It’s almost that time of year again, Cyber Weekend. Black Friday falls on November 27th, with the weekend of discounts and special offers set to run right through to Cyber Monday on December 30th.

From independent digital traders to eCommerce giants, retailers across the globe are gearing up for the most lucrative long weekend year. 

With 77% of shoppers expect to make more of their purchases online this year, and with a certain degree of panic buying expected, it’s easy to see why so many retailers are hopeful of a bumper return.

The growth of eCommerce in 2020

Of course, in 2020 nothing is certain. But what we do know is that it has been a remarkable year for eCommerce. In fact, 2020 has seen the biggest year-on-year increase in online shopping‘s share of total retail sales, now standing at 11%.

In the US alone, eCommerce sales are estimated to reach $709.78 billion by the end of 2020, building on the not-insubstantial $601.65 billion in 2019.

The total global projection for eCommerce figures in 2020, by the way, is $4.2 trillion.

So how can you make sure that your brand is bringing in more than its fair share of that over Cyber Weekend? And what are some of the trends you should be watching out for?  

Let’s look at some ways you can increase revenue, enhance your customer experience and generate excitement over the next few weeks.

1. Use Cyber Weekend anticipation to build up your contact lists 

In the weeks leading up to Black Friday, capitalise on the growing excitement to increase your list of subscribers. And when the time comes to market the sale itself you’ll have a wider range of interested consumers to reach.

Use on-site pop-ups and in-app messages to grow email lists

Two or three weeks out from November 27th, we will most likely see a spike in traffic as people start researching the products they want and getting a sense of the full retail price.

This is particularly common for big-ticket items like technology and appliances. Some consumers will even wait for an entire year just to get a Black Friday deal!

Channels like on-site messages (also called web pop-ups) and in-app messages empower you to engage traffic across your brand’s two most important touchpoints. These are perfect opportunities to gather email addresses.

Your upcoming Black Friday sales are a compelling incentive here, so think about a short-term change in your copy to reflect this.

The messaging should emphasise that subscribers will be the first ones to receive the best deals and discounts.

You can get really granular here and track which specific product pages each customer is on when they sign-up. This data can then be fed into your engagement communications further down the line to personalise the content.

2. Recover abandoned carts and browse-abandons during Cyber Weekend

Cart abandonment is a plague across all verticals, but eCommerce brands experience it more often than others.

For every sale that’s made over the four-day frenzy, how many others will be lost at the checkout? A robust, automated recovery campaign is essential if you want to maximise your revenue.

As you can see in the example above, you aren’t restricted to email either. Depending on the individual’s previous engagement history, it may be more effective to send an in-app message or push notification.

We’ve seen some of our clients drive a remarkable 10% uplift in online sales (and 5x ROI) using using our real-time push notifications solution alongside their traditional email cart recovery campaign.

And of course, layering dynamic content into your automated campaigns is crucial in order to personalise these campaigns at scale.

3. Beat competitors and drive traffic to your website and app during Cyber Weekend

You simply can’t ignore the potential of push notifications to drive traffic and boost conversions this holiday season.

If they don’t currently feature in your customer engagement strategy then it’s certainly a channel you should look into. It’s a chance to directly engage potential customers with relevant, personalised offers.

If you’re interested in learning more about them, we’ve written this guide to creating the perfect eCommerce web push here. Naturally, the same principle apply to app pushes too.

With some analysts predicting that the biggest trend over Cyber Weekend 2020 will be real-time flash sales, push notifications are without a doubt the most effective way to execute this.

Convincing iOS app users and web traffic to opt-in for push notifications

If you want to grow your number of opted-in customers then it’s important that you get the “value exchange” right when asking them to submit their contact details. Essentially, what we’re doing here is highlighting what the customer gets out of it.

If you rely on the generic system opt-in message then you won’t be able to tailor your messaging. However, if your service provider is capable of supporting it then it is possible to create a custom opt-in message that will be shown to the user before asking for permission.

To learn more, check out our in-depth guides about encouraging opt-ins from app users and web browsers. 

Personalise your content and segment your users

Intelligent segmentation is vital. Without it, the alternative is blast-messaging your entire user base with a generic sales offer. 

Of course, this might drive a certain amount of traffic but it will never be as effective as a targeted message that speaks to an individual consumer’s interests and preferences.

You can also drill down into your analytics to focus on your most profitable, VIP customers and look to increase wallet-share from them by segmenting based on total spend or recent purchase history.

Interestingly, while Gen Y consumers are expected to shop in the largest numbers throughout Cyber Weekend, it’s actually the Gen Xers who spend the most. Again, these are the details you’ll want to be able to capitalise on when segmenting your campaigns and choosing which groups to focus your engagement efforts on.

Wrapping up

We hope this article has given you some ideas about enhancing your engagement strategy in the run-up to Cyber Weekend or the festive season. 

Download our free Multichannel Engagement Playbook for the eCommerce industry to see some of the other use cases we’ve rolled out for clients.

Get in touch

Feel free to contact us below to discuss how our solution can drive results for your brand.

We’re also attending the upcoming eTail Nordic 2020 event October 20th & 21st, so be sure to book in a digital meeting  with our eCommerce team if you’re planning on being there too!

About Xtremepush

Xtremepush is a world-leading customer engagement, personalisation and data platform. It’s purpose-built for delivering mobile-first, multichannel customer experiences. It enables businesses to acquire new customers and communicate more effectively with existing customers through automated, real-time and relevant messaging.

Xtrempush was named in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms. Read that report here.