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Video Transcript
0:03 – Hi, everyone. We’re excited to jump into some of the top trends and insights we’re expecting for 2024 when it comes to BFCM and Cyber Week. To kick us off, what are we seeing in terms of differences between 2024 and 2023 at Flywheel Strategy? One of the biggest changes we’re expecting is users and consumers leaning into that online to offline purchasing behavior.
0:33 – When we think of things like BOPIS, buy online, pick up in store, there are expectations out there that it will be upwards of $30 billion in revenue that’s available to brands who make it seamless and easy for users to buy from their phone, have it delivered to their home, go in store, place an order that that’s delivered to their doorstep if they’re traveling.
0:51 – Any combination of omni channel is really what users are and consumers are looking for. They’re on the move, they’re busy. It’s hard to be at the doorstep exactly when they need to be when it’s delivered. So it’s important for for companies to be investing in how do we have an omni channel presence that really meets consumers where they want to be during the holiday season.
1:14 – That’s trend #1 trend #2 that we’re expecting is a shift away from the promotion structures we’ve seen in 2021 through 2023. So the glory days of BFCM many moons ago online was roll out your most limited, hot, most exclusive offer.
1:35 – 2021 through 2023 saw a shift into a bargain by mentality for BFCM. Complicated promotions and discounts that were optimized for the biggest and best deals being on inventory overhauls as a way to move through the warehouse, you know, inventory that’s stuck in the warehouse.
1:56 – Consumers felt that consumers felt like they were hopping online not to find the biggest and best deal, but all of a sudden to have to sort through the offerings that each company was providing for them.
2:08 – So for 2024, it’s really about bringing back into view of crisp, clear, impactful promotion that consumers are going to want to press the buy button for and the noise of all of the brands that are still leaning into that bargain bin mentality for their promotions for the holiday season.
2:29 – There’s about 30% of the revenue that e-commerce businesses make happen in this six to seven week time period. And the way to maximize your revenue during this time period is really going to focus on how clear and crisp and concise is your message in the marketplace.
2:47 – When we think about how do we set your team up for success, here are a few ways we think about what to do in each month for the month of September. It’s really about sitting down with your supply chain inventory planning teams, looking at what inventory do you have available, what has been selling through best and most, and what’s bringing the biggest gains from a profit margin perspective.
3:09 – Shape your promotion around those things. September is around making your promotion, moving it from complicated and complex to simplified and powerful in partnership with both your marketing and merchandising teams.
3:26 – Then as you move into October with that crisp clean promotion, you’re going to want to think about operationalizing your teams so that they can be nimble and data-driven as they respond to the marketplace for the holidays. What this could look like is a weekly stand up. We find that to be very effective across cross functional teams.
3:45 – The teams to include would be CX marketing, digital product analytics and supply chain inventory across all of these orgs. You’ll be sharing in the month of October how you’re progressing into your preparations for Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
4:05 – This will look like, when is code freeze happening? What feature sets are going live ahead of code Freeze? Really turning down the messaging on discounting ahead of BFCM so that users are there’s a pallet cleanser before the big BFCM deal comes through. So you move into November what you’re going to want to look at as your promotion kicks off.
4:26 – Most companies kick off in the middle of the month. This year it looks like it’ll be November 13th to 14th for most, most companies. Some are are starting as early as end of October. The core BFCM. Is really mid November to through Cyber Monday and the first week of December as your promotion is running, continue not only those weekly, but move to daily stand ups with that cross functional team 10 to 15 minutes.
4:54 – If all of the numbers are through the roof, celebrate the wins on those stand ups and continue to look for how can we make this even bigger and better. What numbers do we think that there’s more opportunity and potential for? Realistically, what we see in those daily stand ups is that there are user journeys, flows, channels that are not performing as expected.
5:16 – Being able to tinker, adapt and adjust is really important in this time frame if you want to maximize your the value that you’re bringing to the business. So this might look like managing conversion rate, average order value, marketing channel performance, click through rates and sell through rates of your top performing SKUs.
5:37 – All of this data can lead to what you’re going to optimize in your headlines, your merchandising order, which redirects your sending traffic to give it about three to five days to set the baselines of performance. Find what’s doing well versus what’s not, and then start anchoring the user flows and metrics that aren’t performing to those that are and you’ll see great success.
6:00 – Then when you think about December, the key here is not to kick up your feet and go on vacation. As soon as BFCM Cyber Week is wrapped, 75% of the revenue for BFCM is happening outside of Cyber Week, So make sure you have a strong action plan in place from a promotion standpoint, from a messaging standpoint.
6:21 – In terms of holiday and gift giving, we’re seeing a trend towards users and consumers purchasing through the very end of December. Things like gift cards and digital deliveries of gifts are becoming more and more common and socially acceptable.
6:38 – This means you have an opportunity as a brand to meet that first week of December. Assess where you’re you landed from a promotion standpoint for Cyber Week.
6:49 – Take that base holiday messaging you have planned for December, adjust as needed and then go to market with those weekly standups cross functionally to ensure in December you’re maximizing the opportunity for your business. Lastly, how does Flywheel fit into the BFCM strategy for the brands that we work with?
7:09 – Most of the companies we work with, we focus in on that strategic part of collaboration and operational unlocks in addition to how to dial the nozzles for marketing spend and messaging.
7:22 – It really is about finding those opportunities for data to be central, customer feedback to be central and positioning the teams to execute quickly and nimbly with low stress in this peak performance time for the business.
7:38 – What that could look like In BFCM 2023, one of the brands that we were working with, they had a two week promotion. What they saw was about 5 days in, we were observing those metrics I talked about earlier, conversion rate, average order value, click through rates across their marketing channels and across devices.
7:57 – About 5 days into that 14 day promotion, we saw opportunities to tune up both where we were sending traffic as well as the headline consistency from off site to on site messaging. As we did this, we ended the promotion 20% over our conversion rate goal with two days of the promotion and double digits for conversion rate.
8:21 – So both Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we were in double digits for conversion rates, which was you know a huge and wild success for the business. All because of their commitment to being data-driven, user driven and adapting and being nimble, making sure the changes that they were bringing to market during that peak time were low risk and easy execution.
8:42 – So with that, that’s our wrap, that’s Flywheel Strategies take on the BFCM trends to look out for for 2024.
