It was anything but an ordinary year for eCommerce. In regards of the upcoming holidays, including Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), sales processes needed to be rethought and adapted. The Corona pandemic had created a strong trend towards online commerce, partly because stores that had previously only sold their products in physical stores were switching to eCommerce. This means that more people than ever before are ready to shop online. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, online retail sales rose by around 30% in June 2020 alone.
BFCM promotions contribute significantly to Christmas sales. As the results of the above-mentioned study by the IFH Cologne show, that German online shoppers spent around € 1,050 million between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. More than half of this amount was spent on early Christmas shopping. In addition, a study by Rakuten Advertising showed that despite Covid-19, about 78% of Germans have not reduced their monthly shopping budget since the outbreak of the pandemic. This means that this year's sales season has the potential to be bigger than ever before.
In this blog article, Warehousing1 breaks down the 5 most important points to consider when preparing your 2020 BFCM campaigns so that your eCommerce shop can also benefit from the booming pre-Christmas business.
5 tips for a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday period
1. Cultivate cash with gift cards
As we mentioned in our last blog article , a smart inventory management is essential for successful holidays. Since you should start the sales season with enough inventory, it is a good idea to contact your suppliers in time. Make sure that your sales forecasts for the pre-Christmas promotion days can also be implemented in the area of fulfillment. In order to ensure high customer satisfaction, no stock-outs should occur.
How can you counteract this problem in advance? Gift cards! Gift cards are especially popular around the Christmas holidays and ensure you sales that you would otherwise have lost due to sold out articles. This gives you time to replenish your stock before the cards are redeemed after the Christmas holidays.
2. Bringing the shop up to date
Have you already put your digital distribution channels to the test? Are you prepared for the temporary increase in traffic? Because if your website crashes, you won't be able to generate any sales either. In the long term, this will also have an impact on the trust that your customers have in your brand.
Before the cyber-weekend, carry out load tests or feature stress tests in order to be able to commission any necessary improvements to your online presence. Make sure that your customers will have a flawless shopping experience in your store.
3. Select products & discount campaigns skillfully
Which of your products have the greatest potential to become a box-office hit? Think about possible sales promotions ahead instead of setting them up last minute. The first step could be to create an Excel spreadsheet in which you link the products with the respective start and end dates of the discount campaigns.
Note that you can use the previous year's figures for the BFCM season as a basis for filtering out product groups that sold particularly well in this sales period. This year, you should also take into account pandemic-related product trends, which could confuse your calculations a little. Shopify has conducted a survey to find out that around 38% of Shopify retailers are looking to introduce or market new products. The most popular products are home office equipment, sports accessories, comfortable clothing, etc. - In other words, goods that can make everyday life in lockdown or at home a lot more bearable.
Announce your promotions in time before Black Friday & Cyber Monday and make the customers curious. You should focus on a strategy that distinguishes your company from the competition.
4. Rely on the optimization of logistics processes
High sales volumes in a short period of time can quickly lead to stagnant fulfillment. It is therefore essential to organize the fulfillment area before the holiday campaigns. Do it like Amazon: At the beginning of the Corona pandemic, the eCommerce giant adapted its logistics to the changed product situation and prioritized hygiene and basic food items. In the case of BFCM, you should ensure that the expected top sellers are also quickly accessible for picking, packaging and so on. An increased order situation also means that more employees are needed. Therefore, you should hire additional personnel in advance.
The actual orders should also be prioritized or grouped. If your customers have paid for express shipping, you should ensure that those products are actually delivered the quickest. Alternatively, you can prioritize at the customer level. This means that you process the orders from your most loyal customers first to show them your appreciation.
5. Success Tracking
After the action days is before the action days. After BFCM it is not long until Christmas, which is why it is a good idea to document all problems, challenges and developments precisely. Are you applying new strategies in your operational business? Don't forget to keep a record of what these measures looked like in detail. This will enable you to track the data next year and scale certain elements to get more out of the fourth quarter for your company.
Conclusion
Save the date: In 2020, Black Friday falls on the fourth Friday in November, or more precisely on November 27, as it does every year. After Cyber Week, a large part of the Christmas presents have already been purchased.
Especially around Christmas, you can offer your customers an incomparable shopping experience by using special packaging for an exciting unboxing experience. Tips on how to best approach this in your fulfillment processes can be found in our brand new eBook “Der Warehousing1 eCommerce-Guide für das Weihnachts- & Feiertagsgeschäft”, which you can download for free here .
You are not sure which steps to tackle first? Warehousing1 is your ideal contact person for everything concerning logistics. With over 500 partner locations in Germany and other parts of Europe we can help you to increase your fulfillment capacities for BFCM and the following Christmas season. Our model allows you to pay only for the services you actually use. With data integration, you can view your inventory and fulfillment data anytime and anywhere through our intuitive dashboard. This allows you to make adjustments quickly and directly at any time. Are you curious? Arrange a non-binding appointment for a consultation via our contact form. Together we brainstorm how Warehousing1 could competently support your company in all logistics topics.
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