In this article:
- Black Friday has always been about incentivizing holiday shopping with FOMO
- In our post-Covid world what those mean has changed, especially while stores struggle to keep up with supply chain issues.
Anyone who has a clear memory of shopping in the BC (before COVID) era recounts the intense — sometimes even violent — shopping frenzy that defined Black Friday promotions. Stores would openly insanely early, luring in bargain-hunters with doorbuster specials.
The push for in-person crowds was overruled by safety concerns in 2020 (see This Is Not Your Father’s Black Friday), changing the pace of shopping as we know it.
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Full FOMO: Exclusive Early Black Friday Offers
In 2021 retailers are not just pushing shoppers to shop earlier to avoid in-store crowds, but also to ensure customers get their orders in on time. That’s why
Where one major retailer goes, others are sure to follow. So it was no surprise to see that Walmart decided that Black Friday specials should start at the beginning of November — at least for those who become members.
The mega-retailer started promoting Black Friday in October as an exclusive offer for those who joined Walmart+:
Taking a page out of that playbook, Bissel sent out emails in the first week of November to its Bissell Rewards members with this subject line: “You have early access to our Black Friday Sale!”
Getting carded
Some of us don’t look young enough to get carded in the usual sense. However, we do still get noticed for being in possession of particular forms of credit cards — like the Lowe’s credit card.
What Lowe’s brings together in this promotion is the FOMO people associate with Black Friday mutated into a chance to win a truck or thousands of dollars to spend in the store by spending money on the Lowe’s card. The more you spend, the more you stand to win.
Early bird specials
The incentive to get the best deals motivated many people to wake up in the pre-dawn hours when a store’s doors would open at 5 AM. But now early means earlier in the calendar.
Accordingly, Macy’shas already rolled out its Black Friday offerings with different specials offered during five different intervals in the month of December. It doesn’t hide the fact that it’s all meant to make shoppers keep coming back.
It’s not all that significant to get someone to buy once. But if the consumer gets in the habit of checking the store’s offerings regularly, that person picks up the habit that can turn him or her into a loyal customer who keeps this particular store brand in mind.