The biggest shopping weekend of the year is nearly here. There’s more than one way to win this Black Friday – are you ready or is your strategy still loading?
A UK survey of small businesses and consumers has revealed a widening gap between shoppers’ mobile preferences and what small businesses are offering – and it could be costing them sales.
Traditionally associated with long queues and crazy in-store offers, Black Friday traffic has shifted from in-store to online, and the drive behind this e-commerce evolution is mobile – sales increased by 45% in the last quarter for 2016.
PayPal research has suggested that mobile shopping growth is overtaking online spending by four to one in the UK. But bridging the gap between customer expectation and the reality of what your business is offering need not be daunting.
Here are 4 ways to reach your active customer base through the power of mobile.
1. The notification
Although the stats may suggest it, Black Friday doesn’t sell itself, and with more and more businesses joining the most powerful sales event of the year, it’s vital you ensure all avenues are covered to get your offer seen and heard.
While email can be a wonderful channel to present and conceptualise your offers, open rates aren’t anywhere near as high as you’d want them to be, often requiring that bit of gentle persuasion to nudge the recipients into opening it.
SMS could be that nudge: use to enhance and support other popular communication mediums, such as social media and email, or use to direct traffic to your site by inserting a URL. A simple follow up SMS asking “have you read our email?” can help increase email open rates by 20%–30%.
2. The conversation
When it comes to customer service your business can’t afford to have moments of downtime, especially at the crucial point of a sale. Behind every customer order is an array of questions and queries regarding payment, delivery, product or feedback. But 75% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent.
It’s necessary to work smart and balance call volumes while providing great customer service. The conversational and personal nature of SMS enables a more natural flow when it comes to customer contact.
While web chat platforms rely on site uptime, SMS Chat enables prospects and customers both new and existing to contact your reps offline should you experience high volumes of traffic or site downtime.
3. The promotion
How does your promotional offer stand out amongst your competitors? Email inboxes are flooded daily with the average person receiving around 120 emails and with many customers having multiple email addresses, accessing promo codes embedded in emails when completing a purchase can be a nuisance.
Traditional emails can often get lost in the noise of other Black Friday offers – Mobile Journeys enable users to experience or preview new products, the location of stores or save discount codes to be redeemed later on
4. The review
Large in-store and e-commerce events rarely go by without a hiccup, whether your customers know about it or not. The best way to measure your service is to ask your customers about their experience, not just on the good days but at various points in their journey.
The average response rate for email surveys is roughly 24.8%, according to a calculation by FluidSurveys, however, SurveyGizmo state that response rates can soar past 85% when the respondent population is motivated and the survey is well-executed.
Survey distribution and ease of completion is key to collecting more data from your customers. By using a mobile optimised survey, we’ve seen customers’ response rates rocket just from changing their distribution strategy.
There’s more than one way to provide customers with a great experience that ensures that your next big event goes down without a hitch.
