Crafting an irresistible offer is an integral part of a successful BFCM campaign. The offer needs to be exciting for shoppers but still profitable for you.

In most cases, there are two main objectives that your offer should achieve:

• A big enough discount that excites customers
• An offer that encourages bigger order and more spending

Here are a few of my recommendations that have worked well for my Etsy shops.

Offer Higher Discount Than Other Sales Events

For BFCM, the discount should be higher than what you usually offer in other sales event throughout the year. Given that you don’t run sales too often throughout the year, the higher discount will excite your customers and encourage them to come back and buy again.

Your customers are in a shopping mood, but they also have the expectation of a good deal. If you usually offer 20% discount, then it would make sense to offer 30-50% discount during BFCM.

Emphasise that it’s the biggest discount of the year in your marketing materials like emails and social media posts.

Some shops even increase the price a month or two before the big sales event so that they can offer a bigger discount. This method can be viewed as unethical to some. 

But I do encourage you to re-evaluate your pricing consistently especially now that your product costs have likely increased.

Start Sale Early

You must have the question: When should I start the BFCM sale? And when should it end?

Most retail shops nowadays start their Black Friday sale early, and most customers start looking for deals before Black Friday as well.

So to capture the early sales, my recommendation is to start the sale early on Monday (4 days before Black Friday) and ends it on Cyber Monday.

Running your sale early can help you get ahead and generate more buzz for your products. It will also help you get a jump on the competition and capture the sales from customers who are eager to find deals.

Don't end your sale before Cyber Monday, which is still one of the busiest day for online shopping. Extending the sale period can give you more opportunities to promote your deals by emails and social media, which we will look at in the following chapters.

Offer Same Discount Throughout BFCM

I would recommend offering the same discount in your whole BFCM sales event. The benefits are

• Fewer things to adjust in those few days
• Avoid customers dissatisfaction if they purchase on a day that you reduce the discount percentage (they feel like they missed out)
• Easier for you to advertise - A simple message is always more effective. Imagine you have to say: “Friday 50% off, Saturday 30% off, Sunday 20% off, etc”. Customers can get confused and lose interest in buying

I would recommend selling at the same discount even before Black Friday. It’s the most effective in capturing people looking for early deals. 

Use Tiered Discount

Tiered discount is a popular pricing strategy that I have found great success in the past. Basically, it means 'spend more, save more’.

It's a great way to encourage customers to increase the average spending in your shop. Because each product should have its own profit margin, more items sold mean higher profit in general.

Another benefit is that you’d be able to save on costs like packaging and shipping as you can process and ship multiple items together.

The discount can be based on a money limit, or a quantity limit.

For example, a money limit tiered discount looks something like this:

10% off for orders less than $50

20% off for orders $50-100

30% off for orders over $100

And a quantity limit tiered discount looks something like this:

Buy 1 product and get 10% off

Buy 2-5 products for 20% off

Buy 5 or more products for 30% off

Create Discount Bundles To Encourage Bigger Orders

Bundle is another great way to encourage customers to increase the average order value. It works similarly than tiered discount which we mentioned earlier, but with a fixed product selection. 

Here are a few types of bundles work the best:

• Bundles that include only bestsellers 
• Bundles that include a bestseller and some items that don’t sell much (so you can help move some of the old inventory)
• Bundles that include a product and its complementary products (like refills)

Run Special Discount On Different Days

Another strategy you can adopt is to run bigger discount on specific item/category on each day. This can entice loyal customers to browse your shop more often, and a lot of times it’d encourage them to buy multiple items. 

This strategy is most effective when paired with an email list or social media given that you have a decent following. Without the two, it could be quite difficult to contact them effectively.

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