$25.3 Billion in 3 Days!

“Black Friday $9 billion,” “Cyber Monday $11,2 billion ” “Thanksgiving Sales $5,1 billion”. Only three days within a span of 7 days that account for $25,3 billion in e-commerce revenue in the US alone in 2021*! More and more discount battles are added to the original seasonal sales, of which Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the biggest online shopping events of the year.

It is obvious that Black Friday can bring you a lot of extra revenue. It can also bring you exposure, as it is the perfect opportunity to grab the attention of new customers who hadn’t considered you before. But these additional revenues through discounts come at a cost. Especially in times of economic hardship, customer retention and loyalty is important. Two key questions many e-commerce companies struggle with are:

- Will Black Friday customers stay loyal?
- What will be the effect of all these actions on customer lifetime value?

According to the Conjura benchmarking study on Black Friday sales, the six-month lifetime value (LTV) of customers acquired during this period is 9 per cent lower than the average for the rest of the year. Mainly because of customer acquisition costs (CAC),which are 13 per cent higher during Black Friday week relative to other times of the year as calculated on paid digital media (paid search and paid social marketing).‍

Discounts are an important driver of the CAC. And this may also have a longer aftermath. The more products a company puts on sale, the more people will expect discounts in the future. According to Profit well, discounted customers are more likely to churn out and look for a cheaper alternative, leading to a lower lifetime value (LTV).

So customers acquired during Black Friday and Cyber Monday tend to have a lower lifetime value. This lower LTV occurs partly because these customers were being opportunistic and taking advantage of the promotions, but also because the brand loses mindshare throughout the year.

Does this mean that as an ecommerce business, you should not participate in black Friday promotions? No. It can indeed bring you a lot, but for retention it is key to take care of your customers post-purchase. It's essential for scalable and profitable growth to put inplace a strategy to create loyal customers, drive Christmas sales and hook people into your brand for the long haul. The post-purchase period is especially impactful for new customers and the perfect time to establish a positive first impression. Three important things to consider to improve the post-purchase journey are segmentation, personalisation and timing.

- Segmentation:
Using customer data to segment customers into categories based on particular criteria can be highly effective and make your business much more cost efficient. It allows you to connect withyour customers in a way that suits them by targeting them with personalized service and messages they want to hear and through platforms they want to use.

Companies tend to approach anyone who purchased during Black Friday for Christmas purchases. But, it might not be wise do not retarget every person who purchased any product during black Friday with the entire product range.  
The temptation can be to hit every new customer with dynamic product ads across your entire product feed. but intelligently segmenting and serving relevant mailing, content and ads is the key to driving repeat sales with cost efficiency.

- Personalisation:   
 Shoppers expect personalization and convenience at each step of their shopping experience. Personalization determines relevant offers and content to present to users based on their data – demographics, search or browsing history, past purchases,website engagement, and more. The key to driving customer loyalty, and driving repeat purchases that increase revenue is to create positive impressions across multiple touchpoints using that data. A successful type of ecommerce personalisation is recommending customer-specific products.

- Timing:
The importance of timing already starts during Black Friday. It’s a question as old as time itself: How often should I email my segments about Black Friday or Cyber Monday? The most successful campaigns must take timing into account — when a customer is most likely to click or make a purchase — for the best results. Different segments have different patterns of buyer behavior — a millennial shopper might not be as inclined to click on an email before 6am as, say, a baby boomer. But also after Black Friday, an important factor to consider when adjusting the email-cadence is the typical lifecycle, or purchase cycle, of the customers. It’s about using all the different metrics and data to determine the next best moment to engage with your customers.

Predictive intelligence to transforn one-off customers into loyal customers

How to effectively segment, what type of personalisation to use, what moment to engage again. Like anything, this is easier said than done. Using predictive analytics can help companies answer those questions. Churned is one of those predictive analytics solutions. Churned AI takes away the guesswork and analyses purchase patterns to help ecommerce companies transform new customers into loyal customers. By integrating a fully data-driven customer approach, companies are able to make customer-specific next-best-action recommendations that tell:

- When is the best time to re-engage;
- What is the best way to engage;
- Which products to recommend

By targeting customers at the right time and only with the rightcontent, it is possible to re-engage and ultimately retain customers.

* Adobe Analytics based these numbers on 1 trillionvisits to US online shops.