A look back at Black Friday
Ah, Black Friday, retail’s biggest day of the year, after all, we all remember those viral videos of people going wild in the aisles of Walmart in America, don’t we?
Well, it turns out, Black Friday isn’t only reserved for retail, since making its way over to the UK, it’s now a key date in the hospitality calendar, too, with sales growing year on year.
If there is one thing we have learnt, Black Friday is not just a single day; it's actually an entire week of shoppers scouring the internet for the best deals and discounts. For Togglers, Black Friday 2023 proved to be a monumental success, with over £6.7 million in gift cards generated during the week.
Now we’ve nearly got our sixth Christmas under our belts, and with a year that had already been running at double of that of 2022 up to November, expectations for Black Friday were HUGE. We had estimated that £27 million in Toggle cards would be bought in November and December, and it’s safe to say, Black Friday did not disappoint!
Let’s look at some of the headline figures from the big week:
🎁 At its peak, Toggle witnessed an astounding 11 gift cards being purchased per second.
💸 A total of £6.7 million of gift cards and experiences were sold on Toggle throughout Black Friday week, breaking the previous record by some distance.
🤑 A total promotional value of £617,000 was applied across all gift cards during the week.
📈 During the week, the average gift card value reached £60.38 compared to £49.17 the previous Friday.
😱 As the week came to an end the total live balance, not yet redeemed or expired, being held across Toggle gifts cards reached an incredible £21 million.
A significant 72% of the week's purchases featured a promotion, with this number spiking to 82% on Friday itself – the pinnacle of Black Friday madness! Among the promotions, the two most popular were 20% discount and £20 added value, accounting for 29% and 16% of all promotional cards sold, respectively.
Once again, the highest converting source of traffic to Toggle shops was via email marketing, with 20% of all clicks converting to a purchase, vs 11% of direct traffic, and 4% for visits from social media.
Which is why it’s no surprise to see the busiest week of the year so far for emails sent via our sister platform, Airship, sending out a whopping 22 million emails on behalf of our hospitality customers, with over 5 million being sent on the Friday itself.
Hospitality brands who are using Toggle are on track to collectively sell £52 million of gift cards by the end of the year; and the fact of the matter is; customers do not visit alone. The average ‘heads per visit’ across all the booking platforms Airship integrates with is 3.3 guests, meaning there were 1.4 million promised future visits to hospitality venues, sitting within Toggle after Black Friday.
If you want to get ahead of the game for 2024 and find out more about how gifting can transform your business, get in touch with our team today on sales@usetoggle.com.
