BFCM 2019 Debrief - TribeTalk EP 23

Check out this TribeTalk from our Marketing Specialist, Kathryn Betancourt chatting with one of our Account Directors, Chris Grippo and one of our Growth Specialist, Sarah Ratliff. 

The BFCM Debrief 

This year’s BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) was definitely different! The fact that it was so late in the month really made things interesting. We hope all of you really took advantage of this, made money, and did your happy dance.

We saw a ton of discounts dropping earlier in the week prior to Thanksgiving to account for the November days that were missed. It seems that a lot of people were shopping on these days as they were great performing days for our clients on average. This was also good for giving ad platforms like Facebook and Google the opportunity to learn since the campaigns ran for a longer period of time. It gave them room to target better on the big days. 

Shopify’s BFCM Results

Shopify provided a live map as BFCM was happening. The map showed the overall BFCM results for their over 1 million merchants who sold $2.9+ billion during BFCM. This amount was up from $1.8 billion last year. The story here isn’t so much about BFCM but about how Direct to Consumer is being enabled by Shopify and it’s giving true brands the ability to compete. 

We often talk about AOV often with our clients. It’s really important to think about as you are investing resources to get your customers to buy, because a higher AOV makes getting to your target ROI easier. For BFCM shoppers in the U.S, the average order totaled $83.05, which is a great benchmark for AOV. Are you above or below that average? If below, maybe think more about bundles for next year. 

BFCM Mobile Shopping Trends

How did mobile perform during BFCM? Smartphones had 46% growth from last year!

Techcrunch reported mobile purchases accounting for 39% of all purchases during BFCM. On Cyber Monday, mobile orders hit $3 billion, for 32 percent of all revenue. Mobile revenue was up from last year’s $2.1 billion on Black Friday and $2.2 billion on Cyber Monday.

One of the most interesting facts is that mobile produced 61% of all Black Friday traffic. Even though more purchases happened on desktop, more browsing happened on Mobile. Like in past years, we continue to see people scouting products on their phones, but purchasing when they got back to their laptops later. This really reinforces that consumer shopping is a multi-channel, multi-device process. Holistically, it’s important to think about what your mobile experience is like. People are going to most likely visit your site on mobile one way or another, so how does it stack up to the standards they’re expecting?

If potential purchasers aren’t on your site, then they might be looking at your emails. On Black Friday, 56% of marketing emails that brought in attributable revenue were opened on mobile phones and increased to 60% over the weekend. We really can’t just think about our brands in silos. It needs to be a comprehensive experience that all work together strategically. 

That’s A Wrap

Now that we’re through BFCM, the last date shipping cut-off continues to creep up. If you aren’t already, we definitely recommend retargeting shoppers that added to cart during BFCM and hitting them with an email sequence to bring them back to your site to convert. Use the heck out of the shipping cut off as a scarcity tactic!