Black Friday is clearly one of the busiest times in the ecommerce calendar. One that you and your team will be tirelessly working before, during and after to make sure that it’s a great success.

 
But what do you define as success? Setting clear goals is essential for a successful Black Friday marketing strategy.
 
Whether that be driving sales, increasing AOV, improving engagement or securing new customers, each brand should have a set of campaign goals defined, which all of the team are aligned on.
 
This will not only help you with planning and ensuring you have the right activities in your plan, but also a clear way to check back and help you define the success of your Black Friday.
 
In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common goals, how to set them, and some quick wins to help you on the path to achieving these over the course of your Black Friday campaign.

Goal: I want to increase sales revenue

 
Setting the goal: Aim for a specific percentage increase in sales revenue compared to last Black Friday.
 

Achieving the goal

Many will assume the more emails you send, the more sales you’ll likely bring in, when that isn’t necessarily true. Remember that blasting your whole database multiple times over your Black Friday campaign can not only impact deliverability of your Black Friday campaigns, but can have longer lasting impact into Christmas and beyond.
 
The ideal place to start is to secure sales from those segments of customers that are most likely going to buy.
 
If you had any pre-campaigns where customers could sign up to be the first to know, then these should definitely be the first segment you send to as they have explicitly raised their hand that they want to purchase over Black Friday.
 
Secondly look at who purchased last year in Black Friday, and those who have previously purchased in any other sales you might have had, or generally purchase using discounts. As these customers are showing promotional-driven buying behaviour, therefore would most likely purchase again in this promotional period.
 
Finally, look at your current segments within your database such as your VIPs or loyal segment. These are advocates who would normally purchase with you anyway so could advantage of the additional promotions you have on over Black Friday, making it another easy segment to attract purchases from.
 
These are the ideal segments to maximise first which can get your goal off to a flying start before you start going to your broader database.

Goal: I want to boost conversion rates

 
Setting the Goal: Define a percentage increase in conversion rates you want to achieve this Black Friday.
 

Achieving the goal

This close to Black Friday it will be difficult to make any significant CRO changes to your website so you have to look at the tools that you have at your disposable which could impact the chance of a customer converting.
 
The first thing to understand is which is normally your best converting channel. Then compare that to the performance over previous Black Friday as your customers may favour certain channels differently when there are sales on.
 
For example, it may be that SMS normally doesn’t work well for driving sales, but helps withs urgency and quick conversions over sales periods.
 
Secondly is ensuring you still provide some level of personalisation in your campaigns. It can be tempting to just send broad messages out to your whole database when you’re pressured to drive sales.
 
But the evidence overwhelming shows that personalised content drives better conversion rates, as the customer is seeing items that are more relevant to them, therefore most likely to buy.
 
So make sure you take into consideration their preferences and previous transactions to understand what you should be showing them this Black Friday.

Goal: I want to enhance email engagement

 
Setting the Goal: Target specific increases in email open and click-through rates from your Black Friday campaigns.
 

Achieving the goal

This is the time of the year when customers inboxes are the most crowded. There is no way it can be avoided so you need to really work hard on getting them to want to open your email vs a hundred others.
 
A lot of brands over Black Friday are quite simple on the creative front and will call out the promotional headline in a static image, being vague about anything else in order to drive the customer to click through to their website faster.
 
While this has some benefits it’s a real missed opportunity to engage customers within your emails.
 
Think about how you can inject your brand personality into the email content to make a lasting impression. As well as talk about your promotions, can you give any other value-added content in your email?
 
Or even add a touch of fun and interactivity such as scratch and reveal, spin to win, gifs or videos to engage your customers and stand out against the other – most likely – static emails being sent.

Goal: I want to expand my customer base

 
Setting the goal: Set a target number for new customer acquisitions during the Black Friday period.
 

Achieving the goal

The whole concept of a deal or discount always attracts new customers to a brand, so naturally a lot of brands successfully grow new customers during their Black Friday campaigns.
 
However, you want to make sure you are attracting the right type of customers and that you are getting the most value from your paid acquisition campaigns.
 
A good way to do this is to ensure you use your current customers to help you find new ones. You can create a segment of your most loyal and profitable customers and push that into your social advertising platforms.
 
By using their lookalike functionality you can then serve your Black Friday ads only to potential new customers who match the profile of your current loyal customers – making any new acquisitions to be more of the ideal profile of customer.
 
It’s also worth remembering that post Black Friday is often when your single purchasers segment will be at its biggest from all the new acquisitions, so make sure you have a 1st to 2nd purchase campaign in place to push as many of those new customers into repeat purchasers as soon as possible.

Goal: I want to increase AOV

 
Setting the Goal: Define a percentage increase in AOV you want to achieve from all customer purchases over Black Friday.
 

Achieving the goal

With growing average order value, the most common tactic to use is ensuring you have your cross-sell and up-sell campaigns in place.
 
Whether this is formed as part of your onsite experience at checkout, included in your abandoned basket emails, or even in post purchase follow ups, make sure you take the opportunity at key touch points to encourage them to increase their total order value.
 
However, one key mistake that many marketers make in trying to increase a customers AOV is showing them the wrong products in the first place.
 
You need to ensure you are showing them realistic products not only that they would need, or like based on their preferences, but what they can afford.
 
If someone usually spends £25 then you wouldn’t advertise £50 items to them as that probably isn’t an realistic jump in AOV. Understanding their usual payment brackets can help you bump up each persons AOV on a more realistic scale.

Goal: I want to reduce abandoned basket rate

 
Setting the goal: Aim for a specific percentage reduction in basket abandonment.
 

Achieving the goal

Everyone reading this article should have an abandoned basket email (or series) in place. Therefore, you need to think about ways to optimise that campaign to draw people back to the site to complete their purchase.
 
A lot of the time over Black Friday your customers become distracted and therefore leave before purchase, but with the influx of all your competitors emails landing in their inbox at the same time, the content within your abandoned emails needs to be very compelling to draw them back to you.
 
Research from the Shopper Report with Retail Week stated the number one reason people abandoned their baskets was high delivery costs. Therefore this is biggest factor you need to look to influence in your campaigns.
 
How can you call out clearly and immediately in your abounded campaign the delivery options available to that customer – highlighting the options that are the most cost effective, not necessarily the quickest.
 
Also, make sure if you have an unlimited delivery group of customers that their abandoned emails have a simple dynamic content banner reminding them their delivery is free!
 
If delivery is a sticky subject then why not look through your reviews and see if you have any reviews that highlight prompt, hassle free or cost effective delivery and include these as snippers in you abandoned emails.
 
And even better if they were from purchases from your last Black Friday as this clearly shows the customers how well you respond to deliveries over a busy sales period.

Overall each brand will have different goals that they want to achieve from Black Friday

 
Some may focus on one single goal, others might have a handful they want to achieve. Whichever it is at your brand make sure they are clearly defined so that everyone in your marketing team can ensure they are striving towards to same success.
 
With the right data driven approach and the right marketing automation tool to help you deliver your campaign, you and your team can be set up for the greatest Black Friday success.
 
 

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