Shopify merchants reached a record of $9.3 billion in sales* over Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend — a 24% increase from last year. From early Friday in New Zealand to late Monday in California, more than 61 million consumers globally purchased from brands powered by Shopify. Lets delve into a BFCM Recap and share learnings drawn from what the worlds best brands embraced in 2023.
Shopping peaked when collective sales reached $4.2 million per minute at 12:01 p.m. EST on Black Friday. “Watching entrepreneurs make their first sale and seeing established brands reach new highs on Black Friday-Cyber Monday was incredible,” said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein. “Our merchants spend all year building relationships with their customers and earning brand trust. This weekend was a testament to how they consistently deliver experiences and products that global consumers are looking for.”
BFCM highlights from Shopify Merchants:
-Peak sales per minute: $4.2 million at 12:01 PM EST on Nov. 24
-61 million consumers globally purchased from Shopify-powered brands
-Hottest product categories: apparel and accessories, health and beauty, and home and garden
-Average cart price: $108.12 ($107.53 on a constant currency basis)
-Top selling countries: U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and Germany
-Cross-border orders represented 15% of all global orders
-60% year-over-year increase in sales made via Shop Pay
-More than 55,000 merchants had their highest-selling day ever on Shopify
At its peak during BFCM, the platform handled a staggering 967K requests per second. That’s equivalent to 58 million requests per minute. 🚀
Learn more about how shopify merchants drove $9.3 Bn in BFCM sales here.
12 BFCM Insights & Learnings:
1.Clear Offers & Early Planning Worked Well:
Those brands that began with clear offers and built deal-specific site experiences, messaging that makes the offer loud and clear coupled with constant reminders that the deal is happening and expiring soon, benefited the most.
Planning began as early as July 2023 coupled with implementation of BFCM preparation in the third quarter of the year.
2. Brand Building with UGC, social media, influencers worked:
Those brands that invested heavily in telling their brand story leveraging influencers, user generated content and social media coupled with building credibility leveraging reviews and community saw amazing results. Brands that focused on building rich content, focused on influencer brand/media collaborations, a good customer experience, and a brand that focused on building a solid product that does what it says were the key reasons that led to the brand staying relevant.
3. Brands that focused on reducing purchase friction testing offers in advance worked well:
Brands that worked on streamlining the purchase experience, worked on conversion rate optimization (CRO), optimizing for offer specific experiences, building microsites, landing one click checkouts, focusing on building peaks and creating offers around events. Testing offers ahead and in advance worked well.
4.Static ads and UGC videos performed exceptionally well:
The standard paid social video assets did not neccesarily drive a majority of the purchases – static ads with a clear offer and UGC assets that focused on product demos and feature benefits worked. Static ads worked due to product placements and details while UGC worked both to inform and entertain.
5.Brands that focused on promotional iterations/adjustments real-time were the winners:
Teams that focused on making quick updates to the website, emails, texts, the ad creative, and those that went live on the fly constantly leveraging data points to make informed decisions – did very well.
If you didn’t have the ability to have a team on standby, you were only able to do what you had previously setup. The larger you are, the more likely you want to have a team or your internal team on standby.
6. Brands with a list built up exclusively for BFCM worked well:
In the weeks or months leading up to BFCM, building out a specific opt-in list for those interested in BFCM unlocked huge revenue for many brands, including some being 7-figures. Even if it was a list of people who have, at some point, entered their email for the “Back in stock notification,” it proved to do well.
Learn more on how to build email lists for ecommerce stores here. A smart way to build this list is promoting on your website pages, for those interested to unsubscribe from your email list at the bottom of your email, and add a box that says, “Only send me Black Friday/holiday offers”. To capture hand-raisers who would like to be informed about your early access BFCM deals and onwards worked well. Learn more on how brands mastered BFCM in 2023 here.
7. Organic social content pays big during BFCM & Beyond:
Everyone is on the same main social platforms, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Many brands were running ads, but not as many were putting out as much organic content on Instagram Reels and TikTok. Those who did saw sales surge their daily revenue by 4-7X each day. Just creating content about the sale being live combined with product demos or product related information, right in front of people who are interested in what you’re selling, seemed to be a successful strategy.
For some brands, TikTok was the largest traffic referral on Shopify link-in bios.
8.Offering no discount but product drops helped save margins:
This year, one of the most purchased products was Jones Road Beauty’s Miracle Balm. Jones Road ran a promotion for BFCM offering their miracle balm minis for $68.40. Their “promotion” was this SKU being available to shop, similar to a product drop model.
Jolie also ran a similar promotion. They have never discounted, but they offered a free tote bag with any purchase of a Jolie shower head. They did hefty numbers in terms of revenue, up year over year, and did this without a discount. Ezra Firestone’s BOOM by Cindy Joseph, also embraces the same tactics and has been a forerunner and thought-leader to implement a no or low discount policy for BFCM
9.Brands that started sooner, simply made more money:
A common misconception is that if you start your sale too soon, you will clear your funnel too quickly and then experience a dip when the real Black Friday or Cyber Monday rolls around. That proved to be false. From what we saw, the brands that had started BFCM earlier, just kept experiencing high revenue days with no slowdown in sales.
This proved to be true with brands that updated their offers OR if they stayed the same the whole time. Doing the former allows you to continue tapping your owned customer lists without feeling like you’re sending the same thing over and over again.
10.Repeat purchases nearly made up for half of all BFCM sales:
All brands must drive both acquisition and retention in order to hit profitability throughout the year. But while BFCM has long been considered an acquisition-first event, our data suggests otherwise: Nearly half (47%) of all purchases from Klaviyo customers during BFCM were made by repeat purchasers—pointing to the increased importance of customer retention and loyalty in BFCM success.
11.Brands leveraging AI for personalization saw better CTRs & CVRs:
During BFCM, messages sent through Klaviyo that were personalized with dynamic content earned 17% higher average click rates and 40% higher average order conversion rates than non-personalized messages. Klaviyo 2023 BFCM Aftermath Report shares more insights.
Still, only 22% of marketing messages sent by Klaviyo customers during BFCM were personalized with dynamic content—suggesting there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Learn more on how AI is inspiring entrepreneurs win holiday shopping.
12. Holiday marketing is the next focal point, post-BFCM:
Brands that are mature in their digital commerce strategies, realize that BFCM is not the end game. Planning for holiday marketing strategies ahead and in advance, allows brands to effectively retain newly acquired customers, and build brand loyalty with repeat purchasers.
Learn more on how to dominate the holiday returns game post BFCM for your store
At Smarte Digital Inc. we offer irresistible Q5 holiday offers that will help you and your team get to a winning start in 2024. To know more, book a free 30 min introductory call with us at https://www.smartedigital.com/contact-us
