Peak selling days Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here. Here is a practical guide addressing common challenges throughout the entire Cyber 5 period (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday), based on real-time pain points from online retailers and brands.

1. Manage your inventory and product organization throughout Cyber 5.

• Audit your stock: You’ve made sure your warehouse or fulfillment partner is prepared for high demand. Make sure you have clear processes in place to switch distribution centers as demand increases.
• Product organization: Confirm that single, bundle and variation SKU assortment is in place. This is not the time to test anything new in a live environment.
• Backorder and restocks: Have a backorder system ready if you are not already prepared for fast restocks for items that sell out quickly. Amazon does not allow inventory replenishment until the new year. Make sure you have backup with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) should you run out of inventory.

Assign responsibilities to the inventory management and logistics/operations team.

• Inventory manager: Perform the inventory audit and set up alerts for low stock and immediate communication to front-facing e-commerce channel managers.
• Logistics/operations team: Coordinate with fulfillment partners to confirm stock levels and restock procedures and open lines of communication for delays.

2. Finalize discounts, promotions and bundles.

• Advertising and retail media strategy: Ensure your campaigns are optimized to the most profitable target audience, prioritize products for the holiday sales season and ensure product listing data, images, video and content are recently updated. This is not the time to have your campaign hit their daily spend cap. Increase your bid ceilings or run uncapped and ensure your ads are visible the entire week.
• Discount Strategy: Set up Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) promotions, including sitewide sales, category-specific discounts and flash deals. Clearly define the terms and conditions for each.
• Communication Strategy: Finalize days/times – down to the minute – for when email, text and social communication will be sent out.
• Bundle Deals: Consider offering product bundles at discounted prices to increase average order value (AOV).

Assign responsibilities to the marketing team, e-commerce manager and creative team.

• Marketing: Finalize and schedule promotional campaigns, including discounts and bundles. Have promotional banners and visuals ready for launch. Ensure you have a clear, by the hour breakout of when communication will occur across customer outreach channels.
• E-commerce manager: Ensure discount codes are properly implemented and working on the site. Update product pages with the correct pricing and offers.
• Creative: Design banners, pop-ups and other assets that highlight discounts and promotions.

3. Double-check automated reporting and dashboard report set ups.

• Key metrics: Monitor conversion rate, traffic and AOV. Set up automated email alerts for stock levels, sales performance and ad spend ROI. During peak selling periods, search trends can fluctuate. Ensure someone is checking auto campaigns to capitalize on trends and move those to manual campaigns to maximize opportunity during Cyber 5.
• Monitor ad spend: Set up integrations between your ad platforms and e-commerce store to track ROI on paid campaigns (Google Ads, Facebook, etc.). Ensure someone is watching this in real-time to adjust spend, monitor competitive threats and be able to adjust. This includes tapping into a larger bucket of spending if a clear opportunity presents itself.

Assign responsibilities to data analyst/business intelligence teams, marketing and e-commerce manager.

• Data analyst/business intelligence: Set up and monitor dashboards to ensure key KPIs are automatically tracked and actionable insights delivered.
• Marketing: Keep a close eye on paid ad performance and adjust budgets, targeting and creatives as needed. Paid marketing managers or agency managers are available, real time.
• E-commerce manager: Monitor sales performance and pivot promotions if certain products or categories are underperforming and communicate this to marketing. Make sure ads across your website are relevant to the page and experience. Irrelevant ads reduce the likelihood that a shopper will purchase a product.

4. Prepare customer support systems and FAQs.

• Expand support channels: Ensure live chat, helpdesk, and other support channels are active and capable of handling increased volume.
• Proactively answer questions: Update the FAQ section with anticipated BFCM-related queries like shipping times, returns, or promotions.

Assign responsibilities to customer support, marketing and e-commerce manager.

• Customer support team: Ensure enough customer support employees are available to handle high-volume inquiries. Prepare scripts for common BFCM issues (order status, shipping, returns).
• Marketing: Update the FAQ section on the website with clear, concise answers to common questions.
• E-commerce manager: Ensure clear communication with fulfillment and shipping partners so customer support can give accurate updates on delivery times.

How to organize your team for Black Friday and Cyber Monday peak holiday selling events

Conduct daily briefings to check in and review metrics, discuss any roadblocks and realign priorities. Ensure all teams are aware of their specific responsibilities during Cyber 5.

Cross-functional collaboration is key between marketing, customer support, logistics and the e-commerce team. Regularly share performance data, stock levels and customer feedback to stay on the same page.

Finally, plan for pre- and post-BFCM analysis. Schedule a debrief now. Schedule another after the peak sales event. Share a pre-read summary from each department containing what worked and what needs to be improved. There is limited time to enact changes to ensure a successful December selling period. Learn how Rithum can help your business here.