E-COMMERCE
Black Friday isn’t what it used to be. Unless you’re a Shopify seller
And the results are in! Black Friday is over and here are the sales stats:
A big win for Shopify: The platform set a new record, processing nearly $2.9 billion during Black Friday. This was up 21% from 2020 and more than double from 2019.
Here are a few more interesting stats from the Shopify announcement:
- 72% of sales during Black Friday were made on a mobile device. Only 28% were made on a desktop.
- The top product categories were apparel and accessories, followed by health & beauty and home & garden.
- The average cart price was $101.02.
- 15% of orders were “cross-border,” with the most popular cross-border routes being the United States-Canada, Canada-United States, and United Kingdom-United States.
Black Friday isn’t what it used to be: According to Adobe Analytics, online spending in the U.S. was flat this Black Friday compared to last year.
The reason: The holiday season has been stretched. In order to avoid receiving out-of-stock messages, more people start their shopping as early as October. Retailers have been extending their promotional offers as well.
With this pace, we might have to eventually rename “Black Friday” to “Black November.”
TIKTOK
TikTok to allow you to register your business on their platform
If you can’t get the blue check mark, you now have a consolation prize.
TikTok is testing a new “Business Registration” feature, according to a leak by Matt Navarra.
Here’s what we know so far:
- It isn’t a badge: This is not the same as receiving a verified badge on TikTok. No blue check marks here.
- Set it and (almost) forget it: After you’ve been approved, you cannot change your business registration information for three months.
- Display your business category: Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to display your business category on your profile.
- Early access to features: TikTok will incentivize you to register by providing you with early access to new features.
What this means for you: If you sell on TikTok, this could give you an advantage by allowing you to stand out from the crowd (getting early access to features and displaying your business category).
It wouldn’t surprise us if TikTok also releases a business directory once enough businesses have registered. This should give you even more discoverability.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
Design higher performing Facebook Ads by using secrets from subscription brand Athletic Greens
Athletic Greens is a masterclass on a one-product, subscription-based brand. The brand is known for its all-in-one, subscription-based, powdered supplement.
- On Facebook, Athletic Greens is running four ad types:
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Product video
- Product static image
- Static image with promo offer
Let’s talk about UGC ads first.
Ads featuring multiple testimonials (like Athletic Greens’) instead of just one customer can add more credibility to your product. And producing these videos is easy––ask your customers for feedback, compile the best of that feedback into a video, and use it on Facebook Ads.
Discover the rest of Athletic Greens’ ads, get Stacked Marketer’s analysis and get our list of critical ad elements to create your own high-performing ads by grabbing the 84-page Athletic Greens Marketing Deep Dive, available only to members of Insights by Stacked Marketer.
Insights is the community for marketers focused on learning from the world’s best-performing brands. If you are a marketer striving to become the best, learn more about Insights here.
Get 50% off your first month for Insights with the code BFCM. Offer valid until 30th November 23:59 CET.
MARKETING
Challenges and opportunities of multichannel retail
In 2020, multi-channel retailers generated more than $350 billion in sales.
Experts predict that multi-channel sales will account for 46% of all e-commerce sales.
Selling on different channels allows you to reach different audiences, and give consumers the choice to engage on the platform of their preference.
In this Shopify blog post, Elise Dopson dissected the several challenges and opportunities of this practice, as well as some examples.
The benefits:
- Improved customer experience: Shoppers, before making a purchase learn about a business over different channels. The more touch points you can have with them, the better the experience.
- Reduced costs: When you sell on more channels, you’re going to order more inventory, and the cost per unit will be lower.
- Customer loyalty: According to a report, multi-channel consumers spend 30% more in their lifetime than single-channel purchasers.
However, the multichannel strategy comes with some challenges:
- Marketing: Advertising on many channels means that you need to divide your budget on different channels. The solution is allocating your budget by funnel stages rather than platforms.
- Attribution: Choosing the right attribution model will mostly depend on what channels you advertise on, or what kind of data you need.
- Inventory management: Before expanding into a new channel, streamline and automate your inventory management processes. Or it will get messy.
There are other challenges, but you can check them here.
However, when you overcome them your brands can get a sweet outcome. Here a few examples:
Gymshark: This is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce stores. And half of their revenue comes from returning customers.
They’re a multichannel store:
- E-commerce: Where they redirect Facebook and Instagram users.
- Pop-up stores: By inviting brand ambassadors and influencers to its pop-ups, Gymshark combines online and offline channels, contributing to its loyal fanbase.
Leesa sells mattresses online, and in its multichannel strategy each channel exists as a separate purchase opportunity:
- E-commerce website.
- Amazon: Not only does Leesa sell on this platform, they also retarget customers that added their products to the cart but abandoned it with Amazon Ads.
- Facebook: Leesa retargets users who don’t complete purchases with Facebook Ads.
- Pinterest: They also sell their products natively on Pinterest with Buyable Pins.
SPONSORED BY SEMRUSH
Use this tool to discover keywords that actually have high buyer intent
Not all keywords are created equal – different keywords, different intent. And high-intent buyer keywords are what you want to go after to strike the right chord with your audience!
With the Semrush Keyword Intent metric you can:
- Check the intent of the keywords in your existing target list
- Discover new high-intent buyer keywords for your campaigns
- Build out new keyword lists with intent instantly
- Breakdown a competitor’s keyword profile by intent
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Turn your email marketing into a magazine
Emails aren’t just about abandoned carts and discounts. And a newsletter isn’t just a 3-line preview of your blog post.
More e-commerce brands should try to build a lifestyle magazine for their niche over email.
We’ve analysed Huckberry (free preview of our deep dive here) and they are an example to follow. They provide a weekly lifestyle magazine as a newsletter, through email, with this structure:
- It starts with a quote that helps the reader get into the right mood.
- Then the newsletter has a featured product or collection where there’s a good mix of pictures and text to explain the story behind the product.
- Then there’s a section of 2-3 products or collections based on seasons that come from a mix of categories. They can be clothing, apparel, accessories, household and more.
- Very often there’s a small “The Journal” section recommending an older blog post.
- Then there are 1-2 more products or collections recommended, also based on the season or theme.
Then we have a recurring structure that is much more content focused:
- The Journal – A link to a piece of long-form content from Huckberry’s blog.
- Trending Gear or Don’t Miss – A collection of trending products.
- Diversions – A list of reads, podcasts and videos Huckberry recommends, from all over the web.
- See You Out There – A cool photo that fits well with Huckberry and the readers they have.
And that’s how Huckberry created a lifestyle magazine in the form of an email newsletter.
If you like what you read, feel free to check us out on Twitter.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-COMMERCE: The closest thing you can get to free money. The Social Snowball Shopify app supercharges your word-of-mouth marketing and turns your customers, and even nonbuyers, into raving affiliates selling your products. Don’t spend a dime for a new customer until they actually buy. Try it yourself for free.*
GOOGLE: We shall comply. Google has stated that they will not push for major FloC changes without the government’s approval.
AMAZON: How do products become “Amazon’s Choice?” This BuzzFeed investigation delves deeper.
E-COMMERCE: If you thought buy-now-pay-later wasn’t big enough, here’s a stat. Klarna, one of the largest BNPL providers now has 90 million customers.
INSTAGRAM: Turn everything into Reels! Instagram is testing making each video a Reel.
SEO: “As featured” links are okay, according to Google.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
A cowboy rode into town on Friday, stayed three days, and rode out again on Friday. How did he do that?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
After failing to purchase the US Constitution, crypto enthusiasts now want to buy an NBA team
If you can’t buy the next big thing, go after the next-next big thing.
After raising $40 million and failing to purchase a copy of the United States Constitution, a separate group of crypto enthusiasts has set their sights on another acquisition: an NBA team.
To do that, the crypto enthusiasts will form a DAO in the same spirit as they did last time.
If you’re unfamiliar with a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), it’s simply an online group with a shared bank account and a mission statement.
So far, the DAO has raised $4 million in Ethereum in six days. Let’s see if their idea turns out to be a slam dunk.