Is Your Small Business Ready for Black Friday?
Black Friday is the annual shopping event that takes place on the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It marks the start of the Christmas shopping season and retailers offer huge discounts and promotional deals. The day has become a global phenomenon, attracting record numbers of shoppers looking for bargains.
The sheer scale of the event means there are plenty of sales to go round — for businesses of all sizes. It’s a fantastic opportunity to shift any overstock inventory you may have with some enticing deals and discounts.
Interestingly, four out of five consumers discover a new online store on Black Friday, which means there’s a good chance your business will have some new customers through its online doors on the day. And new customers can be converted to repeat customers — providing you deliver a great experience!
Here are some tips to ensure your Black Friday will be a success:
It’s never too early to start shouting about your deals. Bargain hunters will be browsing the internet and social media in the weeks leading up to 24 November to plan their purchases. Get your business’s voice heard. Create a specific Black Friday landing page. Put your best deals front and centre of this page. Use bold headlines, high-res photos and strong calls to action. A countdown timer is a terrific way to instil a sense of urgency on claiming your deals.
Work out how to be competitive. Look at your competitors’ price points — can you match them or go lower? If not, are there freebies or samples that you can give with every order so that your business stands out. Put a focus on new customers. Attracting new customers through your online stores this Black Friday is key, but so is ensuring they come back again and again. Criteo asked consumers: ‘What would make you return to a brand or retailer that you discovered on Black Friday?’ The leading answers? Beyond the obvious ‘great deals’, free and fast shipping scored highly.
Consider if you can absorb the cost of free shipping
elsewhere in your business — it will be worth it if it secures you extra sales. As for fast shipping, DHL Express has you covered!
Remember to reward your loyal customers. Drop your existing customers an email with an extra Black Friday discount code. Use engaging copy to thank them for supporting your business — they’ll appreciate the personal touch. Just remember to use the phrase ‘Black Friday’ in the subject line — emails containing this phrase have a +64% Click Through Rate.
Can you utilise AI? You can tap into AI to build unique and personalised gift guides for your customers based on their previous browsing and buying history. Email these out to them a few days before Black Friday so you’re on their radar.
Ship Internationally. Of the world’s 195 countries, it’s estimated that over half celebrate Black Friday in some way. That makes it the ideal time for you to think about shipping internationally — if you don’t already do so.
DHL Express can help your business sell cross-border, taking care of all the hassle around customs regulations, duties and taxes, so that your customers receive their orders without delay – wherever they are.
If you’d like to learn more about how DHL Express can help support your business please contact
entrepreneurial team that built technology and software in a different way than they had traditionally done.
“I have a lot of grey hair and have been around the block. Raising money is hard and building a business is hard. It is tough work doing early-stage start-ups, and nothing is guaranteed. We knew the guys in CPP, and we liked them. We were very much aligned, and we reckoned we could impact their business quite a lot. It was a decision to make, and we made it and had no regrets.”
During the Covid years, when travel insurance was floored, CPP/Blink built some parametric small business insurance products. As the Cork business partners explored that insurance niche, they became convinced of another insurtech opportunity.
In the Prendergast telling, over- and under-insurance is a serious problem for SMEs in the UK and the US. “Eighty per cent of UK businesses never tell their broker or insurer of fundamental changes that impact on their risk exposure,” he explains. “This problem becomes more acute when we recognise that major challenges caused by Covid and Brexit have forced them towards significant ongoing changes in a volatile trading environment. Some firms are paying too much for cover they don’t need, while others are leaving themselves hugely financially exposed with cover that’s not sufficient or fit for purpose.”
The problem centres on how the insurance industry is structured. Brokers don’t get paid enough to spend lots of time with each small firm and underwriters get scant data. The outcome results in ‘one-sizefits-all’ solutions for large industry sectors, and Kayna’s research points to 40% of SMEs in the US having no insurance while 75% are materially under-insured.
“Our ‘Aha!’ moment came with the massive shift to vertical SaaS platforms,” Prendergast adds. “With a tight focus on one industry vertical such as restaurants, dentists or lawyers, vertical SaaS platforms have great data, a great community of customers, and want to solve problems for their customers.”
Toast is the type of SaaS platform that Prendergast has it mind. Around 62,000 restaurants use Toast, and each one is recording daily its turnover, as well as other company data. This granular information can inform accurate insurance pricing, if it can be filtered out. Enter Kayna and its API.
“Embedded insurance offers advantages for platform providers and their customers,” says Prendergast. “By integrating insurance into the user experience, vertical SaaS platforms can enhance customer loyalty and increase revenue streams. In turn the integration affords insurers and platform customers the benefits gained from access to real-time customer data and its capacity to deliver tailored insurance solutions.”
The Kayna founders worked with Founders Factory, the London start-up accelerator, to develop the API code and sound out insurers and the SaaS platforms. In May 2023, they tied down initial venture capital from four investors: Delta in Dublin (€400k), MiddleGame Ventures in Luxembourg (€400k), Aperture Capital in Geneva (€125k), and InsureTech Funds in Seattle (€46k).
“Aperture are fintech marketing specialists,” says Prendergast. “We pitched and won at an insurtech event in New York and that’s how the American investment came about. InsureTech Funds are very well connected, and the US is going to be very important for us.”
With his optimistic sales hat on, Prendergast expects to have Kayna operational on three SaaS platforms by the end of 2023. While Kayna is still a virtual venture with no office and no staff, CPP Group’s Blink Parametric recently announced plans to double its workforce in Cork, where it all started, with up to 30 new recruits in the coming two years, if the flight disruption insurance product catches on around the world.
‘Raising money is hard and building a business is hard’