As Black Friday and Cyber Monday came and passed, the number of data validations (verifying a customer’s email, address or phone details digitally) processed over this period is a great indicator of both retail sales performance and consumer trust. By monitoring this data we unlock a wealth of insights that can help retailers drive process efficiencies and better journeys for their customers.
(For more information on what customer data validation is please read this article, Retailers put faith in customer data validation)
And although Christmas saw some slow-down across spending of certain consumer segments, it was spending increases of 7.7%* year on year in November, largely bolstered by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, that caught our attention.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are unique in terms of global and regional scale and evidence would indicate that consumers are both purchasing for themselves and getting ahead of their Christmas shopping plans.
Let’s dig into the data a little more.
Black Friday breaks records… Again
Black Friday and Cyber Monday fall on the last weekend of November and have risen in popularity with consumers each year since its adoption in Australia in 2013 (Other countries, such as the United States of America, had been pushing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for a number of years preceding this).
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (plus the days in between, AKA Cyber weekend) saw total sales of over AU$7 billion**, which, when combined with total sales over November, saw a 7.7% growth year-on-year versus the same month in 2021. This statistic is made even more impressive given the increases in digital spending that occurred during the pandemic (2020-21).
Consumers spent AU$35.9 billion in total across November in stores and online, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Customer data validations are on the increase
Experian monitored the number of digital customer data validations (Address, email and phone) over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend and we also saw record growth.
1.7m transactions handled in a single hour
At its peak on Black Friday, Experian globally handled over 1.7m transactions in a single hour, returning validated results at an average of 85.5ms. Australia and New Zealand drove nearly 13m address validation requests over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In total, across the whole shopping weekend we saw a 9.5% YoY growth in Address validations, and a 12% growth in Email and phone validations.
The performance increase can be attributed to the hard work we’ve put in to ensure we have a strong and stable customer platform, able to handle the largest volumes we’ve ever seen.
Ensuring a well rounded, multi-channel validation strategy is the best way to accelerate the consumer purchase journey.
Talk to Experian about validating your customer data
If you currently don’t have customer data validation technology working within your digital retail operations then you are missing out.
It helps improve the customer journey by automating a lot of the customer’s data entry requirements. That might not seem like much, but our research shows it improves both basket abandonment and speed of purchase, and fractional improvements in purchase percentages can have a big impact on your bottom line.
If you would like to discuss how customer data validation could work for you then please get in touch.
*https://insideretail.com.au/business/black-friday-sales-boosted-retail-spending-in-november-202301
**https://news.nab.com.au/news/black-friday-and-cyber-monday-sales-top-7-billion/