Cyber Monday 2024 — Sales Promotion Ideas & Examples

Cyber Monday 2024 — an event that all eCommerce entrepreneurs have been waiting for!

And why not? After Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, eCommerce businesses have this great opportunity to make the most of the shopping season.

But the thing is — just like your brand, there would be a sea of many other eCommerce brands looking to cash in on this mega shopping fest. So, you need to have solid preparation and strategies in place to conquer this event.

In this blog post, we’re covering the best ideas and strategies on how to prepare for Cyber Monday 2024.

What is Cyber Monday?

First, let’s go through a bit of history of Cyber Monday:

According to Britannica, the term “Cyber Monday” was first coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation. The purpose behind creating this event was to encourage people to buy from online businesses.

Cyber Monday is an online shopping event observed every year — on the first Monday after Thanksgiving Day. On this day, eCommerce brands offer special discount offers and other promotional incentives.

As mentioned, the Friday before Cyber Monday is known as “Black Friday” — which is also a day when eCommerce businesses offer special discounts and promotional offers.

In fact, most eCommerce businesses have now started running a joint promotional campaign for BFCM (Black Friday - Cyber Monday) so that customers get more time to purchase.

As shared on X by Harley Finkelstein (President at Shopify) — BFCM 2023 generated $9.3 billion in sales for Shopify merchants. And it broke the sales revenue record of 2022 ($7.5 billion) by 24%.

We hope this is enough motivation already to get started with your BFCM preparations.

When is Cyber Monday 2024?

This year's Cyber Monday event falls on December 2nd.

That said, as an eCommerce business owner, you must start preparing for the event at least a month in advance. 

Although the actual event is held for one day, i.e., on Monday, the promotional campaigns for raising awareness and creating buzz start well before the day.

How to Prepare for Cyber Monday in 2024

As we just mentioned, most eCommerce brands have started running sales promotions throughout the BFCM phase. So, you may find some strategies that overlap or are combined with the Black Friday sales promotions.

Here are some of the best strategies for Cyber Monday:

1. Start the Preparation in Advance

We can’t emphasize this enough — don’t wait until the last week before Cyber Monday to prepare for your promotional campaigns. You must do that in advance and even launch promotional campaigns before the day.

Create a checklist of all the items that you need to prepare for the Cyber Monday sales promotions. For example, here are some of the key aspects to consider in your checklist:

• Discount strategies 
• Staffing requirement
• Site audit and optimization
• Paid ads strategies
• Social media content
• Blog content
• Other promotional campaigns
• E.g., press releases, email marketing, etc.

2. Create Appealing Offers & Incentives

Customers expect and look for the best discount offers and rewards during Cyber Monday shopping. While you want to give them the best offers possible, you also need to ensure your profit margins are intact.

So, you may need to do some research and come up with the best sales promotions. You can look at the historical data and current trends to make smart decisions.

But keep in mind — your offers don’t have to be cash discounts only. You can come up with creative promotional ideas where you can keep a healthy profit margin and still entice customers to buy from your brand.

Pro tip: If your brand has a loyalty program, you can offer extra reward points on Cyber Monday shopping — and then they can redeem those points again at your store. Thus, you’re offering rewards to customers that will bring repeat purchases too.

Be creative with your discount/reward strategy. Here’s an example of a Cyber Monday promotional campaign by Simon’s Cat where they were offering 20% discount along with a free Simon’s Cat pen.

3. Design Your Store for Cyber Monday

As an eCommerce business owner or marketer, you may already know the importance of website design in enhancing the conversion rate.

Since Cyber Monday comes soon after Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, you need to make the web design changes in a short time.

A page builder app like GemPages can help you create stunning store pages and landing pages with advanced and powerful features.

GemPages has professionally designed templates for Cyber Monday sales that are readily available and can be customized easily to speed up your design process.

Also, you can use the visual editor to simply drag and drop design elements to customize and optimize your store for conversions.

If you’re looking for help from CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) experts to optimize your store design, you can check out the GemPages CRO Experts marketplace.

4. Write Compelling Copy

Remember — customers will have plenty of attractive offers in the market. So, the question is — why should they care to buy from YOU?

That’s where copywriting comes into the picture. Your copy must convey the benefits in a manner that customers won’t be able to move forward without a purchase.

Also, you can use urgency and scarcity tactics in your product copy, but use them mindfully. If your budget allows, hire a professional copywriter to write a compelling website and product copy for the event.

You can look at platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to hire professional eCommerce copywriters at affordable pricing.

5. Website Optimization for Mobile & Speed

This chart from EMARKETER shows that 61% of online shoppers believe mobile shopping is necessary for convenience.

According to Statista, the mobile commerce revenue is estimated to reach nearly 2 trillion USD by 2024 — and will likely double in the following four years.

This shows the importance of mobile optimization for eCommerce stores. Make sure your website is optimized for performance on all devices, especially mobile.

Apart from mobile-friendliness, another important aspect is the page load speed on your website. The slower your website, the more chances your website visitors would exit the website without making a purchase.

Audit your Shopify store to see if there are any areas of improvement and what can be optimized for conversions.

6. Create a Dedicated Landing Page

So, we discussed about designing the website for the Cyber Monday sale. But that’s not the only thing you could do from design and conversion perspectives.

Creating a special landing page for Cyber Monday sales can increase conversion opportunities. Omnisend research has found that among all signup form types, landing pages have the highest conversion rate, i.e., 23%.

One of the best things about landing pages is that you can run experiments. You can test different versions of the landing page to optimize your overall conversion rate.

Once again, anything related to creating store and landing pages — GemPages is the solution. You can select a template from the library and customize it to match your branding and style.

7. Optimize Your Product Pages for Conversion

Your product pages must be optimized for conversion with effective use of product images, videos, copy, and CTA elements.

Display social proof to increase the trust and credibility of your brand and products. Social proof can be presented through customer reviews, press mentions, expert reviews, etc.

Use trust badges so that customers won’t hesitate to complete the checkout. For example, let your website visitors know it’s safe to purchase from your brand by displaying trust badges for a 30-day return policy, secure payments, etc.

Again, make sure your product pages are optimized for mobile.

8. Review and Prepare Your Inventory

You don’t want to end up going out of stock during the peak shopping hours. Going out of stock for a few minutes can cost you multiple lost sales.

Review your inventory stock and prepare for Cyber Monday (and Black Friday) based on demand forecasting. You can look at the historical data and analyze current consumer demand to prepare your inventory.

9. Create a Buzz Through Social Media

Use social media platforms to create a buzz around the event and sales promotions you plan to launch on Cyber Monday.

Publish exciting posts for upcoming sales promotions on your social media and give your followers a solid reason to look forward to the Cyber Monday deals.

Pro tip: Launch a giveaway or contest to increase engagement from your followers and create excitement for Cyber Monday. You can also expand the reach of your social media campaigns by encouraging your followers to share the giveaway/contest details with family and friends.

Here’s an example of a successful social media campaign by Cokodive where their X post for the Cyber Monday giveaway got more than 4700 Likes and 900+ reposts.

10. Use Press Release Promotion

Press releases can play a crucial role in raising awareness of your brand and building its credibility. You can leverage these benefits in your Cyber Monday campaigns.

The Digital Trails case study showcases how CAROL — a D2C eCommerce brand — was able to secure placements in over 250 business outlets in the US. Through these placements, the brand was able to promote its promotional offer links.

11. Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is an evergreen strategy for promotional events. It just never gets old. So, don’t miss out on using email marketing to promote your Cyber Monday deals.

Give your subscribers and followers a special discount code.

You can start promotional campaigns with early-bird discount offers through email marketing. The best thing about email marketing is that you can personalize engagement with your customers or potential customers.

12. Create Cyber Monday Special Content

Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.

Create content around Cyber Monday deals for your target audience. You can help them with their shopping by offering them valuable content.

For example, you can create gift guides as most people are planning to buy things for gifting purposes but are often confused about what to buy.

NETGEAR is a great example of a brand that has created holiday gift guides for its customers. The brand also categorized the gift guides for different audiences such as: For Connected Families, For Travelers, For Tech Lovers, and so on.

13. Leverage Upselling & Cross-selling Offers

What is Upselling?

Upselling is a sales strategy to promote a more expensive, upgraded, or premium version of a product or service the customer is interested in.

What is Cross-selling?

The cross-selling strategy promotes related or complementary products or services based on the customer’s current purchase or interest.

Both, upselling and cross-selling strategies, can help you increase your average order value (AOV). You can even create the best deals for upselling and cross-selling product bundles.

To easily create upselling and cross-selling promotions, you can install a Shopify app. Also, create post-purchase upsell offers for repeat purchases.

14. Create a Plan for Post-Purchase Experience

On Cyber Monday, your aim should not be just to sell the products but also to create a loyal customer base. That’s why a post-purchase experience matters a lot in eCommerce.

Make sure to provide a best-in-class experience to your customer even after the purchase. For example, make sure the customers have access to the support team for any queries or concerns.

Also, appreciate your customer for their business. Send them thank you notes, gift cards, etc. to show your gratitude.

15. Offer Incentives to Encourage Repeat Purchases

Don’t limit your promotional strategies and preparations to just Cyber Monday.

Even after the Cyber Monday event, there are multiple other shopping occasions or holidays in the same (December) month. 

For example, National Sock Day (December 4), Hanukkah (December 7–15), Green Monday (December 9), Super Saturday (December 21), and of course Christmas Eve and Day (December 24–25).

All these are great opportunities to increase your sales and end the year on a positive note.

Learn more: Shopify Post-Purchase Upsell: Definition & How To Best Implement

Best Cyber Monday Deals

Creating the best Cyber Monday deals gives you the opportunity to maximize your chances of conversions. So, if you’re looking to learn how to create enticing deals for Cyber Monday, there are plenty of ways to do so.

Here are some ideas for Cyber Monday sales promotions:

• Product Bundle Offers

Create product bundles for relevant or complementary products so that you can offer handsome discounts and still make a good profit. If you’re using Shopify, you can use GemPages or a product bundling app to create your product bundles.

• Buy One, Get One (BOGO) Offers

BOGO offers have been an all-time favorite strategy for eCommerce business owners because this strategy works. Customers love receiving free items and that’s why BOGO offers have been effective for eCommerce and even brick-and-mortar brands.

• Flash Sale

Flash sales is a sales promotion strategy where a special discount is offered for a short period of time, typically 24-48 hours. It creates a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out), and thus, increases the conversion rate. Since Cyber Monday is a one-day event, a flash sale could work great for this event.

• Sitewide Discount

Sitewide discount offer is also one of the widely used strategies for sales promotions. This allows customers to go on a shopping spree without thinking about what items are eligible for discount offers.

• Conditional Free Shipping Offer

A conditional free shipping offer means when a customer is offered free shipping based on an order value. For example, free shipping on all orders of $150 and above. This type of free shipping offer can entice customers to purchase more from your brand to get the benefit of free shipping.

Learn more: 20+ Best Sales Promotion Examples & Ideas

Benefits of Participating in Cyber Monday Event

• Increase your sales and revenue

This is one of the biggest opportunities in the year to increase sales and revenue. Make the most out of it. With the right strategies and execution, you can skyrocket your sales.

• Maximize the profit

The ultimate metric to measure the success of an event is the profit. You can also increase your profits by creating strategies that can help you sell product bundles, increase your repeat purchases, and level up your AOV.

• Clear your inventory

Brands are often looking for ways to clear old inventory and prepare for the new year. Cyber Monday gives you an opportunity to clear such old stock of items before the year ends.

• Acquire new customers

Attractive Cyber Monday deals let you entice new customers toward your brand. Thus, you can increase your customer base with a successful Cyber Monday campaign.

• Increase your brand loyalty

It’s not just about selling products but also building a strong connection with your customers. Aim for long-term business relationships with your customers by providing them with a great customer experience and post-purchase service.

Get Ready for Cyber Monday 2024

Now that you have all these marketing strategies and ideas, it’s time for the execution. It’s where the real game is!

There are multiple aspects that go into executing these ideas such as monitoring, analyzing, and quick decision-making based on real-time outcomes. 

Since the event is for a short time, you don’t have much room to make big changes, but yes, you can go for quick fixes wherever needed. In a nutshell, you must act fast, and yet, mindfully.

For more eCommerce strategies and tips, check out more resources on our Blog and join the GemPages Facebook community.

FAQs about Cyber Monday