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Episode 138: How to get your Website ready for Black Friday
508 Plays3 years ago
Vanessa Kynes is back on the podcast today chatting with me about how to prepare for a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. We originally were going to stay focused on how to prepare your website for a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale and we still chat about that, but we also talked broadly about running a successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaign. If you haven't thought about Black Friday/Cyber Monday yet that's ok, there's still time to prepare but you’ve got to get moving. Also, this year we will be publishing an awesome Black Friday/Cyber Monday roundup that highlights some of our favorite website and digital marketing tools.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-138-how-to-get-your-website-ready-for-black-friday/
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Transcript
Consumer Anticipation for Sales Events
00:00:06
Speaker
Yeah, I would say something that differentiates Black Friday and Cyber Monday is that there's never a higher, you know, like consumer anticipation to go out and buy stuff, right? Like people have their wallets out. People are ready to purchase stuff. Their credit cards are laying around their computer, you know? So they're ready to purchase. And so I think that really differentiates, you know, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday from like a Memorial Day sale.
Introduction to Brands at Book Show
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Preparing for Black Friday with Vanessa Kynes
00:00:44
Speaker
Vanessa Kynes is back on the podcast today chatting with me about how to prepare for a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. We originally were going to stay focused on how to prepare your website for a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale, and we still chat about that, but we also talk broadly about running a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign.
00:01:02
Speaker
If you haven't thought about Black Friday Cyber Monday yet, that's okay, there's still time to prepare, but you gotta get moving. Also, this year we will be publishing an awesome Black Friday and Cyber Monday Roundup that highlights some of our favorite website and digital marketing tools. This won't be published until the Monday before Thanksgiving, but keep an eye out for it.
00:01:23
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DaveyandChrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode. And as always, we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands of Book Podcast as we move
Listener Feedback Invitation
00:01:33
Speaker
forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DaveyandChrista. Now on to the episode.
Farm Life Reflections
00:01:43
Speaker
Vanessa, welcome back to the Brands of Book Podcast. It has been way too long. It has been a while, but I'm really excited that you invited me on here and glad to be back.
00:01:51
Speaker
how, I don't know how we let it go this long. I guess we've just, when did you come out and visit us? It was last year. Wasn't it right before Christmas? We were on our way home. That's crazy. Because I kept on thinking it was like, oh, this past spring. Yeah. But it wasn't. It's been longer than that. Yeah. Well, Donnie and Joey, the cows, the calves, were babies. I've heard they've grown a lot bigger now. My girls still talk about that.
00:02:16
Speaker
Barely. Barely. So they have powers on their farm. You guys all know that as listeners. Yeah. And it was frost on the ground. So we're hoping actually to swing back by. Krista invited me, even though you'll have a newborn. We're hoping to swing back by this Christmas because this will be the last year my husband's family is going to be a DC and then they're retiring to Florida. So this will be our last trip, kind of up there.
00:02:35
Speaker
Awesome. So a few things. For listeners who don't know that we live on a farm, Donnie and Joey are Jersey cows. And so jerseys are typically a dairy cow and dairy farmers don't have any need for the bulls. And so we picked up two Jersey bulls as a sort of an experiment to see... I'm not going to get into all of it. When I say experiment too, I don't want to leave it experiment because people are like, are you experimenting on animals? Well, no, not...
00:03:04
Speaker
Not the way that maybe that sounds like, but more just, you know, when you don't have, I mean, obviously the bulls are taking off their moms pretty early. And so when they're taking off their moms pretty early like that, they typically don't get very big and Jersey bulls don't get all that big to begin with. But anyways, so we picked up. Well, you just need a Jersey female and then you can have Jersey.
00:03:25
Speaker
female cows. Yeah, like so they, you know, they're, they're no longer bulls. Yeah. They're steers now. And we don't typically raise Jersey. So we have, you know, your different Angus crosses and South bulls and stuff. So everybody listening is like, what did I just tune into? You know, if you're a new listener right now, you're like, what the heck is this? So enough about that. But you know what I was thinking is like you have, I think when you came to visit, like we didn't even have like walkways to our house.
00:03:54
Speaker
We had no landscaping done. The garden was being planned. Krista was getting seeds ready. And it has been amazing actually to see it this year. I think she has the golden touch when it comes to plants. They're impressive. Yeah, it is amazing. Some of the things that she was doing, I was like, this isn't going to work. And it totally did. And it looked beautiful. And so she is really good at that stuff. I'm excited for the next couple of years just to see how some of the stuff comes
Website Readiness for Sales
00:04:16
Speaker
in. But yeah.
00:04:17
Speaker
And that'll be exciting for you all to come back through. I know. To see. I know. Do we need to highlight the bigger part of this reunion is that several years ago, my first podcast with you and how it aligns to what's going on in your life now, because I think that's a bigger celebration.
00:04:34
Speaker
That's right. That's right. And this is the first, we're recording two episodes as you know today, but our listeners might not. This is the first one that will go live of the two. So that worth mentioning. Hopefully by the time this episode goes live though, Krista will actually have had our second son. So that's what we're expecting now. And we're kind of in this weird waiting mode where, you know, he could come at any moment, like Krista theoretically could come upstairs right now and be like, Hey, get off the podcast. We got to go to the hospital. But for those of you who aren't listening, you should go back
00:05:02
Speaker
I'm sure we've talked about it on the podcast before, but basically the morning that Krista went into labor with our first, Vanessa and I are recording a podcast and beforehand the doctor calls and tells Krista to come in and I'm like, hey, listen, I just don't believe it. So I'm like, I'm going to record this episode with Vanessa and then we can go to the hospital. Sure enough, like later that day, Jack's born. So the joke has always been like, you know, or the joke coming into this week was like, Oh, we're definitely, Chris is definitely going into labor tonight because you're recording an episode with Vanessa.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah. She texted me two days ago and she didn't think she was going to make it today, but this was the only opening my schedule. So, so far we, but we're, we're taking guesses that it's coming soon. So yeah. Yeah. Someday you have a girl you're going to have to name her Vanessa. That's the requirement.
00:05:48
Speaker
It will be hysterical though, if later today we end up in the hospital. But today what we are talking about is how to prepare your website for a Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. Right now it is the end of September, last day of September. This episode probably won't go live I think until, forget to check my schedule, but it's probably late October now when this episode's going live. And really, if you haven't started thinking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you
Early Preparation for Black Friday
00:06:13
Speaker
need to start thinking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It's really something you probably should start thinking about by the end of August.
00:06:18
Speaker
We're going to talk about how you can start getting your website ready to make sure that you maximize the potential that's around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Excited to have this conversation with you. Are you a big Black Friday purchaser? Do you hold out?
00:06:31
Speaker
I don't hold out, but I am a bit, I mean, I guess some things I do, especially as we're approaching Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you know, if there's something that I think might go on sale, you know, I might hold out for it. I wouldn't say that I'm like keeping a list or like super methodical about it. I feel like I have friends, actually one of our team members, Sarah, she I feel like is much more methodical and strategic about, you know, hitting certain sales and knowing what's going on. What about you?
00:06:57
Speaker
That's impressive. I'm really not. I actually find, OK, well, going back to the days where we would all go to the mall the day after Thanksgiving, I just found it really overwhelming. And I'm not actually very good at planning gifts in advance. But I will say, on Black Friday, I'll go to my favorite stores. I mean, I'm sure I'm on their email. But I get about 200 emails a day. So I feel like I'm not good at seeing them all. But I'll go to their websites and refresh and look for the deals.
00:07:22
Speaker
So I think I'm looking for my brands I would normally come to and see what kind of offers they have. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what's interesting for me personally, Krista, I don't think falls in this category, but most of the purchases I'm making on Black Friday are actually work-related. So there are different companies that are putting their tools on sale, mostly online, website-related, that I'm trying to pick up licenses that
00:07:44
Speaker
you know, maybe it's a lifetime license that they're doing or something that's like, you know, buy your get a year free, that sort of thing, especially around tools that I already use. And this year, we're going to put together a massive roundup post for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, sort of the best deals that are available on website related, you know, online marketing tools.
00:08:04
Speaker
So, if you're listening, check that out. I'm trying to release that the Monday before Black Friday. So, there's a little time to plan and get organized and then a separate Cyber Monday one that won't actually go live until Cyber Monday. If someone here got it organized. So, I do have a question for you to kind of get this conversation started, which is, who should run a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale?
Should All Businesses Run Black Friday Sales?
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. When we were wedding photographers, we never ran a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale until maybe the very end when we started offering sales on wedding albums. And a few reasons for that. One, I feel like luxury level service like wedding photography doesn't lend itself well to a Black Friday sale. It didn't seem on brand for us. And I would say in general services,
00:08:46
Speaker
probably fall more into that category. That doesn't mean that service-based businesses can't run a Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale effectively. For instance, if you are a massage therapist, I think that you could probably clean up on Black Friday, Cyber Monday selling gift cards. People are probably thinking that's a great gift for maybe a significant other or somebody they know that loves that sort of thing. But if you're a wedding photographer and you're shooting luxury level
00:09:09
Speaker
clients, my guess is that where you would have more luck is if you have any products associated with your business, such as albums. Couples in the past who haven't purchased albums, couples in the past who maybe purchased an album and love it, but maybe you can pitch them on parent albums, something like that. But I definitely think that Black Friday, Cyber Monday probably lends itself a little bit better to product-based businesses. What do you think?
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think there are ways that you could tweak it. Like you mentioned, something that is scalable really is the key, right? Something that can be scaled to, that doesn't take up more of your time. So I think you might have to get crafty. I think offering gift cards is a really good idea because that's revenue in your pocket. And we all know that sometimes people don't even use them. So it does promote that. Now, one of my questions for you though, is are we talking only digital or actual physical products? Does it sound like you tend to buy physical or digital products at Black Friday?
00:10:04
Speaker
And I would say physical products too, you know, like anything that's, you know, I'm thinking about some of the e-commerce companies that Till runs ads for, you know, like easy to run Black Friday type deals on those kinds of products. Especially if you're going to bundle products together so your margins aren't as, you know, don't take as much of a hit. So I'd say both for Black Friday and Cyber Monday that both physical and digital products, I would say lend itself better to, you know, a good holiday sale.
00:10:33
Speaker
Services, like I said, for all the reasons that I just mentioned are tough in part because it's so, I don't know what the word for it would be, but like when you get engaged, you're going to hire a wedding photographer, regardless of whether it's Black Friday or not Black Friday, right? And it's probably not one of those things that you're going to like wait for Black Friday, you know, to see if there's a deal, right? I mean, it's like, you know, a plumber, for instance, like when you hire a plumber, like when something goes wrong with your plumbing,
00:10:55
Speaker
So it would be weird for a service-based business like that to have some sort of Black Friday sale going on, although I could see like an HVAC company, for instance, offering some sort of deal on ongoing service. Again, I don't know if people are paying attention to that sort of thing as much as they're thinking like holiday gifts and I've been eyeing this or thinking about it for a while and I'm on the fence, Black Friday's made it more affordable so I'm gonna give it a shot.
00:11:24
Speaker
Okay, those are some great thoughts. What about introducing new products at Buck Freddy? Do you recommend that at all? Not really. We've broken that rule a couple of times and it hasn't like, but we've always had some tried and true products on sale as well.
00:11:40
Speaker
So if you're a brand new business offering a brand new product, then yeah, I guess do it up because that's your only product. But if you're thinking, oh, I'm going to launch this course at Black Friday, I've never launched it before, I'm just going to see how it goes. I doubt it would do poorly, but I just don't think it's the best time to be testing a new product out.
00:11:59
Speaker
Okay, I do seem to remember that you've tried to do that in the past, but you're still not recommending. Yeah, you know, and I would say it's like, I mean, if you haven't, it's ready and you can, you know, create some deal around it. Like, I guess why not, to a certain extent, but I wouldn't be like holding on to that product to release it around Black Friday, right? Specifically anyways.
00:12:18
Speaker
Okay, so obviously throughout the year, businesses run sales all the time. They run them at holiday time, they run them for things in the spring and the summer. So what makes a Black Friday, Cyber Monday deal a steal?
Uniqueness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday
00:12:32
Speaker
What do we need in place?
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, I would say something that differentiates Black Friday and Cyber Monday is that there's never a higher consumer anticipation to go out and buy stuff. People have their wallets out. People are ready to purchase stuff. Their credit cards are laying around their computer. They're ready to purchase. I think that really differentiates Black Friday, Cyber Monday from a Memorial Day sale where, yeah, we know sales maybe go on around Memorial Day for certain kinds of products.
00:13:00
Speaker
We know that the best deals that we typically get are going to be around this season. So there's a lot of anticipation there. And as a result, people are expecting Black Friday like deals. And so I say that's kind of one of the golden rules about Black Friday and the only sales that we ever see not go well are the ones where people are either they're running like the 5% off. It's like,
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, when all your competitors are running 25% off, 50% off, or these crazy bundles or whatever, you can't be surprised when 5% off isn't going to cut it around Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Do you think free shipping is a good enough deal? No. No.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on the product, I think at the end of the day. I can't say blanket statement, free shipping doesn't matter. But I would say for Black Friday, if that's the thing, unless shipping was something outrageous where you're really saving money and as a consumer, you know you would be saving money, then I just don't think free shipping is something that would get your base excited.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, I've definitely seen Black Friday sales for just list free shipping, and it doesn't make me get out of bed. It's not enough for me to make the transaction. Yeah, exactly. I want to say, one I was waiting for last year is Carhartt. Oh, wow. You have really become a farmer.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I was waiting because I wanted to stock up on winter stuff coming and they didn't run a Black Friday sale. I want to say maybe the most they did was something like free shipping. I was like, no, because I can go to one of five stores nearby and just pick up.
00:14:36
Speaker
Carhartt. Why would I just go free shipping on their website, right? You mean from another retailer that has Carhartt? Yeah, exactly. From Track to Supply and any other... Talked a lot of agriculture today. If you guys had known Davey... I mean, I've known Davey pre and post farms, so it is really amazing that he's running a farm.
00:14:55
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. Backup. I'm not running a farm. My role in the business, it's like when people – I do a lot of running, right? And so people are like, oh, you're a runner. Or sometimes my friends will introduce me as a runner. If they know whoever they're introducing to me, me too also runs. And I always clarify that I am a guy who runs. I am not a runner.
00:15:14
Speaker
And that's how I view farming. I am a guy who farms. So, I would say fortunately we have, you know, my partners in the farm business are, you know, people with actual farming experience, you know. So, I've learned a lot in the last year and I get out there for sure. But to say I'm the guy who runs the farm part of the farm would be, you know, would probably elicit some chuckles from my friends and partners.
00:15:38
Speaker
I love it. With Till Agency, you've obviously seen a lot of different data from this, but how do you prepare for a sale? Are you waiting? Like you mentioned, by the time this goes live, it's probably a little bit too late to be planning it. What can you do now? I would say it's not necessarily too late, but you got to kick some things into gear. Let's just go through some of the things that we should be doing in order to really prepare and get ready for Black Friday. One, like we said, it needs to be a stellar deal. Come up with a good offer or don't.
00:16:08
Speaker
But I would really focus on how can you provide the very best offer for your audience. And that might not be steep discounts. That's not the only kind of offer you can run. You can bundle items together. There's other ways that you can get creative and make a good value offer. But from there, doing things like priming your audience, and this is not necessarily starting in October or September saying, hey, big Black Friday deal coming because you want to balance
00:16:35
Speaker
getting people excited about what's coming versus preventing people who would purchase now and convincing them to wait.
00:16:43
Speaker
Well, that's actually a good point because you don't want to be in a situation as a business. I'm thinking like if you have physical products that people buy all the time, consumables, you don't want to be in a situation where your sales are just dragging on for September and October and then they all hit it at Black Friday and there's products they're selling out and people didn't purchase what they wanted and you're actually down what they could have purchased earlier.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah. And so in November, but in November, it's a good time to start prepping people
Timing of Ad Campaigns
00:17:10
Speaker
for Black Friday. And you can do this in one of a few different ways, but one of the ways that I have in mind is simply by telling people like, hey, listen, if you join our email list, you're going to get access to the very best deals, or you're going to be the first to get access to the very best deals. But there's a serious incentive for you to join our email list. And if you don't, you might still get a good deal, but it's just not going to be the best deal that you possibly could.
00:17:31
Speaker
That's one way, one, just to incentivize more people to sign up for your email list and broaden your base for when you're actually ready to run your Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. One of the reasons that you would do that is because even if you're running Facebook ads, they're going to get more expensive that week of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. The bigger your email list, the better because you can email those people and get in touch with them without paying to
00:17:59
Speaker
Facebook or Instagram to get in front of them. Great point. Grow that organic marketing prior to because the ads are going to be expensive. That makes a lot of sense. If you are planning to run ads during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and you don't typically run ads or you've never run ads before, starting to run ads right now is worth it because you want to give the algorithm time to start getting dialed in just for your account in general. There are certain limitations that are usually placed on new Facebook accounts anyway, so you want to make sure that you're not running into those.
00:18:27
Speaker
So there's all sorts of reasons why you would want to start running ads right now just to, you know, even if it's just to sort of seizing your pixel and to dial in targeting before you actually get to Black Friday, Cyber Monday when you want to start running ads. So consider doing that. Consider really focusing on lead gen and building your email list and priming your audience that way, especially as you get into November in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
00:18:53
Speaker
Okay, so let's just say we are approaching Black Friday. I know that you probably would recommend running it prior to the actual day, right? What does, well, you can comment on that. And then what does your website, does your brand image or change all your assets? What would you recommend there?
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, a few things there. One in terms of, you know, kind of, I feel like one of the things that you're sort of asking is, you know, when do you start running ads and when do you start your Black Friday sale? Yeah. So, you know, I would say there's not really a too early anymore, you know, like people who start running their stuff on November 1st, I feel like it doesn't, maybe it doesn't have the same amount of impact, but there's a reason why people start or why businesses are starting their sales earlier.
00:19:37
Speaker
You've seen it start as early as November 1st. Yeah, I've seen sales start as early as November 1st or like pre-Black Friday sales starting as early as November 1st. I wouldn't recommend starting it quite that early. But from an ads perspective, even if you don't push launch on your sale before maybe Black Friday or before the week of Black Friday, starting your ads the week leading up to Black Friday is a good idea because it gives you time to make adjustments if something's not working.
00:20:03
Speaker
So if you're just going to run ads for like, let's say you're running a sale really like Thursday, Friday, Saturday for Black Friday, there's not much time to make adjustments to your ads. There's next to no time. It's almost like whatever you're running with, you got to run with. But if you start running ads at least the week prior to Black Friday, then that ramp up to Friday, if things are going well, you can really double down and scale. And if things aren't going well, you have time to make some adjustments before you actually get into that big purchasing weekend.
00:20:33
Speaker
So what does the ad say, though? So you're saying the discount wouldn't go live until Thursday, Friday of Black Friday weekend. But what does the ad actually say if you run it early? That it's coming? You're kind of priming them? No. I would just say I would just have it technically on, even if I'm not blasting my list about it yet.
00:20:50
Speaker
So, and that's only for people who really don't want to make that announcement early for whatever reason, right? You know, but I don't think like running your Black Friday sale for like two weeks, you know, I don't think is, I think that's totally normal nowadays. You know, you could even create different like sort of themes within the sale or sales within the sale as Black Friday progresses, you know, so maybe for the first few days, there's certain offers and then they switch, you know. With that said, I would recommend just keeping things as simple as possible.
00:21:19
Speaker
And while we're talking about that, just before we transition specifically to your website, is something else that I would consider doing is running a Black Friday sale and a Cyber Monday sale. And even if the sale is the same, like logistically, calling it something different. Because I think that there's this weird sort of mental switch for people where after Black Friday, now they're looking for the best Cyber Monday sales. And so if you're still running kind of the same old Black Friday sale, I think to a certain extent,
00:21:46
Speaker
it loses its impact. I have zero evidence to back that up. But we've done it both ways. And I just find that it's a little bit more successful when we run a dedicated Cyber Monday sale, even if the sale remains the same. Do you want the deal on Black Friday to be better than the Cyber Monday deal? Because these are kind of like the early urgency pressure.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah, I would say you don't have to, you know, but you could end the Black Friday sale and then start up the Cyber Monday sale and it be the same thing or virtually the same thing and you're just calling it to the Cyber Monday sale, you know, and I think that's fine.
00:22:20
Speaker
Do you now I'm just kind of like going outside because if you sell a course or something like that, obviously you're not going to have repeat customers. Well, you might if you develop different products. But again, let's talk. Let's say you sell like holiday baskets and people know every single year that you have a sale. Do you think it's smart to have a repeatable pattern meaning they always have the best deals on Friday?
00:22:41
Speaker
And by the time you get to Monday, so Friday they're 50% off, but by the time you get to Monday, they're only 30. So that you're almost creating anticipation for the next year that you know you better get the best deals on Friday or by then because they're not going to be as good the following Monday.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a company that does this SEO PowerSuite, which is a SEO software that we use. And what they do, or have done in the past, and I can't remember if they do this on Black Friday. I know they usually have a great Black Friday deal. But I know around the holidays, they've done like, hey, we're going to launch a sale. The first day, it's going to be 70% off. The second day, it's 60% off.
00:23:16
Speaker
you know, and so on, you know, and it goes down to like, let's say 30% or whatever. And so there's real incentive to buy on that first day. But even if you miss the first couple days, and you're on that last day, you know, there's still incentive by because you can still get it as deep discount. So, you know, I would say something like that makes total sense. I think what I
00:23:33
Speaker
What I'd recommend is making sure you don't make it so complicated that people can't understand the deal. If you are going to change things up or do different sales on different days, if you're going to, and I know companies that do this as well, it's like on Monday, this type of product is going to be on sale. On Tuesday, this type of product, if you're going to do it that way, you just got to really prime your audience and make sure they know exactly what the deal is for each day.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, and also run customer service in the email because they're definitely going to be people who are confused, mad that they missed out on the deal. And then ask yourself whether you want to deal with that.
00:24:07
Speaker
But here's a few tips for the website in particular, and I know that's really what we said we were going to be talking about.
Designing Your Website for Black Friday
00:24:13
Speaker
But I think everything on the website should be oriented towards Black Friday, Cyber Monday. What I mean by that is not just your shop page, for instance, promoting this deal, but your homepage. I think it's temporarily okay for the hero spot to be, instead of whatever it typically is, to be just pointing people to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday deal.
00:24:30
Speaker
Some companies, I feel like it's like their entire website is changed just for the holidays and color scheme and everything. But I think it builds excitement that way. For somebody to go to a website that they've been to before, all of a sudden, the color scheme is more, well, black for Black Friday or a little bit different, a little bit off brand. I think all of a sudden, you realize right away, okay, there is a Black Friday, Cyber Monday deal going on.
00:24:58
Speaker
So really orienting everything towards the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. And that might be actually using colors that aren't typically in your brand palette. Even if it's just like A, one of those bars across the top of your website, like a sticky bar, that is black and white. That makes it very clear that you're running a sale right now.
00:25:17
Speaker
So that's something that I would do. Countdown timer is something I would definitely invest in, especially in the last few days of the sale, really just to build that urgency factor. Again, in terms of easy to find and information about the sale, making it easy to understand. If things need explaining, then it's probably too complex. I would say if people have to read a paragraph to figure out what's going on, your sale is probably too complicated.
00:25:46
Speaker
I'm guessing that you're going to recommend on your website templates where the price has been adjusted and they don't have to use codes, correct? Yeah. I would automatically apply the discount codes. Again, this is one of those things that's just going to save you some headache from a customer service perspective because people are going to forget to use the code, so you might as well have it automatically apply.
00:26:05
Speaker
If you could have prices crossed out showing how much they're saving, that's ideal too. That's something else that I would for sure do. Really, just to emphasize how much of a deal people are getting.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah, I like seeing those savings differences. And I actually love it. I feel like a lot of the clothing stores, the whole app brand, they go really bright and red, either black or red. I feel like are the two colors they tend to use because it's holiday. And I love it when they apply the codes and you don't have to do anything because they're usually offering you five codes at once. And you're like, just give me the best deal. What's the best deal of the day?
00:26:40
Speaker
So talk to me a little bit about what you're actually marketing during the time you've got your email list, right? And you want to keep reminding them to pushing them back to the website. But what about texting? Because I've noticed recently a couple products, the one was false eyelashes. And then also this, and I didn't mean to buy this caffeinated protein bar, which I don't drink caffeine anymore. So I did like give them away.
00:27:01
Speaker
I noticed that all the e-commerce was happening on text. I could order more, cancel, some really cool things. So I want to hear your thoughts about email marketing, but then also SMS. Yeah, I think texting way of the future in terms of like, I think to a certain extent, especially for e-commerce, it's going to replace email marketing.
Text Messaging in Marketing
00:27:18
Speaker
And I feel this for a number of different reasons. One is anybody who's been following Apple's updates, like you probably noticed if you're an Apple user and you pay for Cloud Plus or whatever, they've automatically upgraded you. And what that means is they've given you access to all these different privacy features. Like people now can actually – there's a feature in Apple apparently where you can basically have Apple create a spam email address for you essentially.
00:27:43
Speaker
so that you don't have to give your actual email address and then it will forward you the mail using that email address but you can cancel it anytime so that, you know, let's say you're getting a lot of spam from that what is basically a fake email address that Apple came up with for you, you know, that will stop going to you. And so, and also like just in terms of like reporting as well, understanding like open rates and click rates and how people are interacting with your emails, different privacy features are making that harder.
00:28:09
Speaker
text messages get a much higher open and just like kind of interaction rate than emails. So one thing that we're going to be trying to push this holiday season is building sort of our SMS text messaging list. Because I think in the future, you're just going to have a lot more success there than with email. We're still going to be building our email list. But like you,
00:28:31
Speaker
a lot of, I'm thinking about two clothing brands, not farm related by the way, all right, for the record, not farm related. One of them is running related, but you know, that's how you, what they'll do, this is kind of sneaky too, is they'll say, save 15% off, right? And you click and it looks like it's just asking for your email address. So you put your email address in, but then once you submit your email address, they're like, they basically bait and switch you. They're like, enter your phone number to actually get the 15% off code.
00:29:01
Speaker
And it's kind of ingenious because on one hand, it's like, well, if I decide not to put my phone number in, they can still market to me on their email list. But I put my phone number in both times because I wanted to save the 15% on the clothing.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah, and you can always honestly doing things by text. I love that. So any subscription based model, like a food product or in this case, it was eyelashes. How many eyelashes do you really need? You can cancel, you can change your order via text. And at first, I would think it was annoying that they're reaching out to me, but honestly, it is just so much more convenient.
00:29:33
Speaker
I'm buying into it. I actually remember a couple years ago, I think it was at United in 2019, you were pushing for text marketing and people were giving you a hard time. But I think you were ahead of the game there. Head of the game people with that said, you know, I didn't take my own advice. And here we are. So I'm like everybody else scrambling to build their text, their SMS list. And there's different challenges. Do you have a software tool
00:29:58
Speaker
that's what we're in the process right now researching a bunch. And I get pretty picky, as you know, about which tools we invest in, in part because, well, some tools aren't like this, but with email, and I assume it's going to be the same with text messaging, is if you ever want to switch, it's going to be a pain, right? We're in the process right now switching from ConvertKit to Flowdesk. And the only reason we haven't made this switch a lot sooner is because it is just
00:30:22
Speaker
overwhelming to think about the sequences that we're going to have to rebuild, you know, whenever you move subscribers from one platform to the other, you're going to have issues with deliverability. It's just how it goes, you know? So, that's why we're being a little bit picky and there's some great tools out there that are pretty, I think, easy to get set up and started with, but it's unclear about like how much you can grow into them. And then of course, there's like
00:30:45
Speaker
tools that are like really built out, ton of huge feature set, but they're super expensive, especially if you're just getting started. So always a balance. Okay, I know this. I feel like we could do a whole we should do a whole call once you're more informed on SMS marketing. But like email can go have deliverability issues. And now Gmail can send it to promotions tab spam like you may never see the email. But are we going to receive every single text? Like we are right. So there's no filtering of that text.
00:31:15
Speaker
It could be blocked and I don't know if you have an Apple phone, right? You have an iPhone? Yeah, and so one thing you might notice in your iPhone is that there is a known folder and an unknown folder, right? But in text messages, if I, you know, like there's my known, but there's like, you know, the backwards arrow and you hit out and you'll have known messages or known senders, unknown senders and all. So like a lot of times the more promotional stuff goes to unknown.
00:31:41
Speaker
Okay, this doesn't exist on my phone. Have you not upgraded your phone? Have you not updated your iOS? I don't know. My husband is the CTO of our household and if he hasn't done it, I probably haven't done it. That's funny. Well, somebody listening is like, hopefully they know exactly what I'm talking about. But the point being is there's no guarantee that your messages can be blocked for sure. There is sort of like a spam filter when it comes to text messaging as well.
00:32:09
Speaker
So you have to, you know, like with email, you have to build it the right way and really focus on deliverability. But yeah, I mean, so those are basically, you know, I think the key takeaways for your website in particular are make sure your website, you know, it's like you're throwing a themed party at your, at like a studio or like if you had a physical location, right? You want people to know
00:32:29
Speaker
that they showed up in the right place. I would make sure that your website just screams sale because there's a lot of noise too. So making sure that your website is really set up for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and you're not just treating it as like any old sale where hopefully when people get on here, they'll kind of figure out what we're doing. I love it. Well, I look forward to seeing all the good sales and hearing from you when you guys post what you think are the best deals this year.
00:32:56
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, we're excited about this. We always say we're going to do this, but it's like, oh, we should, you know, it's like always, you know, a week before Black Friday and we're like, oh, should we put this round up post? You know, so this year we're actually, you know, we're reaching out to all these different companies. We're going to, you know, we're doing the legwork now. So we'll be prepared to actually do a solid round up post. I'm pretty excited about it. Awesome.
00:33:19
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.