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Tentpole shopping events like Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) are a great opportunity for digital commerce advertisers to capture shopper demand, drive increased sales, and reach new customers. And with a deeper understanding of metrics available within the Amazon Marketing Cloud, insights can be uncovered like never before. In this post we'll examine:
- Why Black Friday Cyber Monday is a prime time to capture new-to-brand (NTB) customers
- How custom AMC Audiences help more effectively convert new-to-brand shoppers to repeat purchasers
- The impact and long-term value of driving of NTB customers during BFCM
- How to balance long-term value and customer acquisition cost to optimize your tentpole investment strategy
Black Friday Cyber Monday is a prime time to capture new-to-brand customers
Key Takeaway: Brands looking to expand their customer base should strategically leverage BFCM as it historically has higher levels of NTB shopper penetration than other times of the year. With an influx of shoppers over the tentpole shopping event that extends into the middle of December, this is an excellent time to capture a new set of customers that you can convert to repeat purchasers further down the line.
Last year, we saw a steady rise in NTB penetration beginning early November and extending into December with significant increases on Black Friday (67.9%) and Cyber Monday (67.3%) respectively, demonstrating the potential for brands throughout the entire holiday period.
Using custom AMC Audiences helps more effectively convert new-to-brand shoppers to repeat purchasers
Key Takeaway: Brands should be leveraging the increase in NTB customers during tentpole events to convert them into repeat purchasers in the subsequent months. Custom audience building with AMC Audiences allows you to target shoppers based on specific actions taken.
Case Study: During Prime Day 2023, Flywheel's AMC team built a custom audience for a customer in the supplements category composed of users who had purchased from the brand the week of Prime Day 2022, and retargeted those users via Amazon DSP and Streaming TV campaigns.
These efforts were paired with active presence in Amazon Sponsored Ads and price promotions—ultimately drove twice the return rate of other brands. The brand saw 16% of customers return (trailing 12 month lookback) to purchase during Prime Day 2023, which was 2X the next highest brand.
Learn more about strategies for Black Friday Cyber Monday and the holiday season in our BFCM Survival Guide.
NTB customers generated on BFCM drive similar long-term value to non-BFCM generated customers
Key Takeaway: While increases in long-term value (LTV) for BFCM customers across both the EU and U.S. can largely be attributed to customers' high spending levels during the event, they are just as likely to make repeat purchases as NTB customers captured during non-peak periods. This also provides brands with increased audiences to retarget with hopes of boosting long-term value for upcoming tentpole events.
Balance long-term value and customer acquisition cost to optimize your tentpole investment strategy
Key Takeaway: During BFCM deal periods, brands should largely expect the cost to acquire customers (CAC) to increase due to increased competition and a surge in demand. However, this could still be worth the investment. Oftentimes advertisers look to ROAS as a rough metric for effectiveness of their advertising strategy. However, this is short term with limited attribution windows. Instead brands should zoom out and look at longer term ratios for sales (long-term value) and the cost to acquire a new customer.
As seen in the EU during last year’s extended deal period, LTV:CAC was significantly higher on the 18th vs. Black Friday, indicating low competition amongst an increase in traffic. Brands can use historical trends for LTV:CAC ratios to their advantage to optimize their strategies for the following year.
With insights powered by the Amazon Marketing Cloud, Amazon is increasingly empowering advertisers to build audiences based on granular insights and develop custom targeting strategies to maximize the long-term success of their BFCM efforts and the efficiency of their ad spend.
Find out more about Flywheel's Amazon Marketing Cloud services and learn how you can build your own custom audiences here.
Data disclaimer
The findings in this article are based on Amazon Marketing Cloud data available to Flywheel. While Flywheel, thanks to its close relationship with Amazon and its extensive client base, has unrivaled access to Amazon Marketing Cloud data, the results presented here should not be considered representative of the official performance of Amazon Advertising, nor of that of any individual advertiser.
