The 100 day playbook to win Black Friday with Black Crow AI

For many e-commerce brands, Black Friday Cyber Monday is the main event, your opportunity to drive awareness and engage new users as they ready their wallets to kickoff holiday shopping. And the anticipation is justified: in 2022, U.S. consumers spent a record $9.12 billion online on Black Friday. But as every all-star athlete can attest, it’s preparation that can make or break your performance. 

September and October: Assemble the Scaffolding

‍

When it comes to paid ad spend, every e-commerce marketer knows that competition drives up cost. That’s why we recommend beginning your BFCM strategy as early as September. The reason behind this is simple: it’s far less expensive to generate a high volume of traffic to your site before the holiday shopping season begins.

‍

You should focus on two primary marketing goals during September and October:

1. Build awareness by getting as many users onto your site as possible
2. Capture those user’s email addresses and phone numbers as effectively as you can

‍

Since time is of the essence, there are two tools you can arm yourself with to accomplish both objectives: Smart ID and Predictive Offer.

‍

Smart ID leverages server-side tracking so that you can recognize returning users indefinitely.  Without it, you can’t recognize a user for more than 7 days— even if they’ve subscribed to email or SMS in the past. Smart ID enables you to engage with more customers in email / SMS and improves Facebook performance by sending high-quality user data that improves ad performance. The result is that you’re able to engage with them in a way that better aligns with their needs, even if weeks go by between actions. 

‍

For example, a user visits your site in October, adds a couple items to their cart, enters their email to begin the checkout process, but then bounces. Without Smart ID, you’d be unable to recognize that user when they return a few weeks later. That means you’re unable to retarget them effectively, or trigger messaging flows that encourage them to convert.

‍

But with Smart ID, you can link a user’s behavior and other signals across multiple visits, and dramatically increase the accuracy of your retargeting efforts through Meta, email and SMS.. Black Crow customer Wondercide increased their ROI by 31x using Smart ID, because they were able to avoid signal loss and more effectively communicate with customers.

‍

The second tool that’s built to help you conquer BFCM is Predictive Offer. Predictive Offer’s AI changes the game when it comes to using welcome offers to grow email & SMS lists. 95% of the time, users dismiss homepage welcome overlays instantly. But, prompting the welcome offer at later stages of the shopping journey drives additional, incremental subscriptions.

‍

Predictive Offer uses machine learning to display the welcome overlay when shoppers are more likely to engage. What’s more, the same predictive technology can also determine the best offer to display for that specific user at that specific time. The result? Users are 2-3x more likely to submit their email address or phone number. For Clean Simple Eats, the result was being able to collect a whopping 35% more email addresses!

‍

Smart ID and Predictive Offer are the perfect one-two-punch for optimizing your email program this holiday season. Acquire more subscribers with Predictive Offer, then re-engage them efficiently with Smart ID. Armed with both tools, your CRM will soon be bursting at the seams—you’ve laid the groundwork for a record-breaking BFCM. 

‍

Early November: The Final Countdown

‍

As the anticipation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday increases, so too does the cost of advertising on Meta (historically by as much as 30%). Luckily, just as costs begin to rise, you can lean on Predictive Audiences to make your prospecting and retargeting efforts more cost effective.

‍

Predictive Audiences uses your first party data to generate a custom machine learning model that determines which users are most likely to convert through your Meta ads. The result is more effective spend, so that your ad dollars can go as far as possible when it comes to reaching those who are mostly likely to tap on your ad, browse your site, and submit their email.

‍

Better data enables Predictive Audiences to output more accurate predictions.The traffic you’ve generated up to this point will pay off as you focus your budget on the users that are closest to making a purchase, leading to better CAC and record breaking ROAS.

‍

The Big Day: Black Friday and Cyber Monday

‍

Brands that follow the Black Crow AI strategy can expect standout Black Friday and Cyber Monday performance to typical e-commerce businesses. If you’ve already captured thousands of new email addresses for your database, and enriched that data with Smart ID, you’ve essentially entered a cheat code to avoid exorbitant BFCM ad costs. You’ve unlocked the ability to employ an active marketing strategy, rather than a passive one.

‍

While you can still serve up special promotions or discounts, those efforts won’t take place in a vacuum:

• Your ad spend can be targeted not to new users, but toward those who have already visited your site and have some familiarity with your brand and products.
• Your messaging and promos can utilize machine learning to serve up the optimal offer for each user. 
• Your abandonment flows and other email retargeting efforts will be much more likely to convert, since they’re geared toward an audience that you’ve already been communicating with for weeks.

Imagine getting a browse abandonment email that reflects not just the products you’ve looked at during your most recent web session, but all of the products you’ve browsed across multiple visits and several weeks. The personalized nature of that communication is much more likely to convert, especially if it’s paired with a custom discount or other offer. That’s the power of Smart ID.
‍

December and beyond: Long-term Impact

After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s important to continue to focus on acquisition as shoppers continue to buy for the Holidays. Once you’ve converted browsers into buyers, retain them by engaging effectively in email and SMS. With Smart ID, server side tracking allows you to increase ROAS on Facebook and send more abandonment messages to customers that were previously unrecognizable due to third-party cookie expiration
‍

A record-breaking BFCM starts right now

‍

We’ve explored how Smart ID, Predictive Offer, and Predictive Audiences can help you crush your BFCM goals. Since there’s a clear advantage to getting started early, we’re excited to offer a free trial to all the Black Crow products discussed in this article. That means you can get all the pieces in place for the best BFCM ever, and start enjoying increased revenue right away.

‍

Ready to get started? Book a demo today!