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Are you prepared for Black Friday? 5 advanced details to double check

Vanessa Copley
Marketing

2021 seems like it only finished moments ago, yet somehow we’re almost ready for Black Friday 2022. November as always feels like the calm before the storm, with marketers working to finalize their preparations before the rush begins.

No doubt you have planned your discounts and prepped your ads. But, with thin margins, we want to ensure you get the most value possible from your BFCM campaigns.

So, here are five expert-level details to double-check before the big day:

1) Have you prepared a tripwire offer?

If you sell a premium product, then tripwire offers can bring in a huge boost of sales for Black Friday.

Tripwires are low-priced offers, typically under $20. One popular example is a short book that is “free” other than the shipping price.

They are intended as an impulse buy, serving as a small taste of what you have to offer in your premium product. For example, if you sell a $300 course, then a tripwire can be a low-stakes first purchase.

Tripwires then commonly work in two ways:

  1. The immediate upsell, where the checkout sequence pitches higher-value products
  2. A nurture sequence, giving them time to find value from the first product before upselling

Both aim to sell the premium product, with the best approach depending on your content and sales style.

If you’re looking for an enticing deal to offer new prospects this Black Friday, then try pitching them a small mini-product. It can be a great alternative to discounting your core offer.

2) Will you track the lifetime value of BFCM customers?

Bringing in a burst of revenue on Black Friday is great, but it should also be part of your long game. The best way to make the most of the extra ad budget and stress is to turn those discount hunters into loyal customers.

It might seem obvious, but this aspect of new vs repeat customers is often overlooked in marketing. After all, your typical tools like Google Analytics can’t track it so we get distracted by data on single purchases. And that sucks, as repeat customers are vital to a healthy business.

Most SMEs report that over half of their annual revenue comes from repeat customers

BIAKelsey

That makes measuring the LTV of Black Friday customers a top priority. 

Gathering this data can uncover insights such as those customers who bought a particular product were far more likely to purchase again in the following year. That could help you fine-tune your BFCM promotions for next year to really maximize revenue.

3) Are your contact tags set up with BFCM automations?

We’re a big fan of contact tags here at SegMetrics, whether it’s in your CRM or email system.

Whenever you run a big promotion, we would highly recommend giving those contacts a unique tag. Since it is a promotion detail, a tag name of promotion-BFCM would be ideal.

(NOTE: We have a thorough collection of advice around what details to tag and how to come up with clear naming in our Ultimate Tagging Guide)

These contact tags have two main uses:

  1. Setting up automations, such as specific email follow-ups
  2. Uncover deep insights about your customers

You’re probably already using tags for automations, but many marketers miss the potential of tags for finding insights about their customers.

For example, you can use them to calculate the lifetime value stats we discussed in the previous recommendation.

You can extract this LTV data either by wrestling with pivot tables or in a few clicks with SegMetrics.

4) Are you using the Conversion API to optimize your ads?

One of the biggest challenges when running ads is accurately measuring which clicks lead to a sale. It is crucial data that the AIs use to optimize your traffic.

But, the AIs will miss opportunities if they can’t see most of the purchases.

For example, if Facebook can’t detect any purchases from iOS users, they won’t show your ads to people on iPhones. Suddenly, a huge potential source of sales disappears.

The same goes for desktop users whose ad blocker stops the tracking pixel from loading. The AIs will see a lack of sales so won’t prioritize those types of users.

This brings us to the Conversion API, also known as CAPI.

It is a way for businesses to send Facebook or Google data about sales that they would otherwise miss. Some platforms such as Shopify have an inbuilt CAPI integration, but many marketers will need to find alternative ways to send this data.

One solution is through SegMetrics. We use our 7D Tracking to record every sale, which our Conversion Feeder then sends back to the ad platforms. 

Conversion feeder image

5) Do you monitor the refunds or cancellations from Black Friday?

Tracking orders is all well and good, but they don’t all turn into money in the bank.

When rushing to make purchases during a sale, it’s expected that some amount of customers will get buyers remorse. There will be cancellations, refunds and declined cards.

These abandoned orders can quickly damage your profit margins, especially when they’re already being squeezed by discounts. That means it is vital that you monitor how many of your orders turn into revenue from each promotion.

Of course, you won’t get those stats from basic analytics platforms.

You can use a funnel optimization tool such as SegMetrics to monitor these abandoned orders, tracking them back to the relevant source. This will help you find out which of your Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotions truly brought you a positive ROI.

bcfm metrics

Want to complete your Black Friday setup?

For more details on how to get all of your tags and UTMs ready go ahead and check out our free Teachable Course. In it, you will learn all about:

  • Tagging best practices, with instructions for popular tools
  • Advanced reporting on paid advertising
  • Creating detailed dashboards to capture specific KPIs

Or if you want to ensure your BFCM weekend is as profitable as possible, go ahead and sign up for a free trial of SegMetrics.


Vanessa Copley

Marketing

Vanessa Copley is a business automation specialist and the founder of Custom Client Journey. She specializes in client journey management and bringing the human touch to your automated experience. In her free time, she enjoys reading fantasy and horror novels, practicing Tang Soo Do and spending time with her amazing children, the love of her life, and their 15 birds and 2 dogs.


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