Ideas for Reactivating Customers on Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Believe it or not, we are in September! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are less than 12 weeks away, so if you have not thought about your promotions and marketing segmentation, here is your sign!

These retail holidays are more than just a week of sales to help boost your bottom lines for the fourth quarter. It’s an opportunity to win back lapsed customers that will hopefully buy again throughout the new year.

Here are some of our favorite strategies to reactivate lapsed customers.

Reactivate With Tiered Promotions Based on Last Purchase Date

Doing a general percentage discount for everyone on your marketing file is tempting. Instead, create three segments of customers based on their last purchase date, and give those who have spent the longest time away from you the deepest discount. For example:

• Give 30% off to those who last purchased within the last 12 months
• Give 35% off to those who last purchased 12 to 24 months ago
• Give 40% off to those who last purchased 25+ months ago

While you certainly can give everyone a good discount, in the example above 40%, you’ll be eating into your profit margins since those who purchased recently are more prone to return anyway. Save the deepest discounts for those customers you are trying the win back.

Reactivate with a Touch of Customer Service & Market Research

When you analyze your customer file, there are bound to be many customers who were incredibly loyal but suddenly stopped coming back. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great opportunities to find out why.

Look for those customers who have purchased 5+ times but not in the last 12 months. These folks used to be champions of your brand but stopped. Ahead of the holidays, send them a brief survey to find out why. In reward for taking the time to fill the survey out, give them a gift card, promotion code, or a sneak peek at your upcoming sales.

Not only will your customer appreciate the extra effort you are making, but you can also use their feedback to improve your products, fulfillment, or customer service. Plus, you’ll get them back engaging with your brand.

Reactivate Only High-Income Households

With the rising paper costs and CPMs around these two retail holidays, it might be worth only going after households with a certain income level. For this strategy, you’ll most likely need to license third-party data or set up a LaunchPad account.

First, you’ll need to run a Customer Profile Analysis or determine internally what income band will be your “floor.” For example, in LaunchPad, you can select Households with a yearly income of 0-$14,999, $250k+, and everywhere in between. Once that level is set, pair this up with those who have not purchased with you in the last 12 months, and you have all your lapsed customers with enough disposable income to buy again.

Reactivate on Birthdays with LaunchPad ASAP

LaunchPad is LiftEngine new SaaS platform for customer data management and segmentation. Along with dozens of RFM roll-ups, like those needed to do the segmentation above, you’ll get access to 300+ licensed data elements.

If you’re interested in long-term strategies on how to use birthdays to reactivate customers, check out our blog post here.

About LiftEngine

Since 2005, LiftEngine's primary mission has been to help clients better understand and connect with their most responsive prospects and customers, online or offline. Our expertise is behind the marketing campaigns of 400+ clients.

Behind LiftEngine is LiftBase, our proprietary addressable consumer database. Comprised of 250 million US consumers, 140 million US households, and 1,000+ enhanced data elements, LiftBase powers our audience development services and industry-leading products, PortalLink and LaunchPad.

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