The 7 Easy to Setup Tools you Need for Black Friday/Cyber Monday
When it comes to Black Friday/Cyber Monday, businesses have the opportunity to make a large portion of their annual revenue (as much as 20%) in the span of a few days. You’ve seen on the news where people are lined up for miles to be the first through a store's doors to get the biggest and best deals of the season. People are conditioned to shop during this specific weekend every year.
So what does that mean for you, as an Ecommerce store owner? It means you need to bring your A-game, and from the first touch point to the last, be prepared to wow every person that “walks through your door” i.e., lands on your site.
When you do this, not only will you convert customers, but you will see metrics increase across the board, including Average Order Value (AOV), repeat purchases, Lifetime Value (LTV) and more.
This is especially important now as retailers and e-tailers are facing increased operations and logistics issues that are shifting the Black Friday experience from a single day/weekend shopping extravaganza to an entire season of shopping. Think about all the ads you are currently seeing from major retailers like Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc. Instead of the “Black Friday” ads that usually come out a week or two before “the day”, we’ve now received these ads a month (or more) in advance and the deals have been sprinkled throughout the days leading up to Black Friday. (see example below - released November 18, 2021)
With “deals of the day” and “weekly deals” these retailers are incentivizing shoppers to come in regularly. And if they are providing an excellent customer experience - great ads, excellent customer service, easy pay options, etc., they are turning what once was an all-or-nothing shopping weekend into a 2 month long cycle of revenue.
With that in mind, I want to introduce you to 7 easy to setup tools that will help you crush your customer experience for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and throughout the entire holiday shopping season. These tools are all easy to set up, some are free for you to use and all have proven returns on investment (ROI).
The Best Easy to Setup Tools for Black Friday for Ecommerce
The Shortlist:
Gorgias
All-in-One Customer Support Designed Specifically for Ecommerce
Gorgias is an omnichannel customer support helpdesk suite specifically designed for Ecommerce stores. With a deep Shopify integration, it pulls in all of your customer data, allowing agents to view orders, make refunds, edit shipping information, etc. all right from within the helpdesk.
Gorgias looks to improve first response time and ticket response time by having all the information a support agent needs, right at their fingertips. This also drives up customer satisfaction and drives down support agent resource costs. Happier customers help increase lifetime value and referrals, plus when agents are able to work quickly (by having access to the right information) you need less agents which decreases costs.
Gorgias takes between 1-3 hours to set up, depending on whether you’ve set up macros and rules for a tool like this before. Luckily, when you use the EcommerceTech partner link, you get an onboarding specialist when you start paying for Gorgias to help.
Features
- Unlimited users
- Integrations
- Live chat & chat campaigns
- Macros and rules
- Satisfaction Survey
- Phone
- Onboarding
- Revenue statistics
- Dedicated Success Manager
Pricing
Pricing starts at $60/month for a basic plan that handles 350 tickets per month. They bill on tickets and not seats, which is a major differentiating factor and means that it's only the tickets you respond to that count against you. And you can respond to one ticket as many times as needed to resolve an issue. Price goes up to $750 a month for 5,000 tickets. Beyond that they have enterprise plans that tier up smoothly from there.
Alternatives to Gorgias include Re:Amaze, RichPanel, and JumperAI
Route
Shipping Insurance and Visual Tracking
Route is a free for merchants shipping insurance app with built in visual package tracking. This tool dramatically improves the post purchase experience for customers by offering them two forms of peace of mind:
- The ability to see where their package is/expected arrival date. (This also continues the excitement they felt when they purchased the item as they watch it in transit - which is good for you as the merchant).
- Replacing lost/stolen items with ease. (Again, great for you as the merchant - cutting down on customer service inquiries and the cost of replacing stolen/lost items).
With an average opt-in rate of 55%, Route will become a major part of your product offerings with the biggest value add being how much it will cut down on customer service inquiries (where’s my package, package lost/stolen), and that Route will reimburse you for lost and damaged items, allowing you to reship brand new ones without having a negative impact on your cash flow.
Route is helping customers achieve a higher level of customer experience, which builds your brand relationship, increasing customer confidence in your brand while decreasing the cost of customer service on your margins.
Route can be set up in a few clicks. Typically 15 minutes at most if you want special integrations.
Features
- Automatic Package Tracking
- Real Time Shipping Updates
- Instant Issue Resolution
- Curated Brand & Product Discovery
Pricing
Route is free for merchants.
Alternatives to Route include Rush and Malomo.
Sezzle
Buy Now Pay Later Tool
Sezzle is a buy now pay later tool that makes it easy to break up a large purchase into multiple installments, at no cost to the user. Typically this is 4 payments over 6 weeks with 0% interest.
This is truly a disruptor tool that is going after an underserved market of individuals that don’t have great credit, but are capable of paying off small debts. This is especially useful around the holidays when people are excited to buy gifts for their families, but don’t want to incur interest accruing credit card debt. Sezzle doesn’t impact their credit score, and they will never be sent to collections for an inability to pay.
This tool is great for store owners because it tears down a barrier that prevents some customers from buying… The pricing barrier. Once a customer buys through Sezzle, you as the merchant receive the full amount immediately into your Sezzle account. There is absolutely no risk to you! The responsibility of payment collection falls completely on Sezzle.
Sezzle merchants see an average order value increase of 20%, 10% increase in repeat purchases, and an overall increase to conversion rate by removing this large barrier to purchase. Plus, when you register you will be listed in the Sezzle directory where merchants have seen an additional 10% of revenue simply by being listed. With Sezzle having over 1million active shoppers, that can provide you with nice “foot traffic”.
There is a 4 step checklist for set up that takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Once installed, the tool is “set and forget”.
Features
- Reach New Customers
- Split Payments for Larger Purchases
- Zero Risk
Pricing
Pricing is customized to merchants, depending on their transaction volume and take rate.
Alternatives to Sezzle include Klarna and Afterpay.
SMSBump
Robust SMS Marketing Tool Built for Shopify That is a Proven Revenue Driver
SMSBump is the largest SMS marketing tool in the Shopify market with an extremely robust functionality and feature set. From dynamic abandon cart and coupon code campaigns to segmenting by country, price of SMS or time of day, this tool has proven return on investment (ROI).
When it comes to SMS, the most important thing to remember is that it is a way to have conversations with your customers. It’s not about spamming them with generic coupon codes. SMSBump is a “smart tool” that keeps you in compliance with all laws around texting while at the same time conversing with your customers, personalizing their experience with your brand.
The key metrics you can improve through SMS are abandoned cart, on-site conversion and retention rate, all of which can make a big difference in your holiday revenues.
There are some initial setup needs, between testing and integrating with current efforts I would guess a day's worth of work.
Features
- SMS Segmentation
- Custom Flows
- Run A/B Testing
- ROI Text Automations
- SMS Automations
- Link Shortener
- Campaign Scheduling
- Opt Out Lists
Pricing
SMSBump starts at $19/month and $0.0149 per SMS and goes up to $199/month and $0.0130 per SMS based on the feature set you select.
Alternatives to SMSBump include Postscript, Emotive, Cartloop, Voyage, and many Email Service providers also have SMS these days.
ShoppingGives
B2B Social Commerce Platform for Charitable Donations
ShoppingGives is a B2B social commerce platform that allows companies of all sizes to make charitable donations through their customers' purchases.
Instead of your company making a blanket statement on your website that X% of all purchases will go to charity, you can let the customer decide who they want to give to. And they can truly choose any cause, because ShoppingGives connects to every non-profit organization in the country (that has filed their paperwork with the IRS).
Companies that offer customers a chance to give back see 45% of customers doing so. And that 45% spent an average of 23% more than the customers who did not opt-in to giving back. So say you are offering customers an opportunity to donate 2% to the cause of their choosing by making a purchase, then get 23% more revenue by doing so. Seems like a pretty good trade off to me!
Shopify and ShopifyPlus stores can be set up in less than 30 minutes. Other platforms, usually in a couple of hours.
Features
- Sales Donations
- Order Donations
- Dynamic Donations Widget
- Customized Widget
- Checkout Widget
- Social Sharing
- Multi-Cause Support
Pricing
ShoppingGives has a starter plan that takes a 0.5% transaction rate for up to 20 orders with a donation in them, but that is really just for testing out the tool. From there the platform really begins at $270/month ($285/month if you don’t do an annual contract). Clearly this is a little bit of a cost and you should have at least a couple hundred orders a month coming in to justify the impact of the tool vs the cost.
Alternatives to ShoppingGives include DailyKarma, Givz, and GetChange.
Spently
Optimize your Notification Emails with Upsells and Cross-sells
Spently is a “quick optimization” tool that helps you to optimize and profitize the most opened emails you send your customers - the notification email.
Tracking revenue through a reporting dashboard, Spently allows you to see new referred customers, lifetime value, repeat customers, etc. all while helping to build out your branding.
When it comes to emails like order receipts and shipping details, not only do customers open them at a high rate, but they regularly open them more than once. Offering dynamic discounts and related products are a great way to incentivize repeat purchases, especially around the holiday season as shoppers are buying for more than just themselves.
Spently can be set up in just a few hours and worked on as much or as little every month as you choose.
Features
- Unlimited template sets
- Smart product recommendations
- Personalized discount generator
- Built-in referral program
- Event-triggered follow up emails
- Integrations
Pricing
Spently is free for the first 25 orders each month, then costs $10 per additional 50 orders. For stores with orders between 1,000 - 5,000, it is $10 per 200 additional orders.
Klickly
Commission Based Ad Network Driving Traffic and Sales for Your Store
Klickly is a digital advertising platform where you only pay based on criteria you set being met. It is guaranteed return on investment (ROI) advertising.
Based on the commission rate you set, they prioritize your ads within their platform (dictating how many impressions/clicks to allocate to your campaign) and use their AI engine to optimize for products, campaigns and overall conversions. They showcase your brand across over 25million premium destinations, including web properties, app extensions, social media, their own email list, and more.
Klickly is specifically designed as a new customer acquisition channel, bringing awareness and closing sales more cost effectively through their AI and extensive ad network. They are 100% automated and only paid when you make money.
There are some requirements for joining this platform. See those details here.
Set up can be done in under an hour.
Features
- Lead identification
- Offer prioritization
- Omni-channel transactions
Pricing
Pay for Performance - Choose your own commission and pay only on success.
Klickly doesn’t really have any alternatives, but there are other affiliate marketing tools like Refersion, and there are other ad exchange networks like Storeya.
Next Steps
There are so many opportunities during the holiday shopping season to “win” customers. Whether through an excellent interaction with your customer support team, helping them give back to causes they care about, breaking down purchasing barriers, or the anticipation of tracking their package from your door to theirs, the possibilities are endless.
The three things you care most about this holiday season should be:
- Maximizing conversion rate.
- Delivering on your promise (getting the product to their door!)
- Activating your customers to become advocates (thus driving repeat purchase, referral, etc.)
Good luck!
