Tips for Targeting Customers with an Optimized Cyber Monday Marketing Strategy

Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, and 2018’s incarnation of the holiday saw 67.4 million shoppers in the U.S. spend over $6 billion. Coming in on the heels of Black Friday, Cyber Monday has a few advantages over its predecessor. While Black Friday carries horror stories of large crowds and crazy competition, Cyber Monday focuses on the ease and convenience of shopping online. It also does not coincide with the night of Thanksgiving, when many families would rather stay at home and enjoy their holiday rather than venture out with the masses.

The opportunity for your business is massive on e-commerce’s most hallowed day, but you’ll need a marketing strategy to match. Here are 14 tips for crafting your Cyber Monday marketing strategy.

Avoid the Abandoned Cart

One of the biggest problems that faces online retailers is the abandoned cart. Consumers often browse and even go as far as compiling items they’re interested in buying within their cart, but end up not following through. It’s inevitable that this will happen on your site, but that doesn’t mean that those potential sales are lost forever. Follow up with cart recovery emails, if you can, reminding the customer of the deals they’ll miss. You may also consider adding notes to your cart screens, reminding customers that the deals they are about to secure can’t be beat or that the products are selling out fast.

Bundles

Bundling various items together as a purchase option is a good way to cross-sell and increase your returns. There’s also the benefit of consumers feeling like they’re getting an even better deal if your bundles have additional discounts or perks for buying the whole set of items at once.

Contests

Run a contest on social media during Cyber Monday to hype your sales and engage your followers. Contests are meant to generate leads and boost brand awareness, so offer something that justifies the interaction required for the contest.

Drip Campaigns

Schedule a series of emails to send out to your customers in the days or weeks leading up to Cyber Monday to hype up the eventual deals taking place. You can make them fun and mysterious, encouraging customers to keep coming back to learn more. Consider offering exclusive deals for customers who followed through with the whole email thread in some fashion.

Easter Eggs

If you have the tech savviness to get it done, try adding some fun, hidden features to your website during Cyber Monday. These features, called “Easter eggs”, can take whatever form you’d like, but the important part is hinting at them and getting a conversation going on social media. Consumers love finding them and will likely tell their friends.

Exclusive, Limited-time Deals

A tactic touching on consumer psychology is scarcity marketing, which involves the utilization of time and availability to increase the value and desirability of your products. If a product is known to be available for one day only or is inexpensive for a short amount of time, consumers will be more likely to buy, thinking that they are truly cashing in on an exclusive deal.

Extended Sales

While exclusive deals are great for the day of Cyber Monday, there’s nothing wrong with letting customers know they have another chance to get those deals they may have missed or passed on initially. Extending your sales after the holiday itself or even starting it early, is still a nice way to bring customers to your site and encourage continued browsing and buying.

Feedback Readiness

Stirring the conversation on social media is one important facet of keeping your brand relevant during the holiday. Still, many brands forget an important part of social media: consumer-to-business interaction. Social media channels welcome feedback from consumers who may be leaving feedback on your posts, both positive and negative. Make sure your team is ready to handle this feedback, whether it’s handling complaints or appreciating compliments. Leverage this feedback to find and fix issues you may experience. 

Free, Digital Gifts

Consumers love free stuff, plain and simple. If that free stuff is promised as a result of spending a little bit of cash on something else they already want, then it’s a win-win. If you can swing it, giving out a free gift is a great tactic for increasing sales. The beauty of Cyber Monday and e-commerce is that you can give digital gifts- which can be much cheaper and easier to create. Popular examples of this include e-books or digital coupons, but a unique example is shouting out customers individually on social media.

Philanthropy

Team up with a charitable organization to do good on all sides—help the organization and those in need, help your own sales and brand awareness, and help consumers who will feel better about their purchases supporting the charity. That’s a triple-win!

Rewards for Fans

Customers who follow you on your social channels and subscribe to your email lists deserve some appreciation. Give it to them in the form of exclusive deals and other rewards that are meant for them only. Show others on social media that they can get in on the action too by joining the club.

Smart Pop-Ups

While people tend to hate pop-up ads, they do still convert. If you can craft smart pop-ups that are actually useful and not wholly invasive to the customer’s experience on your site, they may actually have a good shot at working. Be sure to include highly intriguing content, appealing visuals, and easy follow-through action options.

Unique Packaging

One way to encourage positive talk on social media is to improve your unboxing experience with post-worthy packaging. Awesome packaging will bring your brand further attention after the holiday has concluded and consumers are excitedly receiving the fruits of their labor. 

Website Requirements

Lastly, you should note the importance of having a Cyber Monday-ready website on the tech-end of things. Cyber Monday means a lot of traffic to most e-commerce sites, so if you’re expecting a virtual line similar to the hordes of Black Friday, talk with your tech team to be sure that your website is prepared to handle it all. The worst thing that can happen is downtime and errors when you could be making sales.

 

Need help crafting your marketing strategy to prepare for the holiday season? Our expert team of copywriters, developers, designers, and digital strategists at Kraus Marketing are here to help you capitalize on the Cyber Monday hype. Contact us to start planning today.