Despite being a week shorter than the 2018 Black Friday-to-New Year’s holiday window, we’re heading into what is predicted to be the first-ever trillion-dollar holiday shopping season—and we have some tips to help users on the Impact platform—and others!—get your partnerships zipped up and ready to produce. While Black Friday (November 29 this year) traditionally kicks off the peak period of sales, many retailers are already promoting deals and discounts for Thanksgiving week.
There’s no time to lose when it comes to priming your partnerships to bring in holiday traffic and sales for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BF/CM) shopping peaks.
Here’s your ten-point pre-holiday checklist to ensure you and your partners have everything needed to fulfill your holiday wishes and sales goals on BF/CM and beyond!
- Review pending partner applications. Get those new partners on board for BF/CM and see what they’ve got!
- Prep your Ads + Deals. Send ads directly to your partners using the “Send to Media” option. If partners ask how to pull ads, you can direct them to this article.
- Send partner messages. Communicating regularly with your partners is always good practice, and even more so when prepping for BF/CM. Let partners know your ads are coming!
- Review partner contracts. Are commission and fallback terms being applied correctly on intended dates? Make sure terms are exactly the way you want them. Reach out to your CSM if you need help.
- Set up fallback ads. When your big BF/CM deal is over, you don’t want expired ads still circulating. When you create your ad, select a date range and choose “fallback to another ad on expiration” to select a replacement ad to display.
- Run a test conversion. This can help you spot and resolve problems before the big rush. Reach out to grow@impact.com or your CSM if you have questions on how to run a test or are unsure if the order tracked properly.
- Check with tech. Confirm that your internal tech/engineering team isn’t planning to make any updates to your website or mobile apps that could affect tracking as we approach Black Friday.
- Review landing page query string parameters. Do your tracking templates match what you need for your internal reporting, third-party analytics, and partners?
- Schedule reports. It’s important to know what reports you’ll need to run during and after BF/CM and how you’ll pull that data. Make things easier on yourself and your team by scheduling these reports now.
- Don’t forget to relax, take frequent breaks, and enjoy the holidays!
Your partnerships will help you stand out and sell big during the 2019 holiday season, and getting the technical details buttoned up beforehand will keep anything from getting in the way.
If you are an existing customer, please reach out to grow@impact.com for assistance with any of the points above to ensure you and your partners are set and ready to roll this Black Friday.
For more help with your end-of-year partnership strategy, reach out to an Impact growth technologist at sales@impact.com.
