We're often asked how to best set up early access for the biggest sales event of the year: Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and as always, we're happy to share proven strategies!
Let's take a page from one of the best: Nordstrom's Early Access. This strategy generated an impressive $100,000,000 in additional annual sales and nearly $30,000,000 in profit. The promotion was so successful that it's still going strong 20 years later- and it cost almost nothing.
What did Nordstorm do?Simply put, Nordstrom required customers to spend $700 to be invited to their Anniversary Sale. This resulted in customers spending 18% more before the sale to avoid FOMO. The key is smart segmentation - identifying customers who needed just one more purchase to qualify for VIP access. And since the sale was happening anyway, Nordstrom used it as an opportunity to drive more full-price purchases. |
How to Create Your Black Friday Early Access Campaign
Let's take the same approach to Black Friday, the biggest sale of the year, for your brand!
1. Identify the Right Threshold
The first step is to define the entry point that grants your customers early access. The key goals are:
- Incentivize customers to make full-price purchases ahead of the sale.
- Ensure the threshold is achievable, yet still profitable.
- Create a feeling of exclusivity, so access feels like a reward rather than something available to everyone.
We recommend focusing on 2x buyers and high-spending 1x buyers, encouraging them to make an additional purchase. This allows you to target a broad audience while keeping early access exclusive.
To set an effective threshold, consider the average net revenue (after product returns) of your 3x buyers. Start by segmenting these buyers and exclude any product swaps to avoid skewing your net revenue with $0 exchanges.
Next, you’ll want to examine the average net revenue from your selected customers available in the Percentile Analysis. Let’s break it down with an example:
Customers with 3 orders contributed an average of $335 in net revenue. Based on this, setting a threshold of $350 could be an ideal target for your "Black Friday Early Access."
Here's the twist: the threshold should be set so that one additional purchase is enough to qualify for early access—but it needs to be a regular-sized order, not just a small add-on. In our example, the product return rate is close to 50%, so the net revenue after 3 orders is relatively low compared to the AOV. Therefore, you’ll want to factor in return rates to ensure your threshold encourages meaningful purchases.
To incentivize a regular order with an AOV of $226, you’ll need to raise the threshold slightly. A good threshold, factoring in returns, would be calculated as $350 + ($226 x 50%) = $463.
For simplicity, we recommend rounding to a clean number, such as $450 or $500.
- Higher threshold: Maximizes full-price sales before BFCM.
- Lower threshold: Drives more sales during the discounted period.
In our example, we’ll use a $500 threshold to ensure higher pre-sale revenue.
2. Segment the Cash Cows
The next step is to identify customers who only need one additional purchase to qualify for "Black Friday Early Access." To achieve this, create a segment of customers with net sales between $274 ($500 - $226) and $500:
Target this segment with a focused communication plan:
- Timing: Start your outreach 7 days before the early access date.
- Email Campaign: Send a series of 3 to 5 emails throughout this week.
- Early Access Duration: Offer early access for a period of 2 to 3 days.
- Create FOMO: Implement strategies to instill a sense of urgency (see below for Step 3).
- Transparency: Clearly communicate the remaining revenue needed to reach the qualifying threshold, ideally using a progress bar. You can send net revenue data to Klaviyo and utilize variable filters to calculate the missing amount.
3. Setup the Access
Now it’s time to establish the access rights for your early access campaign in Shopify. Identify the customers who will qualify: those with net revenue of $500 or more.
These customers will be notified 3 days prior to the start of "Black Friday Early Access." The notification should highlight their eligibility and the benefits of early access, which may include:
- The opportunity to shop before anyone else
- Access to the best deals on high-demand items
- Additional discounts exclusive to early access customers
- Faster shipping options
To implement this, create a customer segment for those with net revenue of $500 or more, and sync this information back to Shopify to tag your customers accordingly. This will enable you to customize access to the Shopify early access collection for specific customer segments. For detailed guidance on creating early access collections tailored to particular customer groups, check out our step-by-step guide.
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