How to Prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

welcome to the e-commerce podcast with Matt Edmonson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
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[Music] edmonton. well hello good evening and
welcome to the e-commerce podcast uh my name is Matt Edmonson and if this is your first time here it's great you
could join us welcome welcome to the show uh in this show we talk about all things e-commerce the clue is in the
title as they say and we just like to get on it I myself run my own e-commerce businesses do a
lot of e-commerce podcasting and coaching so we just we just love e-commerce that's what we do so we're
here to give you some tips and tricks on how to get your e-commerce business thriving online and tonight we've got a
great show we have the wonderful Khloe Thomas joining us uh excuse me well I just moved my chair uh we have the
wonderful Khloe Thomas uh joining us and we are going to get to talk about all things to do with her brand new podcast
and why she's doing it what she's learned we're going to talk about Black Friday we are going to get into it all and if you are regular to this show you
will know Chloe has been on the show before that's right she is a returning
guest and it's such a privilege that she's joining us again always love my conversations with Chloe but before we
jump into that let's just take a few moments uh just to give a big shout out
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you in touch with those guys uh we have on tonight's show as you can see we have
the amazing Chloe Thomas and like I said before Chloe has been on the show before
but since Chloe you and I talked last time because you know we talked last time about your book your e-commerce
marketing book didn't we we did I'm sure we've got a copy of it there that one absolutely that the one we talk about
many copies many copies many copies you should definitely buy actually I think it's one of it's a really good book I
have it on my shelf just behind me cool so yeah have recommended it do buy Chloe's book but all that aside right
Chloe has been or you have been uh busy doing a new podcast so I um you now do
two podcasts right I struggle with one how are you doing two um with with
increasingly large amounts of time and a lot of Outsourcing so far Co and Outsourcing
yeah yeah wow so what out of curiosity what of your podcast what parts do you
Outsource I Outsource so so me I find
the guest book the guests prep the interviews record the interviews brief
the editor and then make sure everything comes together yeah I'm I really love
ticking boxes I should showed someone else this day but just to demon confession time is this is confession
time okay holy cow that is keep optimizing and that is e-commerce master
plan wow I love ticking boxes so I I kind of am the conductor bringing
everyone together so outsourced I have an editing team um I've got a social
media guy because I hate writing social media don't tell he writes all the
social media for me um I've then got VA who does various bits and pieces um and
pulling stuff together as well um I've got a show notes writer who writes the
show notes for all the shows I've got a guy who does my audiograms and then we've got really cool Tech that does
some bits and pieces as as well so he's a really awesome tool called relay that um relay that.com that does all our
Graphics okay I regularly get people telling me how amazing they look and how on brand they all are yeah yeah they are
and literally an idiot could do it and and it just makes everything look
consistent and awesome with a couple of clicks and I I would Outsource it but it takes so little of my time it's less
time to do it than it would be to go oh can you move that one to the left a bit and all that kind of jazz so what was
that it relay relay that.com okay awesome well we will definitely be
checking that out fantastic so um I I saw I'm just curious has nothing to do
with e-commerce that's just me being curious how you do your podcast and what gets done and what what doesn't get done
actually um I'm about to come to episode on the e-commerce Master congratulations i' been going what do I
do for episode what do I do so I put a post in my Facebook group yesterday
saying I'm thinking of doing a behind the scenes episode what I do and how I create it and they all got really excited so in November there's going to
be a half hour long version of what I just told you fantastic fantastic I'll be tuning in so lots of tips and tricks
yeah yeah yeah that'd be great that'd be I'm always F I'm always watching those YouTube videos you know how to do your podcast how did and because you know
we've been evolving this show as we've been going along and you just really I really want to get into the nitty-gritty of how people do it so so you've decided
after episodes you're gonna do a second podcast why did you what what
were you what was your thinking behind that I guess what was one missing that you decided to start another one yeah it
was um so the the original one e-commerce Master plan's been going for
five years this summer which is a surprisingly long time let see it turned
out um and my promise with that podcast to the audience is that it comes out
every week which it does we've never missed a week and that we it's it's aimed at e-commerce business owners and
it's an interview with an e-commerce business owner every week you've been on it talking about Jersey Beauty um Myriad
other people have been on you know we' over of them a year but I get huge numbers of awesome people who could come
on but who don't have an e-commerce business and when you're promis to the listeners is you're going to bring them
a client side expert each week to tell their story and then you populate it
with a whole load of supplier side people they're just not going to tune in however good the content is because it's not what they're expecting from the show
yeah so that was an angle um I had a I mean it was about a year in the prepping
this podcast to clear the deck create enough time to do it work out how it was going to be find the sponsors and all
the rest of it actually sponsors is another reason I created it because I mean as I'm sure you you know Matt there
are so many things we could do I could do another book I could do another podcast I could do a video
podcast could do a Facebook live thing there's so much stuff you could do yeah um so a factor in deciding to commit to
this podcast was that I know that there is a lot of people wanting to sponsor
podcasts at the moment and you can only put so many ads in one episode so it was kind of how do
I satisfy you want people to stay listening right yeah exactly exactly um so I was like right what do I do I'll
create a second podcast so the new podcast is aimed at marketing managers um each month we focus on a different
marketing topic so month one was email month two was SEO uh month three we are
currently doing improving conversion rates from really different angles wow month four is going to be she says
losing track of her sheets I was like oh which one is it because that's the problem I'm a bit
like a retailer now so retailers at the moment are worrying about Christmas
spring weand what happened in spring summer I'm a bit the same
with my podcast months guys sorry about that next month is advertising and then the
month after we've got youat coming on to talk social media yeah I'm looking forward to that one because we had a great conversation didn't we the other
week about social media and we're like oh um should recorded that we should have recorded that because that was that
was quite blunt to the point and um yeah it was it was quite an enjoyable conversation so we're going to carry
that on so do definitely come check that out not just because I'm on it but actually your podcast are genuinely high
quality so do if you haven't already done so do check out chlo e-commerce podcast now you've been doing this keep
optimizing things so now you're talking to the experts in e-commerce yeah um a bit like what we do we we like to bring
people you know the experts on the show and we talk to them um I'm going to ask you what what are some of the most
powerful things you've learned in the first few weeks of doing this
show um the the most important one as the host of the show or two important
things of the host show one my kpi question that I asked everyone is pointless because everyone says
money who couldn't have seen that one coming so that's going to be got rid of for next year but I'm afraid Matt you
are gonna have to answer it so I'm just gonna I'm gonna come up with a different answer I can't say money okay you have
to now um the other one is that it's been really interesting to see which topics people actually listen to so in
the email month for example so so within the month we each week we tackle it from
a very different perspective so email we did preference Center we did email for D Toc we did
automations we did email signups and we had a really cool author on okay and
Matt can you could you guess which one of those got the lowest lessens uh oh say the first one yeah
preference centers shockingly bad so I'm like okay this is kind of the the the
accelerated stuff the high level stuff people don't tune into as much now I'm not going to stop putting it out there
but I'm I there will not be two high level things in one month ever because
the numbers are low but in terms of practical advice for the audience I've learned that there are
some really different approaches going out on out there yeah and it's so hard
to follow what's going on I mean one of my favorite episodes was um uh A lady called Christina azaro who's an SEO
specialist who some of your audience may have come across and she's developed just this amazing
process for speeding up and automating how you work out which categories to
improve the keywords on and the filtering on and then which ones it's
worth doing it on and which keywords to do each one for which is something which I think I've been talking about in SEO
for about years yeah as this idea um but she's done this amazing ep process
which we go through on the podcast and then she explains how you can you know get more information afterwards and that one has been really popular because it's
really focused in on something which is a problem for many many e-commerce businesses and if you can have the
perseverance to get it right then it really really delivers yeah pays off massively pays off massively so are you
enjoying talking to all these e-commerce guess I am that's one of the interesting
differences between e-commerce master plan with the retailers and keep optimizing is on keep optimizing I get to have a lot of my friends on and you
know people who I already know and quite often at least every other interview we
get to the point where we go oh my God we'd better hit record God we need to hit record so um
so yes it's it's a lot of fun I'm learning a lot which is which is excellent I mean I'm asking some really
stupid questions at times as well because I don't know know what I should know um but it's it's really interesting
we're getting good feedback from the listeners and it's you know the listenership is growing each week which is the best thing when you have a podcast you can see if people are still
liking it so um that's yeah it's it's been a lot of fun wow so what's coming
up in the show coming up um we have a very special episode next week actually which I was really pleased to get to
come and talk to you this week because um it means I can tell people about my special episode so this month is a five week
month so I was like right should we talk about yeah yeah of course it is that's that's five episodes you've got to plan out yeah so I was like right the last
week what should we do Black Friday Cyber Monday that's what we'll talk about so I've got n no eight nine
includes me I've got eight great e-commerce experts on um each sharing
their own special tip for um for Black Friday Cyber Monday okay and we've got
people from all over the world from all kinds of different backgrounds um so we've got Chris Kristen lefrance from
Shopify who um many people will know as the mayor of DTC DTC Twitter we've got
Kevin arua from voy media who's amazingly good at Facebook ads which he'll be talking about later this year
um and he's also a retailer as well um we've got uh Jessica from the e-commerce
badassery podcast we've got Conley from the x e-commerce podcast we've got Lucy
Bloomfield um from Australia anyone Australian tuning in no idea what time
zone it is for you guys right now but if you're here nice work um really early in the morning for those guys yeah well
she's she's a super clever e-commerce entrepreneur who now coaches others and her top is tip is top-notch as well so
it's a really diverse mix of people so it was it's a really nice way to see what everyone's focusing on at the
moment for Black Friday Cyber Monday but also it is packed with tips for people so that that one comes out on Wednesday
wow so I mean this is what we're going to get into tonight right is the Black Friday Cyber Monday thing so you've done
all your prep by the sounds of it you you've checklist that is the bonus of
running a running a podcast isn't it it's very easy to be your kind of forced to keep up to speed with what's going on
in the industry you really are I said to you didn't I before we came on out I said you know what tomorrow I have to record um a talk for a conference which
is going to be online of course covid so all the public speaking engagements are now online and I'm speaking at um I'm
speaking at a couple of conferences coming up and one of them uh I have to record tomorrow is on Black Friday so
this could not be a better time conversation for me I'm like woohoo we can get into this kind of feling I've
spoken to eight people funneled it down and we're sending it to you to yeah yeah it's a beautiful thing so what I'm going
to do is I'm going to pull up the questions which I have to answer um in this video and so we're going to have a
little conversation around those and um I've not sent chlo these questions beforehand actually so I just want you
to know that this is um this is just offthe cuff kind of conversations AB
which usually end up being the best so uh question number one what was the best Black Friday markeet campaign you saw
last year oh and why did you like it do you remember BS last year that's that's a tough question I can't remember Black
Friday last year it's a really tough one isn't it and I I'm really intrigued by your response I just to show how little
I can remember of last year um I hadn't had someone asked me today to do a review for an event I spoke at which I
would have sworn was in I actually went and looked up went
God that was less than a year ago wow oops um I I have no answer for that I can't
tell you which the best one was last year because partly because last year is just so irrelevant right now that's a
fundamental point right and I'm glad you mention it all this turbulence we've got
consumer shifting to online like never before We've Got High Street retailers who have was it next to % down how
much stock do they need to shift they'll have reduced their buy but how much stock have they got shifting around they
want to shift as we going into this promo period we've got um Amazon having moved Prime Day from the summer to the
Autumn so that's happening in October which is going to get all the consumers going bargain hungry October we've got
the Coura Network creaking at the seams we've got other retailers whose sales are so high they can't get stock
manufacture stock Etc we've got in America we've got the elections happening so the cost per clicks are
going to go through the roof it's just how can you compare that to last year it's just crazy such a point and whilst
we can talk about what we did or didn't like last year as principles which I think we're going to get into some of our favorite Black Friday principles um
it is such an important point that you've raised that actually what we do this year has to be with our minds
firmly fixed on the fact we are in the midst of a pandemic and it is not going to be business as usual right we have to
we have to realize that and so I think we have to be a bit creative a bit Innovative um and think about what our
customers are going to really want what's really going to help help them and their business right so okay so what
are some of the what are some of the things that you guys talked about um some of the tips that sort of really
struck out to you there was a lot of tips about planning um which to be fair
right now you've still got enough time to plan well yeah but now is the time to start right yeah if you're if you're
listening to this like Midway through November still write a plan but you have left it a bit late um and I think this
year a plan is more important than before for you know for those um single person business entrepreneurs out there
who can manage it's much easier for you guys to to ignore a plan than it is for others you probably should have one more
than anyone else though by the way um but even you guys you need a plan going into this because just as Matt just said
things are going to twist they're going to turn changes are going to happen um earlier today I was hosting a webinar
with Barkley card and big Commerce and bar the lady from Barkley card was saying that some of the um oh she
forgets the word for it but the the credit card processing companies have extended how long it is until they give
you your cash to days it's just nuts isn't it which is nuts I hadn't hadn't
heard that before nuts but that could happen to any of us any week depending on your contract so you might be heading
into Black Friday Cyber Monday and all of a sudden your credit card guys turn around and go oh by the way Fraud's
costing us too much we're extending it by days what do you do because you're going
to be paying for all the marketing money right then you're not going to get the cash you're going to ship the goods deal with all the problems with all the
customer service inquires and all the rest of it so you've got to be ready to adapt depending on what's Happening you
need to be ready to adapt geographically as well depending on what's Happening and I think this year we also need to
plan in what are the other parts of the business are doing we need to work more
closely with buying and Merchandising teams we need to work more closely with customer services I mean one of the tips
that that one of the guys gave in the webinar it was Kevin actually Kevin aruti it was saying
when you're putting together your your vouchers or your offers do them as ones
which don't require a voucher code being entered so sitewide discounts or product bundles that are just sat there on the
site yeah because that will massively reduce your customer service inbound queries of I can't put my voucher code
in my voucher code isn't working and someone have to reply every five seconds going capitals capitals or whatever
whatever the C it's an O not a zero or whatever the crazy is um so you know
really simple tip not going to make any difference to your performance but it enables your team to
be that bit more streamlined just takes the pressure off that's an interesting qu you say it doesn't make any difference to your performance I've come
across people that would argue differently and their argument would be whenever you put if I put um an offer
let's say it's % off right this was quid it's now quid or dollars you
know if you're listening outside of the UK um so that's the offer and then I could
permanently put that product on at £PS over Black Friday or I could say put this promo code in knowing full well
that maybe % of people will % of people won't so therefore I capture extra profit on my business so on one
hand you could you could argue you get more profit that of course like you say leads to customer service problems and I
think actually customers feel a little bit cheated not going to lie uh when you do that we've all bought stuff off
websites like that I'm going so um I I I get your argument and
it's interesting hearing from both sides it it also makes um segmentation a bit
harder if you want to put you know if if you got a whole host of new customers beginning of this year and you want to
retain them and turn them into repeats over Black Friday and they're the ones you want to give the best discounts to
that becomes a little bit more difficult if you're not using voucher codes you can of course CR create different landing pages with different offers that
you link to from different places so yes it can you may lose a few sales you may
lose a few people who accidentally bought full price but I think the overall impact of the Simplicity and
speeding up and not having to have customer service working all hours of the day yeah I think makes a makes a big
difference makes a massive difference okay that's a good top tip so plan and I would actually say into this as you were
talking I was thinking goodness me we definitely need to plan we I we always have um we always have a big planning
meeting it always used to be that I would record on video our Black Friday planning meeting and put those online
for people to see oh wow yeah so I I three-hour planning meetings just like
you know the end sort of theend how we did it and um they were always fascinating getting people sort of
feedback and comments outside you know on those videos but all that said um we
we do do the planning and we've historically we've gone right this is our plan this is the road we're going to go down do you I mean Super tunnel
vision just like this is it but I think I think you almost need like three or
four plans don't you you almost need to go well what happens if what happens if
you know there's a second lockdown what happens if the couriers you know don't
pick up my do you I mean it's like what happens if my suppliers can't Supply this particular product what am I going
to do then and um I don't know if you've ever read the Lee Child Jack Reacher
novels uh it was a one I don't think I've seen them all but I think I might have read one yeah yeah love those books
very very easy read books which is good for someone like me granted you can't take all your life Philosophy from Jack
Reacher but he always says this hope for the best but plan for the worst they say it in every book it's like his phrase
and I think I love the idea of planning I would almost take it a step further and
say write two three four plans with a you know have a number of whatif
scenarios in there I mean I think at the moment we have to have those whatif anyway and what rather than completely
spoke um specking out X number of plans what I'd suggest is to have your plan
and then to have a list of your levers so this is something I've been been talking to people about for a couple of
months now is that you have a list probably just on one side of Anot fully fleshed out because quite frankly
he's got time for that at the moment but you've got a list of if sales go down % we'll do this if sales go up %
we'll do this so it's not like a full week by week but it's a if this happens
we'll tweak that way and it should be to the level of um per campaign on Google
ads not just do more Google ads that's a copout you have to do more than that you
know it should be turn on this campaign because we'll have enough budget for it or it should be turn off these and and
put all the budget into Facebook ads or whatever it is just so that when you're in that ah moment you've got a list of
things to do yeah right really helpful really great advice because now actually I think I've always found it's much
easier to make the decision when you're not in the throw of it yeah and so when you're in the throw of it you make
emotional decisions which aren't always it's not always the wrong way but it's not always the right way and so when
it's not as intense is a good time to to think that through no I like that okay so we've got planning uh we've got get
rid of the voucher codes and just put the offers on there you tight little ties do it anyway um what else have we
learned um in that world of planet the fascinating thing was that everyone
almost everyone who mentioned planning mentioned that we need to warm up our list and prepare our list for it so if
you think of um of black this Black Friday Monday is being incredibly busy and you want your customers to recognize
your emails in the inbox they want to recognize your ads on Facebook so you want to warm them up and build some
trust with them now when you're less crazy busy as you will be um over Black Friday so Monday you know when you're
still able to to get things delivered nice and fast and you're still doing all the niceties of the product packaging so
you should be getting the list ready so if you've not been emailing as regularly as you should start emailing regularly
now if you've not yet put in place your post-p purchase automations put them in place now so you're prepared slightly
doesn't quite entirely fit with the point I'm making but I did want to mention that um if still a point yeah yeah one of our um one of our guests
Reus lores from omnisend actually recommended the best thing can do to
improve your Black Friday Cyber Monday sales is to drive sales now so if you get if you turn someone
into a buyer now then they're more likely to buy on Black Friday Cy Black Friday Cyber Monday exactly right Y
which is just kind of like whoa I mean it's totally true but I love
the fact someone was willing to say that on the podcast and go actually the best thing you can do is drive sales now because then you'll have a bigger
customer list which means your Facebook ads will be more accurate and everything goes more accurate and the secret thing in e-commerce is if
someone's bought from you once they're far more likely to buy from you again absolutely it's much easier to get the
second sale than the first yeah so that whole warming up part of the planning so your Black Friday planning starts now
and your Black Friday workload starts now as well no that's brilliant perfect perfect perfect so um you talk about
warming up your list which just means get on to advertising now emailing the advertising get on to emailing them now
um start to build that up get them used to get your emails into your inbox um It's that kind of stuff you passed over
the advertising but actually our Facebook pixels as we know you know if you set up a campaign and you have that
audience in there with their Target that is learning that little kind of bundle of campaign is learning learning
learning so you want to make sure that wherever you're saying for Black Friday Cyber Monday is not a whole campaign on
Facebook that's just sat there not doing anything and turned off that it's a campaign you're already sending ads to
so you the algorithm do the work now so it's going to work that much better for you when you get to Black Friday Cyber
Monday so even your advertising you can warm up yeah yeah yeah absolutely and
definitely with your Facebook pixel uh and also yeah I mean even with your Google ads just testing what's working
what's working where's the conversion coming from rather than just plowing money into it like you say getting that Roi set right getting your optimization
right on your ads and um super super important stuff super important stuff okay even just to add one one little
more in there go for it even to create hidden landing pages with if you're
doing product bundles or specific product offers that test how well those bundles work is this the best bundle or
does this bundle work better so you're actually even testing the offers early on compared to what you'll do later
which is I know a huge pile of work um but it will really pay off it's a great
idea though um not mine that was Kevin's thank you Kevin it's a great idea so
yeah uh set up some hidden Landing what do you mean when you say hidden landing pages um as in you're not going to
navigate to them from the website the only people are going to find them are the people you're sending from that Facebook ad or from that email if you're
partioning off a small part of your database they not link into it from your site in any way yeah so you you may you
might be setting up just like you would a normal category page or a normal product page but it's just hard to find
doesn't need to be any more complicated than that just yeah hard to find and you're just going to drive ads
to that and you'll probably have two landing pages similar to each other with similar offers and you'll send traffic
one traffic the other see which converts the best find that out now yeah and voila you've got a much more well
hopefully a much higher converting campaign around the Black Friday season right and it's one less test to run over
the weekend yeah yeah yeah because Black Friday is not the weekend to be testing no no it's not really isn't you just
want to be able to set it up and go yeah just set up and go go set up and go we like that we like that and deal with all
the crazy that comes with it because it's a fun kind of crazy right so
um okay uh I'm loving this are we on a roll we're on a roll are we are we tick
oh yeah okay what else were the guy saying um put new customer service people on live chat because it's a
really quick way to train them um yep and and up up um increase the man power
your customer service team we all know fundamentally that people buy in the evenings but many of us do not have
anyone in customer service in the evenings um Black Friday Cyber Monday is
a weekend I know you might run a two-e promotion or whatever else but it's a weekend so um you also need some of Mone
in customer service over the weekend if you're going to make the most of this and also not annoy anyone because you
know it not being good to custo you know looking after customers over Black Friday Cyber Monday
is a very quick way to lose them and if something goes wrong on the site and no one's monitoring that could spiral out
of control on a Facebook ad before you know or other social media areas before you even are aware of it when you come
in on Monday morning so someone needs to be Manning it and be aware of what's going on and looking after the customers
even evenings and weekends that's such good advice I like that um because like
you say it it comes around Black Friday and the guys clock off at and a way
you go right it's just um yeah that's fascinating okay so um so can I tell you
what I thought was one of the most interesting things about doing this is that I thought I would be getting
recommendations of marketing methods to test or little marketing strategies to do because normally when we've been
talking in the past about Black Friday so Monday we've been talking this is the year you have to test SMS or this is the
year where you need to do your Auto or this is the year where Facebook video ads is the only thing you should be doing yeah and not one of the guests
said you know not one of the guests was their first point this is the marketing methods you need to test all of them
were about preparation understanding the customer warming the customer customer up how to reduce the workload on your
team how to make the whole thing more efficient and more effective which I thought was from from what I've I've
seen going on was a was a huge step change from what we pre we previously were talking about for Black Friday
Cyber Monday so I thought that was really interesting too is that it's almost like we kind of grown up a bit
maybe yeah it's well it's like we know what's coming now we've had a few years of this and we've kind of we kind of go
okay now I understand it now I know the the rules of the game let's figure this out for because what we do in Black
Friday now is very different to what we did three or four years ago um and our marketing methodology is very very
different now because like you say we've grown up and we understand it a bit better um which is which is which is right I
think uh and and good and helpful and healthy um yeah
so so they're talking a lot about preparation and less about marketing tactics so let's talk about marketing
tactics let's let's do that um not because I I mean we've talked about
preparation you've got a plan you've jimming you've got to get these these your customer service right you've got to get the products in you've got to
talk to your suppliers etc etc so marketing stuff what do you see for
Black Friday some of the things that maybe maybe you you would go um okay I
think I think it I'm really fascinated by what happens on Black Friday Cyber Monday because I think we've got we've
got some companies who don't have enough stock who are going to do some really clever messaging and channel selection
of where they put their offers into terms of a lot of those who don't have a stock had huge uplifts and huge new
customer gains in the first part of this year you know the March April May period and they are desperately trying to keep
these as customers not just one hit wonders so for them I think it's mainly going to be about remarketing audiences
and it's going to be about email list and it's G about those kind of things is where their biggest offers are going to be and if you come to the homepage you
might get not the best offer in the world or a join our email list or something um so I think that's one whole
tribe of people then you're going to have the heavy Discounters who have so much stock that they're trying to get
rid of yeah um The High Street I think is where you're going to find the best deals this Cyber Monday Black Friday
Cyber Monday and I think it's gonna be interesting to see how many I I suspect they will be hitting every marketing
channel known to man and we'll all be sick of them by the beginning of November let alone the end of
November but I think the there's they're going to be people who make the mistake of trying to comp compete with
them because if you don't have much stock why would you try and compete with someone who's doing a % off it's not a
good idea for your business but I completely ignored your channel question there so channels I think we're going to
see those which enable us to Target our existing customer base have a lot of
time and effort spent on them and by that I mean email I mean SMS um I mean
that for those companies that are doing browser push notifications I think we'll see a fair amount of that and I think um
remarketing audiences on Facebook are going to get very very busy
um there's going to be a lot of competition going on there I think for the for the retail comp the retailers
those who've got huge amounts of stock to get rid of and who are really needing cash at the moment I think we're just going to see everything everywhere yeah
it's going to be interesting isn't it it's going to be interesting and yeah I mean there's a couple of things you said
there I just want to pick up on number one is email that actually if people come to your site and they don't buy you
should still try and get their email address right yeahum because they're that's always for me the second point of
a website so first point is you know sales the second point is email addresses and so if you can do something
that will encourage people to to give you their email address they're obviously interest in your product it's obviously the Right audience get their
email um so that was that was good what you said there and the other thing that I wanted to pick up on was actually the
remarketing thing you are going to get a ton of people coming to your website whether they buy or don't and if you
don't have the Facebook pixel on your your website you are you are going to be
missing out because the Facebook pixel in effect is going to record all those people that come to your website even if
they don't give you their email address you can still retarget them you can still remarket them um and so this I
mean it's part of the preparation but it is a marketing tactic I feel like this is a hybrid of both make sure your pixel
is installed and working yes oh completely because you have um you have
to try and capture all the information of these people you know we've seen huge volume increases to e-commerce websites
and you know the best e-commerce websites out there are only converting % or so of the people who who you know
who get there so that's % you're not capturing so email sign up is a great
way of getting some some indication that they're interested pixeling is another great way of being able to follow up
with ads or be able to profile them and so forth I mean I would say within email
sign up what you really must have is a welcome campaign coming off the back of
that email sign up which tells them the story of your business which tells them why they should trust you why they
should be interested in your products and educates them because by by coming to your site not buying and signing out for emails what they're doing is they're
going I'm interested but I don't yet trust you enough to buy yeah it's a B on
you to teach them it's exactly it and the analogy that I've always used which may not be right in the modern world is
when I was when I was at school which I appreciate was a while ago um the the ual if you wanted to date someone would
you try and get their phone number if they gave you the give you their phone number it was a sign and you'd have a few phone conversations then maybe you'd
meet up and it you didn't go from one to instantly the other there was there was a there was a courtship and this is what
you're talking about with these emails they've given you the sort of the initial sign now we have to courau them
uh and we have to to woo them over uh and that's what you're talking about with the welcome campaign or welcome
email it's a sequence of emails isn't it where yeah where we're drawing people in
and will will get people warmed up and more likely to buy from you so that's really important to have in right now
the other sequence that I would I guess abandoned baskets yes you really need abandoned basket setup but the other
sequence which I think is really important for black Fray of money for any kind of peak sales period is to make
sure you've got your post purchase sequence in place which is the sequence of emails someone's gets after they've
placed the order yeah and you want that in place both because it makes sure they're getting a good experience which
incl increas their chances of buying from you again but also because you can be proactive in there about customer
service issues you can be proactive about the the fact that I know maybe you know when once your Black Friday
promotions are on you say we've we've gone back to XYZ Courier so things are going to be a bit slower um due to
social distancing our warehous is only being uh our warehouse team are working around the clock but they're fewer of
them in so it's going to take us a little while to process orders we will let you know as soon as it shipped please wait X number of days before
talking to our customer service team because they're pretty overstretched at the moment so you can add that Humanity in so as people feel like they'd be
being annoying which they would be um if they phone up and hassle but also so
that you're telling the customer's going on and what we hate as human beings why so many of us are struggling at the
moment is uncertainty yeah we don't know what's happening and it is humans are not good at dealing with uncertainty so
if you can give your customers some certainty over when their products coming and that you haven't forgotten about them yeah that's that's important
it will really reduce the pressure on your customer service team and make happier customers which will get you
more sales in the future so it reduces costs and increases sales exactly that is that is so right and I think and I'm
going to add to that if I may put that information on your website as well because there's nothing more annoying than going onto a website and not
finding out oh okay there's a few days do you know I mean where's my order oh there's a few days delivery okay I don't
have to contact customer service I don't have to go on live chat I don't have to sit here and wait I just know in a few days I'll I'll call so make it really
clear for people to find that information on your website because too often it's just we don't think about that I mean it's just if you think
you've already got a great postp purchase campaign setup just go in and double check there's no ambiguity you
know your order confirmation page does it say your order is in the warehouse and being processed for shipping no
don't say that at the moment we've got your order it will be passed to the warehouse shortly they're really busy
and being socially dist you know just those simple rewordings will will stop
you from creating the impression in the customer's mind they're getting it tomorrow yeah exactly very good and just
make life a little bit easier for everybody simple things but will make a big difference yeah love that I call it
uh Chloe I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say this I call it the mum test right so what I do is I'll send the emails um or
if we're doing something new on the website I'll just I'll call my mom mom I need you to go and look at this and tell
me what you think can you use it does it make sense what do you understand when you see this and so I call it the m test
and so she'll get a little she's brilliant M she'll get a little iPad and she'll do little oh how do I do this
okay if my mom can't use it then I need to make it so it's usable for my M does that make sense that makes tot sense uh
yeah everybody needs to do the m test on their on their emails and uh you know
the how it all works just if your mom can do it unless m is like you know a a techno
wizard in which case don't use your M use your grandma or somebody somebody that's not technically o uh and to see
what they come up with because I always find that's quite fascinating yes and then if you're standing there with them the challenging
thing is not to go why aren't you clicking on that obviously you should be clicking on that you get it you have to
just remain really quiet when you do these things go oh interesting that's so true
so very true so let's say you you've gone through Black Friday you've made it you survived
um you've had a lot of people com into your site you've got a lot of new C even now through covid you've got you know a lot of people sort of connecting with
you how do you how do you turn an Impulse buyer
into a regular buyer how do we keep these people uh coming back time and time again is there something deliberate
that we should do or should we just play it cool and you know I mean you can the deliberate
things I would do is I would definitely make sure that in the parcel you've got an offer for the next purchase probably
free shipping just a postcard something simple that says thanks so much for taking a chance on us this Black Friday
s Monday here's free shipping off your next order give them a deadline for when it should be should be placed by um so
you know there's tactics you can do like that you can do that in the postp purchase sequence for after they've received it um I wouldn't try and get
them another order um before they've received the first one but the most important thing we can do is make sure
they get the story and the power of our business why they should care about us
why they should care about their product a couple of years ago I was at an event in Manchester I think it was uh one of
the channel advisor Catalyst events and they had Mary Porters speaking for those of you outside the UK she is the queen
of shops she is incredibly clever visual merchandiser who that's what her career
was um she really get it she advises most of the top retailers in this country very very clever lady and she
was saying that we have moved from a society of people who care about status
symbols so the Rolex watch the Porsche Etc to a a world who care about status
stories so if you have that friend who comes in to the work on a Monday morning
goes oh my God you won't believe it on Saturday I bought oh I'm eating it for lunch I'm
the most amazing sausages from Ben Ben Ben the sausage maker oh my God his pigs
do you know what he feeds his pigs and they just go on and on and on the reason that woman loves the sausages is because
of the story of the sausages because Ben has done a great job about explaining the sausages yeah and everything to do
with the pigs and all the rest of it and we have to do that if we want people to be interested and to buy from us so
there is you know the story part where you talking about the and the solution and so forth which is also really important you've also got to build that
reason why they should care about your business why they should care about your brand that's why we need welcome campaigns that's why we need postp
purchase sequences that's why we need pretty boxes sending out our product that's why we need good about us pages
and why we should be doing video ads on Facebook that include testimonials include details about about our our
business and the why and the people if we can do that then we'll make our job of when we put a postcard in the parcel
with offer so much easier to get people to convert incredibly hard to measure quite hard to do but very very powerful
so and it's it's it's making sure those bits fit together isn't it when telling your story I like that you know you've
got to get your postcard youve got to get your packaging you've got to get your sequences it's not just one thing there's no Silver Bullet it's uh it's
death by Thousand Cuts isn't it so who have you seen that has done this kind of thing like super super
well oh you're good with a tough question tonight Matt um I think my
favorite post purchase sequence I've had in recent years is from or or this year
yeah I think it was early this year it's from an amazing company called paper Republic who make really cool stationary
like this yeah they are this is my diary everyone just case you're wondering why I'm kind of waving this at you and they
have pen and paper pen and paper I I'm surrounded with paper I love paper I
used had a file OFA until I bought this and I was too bigy diary yeah it was
awful but I loved it um paper Republic are in going to get the country wrong
they're somewhere in Eastern Europe and they create the most amazing stationary and they have this post-p purchase
sequence that makes it really clear when things are going to arri this was preco
um and it's got pictures of the people who are going to pack the product and it's got videos of the person who who's
talking about how they make the product and it's got It's got this weird way of using um using elastic bands to attach
things in okay which could be a pain point when it arrives you go what on Earth am I supposed to do with these but
they give you a video on how to put it all together so as by the you're getting
excited about the product and when the product arrives you already know how to use it you're already in love with it
you're not looking for the faults you you've already convinced yourself this is fantastic which if they can do that
with a square piece of leather and three elastic bands you can do it with your product
so that's a great um postp purchase sequence story and welcome campaigns um
I think you're about us page on Jersey beauty is very good because it's a really easy to to copy um this is our
this is the reason we created the business this is the pain point we are the solution here's some social proof
simple easy to do any of us could do that um there's a guy in America called
JJ Resnick who's built JJ you J he's awesome he knows story like no other
yeah um he admittedly his grandmother did invent the mosc meal cocktail which makes it quite easy it's a big story
yeah yeah y but he's very good at it and my other absolute favorite about us page is a UK company called farm toys
online which if you want to see a very simple set of text explaining what the
problem is how you solve it and why you should trust them they have got it absolutely spot on so farm toys online I
think it's. co.uk well I'm going to check all of those out I mean JJ is is just an extraordinary character with
this stories um you're right and um so farm
toys.co and paper Republic we'll go and we'll have a look at those Farm it's farm toys online.co and actually the wel
welcome campaign two welcome campaigns I really like um snakehive who are mobile phone cases yes
you can do a really good welcome campaign when you're talking about mobile phone cases um and project
repat who are an American company who have a product which is t-shirt blankets
which in America you get as of your americanists will know you get a t-shirt for everything in America yeah you do yeah and when you outgrow your T-shirt
as you inevitably do you can send them to project repat who will cut them up and sew them into a blanket for you
which is a pretty difficult sales process so they have an amazing welcome Campaign which will take you through the
process of um of sorting all that out and convince you that they are trustworthy to cut up your prize
t-shirts fantastic I mean that's great isn't it so we we've talked
about um the welcome sequence the postp purchase sequence we've talked about loads tips tricks on how to how to do
Black Friday well I've got one question for you right that remains
and it's a little bit controversial um and it's this what do
you think to the idea of not actually doing any Black Friday campaigns
specifically offers do Black Friday very well like all the tips You' talked about you don't really need to do any offers
um because you're going to get a massive influx to your website
anyway yeah I think it's an interesting one um I think we're now especially I've
always been a a believer that you don't necessarily have to do Black Friday isn't the right thing for you I think
any promotion you do should be designed to get the customer to do what you want them to do as cheaply as possible are
you without giving away more margin than you have to yeah or effort backend work etc etc now that may mean if you're a
business who has Limited stock and there is no way of increasing that that being you know giving away stock with a discount which you would sell full price
anyway this side of Christmas it's not worth being part of Black Friday um the
only so I I think there's nothing wrong with deciding you're not going to partake the only um caveat to that would
be that consumers are going to be discount hungry from October onwards
because everyone's talking Black Friday yeah so you may discover and to be fair
you're going to work this out in early November way before we get to Black Friday if your stock isn't selling through at full price or at minimal
discounts then you may need to change that in your plan but I don't there's any reason if you're sitting there going
I don't how this Stock's going to last till Christmas why should you give it away for a discount if you don't need to
yeah in that scenario what I would probably do is do some kind of email signup competition on the homepage which
has like um you know explains why you're not doing Black Friday this year as in
you know we're we're already bursting at the seams and we don't want to give you a bad experience as the customer but we
know you love a discount so we're going to award you know we're going to give the first five people um who we pick out
the Hat a free product or we'll give um a discount to the next people we pull
out the hat or something like that yeah so you've still got something there so people aren't coming to your site and
going well maybe they're not even alive because they've not put a Black Friday banner up um so I would do something
like that so as customers aren't put off you because you're not doing it but I don't think there's any reason you know
you don't have to do Black Friday you should be doing what's best for your business and for your team fundamentally very good very good I like
that I like that answer chary listen it's been great having you on the show again uh really appreciate you taking
the time to be with us uh and sharing your wisdom I shall look forward to the next time in in no doubt that you'll be
on the show we be you'll have started another podcast or written another book very soon I'm sure yeah there'll be something I'm
sure how do people um reach out to you how do people get hold of you if they want to get in touch what's the best way
to do that cool well if you head to keep optimizing
docomo and.com so uh there we go thanks for doing that Chloe really appreciate it thanks for having me on the show Matt
it's always a pleasure catching up with you and I hope this has been useful to your audience brilliant thanks Chloe and
as I've said before we will endeavor to put all the links um from tonight's show
from the sponsors to everything that Chloe has talked about um we will put
those in the show notes in the Show links and uh we'll we'll put those on
there at Matt edmonton. comom just make sure you head on over to the website and you will get those without any trouble
uh I just want to say a big thank you big massive thank you to Klo for joining us on tonight's show we hope that you've
enjoyed it make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcast from uh and uh thanks for listening in we'll be
back again very very soon with some more e-commerce tips and tricks until then bye for now
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with Matt Edmonson join us next time for more
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