Episode #193: 3 Last-Minute Black Friday Promo Ideas To Increase Q4 Sales
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It's that time of year again, and Black Friday is just around the corner. If you're still finalizing your Black Friday promotions, or you haven’t even started thinking about them yet, stress less! This podcast episode has got you covered with 3 easy to implement, last-minute ideas to boost your holiday sales at this important time of the year.
To kick off this episode you’ll get an overview of a 2022 holiday sales report provided by Adobe Analytics and compare and contrast that report to projected consumer spend in 2023. From there we'll dive into these strategies to help you make the most out of Black Friday while taking into consideration your unique customers. From descending discounts to offering MORE instead of LESS, we'll explore creative ways to attract customers and enhance their shopping experience.
Make sure that you have important elements like abandoned cart campaigns and SMS texting setup to reach customers in unique ways. Press play, listen, learn and then take action on these last-minute promo ideas to make this holiday season a successful one for your toy brand.
EPISODE CLIFF NOTES:
Discover the Power of Descending Discounts to keep customers engaged over the entire holiday weekend.
Add Value with Holiday-Specific Freebies when deep discounts aren't feasible for your profit margin. Learn ideas for freebies that can enhance the customer experience.
Surprise Your VIP Customers and stand out from the competition by doing this one thing before Black Friday even begins.
Don’t stop at Cyber Monday, embrace Give Back Tuesday and plan your give back campaign and the promotion of it.
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[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: Black Friday sales alone are expected to reach 9. 8 billion in 2023. You are listening to making it in the toy industry. Episode number 193.
[00:00:23] Hey there, toy people. Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast, making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach. com. When this episode first airs, it will be November 1st.
[00:00:38] And so today's podcast episode is focusing on the upcoming holiday event of the retail buying season and that is Black Friday. If you are a small toy entrepreneur selling direct to consumer, there is a chance that you may not have had time to think about Black Friday just yet. So my goal is, by the end of this episode, to inspire you to take action and launch yourself a Black [00:01:00] Friday promo or deal just in time for the holiday.
[00:01:03] Even if your efforts to push out a Black Friday sale this late in the game yield just one sale, you'll have an idea of what works for your customers and what doesn't, and that data is powerful and can be multiplied into more sales in the coming months and even the following year. Now, in this episode, we're going to start out with a quick definition of Black Friday.
[00:01:22] Then we are going to review the data reports from Black Friday's sales in 2022. And finally, we'll explore a few ideas on Black Friday promos and deals you can run for your brand just in time for the holiday.
[00:01:35] Of course, we'll get into steps to how to get started. You'll have everything you need to get going after this episode. So stay First, let's start with that quick definition. Black Friday. What is it? Black Friday has historically been represented as the kickoff of the holiday shopping season. And as we know in the toy industry, about 75 percent of our business is done in Q4.
[00:01:59] This [00:02:00] year, Black Friday falls on November 24th and is Rumored to be the day that retail stores go from being in the red all year to finally being in the black, thus the name Black Friday However, there is a deeper and somewhat darker history to Black Friday.
[00:02:15] So if you're interested in that story, we're not going to dive into that on this podcast, but you can tap the link. In the mentioned in this episode section find the link to read the full story on black Friday at the toy coach. com forward slash one nine three, and I will link you to the full Wikipedia article. Following the Black Friday promo sale, there are a slew of other consumer focused holidays designed to motivate people to buy, buy, buy with different promotions and sales designed around the holiday season. So, let's list what those are, and they kind of make up Black Friday week.
[00:02:48] Following Black Friday, there is Small Business Saturday, we've then got Cyber Monday, which is then followed by Giving Tuesday, and then in the following month, in [00:03:00] December, the last Big sales push of the year is known as super Saturday or panic Saturday. And that is the final chance to buy gifts before the Christmas holiday.
[00:03:09] Now, as we go through this episode, we're going to look at sales for this overall holiday season but we'll be focusing on Black Friday and the weekend of sales that follows it.
[00:03:18] Now for an extra challenge and to have a longer impact on your customers, I want you to try to think of this episode, not just for Black Friday, but how you can take advantage of small business Saturday and Cyber Monday as well.
[00:03:32] Let's start out looking at the 2022 stats. Earlier this year, Adobe Analytics released a
[00:03:38] Marker
[00:03:38] Scarlett 2i2 USB-5: report showing record spending on Black Friday and Thanksgiving in 2022, record compared to 2021.
[00:03:47] Cyber Week drove 35. 3 billion with a record breaking 11. 3 billion driven by Cyber Monday. 211. 7 billion [00:04:00] spent the entire holiday season between November 1st to December 31st in 2022. This report was for 18 different categories of products.
[00:04:08] The key driver for that resilient holiday season was toys. Online sales for toys grew 206 percent compared to previous months the same year. Discounts at this time averaged 34 percent for toys, which was up from a 19 percent discount in 2021.
[00:04:28] Now, a lead analyst from Adobe stated that geographical areas that were dealing with elevated price increases in food, housing, and gas at the time, that discretionary spending was actually saved due to these deep discounts that were offered in 2022.
[00:04:43] And remember, also back in 2022, we were dealing with an oversupply of inventory in the toy industry, which was likely a driver behind the offering of all of these deep discounts. Now, 47 percent of sales In 2022, during the holiday season [00:05:00] came from smartphones, that's up from 41 percent in 2021, so. The last thing we got to look at here for Adobe's report on 2022 sales is how did people pay for their product? In 2022, about 4 percent of shoppers used buy now and pay later credit to purchase their gifts, hinting at what may be the Future reprieve as we come into a holiday season at a time of even more economic uncertainty.
[00:05:30] So we'll, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Now. For a link to this original report by Adobe Analytics, visit the toy coach.com/ 1 9 3. Scroll down to the mentioned in this episode area and you will find the link right there. Now, because so many of the toy entrepreneurs that are listening to this podcast host their toy websites on Shopify powered sites, I thought it would be really useful to dive into Shopify specific data around Black Friday.
[00:05:58] Because Shopify [00:06:00] also released global data for Black Friday, so they showcased remarkable growth . So the link again for this article regarding the Shopify data is going to be at the toycoach.
[00:06:12] com forward slash one nine three as well. Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend in 2022 for Shopify merchants worldwide pulled in 7. 5 billion in sales, and that for Shopify is a 19 percent increase compared to the 6.
[00:06:27] 3 billion generated during that same weekend during 2021. Now, according to Shopify survey of more than 24, 000 consumers worldwide, 76 percent of people shopping were looking for higher quality products that were going to last longer.
[00:06:43] And now, if you remember in 2022, our economy was faring pretty well. Families were still getting some subsidies received from the pandemic. School loan repayments were paused. The cost of living hadn't totally shot up. And many households had just spent an additional [00:07:00] year saving more money by working remotely.
[00:07:02] Also Shopify dug into where and how customers shopped. So I love seeing this data to compare it back to Adobe analytics.
[00:07:09] So Black Friday in 2022, based on Shopify's data\ their peak sales, there were 3. 5 million being spent per minute. Shoppers average spend also increased globally on Shopify's platform. Each order was averaging 102. 10 up from 100. 70 the previous year, and that in Shopify's data highlights a global willingness to spend more money to get more, whether it's quality, quantity, both or one or the other.
[00:07:43] So we're going to be referencing back this number quite a bit as we keep going into our 2023 numbers. Now, the top selling cities where shoppers made their purchases included London, New York, and
[00:07:55] all right, let's move on to our toy. 2023 predictions. So we all know [00:08:00] 2022 was a banner year for the toy industry, for online sales in general, but what can we expect for 2023?
[00:08:06] Right now we know the cost of living here in the U. S. is outrageous, interest rates are insanely high, student loan payments are back, and salaries that are rising are not keeping up with inflation. Let's turn back to Adobe to see their forecast for the holiday season in 2023. How are people going to be spending their money considering the economic conditions?
[00:08:28] Now, in 2023, Adobe forecasted a 10 billion Increase in online sales from November 1st to December 31st for the U. S. holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is expected to drive 37. 2 billion in online spending, and that is up 5. 4 percent year over year and
[00:08:51] adobe expects that Cyber Monday is going to remain the season's biggest shopping day driving a record of[00:09:00] 12 billion in spending up 6 percent year over year. Now, this is again based on Adobe Analytics data, which includes the analysis of 1 trillion visits to U. S. retail sites, 1 million SKUs over 18 months.
[00:09:12] 18 different product categories. Now let's talk about what are the big changes that are expected to take place to actually lead this 10 billion sales lift. Well, one higher discounts and two more people using the buy now and pay later flexible payment features.
[00:09:31] So Adobe analysts expect discounts in the toy category to peak at 35 percent up 1 percent from the listed price, expecting the deepest toy deals to come in on Sunday, November 26 and the analysts expect that the buy now and pay later feature that was used in 4 percent of purchases last year to now drive 17 billion in online spend, a 16.
[00:09:56] 9 percent increase from 2022.[00:10:00] Since more consumers are familiar and comfortable with the option of buying now and paying later, and it's become more mainstream, and we're in a difficult economic time, they do expect that that will be leading some of the sales. Okay, so with that kind of big picture of where the market is going specifically the online sales for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, let's just hyper focus on black Friday and not just online. There are a few black Friday statistics, key data provided by online dasher. com. And again, this link will be in the show notes, the toy coach. com forward slash one nine. Three. Now, here are the key points I pulled out from their report. 1.
[00:10:44] Black Friday sales alone are expected to reach 9. 8 billion in 2023. Second, in 2022, approximately 125 million people in the United States shopped on Black Friday, accounting for [00:11:00] 37 percent of the total population,. Three, 69 percent of people shop online for Black Friday compared to 32 percent in store and these were numbers from 2022. Now I also dug into a research study put together by a company called Drive Research who surveyed over a thousand US consumers to learn about what they are planning to do for their 2023 holiday shopping plans.
[00:11:26] Now, analyzing that qualitative data along the quantitative data provided by Adobe Analytics and Shopify we can draw a few conclusions. Now, thanks to Drive Research, we're discovering that about 78 percent of consumers plan to reduce or keep their holiday spending the same as prior years due to the rising cost of living.
[00:11:51] Now we know Shopify has that number estimated at about 100 per order. Now we also know that Drive Research [00:12:00] says clothes, accessories, and electronics are at the top of people's minds. To get discounts on for Black Friday shopping, which tells me that people want deals on necessities like clothing. And also they're looking for deals on the most expensive items like those electronics.
[00:12:16] So it might be a good time to think your high end toy might also be something that's at the top of their list. If you have a higher end toy product. Drive research also did Some deep dive into what time people that are going to shop in store plan to go in store to do that.
[00:12:33] So in person Black Friday shoppers, 29 percent of them intend to start shopping at 5 a. m. to 10 a. m. While 20 percent plan to start shopping from 6 p. m. to 12 a. m. So you can see where we have people at the two extremes trying to beat the rush or come in more toward the end. Now, the important question is this, what is going to push people to buy for Black Friday and the days following Cyber [00:13:00] Monday, Small Business Saturday?
[00:13:01] Well, according to Drive Research, promotions and free shipping won out as what's going to motivate 80 percent of buyers to buy on this day. Now, we got to talk about the top retailers who people are going to be flocking to on this day. What are the websites people are going to be checking for deals?
[00:13:18] Amazon, Target, Walmart. And another important data point is how shoppers think they're going to discover Black Friday weekend deals based on how they've discovered them in the past. So the top method that was revealed is what I just said. One, 64 percent of customers said that they discovered Black Friday deals by just going on to the retailer's websites. So these retailers, Amazon, Target, Walmart, that are top of mind, where people are going to be visiting their sites. That is how 64 percent of consumers are going to be hearing about their Black Friday deals. 58 percent said they
[00:13:55] And great for those retailers and great for the brands that will be promoted in those emails. [00:14:00] But what if that's not you? Well, then you drop to the 47 percent of people who said they have heard about black Friday deals from social media ads, social media ads. are a place that you can compete. So now it'd be a good time to spend some time, set up your ad campaign and get some ad artwork together to promote your Black Friday deal.
[00:14:21] Now there was one other area that I was actually surprised to see customers list so low as a way that they were going to hear about Black Friday deals. And that method was push notifications with only 30 percent of shoppers mentioning that they would be notified of Black Friday deals in that way.
[00:14:39] I see this as a major opportunity for you to offer push notifications because it seems that many retailers aren't. doing that. So potentially you won't get lost in a sea of other retailers who are all sending emails or just putting banners on their site. You can be one of the few that are sending some push notifications or some SMS notifications.
[00:14:59] [00:15:00] Now, you can grab your own copy of Drive Research's report, and I highly recommend you do. It's a great report. Just visit thetoycoach. com forward slash 193, check the mentioned in this episode's link, and you will see the link to get the Drive report.
[00:15:15] Now that we know the numbers behind Black Friday, now that we feel motivated to dive into and take part in this massive sales time of the year. What can we do about it at this stage of the game? You might be thinking, Okay, Ajelle, I get it. There's a ton of money that's about to be spent this Black Friday, and I need to make sure that my toy brand is making the most of it.
[00:15:37] But what can I do this late in the game? Well, if you want to drive sales, I've got a few ideas on how we can quickly get ready for the most important season of the year. So, We're going to make this happen in a few steps, and these steps are going to seem a little out of order, and they are because we are doing this late.
[00:15:56] So we're, instead of doing the planning and the action first, we're going to do a little bit of [00:16:00] action, then a little bit of planning, and then finish off with some action. So step one, you are going to start yourself a holiday alerts email list. Now, if you already have an email list and an email service provider, great.
[00:16:13] Just create a new list within that email service provider or a new tag. If you have an email service provider, you already know what that. tag term means, and then use all of that to create a brand new lead collection form. And a lead collection form is just the form that someone's going to fill out to share their contact information with you in exchange for something.
[00:16:33] So if you don't have an email service provider and you want to get started with this, I would recommend MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, or ConvertKit. Those are all email service providers that I have used in the past and had success with. Either of those would be a great email service provider for you.
[00:16:51] Now, your first step, as I said, is to set up this holiday alerts email collection form. The purpose of this form is to collect the [00:17:00] information of anybody who is interested in knowing about your holiday deals and your Black Friday alerts. That's why. They're going to be like the title and imagery behind this form.
[00:17:10] This form should ask for the person's first name, email, phone number, and of course need to comply with all of the data processing rules. So you've got to have that check box that clearly states what the user is signing up for, whether that's a email list and how often you will be contacting them. And what about you should also link to your privacy policy.
[00:17:31] And you can and probably should have an additional check mark or radio box option that says, would you like to stay on my regular email list after the holidays, allowing them to choose yes or no. So that way you're getting people to sign up just for it, Black Friday. And if they want to stay connected with you, they can sign up for your emails in the longterm as well.
[00:17:52] Okay, so you've got your form set up and then step two, I want you to take the link to that form and replace [00:18:00] it with the link that you have in your bio on all of your social media platforms on all of your accounts. So if you're Instagram, this is your new link in bio. If it's LinkedIn, this is your new LinkedIn bio and you want to make that link say, For holiday deal alerts, for holiday alerts, click here, tap here, sign up.
[00:18:16] So you want to start attracting people to this list and eventually you'll be posting about this list on your social media platforms so that you can start building a list of people who are specifically interested in Black Friday deals from your brand. So let's move on to step three. Make a graphic in Canva.
[00:18:35] Now look, you can go into Canva, canva. com, one of my favorite easy to use tools for creating graphics to post on social media. You don't have to start from scratch. Just go into Canva, search their templates for Black Friday promotions, choose a graphic that works well, update it with your brand colors. No need to get fancy,
[00:18:56] but you do want to create a graphic or a [00:19:00] banner that will say something like, want holiday deal alerts from XYZ toy products? Tap here to sign up. Post that graphic to your social media pages this week, and link to the form that you just set up so that people can start signing up.
[00:19:14] Even before you've figured out what your final Black Friday deal will this be. will be. So I'm sure at this point you're thinking, Ajelle, okay, I'm gathering information, but hold on. I don't have a plan for those holiday deals just yet. Yes, I know that's because we're late in this game, right? But we're going to get it together next in step four.
[00:19:32] So step four, decide what your deal is .Before deciding what your Black Friday deal is. You have got to consider the insights that were laid out for you in this episode and compare and contrast those insights against the needs and spending history of your customer. So in this episode, for example.
[00:19:50] We mentioned customers or consumers are spending an average about of about 102 per cart online in 2022. We also know that [00:20:00] consumers are being motivated by promotions and things like free shipping, and we know that the purpose of shopping this time of the year is to primarily get a discount on gifts that you'll be giving in the coming month.
[00:20:13] We also know from this research that discounts drove sales in 2022, even when there was some economic uncertainty, and that discounts in 2023 are expected to peak at 35 percent and if we combine all of that information with what you know about your customer, how much they typically spend, what are your best sellers, and that's how you're going to start thinking up some ideas for what to offer for Black Friday. Okay, so let's get into the Black Friday ideas. I've got three different ideas for you.
[00:20:44] Feel free to take them as is, change them up, do whatever you want with them. But I hope this inspires you to do something this holiday season. So idea number one, descending discounts. Now look. Everybody's first thought for something like Black Friday is to bundle [00:21:00] products and offer a discount on a bundle of products.
[00:21:02] But, fact of the matter is, for a small toy business managing a limited inventory, bundles can actually be more trouble than they are worth. Bundles essentially require to be listed as a new SKU. In the back end of your small business and actually removes inventory from the single SKU options on your site.
[00:21:19] So if you don't have enough inventory in stock to play with the idea of a bundle, I would suggest something more straightforward, just like strategic descending discounts. But. PSA, before you offer any discount for Black Friday, you have got to look at your profit margins.
[00:21:35] Your products should all have a sheet where you are tracking your cost of goods, warehousing, import fees, and of course your manufacturing costs. From there, you should also have your standard MSRP figured out and calculating what your profit you would be able to maintain if you did run A black Friday sale or any sale for that matter, just because Adobe analytics says the top discounts will be 35%.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] This is not a blanket statement that can apply for every brand. You may not be able to gain enough profit to make this worth your while. If you offer that heavy discount and you may need to adjust. So you've got to do what works best for your business while also being competitive in the market.
[00:22:16] Keeping your own profit margin in mind, I'm going to talk through an idea about what you can do for a strategic descending discount for the week of Black Friday.
[00:22:26] Why not start with a heavy discount on Friday? The big Black Friday discount that slowly reduces over the weekend and then Keeps reducing into the next week. So let's say you plan to start off with a massive deal with a whopping 40 percent off select items.
[00:22:43] You might choose to offer this discount on items that typically sell slower for you instead of all of your items. Or you might offer it on a few different items, a mix of the good sellers and the bad sellers. Now, with 40 percent off for Black Friday, you could keep that offer [00:23:00] valid until Saturday, until small business Saturday, and at which point that deal can drop down to 35 percent off and perhaps extend to more products or different products at that time.
[00:23:12] Then 35. 30 percent off and again could be applied to different products or additional products. Then for Cyber Monday, you can drop down to 25 percent and do something a little extra for Cyber Monday because it's supposed to be generating 12 billion this year. Maybe you could tack on free shipping for orders either over a certain amount or shipping to a certain geographical location.
[00:23:38] Now, If you choose to go the descending discount route with your promotions for this week, be careful not to offer a discount for an item later in the promo week that wasn't there at the beginning of the week at all. For example, you don't want to start off like with 40 percent off of one product on Black Friday and then at the end of the week all of the products have 25 [00:24:00] percent off.
[00:24:00] Why? Because you could get yourself into a situation where somebody who shopped on Monday with the initial sale may have also purchased other items and then those items weren't on sale at all and suddenly they were on sale for Cyber Monday and now you might be dealing with people wanting refunds or wanting to get the deal that they missed and being frustrated and all of that.
[00:24:19] So just be sure to plan your discounts so that the... Best offer for all products happens Friday and then descends and lessens until Monday or Tuesday so that the best deal really is on that first day. And then every other day is just a little bit less, a little bit less. Now, this doesn't mean that every product has to be on sale.
[00:24:41] If you're low on that item out of this entirely because you know it's going to sell out. Even without being promo'd. Let's move on to idea number two. Idea number two is for holiday specific freebies. If you don't have room in your margin to give [00:25:00] a massive discount for Black Friday, let's think about what you can add to your customer's service or experience with your product for free.
[00:25:08] That would provide immense value to them in another way. So if you think about why your customer is coming to your site this holiday, you'll know it's to get a gift for someone that they care about in their life, a gift for the holidays, get a good deal. So what if any purchase of your toy or game during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, came with a free custom designed and cleverly branded reusable gift bag and perhaps even upgraded shipping.
[00:25:36] Again, if it works with your profit margins. So in this situation, you would head over to custom ink or no issue. com and get a custom tote or a custom drawstring bag designed with a holiday inspired. bow, perhaps even a graphic designed tag with a spot to write who the gift is to and who it's from, and [00:26:00] maybe some colors or graphics that call back to your brand style without giving away what the product inside the bag is.
[00:26:07] Or if you want to do it super affordably you can order plain color totes or drawstring bags and add those decorative elements yourself However, you choose to make them the design of this bag should be giftable so that the person who gets it for free with their Order doesn't need to do anything but hand the item to the person that they love and make it the perfect gift.
[00:26:30] Now you could combine this idea of this free gift bag with an offer for upgraded shipping. So anytime a customer orders an item during this promo time, whatever shipping speed they choose, they automatically get
[00:26:45] upgraded to the next shipping speed, this combination of the gift bag and the shipping speed upgrade could be dubbed your holiday express service. . Now, again, you've got to check the costs and the pricing if [00:27:00] you have a heavier product to make sure that this is doable for your profit margin and your brand.
[00:27:04] In thinking about what's important to the customers that are shopping quickly on Black Friday, trying to get their Christmas shopping done, it's that they can get it all done quickly and in one place. So if you can make it so they don't even have to worry about a gift bag, they don't have to worry about timing.
[00:27:20] you'll be ensuring your customer. They can get your gift well before the holiday. Let's move on to idea number three, a pre Black Friday surprise deal drop. Now everyone is anticipating Black Friday, right?
[00:27:33] They're by their computers toward the end of their Thanksgiving dinner, just hitting refresh to see if anything's coming in early. to stand out from. Most brands stand out from the crowd. You can start promoting your product a day early. What if you dropped your same Black Friday sale just one day early to your VIP customers with reserved inventory just for them?
[00:27:56] Your VIP customers might be people who have purchased from you before. [00:28:00] For people who just discovered you or people who signed up for your holiday alerts, email list. Now you can offer the same black Friday deal, but reserve a select number of your product just for this early drop. Let them know that when it's gone, it's gone.
[00:28:17] Until tomorrow when the deal and full inventory are announced and available to everyone. Okay, so those are the three ideas that I had for you, but there is one more because, you know, we have to have a bonus idea. There is still Give Back Tuesday, and a lot of companies will be posting on Give Back Tuesday what causes they support.
[00:28:37] But you can build this into your marketing plan even now. And what you could do here is run a campaign to donate a certain amount of money or product for every order placed on give back Tuesday.
[00:28:50] So give back Tuesday is not really, you know, giving a. Discount so much as making the purchase of your product matter even more in a different [00:29:00] way. So that is definitely something you can incorporate into that process that give back Tuesday. All right, let's move on to our step five, step five of this whole process.
[00:29:08] We've built our form page to collect emails. We have posted it everywhere. We've shared it. We've chosen what our black Friday idea is. And now step five, Launch it, go back to Canva, use Canva to create that web banner graphic for the homepage of your website that will announce that you're having a Black Friday deal.
[00:29:27] Do not be shy about this. People want to see that, you know, that big Black Friday sign on the top of the website to know something new is going on here. Something special limited edition that I've got to check out now is happening here. So don't forget to put together a banner for your homepage or an entirely separate Black Friday landing page.
[00:29:50] To write, schedule, and send three to four emails to your list starting the day before Black Friday and announcing each sale as it drops. [00:30:00] Also make use of the phone numbers that you gathered back in step one and plan at least two SMS text message campaigns as well.
[00:30:08] I would recommend announcing your Black Friday discount as soon as it's live. And then another text announcing Your last deal, your cyber Monday deal, either as it goes live or as it's about to expire and make sure that it's clear in that last message that this is a last chance. Now, if you're not sure how to send promotional texts, check in your email service provider.
[00:30:31] Many of them have the upgrade option to be able to send texts. If yours doesn't, for whatever reason, you can use the tool text magic. That is one I've used in the past and it works pretty well. I will also throw the link to Text Magic in the show notes. Again, that's thetoycoach. com forward slash 193.
[00:30:49] Now that you've done all of this hard work to set up your Black Friday promo, there is one more thing I want to make sure that you put into action to make the most of your efforts [00:31:00] here.
[00:31:00] And that is going to be a step six to set up an abandoned cart email campaign.
[00:31:06] We won't dive into the details of an abandoned cart here in this episode. But for that information, you can go over to the toy coach. com forward slash one six nine. I did a whole episode on email campaigns back then. But as a quick recap for black Friday, you want to send just one reminder email to someone who visits a specific page of a specific product within your black Friday offer.
[00:31:34] If that is too difficult for you to figure out how to do, you can also have this send after they have clicked a link in one of your emails, but have not purchased in this email. You just want to do a quick nudge. You could be a little funny and quirky about it. Hey, it looks like you dropped something and have a picture of the product.
[00:31:52] You just want that one nudge after someone leaves your cart or leaves your page. Because remember for black Friday, they're getting so many [00:32:00] messages from other retailers and merchants and marketplaces saying, buy this, buy that. So just in case another brand stole their attention just as they were about to check out, you want to do that last check in with them and say, Hey, don't forget you wanted to buy this item.
[00:32:15] Well, that is all I have for you today, toy people, for your Black Friday preparation. I hope you found this incredibly useful. If you're listening to this episode in early November, it's not too late for you to put your Black Friday plan into action.
[00:32:31] By putting these Black Friday marketing ideas into play with your toy brand, you can drive additional sales to your online store. You can improve the shopping experience of your consumers and bump up your own revenue as long as you protect that profit of yours and create a sense of loyalty and excitement Around black friday deals for your brand now before I jump into my summary of today's episode I'd like [00:33:00] to take a quick break and give a shout out to Brenda
[00:33:04] Brenda left a five star review for the podcast and said, Inspiring and so informative. Brenda continues to say, I recently signed up for TCA and then discovered this amazing podcast.
[00:33:15] I've had a lot of windshield time the past week and was able to binge listen. I definitely will be listening to some episodes again so I can take notes. I just got home from my road trip to find my Toy Creators Academy workbook has been Can't wait to dive in and bring Howl the Owl to the next level.
[00:33:30] Thank you so much for your review, Brenda. And I'm so glad that you got your physical workbook. If you don't know, when you join Toy Creators Academy, you get a physical workbook delivered to your door. It is a workbook designed to help you go through the program even faster because you don't have to worry about printing out all of the program materials.
[00:33:48] It's fantastic. If you want to learn more about Toy Creators Academy, head over to ToyCreatorsAcademy. com and fill out an application where you can learn more.
[00:33:58] Let's conclude what [00:34:00] we've learned today. There are some key metrics that I want to pull out and some key action items. Black Friday sales alone on the day on Black Friday are expected to be over nine billion dollars in 2023 and people are expected to spend about a hundred and two dollars per order.
[00:34:20] Those are some good numbers to keep in mind as you're planning your Black Friday promo. the last thing I hope that I taught you. It's not too late to put together a quick and dirty Black Friday offer, but you should start by building a list of those interested. If you already have an email list that you connect with regularly, great.
[00:34:37] You can promote this offer to them. However, getting people to sign up specifically for a Black Friday updates or for holiday updates is just a quick shortcut way to create that fast anticipation that something cool and big is coming, especially if you're a little late in the game. Okay, let's get into your action item to do next week. Your action item is to take [00:35:00] action on step one. I want you building out that list to promote your Black Friday idea to.
[00:35:06] If you already have your list established and you're like, I don't need a new list. Then go to step four, figure out what your deal is, commit and start making it happen.
[00:35:17] Send me a message on Instagram. Tell me how it's going. Tell me what you got done for Black Friday. You can tag me in a story showing me what you've got done. I will respond and cheer you on. As always, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one.
[00:35:37] Until next week, I'll see you later toy people.
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