Loyalty and Black Friday: Can They Go Together?

There’s no doubt that Black Friday is a celebration of pure discounts and sales. However, things have been very different this year so why shouldn’t Black Friday be too? We highlight how to make your customer loyalty soar during Black Friday 2020.

As simple as a change of KPIs

If you’ve never thought about Black Friday and loyalty together all you need to ask yourself is: “what is my measure of success?”. It’s likely that the KPIs, such as customer acquisition, number of orders or revenue generated come to mind. The real question is, however, how can you make most of your new customers and sales over time?

The answer is (yes, you guessed it) loyalty. Loyalty programs and other retention strategies work to increase customer lifetime value. Customer lifetime value should be up there with your most important KPIs as it’s often a more accurate measure of marketing ROAS. Hence, if you want to maximise the impact of your Black Friday marketing budget, spend at least as much of your resources on retention and loyalty as on the short-term goals.

How to make it work?

The fact is that most consumers shopping online do some research first before making a buying decision. This is particularly true on Black Friday. Looking around for the best deal is standard practice and frankly, the entire point of this consumerist holiday. According to Google, consumers are much more value conscious this year due to the economic hardships connected to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Value. Now, what is a loyalty program supposed to offer customers again? That’s right, it’s value! Don’t forget that value is not necessarily just price. Offer your potential buyers an additional incentive to buy, on top of any discount you might have. These incentives can be double point offers for spending that weekend, a free present or a voucher for 10% off their next purchase. Whatever you can offer that will make you stand out from your competitors.

60% of shoppers have said they would shop at a store with slightly higher prices in order to earn a loyalty award.

Source: KPMG

Make it easy

If you are to use your loyalty program as part of your Black Friday efforts this year, don’t make your customers work for it. Communicate the perks of your program clearly at checkout and prompt new users to sign up. Make sure that any promo codes and calls to action are visible at every point in the customer journey. This will increase the likelihood of buyers signing up or engaging with the offer. Ultimately, this will lead to better results of your campaign.

Don’t cheat

Finally, if you are hoping to improve customer loyalty on Black Friday, don’t cheat. False advertising and offering prices that are only seemingly lower is a big no-go. Trust is key to any successful relationship and it is almost impossible to get back. Research shows that consumers’ expectations of trust have increased 250% year-on-year. So if you are going to cheat in any way this Black Friday, say goodbye to loyal customers and high customer lifetime value.