Aligning Your Strategy for Record BFCM Returns: A Step-by-Step Playbook

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; look at previous years' results. Celebrate your successes by understanding them!
Maya Juchtman

This article comes from Maya Juchtman's keynote talk at DtCX in September 2024. Maya, a seasoned marketing professional, launched her career in startups, having worked in industries ranging from wellness to pet food brands to fashion, jewelry, women's health, and more. Her journey has been marked by a passion for innovation and learning, and she has a track record in various marketing facets, from branding to customer experience.

You can watch the recording here.

First things first: Review Previous Years

Marketing

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; look at previous years' results. Celebrate your successes by understanding them! What went right and how can you emulate it this year? Figure out your pitfalls and brainstorm how to overcome them.

Something that people frequently forget to take into account, how has your audience grown/changed? A lot can happen within a year and not taking it into account changes does you and your community a disservice. If you’re starting, there are resources for you, too. Look up case studies conducted by industry leaders in your space, review what others are doing, and make it your own! Reach out to your tech partners and see if they can share any industry results with you.

Buzzword: TIMING! Take two things into consideration here,

  • What is your industry doing? You don’t want your customers to purchase from your competitors because they beat you to it.
  • What has worked best for you? You may have found your sweet spot.


Production


As the production/fulfillment team, you are the foundation everyone else relies on! No pressure.

Something that is vital to continue optimizing is how as a team everyone is communicating about these experiences. This may feel obvious but sometimes it needs reminding, you are all on the same team, just different branches.

Keeping everyone on the same page with inventory planning helps nuance the entire company's implementation of their own work.

Questions to ask yourself in preparation for this year:

  • How did inventory hold up last year?
  • Were there any fulfillment issues?
  • Were there shipping delays?
  • How was communication across teams?

Customer Experience


You are the frontline, and it’s imperative that you set yourself up for success. If you have data from previous years, look at it! You can go into your Gorgias and use their analytics tools to see the following:

Review your ticket volumes and response times during big promotions. There’s no shame in needing help! Based on this information, you can figure out if you need to hire additional support staff through the holiday season. Talentpop is a great option for affordable workers with extensive knowledge of the Gorgias platform.

Identify what were the most common questions / issues that came up. Can customers easily find this information without submitting a ticket? What are ways you can optimize their experience?

If you have a theory, test it NOW!


There are few times I will say something is a bad idea, but trying out a theory for the first time during your busiest time of the year? Not a great one.

This applies across all facets of the company. Test it now or hold it until Q1.

Deadline is October.

Now the Fun Part: BFCM Must Haves

Create everything ahead of time: CX

At this point, you’ve listened to me, 👀, and not only have you reviewed common ticket topics from last year, but you’ve communicated cross-functionally and understand what the marketing language might be and what the worst-case scenario could look like in terms of fulfillment.

Based on all of this, you can add FAQ’s ahead of time that help the customer get most of their questions answered, right away. You can use this information to set up automations with Gorgias, and preemptively make macros for the inevitable few that still reach out.

So what if they don’t get used? Most likely, they save your team headaches and time.

Create everything ahead of time: Marketing


If you’re going to do it, do it 100%. And what I mean by that is adjust your messaging across the board to match the holiday. This includes the following:

  • Abandonment Email/SMS Flows
  • Welcome Email/SMS Flows
  • Sign up units (popups)
  • Website banners

It doesn’t make sense to offer a welcome discount for signing up if the promotion is a better offer / cannot be combined. You’re just giving out discounts for the sake of it and losing out on lead capture. Keep your messaging consistent. It may feel like overkill but you are HEAVILY competing for attention in an overstimulating attention deficit world, you need to hammer home your message so that you stay top of mind.

Speaking of lead capture

Q4 is when the highest number of traffic is coming to your website. It would be a shame to not capture as many of those leads as possible! One recommendation? Server side tracking, instead of grabbing website data from your browser, it does all the magic on a special server.

This means even adblockers or tracking blockers can't stop it from capturing that information. This gets more people into your marketing funnel that identity solutions from platforms like Klaviyo may have not ordinarily captured.

A few companies Roswell loves to partner with for this are: Black Crow AI, Triple Whale Sonar, Elevar, Blotout, Opensend and Littledata.

Read more about it here.


Set a precedent for communication


This is something I wish I had set up my first four BFCM’s but hindsight is always 20/20.

Create a channel/message group with key players from the marketing/CX and production teams. Here everyone will give each other daily updates on inventory levels, outgoing campaigns and CX message themes.

Create contingency plans if anything goes out of stock. This should never be something that comes as a surprise, plan for it. Shift ads to gift cards, create backup landing pages, don’t lose your momentum

or set yourself up for a poor customer experience.


VIP VIP VIP

Unless you’re selling something that doesn’t exist anywhere else (which good for you if you are), you’re not only in competition with other brands but marketplaces selling your products too. Why would someone purchase from you vs others? Incentivize brand loyalty with the VIP treatment. A few ways to do so:

  1. Early Access
  2. Exclusive Deals
  3. Tiered Rewards
  4. Special Experiences
  5. Point Multipliers

Set up what you can

At the very least set up the “bones” so that it’s quick to implement everything once you have final details. Things will slip through the cracks if you wait until the last moment. After all your hard work, it would be a shame if the lack of time to QA meant that something went out with a wrong link or missing button.


Maximize your content

Do a resend of your emails! There are a ton of companies flooding your customers inboxes and yours could get buried. Set up an exclusion segment for those that have previously opened and change the subject line. Resend that campaign so your work doesn’t go to waste.


What do you mean after BFCM?!

Create a post-mortem, future-you will thank you.


While it’s still fresh, record the experience! Review it together as a company. This will also help you plan for next year! Also make sure to write down all the cool things you saw other companies do and help it shape how you plan testing throughout the rest of your year.

You don’t need to have a slow Q1

Start planning for post BFCM asap. Post holiday burnout will happen, and expecting that version of yourself/your team to do the their best job isn’t fair to anyone. Planning for Q1 is actually super exciting when you think of all the possibilities post customer acquisition in Q4. Here’s a brief rundown of recommendations:

  • Retargeting Customers from BFCM
  • Product launches
  • Q1 Promotions/Holidays: Presidents Day & Valentines Day
  • AB testing & Update Segments
  • Optimize your tech stack
  • Leveraging Loyalty Programs

Read the full list and details here.

Thank you! Reach out to buildmybusiness@roswellstudios.com with any inquiries.