Ecommerce Learnings from Black Friday 2024
This BFCM has been prosperous for ecommerce brands. We observed that online retail has fully recovered from the softening demand in 2023 and early this year, and is trending upwards with strong momentum. Here are the top sales and marketing trends we’ve seen from Nov.1 to Dec. 5.
Sales per day more than doubled as soon as brands turned on holiday promotions.
Sales continued to rise week over week in November and peaked on Black Friday.
Website conversion rates also increased significantly, peaking on Cyber Monday.
These trends indicate that many consumers had been eagerly waiting for promotions and purchased as soon as they found satisfactory deals. Meanwhile, there are plenty of last-minute shoppers.
Premium bundles consisting of a high-priced item with accessories were the most successful.
Conversion rates for those bundles increased 5x or more, while the metric for other products increased less than 2x during promotions.
20%-30% discounts effectively incentivized consumers to choose a brand over its competitors and convert right away.
For brands running promotions during BFCM, their highest priced items were largely purchased during the Black Friday spike, while other products saw sales spread evenly over the past month.
Flat discounts for hero products primarily attracted repeat customers to stockpile and were less appealing to new customers compared to premium bundles.
Conversion rates for Meta Ads, Google organic, Google Ads, Email, and SMS significantly increased during promotions.
We noticed much higher non-branded search volume during BFCM, indicating that many consumers had a clear ides of what they wanted for the holidays.
Conversion rates for both Google organic and paid channels approached 10% across brands. However, many brands have not utilized Google Shopping to its full potential, handing over growth opportunities to their competitors.
Email and SMS were especially effective in retargeting new customers. We saw 20%+ conversion rates for these emails, with SMS achieving an even higher conversion rate for new customers.
However, many brands focused on messaging existing customers, resulting in a decreased conversion rate during promotions. For Christmas and New Year, brands will be better off differentiating between new and existing customers and tailoring messages accordingly.
Running promotions has been highly profitable for brands during this BFCM.
Brands’ customer acquisition costs (CAC) decreased by 50%+ as soon as they launched promotions in early/mid November, with CAC trending even lower during BFCM.
In summary, this holiday season has been a huge growth opportunity for ecommerce.
Offering time-limited premium bundles with small discounts has been the most effective promotional strategy this season.
Running extended promotions can help brands fully capture the holiday momentum. It’s critical to launch different promotions at different timing to attract various types of shoppers.
Leveraging diverse channels helps brands appeal to consumers at different stage of their purchase journey and gain an edge over competition.
Now let’s ride the wave of these trends to maximize sales for the rest of the holidays and close the year strong!
