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Our flagship series will propel you to the forefront of the global ecommerce revolution. From analyses of breaking current events to the intricacies of navigating cross-border sales and regulations, Business over Borders entertains and informs any audience who wants to learn more about how international ecommerce works.
Welcome to Business Over Borders. I'm your host, Leo Tucker, and I'm joined today by the head of sales here at Reach, Cayleigh Palen. Cayleigh, welcome to the show.
Cayleigh Palen:Hi. Lovely to be here.
Leo Tucker:Are you ready to talk about shopping generally and Black Friday more specifically?
Cayleigh Palen:I love shopping, so I'm glad I was invited.
Leo Tucker:Alright. So what's going on with Black Friday? Like, that's that's changed a bit now because I know it used to just be the day after Thanksgiving, and that was it. And it's it's grown, you know, in a lot of ways that include, like, Cyber Monday and everything. But what have you seen?
Cayleigh Palen:It's a little crazy because it it it you have Black Friday. You have Cyber Monday. You now have Prime Day. You now have Prime Day 1, Prime Day 2, Prime Day 3. It really has, like, gone away from being, like, a single day, although I think that single day still holds a lot of, like, significance.
Cayleigh Palen:I think Black Friday has become more of an experience. When I was a kid, it was definitely an experience. My mom would wake us up at, like, 4 AM, and we would go to the town center. And we would get lunch, and I think I got my ears pierced once when I was, like, 10 on, like, Black Friday. It was just, like, a cool thing, like, to go do.
Cayleigh Palen:Then it got a little crazy where, like, everyone opened at, like, 4 o'clock on Thanksgiving, and you had to basically, like, make thanks giving dinner, and they'd be like, oh, I'm going shopping. On it goes.
Leo Tucker:And
Cayleigh Palen:now it's something totally different. Last year, I went Black Friday shopping, so I got up. And and it was so funny as we were going down the aisles, we would see things and be like, oh my god. It's a great idea. And we put it in the cart, and then we'd take 2 steps and we'd pull out our phones and we'd, like, see if we get it on Amazon or, like, we'd see how much it costs online.
Cayleigh Palen:And by the time we left Home Depot, we ordered all, I think, 5 items that were on our cart online from online retailers and put everything in our cart back.
Leo Tucker:So that was your your Amazon window shopping was there, the people
Cayleigh Palen:that was like. It's crazy. It's like having the experience of physically shopping, but not doing it because you get a better deal or better sale online. And I think online retailers, it's kind of funny. Right?
Cayleigh Palen:Because they can offer these deals. They have less overhead with, like, a building, a store, whatever. But you combine both experiences, which sounds ridiculous, but I did where I had that experience of going Black Friday shopping and saw what I wanted, but I got a better deal by, like, peeping it online.
Leo Tucker:That's great. I know that experience firsthand very well of going into a store and being really excited to buy LED light bulb, we'll say, this time. And I got my light bulb. I'm like, yeah. I'm gonna go check this out.
Leo Tucker:I'm like, maybe I'll just, take a look at all Amazon here and see if I can get it cheaper. And sometimes I'll get $10 off, or sometimes I'll just order it from there. Or if they're out of stock, like, that's the way it's like I'm shopping twice.
Cayleigh Palen:But it really matters. Like I said, like, online retailers have more leeway, I think, with their pricing and their margins and their sales because they don't have, like, that overhead of having a store, having an entity, or having set up operations. So you do get things less expensive. And while $10 is $10, $10 across 10 items, you've just saved a $100 by taking it online. Right?
Cayleigh Palen:But I think the sales have gotten more aggressive too because there's so much competition out there. If you wanted to target, like, especially American consumers, like, you had to have a Black Friday sale. You had to have some kind of Black Friday special.
Leo Tucker:I I mean, I remember Black Friday sales being a thing for a long time, but the Cyber Monday thing
Cayleigh Palen:Yeah.
Leo Tucker:I feel is new is newer than that. Do you remember when that came out when it was, like, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, get your latest digital deals kinda thing? Like, when did that come about?
Cayleigh Palen:I feel like it came about when brick and mortar retailers really wanted to, like, extend the day, and so they would have online only sales for Cyber Monday and then their brick and mortar sales on Black Friday. So I think it it stemmed from that. Right? It was like, hey. We got so much business on Friday.
Cayleigh Palen:Let's make it 2 days. Right? So it's always gonna be an extension of wanting to, like, pump up that, like, fear of missing out on, like, this big sale situation. And in today's, you know, inflation issues and, like, tight economy, it matters. Now and I think another thing with holiday shopping is it's discretionary spending, a lot of it.
Cayleigh Palen:Right? It's not stuff any of us need, necessarily. So if we feel like we're getting a good deal, a lot of it's psychological. Right? You feel like you're getting a good deal on something you've been wanting but haven't wanted to spend the money on, and suddenly it's on sale for 25% off, you're just like, you know what?
Cayleigh Palen:It pushes that that envelope, right, to convert on on buying it.
Leo Tucker:Yeah. I mean, obviously, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are all really important kind of quasi holidays for consumers. But for businesses, that's a huge deal. I mean, that's livelihood. That's that's marketing at the right time.
Leo Tucker:That's pricing appropriately. Let's talk about this from the perspective of of the business owners. Yeah. So selling, you know, on Black Friday, like, what kind of things can they look to do to improve sales and get the get the most out of that?
Cayleigh Palen:Yeah. I mean, retailers have a hard job going or planning holiday shopping season. I mean, you're going up against mammoths. Right? You're going up against Amazon.
Cayleigh Palen:You're going up against, you know, these big big companies that have been around forever. Like, how do you differentiate yourself? And I think, there's really 2 two probably main focuses. Right? One being marketing, how you're marketing your business leading up to holiday shopping season, what channels you're using for that marketing.
Cayleigh Palen:You know, you've got crazy stuff now like TikTok shop and Instagram and all that stuff. Right?
Leo Tucker:Mhmm.
Cayleigh Palen:So targeted ads are are huge, but also seizing on the opportunity to really create a sense of of savings and a sense of of missing out. Even as a consumer myself, if I see something, again, that I've wanted for a while that's on sale, that is that extra push. But also, you know, competing when it comes to shipping times, when it comes to, payment methods, when it comes to the checkout experience. Right? If you make it very easy for me to say, oh, I see this on sale, and then 30 seconds later, I'm like, cool.
Cayleigh Palen:Bought. Right? Whether that be Shop Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, some kind of of instant Apple Pay, right, where I don't have to go get out of my seat, think about what I'm about to buy as I walk to probably my car to pull my purse out to get my card, and give me the extra 5 minutes to be like, woah. Do I really need this? Because chances are I probably don't.
Cayleigh Palen:It's really about instant you know, the need for instant gratification, which is not great in consumerism, but it's realistic. Right? When you're buying something, you want that instant, oh, I bought it. I I decided I want it. I got it.
Cayleigh Palen:It it it retailers really need to focus on how to catch the attention of customers, especially when there's so many players out there trying to do that. Black Friday is just such a great opportunity for that.
Leo Tucker:Yeah. So you mentioned making it as simple as possible, and we've talked about in previous episodes reducing the friction, which is just a fancy term for having as few clicks and things you have to type to buy something. If I see that online, I wanna click buy now. If I can go to Apple Pay and just literally have it look at my face and approve it, and then they send it to my house, that's awesome.
Cayleigh Palen:Yeah. Yeah. So when you're an online retailer and your checkout is literally like someone has to physically enter their card number and you aren't offering, like, frictionless payment options, your your conversions gotta suffer. I mean, it's got to.
Leo Tucker:So let's talk again about the perspective from the perspective of the retailer participating in in these big sale events. What can they look at retroactively to know that they're they've been successful?
Cayleigh Palen:Yeah. So I think there's a couple measures of success, right, when you do your kind of post holiday audit. Obviously, there's amount of sales you did. A lot of online retailers that I've talked to, right, the last 4 months of the year, like, 50% of their revenue. And so they can look at a couple of things.
Cayleigh Palen:Obviously, sales. Did we do a lot of sales? But at the end of the day, how many sales did you miss out on? Right? What was your conversion?
Cayleigh Palen:And really looking back at maybe what caused your conversion to not be as high as you thought it would. Right? You'd have a lot of sales, but you would have a lot more sales if your conversion was 90% as opposed to 70%. And we touched on a couple of things on why that would dip. Right?
Cayleigh Palen:Having friction at the checkout, having friction with payment, having friction with shipping. Right? People want things relatively quickly. If you don't have your operations together and you're either charging a ton for shipping or your shipping times are 14 days and we're our deadline at Christmas, your conversion will suffer. So that's that's kind of a big one.
Cayleigh Palen:What was your conversion? You did a lot of sales, but it would have been great if you did 20% more because you offered quick Apple Pay or 2 day shipping or free shipping. Right? So that's probably a major one. 2nd is your costs.
Cayleigh Palen:Right? What was the real return on your investment when it came to marketing or shipping or processing fees or overhead in that way. Right? Those are all ramped up during the holiday season. So it's always gonna do a post holiday audit.
Cayleigh Palen:Right? Where where can I do better next year? Holidays are every year, so you start planning ahead. Where can I cut costs a little bit in my overhead costs? How can I improve my shipping times?
Cayleigh Palen:How can I improve my conversions? Really looking at each of these factors to just be better next year. Right? But, yeah, I I tend to reach out to retailers a lot, around January, February. Everyone's coming down off off the holiday shopping.
Cayleigh Palen:And I always encourage or bring up post holiday shopping audits, that's what I call it, to really see how you did. Right, and and where you could do better. So we can always always do better.
Leo Tucker:Absolutely. Well, I'm pretty excited about the upcoming sales to have. Do you have anything in mind you're you're looking to get? Anything you you're eyeing?
Cayleigh Palen:I don't know. No. See, I don't I'm more of an impulsive shopper.
Leo Tucker:It's all impulse, isn't it? Just just that end cap right before you get in there? It's all Snickers and
Cayleigh Palen:There there's a bunch of stuff out there I don't even know I want yet that I am primed to find out.
Leo Tucker:I like that. There's so many things out there I don't even know I want yet.
Cayleigh Palen:I know.
Leo Tucker:Cayleigh, thanks for hanging out with me today. It was good to chat with you.
Cayleigh Palen:Yeah. Awesome. Always a pleasure, Leo.
Leo Tucker:Alright. Well, if you found this to be interesting, go ahead and give this video a like and subscribe to us. And if you wanna see what else we got coming, hit that little bell, and we'll let you know when the next thing comes out. Talk to you soon.
Cayleigh Palen:Brought to you by the reach network. Visit with reach.com/network for more.