w/ Molly Pittman of SmartMarketer
As the year winds down, pumpkin spice aromas fill the air and holiday sales are everywhere. So, how do companies make the most of this bustling season? Molly Pittman, CEO of SmartMarketer, joins us to unravel the complexities of holiday marketing. She explains why the fourth quarter, or Q4, is both a golden opportunity and a challenging time for businesses. Molly walks us through a detailed plan that starts with pre-Black Friday strategies and goes all the way to New Year's resolutions. The key takeaway? With solid planning, focused efforts, and a touch of creativity, the holiday season can be extremely profitable for your business.
Brands and apps mentioned:
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
10/10/2023
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are talking about turning holiday cheer into sales at your Shopify store.
Sound Board: (cash register ringing)
Kurt Elster: We’re talking Black Friday. We’re talking Q4. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, what should your promotions, sales, et cetera, look like? November, December, January, maybe October. I don’t know. It’s already October. Oh, gosh. We’re running out of time here. And to guide us on this journey is none other than Molly Pittman. Molly is the CEO of Smart Marketer, and she is going to teach us how to craft an offer that is irresistible as grandma’s pumpkin pie. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: This is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and I am thrilled to welcome Molly. Molly, how you doing?
Molly Pittman: Kurt, that’s the best podcast intro I’ve ever experienced, so thank you for that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You got like three versions of it because I kept screwing it up.
Molly Pittman: What’s up, everybody? Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kurt Elster: Well, I’m thrilled to have you, and I’m going to pick your brain.
Molly Pittman: Let’s do it while I drink an iced coffee here.
Kurt Elster: Okay. What I don’t get, because I’ve been doing this a while, as have you. We always treat like… Oh, 4th quarter, that’s the ¼ of the year in which you’re allowed to really have promos and make a concerted effort at marketing, promoting your store, and making sales and money. Why are we not just doing this year around? What is special and different about 4th quarter that we see this as like this is the gold mine?
Molly Pittman: Right. I mean, we are doing this year around, right? But Q4, whether we like it or not, this is the time of year where consumers are most used to being hit over the head with deals, sales, and so as marketers, yeah, it’s a big opportunity for us to enter that conversation. But Kurt, you know that we are not just doing this in Q4. This is happening. You know, in most of our businesses we like to run a promotion every four to six weeks. A promotion doesn’t mean that it has to be a giant discount like you see during Black Friday. It could be a new product. It could be some sort of bonus. There could be inventory scarcity. There’s so many ways to run a promotion. So, we’re definitely doing this year around, but Q4 is when we go hard, and that’s because you’re not really gonna piss anybody off, right? People are used to… Think about it. This is like… I don’t know if you’ve ever driven between Dallas and Austin, Texas.
Kurt Elster: I have not had the pleasure.
Molly Pittman: Okay. Well, and I’m sure there are many other places like this, but eventually that will become one big city, right? Things just keep being built until eventually that whole area will be covered. And it’s almost like that now. Even in Q3 to Q4. You think about it, people are really starting… A lot of big brands are starting on Labor Day, and they essentially run some sort of variation of that sale through January. Now, that’s not what we’re doing yet, but Kurt, I do feel like this time of year and what’s acceptable, and what you’re seeing from big brands, especially retail, it just kind of inches. It moves a little bit each year. It might last all year in 2033.
Kurt Elster: I noticed Home Depot, the Halloween décor shows up in September. The Christmas trees and Christmas décor shows up October 1st. By the end of September, it was already in there. And so, yeah, it’s just like if it’s a situation to make money, it’s gonna keep creeping forward. And part of it’s I’m reading… I’ve heard there’s a sizable percentage of people who just get their shopping done early. Good for them, who maybe by October 15th, they’re like, “I’ve already done the majority of my Christmas shopping.”
Molly Pittman: Those are your early birds. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: We get those early bird folks. So, I get why that’s occurring, and certainly we want to take advantage of it. Okay, so in your head, what’s the calendar range here? Let’s ignore the Q4 part. Just what is-
Molly Pittman: Of course. Good question.
Kurt Elster: What’s start and end date for this season?
Molly Pittman: And you know, I know we’re recording this in October, but y’all, it’s not too late to create a plan. That’s what’s fun about Q4. There are a lot of moving pieces, but it’s not that difficult, right? When I look at the grand scheme of marketing campaigns, in my opinion building an acquisition funnel, or working on customer acquisition in general is more complicated and takes longer than building these promotional campaigns. So, especially if you’re newer to this, or you haven’t done a lot with this time of year before, don’t stress. What I’m going to present to you, it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s actually not that much work, Kurt.
I mean, is any of this really easy? I don’t know. But just a little preface there.
Kurt Elster: When I think about it, I think the individual components, like each step, each task to be done, I don’t think each of those, I don’t think is hard. It’s when I see all of it as a giant list that it becomes overwhelming and difficult, and instead I’m like, “You know what I’m gonna do? Nothing.”
Molly Pittman: Nothing.
Kurt Elster: I’m just gonna worry about it.
Molly Pittman: Oh, I’m gonna curl up and take a nap, right?
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Molly Pittman: But yeah, that’s why we’re recommending a phased approach this year more than ever. It’s easier for people to digest. So, let me walk you through what we’re planning for our businesses and what we’re recommending for our clients, and you guys just take what’s interesting for you, right? Maybe you do 10% of this. Maybe you do 200%, you’re an overachiever. But the key here is just to really understand the different phases. Kurt, I love that you pointed out earlier that right now we have your super early bird shopping going on. And we’re not really doing anything sale-wise to incentivize that, but that line of thinking is really important right now. We gotta think about what are people doing during these time periods and how can we make whatever sale we’re running applicable to them in that moment?
So, with most of our brands, we’re starting with what we’re calling a primer sale, and this is going to run, depending on the brand, from about November 1st to November 8th. It could go a little bit longer if you would like, but for us, we’re gonna run essentially a weeklong sale just to get things going. This is like… This is the warmup, Kurt. This is you on the elliptical before you go deeper into your exercise. This is just to start to get things rolling. This is not gonna be your biggest sale of Q4. This is not gonna be completely earth-shattering probably for most of you. But the goal here is to start to get the wheels turning and for brands to be able to roll out the beginnings of their holiday sales.
Now, another reason that we like this phased approach, Kurt, because what I’m gonna go through is essentially running a variation of a sale from the beginning of November to sometimes mid-January. And what we like to do on November 1st is launch our campaigns that are gonna be more evergreen during this period. So, we’re using the same URL through the entire period, right? Through all of those months, every sale is being housed on the same page. So, maybe it’s SmartMarketer dot com/holiday sale, or something that’s a bit more evergreen. And the reason that we do this is so that we can launch ads on November 1st that are a bit more generic about a sale happening, and those can run through January without having to turn them on and off, which is really good with platforms like Facebook.
If you wait to enter the auction the day before Black Friday, your ads might not even be approved, so not only is your rank in the auction gonna cost you more money in terms of CPMs. There’s also a chance that you just won’t get to run ads. So, it doesn’t mean that we’re also not launching specific campaigns for each of these phases so we can have that specificity about whatever the offer is at that time, but we’re also launching campaigns on November 1st that we can run for months that are more evergreen, that allow us to not have to turn things on and off.
So, I just wanted to speak to some of those bigger benefits before we dive deeper, and especially around the page. Not only is it easier to keep the same URL and just change the design, or the copy, or the offer based off of whichever phase you’re in. It’s also better for consumers because I don’t know about you, I’m not the best at, for example, keeping up with my email inbox. So, I might go in and read emails from a couple weeks ago. Well, if you see a sale that was during Black Friday, and now it’s two weeks later, you might still click that link, and you want that link to still go to a place that it might not be the same sale that was in the email that they’re reading, but it’s gonna be whatever the current sale is. So, you’re just gonna get more traffic and it’s a bit cleaner. It’s also easier for you and your team.
So, just some tactical things before we hop into the phases.
Kurt Elster: All right, this one already is a brilliant, simple tip that I have overlooked, now realized I’ve overlooked this for 10 years. Your store is acme.com. Acme.com/sale. Slash sale, that URL is always present and is always whatever the current promotion is.
Molly Pittman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: And so, if I search in my email Black Friday sale, Molly’s pet store, and because Molly sells kitty litter. She’s like a kitty litter enthusiast. And so, I love Molly’s kitty litter. Always texting me about kitty litter. It’s awful.
Molly Pittman: Always. Always.
Kurt Elster: And so, I go-
Molly Pittman: Color changing.
Kurt Elster: That part’s actually true. So, I go in my inbox, Molly’s litter sale, and boom, there is an email from two years ago about a sale. I click it. It’s not gonna be the same sale. It probably isn’t. But at least it works. It goes to your site. It doesn’t go to a missing page. And I’ve got-
Molly Pittman: It’s not a dead link.
Kurt Elster: … a current running promotion to hopefully get people in. Because once in their head, they’re like, “Well, I’m gonna get a deal. If I show up and everything’s full retail, I’m out.”
Molly Pittman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Brilliant.
Molly Pittman: It’s less complicated. And think about whether you’re a one-man or woman shop, or whether you have a team, just cleaner. You’re not like, “What’s the link for this promo?” You always know what’s going on. It’s simple. And like I said, you’re not having to relaunch your ads. That’s the most exciting part for us. We can enter the auction November 1st where CPMs are still relatively reasonable. And yes, you’re gonna see fluctuation as things heat up during Black Friday, but we really love that part of it, too, so you’re not changing the destination link.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Excellent.
Molly Pittman: Okay, so back to the primer sale. Sorry, I kind of went down a rabbit hole there, but those were two important tactical things I want you guys to hold in your brain as we start to talk about these phases. So, the primer sale. November 1st to November 8th-ish. This is a time to run a sale that is very different from whatever you’re gonna do during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, which is generally a big discount site wide, just to keep things easy.
So, for most of our brands, we are launching something new. This is a great time actually to launch a new product. And the reason for that is that people are in buying mode. You still have early gifting going on at the beginning of November. And again, it’s a chance to really warm up your audience without oversaturating the, “Oh my goodness, there’s a big discount going on.” So, you still want to have scarcity here, so you want the sale to end on a certain date, or you want to have a certain amount of inventory. But even in our information businesses this year, Kurt, like Smart Marketer, we’re launching a brand new product at the beginning of November that you’re actually a part of.
Kurt Elster: I was gonna say, this wouldn’t happen to be the one that I was in.
Molly Pittman: Yes, it is. Smart Ecommerce. And we just find it to be a great opportunity to launch a new product if you can. And it doesn’t always have to be a new product. We have a client that sells these really successful journals, and so at the beginning of November, they’re launching some new colors, right? Just some different variations. We have a client that’s launching gift boxes that they’ve never had before. So, it's a cool box that… They sell supplements and it’s a cool box that you can send to a friend as a gift that’s a bit nicer than just sending a bottle of pills. So, they’re launching with a buy one, get one 50% off.
Kurt Elster: Oh. It’s like almost a BOGO.
Molly Pittman: There you go. Buy one for yourself and for your friend.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so the advice I’ve heard in the past that now makes your advice seem counterintuitive, only because which one did I hear first, I’ve heard people say, “Oh, you can’t launch products during November. That won’t work because that’s what no one expects.” And that’s silly, because they are paying attention to their inbox, and what you described to me. When we talk about product launches, it’s easy to dismiss it by saying, “Oh. Well, I can’t develop another product right now. That’s now what I’m gonna do.” When we say product launch, it just has to be a new SKU. It just has to be a new thing. It doesn’t have to… You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. So, you know, a different scent of a product that’s limited edition, like Adam’s Polishes sells car detailing, will do a pumpkin spice version during the fall of their regular… the products that they already have developed. Just different scent. Different label. I love that. I think that’s brilliant. You suggested fancy gift boxes. You don’t have to overthink it.
Molly Pittman: And it doesn’t even have to be a physical product, especially if you’re running out of time here. We have a client that sells physical products to parents of children and so this year during that time period, if you buy one of her products, you’re gonna get this cool info product that she developed that further helps you as a parent. It's essentially a PDF with some videos, but she’s using information as a bonus when you buy during that period physical product wise. So, just think out of the box, and Kurt, if you don’t have time for something new, this is called a primer sale for a reason. Remember, it’s a warmup. So, if you do just want to use a more generalized discount, maybe pick a product line that’s specific, or one product that you’re gonna give a discount on, just so you have focus, and so you don’t spoil your Black Friday sale that’s coming up.
Kurt Elster: All right. I got you. And what is this-
Molly Pittman: Okay, so that’s the first phase.
Kurt Elster: This is just early November this occurs?
Molly Pittman: Yeah. November 1st through the 8th is what we’re currently recommending, but of course, everybody’s different. Maybe yours is a bit shorter, a bit longer, maybe it moves more into mid-November. It’s really up to you. Honestly, of the phases I’m recommending, this would be the one that’s probably the least impactful, but it’s still fun, so the least important, but still something that you could do if you wanted.
Kurt Elster: All right. I’m in. I’m doing it. I don’t care if it’s the least impactful. What’s next?
Molly Pittman: Okay, so phase two, this is where we’re moving into our Early Black Friday phase, because again, remember, Black Friday is eventually gonna be four months long. So, we’re moving into Early Black Friday, and for us, this is gonna run from about November 9th to the 23rd, so right before your big Black Friday sale opens. So, two things are happening here. First, which most of you probably do, is lead generation, so having a simple opt-in page that really builds up the hype for the big Black Friday sale that’s coming, and getting people to opt in. Even if they’re already in your warm audiences, or they’re already a buyer, don’t think of this as like why would I buy them as a lead again if they’re already on my list. That’s not the thought process here.
The thought process here is that you were getting them to raise their hand and say they are excited about the sale, and that they want to be notified earlier, before everybody else, which is especially fun if you have inventory scarcity during this time of year. So, the first thing that’s happening is lead generation. Yes, this can go to cold traffic, to people who have never heard of you before. It’s a bit tougher to get someone who’s never heard of your brand to raise their hand and be like, “I want to hear about your Black Friday sale.” Because if they haven’t heard of your brand before, there’s probably not a lot of excitement there unless you have a novel product. But it can work, and we do dedicate about 30% of the budget to cold traffic, and then the rest of it is retargeting people already in your ecosystem just so you can build that early bird list.
And then on the other hand, and I don’t think most people are doing this, Kurt, is we are also running a sale during this period. So, again, back to that URL. We’re now out of phase one. We’re now out of the primer sale, so the page has changed from, “Oh my goodness, look at the new colors of our journals. Here’s what each color means. Do you want to buy a bundle? Do you want to buy it a la carte?” Okay, now we’re switching to a more generalized page that’s usually showcasing almost all of our products, if not all of them, with a general discount that is significant and more than you would give on a day-to-day abandoned cart email but is not as big as you would do during Black Friday Cyber Monday.
So, for most of our brands, this is gonna be about 15 or 20%, because Black Friday is usually 20 or 25%. So, you want this to be about 5% less than Black Friday, but really what’s important is that we called that audience earlier of people that are buying gifts now, those are your super early birds. Those are your earliest adapters if we want to look at it that way. When you’re in the beginning and mid-November areas, now you’re getting people that are still planners, you know? They’re not waiting until the shipping deadline in December to buy their gifts. So, let’s still call them… They’re still early birds.
So, during this period, we’re using a lot of gifting messaging, especially if your brand lends itself to giving gifts. We’re doing lots of prescriptive bundles. So, I just had a meeting with a supplement company that we work with, and the bundles are going to be by avatar, which makes sense. It’s common sense, but here is when we need to get prescriptive, because there’s a runner’s bundle, so whether you are a runner, or you know a runner, you should buy this bundle so that they have the best year of running going into 2024. But what’s also fun about this time period, Kurt, is it’s still early enough that if they purchase your product for themselves, now they might see results before the end of the year. So, you know that in December, and in January, we’re starting to get more into the messaging of new year, new year, you know? Make improvements in 2024. And that’s fun.
But what can make this Early Black Friday sale different is they still have enough time to really make a difference now. So, whether we’re selling bloating supplements and we’re talking about Thanksgiving coming up, and you’re gonna eat a lot, and you need this bloating supplement, or whether we’re Smart Marketer and we’re launching an information course, and we’re saying, “Hey, use this course to finish out 2023 strong,” really think about that type of messaging and your gifting messaging and bundles during this time period.
Kurt Elster: Okay. I love the bundle idea and the gift messaging, because you’re putting it in my head. You’re reminding me. It is an indirect reminder. You have to buy gifts soon. And so, it’s gift guide, but then combining it with a bundle, you’re really taking the thought process out of it, and I like the example of the supplement brand because you wouldn’t necessarily give like, “Hey, here’s some Vitamin D3. Here’s a bottle of magnesium. Merry Christmas.” Right?
Molly Pittman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: But when I apply the avatar to it, the use case, and make it a bundle, and then stick it in a gift bag, now I’ve overcome that objection and because you’re using this customer segmentation as customer avatars, as gift guides, now the person viewing it, the reader, will… You’re holding up the mirror. They’re either going to recognize themselves or someone they know and then make a quick judgment call. They’ll connect the dots. Oh, I’ve got this person I gotta buy a gift for. I should buy this for them. That’s perfect.
Molly Pittman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Now, that’s one less thing to worry about it.
Molly Pittman: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: That’s brilliant.
Molly Pittman: It’s probably one of the most underleveraged parts of this time of year. I think a lot of marketers get lazy. They’re like, “I’m gonna run a 25% off sitewide. It’s gonna crush it. It’s gonna do great.” It’s like yes, and you’re still marketing, right? And when we’re thinking about these pages, Kurt, not only are we doing prescriptive bundles, because what that is is like you said, you’re painting the picture of what this could be. You’re almost doing their shopping for them. Almost like a gift guide, but less direct.
I also want you guys to think about badging on your holiday sales pages in the same way. So, we use a lot of symbols, or little circles next to the product, what we call badging, I’m not sure what you call it, also as a way to guide people. Whether it’s something as simple as best seller of 2023, to stocking stuffer is a great one, great for grandma, right? Great for kids. Think about how you can add those elements to your page and your email. Like you said, you’re almost like a personal shopper.
Kurt Elster: I need the ultimate badge. Oprah’s Pick. Just put Oprah’s Pick, all of them.
Molly Pittman: And of course, we always have, no matter the brand, Kurt, we always have an ultimate bundle on the page. You always should have an ultimate bundle where you try to put together as many of your products as you can into one bundle. The conversion rate on that bundle is not super high but because the price point is so high, can really make a difference in your day-to-day sales. For Smart Marketer, our big bundle is $6,000. So, we don’t sell a ton of them, but they do well, and hey, that appears for our ad spend for the quarter.
Kurt Elster: Does having the ultimate bundle act as a price anchor? Like if I put that first in the page-
Molly Pittman: Also that.
Kurt Elster: … and starts at $6,000, now when I see an item that’s $600 and one tenth the cost, I go, “Oh, well, that’s a deal.”
Molly Pittman: Yep. And it’s really there… Also, remember most of the people that are engaging with you during this time, they’re your warm people. They love you. So, they might buy a 12-month supply of Vitamin D as the ultimate bundle because they already love your brand. So, think about how you can play with bundles in terms of their size, but also how you’re prescribing who they’re for.
Kurt Elster: And Shopify just not that long ago rolled out native bundles that you don’t even need to get an app to do this.
Molly Pittman: During these time periods, too, there are also other elements of the offer that you can be changing to add scarcity. So, remember guys, at any time there could be a special bonus. Like for example with BOOM, Ezra’s makeup brand, one of the bonuses during a sale period where we didn’t have as much scarcity last year was a free lip gloss. So, if you buy during this two-week phase, you get a free lip gloss, or you get this free information course like I shared earlier. So, remember that there are other elements you can add to the offer too, to create that scarcity if you feel like a particular phase is weaker than the others.
Kurt Elster: Free gift with purchase is probably my single favorite promo. I just… I love FGWP because you’re not discounting the core product. It’s like, “Hey, you’re getting a free gift.” The discount on that’s 100% and just that one item. And ideally, the free gift is an exclusive. You can only get it in this bundle or purchase. That really drives when you add that scarcity.
Molly Pittman: I love it.
Kurt Elster: And the one you described for last year, I’m the one who set that up on the store, and used… That was Easy Gift app to add it to cart, and then a Shopify script that’s now… Those are deprecated, but that was how I ran the discount on it. It’s very reliable to do it that way.
Molly Pittman: And it worked really well. Hey. Kurt, one more thing that I wanted to add too. During this period with Early Black Friday, something else you can do is really start to segment your audience based off of whether they’ve purchased from you before, or even if you have a large customer base, how many times they purchased from you, or how much they’ve spent. And then you could further incentivize them. So, say during this time period you have a 15% off sitewide discount. Well, you could email let’s say everyone who’s bought from you two times or more and reward them with a 20% off coupon. This also helps people come back. So, say they bought during the primer sale, and you want to keep incentivizing them. It’s also just a nice reason to come back and buy from another phase of your sale, too.
Kurt Elster: So, this is a win-back discount ladder, but we phrase it as like, “Hey, we really appreciate your past purchases. Here’s bonus discount.”
Molly Pittman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Because otherwise they’ll be annoyed, like, “Well, I bought at a lower discount before.” And so, really it’s just like tweaking the positioning to be like, “No, no, no. This is because we love you.”
Molly Pittman: Yep. It’s a way to totally switch that around, and make them feel special, and hopefully get them to buy again.
Kurt Elster: And if you’re a repeat purchaser, yes, we love you.
Molly Pittman: And we thank you.
Kurt Elster: So, where in the timeline… Where are we now?
Molly Pittman: Okay, so now we’re getting into phase three, which is the big moment. This is the Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. You can run this sale… There are many ways to go about this. Of course, right? And people have different schools of thought about how this should go down. We like to be a little bit more liberal here because this is usually our best sale of the year and we want to juice as much as we can out of it, of course. I mean, who doesn’t? So, we are running our Black Friday Cyber Monday sales from November 23rd through November 30th, so we’re actually gonna run this for a week, which I know is a bit non-traditional. Most people run this for about four to five days.
But this is going to be the most competitive time of the year. Think about your email box during this time of year, Kurt. I hate even checking my email because there’s just… There are brands I haven’t heard from in like five years emailing me about their Black Friday Cyber Monday.
Kurt Elster: That’s unsubscribe season.
Molly Pittman: Exactly. Discount. So, we actually like to close on the Thursday after Cyber Monday. Most brands close on Cyber Monday, but in my opinion that’s not the best thing to do because that’s when everybody else is closing and people are just distracted. So, we actually run the sale until Thursday. Of course, this is gonna be the biggest discount of the year, whatever that means for your brand and your margins. You know, whatever you can handle. But definitely needs to be your biggest discount of the year. And just keep it simple.
This is the phase where you don’t want to overcomplicate. You don’t want to do, “You spend $50, you get this. And then you spend $125, and you get this. And then you spend $200, and you get this.” That is too complicated for this moment in time. Consumers are digesting way too many sales. Make it easy for them, guys. Just do one sitewide discount. Maybe you add in another free gift with purchase if you wanted or some sort of bonus. And definitely wait to close it until Wednesday or Thursday so that your scarcity messaging actually gets through to the audience.
Kurt Elster: And how many follow-up emails are you sending for these?
Molly Pittman: We go pretty hard during this time. So, usually about two emails a day, at least two emails on the first day and the last day.
Kurt Elster: I think that’s the right amount for Q4.
Molly Pittman: Agreed.
Kurt Elster: Especially like fashion and apparel brands. They go absolutely buck wild. They’re like… It is just a free for all. We’re gonna take a shotgun approach here. In a month, if you are an active past purchaser, you could get 100 emails from fashion and apparel brands.
Molly Pittman: Very true. Yeah. If the sale is going really well, Kurt, we might add a third mail onto the last day just to be fancy. But we’ll be emailing twice a day, three times a day on the last day of the sale, some brands we’ll do more. Some brands are scared to send more than one mail a day.
Kurt Elster: Why be scared? Why are they scared? At that point if you’re scared of marketing your own business, just book a therapist.
Molly Pittman: Right. And then once they do it, they understand, but I think a lot of people, their identity is wrapped up into their brand too, and they don’t want to be the over-salesy brand. And I’ve heard that a lot even this holiday season, and I tell those people I understand, but this time of year especially is when you have permission to do this.
Kurt Elster: Yep.
Molly Pittman: Especially if you’ve been communicating with your customer base all year. You’ve been running ads; you’ve been sending emails. They’re used to hearing from you, right? Don’t be the brand that hasn’t contacted them in five years and then you just show up. But you know, this is what’s happening this time of year. You get a pass from most people. We usually don’t see an increase in unsubs or spam, things like that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I think that’s the giveaway. If you’re worried about it, send the email and start watching that unsubscribe and spam report rate. And even on our brands that aggressively send emails, the spam rate, as long as it’s… Because they’re consistent about it, that spam rate will be 0.1%.
Molly Pittman: Yeah. Exactly. Consistency. And something else that we’re doing during this phase, Kurt, that worked really well last year, is a giveaway. And I think this just puts people over the edge if the giveaway is a prize that is really applicable to the market. So, for Smart Marketer, we’re giving away business consultation with myself and Ezra, which we don’t really sell. It’s not a product that we offer out into the market. And so, anyone that buys during the Black Friday Cyber Monday sale, they’ll also be entered to win that giveaway.
So, I’m not saying do a giveaway for a laptop, or something general. Make the gift super cool and sweet. Make it a trip somewhere. Make it something unique to your audience. But that can also really help during this sales period.
Kurt Elster: Another brilliant idea I hadn’t thought of. You know, we have a brand, Hoonigan, that does contest points. And this is easy to run with an app called Viral Sweep has this as a campaign you can run, where it’s like, “All right, $1 equals one raffle spent.” And they’ll give away a straight up car, and they’ll run this thing for like 60 days, and then on sale days, they’ll do bonus multiplier. Well, $1 is now 3 entries. It is incredible what a motivation that is for people.
Molly Pittman: Yeah. It’s just an extra reason to do it. And it’s something that you don’t see as much out there.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And I’m not suggesting people give away cars.
Molly Pittman: I mean, you could.
Kurt Elster: I mean, for them, it’s relevant to the brand, to the audience, and it makes sense for them, but I think for other people, like the one-on-one consultation, that’s a big deal for your audience. You know, it depends what it is.
Molly Pittman: Exactly. That’s why I like a trip. You know, who doesn’t want to go on a trip?
Kurt Elster: I don’t want to leave my house. It was very difficult just to get me here.
Molly Pittman: You did leave your house to come to our shoot in New York. That was fun.
Kurt Elster: I did. I went to Upstate New York. And I admit, I had quite a lot of fun.
Molly Pittman: Kurt, so, what do you think phase four is?
Kurt Elster: Phase four. I think now is where we’re just gonna lean on the procrastinators. It’s like, “Look, you are down to the wire here. This is what we got left and this is how much time you have to get it in time for Christmas.”
Molly Pittman: Yes. So, we’re calling this the holiday sale. This will run for us from about December 1st to December 26th-ish, just depending on your brand. And exactly what you said. This is very similar to the sale, the Early Black Friday sale that we ran before Black Friday. It’s just after Black Friday. So, the page is more themed to Christmas, wintertime, and the messaging, as you said, is way more gift heavy, and way more scarcity around time.
So, of course, you have your shipping deadline, which gives you a lot of scarcity, but I also want you guys to add some other form of scarcity here. So, maybe you go back to the discount that you had in the Early Black Friday sale. Maybe that expires December 26th or before then. Again, maybe you have a bonus. But I just want to make sure during this sale period that you of course are thinking about gifters, and everything we talked about earlier with that. You’re thinking about the shipping deadline. But you’re also adding another variable here of scarcity that’s gonna get people to buy.
Kurt Elster: Well, what’s the scarcity?
Molly Pittman: So, normally we do a discount that was the same as Early Black Friday, so maybe it’s 15%, and then that expires on that certain date. So, it just gives people a reason to buy even if they aren’t in gift mode, or even if they don’t care about the shipping deadline.
Kurt Elster: Okay. That makes sense. Do you ever do the like, “Get what you really wanted,” sale? On Christmas day, people have got Visa gift cards burning a hole in their pocket. You’re like, “Hey, you want to buy something for yourself? Here’s 15% off. Go. Today only.”
Molly Pittman: I think that’s great because after Christmas, the moment that Christmas day is over, Kurt, that’s when we are moving more into this new year, new you type of messaging. So, we flip things, and now it’s about that person and why they need the products, and how these products can set them up to have the best year yet in 2024. So, I love that idea because it’s shifting the conversation back onto the consumer.
Kurt Elster: I hadn’t considered it as like the transition in our positioning. I wonder if I search my inbox, my email, for new year, new you… It’s like a tongue twister. We’ve said it too many times. If anything comes up.
Molly Pittman: Oh, it’s gonna come up.
Kurt Elster: The problem… The way Gmail works, it’s just like here’s emails that have the words, “you and year.”
Molly Pittman: Yeah. Same for me. It’s pulling up you, which is definitely not helpful.
Kurt Elster: Thanks, Google.
Molly Pittman: But yeah, that’s really the last phase of this, Kurt. Phase five, which is your New Year sale, and this is usually, surprisingly, our second best sale behind Black Friday Cyber Monday. I’m not quite sure other than the conversation switches and I think the reason people buy changes, and they know we’re getting to the end of this period where they’ve had sale opportunities for months. So, there’s true scarcity here, but this is the New Year sale, and here you can still play with the offer. You can do a discount if you want, a bonus, all the fun stuff that we talked about. You could even launch a new product here. This is another great spot to launch a new product.
But the key here is the messaging switches. And especially, Kurt, like I said, these can be really powerful sales. For Smart Marketer, this time of year does so well because our avatar is business owners. They’re marketers. A lot of people have checked out for the past few weeks during the holidays and now it’s January, they’re back in their email inbox, they’re ready to figure out email marketing, or fix their business this year. Our health brands do really well, of course. Anything around feeling better, looking better, getting into better shape. So, any product could be positioned to help someone in the new year, or your product probably doesn’t actually help people, and that’s really the key here.
And think about that too in terms of bundles and what you’re actually offering. You don’t have to do a sale on your entire catalog here either, Kurt. This is an opportunity where you could pull out a specific product line, or something that’s relevant to them in that moment.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I like doing… For brands that are hesitant to do that storewide sale, I like highlighting a single product or highlighting a single category. Using apparel and fashion again, you mentioned it. You’re like, “Buy one, get one half off.” BOGO t-shirts. Maybe you have an apparel fashion store. BOGO t-shirts. That’s the sale. And for January, maybe not T-shirts.
Molly Pittman: Depends on where you live.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I used to sell t-shirts. Oh my God. The seasonality around t-shirts is independent of geography, which absolutely baffled me.
Molly Pittman: Wow. I guess t-shirts hibernate, Kurt.
Kurt Elster: It seems that way. They’re like, “Well, it’s January. Even though it’s like 85 here, you’re going back in the drawer, buddy.”
Molly Pittman: It’s their personal preference. Also, Kurt, in January people tend to get back into learning mode, so if you are a brand that is pairing eCommerce with information or education, this is a great time to educate, or to add information again as a bonus here. January is a great time of year for us to do things like webinars, or launch new video series, even for our eCommerce brands. So, just keep that in mind. In January, people… They’re ready to get back in shape. They’re ready to do the right thing. So, they’re more likely to learn and consume information, too.
Kurt Elster: No, we see it with this podcast. Every January there’s like… December, you have a slump because people have checked out, and then January, you see this big spike because it’s those people returning, plus you get an influx of new people who are like, “This is it. This is gonna be my year.” And so, we try and tailor the content a little bit to that.
Molly Pittman: I love that. January is always one of our best months at Smart Marketer. So, really think about that info side, too. But we’re gonna close out our New Year sales, most of them January 2nd. For Smart Marketer, we will wait probably five more days because the business community is coming back to work. We want them to see our offers. So, really think about your avatar and what they’re doing during that time period of the new year when you decide your close date for that sale. But once that sale closes out, Kurt, you have… You’ve done it.
Kurt Elster: And that’s it. Just pack it in until next-
Molly Pittman: You’ve completed the months-long sale.
Kurt Elster: Just pack it in until next October.
Molly Pittman: Yeah. Then you acquire customers for eight months and get back at it.
Kurt Elster: It’s all about list building. Just get people in that top of funnel so we can remarket to them come October. Okay, single piece of advice. What is the one thing you would tell someone who is struggling either with confidence or creativity? They’ve got something is blocking them from getting these campaigns set up.
Molly Pittman: Yeah. Just do something. Do something. This is the time of year where we have a pass to be over promotional. Not only that, this is the time of year where people are buying stuff more than any other time of year. You want to be a part of that as a brand, so even if you set up a simple Black Friday Cyber Monday sale and that’s all you run, that is better than nothing. So, just do something. Don’t… As I said in the beginning, Kurt, don’t let yourself feel overwhelmed by this. Because yes, there is the possibility of many phases, and many moving pieces, but this is actually my favorite time of year, Kurt. Because people actually plan. The building of the assets is fairly easy. We’re not as worried about customer acquisition from a paid standpoint. So, we can build these campaigns, and monitor them, and let them run, and make a bunch of money.
And that’s what I hope for all of you guys, so just do something, because you can never go back. There’s an opportunity cost here. You can never go back and choose to run a sale, so just do it.
Kurt Elster: Fabulous advice. And I think a lot of people just get hung up on the creativity. You know, put together a spreadsheet. Figure out your timeline, your offers, and then they get stuck on trying to be too clever with the graphic in the email, the subject, and there’s no need for it.
Molly Pittman: Yeah. This requires the least amount of creativity of anything in marketing.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And I think-
Molly Pittman: Be direct.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Clarity trumps clever here. So, where can I go to benefit from your mentorship and expertise, Molly?
Molly Pittman: Oh, Smart Marketer dot com. You can check out our podcast, which is called The Smart Marketer Podcast with… Mr. Kurt has actually graced our presence on that show.
Kurt Elster: I got an episode on there. Lucky me.
Molly Pittman: I’m on Instagram, @mollypittmandigital. You can check out our blog at Smart Marketer dot com. Our courses, our mentorship, we also have an agency which services clients, so yeah, all that can be found at Smart Marketer dot com.
Kurt Elster: Beautiful. Molly, thank you so much. This has been great.
Molly Pittman: Thank you.