Last Minute Black Friday Cyber Monday Planning Tips

The holiday shopping season begins next month! Ideally, you should be near the end of your BFCM planning by now, but if you haven’t had the time or otherwise haven’t started yet, it’s not too late to make a successful holiday season happen for your eCommerce business. Here are some of the most important last-minute steps to take to make sure that your website, promotions, and marketing materials are ready for your holiday shoppers!

Design a Pop-Up That Captures Site Visitors’ Interest

Building your email list as the holiday season approaches is a simple step you can take to make sure as many people as possible can to take advantage of your seasonal deals. Although many of your customers will not actually purchase until Black Friday or Cyber Monday, most shoppers spend time browsing several eCommerce sites during the weeks leading up to Black Friday to search for gift ideas for the people in their lives and decide which shops’ sales they want to take advantage of.

By creating a new pop-up for your site or adjusting the one you are currently using to fit the holiday season, you can encourage early visitors to your site to provide their email addresses in exchange for a future bonus discount, free item, or other promotion during your Black Friday and other holiday sales. This pop-up should be the first thing visitors to your site see and make the benefit of providing their email address obvious. Taking advantage of this strategy makes it possible for you to remind potential new customers about the products that interested them and the deals your brand has to offer shortly before Black Friday.

Create a Content Calendar to Make the Most of Your Email Marketing Campaign

By planning your full holiday content calendar as early as possible, you can ensure that you are letting your email subscribers know about each separate promotion as your sale dates approach. Scheduling your emails in advance also helps you make sure that you can put as much time as you need to into drafting interesting emails that capture your subscribers’ attention and stand out from everything else in their inboxes.

Ensure that you schedule consistent emails throughout the holiday season to keep your subscribers’ attention. Although you probably don’t want to bombard your subscribers with daily emails, most eCommerce shop owners should be sending at least one email each week throughout the holiday season that reminds customers of promotions or showcases new products, especially those that do not have a physical location and rely entirely on email marketing and other forms of digital advertisement to connect with their customers.

Creating a strategic content calendar for your social media pages can also bring better results than simply posting random photos whenever an idea pops into your head. Taking some time to plan exactly what you want to post on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook each day and week from Halloween to New Year’s can help you stay organized and create more interesting content. Although these posts play a role in your comprehensive BFCM advertising strategy, your email marketing calendar is still the easiest and most effective digital advertising type.

Include Important Holiday Dates in Your Content Calendar

Clearly communicating the dates of your promotions with your customers is one of the most important steps you can take to make sure they have all the information they need to take advantage of your sales this holiday season. Working these dates into the social media content calendar that you plan for the entirety of November and December, as well as your email marketing campaign and prominent banner ads on your eCommerce website, can help you make sure that your customers do not have any trouble finding the time of day your Black Friday sales begin. Whether Cyber Monday deals are only available on Monday or continue throughout the first week of the holiday shopping season, or the cutoff order date to ensure delivery by Christmas.

Ensuring that these details are readily available for your customers ensures that you will not lose repeat customers by inadvertently making their shopping experience more challenging than it needs to be. Keep in mind that your followers will not necessarily see every social media post you make, which means that reiterating important information several times is a must.

Other Tips for Making Sure Your eCommerce Site is Ready for the Holiday Season

Although planning your social media and email strategies should be at the top of your to-do list if you haven’t started your Black Friday marketing yet, here are some other steps to take to make shopping on your site a smooth experience for your customers.

Test Your Checkout Process

Nothing drives customers away like a malfunctioning checkout process. Make sure that your discount codes are activated and the rest of your checkout process is working properly.

Create Personalized Emails

Not all of your customers will find the same information beneficial. Create special welcome emails for new customers and separate ones for last year’s customers that encourage them to return to your shop.

Plan Your Next Steps

Although Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season probably make up the largest percentage of your eCommerce shop’s annual sales, it is essential not to forget about what comes after New Year’s. Be sure to schedule some time to make plans for the first quarter of 2021 before the end of the holiday season.

If you’re just starting to make plans for this BFCM and the rest of the holiday season, working with Future Holidays can be an effective way to make sure that you get the most out of the limited amount of planning time you have left. We can help you optimize your eCommerce website for the holiday shopping season, plan your email and social media marketing campaigns, and identify more ways to build meaningful relationships with your customers this fall and winter. Contact us today to learn more about the services we offer or to get started!