With the best sales reports numbers we’ve ever seen, the holiday shopping season is off to a great start. Online retail sales alone rose 20% year-over-year, as more and more customers turn to digital shopping. That’s great news for Refersion’s affiliate platform, which has grown tremendously over the past year.
Here’s the scoop:
Refersion Brings It
Refersion tracked 81% more conversions by its merchants this year than last year, between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Strong Thanksgiving day sales started off a good shopping holiday for all of retail. More stores were open this year than last, and some shoppers just couldn’t wait to get started on their holiday shopping.
On Thanksgiving day, Refersion’s merchants saw a 50% sales increase over last year. In total retail, Thanksgiving day online sales reached $7.5 billion.
As you can see, Refersion’s growth far outpaces the market norm for the turkey holiday. This leads us to believe that retailers are employing a more aggressive performance strategy overall.
Brand influencers and affiliates did good work, increasing traffic to Refersion’s merchants by 43% since last year on Thanksgiving day and creating a 41% traffic increase from Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
In summary: Thanksgiving saw strong online sales increases, and the shopping days between Black Friday (Nov 25th) and Cyber Monday (Nov 28th) 2022 had the largest eCommerce revenue numbers to date.
Mobile is Where it’s At
The retail market remains strong despite some major brand closings or downsizing, and mobile sales numbers support the pattern of digital domination.
While the in-store presence on Black Friday increased from 6% to 8% compared to last year, shoppers made up for it by breaking online retail sales records and spiking growth by 10.2%. Black Friday sales rose 2.3% to hit $9.12 billion and Cyber Monday sales rose 5.8% to $11.3 billion, according to the company, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites.
Mobile is up overall, and Refersion helped capture that market. Not only is mobile outpacing all other forms of digital shopping, but online channels are increasing their share of total revenue. Average order values rose is $105 globally for Black Friday compared with last year.
Smartphone ordering teamed up with in-store pickup to increase “Buy Online, Pick-up In Store” (BOPIS) orders 48% in 2022. A lot of in-store purchases are shifting to digital orders, but there’s a surprising sub-category of mobile-to-in-store purchases that remains strong. Many shoppers order online for in-store pickup and/or payment, and grab additional items at the store.
Omnichannel marketing is when all sales and delivery channels work seamlessly in all directions. Buy online or in-store, and have delivery shipped or in-store. It’s important for brick-and-mortar locations to remain competitive with online-only retailers by expanding their digital avenues. The popularity of BOPIS is a good indicator that stores need to integrate their digital and physical options to avoid becoming obsolete.
Shopify Success
Shopify’s merchants across 175 countries racked up $7.5B in sales from more 52 million customers, from the beginning of Black Friday to the end of Cyber Monday. The average order value was $102.10.
Mobile ordering accounted for 73% of sales, while desktop contributed 27%. Apparel and accessories topped the sales list, with health and beauty, then home and garden coming next.
Shopify launched a live map of sales as they happened across the world, documenting the results of the holiday shopping rush in real-time. Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday retail surges are no longer a primarily US phenomenon, as this heatmap clearly showed.
The days between the two ‘posts’ of Friday and Monday hit an uptick in spending. The trend reveals that shoppers sustained interest in deals and discounts across Saturday and Sunday, with ‘Cyber Weekend’ sales seeing a 12% increase over the previous year. This increase outpaces this year’s revenue bump on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
With across-the-board gains in sales and revenue for the entire weekend, the eCommerce sector is poised to continue their upward path.
Performance Marketing
With its focus on results-driven methods of advertising, performance marketing (PM) was perfect for the post-Thanksgiving sales rush. With its ability to rein in the advertising budget and use every dollar to the best effect, PM can make the best use of high-volume sales periods.
As the effectiveness of traditional advertising like print, TV, and radio declines, a dynamic strategy is in order. Meet your customers where they’re at and bring them into your digital sales space–without spending a ton of money upfront.
As you already know if you’ve read Refersion’s piece on why you need Performance Marketing, we’re not talking about mere pay-per-click campaigns. These, like billboards, can fail miserably if the parameters aren’t carefully set.
Site banners proclaiming discounts, coupon codes, referral bonuses, and affiliate commissions all fall under the PM umbrella. Motivate an action; pay after completion is the most succinct definition.
Rallying your influencers and affiliates for the holiday shopping rush is simply good business. These people are already working to promote your brand. A holiday commission bonus is just the thing to give them an extra nudge.
To understand which methods generate the most leads, you can segregate your offers by channel. By offering different discount codes on different social media platforms, you can immediately gauge which source generated the most leads and conversions. This is a crude approach and requires other, more detailed data sets to fully utilize. But it underscores the need to be aware of lead generation methods and how to optimize them.
Keep an eye on your affiliate performance and single out the best and worst performers. Congratulate your best influencers, and give a little encouragement to those lagging behind. Perhaps all they need is some ready-made content to get their efforts back on track.
Refersion has all the data you need to make micro-corrections to your sales plan as the need arises. With the flexibility of performance marketing and the data-driven results of Refersion, your company can get the most bang for every advertising dollar.
Track sales, automate payments, control commissions, and verify onboarding with ease. Comply with tax codes and banking rules in multiple countries without losing yourself in confusing details. And, most importantly, recruit the best of the best to help you promote your product.
