Prepare for Black Friday

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OK, we will go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone.

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Good morning to those of you out on the West Coast, and welcome to today’s webinar, Prepare for Black Friday: Turn Last Year: Seasonal Buyers, and the Repeat Customers this holiday season.

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Today’s presentation is hosted by Searchspring, we’re joined today by experts from Simplistic, Attentive and Reseller Ratings.

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Just a moment here to turn on my camera.

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Hello, everyone.

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My name is Charles Summers. I’ll be serving as your moderator for the next hour.

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You can feel free to reach out to me anytime regarding our webinars, any future topics, or really anything Searchspring related.

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Even if you want to join as a, as a panelist on one of these webinars, sometime in the future, you can reach out to me for that as well.

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Love to have you. And the slides, I just want to mention this, the slides for this presentation.

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You can find those in the handout section in the goto Webinar control panel that will contain all of all of the content that I showed you here today, as well as my contact information or experts contact information.

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There’s some upcoming slides here that have good, important information for you as well. Speaking of the control panel, please take a moment to locate the questions queue. That’s where you can enter any questions that you might have for our experts today.

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We will be answering those questions as we go, if they fit within our natural conversation that we’re having during the bulk portion of today’s presentation.

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Or you can enter the error, or we will be answering them during the Q and A session, at the end, We have 10 to 15 minutes usually, dedicated to that, depending on how many questions that we get from the audience.

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Today’s webinar is Part two of our 5, 5 part webinar series, which is designed to help you prepare for black credit each step along the way.

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If you’re interested in joining more webinars, you can follow the, the link to our Black Friday hub.

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We’ve created a Black Friday Hub page with tons of really great resources. Lots of e-books, lots of how to lots of blogs, webinars, that sort of thing. Simple, some fun pulls in there as well. I’m joined by Teresa, my colleague here at Searchspring.

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And she’s going to drop the link to that, that homepage, into the chat right now, so you can follow that link. Go register for all the upcoming webinars.

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Also, pretty fun thing that we’re doing.

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We’re giving out 50, Black Friday, we’re calling them survival kits, their **** kits. So if you score 30 points, you can, you can get one of these get sent to you. So, Susie, hit 30 points, we send those out.

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And here’s, this slide, kinda outlines how you can get your, your Black Friday swag kit. So square 30 points.

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And then there’s a lot of different ways to do that. All of those are available on that Black Friday hub page. It looks like Teresa just posted that.

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Search stream dot com backslash win dashed black Dash credit.

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Lots of different ways. What I know about today’s audience is that many of you have already registered for all five webinars.

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So no, two points per webinar.

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So that’s 10. Plus, if you register for all of them, will give you two bonus points.

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If you show up to the webinar, you get two more points.

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So many of you are actually already very, very close to that 30 point threshold.

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And you can earn it in various other ways, too.

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So beyond just the webinars, we’ve got three e-books that are available on that, on that Black Credit Hub page.

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So if you download those, we’ll give you this, will give you two points for each of those, as well as quick service.

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So I mentioned those before, but those are on that Black Friday hub, just answered the question into your e-mail address, and then that will give you an extra point. You can also get, you can score 10 points by looking at demo.

4:28

So if you get a demo of Searchspring, even if you’re just curious about what Search screen can do to help you with Black Friday, you can, you can earn some points that way as well.

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So, lots of ways to earn points, I will send you a fun, fun slide kit.

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Really quick, Searchspring, we help online stores drive the ultimate shopper experience.

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How do we do that through a world-class site search, personalization, recommendations?

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Again, if you have any questions, you know, anything related to search ring, feel free to reach out to me directly. You can reach out. You can go to our website, as well.

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You can request a demo there. If you want to speak with our sales team, you can put in the contact form, or you can contact your CSM as well if you’re a client.

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As mentioned, we’re joined today by three experts on today’s topic.

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We’ve got Greg Bowman, or Bauman from Attentive. We’ve got Christina K from Reseller Ratings and Francesca McDonough from Simplistic.

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So at this time, I’d like to welcome the three of you to come on camera us.

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Take yourself off mute and say hello.

5:44

So, I’ll just, we’ll do some, some quick introductions here. So, Greg, I’m going to kick it over to you first to introduce yourself. Yes, thank you. It’s exciting to be here today. So, hello everyone. I’m Greg …, Director of Ecosystem Partnerships here at Attentive So work, primarily with our technology partners and our agency partners to help them adopt the SMS channelized as a top revenue driving Marketing Channel for, for e-commerce brands. So, excited to chat today.

6:15

Perfect. Thank you, Greg. Christina, I’m going to kick it over to you next.

6:19

Awesome. Thank you so much. Everyone. I’m Christina …, VP of Marketing and … at reseller Ratings. At reseller ratings, we amplify the voice of Millions of Shoppers by helping thousands of retail brands collect analyze, and syndicate UGC across key shopping channels. I’m super excited about talking with the group today because data analytics is in my heart all the time, so I’m super excited to help you guys out.

6:47

Awesome. Welcome, Christina. Thank you. Francesca, I’ll go to you next.

6:52

Thanks, Charles. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to join today’s webinar. I’m very excited to learn a little bit more about you all through some of the polls that’ll go up shortly and our Q and A session that’s to follow.

7:05

But a little bit about myself, I head the data analytics and optimization team at simplistic. And, for those of you who aren’t familiar with what simplistic is, we are an e-commerce consulting agency. And we have teams of designers, developers, strategists, and of course, the optimization team.

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We’re very much focused on helping our clients build and grow their online businesses, so whether you’re a small to medium business or a mid to large size company, wanting to figure out how to grow your business and increase conversion, that’s what we do.

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But in my role, specifically, I live and breathe all things, website data. So that means audits, reporting, AB testing, and really just identifying what users want based on what they tell us through their actions, both on and off the site. So that’s a little bit about me for now. Looking forward to diving in today’s into the topics with you all.

8:02

Awesome, thanks, Francesca, and just one more time. I really appreciate the three of you joining us.

8:08

Awesome to have such great, you know, panelists and experts on the topic, so.

8:12

Now we’ve got a great conversation ahead of us here.

8:17

All right, so I want to quickly just jumped through our agenda for today, we’re gonna kick things off with three quick polls. We just wanna get an idea of kind of, where everybody in our audience is with their Black Friday planning thus far.

8:32

We’ll kind of get an idea of the, the things that you’re, that you’re currently doing, to bring back buyers from previous black credits or previous holidays, and nurturing those, those people to buy again.

8:48

So that that’ll be one of our questions that we have as well as a question that will help us understand where we should spend the majority of our time, what you’re most interested in learning about today.

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And then we’ll jump in. We’ve mentioned this a few times, the Q and A session.

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So the Q and A session, we’ve got dedicated time towards the end, but if you put another question about the topic that we’re, that we’re on, we’ll jump it, will jump in, and we’ll, we’ll add that question, to that, that part of the conversation today.

9:18

Cool, so that brings us to our first poll, so I’m gonna go ahead and launch that very quickly here.

9:25

OK, so you should see that start populating, I’ll read it out here aloud.

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How far along are you and your 2022 Black Friday planning?

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So select one of these following.

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Haven’t started.

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We’re about 25% of the way done, 50% of the way done, 75% of the way done, or we’re completely done and we’re ready to execute, which is a great place to be.

9:52

Alright, so about half of you have voted so far.

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We’re seeing more votes, pyle and here. We’ll give it about 10 more seconds.

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Rabie, I’ll close the poll and share the results.

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Alright.

10:18

So, we have 49% haven’t started 30%, Or about 25% of the way done, 11% or 50 with 50% of the way done.

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And then very few of you are 75%, or beyond those 3%. I’m sure you’re feeling pretty confident about your Your Black Friday this year, given that you’re there, you’re ready to execute so awesome to see, go ahead and hide those results and pull up our next poll.

10:51

So, in this poll, you can select all that apply.

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So, I’ll read it out here loud. Which of the following tactics are you currently leveraging to drive repeat buyers?

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Select all that apply.

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So nurture e-mails and or retargeting ads.

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So are you, you know, taking the data that you’ve collected on your previous buyers and getting in front of them via e-mail or retargeting ads, Are you doing recommendations?

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So did you sell an i-phone, you want to sell, no some accessory that goes with it, or upgrade, that goes with it?

11:29

So that’s number two. We’ve got personalization and communications.

11:33

So that would include things like, you know, using data to personalize, you know, an e-mail, or an ad, or or a text.

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We’ve got loyalty reward programs. So, are you sending promo codes? Do you have a point system for your previous buyers?

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And then last but not least, we’ve got SMS on there.

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Are you reaching out to previous buyers via SMS, so, all right, we’ve got about 60% voted.

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We’ll give it five more seconds here and we’ll close the poll up.

12:13

Alright, closing that up right now, sharing the results.

12:20

OK, so, I’m gonna make a couple of notes here so we can make sure we talk about these.

12:27

90% said, Nurturer e-mail, retargeting ads, that’s great to see.

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58% said recommendations, we’ve got 52% on personalization, 55 on loyalty and 48 on SMS.

12:47

Alright, great, so we’ve got a good, we’ve got a good spread.

12:49

Looks like there’s a lot of different tactics that are being used, so we can definitely talk to some of these and ways to optimize some of these, some of these items here.

13:00

All right, so let’s jump into our third and final pulled.

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So you’ll notice these are the exact same answers, select only one of the following, which are you most excited, are most interested in exploring in today’s conversation? So we’re, where would you prefer that we spend the majority of our, of our time today?

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So we’ll give it another NaN here.

13:38

All right.

13:39

Good answer, About 50% of the way done.

13:56

Right.

13:59

Cool, We’ll go ahead and close that poll, and share the results one more time.

14:05

All right, so, personalization and communications, I was guessing that this would be number one: lots of fun, interesting ways to personalize your content, your communications, whether that communication is sent via e-mail, or SMS, or an ad.

14:22

Can definitely talk about that, and Ads, ads, and e-mails are, are the number two selected item here, too. So, we’ll definitely spend some time on both of those. I know our experts here today.

14:34

We’ll be perfect for that, so we’ll go ahead and take that off of here.

14:39

Give me one second, too, stop sharing my screen.

14:47

Alrighty, cool, so I’ll just kinda open it up here.

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We’ll jump into the panel discussion with some thoughts about those poll results, so I’ll just open it up here. Greg, for Francesca.

15:00

Christina, feel free to jump in and kinda give me, give me your thoughts on those polls.

15:07

Yeah, I’d make the, the trends that I saw make A lot of sense, I saw a lot about personalization on there. It was exciting to see that half of you are already using SMS.

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Excited to chat more about how the other half can leverage it.

15:23

And, you know, I think with the amount of messages that we receive in a day, it’s not decreasing, it’s increasing. So I think personalization does make a lot of sense to, to help break through the clutter.

15:36

And so yeah, just excited to to help share insights on how SMS can be that channel to break through that clutter and add more personalization, build more of an emotional connection with your customers. So that’s really what I took out of the polls. Really interesting.

15:53

Yeah, same here with like personalization and customization in my mind to it has to be aligned also with the data, because if your data is not in line, your personalization and customization can be a little wonky and you don’t want that at all.

16:10

And I feel with this environment, we’re all in Right now, it’s super important, to be that, like empathetic brand, that also have affinity over awareness. Just because there are so many options out there And having that in mind, and being the reason why people come back. You need to really like, figure that out, and that’s how you can do that with data, but also listening to your shoppers. Because they should be driving a lot of your conversations.

16:38

Yeah, Christina, that’s something that excited me about the poll results as well. Especially seeing that strong interest in how to personalize your communications, whether that be via e-mail or SMS. There’s so much that you can gather through the information that people communicated to you on your website last year, the things that they enjoy, then they didn’t enjoy even tactics as it relates to the coffee, the creative, all of that fun stuff. So, we’ll definitely be doing a lot more, diving into that.

17:09

Awesome, definitely, definitely excited about those, the results, because, I feel like there’s just so much that we can talk about on, on the personalization front Like, you know, I I’ve personalized a lot of retargeting ads. I think that that is something that people are definitely interested in here.

17:25

It’s kind of finding what that piece of data is that you should be looking at.

17:30

Um, and in using that piece of data to, to make that, to meet that Retargeting Ad, or that, that e-mail or that message, that the SMS message, and I feel like we can definitely, we can definitely talk about that a bit. So, that actually dovetails perfectly into my first question. Christina, I’ll kick it over to you first.

17:52

What, what types of data should should we be looking at?

17:59

And, you know, Like, how, how can that, how can that data be used to, to personalize?

18:05

Going forward, I know you had some thoughts on reviews and things like that.

18:09

Yeah.

18:09

So, as I mentioned, a little bit before bass sound like the Poles, you really should be driving your initiatives by what your shoppers are saying. Look at the data that your reviews are saying, that UGC, the tag that you see on social media. Look at your negative reviews, because that’s going to tell you what you might need to improve on that. And I’m not saying like the color of a shirt or things like that, I’m seeing. Customer service may be shipping. At that point, you’re like, OK, I should be looking at a new shipping partner, or train my team on talking people with a solution based support, rather than, sorry for your experience. Like really listening to their needs. Other data points you definitely should be looking at. Your shopping habits, are there. They’re shopping habits. Are they only purchasing with a coupon code?

18:58

The shopper needs to be able to expand their, their usage of your brand, and just drop into this cobalt coupon code could show up that loyal, you know, and you should be recognizing the customers that are leaving reviews because they are being advocates for your brand in a sense.

19:20

And that’s going to help you and become more known as a brand. Because a lot of people make decisions on purchasing, based on what reviews say.

19:30

Especially if you have videos and photos in those product reviews. And really like to wrap that all up. And I’m going to keep saying day-to-day to data, because it is a fact, in order to succeed in today’s retail environment, you need to have your tech stack integrated across all your channels. And this means that your CRM, so whatever you choose for that, needs to be on lock, because a lot of things can go array, and all over the place if it’s not.

20:02

And making sure you talk to every team member, not team member, Sorry, Every department, to make sure that they’re getting the data that they want.

20:10

So you can be you can be proactive, instead of reactive with different campaigns you’re doing.

20:21

Awesome. Yeah, Greg, do you want to maybe elaborate a little bit, add some color?

20:27

Yeah.

20:28

I think from an SMS perspective, especially as we’re looking at Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I think there’s really two things that I want to call out.

20:38

The first one is, I think we’re past this concept of work. We’re consistently, like each year is going to be the year of mobile. Like, I’ve heard that, 2019 was the, are going to be. the year of, 2020, was the Year of Mobile, I think. It’s very safe to say that we are in a mobile first era.

20:53

And I think that’s where we’re going to like, That’s, that’s kinda the future of how customers are. And consumers are going to purchase products online.

21:04

And we’re seeing that in the data just with our Black Friday performance.

21:07

So, in 20 21 the revenue we drove for our clients doubled versus in 20 20. We’re sending so many more text messages than we were.

21:17

So, the adoption of the channel with customers while in the past maybe, it’s been a channel that people have been more unsure about there.

21:28

I think the pandemic also help amplify this a little bit but consumers are more willing to sign up for brands via text that they’ve had a genuine interest in.

21:38

And today, almost four of every five consumers have opted in to some type of brands program versus a couple of years ago is about half.

21:50

So, we’re definitely seeing more adoption with the channel.

21:53

The second thing I’ll call out is the shopping window of Black Friday, Cyber Monday is expanding.

22:01

So it’s no longer just that Thursday or Friday, almost 40% of consumers are actually planning to shop, do their Black Friday, Cyber Monday shopping in October.

22:14

And so, that window is, is, is a lot more open.

22:18

So especially for a lot of you that haven’t started Your Black Friday, Cyber Monday planning. You know, definitely encourage you guys to start thinking about that. Because there’s a lot of opportunity to get some of those sales before the holiday period even starts.

22:33

And so, when we think about what data you should be looking at, I think the thing that I really want to call out from an SMS side is subscriber acquisition.

22:42

It is really hard to grow. An SMS list is probably the hardest thing to do with the program because we only have one phone number.

22:50

So to get someone to give you that real estate is more challenging than when you have 5 or six e-mail addresses that you might sign up for programs on.

22:58

And so, really leveraging that traffic, that you’re driving to your sites, making sure you’re getting these consumers, who have real buyer intent to opt into your program, it’s going to be critically important. Just because of where we’re going from a communication perspective.

23:17

And being able to communicate with more of our customers on their mobile device, where we’re spending a lot of time, and it’s not even just, uh, acquiring subscribers on your website.

23:26

But what are you doing to acquire subscribers, if you have a big Instagram following?

23:31

What about your big e-mail lists that you might have and you want to get them to opt into your SMS program?

23:37

We’re starting to feel more comfortable going back to Malls and and Department store.

23:42

So, what are you doing with that in-store traffic? What are you doing? Like, a text to join campaign for these types of program? So, I think when the buyer intent is really high, and when that window is expanding, and the fact that with with SMS, we pretty much look at all of our text messages. Like, I went when my electricity company sends me a text, like, I’m still looking at that text. So, people are seeing it. But, when there’s buyer intent, there’s there’s more click through rates, There’s more conversion opportunities. And I think being able to grow your list as quickly as possible, is going to help turn SMS into a top three Revenue channel incredibly quickly.

24:21

Yeah, and I think just talking before this a little bit, we’re talking a little bit about, you know, how critical it really is.

24:28

You know, if you don’t, have, you didn’t get, if you haven’t had a subscriber system set up in the past, you know, right now, we’re talking about, you know, taking a lot of the 2021 data. And using that to help personalize.

24:41

No communications for, for 2022, to get people to come back, but if you didn’t have, you know, a nice, sound communication or subscription model. You know, now is now’s the time to get that in place. So that you’re ready for next year, and the year, following.

24:57

And so, yeah, I think that’s, that’s great. Thanks for those points. And I’d like to probably circle back a little bit here in a little bit on some of those, some of those strategies on getting subscriptions.

25:09

You mentioned, you know, text to join, You mentioned e-mail lists, things like that. So, love to circle back on that.

25:17

For Jessica, I want to kick it over to you and get your thoughts on the types of data, the types of data we should be looking at, and how, how we can make, how we can make you know, how we can get people back to the site previous fired back to the site.

25:32

No. In a, in a really efficient way.

25:35

Absolutely! You know, I’d say when it comes to leveraging last use data to drive repeat buyers, it’s about the information that you’re seeing. Learning from that and then improving and analytics.

25:48

They can really provide such great insights into what works and what doesn’t work Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, just when it comes to your overall online store experience but then also your marketing efforts.

26:00

So you can use them to optimize really anything from friction that you might have spotted in the typical customer journey on your website. You can determine if there’s certain types of content that really resonates with your users. Maybe, Cristina’s point, it’s evaluating your inventory.

26:19

You know, is there something that people are really excited about, or the opposite. Is there something that you probably shouldn’t push as much anymore this year?

26:27

So, when it comes to, you know, more specific types of data that you should be looking at to bring those buyers back to your website.

26:36

First, I would recommend understanding your most profitable channels, sell, while overall organic traffic, you know, is always going to be great!

26:45

We have platforms that optimize things like e-mail and SMS, and those forms of marketing tend to be very effective as marketing channels.

26:56

So, you can analyze how those highest converting customers actually got to your store specifically, and make sure to utilize that this time, around.

27:07

The second thing I would say, and I know this was mentioned earlier as well, is, look at your discount reports. Make conclusions about how effective your previous Black Friday discount strategies were. Which lines brought in the most sales throughout previous years and are worth re implementing for 2022 as well.

27:30

We don’t need to harp on inventory too much. But the last thing that I’ll add is, I do think another really important thing to take a look at is payment methods. Evaluating the payment method. Set your shoppers use last time around.

27:42

And by that, I mean, are there payment methods that your shoppers leaned on? Most? Are there shoppers that took advantage of Buy Now Pay later services, or an alternative payment method?

27:56

And what are you doing to really promote the convenience of those payment methods on your website? So that when they do come back, they think, Wow, this is super easy, a couple of clicks, and I’m done? So I would start there. Of course, with data, there is a lot that you can look at, a lot that you can understand about your typical user, but those are great places to start.

28:19

Yeah, and I’m actually curious.

28:21

It’s like if you, if you had like one specific piece of data that you, you wanted to put into, let’s, let’s, let’s call it a retargeting ad.

28:32

You know, obviously, you know, you can, you can customize retargeting ads, you can customize e-mails in a lot of different ways.

28:37

What is like the single piece of data that would be that you feel like is the most important?

28:42

So, it could be like a product name, like, come back and get the success rate for this, or, um, is it, you know, maybe it’s just their first name or you know, whatever, whatever it is, what does that single piece of data that should be present in that community or in that communication channel?

29:00

Yeah, that’s a great question. I do tend to promote category affinities. So if you know that a customer made a purchase of you know, just for the sake of an example, a moisturizer last year during your Black Friday promotions that were going on. And you can see through the information that you have about them, that they do tend to gravitate towards collections and include moisturizers or skincare products.

29:25

Tailoring your marketing efforts to include items that are very specific to their history tends to work well in my experience.

29:37

And I echo that 100%. Because, with the data.

29:42

And if you have, and I’m talking, like, product reviews wise. If you have it tied to like the skews, you’ll be able to recommend outfits based on different things they’ve bought. So say you see them only buying jeans. But you can do, is give them a personalized e-mail, or SMS, or retargeting ad with those genes on someone, but with a tap, and shoes.

30:05

I’m a person who, I go to one place, You see for teens and one place for shoes, one place, for tops, but I’m starting to see myself trying to expand my horizons with those, different brands, because of, there are personalized experiences with how I shop with them.

30:24

And that’s so important to view that, because you obviously want a shop or two, by more than just jeans.

30:31

You want to show them their full brand, because then they’re gonna have a better connection with your brand and have more of a tied to it verse, like, Oh, I justified genes from them.

30:42

You really do want to have that, kind of like friend tie, I guess you can say like alpha of the day, that’s where they go. That’s what they’re going to wear. And that’s super important because it will help drive your personalized experiences, but it also help with your upsells and things like that.

31:01

Yeah, and I’ll third that. I completely agree.

31:05

And, and I think just to add how SMS can help amplify that, is the ability to capture some of that zero party data through text messages.

31:17

So, one of the things that you’ll probably hear me talk a lot about today is conversational commerce, and the ability to have a two-way conversation with someone that’s interested in your brand, and you can do that with texts, people.

31:32

People respond back to the text, the marketing messages that you send, and you can actually see those messages and respond back to them if you wanted to or create some type of automation.

31:43

And so the ability to actually ask questions to those subscribers that have shown intent to opt into your program is a great way to add that extra layer of personalization.

31:53

So let’s say you’re a, a retailer that is, you, know, selling a bunch of different types of athletic apparel. And you want to learn more about the brands that they’re interested in.

32:02

You can tell them to reply Nike for Nike or Adidas or Adidas and then that’s now data that you can segment off of.

32:09

So when you have a flash sale or maybe not a flash sale for jordans, but like let’s just say like a drop, a new drop of Jordan branch, you, like, you could send that to the people that have expressed. They said they’re interested in Nike.

32:23

So that they’re getting that personalize, that, that VIP experience at.

32:27

like, maybe they have 24 hours to purchase these shoes before we drop it to the general public.

32:32

Because the other thing about SMS is there’s an immediate immediacy to SMS that is not necessarily available with other channels. Because we look, we look at our text pretty quickly after that text is sent, 90% of consumers look at a text message by within five minutes of receiving that text.

32:53

So, just, the ability to have that conversation with it with a subscriber or customer and get more data from them, is just a great way to add more value to the SMSs channel.

33:09

And Greg, on that. And I’m not even in the SMS world, but a lot of our customers use it and they were saying, the way they get those phone numbers for messages is an e-mail saying, Hey, we noticed you buy a lot of Nike’s, There’s new nikes coming out.

33:27

Click here to like add your phone number and then they’re in that way because I could say, oh, you’re listening to me and I want something special because we all deal, let’s be real.

33:37

So, Absolutely, Yeah.

33:40

Do you usually usually like, provide a discount when, when that happens, like a promo code, if you go put it in, Say it’s an e-mail about Nike, you’re trying to get the text, you’re trying to get them opted in. A test you do sometimes incentivized with, like a promo code or something like that.

33:55

Yeah, I mean, I think discounts are certainly an avenue that you can go, I think sometimes, especially when you’re Yeah, maybe it’s like a premium product, like Jor Jordan Chew or something where you don’t have to discount. But you’re giving them that type of exclusivity. I don’t think you necessarily have to discount. It’s certainly a strategy.

34:16

And, you know, we have a lot of clients that do that.

34:19

But there are also ways that you can drive revenue or drive additional purchases without having to go directly to a discount.

34:29

SMS subscribers tend to be your more loyal customers because they’re going to opt into your program.

34:36

There is that intent, like I know this brand, I’m interested in this brand, I want to hear from this brand because they’re going to be sending me text messages that I’m gonna get notified on my phone, you know, or maybe a weekly basis.

34:47

So, I think there’s a lot of different strategies that are discounting, meaning one exclusivity, VIP experiences, a seamless purchase experience. Francesca and I talked about, like, Buy Now, pay later.

35:02

What about texts to buy, You know, that’s something that we’re starting to get into, right. Like, having the ability to, they don’t even have to go to your site.

35:10

They can actually purchase it by replying by. So, eliminating that, that friction.

35:19

Especially when you add the urgency to it there, You know, that’s the power of the SMS channel that I feel is that you do have that ability to, you know, offer a lot of different types of experiences based off of, you know, what the brand is looking to accomplish.

35:37

Awesome.

35:37

Yeah, so that actually, I mean, all of this actually dovetails perfect into the very next topic that I want, that I want to get into, but I have I have like some really quick hit questions that came in from the audience.

35:51

Christina: can you define UGC?

35:56

Yeah, so I’m UTC. I’m sorry, I use acronyms. I promised earlier I wasn’t.

36:02

But DC is user generated content, and there’s many ways to think of UGC.

36:09

It could be like organically, or you’re seeing a big rise of UGC in the influencer world.

36:17

If they’re like taking over a tic-tac or things like that, that’s called UGC, but what my definition is, is user generated content with organic customers, and shoppers, like their ratings and reviews, videos.

36:31

And then those tags that you see on social media that aren’t sponsored or promoted, that’s organic UGC, are used to generate content. Sorry.

36:41

Perfect. Thank you.

36:44

Gregg, one quick question for you.

36:46

What what GDPR rules are there for SMS?

36:51

Like, how do you make sure that you’re compliant with GDPR?

36:55

Yeah, that’s a great question. We could probably do a whole webinar on. Yeah, that’s it’s. That’s one thing to really call out to about SMS’s.

37:06

It’s a it’s a really litigious channel.

37:09

You know, there are all these different compliance acts that you have to follow that based on the region.

37:15

So, in the UK, there’s GDPR in the United States there, we have our own Federal Act, the TCPA that you have to adhere to. California has their own Compliance Act, Florida has their own. Canada has one. So, yeah, it’s really important that you work with a platform that has compliance, bildt’s as sort of the foundational method, you know, how we drive really great revenue, but also keep your program compliance.

37:45

So, you know, there’s a lot of things you have to think about, SMS requires a double opt in, not a single opt in, so with e-mail, like to do is type in your e-mail address and your opt in.

37:57

With SMS, you can’t do that. If you type in your phone number, you still get that text that says, Reply Why? And you have to reply why. Or else you can’t receive those marketing messages. There’s also making sure that.

38:10

You, you make it really easy to opt out of the program. If you make it difficult to opt out, it can put you at risk.

38:17

And that’s even people might misspells stop, right, and they don’t get opted out.

38:22

But then you keep sending text messages.

38:25

And so, you know, we’ve built a lot of things internally and attentive to make sure that we are covering the protect or giving our customers protection, making it easier to do the double opt in. Without even have to type in your phone number, making sure that they misspell stop. Maybe we have, we do a lot of fuzzy opt out language.

38:44

So if someone misspell stop, or maybe they send you a profane, these texts back, we can track that and say like, hey, it looks like you’re trying to unsubscribe, reply, why?

38:55

And so, it’s, it is, it’s very important to, to keep that in mind, but what we really try to do, as well, is that kind of create that assurance that we have covered you on the backend, so that you can focus on the awesome results that SMS can offer. But, yeah, it’s really important that you’re, you’re growing the list in a compliant manner, that you’re making sure your legal language is really clear and concise, and is visible. So, that goes like ADA compliance with your pop-ups.

39:24

Again, I mean, we could, I could talk about this for awhile. But yeah, I mean, it’s a, it’s a really important thing to call out, that you can’t just, like start an SMS program and just add a bunch of phone numbers to your list and assume you can text them.

39:36

If you have a phone number in your database, but they haven’t done that double opt in, you can’t send anything. So that’s where like leveraging your e-mail list to try and get those phone numbers to opt in can be a great way to get them to subscribe your program if you already know a lot about these customers. And maybe you just haven’t gotten them to take that next step.

39:55

Yeah, and I think that I think it’s also like, you know, it goes back to using the data that you’ve had that you’ve received in previous years to make It’s like make sure that people are opting out, right, like they’re not saying stop using data right to your advantage.

40:11

and make sure that those those communications are super personalized Relevant for that person, and then you’re less likely to get those those opt out, so OK, cool. So let’s jump into our our next part of the conversation. We’ve talked about data. We’ve talked a little bit about recommendations, so I’d like to spend a little time on that. And then we’ll get into some incentive programs and communication.

40:34

Um, So, let’s talk about, let’s talk about recommendations a little bit.

40:41

What, I guess, let’s, let’s kinda try to talk a little bit about like some, like real life examples. I feel like, if we can give some examples to our audience, that would be really, really helpful.

40:51

Um, Christina, maybe I’ll go to you first. I know you had some good notes on this. But what, what strategies do you recommend most this year when it comes to making recommendations and personalizing those recommendations?

41:07

Yes, so, I kinda mentioned that a little bit, but really recommending recommending based on their past shopping habits. So if you see them only buying pants do an e-mail campaign that’s pulling in user generated content, AKA UTC. From your reviews and ratings with an e-mail campaign. And you can do that simply with whatever like e-mail marketing automation provider that you use and have it like an output of the day campaign Because if people Are looking at like the models and different outfits are going to be like I don’t know that. they see actual people in those outfits They’ll get more of that personalized experience based on what they’ve? been shopping for in the past. Also, a really big thing is you can do with that is even like on your site.

41:58

Through, like with Searchspring, with like search, you can do that and recommend based on various things that they’ve purchased in the past, and you can like see things right at the top, that they can kind of push towards that full outfit journey per se.

42:15

And I guess, with personalized shopping and different database on that, obviously those gamification systems are going to help.

42:27

I am a big, big component on that personally when I’m shopping.

42:34

And I feel that also helps me get a more personalized experience, because I get higher up on their tiers.

42:40

So I feel more like special, when they’re recommending things, and we’ve seen a lot of our customers have a really big improvements, or increases on their database, the database, sorry, their shoppers, habits with what they’re purchasing on their site based personal experiences, especially with the gamification and putting those two together.

43:05

Awesome, Thank you! Yeah, Francheska, I’m gonna have you jump in next to, curious. Curious your thoughts on recommendations?

43:13

This, this coming Black Friday, how to optimize those for success.

43:19

Maybe using, maybe, using some of the data that we talked about before, But what are some of the things that you expect to be effective this year?

43:28

Yeah. There’s really so much that you can do to create a very custom feel to your site, dependent on the user or the user group that you’re focusing on. So kind of going back to what we talked about earlier with category or product affinities, you know, you can build an experience for people based on things that you already know, that they like, it could be a landing page, for example.

43:52

And the nice thing about personalization tools is that it’s fairly easy to get things like that up and running, because you’re able to segment your different users. You’re able to create unique experiences for those different groups. So, it might be showing one group, a certain version of your homepage versus a different version of that For a group that you know is interested in something completely different within your product range.

44:19

There are also things that we really push. I think that you should always have product recommendations on your product pages, but I think it’s especially important to personalize those. When we, you know, test those out with the brands that we partner with.

44:36

Or even if we just implement personalized recommendations, immediately, we see a much higher click through rate happen on those products. And we see a much higher conversion rate happen on the products that are being pushed because the logic in the background it’s, it’s learning, it’s evolving.

44:53

It’s pulling from the user behavior that it Cs and it’s showcasing the products that are most likely to be relevant to that specific person.

45:03

So very much, you know, personalizing product recommendations in that form.

45:08

But then something else, though, that I think is exciting.

45:11

and something worth exploring this year is incentivising purchases with personalized discounts or personalized gifts.

45:22

So not to say a discount that everyone gets for Black Friday, but if you know that you’ve had a customer from last year, you can reach out to them and make them feel extra special by giving them earlybird access. Or maybe they get a special discount that, like you mentioned earlier, right? Includes their name or something of that sort, where they know that you recognize them, you appreciate them, and they’re getting a special gift as a reward for being loyal to you.

45:50

So, those are two things that are top of mind for me at the moment.

45:54

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, super, super personal. It’s like just specific to that person.

46:00

I Know, like, we at Searchspring, do a lot of, like dynamic Content and things like that to make sure that the content is super relevant for each individual.

46:09

Um.

46:11

So, yeah, I’m definitely, definitely interested in learning a little bit more about some of the tools. We mentioned a few tools.

46:20

Christina, you mentioned Searchspring and you know the the recommendations that we have built and personalization that we haven’t built into our site search.

46:29

one thing that you both mentioned was no personalizing a page for somebody, so 1 group 1 group sees one day, one group sees other things.

46:39

What’s, what’s a tool that is used to do that?

46:43

Is it, is it, like, the website builder? Is it some sort of plugin, like, how do you? How do you go about doing that?

46:50

So for me, and what I’ve seen a lot of our customers use, is there.

46:56

Their CMS website spill on HubSpot, and it can be completely personalized based on that, whatever. You want to really segment that audience by, and you can do a lot of those personalized product lines, or product facing things on the website, as well as just pictures, conversations. Things like that, especially if you have, like, demographic data on them.

47:20

And say, they live in Florida, you’re not going to want to show them a puffy coat. In the middle of, like, summer and say, prepare for winter. Because that doesn’t make sense. You know, so, things like that.

47:30

HubSpot CMS, I’ve seen that a lot, and they’re coming up in the, like, payment side, e-commerce world as well. So, a lot of things you can do based on that and personalized buttons for purchasing, and kinda like, Greg said that the text messaging, things like that, others, how does that, CMS is definitely one you can personalize with?

47:54

Yeah, I’ll echo that, where Shopify is similar in that way, where you can create a lot of customization on your theme. You’re able to create those unique experiences there.

48:05

And for individuals who, maybe don’t have, let’s say, access to the type of developers that are needed to create those types of experiences, There are also workarounds for being able to do things like that, and creating multiple experiences, where you could even, you know, throw up something in the form of an AB test and get really granular with who you’re showing what to, in a way that doesn’t necessarily require too many extra parties to be involved.

48:37

Yeah, you typically, and we’ll just quickly do this part because we’ve got eight minutes left, but are you typically using like cookie data too?

48:46

Make those pages dynamic or is it more along the lines of, like, I’ve got this group of people in my e-mail database or SMS database and dividing them up and then sending them down different pathways to different pages Or is, yeah. Is it that cookies? What do you typically see there?

49:02

So, um, I kinda mentioned this before, but having your like CRM really power all of that, and have an integrated within those different experiences, is going to help you tremendously having that source of truth in that.

49:17

And I know like CRMs aren’t talked a lot about with IT to C or B to C But it is incredibly important important for that, especially, to have that ease of personalization in that data is held within that record, depending on what you’re asking, obviously within those parameters, But I’m sure for what we personally is and then like our customers is all the times that CRM driven. First like cookies, just because cookies are.

49:44

Yeah, a lot of people have a lot of, I guess, that’s a whole other webinar, too. So, the VR and cookies Yeah, Well, this will spend a little time on that.

49:56

Next webinar. How about that? OK, we’ve got seven minutes here, we’ve been answering the audience questions as we go because they kinda fit naturally.

50:06

So, we’ll just keep going here, I wanted to dive into two more topics.

50:11

The, you know, finding ways to reward your fan base and how and when to communicate with past buyers.

50:18

So, I want to start with a couple of ideas that maybe each of you have on rewarding incentivising people.

50:26

I know Francesca, you mentioned doing super personalized super personalized.

50:34

Like promos basically to get people to come back.

50:36

Maybe elaborate just a little bit more on that idea and any other ideas you have around Incentivising Pacifiers.

50:45

Yeah, Something that we’re seeing, and that very much makes sense, I’m sure for all of us listening in as shoppers, is people love the VIP treatment.

50:54

So, you like to see those e-mails, or those texts come in, that are saying that you get something special and unique to what other shoppers are getting because of how you’ve supported the business in the past.

51:08

And an idea that, you know, stems off of that, is, you can target, You know, if you go back to your data, and look at what the spending habits were of your customers last year, target your highest spending customers and give them an e-mail invite, or Texts Invite.

51:23

That has a link to pre sales deals, so that they’re getting the first glimpse of what’s going to be available to everyone else once those are released to the public, right.

51:33

Basically, just anything to really make them feel special for spending with your store. So, it could be, you know, the highest vendors. It could be anyone that met a certain threshold, maybe, you know, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the one spending the most money, but you can kind of define the benchmarks for that.

51:51

And tailor your communications accordingly.

51:57

And another thing that I know that one of our customers does, with their incentivizing programs, it’s actually an exclusive program and no one knows how the list was even selected. Not even a lot of the employees know-how less was selected. And this is with Hammett Luxury Handbags.

52:17

So think of it as kind of like The Great Gatsby invite, but for your Shoppers, and it creates that buys without you really having to do much besides invite them to the program. And that’s going to create that social proof, as well as user generated content for those specific pieces. But it’s not saying that these shoppers on the list are the ones who are spending the most. It’s across the gamut and they kind of do it in a random way.

52:46

Because you want everybody to feel special in the moment death or with, with your brand, because just incentivizing the most expensive people who are spending the most. That could slowly turn away some other people, obviously, but you never know where those people are at in their life. So having that exclusive list, having an open to really anybody, I think, is a really cool thing to do, and how much does it incredibly well.

53:13

Yeah, and that’s a great point, Christina, where with any of these ideas that are being thrown out, you do want to make sure and say, like, pay very close attention to who you’re segmenting, who you’re giving special treatment to. Because any repeat buyers should be getting at least some form of an incentive. point. You don’t want someone finding out through the grapevine that there was a deal going on that they weren’t a part of and then be turned away from you in the future.

53:42

Yeah, I think, perfect.

53:45

I think that’s a perfect opportunity for Greg to jump, and, you know, say what you’re going to say, but at my follow up question is also, when, when should you start communicating that?

53:56

Those incentives for, specifically for Black Friday?

54:00

Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, people are looking to shop sooner and sooner.

54:06

So if you want to maximize that, that traffic and getting these customers to buy from you, if they’re looking to shop early, like getting them out in October, potentially it could be really important, especially when we’re looking at it from an SMS perspective.

54:20

I think more broadly, in terms of like how to engage those repeat buyers.

54:23

Like I always look at it from the perspective of what’s going to drive that emotional loyalty that you’re looking for, like that true connection where they really identify with your brand over someone else.

54:35

And how can SMS be the vehicle for that? And so there’s a lot of really cool things that you can do on the SMS side and I know we’re running out of time So I’ll just quickly go through this.

54:45

But like we’ve had a client do a scavenger hunt on add on SMS right?

54:50

Where they got able to opt in to the program by signing up for the scavenger hunt. They would ask questions. The Subscriber’s would reply back with the answers.

54:59

Once they got through the whole thing, there was a discount code at the end and the redemption of that code was really high because they invested time in participating in this program.

55:09

So when I look at it, if you’re just using SMS as a sales channel with discounts, it’s a missed opportunity.

55:17

It’s, what else are you doing?

55:18

Like if someone buys a product, are you sending them details on how to take care of that product?

55:25

Showing that you actually care about the products that they’re purchasing, um, because you want your program to differentiate from the others.

55:33

The one thing that’s unique about SMS versus e-mail is we can’t just opt into hundreds of programs, aye, there is a fatigue point. I think that is around like 15 to 18 brands. Once you hit that, you start your so you’re getting too many texts, and then you’re gonna start to see opt out rates, right, so it’s, it’s a race to own that inbox.

55:55

So, you know, if you’re not leveraging SMS right now, like, are you missing out on an opportunity to get consumers to subscribe to your program Versus a competitor of yours and being able to build that relationship with them and create a program that’s fun and engaging so that they’re interacting with your program versus some of the other programs that you’re potentially opting into.

56:22

Thank you, Greg!

56:25

Thank you. Thanks to all of you, Greg, Francesca Christina I really, really appreciate it. Really awesome pointers, there’s even, now we gave quite a few little actions and tool ideas, things like that, so lots of great stuff for our audience. Know, again, we have, this is part two of our five part webinar series, you can go back and watch the first one on recording, seen this one. Feel free to go to our Black Friday hub that’s in the chat and registered for the rest of them.

56:55

Next month, we will be doing a webinar on fine tuning your site search, Time for Black credit, so making sure that you’ve got that in place. So you can make sure that your your, your buyers are finding your top deals. And that’s it. So, again, Gregg, for Jessica Christina. Really appreciate your, your, your, your expertise and willingness to join us and give us some good tidbits of information. So, thank you. Thank you to our audience, Hopefully, we’ll see you all again next month.

57:27

Thank you. Awesome.

57:28

Thank you.