BFCM or Black Friday and Cyber Monday is an extravaganza awaited by any ecommerce store owner(s). However, most of them are clueless about how to brief the cash on it.
There can be several reasons for this. They might lack a strategy to market their products or have a store that is not optimized to offer a good user experience.
Fix this, and you have yourself an opportunity to 10x your sales during the BFCM season.
In this blog, I’ll share with you 14 Magento Black Friday marketing and performance optimization tips to ensure success throughout the extended holiday season.
Let’s get started…
- 7 Magento BFCM Marketing Strategies
- 10 Magento BFCM Performance Optimization Tips
- Prepare Your Site for High Traffic
- Make Things Easy & Improve the Checkout Process
- Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
- Focus on Performance for Peak Times
- Enhance the Back End
- Use Real-Time Inventory Tracking
- Check Your Third-Party Integrations
- Enable Advanced Search
- Optimize Front End and Images
- Minify and Clean Up Code
- Conclusion
14 BFCM Marketing and Performance Strategies to Outsmart Competitors
Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) goes a bit further than offering some small discounts— it is also about implementing marketing tactics to outsmart the competition and website optimization to offer the smoothest user journey to your visitors.
On that note, we have listed 14 marketing and performance BFCM tips for Magento store owners to help you implement successful BFCM campaigns.
7 Magento BFCM Marketing Strategies
Here are seven effective marketing strategies that you, as a Magento store owner, can adopt to create buzz, keep your audience excited, and get the highest possible conversions.
1. Launch Campaigns Early
Why wait for the last-minute rush when you can get ahead of the game?
It is ideal to launch your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns ahead of your competition.
By doing this, you get a headstart on your competitors and also target willing buyers who are already on the lookout for the best offers.
Moreover, starting early allows you to gather valuable data on what resonates with your audience. You can test different messages, visuals, and offers to see what clicks before the big day.
Consider crafting a series of enticing teasers leading up to your official launch—think exclusive previews and countdowns that create buzz and anticipation.
When customers see that you’re ready to roll, they’ll be more inclined to check back frequently, ensuring your brand stays top-of-mind as their shopping plans unfold.
2. Grow Your Email Marketing List
Your email list is one of the most powerful tools in your Black Friday marketing arsenal. Use your Magento store’s pop-up plugins and newsletter sign-ups to capture customer interest.
Once you’ve grown your email list, craft compelling email campaigns that spotlight your BFCM deals. Use dynamic visuals and attention-grabbing subject lines to entice your subscribers to open your messages.
The best way to achieve this is by personalizing your emails: create content based on customer preferences and previous interactions.
3. Promote on Social Media
Share your BFCM offers all over your social media pages. If you want your products to be visible to buyers, then do not shy away from executing paid ads to increase your reach and hit different demographics by targeting them with your ads.
Get your followers involved with polls, giveaways, and discussions. Use countdowns, “coming soon” posts, and sneak peeks to build excitement and keep people waiting for your offers!
The more engaged your audience feels, the more likely they are to share your content, spread the word about your BFCM promotions, and draw in new customers.
4. Share Sneak Peeks
Keep your audience guessing!
Set the stage ahead of BFCM and tease your audience with exclusive sneak peeks of your offers on your magento store.
Through social media stories, blog posts, and email newsletters, slowly peel back the curtain on what your customers can expect in the future.
This strategy is a great way to create buzz and generate visits to your site. Customers are more likely to bookmark your site and watch for the official release when they know something exciting is in the works.
5. Offer Special Incentives
BFCM shoppers are always hunting for something special. Adding unique incentives can set your Magento store apart from the competition during BFCM.
Offer them incentives they cannot refuse! Advertising your offers like “Buy More, Save More” can entice shoppers to buy more items.
Offering gifts with purchases, exclusive bundles, and limited-edition products are also fantastic ways to make customers feel like they are receiving something special.
If you’re targeting repeat customers, give them extra perks, like early access to sales, VIP discounts, or loyalty points. You can even run exclusive referral incentives, turning your current customers into brand advocates.
6. Launch Loyalty Program
Having a loyalty program is a BFCM no-brainer that encourages customers to make repeat purchases.
Wayfarer Rewards encourages customers to engage with the loyalty program by offering points for signing up, following the brand on social media, writing reviews, and referring new customers.
Loyalty programs work as they give your customers a good reason to stick around and become repeat customers.
You can advertise your loyalty program on your website and in your ads. Emailing your customers reminders about their point balance and other loyalty program incentives can also increase your sales during BFCM.
7. Recover Abandoned Cart
Abandoned carts are the goldmine nobody talks about in BFCM. On average, 70% of digital shopping carts never complete the purchase.
Using a strategy to recover them is the best idea ever because that can change the whole game level of conversions.
Magento abandoned cart recovery features allow store owners to automatically send reminders to customers to reclaim lost sales.
A well-timed “Don’t miss out—your favorite items are almost gone!” can be the perfect prompt for holiday shoppers to return and complete their purchases.
10 Magento BFCM Performance Optimization Tips
When it comes to BFCM, even a few seconds of downtime or lag can cost you sales. As a Magento store owner, you can use these ten performance-boosting strategies to ensure a smooth, fast, and reliable shopping experience that turns holiday browsers into loyal customers.
1. Prepare Your Site for High Traffic
A successful BFCM campaign means a surge in traffic, and if your site can’t handle it, you’ll have abandoned carts and missed sales.
Magento offers several built-in optimization features, like caching and content delivery network (CDN) integration, that can significantly speed up page load times.
Enabling full-page caching and utilizing a CDN can reduce the load on your server, ensuring a smoother user experience no matter where your customers are.
If you set up your Magento store on Cloudways, you can leverage built-in caching (Varnish, Redis, and Memcached) and easily integrate the Cloudflare Enterprise add-on to ensure fast load times. You can also protect your store with add-ons like Malware Protection, ensuring it stays protected always.
2. Make Things Easy & Improve the Checkout Process
A seamless checkout process can make or break your sales during BFCM, as even a minor delay can lead to cart abandonment.
Magento’s one-page checkout is ideal for expediting this process. It minimizes the steps in checkout and reduces the friction between browsing and making a purchase.
Additionally, Magento’s partnership with providers like Klarna and Affirm allows you to offer added flexibility of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options, which can raise conversions by dividing payments over a certain period of time.
3. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
With over 70% of online purchases now happening on mobile devices, optimizing the mobile shopping experience is non-negotiable. Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you identify performance issues in your website’s code.
But even if you don’t perform last-minute mobile optimization, Magento’s mobile-optimized themes provide a smooth, app-like experience, making mobile navigation and checkout easy for customers on any device.
To learn more optimization techniques, check out our detailed guide on Magento optimization and Black Friday SEO to ensure your landing pages rank before the big day.
4. Focus on Performance for Peak Times
When traffic spikes, site speed is everything. Magento store owners should enable caching mechanisms like Varnish or Redis and optimize their server response times to ensure smooth performance.
By preloading and caching popular pages, you can reduce load times and ensure that high-demand pages, such as product listings and checkout, remain lightning-fast.
You can also use Magento’s performance monitoring tools, such as New Relic and Pingdom, to track and adjust your store’s performance in real time. This way, you can proactively address any peak-hour slowdowns, ensuring that customers don’t get frustrated and leave.
5. Enhance the Back End
A successful front-end experience relies on a strong back end, especially during peak traffic periods.
Optimizing the back end involves upgrading to the latest Magento version, as each update includes performance improvements and new security features.
Consider implementing database optimization techniques, like query caching and regular indexing, to ensure your site remains responsive under load.
6. Use Real-Time Inventory Tracking
Magento also supports integration with third-party ERP systems like Beehexa and Alluvia, which can streamline inventory management and order processing.
You can sync inventory updates and shipping statuses in real-time, which will help reduce the risk of overselling while keeping customers updated with information on product availability.
As a result, you can have a more efficient BFCM transaction experience for both you and your customers.
7. Check Your Third-Party Integrations
With the flurry of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) traffic, every extension and integration on your Magento store needs to work properly. Third-party integrations can be a hidden drain on resources if they’re not optimized.
Look into each integration’s role and performance impact. If an add-on isn’t performing well, consider deactivating it for the sales period.
Some integrations, like analytics and data feeds, can run less frequently or off-peak without affecting the customer experience.
8. Enable Advanced Search
Offering an advanced search feature allows users to find exactly what they want faster, increasing satisfaction and reducing bounce rates.
~ Souce: syte
Consider implementing autocomplete, smart filters, and personalized suggestions to enhance the experience. When customers can instantly locate the items they’re excited about, you boost your chances of turning browsers into buyers.
~ Source: wpgeodirectory
9. Optimize Front End and Images
Don’t let heavy images slow down your sales. Compress every image without sacrificing quality, and consider next-gen formats like WebP to reduce load times further. Fast-loading visuals showcase your products without dragging down your site speed.
For BFCM, use vibrant, clear, optimized images to captivate visitors and encourage more clicks, keeping them engaged and excited to buy.
In the BFCM frenzy, your website’s first impression is the make-or-break moment. Eliminate every possibility of extensive load time by optimizing the front end to ensure lightning-fast load times.
Simplify your layout to minimize distractions, and design with a user-first approach that enhances clarity and ease of navigation.
10. Minify and Clean Up Code
Give your code a tune-up to make your site lean and lightning-fast. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, removing redundant code and streamlining scripts for peak performance.
Less cluttered code means your pages load faster, resulting in a seamless user experience and reducing abandonment during those high-traffic BFCM moments.
Conclusion
This blog covers marketing tactics such as crafting irresistible offers and using social media and email marketing to capture attention at just the right moment.
On the performance side, we discussed essential strategies for enhancing site speed, creating a frictionless checkout, and optimizing both the front and back end to ensure our store can handle high traffic, among more.
Combining these approaches allows you to offer a standout experience, one that’s optimized and customer-focused from start to finish.
If you want your store to operate seamlessly during the holiday season and beyond, consider opting for our optimized managed Magento hosting.
If you think we missed anything, let us know in the comment section.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]