Newsletter #6 - Pro or Cons: 
the secrets to winning big this Black Friday

As the most important sales period in the retail world (30% of annual turnover on average), it is difficult to miss Black Friday when you are an e-tailer.

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Whether you're for or against it, it's essential to be well prepared so as not to miss the opportunity to get your brand talked about (a lot), capture new customers and anticipate your sales for Christmas 2022.

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To help you out, here are 4 tips, tricks and brand examples to get you in shape and shine this Black Friday.

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1️. 10 letters: a-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-e

November has become as big a month as December for e-commerce in the UK, largely due to Black Friday.

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In 2021, Shopify's sales exceeded $6 billion over the BFCM period and the platform is targeting a +23% increase for 2022.

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Your customers have money to spend, now is the time to go and get them!

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<sub>💡This also applies to your post-purchase experience!

‍Whether you manage your shipments in-house or go through a 3PL solution, I'm sharing my checklist for optimising your logistics this BFCM:

☑️ Announce achievable delivery times (with increasing volumes, carriers are bound to fall behind).
☑️ Predict the right level of stock (depending on sales, types of promotions applied, etc.). To help you, I recommend Prediko.
☑️ If you manage your logistics in-house, you will definitely need additional manpower to prepare orders (you can go through Side, for example).
☑️ Make your returns easy and take care of your follow-up emails to ease your customer support!</sub>

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2️. Segment your audiences

The closer D-Day arrives, the higher the CACs will climb.

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So much so that it will be virtually impossible to reach a cold target without sacrificing a good part of your annual marketing budget.

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Whether you participate or not, anticipate and take advantage of the pre-Black Friday period to segment your audiences and invest in your future hot targets (customers, subscribers, fans, etc.)!

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<sub>🔥 During Black Friday, the trends are reversed!

‍I share with you the ranking of the sources that generate the most traffic:
🥇26 % via SEO.
🥈24 % via paid (social and search).
🥉17 % in organic searches.
⭐️ 7 % via email.
Source: Contentsquare</sub>

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3️. Be creative and vary the formats.

Stand out in the feeds/email box/Google results of your potential customers by being creative!

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For inspiration, here are some examples of brand campaigns for and against Black Friday ⤵️

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✅ FOR

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‍Gymshark's parody of a gym session to announce their Black Friday 2021 offers to their customers.

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<sub>👀 Are you interested in Gymshark's campaigns?

‍We've listed about 20 of their email marketing and Ads campaigns for you in this playbook.

Download for free</sub>

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Apple's "FOMO" emails (aka. Fear Of Missing Out), to keep the suspense going and tease your offers gradually.

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Kohl's Twitter contest. The brand offered $500 gift cards in exchange for retweets and comments. A great way to get the word out, while creating interaction with their current and potential customers!

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‍❌ AGAINST‍

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Not doing discounts is not a reason not to communicate.

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On the contrary: this is the time to promote your commitments!

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Here are some examples 👇‍

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Patagonia's "Don't buy this jacket" campaign in 2011, a first. In 2016, with "100% for the planet", it committed to donate all its profits to environmental protection.

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To make it memorable, the Picture brand had completely closed its site on 26 November 2021.

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Click here to watch the video  ⤵️

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For the 2021 sales, the fashion brand Asphalte played it funny with the "No Sales", an idea you can totally pick up for Black Friday.

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<sub>✊ Unity is strength

‍More and more brands are fighting back and boycotting this day! To learn more, I list here a small but not exhaustive list of anti-Black Friday collectives and initiatives:
‍-> Make My Friday Green Again (Faguo)
-> Black for Good (Typology)
-> Green Friday (Federation Envie)</sub>

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4. Optimise your website on mobile!

Heavily influenced by the health crisis, Black Friday has become a real mobile phenomenon: 70% of Shopify sales were made on smartphones.

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Knowing that 52% of users will not go beyond the second scroll, I strongly recommend that you optimize your e-commerce on this medium as a priority by prioritizing simple landing pages and product pages!

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The product pages that convert the most on mobile are those on which you can see:

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• The name of the product,
• A photo,
• Its price,
• A brief description,
• A call to action

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<sub>🌱 3 tips for a more eco-friendly website

Small streams make big rivers, whether you are doing discounts, or not!
-> A dark theme requires fewer resources than a white theme (see the new SNCF website).
-> 2D animations require fewer resources than 3D ones.
-> Videos take up a lot of space on the servers, so choose light visuals for your product pages.</sub>