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- BFCM 2023 Recap by the Numbers
The TL;DR:
Let’s Chat D2C: BFCM 2023 Recap by the Numbers.
What I’m Thinking about this Week: Why Shopify? Innovation and pace of development, app ecosystem, and the Shop products and their network effects.
The D2Z Podcast: In this week’s episode, I sat down with Richard Robert, who oversees Field-Based Marketing at Justworks, a benefits, payroll, and HR platform.
App Highlight: Lifetimely
Upcoming Events: None!
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Let’s Chat D2C - BFCM 2023 Recap by the Numbers
The Stats
$9.3 billion sold in just a weekend on Shopify! Shopify merchants reached a record of $9.3 billion in sales over Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend — a 24% increase from last year. $4.1 billion in sales on Black Friday alone - that’s up 22% from 2022. Peak Sales on Black Friday hit $4.2 million per minute at 12:01 pm ET.
Despite economic uncertainty, consumers still continue not to sacrifice spending during the holiday season.
Commerce also continues to happen on mobile, with 74% of checkouts happening on a phone versus 26% on a desktop.
Shopify Network Effects
There was a 60% YoY increase in Shop Pay checkouts! Shopify's scale continues to increase, and its network effects are turning into a competitive liability for brands who are on alternative platforms. It can’t be overstated how powerful features like Shop Pay are for Shopify merchants, and as it reaches a greater and greater scale, consumers are getting more and more accustomed to being able to shop this way.
Extended Sales Period
Most of my favorite brands that I shop from have extended their BFCM sale into December or have already launched another promotion for the month of December. You can not go back to business as usual between BFCM and Christmas; otherwise, your sales will be negatively impacted as other brands continue to press with discounts and promotional offers.
What I’m Thinking About This Week - Why Shopify?
I was asked yesterday on a Shopify Plus prospect call, “Why Shopify” versus any other commerce platform. There are three key reasons for me:
1️⃣ Innovation and Pace of Development. With over 4,000 engineers, all you have to do is take a look at one of the Editions Reports to see the mind-boggling number of new products and updates that are shipped every quarter. The platform continues to improve. It’s why I believe point solutions for specific industry verticals are fundamentally flawed - there will never be enough merchants to support a behemoth engineering team.
2️⃣ App Ecosystem. If you’re starting an ecommerce app, you build for Shopify first and foremost, and then maybe at some point, you look at expanding to other platforms or becoming platform agnostic (but most never do). If you’re already an established app, you prioritize updates to your Shopify integration versus others. This causes a majority of new technologies and trends to be available only to Shopify merchants.
3️⃣ Shop Products and their Network Effects. Shop Pay, Shop App, Shop Cash, etc., are all great products in a vacuum, but the value each provides continues to increase as more and more merchants and customers utilize them. For example, there are over 118 million registered Shop Pay users today, giving all Shopify storefronts a conversion rate advantage versus the competition. Even if a platform like BigCommerce came out with something similar, they don’t have the scale to compete with Shop Pay results.
This Week’s The D2Z Podcast
#85 – Field Marketing Masterclass
🎧 Listen Now 🎧
In this week’s episode, I sat down with Richard Robert, who oversees Field-Based Marketing at Justworks, a benefits, payroll, and HR platform. This one was one of my favorite episodes yet, as it dives deep into field marketing and how to align sales and marketing teams around making events like these successful and driving an ROI. I have very little experience in field marketing, so I learned a lot! Specifically, we explored the following:
💰 How to effectively measure the ROI of events and large-scale conferences.
📲 Upcoming events Rich is excited about, like Miami’s Art Basel.
😎 What Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is, and how to leverage it at your organization?
🚀 Event planning checklists, lead generation strategies, the evolving role of technology in field marketing, small vs large companies, aligning sales and marketing teams, and more!
App Highlight - Lifetimely
What is it: Lifetime Value and Profit Analytics
Differentiator: Lifetimely allows you to look at your customers' lifetime value and other behaviors. Their array of in-depth features, functionalities, and data allows you to make better-informed decisions across your business.
Starting Price: $19/month
How we use it: For cohort, retention, and LTV analysis. I put together a video that describes how we use it at Electriq and what actionable takeaways you can glean from the data.
Upcoming Events
None! I’m in Miami until the new year. Let me know if you want to connect.
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