Automated product recommendations are a vital element on the customer shopping path. The majority of recommendation tools offer huge capabilities of their algorithms’ configuration to streamline the buying process and enable customers to find the right product quickly. The Black Friday peak season is a special time of the year when customers have even less time and more offers to look at. In this article, you will find tips and inspirations about the modifications in your recommendation algorithms configuration that are worth implementing for the 2024 Black Friday season.
New recommendation features and AI
Firstly, it is worth checking the developments made by the provider of our product recommendation technology in recent quarters. The technology is evolving, and in 2024, most MarTech providers introduced upgrades to their products and features—many of them launching new AI-based functionalities. It’s important to ensure that you are equipped with any new options or engine types available in the recommendation module.
Products to boost recommendations during the Black Friday season
Secondly, you have likely formulated a general sales and promotion strategy for this year’s Black Friday season, so make sure to implement that strategy in product recommendations across all channels.
Apart from what your Black Friday strategy dictates, consider increasing the promotion for:
• Products added to the favourites list by customers. If you don’t have such lists or they are not widely used by your customers, you can consider products that were added to the cart or viewed multiple times.
• The most popular products. Popular products with high discounts create an explosive combination, which will result in the highest conversion.
• Products you want to get rid of. If you don’t know where to start, filter the product catalogue by warehouse entry date and product count. The longer the time in the warehouse, the higher the costs and the lower the margin for that product.
• Products with the highest margin.
• Products from suppliers or brands you want to promote in line with your strategic goals.
• Products suitable as gifts. Many consumers use Black Friday smartly to buy discounted gifts before the upcoming holidays.
Consider minimizing the promotion of certain products during Black Friday
The time a potential customer spends in the buying process is very limited during high promotional periods. Therefore, it’s important to use each promotional space wisely, which means excluding non-essential products from recommendation blocks can be beneficial. Consider excluding the following types of products:
• Products with the lowest margin.
• Products already purchased by the customer. This depends on the industry; for some sectors (like fashion, bookstores, and electronics), it doesn’t make much sense.
• Products with low or unknown stock levels. There is a risk that the product could go out of stock before the customer completes the purchase, which may cause significant disappointment and frustration.
• Products that require complicated packaging, longer preparation times, or other complexities in the order fulfillment process.
• Products that are purchased regularly by the customer (e.g., monthly). It’s likely the customer will buy them anyway, so you can use Black Friday to raise the customer’s awareness through cross-selling.
Offer the highest discounts to the most loyal customers
Building loyalty is a challenging and demanding process, and Black Friday presents an exceptional opportunity to support this goal. If you treat your loyal customers exceptionally well during this special time, you will stand out from the crowd of offers and increase the chances of your message being remembered. You can define a segment of loyal customers (e.g., using RFM analysis) and build recommendation models specifically tailored for them:
- Personalised models. You have the historical data of your loyal customers, so the personalised models will act much better in their case.
- Models extended by-products with the lower margin – because in the local customers’ case, you can achieve other goals: increase of their purchase frequency and CLTV increase.
Recommendations prepared in this way should be sent in a dedicated email campaign or attached as an additional element of the existing campaigns in the Black Friday period. Of course, another good place for their presentation is your e-shop’s web pages.
Ensure the quality of your product recommendations
The final step of recommendations updates is quality assurance. Since the products are chosen by algorithms automatically, it is crucial that there is a human eye overseeing the quality of the final product for the customer. Of course, it’s impossible to check all the versions as they are personalised and change in time. The good practices of recommendations’ QA are:
- pre-launch tests for the most valuable and most common segments or example customers
- creating and monitoring analytical dashboards with the product recommendations KPI tracked on a time scale, so any drop or unwanted behaviour can be spotted quickly
- setting up e-mail alerts to be sent automatically when some KPI get to an abnormal level
- have resources for making fixes whenever something stops working correctly (people with the needed access to configuration editors, know-how and documentation)
To sum up
Successfully preparing your product recommendation strategy for Black Friday 2024 requires a thoughtful, strategic approach. By utilizing AI-driven upgrades, aligning recommendations with promotional goals, prioritizing key products, and maintaining strict quality control, you can maximize the effectiveness of your product suggestions. These techniques not only enhance the customer experience but also drive higher conversions and build lasting loyalty, ensuring you stand out in a competitive market.
If you’re ready to elevate your recommendation strategy this Black Friday, contact us at vecton.pl/#contact-us and learn how we can help you maximize your results!
