eBay’s Black Friday Sale
About
The annual Black Friday shopping event has become one of the biggest shopping event in Australia even eclipsing the end of financial year sales and eBay wanted to “OWN” this shopping event becoming the one stop shopping destination for the best inventory, the best prices and the best deals. In order to achieve this, eBay needed to approach Black Friday a bit differently compared to previous years. A secondary goal was to increase the subscription numbers of the premium eBay membership called eBay Plus.
Research
Competitive analysis and Analysis of Past campaigns
In order determine the best strategy myself and a team consisting of all parts of the eBay business analysed what other retailers would do during this sales period and also look back at the most effective eBay campaigns which have been run in the past. We analysed what worked and what didn’t from an eBay perspective, and also looked at our main competitors, eg. AMAZON, JB Hi Fi and determined how effective their campaigns were in the past.
Outcomes
An increase in focus on the eBay App shopping experience as 60% of total eBay Australia traffic was from the app
Unlike competitors, eBay has historically not had as a great uplift in purchases compared to competitors
Needed to have a cohesive sales messaging aligning onsite marketing messages and Out of Home. It was very fractured in the past
Needed to lean on the Black Friday messaging. Created eBay exclusively named sales in the past with little to no increase
A more streamlined user experience to access both sales and also eBay Plus Sign up Flows for non eBay Plus members
Creative Testing - Messaging
In order to make sure the eBay Black Friday Sale would cut through the 100’s of other retailer’s Black Friday sales, we wanted to ensure that the messaging we were marketing was the most appealing and strongest we were going to use. We decided to do some creative messaging testing through user interviews and surveys. The users we engaged were aged between 18-65 year olds and had shopped in the last 12 months. With the help of an external agency, we were aiming to achieve the following objectives
Identify the most persuasive messaging
Understand which pieces of messaging complimented and strengthened each other when used together
Determine messaging which would deliver on likelihood to visit eBay during Black Friday
Outcomes
A clear % off messaging resonated the most with users
The use of “Extra XX% off” was very enticing, implying that users would be saving a further % off to great deals
A secondary message of “Shop millions of items on eBay” complimented the % off messaging the best increasing the likelihood of shopping on Black Friday
Wireframes of messaging
Using the insights gained from the Creative testing, our copy writer started to create key messaging to be used for our campaign which was ultimately signed off by the marketing manager.
Design
With messaging approved the design team used data gathered from the user interviews to inform creative. The insights that informed the designs were
Well known branded products resonated the most
Products with a mix of prices showed breath of inventory
Clear indication of % off on all creative
First concepts
APPROVED CREATIVE
Through numerous iterations of creative by presenting it to the business, aligning with business goals and also presenting it to our user testing groups, we arrived at the approved creative. Creative that was produced consisted of Onsite marketing, Out of home, Train Station take overs, Display, Website take overs, eDMs and more.
