For the majority of retailers Black Friday is a time to generate an unprecedented influx of purchases – both online and offline.

Consumers are estimated to spend as much as £2billion in a single day which is equivalent to £83million every hour, £1.4million every minute and more than £23,000 every second!

With more sign-ups, customers and transactions happening across all channels and devices it is not only a time for high revenue but also a time for high volume and velocity data collection.

Website visitors will sky rocket, apps will be pushed to the limit, servers will start to creek and many online baskets will be full or abandoned. Those that are able to collect, analyse and interpret the high volume, high velocity data in near real-time will be able to maximise their Black Friday revenue potential and learn incredible insights about their customers’ behaviours and the success of Black Friday campaigns.

Here are 7 key questions to ask yourself before Black Friday:

1. Are you able to use information about past transactions to personalise offers individual offers?

2. Are you able to act on abandoned baskets in realtime?

3. Are you able to use anonymous data to recommend dynamic offers?

4. Are you able to monitor, and act on, the social impact on your campaigns?

5. Have you put in place Black Friday Welcome Programmes for new sign-ups?

6. Are you able to link in-store Black Friday purchases back to digital ‘Cyber Monday’ campaigns?

7. Will you be able to monitor the optimal point of your campaigns to fire out recovery campaigns during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush?

In our experience Marketers often struggle with one or more of these 7 questions whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday or just a regular day of trading! Data collection has expanded faster than our capabilities to harness it and although we all have best intentions to create perfectly targeted marketing programmes, the reality is that we’re often left confused as we look for the ideal solution.

"I have spoken with hundreds of CMOs and Marketing Directors over 25 years and the biggest advice I can give is that it's better to take an imperfect solution and execute it aggressively rather than look for a perfect solution and get caught in technology inertia!"
Iain Lovatt, Chairman & Founder, Blue Sheep

There is a vast amount of technology for marketers to choose from and they all provide similar messages.  Some buzz words you’re likely to see on any marketing platform include “Real-time”, “Omni-channel”, “1-to-1”, “Customer Experience marketing”...

Of course, the reality is that technology in and of itself can't give you everything you need to answer "Yes!" to the above questions and create perfectly targeted marketing.

There are actually 5 key elements of any successful marketing solution:

1. The Data

2. The Technology

3. The People

4. The Culture

5. The Processes

Here are the technology and data elements clearly laid out:

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