For some of you, you have just finished up with Black Friday and Cyber Monday! However, while your shopping deals may have ended, it is not yet time to push your campaign aside. With your completed promotion, it is now time to measure its success and refine your campaign for next year!

When it comes to determining if your promotional campaign was a success, you need two things: goals and metrics. Your goals should reflect what a successful promotional campaign looks like to you while the metrics you track should give that goal measurable numbers. There are many metrics we can consider when figuring out a campaign’s success as well as many ways to track them. Some metrics we can track are:

Traffic

One metric that is always useful to track is traffic: how many people visited your site during your promotion? Traffic can be a great way to measure how well your marketing efforts & special deals attracted users to your site! Tracking traffic can be done in multiple ways. In terms of the number of users who browse your site during your promotion, you can measure “sessions” with analytics tools such as Google Analytics 4. Sessions let you not only see how many people visited your site, but can also give you a glimpse of how long users stayed on your site as well! If you have set up your marketing materials to track clicks, you can also look at those numbers to see how many people decided to check out your deals!

Engagement

User engagement is a great way to track what your most effective content was during your promotional campaign. Overall, tracking engagement means tracking how users engage with your content. This can come in the form of clicks, participation in polls, social media likes, shares, comments, and so forth. With the help of social media & email management tools, for example, you can collect engagement data and compare your marketing material: what did users interact with the most? What received the least interaction? By taking note of what your customers like and don’t like, you can create even better marketing materials next year!

Lead Generation

Lead generation is a lot like engagement, but instead of simply engaging with your content, leads would be users who connected with you in some way. A lead could be a user who subscribed to your newsletter or social media channels, or a user who downloaded a freebie. Leads are valuable to you because they are interested customers who want to continue receiving information about your products and services, even beyond your current promotion. Track what content led to the leads you received to better understand what your customers want to see!

Sales & Quotes

Of course, during your special events, sales are a must have metric when evaluating your campaign’s success! Tracking sales can help you learn a few things about your campaign’s effectiveness, such as what your most popular products are, how effective past lead generations were at nurturing conversions, and even how well you are encouraging customer loyalty. Ideally, when tracking sales during your campaign, you want to compare those sales to your normal sales numbers: do you see an increase in sales? Compare your sales increase with the goals you set for your promotion event and see how you fared!

Customer Feedback & Surveys

As your campaign comes to a close, asking your customers for feedback is a great way to gain insight into what your customers want and to spot areas of opportunity. Through the use of surveys, you can collect poll results for things like customer satisfaction concerning your products, website, customer service, and more. You can also offer the opportunity for free-form feedback, such as product reviews, that can lead to quality social proof and insight into ways you can improve your products and shopping experience.

Want to learn more?

Figuring out whether or not your promotional campaign was a success can be difficult, even with data to consult. Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy Podcast where we dive into how to refine your promotion with a positive and realistic mindset.

With Black Friday & Cyber Monday rushing upon us, it’s time to review your strategy! When it comes to preparing your online business for a successful shopping campaign, there are a few steps you can take to not only draw customers in but stand out amongst the competition!

When it comes to major shopping events like Black Friday, standing out online can be difficult. Afterall, in a sea of online businesses, how can you make your deals and website more enticing than the rest? When reviewing your Black Friday strategy, there are a few key tasks that you should pay special attention to:

Offer Irresistible Deals

Shopping events like Black Friday are all about deals! Crafting an irresistible deal requires a deep understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. Once you determine the products and services your customers love, there are a variety of ways to apply attractive discounts to them. Bundle deals, buy-one-get-one-free promotions, limited-time offers, or even time-limited products are great ways to create enticing deals that you share exclusively during your shopping event. With any deal, make sure that the value of your discounted offerings is clear and easy to understand to further make it stand out.

Check & Optimize Website Performance

Major shopping events often result in unusually high traffic for online business owners. Both old and new customers will be browsing your special promotions and deals, so one of the first things you should do to prepare is check your site’s health and performance. Make sure your site is ready for heightened traffic: this includes checking your site’s speed and responsiveness. Afterall, a slow site can lead to frustrated customers and lost sales.

Re-visit your Site’s Mobile Experience

Many customers during major shopping events will be browsing and purchasing products on their phones. On top of making sure your site is optimized for speed and responsiveness, making sure your site’s mobile experience provides a seamless shopping experience is imperative to keeping potential customers on your site. This is especially true for mobile checkout! Optimize your mobile checkout process to minimize friction and encourage quick and easy purchases.

Create a Marketing Plan

Ideally, before any major shopping event such as Black Friday, you and your team should create a marketing strategy. From social media to online advertising, plan out and create your marketing content to create excitement around your upcoming special deals. On both your social accounts and in your email, consider sending teaser emails and posts in the days leading up to Black Friday. If you have different tiers of customers, tailor your marketing material towards their needs and wants, creating anticipation around the deals you created just for them!

Provide Excellent Customer Service

During such busy times of the year, there is going to be an influx of new and old customers. It is important that you and your team are prepared to provide any customer service they may need. From being active on your contact channels to making sure that your deals, shopping information, and return policies are clearly stated, you want to create an experience that customers remember positively. Beyond providing assistance for customers who run into trouble, reaching out to customers post-purchase just to check in with them is also a great way to show that your business cares about the service you provided them, which can lead to good reviews and repeat business.

Want to Learn more?

Looking for more insights on how to make your Black Friday and future shopping event successful? Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy Podcast where we further explore how to stand out during these highly competitive times of the year!

Celebrating special occasions with customers is a strategic and meaningful way for businesses to build and maintain positive relationships. From anniversaries to the change of seasons, there are multiple special occasions that can act as a catalyst for customer loyalty and business growth! However, what special occasions should you consider?

Why should I consider celebrating special occasions through my business?

Celebrating events with your customers is a great opportunity to deepen your relationship with your customer base. Through these shared celebrations, you can:

• Encourage Engagement – What is a celebration without a party? Special occasions provide an excellent opportunity to engage with your customers. Whether it be through special promotions or just festive content, celebrating with your customers is a great time to encourage customer interaction with your business and content.
• Increase Brand Visibility – Celebrating events with your customers is a great time to share who you are as a business! As with any marketing campaign, special occasions can contribute to building a positive brand image. These events can help make your business feel relatable and show that you share similar values with your customers.
• Foster Customer loyalty – By including your customers in your celebrations, you show customers how much you appreciate them. Customers that feel valued are more likely to become loyal to your brand.
• Get Customer Feedback – Special occasions are a great time to ask customers to share their thoughts on your business. From success stories to requests for feedback, starting a dialogue with your customers not only provides insight into the future of your business, but also lets your customers know that their opinions matter!

What special occasions could I celebrate with my customers?

Anniversaries

Anniversaries come in a variety of forms. You could celebrate your business’ opening anniversary or even the anniversaries of popular products or services that define your business. If you collect analytics on your customer base, you could even consider celebrating the anniversary of when a customer first started using your products or services! Overall, anniversaries are a great way to acknowledge customer loyalty over the years.

Customer Appreciation Events

Instead of waiting for specific events to celebrate your customers, you can designate a customer appreciation day or week at your business. During your customer appreciation event, you can share special deals and events with your customers to show your thanks for their continued support!

Holidays

Depending on your audience, holidays can be a great way to celebrate with customers and share special promotions. From holidays such as Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving or Christmas, holidays are full of excitement that can be a great catalyst for customer engagement! However, one thing to keep in mind, especially for online businesses, is that some of your audience may not celebrate certain holidays. When creating marketing content for holiday-related occasions, try to stay inclusive so that all your customers can still enjoy your content.

Customer Birthdays

On a smaller scale, celebrating your customer’s birthday can make your customer’s day! This could be a simple email with a special discount just for them. By celebrating your customer’s birthday, you affirm that you remember them and consider their special day important!

Milestone Achievements

Our customers’ support throughout the years helps us grow as businesses, so it’s only natural to celebrate business milestones with them! From selling a certain number of products to expanding your business to include new locations or services, company milestones are an excellent time to thank customers and get valuable feedback.

Seasonal Events

Changing seasons are an effective time to reach out to customers. Creating promotional events to help prepare customers for the season, whether that be for themselves or for their own businesses, is an easy way to engage with your customers and meet them where they are! Just as with holidays, note that the seasons change differently around the world, so be conscious of that when creating seasonal special events.

Want to learn more?

Interested in celebrating special occasions with your customers, but not sure how to go about it? Listen to our latest eCommerce Made Easy podcast where dive into the variety of ways you can share the joy of special occasions with your customer base. From discounts to simple thank you notes, there are multiple ways to celebrate with your customers!