Shop Direct puts £1m bet on Black Friday
Shop Direct has ploughed £1m into a campaign around Black Friday and Cyber Monday after it recorded its biggest ever day for sales on Very.co.uk during the retail event last year.
The week kicks off with Black Friday – the last Friday of November – and sees a number of retailers offer discounts and promotions in a bid to woo Christmas shoppers. It continues through to the following Monday – dubbed Cyber Monday. Last year, IBM found this to be the busiest online shopping day in history.
In 2013, Shop Direct ran promotions on Black Friday across its Very.co.uk brand and achieved three orders per second via the site – making it the busiest trading day of the year.
However, this year it is hoping to drive even more traffic this year across all of its brands, including Littlewoods.com and Isme.com.
Jon Owen, retail brands and trading director at Shop Direct, said: “The level of engagement and incremental sales [Black Friday] drove completely blew us away. It was hands down our busiest ever trading day, generating up to 10,000 orders per hour on Very.co.uk.”
It has planned a TV and press ad campaign this year which kicks off on Wednesday 26 November, as well as a radio tie-up which will also announce hourly deals and Very.co.uk’s promotions as they happen throughout the week.
“If anything, customers are even hungrier for deals this year, so it’s a logical next step for us to roll out Black Friday across all of our brands. And by extending the event over a further seven days with Cyber Week, we think we’ll have something to offer every member of the family in the run-up to what we’re predicting will be another record Christmas for Shop Direct,” added Owen.
Shop Direct has estimated that “millions” in incremental sales will be generated during the period.