Your Black Friday briefing has landed. Find out what we learned by analyzing a decade’s worth of orders.
There have been seismic shifts in consumer culture over the last 10 years. Marketing tech has had to develop at lightning speed to keep up with shoppers’ changing behaviors.
So, we gathered and analyzed a decade’s (!) worth of order data and identified trends that will make or break your marketing decisions this holiday season. We set out to reveal:
- whether Black Friday really is all that it’s stacked up to be
- what shopping trends we can uncover by looking at millions of transactions
- which shopper personas prove to be most receptive to Black Friday marketing
- and the things you shouldn’t be doing as a marketer
This article highlights our key findings and offers some easy-to-apply tactics that will make November 2019 your best month yet.
Dissecting 10 years of Black Friday order data
We see over 40,000+ orders land in dotdigital Engagement Cloud every single day, that’s over 14 million a year! We asked our data science team to analyze 10 years’ worth of data so we could give you takeaways to help you prepare for the holiday sales season ahead.
Is Black Friday all it is cracked up to be?
The short answer? It certainly is. This report will show you the numbers and dives into how retailers can harness the data available to them and ensure the after-effects of Black Friday last they’re very longest.
Inside this Black Friday report
Want to know which personas you should be marketing to? And which tactics to avoid? Read on this article to find out.
You may have wondered whether Black Friday is all that it’s cracked up to be? The short answer? It is, and increasingly so. The more interesting question is how retailers can harness the data available to them and ensure the after-effects of Black Friday last they’re very longest.
November orders are on the rise.
As November continues to take an increasingly dominant percentage of your annual orders – averaging 9% of total orders in 2010 and 14% in 2018 – it’s becoming more important than ever for retailers to smash their targets during this month.
- 2010 December leads. Not yet an influence, November remains overshadowed by December shopping in 2010. At its peak, there were 62% more orders in the two-week lead-up to Christmas versus Black Friday.
- 2013 Cyber Monday overtakes. Online shopping has become an established behavior. Cyber Monday mania peaks above December sales for the first time in 2013 – a trend that continues into 2014 and beyond.
- 2018 Black Friday reigns. Retailers offer in-store and online deals earlier than ever, causing November to account for 14% of annual sales. Cyber Monday continues to surge but is now eclipsed by Black Friday.
4 ways to make the most of purchase indicators with personas
Anyone who has ever set foot into a department store in December knows that something happens to customers over the holiday season. The surge in online shopping may not give you the same in-your-face frenzy, but trust us when we say shopping a sale digitally can evoke the same sense of urgency. Your online order data holds three valuable takeaways that can help you assess shopper loyalty. Measure order recency, frequency, and spend. Combine the three and you’ve got what we call an RFM score which relates to a persona. Since no one is born a brand champion, and no one needs to retire to inactive forever, we’ve laid out four tactics that you can apply this Black Friday
- Engage with customers you haven’t seen in awhile, especially during Black Friday. Our data shows how inactive customers readily re-engage during Black Friday, and with a much higher likelihood to graduate to more valuable persona profiles. The rate at which an at-risk persona decays to inactive is reduced three-fold whilst the chance they become loyal increases.
- Don’t bore your brand champions with off-price products. You had them on the side, to begin with, so keep up your usual best with your most loyal base. Black Friday is a good opportunity to graduate customers into this lucrative persona group. But for those already there, don’t solely target them with seasonal sale messaging, but keep up your regular best too.
- New customers are unpredictable and need nurturing immediately. New customers are more likely to become loyal than inactive, and they’re nearly twice as likely to graduate to a high potential persona compared to the rest of the year. Sounds great, right? However, it is even more likely they will lapse. Offer incentives (coupons/free ship) and maximize the window to high potential.
- Put it to the test with persona movement reporting in Engagement Cloud. With customer dashboards now encompassing persona movement reporting in dotdigital Engagement Cloud, it’s easier than ever to observe trends, filter data by persona, and test and tweak your campaigns for year-on-year success. Start sending messages that deliver more bang for your buck.