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The After Cyber Monday Checklist for eCommerce Brands
Take a deep breath, in … and … out. You made it through the busiest shopping weekend of the year! Now, the big question. How did your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales go? Good, bad, worrisome?
The good news is that we are still in the holiday season and you have time to ramp up your marketing even more! Here’s a checklist of what you should be taking away from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend to really jump start your holiday sales.
1. Look at your BFCM numbers YOY.
When you’re analyzing your BFCM sales, it’s important to use a baseline. Last year’s numbers will give you an idea of how you did this year.
Here’s how to pull the numbers in Google Analytics:
Log in to your GA account. In the top right, there’s an option to customize the date.
Add in the custom date (this year Black Friday was November 29, 2019, and Cyber Monday was December 2, 2019).
Check the box for Compare to and Custom, then add in last year’s BFCM dates (November 23, 2018 to November 26, 2018).
View total sales YOY, or you can sort by channel.
If you didn’t see the same great results, try to pinpoint why. Maybe you sent out more emails last year or offered a better promotion this year? Whatever the case, you should be analyzing the data to discover insights that you can then apply to your holiday sales strategy.
2. Which channel produced the most sales?
This is an important one. You need to know where to allocate your budget and where to spend most of your time to get the highest returns.
Here’s how to see sales by channel:
Log in to your GA account
On the left-side navigation, go to Acquisition
Select Overview, then Channels.
Click the channel you’d like to view (e.g. paid search, email, organic traffic, social, etc.)
If you’re seeing one channel bringing in the majority of sales, up the budget and strategize ways to quickly grow that channel. It might be as easy as increasing your spend or involve creating more campaigns.
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3. Look at your competitors.
Hopefully, you took our advice from our Black Friday blog and closely followed what your competitors did on BFCM. Use this insight to improve your holiday promotions and/or messaging.
If you didn’t, don’t worry—there are some ways you can still gather competitor info:
Facebook Ad Library – Use this to see all of their Black Friday ads on Facebook.
Sign up for their email newsletter – They are probably still sending emails about the current promotion, so do this now.
Check their social channels – What images and promotions did they use in their Black Friday organic posts?
Search on Google within their site – Check if they still have a Black Friday landing page up. To do this, in the Google search bar, type in: “site:{competitor url} black friday” to populate search results from their website.
4. Analyze your email data.
Review your CTR, open rates, and conversion rates from your email campaigns. Gain insight into which emails drove sales, which emails flopped, and where (or if) your customers got fatigued from your promotions. Maybe a subject line crushed it with a higher open rate? Or an image produced the highest CTR you’ve ever seen? Really dive in and take a good look. Then use what you’ve learned to decide how you want to craft your holiday messaging, how many emails you want to send, and the type of emails you want to send.
5. Take a peek at your audience.
BFCM hopefully produced the most sales for you, so get familiar with the type of audience that purchased from you over the weekend. You might find a niche you were unaware of that you could target in the future.
Run a report in GA and see demographic data:
Log in to your GA account.
On the left side navigation, under Audience, click Demographics.
View the Overview or sort by:
Age (listed in groups: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 & 65+)
Gender
Interests (Go to Audience, then Interests to create this report)
Facebook offers lots of data including how many people see your ad and how many click your ad, as well as the amount you spent on each ad. Run a report on Facebook to see more data:
Log in to your Facebook Ads Manager.
View by Campaigns, Ad Sets, or Ads.
On the side panel, click Demographics.
View how your ad performs based on gender and age.
This is great insight into how you can target potential customers for your upcoming holiday promotions.
6. Look at your returning customers.
How did they react to your BFCM sale? This audience is so important because they are already brand advocates. Plus, it’s more cost efficient to keep a customer coming back then to find a new one. Analyze how many orders were returning orders to see if your BFCM audience was a majority of previous customers.
7. Analyze the items that sold best.
What were your top-selling items, brands, and/or categories? Were there any surprises? It might be worth offering a special promotion just for these items during your holiday sales campaigns. Consider different promotion types, such as bundling or BOGO for these popular items.
Keep Up the Holiday Momentum
Hopefully you gained some good insights from your BFCM sales data to help you ramp up your marketing efforts for the rest of the holiday season. Do what you can now to prepare your holiday campaigns for success, with a focus on your most profitable channels.
Also, don’t forget to thank the team, especially those who worked during the holiday. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is stressful for everyone involved, and this is the season of giving thanks, after all.
