Best Black Friday Marketing Ideas from Ecwid Merchants

A staggering 53% of all holiday shopping is expected to happen online in 2019. What’s more, spending is expected to increase by 5% this year over 2018. But promising as these estimates are, increasing shopper intent won’t magically drive shoppers to your online doorstep. To take full advantage of the holiday shopping frenzy (particularly everyone’s favorite almost-holiday Black Friday), you’ll need to have a great holiday marketing plan.

To help you prepare for the rush, we reached out to some of our most successful Ecwid E-commerce merchants to talk about their top seasonal selling tips. Read on for their best Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategies to increase your sales in 2019!

Use Discount Coupons to Test Demand

Drew & Karen Clark, DAK’s Spices:

We love, love, love Ecwid’s coupon codes. We throw out coupons codes in our newsletters, Instagram, and to our social media influencers. Every advertisement, newsletter, post, and influencer has a custom code so we can track and learn what avenues are the most profitable with our holiday gift sets.

Oviedo Salinas, Fleurs Lumiere:

During the holiday season, we love to use the discount codes in Ecwid 2-3 weeks before a specific holiday. We usually use the code before a holiday to boost sales on low peak or non-holiday months. We love to offer our clients a certain percentage off (usually 15%-20% off) any of our products. That usually works really well and is of great benefit to us since we get to see what the holiday peak season has in store for us. We can prepare with extra inventory or staff if needed. It has been a really great tool for us! Plus, we love the extra boost in sales on a non-holiday month!

Customers enter their coupon code at checkout with Fleurs Lumiere

How to create discount coupons in your store:

1. Go to your Control Panel → Marketing → Discount Coupons.
2. Click Add New Coupon and enter a Name for your coupon.
3. Keep the Code generated by Ecwid or type your own code, for example BLACKFRIDAY2019. Try to make your code short and memorable.
4. Select the Discount Type. enter the discount Value, and choose between a percentage (for example, 30% off) or a monetary value (say, $5 off.)
5. Choose what day the coupon will become active and what day the coupon will expire.
6. If the code should apply to specific orders, products, or customers, click No Limits and define the coupon limits.
7. Click Save.

Check out Ecwid Help Center for more details.

Offer a Gift Instead of Discounting

Cedric O. Cobb, Best Wardrobe Solutions:

Many people like to give direct discounts, but I’ve found that a gift with purchase has delivered better results than sales for us here at "Best Wardrobe Solutions." For instance, I offered a free pair of Crazy Socks with purchase, and it was a big hit. To create a Free Gift option, we use the Ecwid store to add an item with a price of $0.00 in a specific product category (i.e. socks) that can be dropped in the cart by customers and can only be added once. We couple that with a widget to create a popup window once the customer has been on our site for at least 10 seconds that says "Drop A Free Pair of Sock in Your Shopping Cart."

Promotional popup on Best Wardrobe Solutions

Gift pair of socks on Best Wardrobe Solutions

How to add a free item that can only be added to a cart one time:

1. Go to Catalog → Products and add a product you want to send as a gift.
2. Set the price to $0.00.
3. Install the Purchase Quantity Limits app.
4. Go to Catalog → Purchase Quantity Limits. You can also open the app in Apps → My apps.
5. Search for the gift product and limit Max Order Quantity to 1.

You can also remove the quantity field in product and cart pages with the help of the code. To do that, check out Ecwid Help Center.

How to do add a popup in your Ecwid store:

1. Install the Easy Popup app.
2. In your Ecwid Control Panel, go to Apps → My apps, find Easy Popup app, and click Open App.
3. Customize your popup: choose a background and template (Promotion), and enter your message and button text. Add a link to your gift product in the Link Main Button to Page field.
4. Add a countdown timer if needed.
5. Customize your tab: tab placement, text size, tab style, etc.
6. Set display options: screen size, display frequency, who will see your popup, when and where to display it, etc.
7. Click Save.

Offer Free Shipping

Drew & Karen Clark, DAK’s Spices:

Customers love gift packs, a deal, and free shipping! We offer several gift sets, but our best holiday special is a 4-pack — pick and choose your favorite spice blends for under $25, plus free shipping! This deal checks all the boxes for our customers. We love how easy it is to set up a gift set special and to let customers pick and choose the blends they want with Ecwid’s checkbox option.

Customers can create their own gift packs on DAK’s Spices

How to add product options in your store:

1. Go to Ecwid Control Panel → Catalog → Products.
2. Open the product page you want to edit.
3. Go to the Options tab.
4. Click +Add New Option.
5. Add the Name of the option, for example, Size.
6. Select the input type — Checkboxes.
7. Click +Add New Value and add all values of the option. Add as many new values as you need, and specify whether or not they affect the base product price.
8. Choose the Default option (if you select Do Not Preselect Default Value, the Default column is hidden).
9. Save your changes.

Check out Ecwid Help Center for more details.

How to add free shipping to your store:

1. Go to your Ecwid Control Panel → Shipping & Pickup.
2. Click Add Shipping Method.
3. Select how you ship your products and click Set Up.
4. Set up Free Shipping or set up Custom Rates. In the latter case, choose how your rates will be calculated.
5. Click Set Delivery Speed and enter the time it takes for orders to arrive when shipped with this method (optional).
6. Click Set Shipping Region to specify the destinations you’ll ship to with this method.
7. Click Save & Finish.

To set up free shipping for a particular item in your store, or to create a discount coupon for free shipping, check out the Ecwid Help Center.

You can also install the Free Shipping Icon app. It’s free and allows you to notify customers right on the product page whenever free shipping is available.

More: 6 Free Shipping Strategies and Their Alternatives

BOGO Promotions

Akilah Scott-Amos, Kissed By A Bee:

It’s a given that during the holidays, you must be ready and fully stocked with products and/or services. However, the best way to boost sales during the holidays, especially Black Friday, is the Buy One Get One Free: Sales Promotion app. It allows you to entice your customers with a free item or a percentage off with other purchases, automatically, or with coupons. It also syncs with Ecwid’s built-in discount coupon feature. This BOGO app takes the guesswork out of offers, especially if you have other people assisting you during the holiday rush!

How to run Buy One Get One Free promotions in your store:

1. Install the BOGO app.
2. Go to Apps → My apps, find the BOGO app, and click Open App.
3. Choose what products your customers will need to purchase to claim their deal.
4. Select the product that will be free if purchased with the first item.
5. Set a 100% discount on the second item.
6. Optional: enable Advanced Options to add a short description about the offer.
7. Click Save.

You can create your BOGO promotion in just a few clicks

Check out the Ecwid Help Center for more info.

You can also run other types of BOGO deals, like "buy three for the price of two" or "buy one and get the second half off." Check out our article on BOGO deals to choose the promotion that’s right for your store.

Recover Abandoned Shoppers

Mark Norman, JustSaiyan Gear:

During the holiday sales season, we use the BOGO app to create unique codes or automated discounts. We also send abandoned cart recovery emails with catchy email subject lines. I would say these Ecwid basics are pure gold.

JustSaiyan also offers a discount in their cart recovery emails

How to send cart recovery emails from your store:

1. Go to your Ecwid Control Panel → My Sales → Abandoned Carts.
2. Change the toggle to Enabled to enable automatic recovery emails.
3. To change the email template, click the blue link or open the Abandoned Cart Recovery template in Settings → Mail.
4. Enter the email subject and default message.
5. Click Save.

More: Abandoned Cart Recovery for Ecwid Stores: Bring Customers Back With Automated Emails

All the tips provided above have proven to be profitable tactics to capitalize on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping rush. But that doesn’t mean you have to try them all right now.

If it’s your first time promoting your products for the holiday shopping season, try combining just a couple tactics or choose one main offer and go all in. Stick to the tactics that best fit your store: for example, if you sell globally, free shipping might not be the best idea, but a free gift with purchase could be fairly inexpensive. Likewise, if your customers are mostly local, free shipping could be an easy win.

Already tried some of these tactics? What worked best for you? Feel free to share your own sales tips with fellow merchants in the comments!