5 factors to building an effective Black Friday strategy 

Why it matters

With staggering sales figures, Black Friday and the adjacent period around it make this one of the busiest – and chaotic – periods for retailers. Faced with changing shopping habits and an evolving digital marketing environment, how can retailers gear up for success this year and beyond?

Here are 5 factors they should be taking into account.

5 consideration areas for Black Friday success

Leverage the loyalty factor: Use data from your most valuable customers to identify and target similar prospects during your Black Friday campaigns. While loyalty programmes are designed to retain customers, tapping into this data to inform your Black Friday acquisition campaigns ensures your activities focus on "profitable" new customers.

Ramp up your website traffic: Mobilise every tool available to drive traffic to your ecommerce platforms. From email and social marketing to increasing ad spend and sharing content like Black Friday gift guides, focus on getting cut-through during this period. And make sure you speak directly to individual customers by using data-driven customer insights to share personalised stories at key moments during their path to purchase.

Focus on incrementality, not attribution:Switch your marketing focus from last-touch attribution to measuring marketing effectiveness and incremental growth. This metric allows you to uncover which marketing channels have the most impact on your customer journey. Then invest in what's delivering results.

Prepare for a cookie-free future: Even though the depreciation of third-party cookies has been delayed, take this opportunity to audit your first-party data and develop a business case for enhancing and building it up. Developing your own loyalty programme is a perfect way to achieve this.

Refine your first-party customer data: As you build up your first-party data, ensure you can refine and distil this information into powerful, actionable insights. Investing in a Customer Data Platform will add serious value to your data-driven marketing approach this Black Friday – and in the future.

The bottom line

A changing economic climate means retailers must adjust their strategies to reflect the current and future environment to remain competitive. Failing to act soon can mean losing out in the short and long term.

Want to find out more? Our latest Black Friday report examines the challenges retailers face this year and offers suggested approaches to adopt that can help you deliver success based on six Black Friday strategies. Download your copy here.