Black Friday: How to make the most of it with e-satisfaction.com?
Black Friday was originally one day in November, where huge crowds of shoppers and tourists went to the city and used to unofficially (or officially) be the start of holiday shopping season. In the course of time and with the rise of online retail, Black Friday has morphed into a week of sales and special offers, with other events, such as Cyber Monday, creating a frenzy of deal-searching that extends well beyond a 24hour timeframe.
This frenzy and the sheer volume of traffic on the day itself can create a number of setbacks for any brand: from an increased Call Center workload to having to deal with impatient, difficult to satisfy customers, Black Friday is probably the most challenging period for online retailers.
A way to cope with the day’s demands and create opportunities for successful customer engagement is to have a clear plan and timeframe of actions. At e-satisfaction.com, we have divided the process of Black Friday customer engagement in three stages. Each stage comes with a set of mechanisms that you can activate through our platform and get the most out of this year’s Black Friday.
Stage #1: What to do BEFORE Black Friday?
There are a number of ways to prepare your audience during the period that leads to Black Friday. You can try the following:
- When a user is browsing your website, a pop-up window can invite potential customers to create their account beforehand and be ready when Black Friday comes. This helps them skip the account creation stage and go straight to purchasing on the day that your prices would be simply irresistible. Alternatively, you can ask them to provide their email addresses so that they will get your Black Friday newsletter in time and become aware of your upcoming offers before everyone else.
- You can go with a similar approach on your thank you pages, whether during check out or on the after sales stage, and redirect your customers to a page where they can share their personal info with you in order for them to receive any Black Friday related news and updates.
- Another way to remind your customers that Black Friday is coming and get them to think of their needs, is to add a relevant question in your surveys, regarding their intentions and expectations about this year’s Black Friday. You can formulate your questions using the following examples: “What are you planning on buying on Black Friday?” or “Which product is on your Black Friday shopping list?”
Stage #2: What to do DURING Black Friday?
Regardless of any actions you may have taken before the main event, you shouldn’t miss the chance to engage with your customers on what is probably the busiest day of the year. Here is a list of best practices:
- Add a question on your check out or after-sales survey asking your customer to evaluate your Black Friday offers.
- Create and set up Thank You pages that mention the day’s singularity. These dedicated Thank You pages also give you the chance to ask for your customers’ understanding by acknowledging, even in a mildly humoristic style, the usual setbacks that go hand in hand with Black Friday, like the increase of delivery time or the more sluggish page load time.
- You can also add some extra character on your Thank You pages by offering some fun facts about your brand or an invitation for customers to follow you on your social media pages.
- Consider Black Friday as a good opportunity to ask for google reviews, especially from customers that will go with the store pick up option.
- As we mentioned before, Black Friday has spawned a week-long offer period, so a refer a friend campaign can be activated using the incentive of a discount on/free shipping for future purchases.
Stage #3: What to do AFTER Black Friday?
The big day has come and gone and -hopefully- has left you with satisfactory results and a considerable number of new customers. Let’s now see what you can do to boost your customer engagement and make sure they keep on being satisfied from your brand.
- Collect and analyze all the Black Friday-generated raw data and feedback. This analysis will not only provide valuable insights on how to be better prepared for Black Fridays to come, it will also highlight any need for fine tunings that should be implemented regardless of whether a sales period is looming.
- Send an ad hoc survey to your Black Friday customers as a means to engage them and generate data. The survey can include questions concerning the evaluation of the buying process, a prompt for google reviews, an invitation for recipients to leave a product review or an incentive -in the form of a reward or a significant benefit- for the customers to repurchase during January and February, a period that sales tend to be on the low side.
- Black Friday shopping means impulsive purchases for a lot of people, so it is natural if some of them change their minds and wish to return their products. Make sure that your return policy does not “punish” them and deters them from ever coming back to your brand. A simple return process can boost customers’ trust, as showcased by two interesting statistics from Return Magic:
– 72% of consumers said they would spend more and buy more often with merchants that make the return experience simple.
– 89% of repeat customers who had a good return experience are likely to buy again.
Black Friday is a first-class opportunity for every retailer who wants to drive sales and boost customer engagement and retention.
If you wish to be prepared for November 27th, the e-satisfaction.com team is always ready to give you the tools and the ideas that will help you get the most of your customer satisfaction efforts.
