4 ways to drive Black Friday customers to shop again over the holidays

The cost of acquiring new customers has increased by 60% in the last six years. To maximize the profitability of the season, you need to plan ahead. How can you drive BFCM customers to shop again over the holidays and beyond? In this article, we’ve put together our top strategies to help you create experiences that will keep customers coming back for more. By getting these experiences right at the early stage of a customer’s journey you will be able to drive repeat sales and increase customer lifetime value (CLV).

1. Create memorable experiences

First and foremost, you need to be thinking about mobile experiences. Last year shopping on smartphones jumped by 24%. Today, smartphones make up 40% of online spending over Black Friday and it’s only set to rise. If your online experiences are not already optimized for mobile, now’s the time to get ready ahead of the 2021 holidays. Brands can now deliver app-like website experiences using Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs give users faster, smoother online experiences with less development time required on your end.  By putting you in the driving seat, PWAs give marketing teams creative control to create and optimize customer experiences. It’s a win-win and a must for brands looking to engage new customers this holiday season.

2. Build relevant segments

As well as online experiences, relevancy drives customer loyalty. Modern shoppers want to be treated as individuals. Segmentation allows you to deliver targeted messages to specific audience groups. Using insights gathered during the Black Friday period, you can create granular segments to deliver relevant marketing throughout the holiday season. Customer modeling tools such as RFM, eRFM, and lead scoring will be invaluable during this period. RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) can help you group your audience based on how much they spent with you over BFCM. eRFM and lead scoring also consider online engagement. Email opens and high-intent page hits are added together to give insight into who’s engaging with your brand. You can then subsequently enroll them into relevant automation programs to drive future purchases.

3. Optimize automations

Automations are brilliant because they do the heavy lifting for you. You don’t have to build new campaigns every day. Marketing automation programs can be built to target specific segments with relevant and personalized messages. But, that’s not to say you can set and forget these programs. To maximize the profitability of your programs you should be constantly optimizing. And doing it now – pre-BFCM – is the perfect time to do it. Welcome, nurture, post-purchase, and re-engagement programs are essential automations for the busy holiday period. Optimizing these now, testing new tactics and marketing tools will help you drive conversions later. Introducing product recommendations and dynamic content will give the reader more to engage with. When you showcase complementary products or offer discounts to win back unengaged shoppers you will encourage them to return sooner rather than later.

4. Loyalty and referral schemes

Black Friday is not only a chance to drive sales but to engage new customers and turn them into brand advocates. And the easiest way to do that is through a loyalty program or referral scheme. Introduce these automations to new customers as soon as possible. Preferably, to really drive interest in them, you should mention any loyalty and referral schemes in your welcome program to drive customer engagement. Tiered and points-based loyalty programs encourage shoppers to repeat purchases to earn points and discounts. Similarly, referral schemes can offer shoppers incentives to return to your online store. By giving targets such as five referrals to get a 20% discount code, you can turn engaged customers into high spenders and brand champions.