.
Step 8: Nail Your Black Friday Email Marketing
Black Friday email marketing is crucial, providing a direct channel to your most engaged audience and delivering high ROI. To make the most of it, focus on strategic, personalized campaigns that build excitement and urgency.
Ensure your emails reach inboxes by optimizing deliverability through authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Warm up your email list well in advance to boost engagement rates. Expand your list with tactics such as account creation pop-ups, sign-up incentives, contests, and social media promotions.
Segment your audience based on purchase history, engagement, and demographics to send targeted, effective messages. Follow best practices by keeping subject lines engaging, writing high-converting CTAs, and designing aesthetically appealing emails.
Step 9: Lock Down Your Black Friday SMS Marketing
The next order of business on your Black Friday checklist is SMS campaigns. To optimize Black Friday SMS marketing efforts, start by building your SMS list early. Use checkout prompts, exclusive BFCM discounts, and pop-ups to encourage sign-ups. Integrate SMS opt-in incentives across your website, social media, and email channels.
Create a respectful SMS schedule, adhering to guidelines like TCPA, and avoid spamming. Target optimal sending times, such as afternoons and evenings, to catch shoppers during their peak engagement hours.
Segment your SMS audience for personalized messaging: focus on engaged subscribers, SMS-preferring customers, VIPs, past Black Friday shoppers, frequent holiday spenders, and inactive users. This approach enhances relevance and effectiveness, boosting your BFCM results.
Step 10: Finalise Your Black Friday Paid Campaign Plan
Most Shopify merchants outsource paid campaigns to performance marketing agencies. Most likely you do it too. Engage with your agency early to review performance from past years.
Determine the audience you wish to target, this year. Jointly decide on your target ROAS and paid campaign budget. Ask your agency to come up with a comprehensive Black Friday media plan with a budget split between Facebook (Meta), Google, TikTok, and other platforms.
Prepare your campaign creatives, ad copies, and landing pages, well in advance. Start early and scale campaigns over time. Our advice: create a mini Black Friday checklist for performance marketing execution items.
Step 11: Create a Black Friday Social Media Campaign
Maximize your success with Black Friday social media posts, by starting with clear goals and audience targeting. Identify where your audience is most active—Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are top choices for e-commerce.
Leverage past data to refine and create content that is in line with the algorithm of the platform. Use shoppable posts, visual storefronts, user-generated content, and other platform-specific tools to boost engagement. Build urgency with limited-time offers.
Test different content formats with A/B testing, track key performance metrics, and engage your customers with authentic interactions. Finally, continue the momentum with post-holiday campaigns, encouraging user-generated content (reviews) and offering leftover inventory discounts. Social commerce is key—integrate it smartly.
Step 12: Include Influencer Marketing in Your Black Friday Plan
Start your influencer marketing strategy early, securing partnerships 3-4 months ahead of Black Friday. This builds genuine relationships and ensures availability. Plan budgets to ensure you are in a better position to negotiate. You can either choose a few top influencers or multiple micro-influencers.
Create live shopping events with influencers and empower them to share personalized discount codes with their followers. You can also leverage the partnership and consider adding influencers to your long-term affiliate program.
Leverage influencer-generated content across social media, websites, and ads. Track campaign performance by setting up effective back-end attribution mechanisms.
Step 13: Measure Your Metrics
You may have planned right and executed flawlessly. But how do you know you have succeeded? By measuring and tracking your key metrics. By focusing on key performance metrics, you can assess the overall impact of your campaign and plan for future success. Some Black Friday e-commerce metrics you need to track are:
Sales Metrics: Track revenue, average order value, and profit margins.
Traffic Metrics:Analyze website traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates.
Inventory Metrics:Monitor stock levels and sell-through rates.
Support Metrics: Evaluate customer service performance through response and resolution times.
Conclusion
Black Friday preparations can be overwhelming. But when you break down any big task into small actionable steps, you can conquer anything. This is what we have done with our 13-step guide. If you want a downloadable copy of the checklist, please access our Black Friday toolkit. All the best!.
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Neetika M
Neetika is the founder of Skai Lama. Passionate about building SaaS, Product Development, and Marketing, she talks about eCommerce Growth, Product Bundling, Gifting, Retention, and Shopify.
Increases Sales this BFCM!
Step up your Black Friday and Cyber Monday game with our essential BFCM Toolkit.
Unlock the secrets to a successful BFCM with our exclusive Toolkit. From marketing strategies to conversion optimisation, we've got you covered. Visit the BFCM Toolkit now and turn this shopping season into your biggest win yet!
Unlock the secrets to a successful BFCM with our exclusive Toolkit. From marketing strategies to conversion optimisation, we've got you covered. Visit the BFCM Toolkit now and turn this shopping season into your biggest win yet!
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