Cyber Week has once again been an incredible success for SAP customers and given us interesting insight into market trends.
Through Cyber Week, SAP Commerce Cloud powered US$12.2B in gross merchandising value (GMV) for our customers, with a 23.42% year-over-year (YoY) increase in number of orders processed through the solution and 100% uptime. This level of success requires personalized customer engagement, and, for Cyber Week 2024, SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement delivered a 10% YoY increase of overall engagement across all channels, with mobile channels seeing a 200% growth YoY.
But more than just numbers, we’re drawing insights and learnings from some of the largest brands we serve around the world.
Imitation Is a Form of Flattery for B2B Companies
Many industries have looked at how B2C retail companies reach their customers historically and used it as a model. This year, we saw our wholesale distribution customers running Black Friday and Cyber Week promotions to their customers – B2B buyers – with outstanding results. In fact, customers in the wholesale distribution industry saw a 125.2% increase YoY in GMV.
Holiday Shopping Continues to Start Earlier Each Year
E-mails, SMS, social ads, and more for Black Friday sales have been circulating since well before November 29th. Understandably so, as retailers compete for market share. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, retail sales saw an increase of 2.3% in October, which beat analyst predictions and is a good early indicator for the holiday shopping season. For SAP customers in electronics, appliances, and personal care and beauty, we saw spikes in sales in mid- to late-October, which supports the U.S. Commerce Department’s findings.
However, getting started early doesn’t mean that retailers are simply shifting their sales and then finished. Instead, getting started early allows retailers to do both – lean into a first round of promotions earlier than the “shopping season” and a second round during peak Cyber Week shopping, leading to a higher total year-end volume. In addition, by providing two rounds of promotions, companies were able to capture customers who may have missed the initial offering. SAP customers, particularly in the home improvement and personal care industries, were able to achieve this success with a “two-hit” strategy.
Consumers Perceive Deals May Get Sweeter If They Wait
It’s been the belief for years that the best deals happen on Black Friday, but we’ve seen a shift this year. Our data shows that on Cyber Monday the GMV values were significantly more than Black Friday, with an explosive 71.8% increase YoY. Was this trend due to shoppers rushing to take advantage of sales on the last day of the sales event? Or have shoppers been re-conditioned to wait for the best deals on Cyber Monday? We’ll see if this shift has a stronghold in the upcoming years.
Cyber Week Isn’t About the American Thanksgiving Holiday Anymore
With the adoption of e-commerce and the desire to seek out deals, this major sale event has become a global phenomenon, and SAP Commerce Cloud data shows it. Last year, we reported that the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region was comparable to North American sales, with the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region showing explosive growth – and now it is official! Our data shows EMEA with 139.6% and APJ with 49.7% Cyber Week GMV growth. Customers in countries like Germany (+314.3% GMV), the United Kingdom (+106.1% GMV), and South Korea (+12.3% GMV), continue to adopt this sales event, and it’s looking like a mainstay for the future.
A Village Is Key to Success
To achieve this kind of success takes months of work from entire teams – both from our customers’ side and from SAP. By infusing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools to predict, prevent, and address issues proactively, our team of dedicated engineers created 360-degree action plans for our customers and created recommendations to help achieve peak holiday success. With 24×7 control room support, real-time monitoring, and risk mitigation, SAP helped ensure seamless performance and availability during peak traffic periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with 100% uptime, setting a new benchmark for holiday readiness.
To learn how SAP Customer Experience solutions can help your organization drive transformational innovation, visit us at sap.com/crm.
Balaji Balasubramanian is senior vice president and global head of Commerce & Industry Cloud at SAP.