BFCM 2021: 4 Things to Keep in Mind

Looking back at the BFCM 2020 Weekend, and the Holiday season in general, we saw online stores cherish accelerated sales over their online and mobile sales channels. Owing to the change in lifestyle brought about by Covid-19, customers gravitated towards online and mobile shopping.  Going into BFCM 2020 weekend, we knew things were gonna be different. The question was how.

Shopify stores rallied to make the best out of the weekend, despite the lockdown and the fall in global economy! It’s important to understand how stores capitalized on the situation, and how shoppers responded to get the full picture of what went down during the BFCM 2020 weekend. These learnings will tell us what to look forward to this year during the BFCM weekend, all through the Holiday season. Here are the takeaways that will most likely shape the upcoming BFCM 2021 weekend and the year’s Holiday season.

The BFCM Fever Will Kick in Sooner and Last Longer

With the pandemic adding to shoppers’ woes with a supply chain slowdown, we can expect consumers to start their BFCM shopping much sooner than the pre-covid times, in an effort to get their hands on the products they’re looking for, on time. And if we’re to go by our learnings from 2020, the season will stretch out till the end of the year.

This presents a great opportunity for brands to offer early-bird discounts and exclusives in order to attract shoppers who are planning ahead financially this year.

Big Support for Small Businesses

SMBs took the biggest hit due to lockdowns that were in place due to Covid. Consumers had a choice to make, and they chose to extend their support to independent businesses in their time of need. During BFCM 2020, over 44 million consumers globally purchased from independent and smaller brands powered by Shopify, notably a sharp 50% jump from the previous year.

The Role of Mobile Devices

A recent Yotpo survey suggests that over 60% of shoppers discovered new brands or products while using their mobile phones. Consumers are now accustomed to the ease of mobile shopping, and the habit is here to stay!

With technology right in their hands, more than half of shoppers report to have discovered items or brands that they were not actively searching for, on Facebook and Instagram. It’s been reported that more than half of global shoppers like it when they discover items or brands they were not actively searching for. Understanding and thoughtfully targeting your audience on social channels can and will present significant opportunities to drive Black Friday and Cyber Monday conversions.

Leveraging Loyalty Programs

Here’s the thing. It’s easier to sell to your well-established loyal customer base than to acquire new customers and go on with the whole process. According to a report by Marketing Metrics, the chance that you’d sell to an existing customer is 14 times higher than that of a newly acquired customer.

You can reward your customers with loyalty programs to encourage repeat purchases and drive more sales! The key goal here is to nail your customer retention. A survey from Incentive Solutions claims that adding a loyalty program to an e-commerce platform can increase average order quantity by 319%.

A report from Yotpo suggests that 46% of customers want early access to sales as part of a loyalty program. You can tie this up with our previous section on offering early access to your customers.

Takeaways

After what we observed  during the BFCM-Holiday Season 2020, we can be certain that most of these trends can be expected to carry on this upcoming BFCM weekend all the way through the Holiday season as well. By offering a good digital shopping experience and well-planned loyalty program, you can leverage this BFCM weekend to nail your conversions and drive Shopify store sales!

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