Three VIP Black Friday Tactics You Might Not Have Thought Were Possible

Here’s a snapshot of what your inbox might look like during the Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) season.

And while it’s not to say the spray and pray promotional method is ineffective, many merchants are missing out on the opportunity to stand out in a sea of sameness. The answer: personalization. After all, who doesn’t like to feel special?

But let’s be honest, setting up and taking down discount campaigns on our Shopify stores is time-consuming and tedious. Moreover, it’s difficult to set up multiple discounts at once, let alone have a custom storefront experience based on the promotion.

This is why I started Abra. I was tired of running simple and mundane promotions because of Shopify’s native limitations. I felt ready to realize the unimaginable and make every promotion adapt to multiple customer segments. If you’re trying to figure out where to start with this, you’re in the right place. This guide will walk through three tactics using Abra’s one-of-a-kind promotion system that will let you break through the noise this BFCM.

1. Start with a public promotion
2. The early bird gets the worm
3. Treat your VIP customers

Start with a public promotion

Step one is to set up your store’s public offer as this is the core promotion that’s available to everyone on your website. Since it’s targeted to net new organic traffic, set a general storewide promotion that will launch the day of (ie. 15% off storewide). After you’ve created the discount, it’s time to make your offer front and center so that it’s impossible to ignore. Here’s how:

1. Create a static header announcement
2. Set up a storewide bottom pop-up banner with a custom message
3. Add product page banners
4. Use our dynamic pricing feature to reflect the discounted price at every stage of the customer’s buying journey

With Abra, it’s a win-win between your customers and yourself. You can create a clear public promotion for your customers, without the hassle of manually coding your BFCM pricing in your store’s HTML. The bonus: Abra will measure the number of offer uses, giving you all the data points to calculate the lifetime value of your customers.

The early bird gets the worm

To level up your promotions, create an early bird promotion and launch it to your customers one to two weeks before your public promotion. This tactic is perfect to target new customers who are holding out for a BFCM deal and want the benefit of having their desired item in stock.

Have prospective customers unlock this discount by joining your subscription list to grow your customer base. It also opens the perfect opportunity to retarget them with an email drip sequence that will have them coming back to your store. The best part is that Abra lets you run this in parallel with your other promotions—letting you be flexible when segmenting your campaigns. To set up an early bird promotion:

1. Plan your offer months in advance as timing is key here, consider matching your public offer
2. Set up your email capture (via a landing page, home page popup, etc…)
3. On Abra, select “Private” for your discount
4. Set up your banners and pop-ups to reflect this discount, and include “early bird” in your messaging
5. Set this exclusive Abra link as a part of the automation flow for your subscription email capture

Strategically, creating an early bird promotion lets you drive early sales and collect customer emails for your future offers. It’s a strong brand play and most importantly, rewards your customers for being active and engaged.

Treat your VIP customers

Nothing feels better than a custom promotion that nobody else gets. It’s the closest thing to being Beyoncé for a day. Create this promotion for your best customers. Maybe it’s your customers that are already on your subscription list or maybe it’s those that have made at least one purchase in the last 6 months.

Once you’ve chosen your criteria, here’s what you need to do:

1. Design an exclusive offer with a higher discount, released a week or two before BFCM
2. On Abra, select “Private” for your discount
3. Set up your banners and pop-ups to reflect this discount, and include VIP in your messaging
4. Embed this exclusive Abra link in your email and target socials promotion, consider even sending them from your personal email for an extra touch

Now every time your best customers click on their special Abra link, they indulge in an exclusive tailored site experience. In other words, if they were to browse your site regularly, their VIP discount would not appear. This white glove service is exactly how you can stand out this BFCM and drive conversions you never thought possible.

The world is your oyster with Abra. Create as many private links as you’d like and have them all running at the same time. Best of all, customize how you’d like each promotion to appear on your website without needing to manually update your Shopify theme, line-by-line. Now this is how you win this BFCM.