Black Friday Inventory Management Tips for Ecommerce Merchants
As we approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the busiest period of the year for ecommerce merchants, many of our customers ask us what they should be tracking in their inventory. This is a great question. Our team suggests a few things that will help you be prepared.
1. Tagging Products
This may sound like a no-brainer but before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period begins, tag products associated with any campaigns you're running in Genie (or Shopify).
Tagging campaign products allows you to easily track the products in the inventory table and which BFCM offer is attached to it. Tagging isn't exclusive to Genie; it's also possible to tag products in Shopify and use the same filtering system in Genie. The key point is to track the products with offers so you can effectively track, segment, and analyze performance in real time.
2. Identify Running Low Products
In addition to tagging, we advise you to identify which products are running low before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend begins. Knowing this is crucial as these products are likely to sell out during the sale period.
This is great if your objective is to clear stock and free up working capital. However, once these products sell out, you may want to stop advertising them and redirect customers to other products. Genie makes this process easy by allowing you to filter by Status on the inventory table, or you can select your running low product directly from the dashboard.
3. Identify Overstocked Products
We also recommend using Genie to identify overstocked items and consider running special campaigns for them.
Unlike running low products, if a product is overstocked that means that it doesn't sell fast enough to burn through the units that have been ordered. So, outside of no-sales products, these are the second-best products to run campaigns for. Not only do they free up significant amounts of capital and storage space, but also not stocking out of these products is more beneficial than harmful, unlike your running low products.
4. Monitor Your Data
Over the last couple of months, we have been striving for real-time data that you can leverage to make on-the-fly decisions about your inventory, and we're excited to say it's a reality.
During Black Friday, you can rely on Genie to update your data in real time for any sales and inventory changes. This is useful for a customer service team to check if a product has run out, when it will be back in stock, or what the sales rates are.
5. Evaluate Your Stock Levels
We recommend that you evaluate stock levels before and after BFCM to get a full picture of the impact on working capital and performance. This period presents a huge opportunity to not only acquire new customers but also to manage a healthier inventory.
