5 top tips for Black Friday success

Delivered originally as part of IMRG's Top Tips, here are five tips for how to optimize Black Friday.

1. Be bold to grab attention and take some swings

So, obviously, Black Friday is great because it brings in lots of traffic and conversions, but standing out is a bit of a challenge, so really try some stuff, some eye-catching deals, some quirky offers.

Tip number one is to be bold and grab attention. Companies that have done this include those that offer 13% off. Something that's a little bit different and stands out.

Is there anything you can do to grab attention? Try things and see what works.

2. Think about spending thresholds to grow AOV

A big challenge for retailers is getting people to increase their average order value and spend more money. One way to do this is to use different spending thresholds, so you can offer other deals with different incentives based on how much people are spending.

You can try setting limits, such as "if your basket is worth £40 if you get it up to £50, we'll give you a discount or some kind of free gift or special offer," and you can do the same for £100 or £200.

That's quite a good way of tiering offers to try and get people to spend more money. It is always a good thing to do, but it is especially beneficial on Black Friday.

3. Use time-sensitive offers

This creates a sense of urgency, which is particularly useful if your average order value is high or your customers are spending a lot of money.

When people are buying things from your site, there can be a long period of time when they're considering their purchase, but using a timed offer saying if you buy by the end of today, by the end of the week, you'll get a discount or some kind of special offer can really just drive those purchases over the line and get them done.

4. Optimize offers with testing while you have a lot of data to use

You got a lot of data in Black Friday, you get a lot of traffic, you get a lot of conversions, so it's the best time to run experiments. When we run experiments outside of peak with retailers, we often have to run them for quite a long period to get enough data to make them valid.

But during Black Friday and the peak period in general, there are much higher traffic volumes and much more data. It's the best time to run these tests, find out what works, and then use those results the rest of the year as well.

5. Make sure you do a Black Friday review for learnings

I think it happens that we get stuck in the weeds and think about what's coming up and what the immediate thing you've got to worry about in the short term is. But make sure you spend some time after Black Friday looking back and saying, right, what worked and didn't?

Note this down and make sure you have some learnings so that next year, next Black Friday or the rest of the time when it isn't Black Friday, we know what works and we can try and implement those things again and drive performance improvements the rest of the time.

Watch the original session