Your Ultimate BFCM Playbook: Expert Tips to Plan, Prepare, and Crush the Holiday Sales Season

The Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) holiday is more than a few promotional sales days. It is the pivotal moment of the year for many commerce-based companies. With gconsumers deliberately planning their yearly spending around this time, the eventful period can make or break annual sales targets.

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To help merchants prepare, the Rep AI team has compiled various BFCM planning resources from our technology partners. In this article, you’ll find them distilled into a step-by-step, actionable plan you can take to ensure holiday success.

1. BFCM Planning

A successful holiday season requires planning. With a proper plan, crafting a meaningful campaign that stands out in a competitive landscape is easier. A solid plan starts by knowing where important dates fall on the calendar.  With this knowledge, you can initiate proactive preparation and set appropriate campaign management milestones. Below are the calendar dates for this year’s main shopping holidays:

↗ Nov 28: Thanksgiving

↗ Nov 29: Black Friday

↗ Nov 30: Small Business Saturday

↗ Dec 1: Cyber Monday 

Setting Up a BFCM Planning Calendar

Proactively managing your preparation is crucial. Tapcart found that 6 in 10 consumers start holiday shopping in October or early November. Therefore, your audience will evaluate potential solutions several times in the weeks leading up to the main promotional days. Having a strong campaign calendar ensures you have messaging prepared to engage these early shoppers. It also helps bolster operational efficiency throughout the holiday season.

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The retention marketing platform Yotpo has created a useful Black Friday Calendar to help with your holiday planning. It includes inspirational message ideas for engaging subscribers and recommended action dates for a well-structured campaign. Below, you can see a few of the key campaign milestones:

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• Sep 24 - BFCM Prep: Run Acquisition Campaign: Start building your subscriber list before Black Friday.
• Oct 15 - BFCM Prep: Decide Dates & Segments: Finalize sales dates, offers, and audience segments.
• Oct 22 - BFCM Prep: Promote SMS & Loyalty Opt-In: Inform subscribers of loyalty programs and any special offers during the holidays.
• Nov 1 - BFCM Prep: Start scheduling messages: Schedule email and SMS messages in your marketing autoresponder.
• Nov 26 - Launch BFCM SMS Deals: Begin promotions for non-loyalty segments.
• Dec 5 - BFCM Last Chance: Send subscribers one final reminder of any ongoing holiday deals.

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2. BFCM Preparation

Planning is only part of the holiday success formula. Strong performance results from preparation well before the BFCM sales week. Critical tasks like inventory checks and website optimizations will ensure a solid baseline for successful holiday operations. Be aware of the global e-commerce landscape, and any events that can lead to delays in shipping and product sourcing.

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You can expect an influx of customer inquiries during the BFCM festivities. As such, you must prepare your customer service resources accordingly. Chatbots and conversational AI are the most effective choices for providing quick service. With seasonal promotions in effect, you’ll need to train your service tools to provide appropriate responses. Many subscribers will inevitably contact you with questions about ongoing discounts and holiday shipping details.

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As a massive sales event, marketing campaigns are naturally the area that will require the most attention during BFCM preparation. This will involve setting up platforms, defining campaigns, structuring audience lists, and analyzing relevant market trends and statistics. Attention in these areas will enable you to provide the best offers to target for each segment. During this time it’s important to test your opt-in forms and email deliverability to ensure they are working properly.

Expert-Led Live Sessions

In the weeks and months leading up to the holidays, many technology providers are hosting training sessions to help merchants prepare. You can use these training sessions for advice on campaign structuring and technology tips from experienced professionals. A great example is the Build Your BFCM Audiences in Klaviyo training where you can learn how to build the recommended Klaviyo segments for a personalized sending strategy during BFCM.

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Customers are inundated with marketing during the BFCM shopping period. Knowing how to form segments that deliver highly targeted messaging can help you stand out from the pack. In the training, Klaviyo team members will instruct you on creating valuable segments to help better reach your holiday sales goals. The live training opens September 26 and runs once a week through October 31.

Consumer Insights Reports for Trends Analysis

As BFCM grows in popularity, consumers continue to form unique perspectives and behaviors around the event. This makes market analysis an invaluable tool for gauging audience sentiment leading into the BFCM shopping days. By reviewing consumer insights reports, you can understand behavioral patterns while gaining a statistical basis for demand and spending. 

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The marketing platform Tapcart offers a detailed BFCM Consumer Trends Report. The report includes over 1,000 completed surveys from consumers representing all demographic segments. Below, you can see an example of the results from one of the survey questions:

The insights offered in the report will allow you to create an experience that matches consumer expectations. For example, by reviewing the study, you’ll learn that two-thirds of respondents state they look for a discount between 20% - 35% before considering a purchase during BFCM. With this information, you can ensure your promotions spark interest while keeping pace with competing offers. Some other useful insights include:

• 63% of consumers are more likely to pay attention to marketing messages around the time of BFCM.
• 48% of consumers would unsubscribe from a marketing list due to messages that were irrelevant to them.
• 81% of consumers plan to use a mobile app to shop during BFCM.
• 40% of shoppers have made a holiday purchase directly from a push notification for a mobile app.

Run Through Your Content 

Your store is stocked, and your campaigns are running, but don’t forget that customers take time to explore your site. Make sure your pages are up to date, and your policies are clear, especially since delivery times may change, and additional details may be required. With potential increases in support demand, ensure all common inquiries are handled smoothly in conversations, such as:

• Frequently asked questions about products
• Delivery and return policies
• Order tracking
• Order changes and edits

Remember, the AI crawls your store every 30 seconds. The more data it has, the better it can assist your shoppers. Have content you don’t want to publish on the main site but still think shoppers care about? Add it to the FAQ page, and the AI will handle it seamlessly, no matter how the question is asked.

3. BFCM Execution

After planning and preparation, your focus will shift to executing an effective campaign. During this busy time, it’s essential not to get distracted and overwhelmed by the discounts and holiday hype. Sound operational and marketing best practices will ensure you continue to provide a great, all-around shopping experience.

Coordinate a Multichannel Campaign 

Personalization is essential to standing out during Black Friday. Customers won’t respond to generalized messages and will turn to a competitor offering a more unique experience. That said, shoppers also expect similar messaging across different channels. This means you need a seamless way to connect personalized messages across the various touchpoints throughout the buying journey.

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Email and SMS marketing platform Attentive offers helpful guidance for creating multi-touchpoint campaigns that maximize reach while deeply resonating with your audience. In their 90-day BFCM prep guide, they explain how SMS and email can complement each other. Specifically, they detail how SMS is great for providing notifications and promo codes and how email is effective for more detailed content. The guide also describes how AI takes both to the next level by reducing the effort needed to coordinate personalization across channels.

Keep Customers Informed With Notifications 

Push notifications can significantly enhance your audience engagement while increasing sales opportunities. With the urgency of Black Friday deals, these messages help drive immediate action and more impulse purchases. Push notifications are also useful for keeping customers informed of order and delivery status. In their BFCM planner, SMS and push notification platform PostScript explains these capabilities in more detail, including how to leverage push campaigns for maximum engagement.

Engage Shoppers With In-store Conversations 

Shoppers today expect personalized, seamless experiences that cater to their unique needs. The Proactive Sales Skills feature enhances your AI assistant’s ability to engage shoppers more intelligently and personally. Be sure to take advantage of this customization during BFCM and the holiday season to create an experience that makes shoppers feel seen and engaged.

Why does this matter? When shoppers are engaged proactively, they’re more likely to ask questions, boosting their confidence and increasing the likelihood of a purchase.

To help you make the most of this, we've prepared a holiday season AI instructions guide that will equip your AI with the right approach. 

Activate the Urgency Mechanism

During the holiday season, shoppers often bounce between multiple websites and offers, making it the perfect time to activate the Abandon Cart campaign in your Rep AI console. When a shopper visits your site with items in their cart, the AI concierge can offer a discount to encourage them to proceed to checkout and complete the purchase. This creates a sense of urgency and motivates shoppers to move through the funnel more quickly.

Using AI to Bring Synergy to Your Omnichannel Efforts

Conversational AI is a great way to connect your holiday campaigns into one streamlined system. With a platform like Rep AI, you can provide quick, personalized interactions to every shopper. The AI integrates seamlessly with all the marketing tools mentioned in this guide to ensure you present congruent offers across all channels. Furthermore, the conversational data provided by a chat AI can reveal new insights into customer preferences and pain points. This not only allows you to fine-tune your holiday promotions but also enables you to design more effective audience targeting throughout the year.

To Summarize: Set, Prep, and Crush the Season

With the right planning and initiative, you’ll be well-prepared to make the most of the BFCM rush and attract both new and returning customers. Follow the steps in this guide and explore the additional resources for more valuable insights. 

You can also get ahead by starting a free trial of Rep AI today. By the time the holiday season arrives, your AI concierge will be fully equipped to handle all your service inquiries, allowing you to focus on driving more sales and growing your business.

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