Is your Etsy store ready for Black Friday?
As any other online marketplace and store, Etsy will see a rise in buyers on the platform during the Black Friday sale. For this reason, sellers need to come prepared by setting up a strategy to increase their sales as much as possible.
Black Friday is notoriously the highest traffic day on Etsy, meaning the day with the most shoppers navigating on the platform. In 2022, Black Friday is on 25 November (save the date), so it’s fundamental that you start preparing for this event.
The first thing to say is that Etsy allows you to offer different types of discounts to your customers depending on whether you want to offer targeted discounts or run a shop-wide sale.
We prepared a list of tips on how to approach Black Friday on Etsy and how to run a sale or offer discounts for your store.
Read also our blog on Etsy Christmas trends
How to run a sale on Etsy
The first step to run a sale is accessing the “Marketing” tab in the “Shop Manager” section and clicking on “Sales and Discounts”. Then you’ll need to select “Run a Sale” to start.
After this, Etsy will ask you to insert the precise details of your sale. Specifically:
- What you would like to offer your customers: you’ll need to choose between a percentage off (and indicate it) or free standard delivery.
- Minimum order to qualify: you’ll need to indicate if buyers need to purchase a minimum quantity of items or spend a minimum amount to be eligible for the promotion.
- The sale duration: so for how long your customers will benefit from the sale.
- Terms and conditions: this part is optional but helpful if your sale has specific restrictions or limitations that buyers should know about (for example, the minimum order to qualify).
- Name of your sale: customers won’t see it, but it’s useful for you to track your sale performance.
Once you complete this section, Etsy will redirect you to another page where you can decide whether the sale will be shop-wide or only on specific listings.
Note that you can’t select specific listings if you set a minimum order to qualify.
How to create a promo code
The first step to creating a promo code is accessing the “Marketing” tab in the “Shop Manager” section and clicking on “Sales and Discounts”. Here you’ll need to select “Create a promo code”.
After this, Etsy will ask you to insert more information regarding what kind of promo code you want to create. Specifically:
- What you would like to offer your customers: you can choose between a percentage discount (and insert what percentage you want), a specific amount (and indicate the amount), or free delivery.
- The promotion duration
- The number of redeemable codes: you can set a fixed number of discounts that can be redeemed or make them unlimited for all your customers.
- Select specific listings or make it shop-wide
After this, you just need to share your promo code with your customers. You can share it in “Messages” on Etsy, in your shop announcements, on social media, or in any other way you communicate with your customers.
Note that you can also offer promo codes to selected customers only. To do it, in the “Sales and Discount” section, you’ll need to click “Automatically send offers to interested shoppers” and then follow the same steps as promo codes.
Specifically, Etsy suggests sending this type of promotion to people that abandoned their baskets or have recently put your shop in their favourites or as a post-purchase thank you. However, you can do this only if the shoppers have agreed to receive marketing messages from you.
You can also offer a discount and free shipping together to your customers. However, you’ll need to activate both promotions simultaneously and indicate what listings are eligible for more than one discount.
Tips for you
We put together a list of tips that might be useful for you to gain the most out of your Black Friday sale.
- Work on your marketing in advance: Black Friday represents the day when most shoppers will be on Etsy, but you need to stand out from the competition to increase your sales.
You can easily use social media for this. Build your followers, and be frequent and consistent in posting so that you’ll reach the highest number of people you can. To gain more followers on Instagram, you should try posting reels as Instagram shows them to people that don’t follow you, reaching more possible followers.
Note that you should create reals with genuine growth objectives. Show why your products are unique and why people should buy from you.
- Pricing: you should evaluate your pricing before running a sale. You need to check if your current pricing strategy allows you to do promotions and still generate a profit. Otherwise, you should take some time to revise your price structure before planning a sale.
To understand the correct price for your offerings, you can look at the top 10% of sellers in your industry and see what price range they’re using.
- Consider different price points: Etsy subdivides items into different price ranges (under £20, £20 to £50, £50 to £100, and over £100). Make sure to consider this when setting up your sale. For example, if your product costs £51, you could consider lower it to £49 (if you think your targeted shoppers are more likely to shop in a lower price range).
- List everything!: Black Friday can be an occasion to sell items you never listed or think people won’t be interested in buying.
- Choose the correct discount structure: you should evaluate which type of discount will work best for your store. To help you with this, you can consider the “Rule of 100”. Specifically, people are more likely to purchase items over £100 if discounted by a percentage. On the other hand, if your products cost more than £100, people are more likely to buy them if discounted by a specific amount.
- Discount duration: this is up to you, but you might consider extending your sale duration to cover Cyber Monday (28 November 2022) and SmallBusiness Saturday (the first Saturday of December).
Note that in 2022, SmallBusiness Saturday is on 3 December, so it’s worth considering if you want to carry out a single sale or offer another one on this day.
