5 CRM hacks for Black Friday
by Kim Martin, Executive Creative Director
Black Friday. Love it or loathe it, it’s now a fixture in the UK marketing calendar. In 2021 UK spend was £4.8 billion, down on previous years but better than expected.
This year, with the cost of living crisis continuing to pile pressure onto household income, brands are expecting a further decrease in revenue to around the £3.95 billion mark. But that’s still a pretty big piece of pie! Marketers are just going to have to work a little harder to get their slice.
Existing customer relationships will matter. Big time. If you’re not paying through the nose to attract new customers, you can make your deals more attractive.
So, here’s five ways savvy marketers can use Customer Relationship Marketing to maximise sales and smash Black Friday 2022.
1. Shoppers will go early, so you should too.
The expectation is that shoppers will be looking for bargains this year. And will choose to spend earlier to get the most out of their budget and to beat inflation. So it makes sense to get your deals out there as soon as possible. Tease them via social and email to drive awareness and create need. Ask people to ‘sign up’ for Black Friday deals to identify hand raisers and increase the size of your prospect pool.
2. Target your deals.
Why waste marketing-spend throwing out all your deals to see what sticks? Segment your database so that the deals you have are the most relevant for a particular audience. Gender, age, location, interests? What data tags do you have? If your deal is more attractive to a particular demographic make sure that demographic sees it. Use previous buying and click behaviour as an indicator of product or category interest. Recency could be an indicator of ‘lead heat’. If you’ve got people to sign up for Black Friday deals for example, you can consider these your hottest leads.
3. Use Black Friday as an opportunity to reward existing customers.
Customers like to be recognised. Black Friday can actually feel quite alienating for people that already buy regularly from you, so use it to make them feel special. Use Black Friday deals as a way of rewarding your existing customers. Give them ‘first dibs’ with early access to your offers. Or provide an exclusive code for a deeper discount on deals.
4. Get strategic with your offers.
Instead of straight discounts think about how you can be more strategic around your offers. Prompt early purchases by decreasing % discount as time goes by. Early purchasers get the best deals. Younger customers are used to ‘drops’ so announce deals at random intervals with a limited shelf life (maybe a few hours) to create the sense of an event with urgency. Value will be key to unlocking customer spend this year. Bundling products you know are popular with related items, means you can increase perceived value and individual spend.
5. Don’t view Black Friday in isolation.
Black Friday is traditionally all about sales. But it’s worth remembering that it’s just one event in your customer calendar. Black Friday is simply a part of the customer comms cycle. Viewed this way gathering data is also a measure of success. Even if people don’t buy, if you’ve got their email address or a ‘follow’, you have a pool of people you can re-target with future marketing campaigns and ‘always-on’ activity. It costs less to talk to a prospect than it does to acquire a new customer.
This year, more than any other, getting a share of your customer’s wallet is going to be tough. The key to success is maximising your owned data so you can target your campaign and limit marketing spend.
Flourish is an independent specialist Customer Relationship Marketing agency. We use on and offline channels to help brands of all sizes plan, design and deploy customer journey and acquisition strategies. To see how we could help you increase sales, maintain customers or reduce CPA, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
