Make Every Day Black Friday: How to Get Ready for the Holidays | Salesforce

Black Friday is generally the busiest shopping day of the year. How can retailers lean in and make everyday Black Friday?

Well, you know, it's funny you think about it last many years, almost a couple decades, the holiday season seemingly gets earlier and earlier. I don't know if anybody was in a Walmart or Costco. This weekend, back to school merchandise was replaced with Christmas trees. And for me, the holiday season really started with Prime Day, this halo effect around demand that was manufactured by Amazon. In fact, our research showed that 51% of the top retailers had some sort a digital campaign on their website homepage or through email. 20% of them actually called out a two day holiday. And so you think about it though, what is really unique about this holiday is there are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And what we're seeing as I'm talking to retailers as holidays all over the world is that retailers are looking to stretch the holiday on both sides of Cyber Week. And on the front side, it's really creating those, as one executive said, earlier moments. And those moments are being created through limited edition product, dare I say sneaker drops. I don't probably sound as cool as the young kids do when you say that, but sneaker drops, where you had limited edition product or social exclusive promotions where we saw a 20% increase last year over the holiday of social traffic referrals. So taking advantage of that inspiration and that discovery on the social problems. Also collaborations as well, or limited time frame, if you think about Bath and Body Works and their Candle Day where they offer deep discounts but you have to take advantage of it in that limited time. So retailers are trying to create scarcity, trying to drum up demand, knowing there's going to be a truncated holiday season.

You mentioned collaborations. Being that we are at New York Fashion Week, I can't help but notice there's been a lot of celebrity collaborations. Collaborations. For example, I think Zendaya and Tommy Hilberger had a collaboration. You previously worked with Gigi Hadid. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, we're sitting here at John Varvatos Tuesday of Fashion Week and that's just another example of an earlier moment in terms of back in the day. For many years it's been you see something on the Runway at Fashion Week and you can't buy it as a consumer for three months, six months, until the season's back, you know, in the late spring or early summer. But now you have this see now, buy now phenomena. And brands are realizing again, trying to drum up demand as early as September. Like for instance, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger through digital platforms, being able to offer the product instantaneously and not having to wait for that demand.

Wow, interesting. So you talked a bit about these earlier moments and pre Cyber Week. What about Post Cyber Week? How can we continue that momentum into Christmas?

I can take that one, Rob. I completely agree with you. It's so interesting to see the innovations coming from retailers as the holiday season has shrunk. However, I have to say that it is still just as important to look at those final shipping days post Cyber Week. We know that 80% of shopping is pretty much complete by 1215, so December 15th, but there's still that 20% of shoppers that are frantically trying to check everything off their list. And how do you provide them with a great experience? Well, one thing that retailers can do is work very closely with shipping and fulfillment providers to make sure that we're capitalizing on those days after ground shipping cutoff. You can do that by offering three day, two day overnight shipping expedited options. And it's a great way to just extend the selling season a little bit further. And on top of that, if you want to also combat the shorter selling season, a program that I've seen that has been very successful when executed well is buy online and pick up in store. It's great. Basically it's blending the best of all worlds, right? So the best online shopping experience, you can find exactly what you want. And then you can be, you know, rest assured that your item or items will arrive safely and on time prior to Christmas.

You know what, if I can interject for one moment, Holly, that shipping window is going to come up really quickly as consumers realize they have fewer and fewer shopping days. And we found actually based on our shopping index that for those last five days of the holiday season, those retailers that have buy online pickup at store are going to have 30% higher, nearly 30% higher share of revenue because consumers are going to have that available to promise that confidence that the product can actually be in stock in the store for them to pick it up. So it's a big deal and another reason why the store isn't dead. You need that for that fulfillment.

Absolutely. And in my experience, stores that have exe executed this well, it's sort of a three part thing that you have to be able to execute from the site, experience what is displayed on the site in terms of products that are available, what stores they're available to be picked up in, and just very clear FAQs on how the program works. Secondly, after the purchase you need to be able to offer alerts for your consumers so that they know exactly where that package is en route and when it arrives in the store, and clear instructions for how to pick it up in store. And lastly, the store experience is probably the most important piece of this puzzle. The store associates need to know that the program exists. They need to be trained and prepared to take in those online orders in the store. And, you know, I've seen dedicated areas for pickups, which really helps. And if you really want to uplevel the store experience, consider things like having a concierge service, a parking spot out front, or curbside pickup. All of those things really, to kind of create that seamless experience from online to store.

That's right. I mean, Buy online, pick up and store, after all, is catering to the convenience aspect and the confidence. You want to make that convenience all the way through the pickup event as well, right?

Right.

Yeah, definitely. And it's interesting to see Nordstrom. They actually opened up a Nordstrom local here last week and there's no inventory at all. It's just a service hub that's focused on buy online, pick up and store. So things are really changing. I'd love to hear more about any other commerce tips that you have for retailers.

Absolute, absolutely. I mean, this may sound rudimentary, but if you're selling online during the holiday season, you need to make sure that your site is sound and ready to take in all of the traffic and order volume coming its way. So all of the preliminary planning around making sure your site is forecasted correctly, you know what demand to expect. You do rigorous load testing, making sure that you can have perfect uptime over the holiday season. Sites like johnbarvatos.com experience almost perfect uptime. And that's what you want because every minute or second that you're down is lost revenue. You can also do things on the site. You know, on site is really important. So one thing that I think is really important this year is to look at your site search and really examine site search as a revenue tool, a conversion driving tool. And now we have AI, which we can embed into site search. So you want to embed AI into all of the aspects of site search, whether that's your search dictionaries, your smart search, and make sure that the AI is there and it's providing relevant product recommendations and search results, and that will ensure higher conversion throughout the holiday season. There is one new search feature that I also wanted to touch on, which is visual search. I don't know if you've used it. But 2/3 of millennials actually prefer visual search over any other search feature, which, it's amazing, it's new and it's very well liked amongst millennials. Basically, what you do is you go to your site of choice, you upload a photo of the product that you're trying to search for, and AI searches the catalog on that site and serves up similar or recommended products to basically that visual image that was uploaded. So really cool, and really something that every retailer should be looking out for this holiday season.

Yeah, definitely. Rob, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, I want to. Well, first of all, the visual search is really cool. I feel like it's the universal language in terms of you don't need to interpret it, but on the AI front, and I think you'll appreciate this, you've been in retail forever, but I see AI being the antidote to what I call discount chicken. You've been there before. You put together this amazing promotional calendar and after the first week, you know what happens? You rip it up.

That's right.

You react and you react and react. And what I have found is that through artificial intelligence, you can drive personalized product recommendations and really put the right product at the right place at the right time. And it really avoids having to discount heavily. And this is so important on the mobile device. I was just talking to a retailer earlier today here in Manhattan who said, let's make this the priority for mobile embedding artificial intelligence. You have such a small form factor, you can't force the consumer to swipe five times down in order to see the right product. And in fact, last holiday season, those consumers who clicked on a product Recommendation driven by AI saw a 26% average order value. So it's not about deep discounts, but rather putting that right product there in a small form factor and breaking down that friction between inspiration and ultimately purchase.

I have to say, that really resonates with me. And in my experience in retail over the last two decades, we have been waiting for something as game changing as this. So, like you mentioned, the promotional planning, the calendar planning, everything that leads up to holiday, as soon as your sales and your orders aren't hitting, to forecast, everything is thrown out and you start over. And it creates a lot of margin erosion because you're essentially putting things at a deeper discount in a panic when you can now lean into a tool like AI to deliver smarter product recommendations, increase site conversion and remove reliance on heavily promoted items.

Definitely. Thank you for sharing all these insights. In addition to a great Commerce experience. Service is a must. Service is actually one of the top reasons why consumers go to physical stores and shop. So how can retailers have a great service experience this holiday season?

Yeah, some of this might sound like blocking and tackling, but there are a couple of things and this goes back to my days in retail and it still remains true today. First of all, don't play hide and go seek with your service options. Right. Don't make it difficult to find out how to call the 800 number. If the demographic wants to do that, let them do that. But also provide other opportunities to engage through services as well. I would also say train, train and then train again. Make sure not only your store associates but your customer service reps are aware of all the policies and programs that are happening around the holiday. What is the shipping cutoff window? How much does it cost to ship overnight? What is the return policy? What products that are on promotion? This sounds very basic, but you can use a tool like Trailhead as an example and make sure that's embedded right there and then also take advantage of where you can automate. Bots are certainly being adopted across the board by many brands and you can think about some of those rudimentary tasks like where's my order? Or how do I return this product to really take out that so that your service agents can focus on service and also think about voice as well. Right. There are opportunities to take some of that friction away from the service experience and offer that bot experience within voice as well.

Definitely. I personally love using bots. Just the other day I placed an order and I wanted to change the size and I was able to chat with the chatbot and get it fixed within minutes. So as we come to a close, where can retailers go to learn more?

Well, you know, I'd say go to salesforce.com we have a full on holiday resource center where you can see our predictions and our holiday guide and a lot of how to content to not only change the game this holiday season but into 2020.

Perfect. Thank you so much Holly and Rob and we'll see you in a bit.

Happy shopping.