BFCM is the Wild West of discounts. According to the 2024 Adobe Analytics Holiday Shopping Forecast, inflation has kept consumers price sensitive this year, with every 1% decrease in sales promotions during holiday sales increasing demand by 1.025% compared to the year prior. In addition, Adobe anticipates major discounts this season—up to 30% off listed prices.
This means you can expect that online brands from all over the country are not going to let up on throwing out every big discount they can. It’s a great way to hook in customers, but it isn’t the most sustainable, nor does it help you stand out.
So, how do you create offers that feel REAL (not just another cheap deal), are sustainable beyond Black Friday and Cyber Week, and continually draw customers back after the hype is over?
We partnered with Sonja Grasser, Founder of RetentionTheory—a biweekly newsletter delivering actionable retention marketing tips—to discuss what you can do to turn first time store visitors and old buyers into loyal customers.
Many of the strategies we cover are actionable directly on the landing pages of your store, such as adding more product options, bundling integrations, countdown timers, or even dropping in new sections. Use Replo to build and edit your pages (from one of Replo’s many landing page templates or from scratch!) with maximum flexibility, in as little time as possible.
Here are 9 tips to get started:
1. Create Value Beyond The Discount
First and foremost, is to always provide value beyond the discount on your ecommerce landing pages. This can be both material, or immaterial—as long as it creates more value for your product or brand in the eyes of customers.
Top examples include limited time offers with a “twist,” such as bundling your best sellers, or offering a buy-one-get-one free deal (BOGO). Or, you can opt for adding a free gift item or video tutorial with each purchase.
Highlight the “why” behind your offers to build further connection with your potential customers. For example, “Thank you for supporting us this year. Here’s our way of giving back.”
2. Treat Your Existing Customers Differently
Don’t be afraid to treat your customers differently. Audiences like feeling as if they’ve developed an exclusive relationship with a brand—it adds to their sense of familiarity with the store. Lean into that exclusivity; create differentiated retention offers or unique paid media to landing page funnels based on the different segments of your customers.
Examples include:
- Segment your current customer base; create tailored ecommerce conversion funnels for each segment.
- Give top or high LTV customers early access to the latest sales drops on your product pages.
- Create VIP promotional offers just for high LTV customers.
- Send a Thank You note along with a tailored offer (little things do matter).
- Give them access to purchase an exclusive item.
- Remind them of what they loved (and bought) in the recent past to encourage repeat purchases.
3. Double Down on Social Proof
Potential buyers look to others’ past purchases for validation, so you should make sure that all the social validation they need is directly built-in to your online store. This is especially true during the sales-crazy chaos of BFCM. The top landing pages come with testimonials, user-generated content (UGC), and reviews, so shoppers can easily locate signs of trust.
You can set this up by integrating reviews using apps such as Yopto or Loox, or shoppable UGC content using apps such as Stamped.io directly onto your landing pages with Replo. Make it known that previous customers love you and vouch for you. Leverage real human stories to make your BFCM deal feel like a no-brainer.
4. Make It "Limited" Not Just "Urgent"
The key is to create FOMO on your product pages without sounding desperate—in this case, subtle urgency incentives customers to act, without making them feel pressured. We don't want to push audiences to become customers, we want to pull them in.
Good examples of this include saying “first 100 customers get access to this exclusive bundle,” or “only 50 bundles left,” instead of just including a countdown banner. Make the sale an exclusive club that they want to join. Not only that, adding a clear and definite limit to the number of purchases available is a much stronger encouragement than something that is more amorphous, such as “sale ends soon.”
5. Ensure Discount Transparency
If you have any discount to offer, make it known! Highlight them on your website, across your banner sections and landing pages, surface these discounts across your marketing channels, and add that discount to your abandonment flows.
That being said, brands should never mark up prices just to slash them for the sake of delivering a “steep” discount. We want to provide people with discounts when possible, but only after showing the original price and making it clear that the value of what you provide them at that price is already a good deal. Once a store has established that baseline, the value-add of a discount becomes even greater.
6. Offer No-Brainer Guarantees
Establish customer trust in your brand. With so many offers out there during Black Friday and Cyber Week, sometimes the greatest thing holding a shopper back is simply the wealth of options available and the fear that they’re making the wrong decision buying from a certain brand.
We don’t want them to doubt; we want to make it as simple as possible for them to trust in your offering. Guarantees like “love it or get your money back” or “free returns within 30 days” are great at mitigating risk for the shopper. The best landing pages we’ve seen out there make it stupid easy for shoppers to build instant trust and click buy.
7. Reduce Purchase Decision Fatigue
With so many heavily discounted options during BFCM out there, shoppers can easily get decision fatigue. That’s the last thing we want.
Instead of throwing every discount at them, try highlighting one key offer (your best and highest performing one!) and feature it heavily across your landing page and even on the hero section of your homepage. It’s easier to say “yes” to one standout deal than sift through 20 different ones.
If you’re not sure which offers work best, make sure to A/B test them in advance of BFCM, and then implement for the real deal. Run experiments on Replo to test, measure, and iterate right where you build your landing pages.
Another quick win is offering themed bundles. This option makes the decision for shoppers; it’s easier to say “yes” when the work is already done. In addition, you can provide clear product comparisons to remove any confusion and to demonstrate how your product stands out against competitors. Replo’s editor comes with built-in components that you can easily drag and drop into your landing pages to build bundles, product carousels, and comparison charts.
Finally, educate your shoppers on the value of your product. Don’t make them search for this information: create a dedicated ecommerce landing page that walks them through objections, highlights benefits and value props, shows before and after case studies, explains guarantees, and is shoppable without friction.
8. Remove Conversion Funnel Friction
Nothing kills a sale faster than a clunky checkout. Make it as easy as possible for a shopper to go from browsing to purchase.
You can do this by running your paid ad traffic straight to listicles with a product section or even product landing pages to streamline your checkout process; this reduces steps and removes distractions. If you’re not sure which flows work better, test them out and let your data speak for itself.
Remember, the faster your first-click to checkout process, the more conversions. With landing pages built on Replo, you won’t need to make any updates to your site to run conversion funnels for peak shopping season.
9. Plan Your Post-BFCM Strategy
Last but not least—don’t just go quiet after Cyber Monday. Keep engaging with your customers across all your channels, including email, SMS, and social media. BFCM might have passed, but the holiday shopping season has just started!
Update your post purchase flows to stay connected and relevant. This includes adding any new leads to your newsletter funnels, sending postcards to customers that are newly acquired, and consistently following-up with both recent and old customers to show you care. The conversion funnel doesn’t end once a shopper makes that first purchase. Incentivize second purchases and provide personalized suggestions based on what they’ve already bought from you. The key is to gain these customers for life through sticky retention flows, so they come back again and again.
Closing Thoughts: Use Shopify Landing Pages This Holiday Shopping Season
At the end of the day, you want to create conversion funnels that can drive purchases and brand loyalty. Promotions and discounts help in the near term, but there are many other levers you can turn to help attract lifetime customer value.
Leveraging landing pages is one key strategy, as is prioritizing your retention marketing for pre-existing customers. Remember, if you’ve bought from you before, they are already much more likely to purchase from you again, as compared to any new shopper.
For more retention marketing tips, check out Sonjay's biweekly newsletter for all the latest retention marketing tips at RetentionTheory.
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