A Note To My Future Self About Q4 2024

I’ve scheduled an email that will send me this blog post on August 1, 2024.

It contains all of the notes I want my future self to remember when planning for this time next year.

Don’t be afraid to go big next year.

Do not underestimate how the zeitgeist has embraced Black Friday & Cyber Monday.

I don’t care what the news is saying, what Twitter macro-economic gurus think, or even what’s happened so far in 2024. Customers will be primed to buy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Do not think small when preparing for this marketing moment. Small brands can outgrow almost any amount of bad news in the broader economy because people just can’t resist shopping during this time period, and the hurdle for small brands to clear to realize growth is much lower.

I was very lukewarm about the prospects for Black Friday and Cyber Monday for 2023, and my brands absolutely smashed all expectations and prior all-time highs. It was a great teaching moment.

Preparing for Black Friday And Cyber Monday is a year-round initiative.

BFCM weekend 2023 was an excellent case study of why you keep creating and promoting great content across marketing channels 365 days a year. Plant and water the garden with new content and fresh angles to move customers into the consideration cycle and better understand the value proposition of your product/brand. Ramp up this effort in late summer and early fall. Harvest liberally during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Consistent marketing does a remarkable job of building engaged prospective customers. Both the ones you know about, from your email lists and other audiences, and the many more you don’t. I plan on doubling down on my marketing efforts in late Q3 to fill the funnel for BFCM

Most customers will check your owned DTC channel on BFCM.

While I don’t have data on this, I’m confident in the take. Unlike the rest of the year, when shoppers using different channels (Amazon, wholesale, etc.) may not actually visit your owned DTC channel before making a purchase. BFCM is the one time of year where you can assume most customers will at least check your homepage offer to see if it’s competitive with other channels.

This is a massive upside opportunity for the owned DTC channel. Make sure your brand website can deliver the best experience for as many prospective customers as possible during this time period. This doesn’t even mean you need the lowest discount (though it can’t hurt). But you absolutely need to have the best product content, the lowest purchase friction, and the best support.

Send more email & SMS.

One thing was crystal clear to me this BFCM. You can go even bigger and more obnoxious than you think with email & SMS. Next year I’m creating a plan that feels nearly criminal in volume, then I’m gonna add another 15% to the total send count.

The trick is to be smart with targeting throughout the weekend. Saturday and Sunday probably don’t need a bunch of mass sends. Instead, focus on active engagement. This is the time to buy for anyone actually visiting your site. They lead busy lives and may need several little nudges to make a purchase.

Cyber Monday is a truly awesome day for email and SMS. I sent emails well into the middle of the night with success. One other trick that worked well was recrafting my offer for a lower AOV entry point. So maybe the discount isn’t as good, but the user can access it without spending as much.

Design a strategy that allows for long-burn advertising.

One thing I’ve really noticed over this last year is that Meta ads take a bit of a ramp-up period. I mean it should be obvious given the language around the “learning phase.” But I have often executed spends with some expectations from a bygone era. Yes, spend levels, and AOVs, and expected CPAs all play into this, but based on watching the data over the weekend, my gut says that the Meta ecosystem runs a little clunky during moments like Black Friday. Firing up a massively critical ad campaign alongside thousands of other brands doing the exact same thing seemed to come with some lag in performance.

Meanwhile, my long-running ads cranked right along and meaningfully improved performance through the BFCM weekend. They seemed to be able to kick into overdrive thanks to the deeper well of performance data to chase conversions from. To me, this is more nuanced than just an “evergreen” ads strategy during BFCM. I think there’s real value in kicking off BFCM offers early enough to strengthen the dataset behind advertising. Or even better, design ads with sale messaging that are still thumb-stopping but also vague enough to run through your entire promotional period, with a landing page that changes to accommodate the different offers running during the period.

Q5 - Early December is the ultimate profitability opportunity.

The last-minute shopper showed up big this year across my brands. For the most part, these folks weren’t clamoring for a discount. They were acting out of urgency and need. One of my brands ran a “free expedited shipping” campaign and had a key product come back in stock. Our advertising across all products performed significantly better during this incentive than during BFCM. And we generated significantly more revenue at a much better-maintained margin.

Going into next year, I’ll keep a few discounts in my back pocket during this time period—a break in case of emergency execution. But instead, I’ll focus on communicating a smooth, predictable ordering and delivery experience, giving people what they really want—a gift in hand in time for the holiday.

What’s next for Q1 2024?

A while back I wrote a blog called “The Longest Black Friday Ever.” Some of the stuff in that blog came true, other parts were a little off. So it goes when you try and predict the future. One take from that blog I’ll 100% stand by is the importance of generating returning customers from this BFCM cohort of customers.

The clock is ticking on that objective, and the best chances for reconversion are likely in the next 6 weeks. Here are a few of my plans.

  • Repeat incentivized review requests - write a review, get a discount.

  • Customer Survey - again, fill out a survey, get a discount.

  • SMS signup with an incentive.

  • Segmented follow-up with product upsells and cross-sells.

Yes, it’s more discounting, but this BFCM cohort is historically a pretty price-sensitive bunch. To me, it’s more important to get that second order than to keep all my margin. Once the customer owns a few products, starts getting questions and compliments from friends on the product, I’m pretty confident they’ll come back for more.

That’s all I’ve got. I hope you had an awesome Q4.

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