Whether it's Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Cyber or Black Week - these days mark the start of the strongest sales period of the year for retailers, which flows seamlessly into the Christmas season. Retailers in almost all sectors use this time for special offers and discounts to attract customers and boost sales.
Sales expenditure on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022 amounted to 5.6 billion euros. In Black Friday's country of origin, the USA, online sales peaked at 9.1 billion dollars in 2022. And for this year, the current forecast for Germany is 5.8 billion sales.
Not only on Black Friday, but especially before this high-turnover period, retailers are faced with the question: What can I offer consumers to make them buy from me and not from the competition?
In order to survive in the highly competitive market, the relevance of the offers for the customer is an important decision criterion - because only if a product is really relevant for the consumer will it be shortlisted. To achieve this, personalization is the right tool.
Here are seven tips for a relevant and positive shopping experience through the use of personalization:
1. Inspire your customers with smart campaigns
The newsletter remains one of the most important means of communication in customer contact and is also relevant for the purchasing process. The proportion of people who read product newsletters they receive will increase from 70 percent in 2019 to 76 percent in 2022. In addition to regular newsletters with personalized product recommendations, it is worth using other formats in the run-up to Black Friday. For example, promotional newsletters with products from the recipient's favorite category including a matching tutorial or blog post. Or even after a visit to the online store: if customers do not make a purchase, they receive a campaign newsletter with recommendations from their favorite categories shortly after their visit. Our customer WMF also uses its customer newsletter in this way.
2. Individual campaign schedule for each customer
The campaign periods are getting longer from year to year. While a few years ago Black Friday was the main focus, retailers now offer discount promotions several days before or after Black Friday. Customers can lose track in the mass of deals. With an individual landing page and selected deals in defined periods that perfectly match the interests of the respective customer, they feel well advised and the likelihood of purchase increases.
3. Hand in hand: personalized customer approach in online and in-store business
Special offer days in November are popular with retailers in both bricks-and-mortar retail and e-commerce. It's great when the personalized customer approach goes hand in hand here and individual offers match the customer's interests, especially on Black Friday & Co. This is how the Swiss retailer Coop does it, for example: customers of the omnichannel platform coop.ch receive individually relevant category and product recommendations based on their purchases in the supermarket and online store on the "My Coop" landing page after logging in with their Coop Supercard ID in addition to the existing personalized areas of the online store. This allows customers to quickly find the products that are relevant to them, which saves time and improves customer service, and not just on Black Friday.
4. Include products on the wish list and frequently purchased products in the Black Deals
Products that customers would like to buy or that are on the shortlist often end up on the wish list. Perhaps they are too expensive at the moment or the customer needs time to think about it. And sometimes these items are forgotten again. So remind your customers of the products they still have on their wish list by including them in your Black Friday offers. This can sometimes be the final impulse to buy.
5. Increase the basket value with personalized product bundles
A product bundle consists of two or more products that are related to each other or to the customer. A coffee machine and the matching filter papers; two books from a special book series, a bicycle combined with a bicycle trailer: customers are offered a "product bundle" - e.g. because these items are often clicked on or purchased together in the online store. Brick-and-mortar retailers have always used this combination of several products to create new incentives to buy. The advantage in online retail is that the combined offers can be designed in a more differentiated way online and respond better to customers' current interests. A valuable use case not only on campaign days to leverage sales potential, as our customer Würth also did on the product detail page in the online store.
6. Entertain and inspire customers through content personalization
Depending on the retailer's intention, personalized content can inform, entertain, advise or inspire. There are no limits to the retailer's creativity when it comes to the form of the content. Examples include topic-specific articles in the blog of a DIY store or a fashion retailer that sends out personalized print advertising in which the customer receives tailored articles on styling topics including product recommendations based on their click and purchase behaviour in the online store. Find out more in our blog post.
7. Reduce shopping cart abandonment through marketing automation and personalization
There are many reasons for shopping cart abandonment: the ordering process is too complicated or involves too many clicks, fees or shipping costs are only displayed during the ordering process or the selection of payment options is too small - to name just a few.
Abandoned purchases on days when sales should actually be soaring are particularly annoying. If you recognize early on which filled shopping cart is highly unlikely to make it to the checkout, you can set appropriate incentives for the customer. An AI-based solution with a scoring process does this: It analyzes customers' movements in the store in real time and uses this to create forecasts for future behavior. If a certain forecast value for "purchase abandonment" is reached, the respective customer receives a targeted incentive. This can be, for example, the display of suitable incentives such as free shipping. But also the display of a complementary product that the customer can purchase together with the item in the shopping cart at a favorable price.
Would you like to find out more about these use cases and our seven tips? GK offers the right expertise when it comes to personalization. Please contact us directly, we look forward to hearing about your use case.
