As mar­keters col­lect their thoughts, and rev­enues, from a busy peri­od of con­sumer spend­ing across “Cyber Week,” data and analy­sis on the way con­sumers have been spend­ing their Novem­ber pay­checks has revealed four key take­aways for retail­ers to con­sid­er in 2015 and beyond.

Black Fri­day has always rep­re­sent­ed some­thing slight­ly bizarre from a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive. After all, con­sumers who man­age to pick up a heav­i­ly dis­count­ed TV might be hap­py with their pur­chase, but does it real­ly inspire loy­al­ty to the brand they pur­chased it from? Does it mean they are more like­ly to shop there for the com­ing year? It’s hard to find evi­dence prov­ing the event makes a real dif­fer­ence.

That’s not to say the Thanks­giv­ing week­end deals and dis­counts aren’t a cru­cial peri­od for any retail­er. It sig­nals the time of year con­sumers minds turn to pur­chas­ing goods or presents, some of whom may have even been hold­ing out for the sales to make nec­es­sary home upgrades.

Retail­ers need to be at the top of their game in win­ning their loy­al­ty, engage­ment, and busi­ness. How­ev­er, of all the things Black Fri­day does rep­re­sent, a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is not one of them.

On the week­end with the great­est poten­tial of all over the cal­en­dar year, should crowd­ed stores, inac­ces­si­ble web­sites, and lim­it­ed deals (that reward few and leave oth­ers want­i­ng) be the sta­tus quo?

While retail­ers may feel they have to fight for the rep­u­ta­tion of being the best val­ue retail­er (or per­haps they want to instill a sense of excite­ment and impul­sive­ness ahead of the win­ter shop­ping peri­od) evolv­ing con­sumer behav­ior may prompt retail brands to re-eval­u­ate their “Cyber Week” mar­ket­ing strate­gies – the peri­od of time lead­ing up to Thanks­giv­ing, Black Fri­day, and the week of Cyber Mon­day.

Takeaway 1: Mobile Consumers Purchased In Record Numbers

Data from an IBM Dig­i­tal Ana­lyt­ics Bench­mark has revealed that mobile devices served as the sin­gle most impor­tant resource for con­sumers in brows­ing prod­ucts online. On Thanks­giv­ing day, mobile account­ed for an incred­i­ble 52.1 per­cent of all online traf­fic, and sales com­plet­ed on mobile devices were up 14.3 per­cent on 2013 fig­ures.

As Jay Hen­der­son, Direc­tor, IBM Smarter Com­merce explained:

“Mobile has become the new Thanks­giv­ing tra­di­tion as con­sumers find the best deals with their fin­gers as well as their feet. We saw retail­ers har­ness the pow­er of data to engage shop­pers, iden­ti­fy­ing the unique pref­er­ences of their cus­tomers while quick­ly cap­i­tal­iz­ing on online, mobile or in-store trends as they emerged.”

Mobile sta­tis­tics were equal­ly strong over the Black Fri­day week­end, as con­sumers used their smart­phones to both to check prices and seek infor­ma­tion in-store and trans­act via their mobiles them­selves:

Accord­ing to IBM:

• Mobile sales on Thanks­giv­ing Day num­bered 29 per­cent of all total sales.
• Online sales on Black Fri­day were up 9.5 per­cent (YoY), with mobile sales account­ing for a quar­ter of all online pur­chas­es.
• Online sales on Cyber Mon­day were up 8.5 Per­cent (YoY), with mobile sales account­ing for 27.6 per­cent of all online pur­chas­es.
• Mobile traf­fic on Cyber Mon­day account­ed for 41.2 per­cent of all online traf­fic, up 30.1 per­cent (YoY). This was pre­dom­i­nant­ly on smart­phones which drove 28.5 per­cent of traf­fic, with tablets mak­ing up 12.5 per­cent.
• Tablets how­ev­er, had the high­est con­ver­sion rate among mobile devices, win­ning 12.9 per­cent of online sales com­pared to 9.1 per­cent for smart­phones. Tablet users also mea­sured a high­er aver­aged sale price, at $121.49 per order com­pared to $99.61 for smart­phone users, an over­all dif­fer­ence of 22 per­cent.

Adobe have report­ed that large retail­ers saw the biggest gains as a result of increased mobile traf­fic, with brands such as Wal­mart and Tar­get receiv­ing record mobile traf­fic. Wal­mart in par­tic­u­lar mea­sured spec­tac­u­lar mobile fig­ures with a report­ed 70 per­cent of traf­fic over Thanks­giv­ing week­end from mobile devices.

With such a clear trend indi­cat­ing that mobile devices have become the most impor­tant means for users to browse for deals, brands should take it as a clear sign that deliv­er­ing an excep­tion­al mobile expe­ri­ence should be of the utmost impor­tance for next year’s Cyber Week sales.

Takeaway 2: Consumer Spending Once Again Shattered Records

As many as 140 mil­lion unique U.S. shop­pers were look­ing to pick up a bar­gain last week­end, and this was reflect­ed in anoth­er year of record break­ing spend­ing:

• Accord­ing to Adobe, Thanks­giv­ing Day and Black Fri­day set new sales records with $1.33 bil­lion (25 per­cent growth YoY) and $2.4 bil­lion (24 per­cent YoY), respec­tive­ly.
• Anoth­er Adobe sta­tis­tic revealed that the top 25 retail­ers of the Adobe Dig­i­tal Index, each gen­er­at­ed $30 mil­lion or more on Cyber Mon­day, con­tribut­ing to an over­all online sales increase of 25 per­cent cap­tur­ing near­ly $1.8 bil­lion in sales rev­enues.
• Small­er retail­ers, those gen­er­at­ing $2 mil­lion or less, grew by 5 per­cent. Con­sumers saw the high­est dis­counts of 23 per­cent in the ear­ly morn­ing hours and more than half (54 per­cent) of online sales came in out­side of nor­mal work­ing hours.
• Com­Score had slight­ly more con­ser­v­a­tive, but no less con­vinc­ing fig­ures indi­cat­ing that Thanks­giv­ing sales rev­enues post­ed a 32 per­cent gain (YoY), up to $1.01 bil­lion – sur­pass­ing the bil­lion dol­lar mark for the first time.
• Black Fri­day num­bers were sim­i­lar­ly high, jump­ing 26 per­cent (YoY) to $1.5 bil­lion. Cyber Mon­day mea­sured an incred­i­ble $2.038 bil­lion in desk­top online spend­ing, up 17 per­cent (YoY), rep­re­sent­ing the heav­i­est online spend­ing day in his­to­ry and the only day ever to sur­pass $2 bil­lion in sales, accord­ing to com­Score.
• The five-day peri­od from Thanks­giv­ing to Cyber Mon­day, had an over­all total of $6.6 bil­lion in online buy­ing from desk­top com­put­ers, up 24 per­cent com­pared to 2013 fig­ures for the same peri­od, com­Score report­ed.

Com­Score chair­man emer­i­tus Gian Ful­go­ni offered the fol­low­ing insights on con­sumer spend­ing:

“Any notion that Cyber Mon­day is declin­ing in impor­tance is real­ly unfound­ed, as it con­tin­ues to post new his­tor­i­cal highs and reflects the ongo­ing strength of online this hol­i­day sea­son. Vary­ing reports have also indi­cat­ed weak­ness in the con­sumer econ­o­my due to flag­ging brick-and-mor­tar sales over the hol­i­day week­end, but what we may real­ly be see­ing is an accel­er­at­ing shift to online buy­ing as mobile phones spur increased show­room­ing activ­i­ty. The data we’re see­ing sug­gest it may be more a change in shop­ping behav­ior than a lack of con­sumer demand.”

Takeaway 3: Email Marketing Gave Online Spending A Boost

A Cus­to­ra blog post has revealed that email mar­ket­ing and Google search were dri­vers of ecom­merce suc­cess over the week­end.

• On Black Fri­day email mar­ket­ing was the pri­ma­ry chan­nel dri­ving con­sumer con­ver­sions, account­ing for 27.3 per­cent of sales; organ­ic search account­ed for 18.9 per­cent of sales; and paid search account­ed for 18.5 per­cent.
• On Cyber Mon­day email mar­ket­ing drove 23.9 per­cent of orders; organ­ic search account­ed for 18.8 per­cent of sales; and paid search for 16 per­cent.

Anoth­er study based on data from Hook­Log­ic revealed that con­ver­sion rates were up to 3.4x high­er than usu­al on Cyber Mon­day.

The fig­ures show that email mar­ket­ing deserves recog­ni­tion for its abil­i­ty to dri­ve con­ver­sions and sales. Email offers the abil­i­ty to com­bine cus­tomer data and per­son­al­iza­tion that when com­bined with attrac­tive deals of Cyber Week offers a pow­er­ful incen­tive for con­sumers to buy.

Takeaway 4: Will Black Friday Or Cyber Week Matter More To Consumers in 2015?

One of the emerg­ing devel­op­ments in the last few weeks has been the rev­e­la­tion that a num­ber of brands had been rolling out pre-Black Fri­day dis­counts, in an attempt to get a head start on the com­pe­ti­tion. Wal­mart report­ed­ly dis­count­ed 20,000 items in the week lead­ing up to Black Fri­day week­end, and more than one media out­let has point­ed the blame for a slight decline on in-store retail on the gro­ceries and con­sumer goods giant.

Ama­zon adopt­ed a sim­i­lar strat­e­gy, with deals being offered a week before Black Fri­day, forc­ing com­peti­tors to move sim­i­lar­ly or lose rev­enue. It shows a trend among retail­ers look­ing to gain a head­start on their com­pe­ti­tion, releas­ing ear­ly pre-Black Fri­day deals online, per­haps in the hope that con­sumers would pick up high val­ue items ear­ly rather than face the lot­tery of ela­tion or dis­ap­point­ment in the end of week rush.

A decline in sales for one con­cen­trat­ed day of dis­counts on Black Fri­day could also be indica­tive a wider trend in the way dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is extend­ing its influ­ence over the entire­ty of con­sumer shop­ping habits, with retail­ers choos­ing to spread dis­counts over a whole week in order to max­imise rev­enues from the end-of-Novem­ber peak in con­sumer spend­ing sen­ti­ment.

Con­sumers are begin­ning to real­ize that they can still get a great deal from the com­fort of their own homes — with­out any of the queu­ing in the cold — and with sta­tis­tics point­ing towards such a strong sales peri­od across Cyber-Week, it could mean that in-store Black Fri­day rev­enues in 2015 mat­ter to retail­ers and ecom­merce play­ers than orches­trat­ing a strong week of sales online.

Takeaway 5: European Consumers Have Embraced Black Friday

2014 is the year Black Fri­day tru­ly hit Europe, espe­cial­ly the UK. Even though there were no nation­al hol­i­days in Europe, sev­er­al UK retail­ers report­ed record-break­ing week­ends. John Lewis have pur­port­ed­ly made £179 mil­lion worth of sales in one week, a record for the part­ner­ship, with one source indi­cat­ing that they were sell­ing a tablet com­put­er every sec­ond, and a flatscreen TV every minute.

Fig­ures were sim­i­lar­ly healthy for oth­er UK ecom­merce retail­ers: Online elec­tri­cals retail­er AO.com has report­ed the busiest trad­ing week in it’s 14-year his­to­ry; and Maplin Elec­tron­ics said its online sales on Black Fri­day were up 70 per­cent com­pared with 2013 fig­ures. Hal­fords, the bicy­cle and car retail­er, report­ed 1.1 mil­lion vis­i­tors on Black Fri­day, dou­ble the traf­fic of 2013, and online retail­er Very.co.uk said its sales were up a stag­ger­ing 134 per­cent, mak­ing it the busiest trad­ing day in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry.

Key to UK suc­cess fig­ures were online sales. John Lewis’ oper­a­tions direc­tor Dino Rocos said:

“Our biggest achieve­ment was deliv­er­ing an oper­a­tion which ran like clock­work. We picked and packed 87 per­cent more online parcels on Sat­ur­day than we did last year, and to have deliv­ered suc­cess­ful­ly on cus­tomer expec­ta­tion is a tes­ta­ment to the work of our part­ners both on Black Fri­day itself and in our for­ward-plan­ning. Our web­site coped well with excep­tion­al demand whilst the atmos­phere in our shops remained both sea­son­al and calm with cus­tomers enjoy­ing extend­ed open­ing hours and the great offers to be had.”

In fact, while there were scram­bles over flat-screen TVs in UK retail stores, many of the big win­ners from last week­end were achieved through the mer­it of their online oper­a­tions. Such was the demand for online dis­counts that most UK ecom­merce sites (with the notable excep­tion of John Lewis) were forced to enact a sys­tem of cyber queues which retail­ers had put in place in antic­i­pa­tion of the rush.

Final Takeaways

In both the U.S. and Europe now, the end-of-Novem­ber week­end marks the moment con­sumers are look­ing to begin their hol­i­day pur­chas­es. Con­sumers look to spend, hunt out the best deals, get good val­ue for their pur­chase, and share tips and expe­ri­ences. An ele­ment of Black Fri­day for many retail­ers has been in cater­ing to a con­sid­er­able spike in con­sumer demands which is what gives rise to the fran­tic head­lines of over­crowd­ed Black Fri­day stores.

How­ev­er, the data from this year’s con­sumer spend­ing indi­cates that a major­i­ty of con­sumers are look­ing to spend online, and in this sense, the best strate­gies for retail­ers in future should include help­ing con­sumers by pro­vid­ing val­ue, offer­ing online (rather than lim­it­ed in-store) dis­counts, and look­ing out for the best inter­ests of your con­sumers across the whole Cyber Week peri­od.

Let us know your thoughts on how dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing will change the end of Novem­ber shop­ping week­end shop­ping in future years.