The sales season is approaching – how does this benefit brands?

In countries with traditions of winter holidays, there are also traditions of winter holiday sales, when buyer activity is highest. The shopping season opens with Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the last week of November and progresses into the New Year’s discounts and winter sales.

During the holiday season, buyers prepare to buy almost anything, and sellers actively offer significant discounts. This leads to a substantial increase in revenue.

For example, in November and December 2021 alone, shoppers worldwide made $1.14 trillion in online purchases. This is 23% of the total annual retail sales in e-commerce.

The number of buyers on Black Friday reached 88 million, and site traffic was twice as high as on a typical day.

In general, 60% of seasonal sales occur offline, with about 40% of purchases made online.

Such a significant increase is achieved with large-scale advertising campaigns. Targeted advertising based on the region’s analysis; users’ characteristics attract already excited buyers who are just a step away from buying.

In addition to banner and targeted advertising, brands and manufacturers actively use mailing lists. With their help, you can attract customers to participate in the sale and encourage them to make purchases they have been putting off for a long time.

A perfect opportunity opens for selling related high-margin products, like covers and headphones for a newly purchased smartphone, accessories for a new dress, or a speaker system for a wide-angle TV.

Black Friday might seem like an excellent way to increase sales of a low-turnover product, but this offer should be used with caution as a small part of a promotion. Wrongly chosen, unpopular products can negate all the marketing department’s efforts and advertising costs.

In addition to the apparent effect of revenue growth, sales can increase brand awareness and customer loyalty. In 2021, 52% of total Black Friday shoppers were brand-new users. The percentage of those who repeatedly made purchases from the same brand reached 16%, those who made purchases for the third time – 9%, and the fourth – 5%.

Loyalty programs are of great importance for making repeat purchases. Obtaining clients’ data and consent to receive letters makes it more effective in conducting general promotions and targeted mailings. The loyalty programs themselves: the accumulation of points, discounts, and exclusive offers, encourage the client to return to the brand’s online store. The most effective recent trends in loyalty programs are personalized offers based on user behavior in social networks, game mechanics, brand collaborations, NFT collections, video creation, and VR and AR content.

A method that costs almost nothing to the brand but means a lot to its customers – early access to sales. Brand loyalists can choose discounted products before other buyers, receiving the best (and limited) offers. This creates and maintains a sense of their uniqueness and allows the company to sell goods close to customers’ needs before competitors.

What measures will help you get the most out of the winter sales? The National Retail Federation of the United States provides the following data on the factors influencing the decisions of buyers at sales:

1. Having flexible shipping options is essential to 83% of consumers
2. Time-limited discounts or well-advertised products – 36%
3. Convenient and easy-to-use apps and store websites – 21%
4. BOPIS system (buy online and pick up in-store) – 20%.

With delivery, at first glance, everything is clear – free services make your customers happier. However, it is necessary to consider the cost of delivery and competitors’ offers. Free shipping on orders over a certain amount can be a good option, which will help attract customers and increase the average check.

Advertising and limiting discounts over time is the basis of a successful sale. Buyers in the US on Black Friday expect a 50-80% discount on the price and will be disappointed if they are offered less. Discounts that are too large can raise suspicion of cheating.

Convenient and easy-to-use apps and store websites play a significant role. In addition to technical parameters, such as usability, the loading speed of a site or application, and ease of registration, recently, omnichannel has become more critical. Users want to communicate with the brand directly regardless of the platform or type of messenger service. Therefore, the brand must consider combining all channels into a connected, coordinated system to retain the client base. This ensures seamless communication and a unique user experience.

Product descriptions on the website must be accurate and complete. Poor or unattractive information will reduce the effectiveness of promotions, and exaggerated features may spur sales now but lead to customer frustration and loss of loyalty.

The Syntes MDM platform helps organize omnichannel commerce by taking advantage of automation and data science. MDM allows management of all marketplaces, an online brand store, and physical points of sale from a single information center. The product description and, characteristics, multimedia content always correspond to the brand book, and the support service can see complete information about the client from all sales and communication channels. This allows your customers to have a great user experience and become brand loyalists.

The ability to use physical points of sale to pick up orders made in an online store also presents a competitive advantage. As a rule, the brand, in such cases, can offer free shipping and payment on the spot. This reduces the risks to buyers and increases the average check. The presence of shop windows and sales assistants allows you to make additional sales, which is especially important during promotions.

The role of omnichannel and seamless integration of e-commerce and traditional retail data in a single data center is also critical here.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other popular and massive sales provide a sharp one-time increase in revenue and give an occasion to conduct an advertising campaign, attract attention and increase brand popularity. Some of the new users will become regular customers or even brand followers.

It is predicted that the “Black Friday” of 2022 will become even more significant after the post-COVID recovery. Due to the penetration of e-commerce, even those market segments that were not so actively involved in holiday sales, like delivery of ready-made meals, groceries, and snacks, are now expected to participate.

Inflation and potential shipping delays worry consumers, so they’ll search for discounts as early as November. They might be less loyal to their favorite brands and may choose based on the lowest price.

However, a properly planned and organized marketing campaign, intelligent automation, and knowledge of your own customers will help you maximize the value and strengthen the brand’s reputation.

Syntes, an international company, develops a next-generation MDM (Master Data Management) and PIM (Product Information Management) cloud platform and provides brands and manufacturers with services for creating, managing and automating D2C (Direct-to-Customer) sales and marketing channels. Syntes solutions and services are used by the world’s leading brands and manufacturers of consumer and business products such as Razer, Scarlett, Pantone, X-Rite, AVerMedia and others. Syntes is a registered trademark of Syntes, Inc.

Mentioned trademarks and company names are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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