Name: BCFM 2026: Win the Weekend | EMEA Session
Uploaded: 2026-09-29T11:11:07.614Z
Duration: 55 min 4 s
Description: BCFM 2026: Win the Weekend | EMEA Session

Transcript for "BCFM 2026: Win the Weekend | EMEA Session": Hi, folks. Welcome to our webinar, Black Friday Cyber Monday. Now I'm gonna give you a bit of a history lesson start. Origins. In the 1920s, after Thanksgiving, lots of people were going down to shop at the Lyca Missy's, and that was the start of it. And in the 1950s, it was coined the term Black Friday was coined by the Philadelphia police because people were coming downtown and traffic was just chaotic. There's loads of people going into stores. And then in the nineteen eighties, a lot of shops were saying Black Friday meant they're coming into profit. So we're getting out of the red and into the profit. And then in 2010, Amazon brought that international. And after that, the rest is more recent history where most of online businesses and ecommerce do Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Today, you have myself, Gareth, who is head of TripleWheel in EMEA. We have Jem from Acubator, Theo from Gorgias, and Valeria from Rebuy. I'll let the guys do their own introductions after we go through this presentation. For anyone that doesn't know, Triple Whale, we're the AI operating system built for modern commerce. We work with over 60,000 brands, 2,000 agencies. We have 71,000,000,000 revenue tracked. We support over 80 countries. We have over 60 integrations, 25,000,000,000 ad spend tracked, and we're number one on g two and TrustRadius, and we have over 300 employees across the world. That's a lot of figures. I'm gonna go through a lot of figures today. So BFCM look back for 2025. Triple Whale brands drove almost 20% of Shopify's 14,600,000,000 revenue in 2025. By the numbers, on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it was 2,900,000,000 in revenue. Ad spend was 606,600,000 with 26,000,000 orders with 33,000 shops. Average order value was $79.18, and new customer revenue was 1,400,000,000. The patterns. So that's all the numbers, but what are we seeing in terms of patterns? Well, treat November as a month long campaign. It's not about four days. It used to be Black Friday, then it went Cyber Monday, and now these sales go on. So early shoppers bought 1.7 brought 1,770,000,000 in revenue during the week before BFCM alone representing 65% of the total spend. In terms of new customers and ROI shift, new customers accounted for 48% of total revenue down from 50 nine point seven one into 2020 four. What do you take from that? Retention infrastructure is nonnegotiable because people are used to Black Friday, Cyber Monday now, and it's going back before that. So the new numbers are gonna continue to go down. Meta versus TikTok. So Meta held the ground with 67.6 percent of spend, while TikTok delivered standout growth. You have ROAS plus 28.4% and CPMs went down to 27.5%. So So it shows the algorithm is working, and they also have TikTok shops that has been, working really well for brands. Key takeaway, social diversification is growing. What else stood out? Mobile, no surprises there. Salesforce reported roughly 70% of Cyber Week twenty twenty five. AI search, now this is a new one. Adobe reported 670% cyber monthly surge in AI referred retail traffic. Used to just think about SEO and paid media, but now you need to think about AEO. And as you're aware, ChatGPT is showing ads. So you have to think this is more questions about general things. What should I do about this? Where will I find this? What should I do next? So it's it has to be conversational. It's not like a display ad or not like a search ad. It's AI search, but bring it bring yourself into the conversation. Buy now, pay later. Adobe reported this past 1,000,000,000 in financial spend on Cyber Monday. What does that mean for 2026? Spend smarter. I mentioned Meta and I mentioned TikTok. So Meta was 67.6% of overall spend. Google was 22.65. TikTok, still relatively small, but growing 3.66. Amazon, 2.82. Applovin, 2.03. Pinterest, no point three one, and Snap, no point three. So you need to look at diversification across digital channels. Now you're probably aware if you've been advertising on the meta, and, of course, everyone is given the the size of the ads business there, the targeting used to be you'd be able to do age, you'd be able to do demographics, and you would target through their tools, but now the targeting is creative. So you need to create that thumb stop and creative, and you need to create different creatives for different audiences. For a while, you were able to put, like, a logo on the left hand side, then another one is on the right hand side. You do a blue background, then you do a red background. But now it needs to be a completely different ad with different hooks. So new persona, a different customer, different life stage, different relationship to the problem, or a new problem, a new pain point, occasion, or use case, then the new mechanism, a different explanation on why the product works. And user generated content, is big on meta platforms, then new emotion, aspiration, relief, belonging, urgency, or confidence, new format for a visual world, distinct storyline, creator voice, or execution style. So think of this as it's not iterations on your existing creative, it's brand new creators. Otherwise, the targeting just won't work. It'll be very narrow. But as you have more original creatives, that's where meta algorithm and Andromeda will present you to different audiences, and then you have more opportunity to get sales. So knowing your benchmarks is one thing, acting on them at 1PM on a Friday across every channel is another. Move faster. This is where we have looked as a company. There's lots of different measurement solutions, but what do you do with the data? There's more and more data. It used to be Google, then it was Meta, and then we went in and there was Instagram, and then there's TikTok. And I mentioned some of the other channels, and now there's ChatGPT. So what we're doing in Triple Wheel, we move from measure to decide and act. So you can turn your existing media buying rules into recurring workflow, review the performance, apply your metrics. So we'll do the the decide and we can act for you, but you set up the guardrails. There'll be no changes, outside those guardrails. Surface the campaigns that need new attention to recommended actions for your review. So this is an example. Find campaigns that meet our requirements for additional spend and cue the highest level confidence budget changes for review, and it will bring up Mobi will bring up, the insights. Speaking of insights, get them without building a report. We're looking to do away with the admin work so you can focus on growing your business. You can set up reports, a daily paid media brief, consistent weekly report, spend and revenue piercing against monthly targets, priority campaigns, and changes to investigate. So you can do all that for do all that with AI. Then not every media buying in question needs recurrent automations. One of the things with AI is creativity is still a strong point of human beings. The AI will only get the answer based on your input. So think beyond I need a report. Think beyond, right, what does Pearson look like? You can ask, why did new customer ROAS decline this week? Show me the channels that contributed most to the change. So you can audit Meta and Google performance, identify potential waste, trace changes back to the channels and campaigns responsible, then pressure test explanations for making another adjustment. Now you have seen in different AI solutions where you're asking the question and it comes back with an answer. You're thinking, that doesn't really make sense. So come back and and pressure test that and then add on other things in terms of what else can I do to to grow my sales, to build my business? This is an example video of what you can do with Moby. Hey, Moby. Let's launch the weekend drop. Pretty cool. She's there making the coffee. She's getting the food ready out with her friends, and Moby has taken all the actions for her. So you can enjoy life while Moby does the work. Smarter spend and faster action gets you through the weekend, but the real twenty twenty six margin is made after checkout. So let's talk about retention. Earn more. Send a post purchase survey within twenty four hours. And you see on, Apple Store on iPhones when you have downloaded an app, the apps would prompt you, what did you think of this app? Information is everything. So you can find out where they heard about you first, what made you make the decision to buy, who or what is this purchase for, and what would help you get the most from the purchase. That can help define your future strategy around products that you sell and how you present them. Send match the next message to the customer basket. You've got all that information. What are you doing next? Is it first order one item? Recommend one useful accessory or companion product. If it's a gift, prioritize gift wrap or delivery reassurance. One example could be you buy a really nice t shirt. You get the confirmation of the order. Maybe there is a nice pair of jeans or a dress that would go with that. Maybe it's a handbag and you're thinking some of the accessories like some jewelry to go along with that, then first order multiple items, lead with onboarding and setup guidance, delay the next sales ask. So maybe you don't wanna be pushing it straight away whenever you bought one item, and then you delay that. Then returning customer multiple items, test premium bundles, limited access, membership benefits, or evidence back category expansion. What else can you sell that would be relevant to them? You're not pushing product. You're not trying to get, more sales. You're being smart about what would relay it to them and what could help them. Then a customer earns a future benefit with their first purchase, has a clear reason to come back. I've seen Tommy Hilfiger do this very well. You come in with your first order, and then you're thinking, what can we do to get them to come back? 20% discount with a discount code can work really well. Loyalty points, you see this on on the airlines. Next purchase only offer. You drive intent and you have that urgency and have on a specific time, fourteen to thirty days. Because if you don't put that time span on it, people are like, okay. I'll buy something. I'll I'll do it at some stage and then they forget about it. Whereas if they know that this offer is gonna run out in fourteen to thirty days, they're more likely to to go ahead with it. Then early access to January promotions, Valentine's Day offers are spring launches, and you see this one buying tickets for concerts. You join up and you get early access, to events. So try to do that in your ecommerce business. Education that helps customers build your product into their habits and routines. I think Amazon has done a really good job on this. It's very simple to order. They have a vast array of products. So you're thinking, right, I can buy clothes, I can buy shoes, I can buy groceries, and they have that sticky factor that you just think it's easy to do. Subscription messages when recurring is a natural fit, and we find this with ecommerce companies that if it's a product like, say, a protein shake, or some vitamins, people are liking it, then they use a subscription to continue to get that monthly. Right. 2026 game plan. In September, audit the channels. Here we are in September, but Black Friday, Cyber Monday is approaching fast. So audit your performance, attribution, and contribution margins. Define the rules. I said if you're using Mobi, you define the guardrails and budget decisions and Mobi will act based on that. Prepare post, purchase surveys, loyalty offers, customer segments. We get into October, turn recurring decisions into Moby automations, schedule a daily Pearson, and then test creative angles and control channel diversification. I mentioned about meta. You need different, types of creatives, not just iterations on existing. Then you will see we talked about TikTok increase in terms of share of wallet and also, the CPA going down. Then we get into November. So treat November as a month long campaign. It's no longer about four days. Review your patient, patient efficiency and new customer ROAS. Investigate material changes before they become expensive because there's gonna be a lot of advertisers advertising across that month. Thank you. High confidence actions for human review. So we said it goes on for a month, but then you're soon into Christmas, and you're looking at December for retention. Once you have that client on board, it's a lot, cheaper to be able to do your email marketing. They have bought from you, so reach out to them again. Do post purchase surveys within twenty four to forty eight hours or on a thank you page. Route offers by basket size, buying intent, and buying history, and activate loyalty. I mentioned the fourteen to thirty day return incentives or subscription and measure repeat purchase rate on a ninety day LTV. The last thing I'll say before we go into the q and a, and now we're gonna do this panel session, and I would ask people in the audience to put in their questions, submit them. We'll cover some questions with the guys, but then feel free to reach out because we want this webinar to be useful for you. We wanna answer your questions. You can book a demo with us at triplewheel.com/bookdemo, and we have BFCM resources that contains all the information that I supplied, triplewheel.com/bfcm. So, guys, I'll let you do your own introductions, Jem, Theo, and Valeria. Jim first. Alright. What's up, guys? First of all, thanks for having me. Very excited to be here with all of you guys. Brief introduction about myself from Jim, Jambora, originally from Germany based out of Dubai, and I'm running an agency called Accubator. The one and only thing that we do is essentially steal ETC brands, ecommerce brands with Google Ads. So we're here to talk about that a bit and how we use Triple Whale in order to accelerate all the brands that we're working with. Cool. Valeria? Hi, everyone. My name is Valeria, and I'm the general manager of rebuy, across The UK and rebuy. For those that don't know much of rebuy, we're a personalization and merchandising platform for Shopify brands, providing cart merchandising, post purchase, and other, platforms there. And, really, my angle today to... Is to help brands really get the most out of the traffic they've already invested in. And, again, super excited to be here with you all today. Create sale. Cool. And I'll top us off, Theo from Gorgias. I lead our tech partnerships across the EMEA region. And if you don't know Gorgias, we're a customer service platform at its core, so a help desk which brings all of your channels into one place, very topical for today. So you could have your email, SMS, WhatsApp, web chat, social media all coming into one place, and then we've built that AI agent on top of that to automate sort of 60% of those tickets and drive sales as well as put out fires. Great. Well, look. The data tells us to plan earlier, react faster, and think beyond the first order. So, Jem, let's let's start with a plan. What do you lock in before November, and what do you deliberately leave flexible in the media plan given that November behaves more like a trading period than a four day sprint? Yeah. I mean, it's a great question because throughout the last few years, BFCM has developed into into something else that it has been overall across the board. Right? Initially, I think we need to understand that BFCM is normally this this one seasonal event that we have once a year, but it's something that people genuinely look forward to. And we can see in The US that people always go crazy in person in all the retail stores. So I think the most important things that we need to consider is that November is essentially a month long thing with December, with everything blending into into q one or rather q five and new year, new me in January. So the most important things that we really need to align on is we need to have media plan. Right? We need to make sure that the budget is aligned with all the stock, but we're still being a bit flexible depending on lead times and everything. Because at the end of the day, BFCN only happens once a year. And it's not the biggest event for every single brand out there, but it definitely is for a lot of brands, especially given all the offers that there is out there, whether that's a 20% sale or or a buy one get one offer. Right? The important thing is that you have a promotional calendar and the messaging is dialed in. And for a company like Absorption Company that we're working with, we always have decks with messaging, with with the product info, with product launches, with angles, with ideas, with copies weeks before we even launch anything. And all of these things, we need to go through a tedious q and a process. And and respectively, there is different, there's different items that every channel needs to do. Right? There's different items for email as opposed to Facebook or or Meta or Google in this case, and it's important that all the channels just essentially sync as a whole. Right? Yeah. So you talked about media plan there and, lots of tedious things. Gloria, if the click is expensive, what has to happen on the landing page and in the basket so Jim isn't asked to buy his way out of an on-site problem? Yeah. For sure. I think really expensive traffic really is a merchandising problem before it actually becomes a a budget problem. So I think when it comes to the landing page, we really need to make sure that we match the landing page to the ad. So if the ad promise, for example, a specific product or deal, we don't necessarily need to send people to a very generic home page. We can do this through hyperlinks, smart flows, UTM based parameters to win the rules to really create that curated experience that shoppers are looking for. And then I think really, really important, and I'm sure we'll talk about this a lot too, is the build for mobile piece. So make sure that the the landing page itself as well is very mobile friendly. Well, actually, let's just stick on that. So what would you advise for for mobile? For mobile, honestly, for most BFCM periods, it's been over 70% of, traffic that comes through BFCM are shoppers purchasing through mobile. So creating a very seamless experience. Really, you don't need to reinvent the wheel there. Just having very simple, not not necessarily brand new strategies that we haven't tested before. Just keep it simple, allocated to what's, important to the brand and making it easy for people to check out. People are impatient. People are excited to make these purchases in BFCM. So anything that I think causes any delays in that purchase will just, really won't stop buyers from actually completing their purchases. 100% agree. You you need to make it frictionless. What I always think is don't make people think because if they're having to take too many steps and they're not really sure where to go next, then they're like, oh, I'll do this later, and then they'll be presented with another ad from another company that makes it simpler. So I think that's that's a really good point. Speaking of simple, we know it's not. During BFCM, the signals don't arrive neatly in a sequence. Campaigns, orders, and customer questions all change at once. So Theo, when BFCM orders and questions hit at once, which customer expectations cause the most friction and what should brands prepare for now so people get a clear answer or a smooth hand off? Yeah. Great question. I think it's, interesting as well, like, on the mobile point, like, in the digital age, like, everyone with a phone in their hand is expecting, like, such a quick answer. Right? I think that's to Valerie's point. Like, everyone's so impatient nowadays. That makes whatever I'm about to say in terms of the tickets and and the responses we can set up even more crucial and not just about the quality of the answers, but also, like, the timeliness. Because to your point before, in the meantime, they're gonna be actually targeted by your competitors and other brands. So if we can't get back to them and help them get through that on-site or in mobile shopping journey, ultimately, they're not gonna convert. So I think, like, before the rush, and I loved, like, your sort of month by month, build up at the beginning there. Like, let's actually get ahead of things and start to think about what are the specific or relevant, policy questions that we expect to come up and start to build some guidance around that for our internal teams, AKA humans, but also using that for, you know, our AI agent to be referencing testing AI in the lead up to the FCM or Cyber Week so that, you know, these these, questions are, like, fully, tested and and built out so our team can respond to them. Or with AI, fully deflect them away to leave the team for, more important questions or or higher touch questions for sure. K. So, yeah, I would be definitely getting ahead of this, by building out full flows around orders. For example, we see, like, a huge volume related to delivery and order being, like, the most high intent, thing that's showing up. So building out for that is, like, easy to start automating 30% of tickets without feeling like you're completely losing your sense of brand. Okay. So you mentioned tickets, and then you mentioned mobile and Valeria you mentioned as well. I wonder what's gonna happen with iPhone Duo that's coming out, mobile optimized. It'll be interesting to see, do people responsive design, does do websites need to change? Bill, you mentioned tickets there and AI. Gem, when support surface is a problem, that might be a person, it might be actually AI. How does that fit into the trade and decision rhythm? What do you check before change and spend? Yeah. Very good question. And I think it doesn't only come down to a singular thing. Right? Across the board, we need to understand and acknowledge overall product market fit and messaging marketing fit across the channels, how each channel is fitting into the entire equation, especially if we take a look at things such as new visitor percentage, incrementality, hold up test, geo lifts, brand lifts, search lifts, yada yada yada, the entire different stream. Right? So in my opinion, it really depends because and and this is funny because this is a conversation that we've had prior. If you are a brand that is selling something that is already out there where there is a lot of intent, There could be the chance of Google being the primary channel for you without being the supplementary channel. Since there's a lot of search volume out there, meaning people are already aware of what they're looking for. So if we're able to grasp all of these different intents, speak about problem aware, solution aware, fully aware, most aware, all these things, it gives us another edge if we're talking about marketing as a whole as opposed to only, okay, meta is the primary thing that we're doing, and we're a little bit on TikTok shop, and we we yield the halo on Amazon. Right? So it's a very individual question, and and it also depends heavily on the category. Are we CPG? Are we subscriptions? Are we in clothing? So I guess I guess that's the lawyer answer. Right? It always depends. Yeah. I think you made a good point there about, Amazon because they have so much data. And as we move to a privacy focused world, they are the ecommerce solution, so they will have a lot of data to understand, which products are gonna work for which type of clients. Now the only thing to be conscious of with Amazon, I read a book about them. What they look at is if it's a third party product and it's selling so much, they will look to create an Amazon version so they'll actually be competing with that product. Theo, if several customers ask about an offer delivery cutoff, how does that reach the trade and team? Yeah. It's a good question. I think, like, the the punchline here would be that CX can't just live within CX. Right? Like, we can see a ticket spike within Gorgias, and, ultimately, like, that needs to be fed into different teams. And we see this all the time. I think, like, BFCM is where we see a massive microscope on brands and and teams that aren't working very collaboratively because it does start to fall apart and it really shows the cracks. So even, like, we're talking about promotion schedules before, right, I think ecomm teams will be super on top of this, really prepping this, maybe holding back certain discounts has been something we've seen done before, but they probably aren't often seeing, like, the impact that this will have on CX, for example. Right? So if you're holding back discounts and then release, like, a higher discount closer to, Cyber Monday, for example, like, a lot of tickets are gonna come in that are saying, hang on. I missed out on, this discount. Can I actually get it retrospectively added? Which is obviously quite a manual task potentially. So that's one crack that we see all the time, but back to your original question around, you know, ticket spikes and passing that onto the media team, I think it is truly like a communication thing. We talk so much and I've already made reference to what do we automate, what do we not. This is totally something that we're not saying to automate. We'll we'll talk about the response being automated, but we can't make those kind of decisions across a team, necessarily straight away or fully automated. Right? I think tools like Mobi help us to have that insight. Right? But ultimately, we do need to have genuine human conversations across teams, pass that across, and and make a decision that's not only best for the ecommerce or the product team or the CX team in isolation, but truly for the business, overall. Yeah. So you you talked about, responding. I think it's it's really important to respond quick, and that human to human interaction, and then you're passing information across different departments. So, Valeria, how quickly could the on-site team turn finding the CART messaging and then thinking of a better recommendation? So they might see that this is actually not working. I mentioned, for example, handbag and a bracelet. Know, I have no idea if that would go together. T shirt and jeans should work. So how do you get that information across quickly for a better recommendation? Yeah. For sure. And and as Theo mentioned as well, like, Gorgias does an incredible job servicing these problems fast. And I I I think the question really is whether the storefront can really move at that same speed. And I think without a merchandising layer, these types of changes can really require a dev ticket, which, you know, during a BFCM week, nobody has time for at all. We gotta move fast. So I think some of the low lift, very low lift, no code, types of changes that we can do on the site there and the merchandising side of things is, I think for some of those offer confusions, you can really easily add those eligibility copies of the PDP or in the cart, so it's easily easily shown to shoppers there. I think for any delivery worries or confusions there, you can also insert some cut off messaging also in the product pages, in the cart, and places that can be easily seen throughout the buyer journey as well. And then for those low stock types of worries as well, you can reweigh recommendations towards the in stock alternatives. This can be done through some of the merchandising rules, the data sources, or logics as well too throughout the site. So I think this can really help expedite these changes too to make sure that we're able to answer these, types of problems fast. K. So, look, if more opportunity comes for existing customers, we've talked about BFCM not just being the four days, so it can't be judged on the first sale. Valeria, we'll we'll stay with you. So if a brand can personalise two or for two or three customers and or two or three customer groups in BFCM, which would you prioritize based on what's in their basket or what they've bought before, and what would you actually show to say differently to each? In terms of places on their site? Yeah. And and just the recommendations. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. We've seen three three main, aspects of the tool work extremely well. And one of them is one product page offering, whether that's a complete the look or, this pairs well with or complete the routine also if in the skin care types of brands. Those convert super, super fast and very well. Then one product page... Sorry. One cart recommendation so that in the cart where, you know, we're trying to move fast. We're trying to, help shoppers get to the checkout journey as easily as possible. Having one cross sell or upsell in the cart there and maybe in a progress bar there, really offers, that, additional sense of products and complimentary products to add there. And then if the brands are on Shopify Plus, one checkout widget there works extremely well. The checkout is one of the most underutilized places on the site too, that, you know, once buyer intent is very high, people are excited to make their first purchase with a with a new brand and convert super well. So I would say product page, cart, checkout, three very, very important things that will show, massive, massive returns. I think that's a great point about after you purchase on that page that shows you what can go along with it because you don't wanna restrict the purchase. You don't wanna add friction there, but you can't present them with products that are relevant. So you're talking about this. Let let's delve in a way bit deeper on that. So what happens right after the discounted first order to give the customer a reason to return without simply sending another code? So this is beyond the landing page afterwards. What can you do to get them to return? Yeah. I think the... It's it's really important as well too on the educational piece of products. For example, might be, needing to understand a little bit more of the routine associated to them if we're in the wellness or technology types of industries as well. Any additional information we can provide them for ease of use or, a type of, you know, outfit that they can wear with that specific piece that they may have bought on the apparel side, or maybe if it's a jewelry or accessory piece, an example of how the look can be put together. Those types of reassurance or content pieces can work extremely well. I think, you know, I thank you right away too on the on the thank you page and also on the post purchase email. I think this is one of the highest attention, lowest risk moments as well too that you'll ever have, especially with a new customer because the order has been confirmed with them. You've created a brand new relationship, with the client too and really, you know, offering us as a thank you there as well. And I think also a really important aspect too is if, you know, we have a membership program, loyalty program, or a community as well too, it's really nice to feel welcomed into a new p... A new community piece too that we might not or the shopper might not have already been a part of. So I think information around those, is always, you know, a great a great benefit and a great win for someone that's completely new to a brand. And then I think two to four weeks, I think is a really key timeline, especially when it's a consumable product that might be needing to be replenished. Checking in on them, asking for, how's it going? Here's a replenishment link too. And having a prepopulated carton checkout associated with that. It can really help with that long term, and lifetime value there created with new customers. Great. We have a couple of questions coming in from the audience. Thank you. And I would just reiterate, look, get your questions in now. We have the experts on the panel, so don't be shy. We'll get the questions in and we'll and we'll answer them. Theo, when delivery returns delivery returns or gift questions increase, how does support protect the relationship rather than turn every conversation into a sales pitch? Because we've seen this in digital advertising where, actually, people wanna hear less from the brands. They don't want a sales pitch. They don't want a direct offer user generated content and influencers are exploding because people find, this is authentic. So when in keeping with that, how can we protect the relationship rather than turn every conversation at a sales pitch? Yeah. Well, I think if you look at the the Gorgias product specifically, like, you have, and, again, I'll lean into AI, but then fall back onto what our our base was, which was the human side. Right? So that we have one AI agent which handles both sales and support queries and can jump between the two based off how the conversation is going and where the the consumer's taking it. Right? So if the consumer is asking for a product recommendation, obviously, that's more of a high intent sales opportunity where the AI agent can use that side of skills. But if they're, you know, asking or have an issue kind of, asking about a support question, there's not really gonna be so much sales put into that thread. And if you read through support starting questions, you don't see the AI agent just suddenly be like, well, what about this? You know? Like, we're very much not trying to crowd them with sales offers if they actually have an issue. And a good example of this is actually how we integrate with email marketing, tools as well. So if, for example, you've got an open ticket within Gorgias, AKA, you know, you're putting out a fire, you have an an issue, we'll actually pause, any marketing campaigns going out to you. So it's not just within chat, but actually across the whole tech stack, we're able to implement, like, nice little, triggers like this, which will stop that feeling of, oh, I'm being bombarded with sales material even though I'm trying to have a a support question. And I think that, like I said, trickles down into when humans are answering the questions as well. I think there's a little bit more nuance there, like, humans can start to, understand and build that relationship, but you can actually shift, let's say, a support question towards an an upsell opportunity as well. But I think that really relies on, high quality CX teams who aren't just focused on closing the ticket out and getting the fire put out, but actually saying, okay. I've built a bit of rapport here, and, actually, they've mentioned, for example, they've got another wedding in a few months. Maybe I can, start to have that conversation with them as well and show interest in the information that they've provided. So on the AI side, I think it it really dives into which of the two skills, the consumer is coming with. But on the human side, I think there's a lot more nuance, and and we can sort of, duplicate that across the tech stack. Great. So I'm gonna have thirty seconds for each, and then we'll go into we've got a couple of questions from the audience. What's one thing a merchant should have in place before Black Friday Cyber Monday trading starts? I will start with yourself, Valeria. I would definitely say audit your product page and card on an actual phone, and, you know, choose maybe two to three different segments of of customers, whether it's, you know, returning VIPs. And on the mobile piece, you even test on four g network just to see how, the the store performs even on a lower type network. Because if we see any hesitancy, any delays, a brand new shopper will too. So test that out. Good. It's it's interesting you say on four g network because I remember when three g was the best, and now unless you have five g five g, things don't seem to work. So I think it's a. really good point to, let it work on four g as well. Jim, what would be your advice? Advise will definitely be q and a copy and making sure copy on the PDPs are changing on the PLPs, making sure that we have respective statics and videos in all sizes for all different channels, whether that be one by one, four by five, nine by sixteen, one point nine, and one by one. But also making sure that codes are working, discount codes are working, that they're potentially capped, that they wouldn't be leaking, that we have different segments on email for as as previously mentioned by Larry for VIPs, loyalists, but also for net new customers. So we're essentially giving people different entry points at different times for the respective offer or different offers. I think there's a very good point you mentioned there, that has an impact in terms of reputation of the brand to have the discount codes work. Because yesterday, I was buying something. There was that pop up, that a lot of companies do, enter your email address and you get 20% off. And I was like, okay. 20% is good amount. Entered in the email address, got the code, put it in, at the basket, and it just didn't work. So what happened was I was like, don't really know this brand. Forget about it. I'm not I'm not gonna buy from there. I'm gonna go to a website that, I recognize. So it does have an impact on brand reputation. It it has an impact in terms of trust. Dale, what what would you say? I think based off what I've shared today, I think the obvious thing that I would call out is really test out your, handover flow. Right? So literally when obviously, the most straightforward is when a customer says I want to speak to a human. That should be so easy to literally pass into your human team, but then we're looking at, you know, how quickly does your human team pick it up post AI handover. But then even more so, like, if your AI can't answer a specific question or you have specific handover topics passing over. But I also thought sorry to, answer with two, No. which first. is more relevant to Triple Whale and paid media. I think, like, little product plug, like, we've just released our AI agent for across socials. Right? So if someone's commenting on an ad that you've posted or any of your your creative, right, that could be a high intent moment where, ultimately, you do wanna jump in and start a conversation as quickly as possible. So don't miss out on that over BFCM. Like, start to look at if you already have Gorgias, let's turn on those channels, and it'll use your current, knowledge base. Great. So we'll get into questions. This one from Maria, Garjaz. I've probably, destroyed the surname there. Apologies for that. How do you strategically manage the transition from Black Friday to Cyber Monday? And let's see. Given that the two promotional moments happen back to back, do you differentiate the offer, messaging, or creative approach for Cyber Monday, and how do you maintain momentum without creating promotional fatigue? We will go to Theo. You were talking for him, so let's say, go to yourself. That's cool. I feel like, the other two might be able to actually go a little deeper on promotional stuff. But, again, like, I would just reiterate from my side, let's think about the full picture here. Let's think about, like, what is our promotional strategy gonna have in terms of impact on CX? Because I think it can often be an afterthought when we think about, the promotion, fatigue, and stuff like that. Like, what actually is the ticket implication for that? And then secondarily, which I didn't share before, is, like, okay. If we are seeing that or we are preparing for that, like, what's the solution? Right? So you've shared with your team, we're gonna schedule it like this. Let's start to think about what kind of tickets we expect to come in. Is it that someone might be upset that they missed out on a better offer or a different offer, you know, and start to create guidance internally with your human and AI teams for how to deal with that? Because I think, naturally, even if it's not a better offer per se, like, some people may come in and feel like they've kinda missed out on on the best bargain for them specifically. So, yeah, I think, like, I'll I'll defer on the actual strategy to Vowel and and Gem, but please please please think about the implication for CX and then start to build out, processes around that. Yeah. I I think it's a good question because you have Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and then it's a month, but are they different days? Is there different behaviors for them? So I think it's a really good question about do you differentiate. Totally. So, Larry and and Gemma, I'd love to hear your point of view on that. Before you. do sorry. I just had one more thought. As you said that, right, like, it's also different timing. Right? Like, you'll see the tickets come in much later. So we talk about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, continuous, continuous, continuous, but the the tickets actually will peak, like, a couple of weeks later, you know, when there's orders, issues, returns start to come in, etcetera. So plan for that as well. Sorry to jump. back in. No. Good. Larry. No. We definitely see this come up a lot with our brands, and it's something that our merchant success team works all year to really help provide the the best strategies. We have, what's called, like, our scheduler campaigns or scheduled data sources and promotions as well too so that you can make sure that, the offers and recommendations and also, like, scheduled campaigns too, whether it's collections or SmartFlows in the journey happen for the Black Friday period, and then change slightly if the strategy changes a little bit to to the Monday onwards period. I think also I would definitely continue to watch the revenue and attach rate per visitor too. You can watch also whether stock is getting low or not. And then if it is, you can also change recommendations too, in, different, like, scheduling parts too of the features of rebuy. So you could be really, really hyper strategic too with how you want to engage with that community, and the different offers too that we wanna create throughout the period. We see brands also do it for multiple weeks, so you can change that throughout the different weeks in the in the, in the period. But for those two specific days, you can make sure that this changes automatically too. Great. Tim, what was your view on that? Yeah. Great question. Throughout the last two or three years, we always have seen that Cyber Monday was, funnily enough, stronger than Black Friday across, like, 95% of our portfolio. So, typically, it depends on the brand. I mean, it it goes hand in hand with kind of, like, one of the questions that we have in the chat with, like, oh, like, how do we go about Black Friday, Cyber Monday? How does the offer look like? And I think it really blends down to that there is no perfect answer to this. Right? The brands that we see are the brands that aren't doing promos for the entire month, but really double down on segmenting again, like the VIPs, the loyalists, making sure that everybody can get their respective early access, and making sure that statics and creatives are properly split for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. You have different timelines. And if Black Friday and Cyber Monday are doing well, that there's potential expansion for all of these. So throughout the entire weekend, what's really important is that you are able to sit down with your team every hour of the day and just take a look at AMER and MER at every hour of the day. And then this is essentially how we make scaling decisions. Right? Because if we know that we have room to push, if ROAS is holding, if MER is holding, we would be foolish to not push during those peak hours that we have once in a year. Right? So that's how I see it. And just speaking there on extension, Gem, was there with yourself? Because the next question from Arnold de Montella, Black Friday discounts now start before Black Friday. I think this is where Cyber Monday came in. It was like Black Friday, let's extend it to Cyber Monday and then it goes on for a month because retailers think happy days, I can get lots and lots of sales. But say a nice start even before Black Friday. Mention we did mention BFCM is a month long campaign. So when would you recommend to start discounts? Yeah. I think in an ideal world, everybody has their promotional calendar mapped out to the t. In a lot of examples that we currently have, we have some brands and and this is not really what I advise for, that they're running promos for the entire month, and they're going from a 20% off offer to a BOGO to a 40% off to increasing the discount. I'm a bigger fan of if we have BFCM, people get early access and not necessarily throughout the entire week during BFCM, but loyalists, VIPs get access earlier, a few hours before the public discount goes live. All of the other people that are net new customers that we want to acquire net new are getting this public discount after, then we just serve scale throughout the entire day, throughout the entire weekend. We extend all of that up until Monday, which is not an extension per se because it's a cyber Monday. And if we see amazing momentum, amazing numbers, and amazing profit numbers because in the weeks before, the important thing is we need to focus more on acquisition and spend more, which also means that net margin can go down less like, the net margin can come down and AMR can come down because we are aware of the fact that we're acquiring many customers to fill the entire funnel, which is gonna pay off during the FCM. Because those days are going to make it all worthwhile if we fill the funnels with emails, with SMS, with numbers, with with people that have bought that might have already received the product that are so astonished and amazed by what we're offering to essentially buy another product or buy a new SKU or buy a new color or buy a new flavor or whatever it is. Right? So based on all of these decisions, I would say focus in the week and two weeks before and really filling the funnel. Pay attention to your AMR and to your net margins. Make sure you don't crash into the to zero depending on if you're playing LTV to cat game or first time order profitable. And then potentially, if you have the option, extend because you don't want to run. the entire month in discounts because then you're just a discounter, not a brand. Right? And I think this really hurts your brand in the long run. I I think you you made a really good point there about, people getting early access. And I mentioned earlier, you see this with the like of Ticketmaster for concerts. So that's when you can get people to sign up and you'll get their details, subscriptions, so you can do newsletters, you can keep them as a client. And then there's that feeling of exclusivity where you have access to, Black Friday sales before it happens. So I think that's a that's a really good point. Devon, thank you, has a question for everyone. He says says, I have a question for everyone on the panel. What's the toughest roadblock you encountered in the last month, such as low CVR, policy rejection, sudden low creative hit rate, and how did you manage to turn the situation around? Valeria, do you want do you wanna start with you? Yes. That's a really great question. As... I'm not necessarily on the brand side. I can definitely share what we've seen with some of the brands that we work with that our success teams have shared. So I would say, for example, the CVR rate, like, the the conversion rate, optimization piece, that we've seen. I have a a brand, for example, that we just actually published a case study for, AU Vodka, a really great brand across The UK. They were seeing very low AOV and conversion rate optimization rates, in the last couple of months as well too, and they didn't really wanna do a completely new change or a huge strategy change to what they had on-site. So they just really did, like, one small change in the cart, just to add some... One or two complimentary products. That was it. No big deal. And then they they, had been growing their subscriber list with different campaigns that they've been trying out and testing, and their AOV in the last month has increased to around 21%, and then conversion rate optimization to around 15%. Like, those little key points and a key change there. And you can also see that by testing too. So if you continue to AB test and see those results change slightly little things too across the year, across October as well, leading up to November, you can really see what small changes you can do to really drive the, net new conversion rate too. That's, like, one of the biggest pieces too that we see on our side. Cool. We have two more questions and five minutes left. So Theo and, Gem, maybe two quick answers so we can we can follow-up these last two. Gem, do you wanna go ahead? Which question do we wanna go over? The question you said for everyone in terms of roadblocks. Okay. The one from from Devin. Okay. Yeah. I think I think across the board, you'll always have policy issues. Right? There's not gonna be a point of time where you don't have policy issues. Policy issues always arise whenever you're being too aggressive with ads, but you want to be too aggressive because if you're too soft, you're not making hard enough claims, which means you know that your marketing and angles are just right when you're being disapproved because then you can tone it down, remove a little bit of the messaging, be approved, and you're good. Low conversion rates, I mean, it really depends on on everything that that you're seeing. Right? There have been a lot of issues with some agency ad account providers from Meta, which is what we've been seeing across the board for clients, meaning, naturally, MetaSpin has come down for a bunch of these accounts. And, I mean, low creative hit rate has to do something with, obviously, angles as well. Right? How much have we spent on the existing angles that you have? How much have we spent on existing creatives that you have? How's your creative strategist performing? What's going on internally? Who's taking the leads? You know? Are they getting enough training? Are they being q and a'd? So I guess it's a very broad question that's that's, not as simple to answer because it has so many different, you know, perspectives and and and things that just matter to be able to properly answer this, unfortunately. Okay. Look. I will move on to the next question because I'm looking to can we add more time? But let's go on to Kat says, how do you ramp up Google spend without getting burned? We usually spend okay on Black Friday, then Saturday and Sunday waste a lot, spends too much, and Centimeters is lower spend as Saturday and Sunday doesn't convert as well. Yeah. Check. I'll figure out it. that one naturally. Yep. Yeah. Typically, you want to work with seasonal bid adjustments, which you can do on the back end. You want to increase your conversion rate by 20% because that's probably what you're gonna be seeing on average. You want to make sure that branded or the shopping branded search is not being capped. And oftentimes, during the FCM for an agency that isn't scaling top of funnel statics, YouTube, whatever it is, Google is not a channel that is supposed to be scaled insanely as Meta. Because on Meta, you can scale up so much more faster. On Google, you can scale as well. But during these times, especially for BFCM, for an agency where we're an internal team that isn't, like, top, top, top, top, top notch that has the experience that we have, I would rather use it as a consolidating channel to make sure that you're not getting burned left and right to make sure you keep the profits. So make sure you raise the budgets. Make sure you let it a bit loose. But if you need to pull back, don't be afraid to pull back. I think it's a good point about Google because when you broaden it out, like, there's the intent there, someone searching for it, so make it relevant. If you go beyond that, then your conversion rate is gonna be lower, your CPA is gonna be higher. Whereas with Meta and Andromeda, if you get the creative right for the different audience, then you can actually scale. So last question, from Katarina Atienza. I apologize in advance. I've probably got all the surnames wrong here. But if I win an ad from Black Friday wins before Cyber Monday, do we have to iterate it immediately, or what's the best thing to do? Jim, I think that's another question for you. Yeah. I would let it run. I mean, if it's a static, then you can adjust the messaging from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. But if you have something that is running and working and is profitable, I would let it run. There's nothing that you need to adjust in terms of messaging on the video creative as opposed to maybe a banner. You know? Have another net new creative, Change it to be, Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday, but keep whatever is working live. The changes that you should make are more so on the copy side of things, on the on the storefront as the on on things. Right? On the announcement bar, on the collection page, on any statics or or or images that you have on on your Shopify at the end of the day. So it's more so about statics copy and and website. Great. So thanks, folks. We've come to the end. Really appreciate all the questions. Hope you found this useful. And, Jem, Theo, and Valeria, been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for all the insights and expertise. And, folks, I wish everyone a good Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but the whole month of November. Thanks, guys. Take care. Hey. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure. Thank you all. Bye. Take care. Alright.