Reserve your customer's wallet share before Black Friday.
"BFCM is a funnel clearing event, not a list growth event."
Jimmy Kim has spent 18 years in email. He built an in-house email tool for his men's clothing store, turned it into Sendlane, and built his own sending network along the way. Now he co-hosts Send It! with Chase Dimond. His view of Black Friday: stop casting a wide net and move every segment one step down the funnel.
Jimmy explains why you ramp send volume in October instead of November, how many emails to send on Black Friday and to whom, and why a new product launch beats another discount.
Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt
Promo Party Pro - Free gifts that drive bigger orders
apps.shopify.com/promo-party-fgwp
Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT
What you'll learn:
Guest: Jimmy Kim, co-host of the Send It! podcast and founder of Sendlane.
The eCom Email Marketer (Jimmy's daily newsletter): https://ecomemailmarketer.com
Send It! podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SendItPodcast
Send It! on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/send-it/id1772942834
Montana Knife Company's Black Friday episode: https://ethercycle.com/blogs/unofficial-shopify-podcast/inside-montana-knife-companys-black-friday-2025-the-unofficial-shopify-podcast
Apply for Shopify Help
ethercycle.com/apply
See Our Results
ethercycle.com/work
Free Newsletter
kurtelster.com
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt • 00:00.000
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wishlists a product, you can trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wishlists for gifts, and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in-store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this, just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You could try it for free today at getswym.com slash kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M dot com slash kurt. So today on the show, we are talking Black Friday. Black Friday email marketing. Every brand you've ever engaged with is going to hit send and bombard your inbox later this November. And annually, we talk about it beforehand on the show. We bring in an email expert. I'm excited. We have Jimmy Kim, who probably knows more about email than 99.9% of the planet. So Jimmy Kim, my opening question, give me one, what is the one big mistake that you think all these listeners are going to make this year?
Jimmy • 01:44.952
Yeah, I'll give you a good one. Here's my hot take. Ready? BFCM is a funnel clearing event. event, not a list growth event.
Kurt • 01:53.222
Okay, what do you mean by that?
Jimmy • 01:54.872
Okay, so most people most brands, they treat it like a chance to cast this wide net into the market. And I think it's the wrong framework. I think it's the thing that people think because you're thinking big time, big sale, I need to get it out as many people. But the goal, in my opinion, is to move every segment one step down the funnel. So you've got your prospects that have been lingering on your list that you've been building all summer, been building all year that you're trying to get into a first time buyer. You're trying to get your one time buyers who have to have purchased from you in the past to come back and make that second purchase and you really want your VIP spending as many dollars as you can get at your store for their people that they're buying for or for themselves. So like to me, a lot of the thought process that I think brands take into effect is that I have this great sale. I want to capitalize on this time and I want to throw the net as wide as possible. And I think that is a big mistake that occurs in this market.
Kurt • 02:48.596
Absolutely great answer. I agree with you. Yeah, for me, it's like my Black Friday email spending as a customer. starting in september i start signing up for newsletters from things i'm like i'll buy that if it goes on mega sale right Yep. and then black friday i'm like all right you know i want to blow 500 bucks today what stupid thing from my wish list or childhood wish fulfillment are we doing this year and it's it's like usually it's like one two to three hundred dollar purchase i blow on myself each year
Jimmy • 03:20.226
Which is all an e-commerce direct-to-consumer store average order value is, right? I mean, I mean, a great one is going to be a couple hundred dollars. So it's literally down that line. And a lot of things that most people sell are impulsive purchases or things that people want or people have been observing. And I think one of the things that you always have to think about is like you just said exactly what I always say, like as a brand over the last couple months, and I don't know when this pod comes out, but like September to October as you're going through it, those are funnel building months, right? What you should have been doing over the last couple months is congregating the audience, prospecting, re-engaging customers, you know, getting an understanding of your data that you have as you're walking into November. And that just sets you up for a great November when you start opening up your sale because you've got these people that you've identified as people who are coming down that funnel and basically you're getting them ready to make that purchase with you.
Kurt • 04:12.692
100 yeah it's that you know the funnel already has to be filled and some of it's going to be deferred spending from earlier in the year earlier in the summer okay you know a ton of about email clearly you have opinions strong opinions on it it is not without reason your background is unusually fit for this because you you owned and sold a email marketing platform you weren't just some guy offering the service on Klaviyo you were competing with them just briefly tell us about that give us that backstory
Jimmy • 04:47.084
Yeah, it's been a long journey. So I started on the internet so long ago, 18 years ago, ultimately on the internet selling, doing things different things online. And when I was a brand, actually, I used to own a men's clothing store, I actually couldn't find a right. right tools that I wanted and I ultimately built an in-house tool. And that in-house tool eventually became a product called SendLane when I launched into the market many years later when I exited the brand when I was looking for that next thing to build. And ultimately, yeah, as you said, I've been in the email game for 18 years. We've done everything from building the infrastructure of deliverability from the ground up. So in a unique way, I've got this weird deliverability lens because I own my own network. work, not out of because I was super smart, but more out of stupidity just purely because I didn't know you can go buy something like this. I just didn't know better. So we built our own and we learned a lot from it. And from there, I've helped thousands of brands and from the smallest brands to the largest brands in the world set up their strategy to deliver ability, their infrastructure, you know, everything down to getting into the nitty gritty of their data and understanding different. different things that I've seen, the way that email's changed or it hasn't changed over the last 20 years. But the coolest thing about it is it is still one of the most cost effective ROI centric channels in this market today.
Kurt • 06:08.468
I would guess there are probably like two dozen people max on the planet that have that kind of experience and lens to view things through. So yes. All right. I'm going to I'm going to take you seriously on this one.
Jimmy • 06:20.268
Sure.
Kurt • 06:20.418
All right. Let's it's October. Let's assume this is it's October. and we have to we're not sending emails yet necessarily or maybe we are in an early sale i don't know but in october what are we doing i think it's get the list ready get deliverability ready talk me through the my my phase one
Jimmy • 06:39.238
Yeah, so phase one, it's October, November. I've been building my funnels in September and October. I've been doing a good job getting people into the system, right? So first things first is I'm really trying to understand my VIPs and my early. my early access signup. So I really want to start getting people to raise hands basically, right? If I have got VIPs, for example, it's okay to go out after those. What I mean by VIPs, by the way, are people who have purchased multiple times, have a high AOV, people who are very engaged with your product and brand, who love you that buy everything you sell them and promote to them. You've got a certain cohort of those people. You want to be in front of them and letting them know that you've got a Black Friday sale coming up. It's not It's not too early to start getting them in prep because what you're trying to do is get their mindset that they want to reserve a budget for you. The
Kurt • 07:25.078
Okay,
Jimmy • 07:25.478
second yeah, thing that that
Kurt • 07:26.078
works on me.
Jimmy • 07:27.128
works on everybody. If you have a brand you love, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you want to know and sign up and be a part of if your favorite clothing brand, you know, someone like Built, for example, comes along and says, Hey, I've got a big Black Friday sale. You're one of our VIPs. And if you click here, we'll let you know the first we have information on the sale. I'm clicking, aren't you?
Kurt • 07:49.876
so yes so
Jimmy • 07:50.776
Yes.
Kurt • 07:51.176
all right so initial id people to self-select and like it's just an offer we're not forcing anything on anybody we're
Jimmy • 07:56.626
No,
Kurt • 07:56.976
saying
Jimmy • 07:57.126
you're
Kurt • 07:57.226
hey you just want
Jimmy • 07:57.526
letting
Kurt • 07:57.626
to know
Jimmy • 07:57.776
them
Kurt • 07:57.826
about
Jimmy • 07:57.926
know
Kurt • 07:57.976
this
Jimmy • 07:58.076
that all you want to tell them first and people like that feeling of exclusivity. You've identified them. You've told them something. And it's a level of personalization that people want. That's what they want to know from their favorite brands.
Kurt • 08:09.526
right so i want to know i think the one method All right, so we want to notify our VIPs, have them identify themselves.
Jimmy • 08:17.416
Yep.
Kurt • 08:17.516
I assume that's like they're going into a segment.
Jimmy • 08:19.616
Yep. The second thing I'm doing is I'm building those segments since we're in the segment topic. We're getting those segments ready. Right. And what I'm talking about is every ESP now has dynamic segmentation available and you've got your prospects. These are the people who have opted in but never have made a purchase. You've got your first time buyers, meaning they've only made a single purchase. Then you've got your customer. customers. In my opinion, I separate buyers and customers. I believe that buyers, when they make a first purchase, they are simply giving you a test try. Customers are the ones who've made more than one purchase because now they believe in your brand, your product or service, and they go into it, right? So I'm creating my segments. I'm creating my prospect, my first time, my repeat or my repeat customers. I've got my VIPs and then I'm even putting together a lapsed customer. list. Now, what that means is this. I don't care about my prospects that have stopped engaging with me. What I do care about are my prospects that are customers who have at least either purchased multiple times or one time that stopped listening to me and I'm building that segment of cohort of people because it is still a time that you may be able to re-engage. So
Kurt • 09:22.290
Okay.
Jimmy • 09:22.440
that's like number two. I'm building my segments and getting them ready. I'm watching them and getting myself prepared because it allows me to forecast. how I'm going to end up doing.
Kurt • 09:32.138
And do you do anything with, are we doing any, how do you feel about identity resolution? Like as long as we're at the top of Sure. the funnel.
Jimmy • 09:39.732
I think identity resolution is what it is. You are identifying an action that is happening less than identifying the user on the other end. And what I mean by that is simple, right? It's great that you can identify people and see them, but that doesn't mean that they have intent and want and desire. There's so many opportunities to opt in and different things. However, I believe identity resolution works great when you're thinking about things like abandoned cards or browse abandonments, things that you can get a little bit more on. more on. And to be honest, it's not that you want to add them to your campaigns and your newsletters that you're sending. You just want to be able to trigger a quick message that just says, did you forget? Is there something we can do for you? Can we give you 20% off? That's where it works the best. Everything else, it's kind of a false pretense. You're not really list building with it. However, that's where brands spend their time and focus on it. That shouldn't be the vanity. What you should be focused on is, is my ability to identify and. my intent and behavior to that anonymous visitor allowing me to actually have a communication point where they might transfer them into an actual buyer or a customer in the future.
Kurt • 10:43.572
interesting because we we have one client who's done a lot with customer identity resolution and testing it you know and they perform differently and they all they all do what they say on the label but the when we had the most success was when it was focused purely on browser abandonment so
Jimmy • 10:56.722
yeah that's
Kurt • 10:57.122
hearing you
Jimmy • 10:57.422
yeah
Kurt • 10:57.622
say that it's like oh that that was very obvious to you to
Jimmy • 11:00.372
that's
Kurt • 11:00.672
me I was
Jimmy • 11:01.022
the only way it works every every other way that people think about it is the wrong way of thinking about it's not a list building product people always end up trying to build their list oh I grabbed you know x amount of lists from this tool that I was using well that doesn't really help you because they weren't actually self-selecting themselves in they weren't opting themselves in they were purely just visiting your site from maybe an accidental click or it could have been someone showing them something or they could be interested right there's so many reasons why they're there but unfortunately with the things that come into place with deliverability that's not not really the best way of approaching it
Kurt • 11:36.196
Okay. I mean, is it spam?
Jimmy • 11:39.346
it's okay so it's
Kurt • 11:41.196
That's
Jimmy • 11:41.246
not yeah
Kurt • 11:41.496
a tough question.
Jimmy • 11:42.496
it okay so what is spam right spam's unwanted emails so technically by this simple blanket it is spam right but it's not spam in nature is illegal no it's not against the can spam act but it is spam in that you are sending people emails that are unwanted ultimately
Kurt • 12:00.148
spam by intent not by legal definition okay
Jimmy • 12:02.648
Yeah, it's a little bit of that gray area, you know what I mean?
Kurt • 12:05.798
i mean that's what that's what i figured but i need an expert to confirm it for me now
Jimmy • 12:09.698
Yeah, sure,
Kurt • 12:10.248
Jimmy • 12:10.348
no,
Kurt • 12:10.498
Jimmy • 12:10.548
of course.
Kurt • 12:10.798
that all right good background there one last you know get the list ready question do you do list hygiene or sunsetting
Jimmy • 12:19.668
I am doing a little bit of both. Okay. So I'm going to talk about that because I think that there's, we, I have a pod too, and we talk all about this stuff and we just did a pod on
Kurt • 12:28.018
What's
Jimmy • 12:28.068
this.
Kurt • 12:28.218
it called? Plug it.
Jimmy • 12:28.818
It's called send it pod.
Kurt • 12:30.418
Send
Jimmy • 12:30.568
It's myself
Kurt • 12:30.818
it.
Jimmy • 12:31.018
and Chase Dimond send it right like send it like sending a pot, sending an email right.
Kurt • 12:35.068
Yeah.
Jimmy • 12:35.668
So come check us out if you want to just get super nerdy on the email side but we talked about this because we talked about the whole wind back flow and re engagement flows that we should be thinking about. about. Win back should be happening regardless of the time of the year. It shouldn't matter that it's Black Friday or it's October and all that stuff. And now you start thinking about what is the people you don't want to go into. And I think this is where people make a big mistake. And I've helped a lot of brands out in November because they make this mistake. They want to start spreading the net because, oh, I need to re-engage people. I need to bring people back. But this is not the time to do it. This is when you... don't want to start adding too many people to the net because you don't have enough. So people, again, go back to the blanket of like, here's my list and I want to go find out, oh, it's been 180 days, 360 days, yada, yada, yada since they engaged. But if you don't subsection them down and you start thinking about, hey, these were people who made a purchase with me last year. Now they haven't been engaged. There's a lot more intent and value in that user. than a person who's just simply a prospect who never spent a dollar with you, right? So to me, when I say unengaged, I'm talking about your prospects. First of all, I never reach out to my unengaged prospects after a certain time. There's only a time and window when a person makes an opt-in to when they make a purchase. That consideration window, obviously, once you get to the median, it starts shrinking pretty quickly afterwards. And most brands at somewhere between 30 to 60 days, sometimes up to 90, depending on your price point. But the reality is. I don't want those people. Now, the people I do want to look at my own engaged list are the customers or the buyers that have stopped engaging with my email but have made an actual purchase or actual spending of dollars in the last Black Friday. So in the last 365 days as you're coming into it, those are the people I'm working on my engagement with, right? Trying to get them back into it, find out if they have some gifts they want to give, find out if they're shopping. shopping for other people or they're shopping for themselves because those there are plenty of people who only come to your brand to make a purchase once a year for that special person that they've identified likes your brand as well as or they just like your brand in your deals that you offered during that time of the year
Kurt • 14:44.404
This episode is sponsored by Zipify. A lot of Shopify brands will make 30 to 50% of their annual revenue in the next 60 days. It is the busiest, highest stakes stretch in e-com. So Zipify made their best tech stack free for Black Friday. Four apps, including one-click upsell that drive more traffic, raise your average order value, and earn you more from every customer, all season, free. Grab the bundle at zipify.com slash bfcf. While you're there, watch their free training with Ezra Firestone on running a Black Friday sale. You want the next 60 days to be your best ever? I know I do. Go get Zipify's free bundle today at zipifyfy.com slash bfcf. All right. Agreed with all of that. The consideration phase is the thing I'm curious about. That really is like dependent on price. You know, if I'm spending, I got a high-end item that's 500 bucks versus I'm selling a $35 t-shirt, the consideration phrase, consideration phase, I imagine correlates to average cart basket size, AOV.
Jimmy • 15:54.708
Yes, but you don't need to think about your AOV. Just look at your data, man. You have all the tools these days to be able to plug this data in. When did they opt in? When did they convert? Look at that cohort of people. Find the average median time that it comes into. Most people, when they've made their first opt-in, you have their purchase happening within the first 24 to seven days, 24 hours to seven days. Basically, those purchases occur. After that, they start to diminish, right? Now, obviously with a bigger AOV, bigger consideration, you're selling something for two, three, four, $500 or more, there obviously is a longer consideration. And in the B2B world, they call this the sales cycle, right? You have to figure out what your average sales cycle is or your average time when people convert and then work backwards off that, right? If you see that most of your people convert in seven days and you're at day 90 hitting that prospect list, what do you think are the chances that you're 90? 90 day person is going to make a purchase is very small it's
Kurt • 16:52.634
Yeah.
Jimmy • 16:52.984
very small in fact
Kurt • 16:53.984
Yeah,
Jimmy • 16:54.184
most
Kurt • 16:54.434
the longer it goes, the less chances they're going to come
Jimmy • 16:56.884
most
Kurt • 16:56.934
back.
Jimmy • 16:57.134
purchases happen from the pop-in to the opt-in in the first 24 hours there's a reason for that because intent is there right they made the opt-in they opted in because well they wanted to make a purchase they wanted the deal that you're slinging at them yeah
Kurt • 17:10.434
Yeah, they didn't opt in because they were disinterested. You're right.
Jimmy • 17:13.284
that's correct
Kurt • 17:15.156
All right, I want to move on to what I suspect is like your real expertise, like email, but within email deliverability, I think is your thing. Tell me. Tell me about, well, talk to me about deliverability around Black Friday. Like, I think we want to try and get it ready in advance. We want to make sure we're not getting, you know, ending up with the promotions or spam folder.
Jimmy • 17:35.650
Sure. Let's
Kurt • 17:36.500
Give talk me that expertise.
Jimmy • 17:37.100
about all of it because I think there's a lot of it. So first, I'm starting off before I ever think about deliverability. First, I'm making sure that I have great health, right? And I think that this is always important is that I do know that I'm doing well. My open and click rates are well, my conversions are good. Everything looks good, right? You're comparing year over year metrics, trailing 90 day metrics. You're looking at all these metrics to make sure that you're looking good and you're going into it. Now, the biggest mistake that I see with deliverability is people are trying to ramp volume. in November. They're trying to ramp volume a week before. They're trying to ramp volume through Black Friday when this is the hardest part to understand when your actual opens and clicks and engagement are actually going to be at the lowest point of your company's history because what happens is they're flooded with 10,000 more emails than they normally get. So they're going to be very selective, right? So you actually get lower engagement which creates delivery problems which is why I always recommend and I tell people start ramping now if it's October right now it's beginning of October as you're shooting this thing I'm starting to ramp my volume because the game of deliverability is two twofold one is engagement we all understand that but two it's volume volume is the scary thing volume is very much a different thing because what Google for example does is they've got a seven-day rolling period of your metrics basically they're looking at your volume they're looking at your spam complaints they're looking you they're looking at your engagement they're looking at all the behaviors that their user is doing and scoring a reputation around what that means for your brand and what the people who are receiving that email they want to see that you're doing a good job but they also want to see where your volume is if your volume is low let's just say you're sending to a hundred thousand people you're sending it three times a week in October but and then in November as we're ramping up a week before Black Friday you're sending seven eight eight, nine times a week, right? Your volume has exploded two to three times. And when you spike that, that is literally one of the strongest signals for a mailbox AI, you know, checking the deliverability that's going to flag you as something that must be going on. And plus your engagement is dropping because the volume of emails are gone up. That's problem number one, but volume of emails from other people are happening at the same time. And that's where the whole. the whole thing can start creating problems. I don't say don't send on your unengaged contacts. I say if you're going to do it, do it with mindset. If I'm sending to 100,000 people, for example, I don't want to layer another 100,000 unengaged people on top of that because you're reducing your pool and your engagement rates by 50%. You want to stack 10% of the people on top of that. So you're going from 100,000 to 110,000 people. You're tapping those people so you only have... Only affecting your metrics by 10%, which is going to lower your engagement by 10%, which will still ultimately potentially could hurt, but most likely it won't because it's such a small adjustment that could occur. Does that make sense?
Kurt • 20:26.736
Yes, so I've got... As I'm leading up to it, the thing I want to avoid is being unexpected and this like giant spike in sending probably to the entire list where in addition to that, I'm adding the signals of unengaged people who just ignore the email. That's what's going to tank me and get me in the doghouse.
Jimmy • 20:45.888
That's correct. That's exactly.
Kurt • 20:47.288
Okay.
Jimmy • 20:47.438
And then there's other things, right? Like spam traps and different things that can happen and different negative. creative effects that can happen, which is again why I say, you know, when I'm working on my prospect list, I'm still working mostly on my engaged prospect list versus when I'm working on my, you know, when I'm working on my customer list, I'm willing to go further, willing to spread my wings further. When I'm working on any engagement or re-engagement process with a brand or a client or something, when we're working on him, a lot of times I say, great, you've got a huge prospect list. It doesn't matter. The last 60, 90 days is all that's ever going to matter. We need to think about it that way. Now let's look at that customer list. That's a whole different story. I want to tap into those people. I want to go back a year ago. I want to see if I can re-engage those people. And it's okay because the reality is most of them know who you are because they made a purchase with you in most cases. And number two, they're real. their real contacts versus the promotions, you're not really sure what the person on the other end is. It's a bot or robot. And a lot of times it is a bot or robot out there, especially in this day and age.
Kurt • 21:50.628
At this point, an AI now scans my inbox and like just the really atrocious promotional stuff, it dumps and then I just get like a digest.
Jimmy • 22:01.228
Yep That's
Kurt • 22:02.786
yeah
Jimmy • 22:02.836
the world today.
Kurt • 22:03.236
yes
Jimmy • 22:03.436
I know it's a very small percentage of the world. And consumers are not like that unless you've got super sophisticated customers. So you have to be careful there, right?
Kurt • 22:10.336
this is one of my all right so like shift of gears here this is one of my annoyances with the tech world's view of ai is they think that everyone uses it the way they do i am using it in such an extreme i'm in the top one percent right and but Other people using it like me in the same way on Twitter are going, oh, yeah, everybody's just like two weeks behind me. No, they're not, man. Like at most middle America is going, this is a better Google.
Jimmy • 22:39.684
That is right. It's a great search engine.
Kurt • 22:42.034
Yeah, but all right. Yeah. OK, before we declare that AI agents have killed email and spam. Right. The OK. send calendar this is the thing that people always they love the most they obsess over it's like how many emails do i send how many is too many guaranteed you're not sending enough just i don't need to know anything you're probably not sending enough how
Jimmy • 23:02.954
Yeah,
Kurt • 23:03.254
many you know how many emails do i send when do i set them like what's
Jimmy • 23:06.404
sure.
Kurt • 23:06.504
the cadence here
Jimmy • 23:07.404
Yeah. So look, your inbox is going to be flooded, right? If you're your consumer right now during this time of the year, and it's already happening right now, but it will just continue to pick up. But you You are getting flooded with more emails. Every brand is sending more. So you've got to stand out with a strong cadence. And that means that you've got to be in front of them often. I think the thing is it's not about the number. It's not an exact number because every brand has a different number or want and desire there. What it is to me is the structure, the architecture, the strategy behind it, right? The number one mistake I see with brands is they don't send enough teasers or or early access hype enough right pre
Kurt • 23:43.152
I
Jimmy • 23:43.352
-launch
Kurt • 23:43.452
agree.
Jimmy • 23:43.652
i'm sure you've heard this thing where you're getting people warmed up on the idea of it yes it's going to halt and slow down your sales that you might have coming into it but the reality is most people are already slowing down leading up to the holiday anyways because everyone's already in the mindset as a consumer that the best deals are going to happen on a certain day right
Kurt • 24:00.202
Yeah,
Jimmy • 24:00.252
so
Kurt • 24:00.652
lean
Jimmy • 24:00.852
yes
Kurt • 24:00.952
into that expected behavior.
Jimmy • 24:02.252
exactly so tease him tell him tell him exactly what's going to happen and what it is and again reserve your wallet share. That is my number one goal that I'm
Kurt • 24:10.922
Reserve
Jimmy • 24:10.972
trying to do is I'm trying
Kurt • 24:11.672
your wallet
Jimmy • 24:11.972
to reserve
Kurt • 24:12.222
share.
Jimmy • 24:12.472
them.
Kurt • 24:13.422
That's a good lie. Okay.
Jimmy • 24:15.332
Does it make sense?
Kurt • 24:16.332
Yes,
Jimmy • 24:16.482
So,
Kurt • 24:16.932
100%.
Jimmy • 24:16.982
all right, so then I'm going off and first of all, I'm honoring my VIPs first. I'm getting them out that they're early access somewhere between 12 hours, six hours ahead. It's no different than the retail strategy. I don't know if you remember, but remember when we used to go to retail stores, they used to have door busters and things that happened.
Kurt • 24:33.732
Doorbusters.
Jimmy • 24:33.982
Yeah, if I was exclusive JCPenney member, they're going to give me access two hours early into the store than everybody else. Buddy else.
Kurt • 24:40.850
I'd lined up at a Best Buy the night before and we camped out and then in the morning there were so many people, the cops got called and the doors literally busted. People pressing against the sliding doors knocked them off the frame. Wow. When they say, I don't think people who had never experienced one of these realize how nuts people got for like buying a $200 laptop.
Jimmy • 25:02.116
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. And it's over not only that, it's just like the hype, right? It's the motion. It's wanting to be there. I think
Kurt • 25:09.716
Yes.
Jimmy • 25:09.816
there's a lot of it. When I ran my brand, we used to run those Black Friday sales too. This is like 2013, 14. We'd have a line out and we used to put on our social like the first 50 people that are standing in line, we're going to give you breakfast like McDonald's breakfast and people used to love that. It's such a small little perk, right? But it's like my appreciation for you being in line and standing out. out there, I'm going to give you something as a token of appreciation, right? So think like that, that cycle, right? That's what you're trying to do with your VIPs. These are your most loyal customers. They're going to buy from you anyway on Black Friday. But if I can get in front of them and get their hype up to going back and thinking about how do I get that consumer to come back and want to look for my email, that's the way you do it, right? So you're out there getting that early access and then you've got to get that launch email out, right? And now this is the core thing is like, you don't want to To make people start thinking about all the different offers, I think this is a place that I think people make mistakes. You should make bundles. You should make discounts. You should do all these different things that you can do, all the different
Kurt • 26:04.164
Too
Jimmy • 26:04.314
strategies.
Kurt • 26:04.514
many offers.
Jimmy • 26:05.614
Don't get confusing. Keep it simple. I always tell people, you got a Black Friday offer and you got a Cyber Monday offer. In my opinion, it's not different. It's just repositioned. And Black Friday, I might give 20, 30% off. On Cyber Monday, I might be giving bundles and crazy packages. crazy packages or something out where it literally does the same thing ultimately at the price points and the dollars and everything else that comes out to it, but really making sure you do that. And then I think the, you know, the second thing about the email cadence is like, you need to be comfortable sending a couple extra emails during peak noise. Okay. Emails are getting buried. You know, you're thinking, man, I'm going to plan early. I'm going to send this at 6am on Black Friday. Nobody's thinking about it. about it so is every other brand and their mother and target and macy's and every other big company including amazon is thinking the same thing right so you've got to be willing to add those extra layers of emails you don't have to get fancy with new fancy angles you're literally repeating it because there's a high willingness and chance because the engagement will drop on your email through black friday and cyber monday that you need to send more in order to to get in front of them by being at the top of the inbox because it's peak noise and you've got it robustured somehow and that becomes creative being up front not trying to be witty or tricky literally saying what you're doing and what you're offering right there on that subject line as clear as possible because you need to catch their idea catch their attention and jump right in front of them right
Kurt • 27:31.876
If I get a marketing email, a newsletter that's like a tease in the subject line, I will be archiving that email. But if it's like, hey, savings, storewide,
Jimmy • 27:41.754
yeah great. i
Kurt • 27:42.554
I want to see what those savings are.
Jimmy • 27:44.154
mean it's so simple man it's not it's
Kurt • 27:46.354
We
Jimmy • 27:46.404
not overthink rocket science yeah what's that that's
Kurt • 27:48.554
I said, I think we have a tendency to overthink it.
Jimmy • 27:52.354
true and that is definitely something people do and then it goes to like okay so sending the cadence a number of emails is one thing but it's the real question is how many two To whom should I be thinking about this stuff? Remember, I just talked about it before. I'm not there to talk to cold subscribers. I'm not there at that moment to want to even reach out and re-engage anybody. At this point, when you're walking in and you're a couple days before Black Friday, segments are everything, right? If you have a group of engaged buyers, engaged prospects, engaged VIPs, those are the people I'm talking to. I'm being really careful about cold subscribers. I'm really being careful about complaints rates and unsubscribes that are happening. And I'm really watching those metrics in real time. Unsubscribes are probably the highest number of metric that you can be looking for. Not only is it telling you that you're reaching the end user, but it's also telling you that it's no longer relevant or there's some other reason that they want to get off your list, right? So you got to be really careful and watch those metrics. But ultimately, how many is. It's how many, send as many emails as you can to the different segments as you can in order to drive and pull the right people in while trying to make sure that you're not pulling forward too much of your sales at the same time.
Kurt • 29:05.954
Right. Yeah, the balance to strike. So just to illustrate the point here, if on Black Friday, if I said I'm going to send five emails. Too many or too few?
Jimmy • 29:17.614
I don't think it's a bad thing. I say my bigger question is to which segments am I sending those five emails to? If it's my engaged prospect list, I tell you all five of those should go out to those people because right now your job is to try to get them to either buy or unsubscribe, right? That's always been the job of a prospect. If it's a customer, sure. Like you can probably still send that. It might start feeling like a little bit too many. many versus a vip i probably don't need to send that many because they're paying attention to you right so like there's different layers of caliber i will end up ultimately probably sending if i'm a brand i would be sending five six seven eight emails on a friday but all those different segments are getting different emails right i'm not sending the same customer to a buyer or vip versus a prospect they're all getting slightly unique emails so that
Kurt • 30:05.848
Not
Jimmy • 30:06.148
is
Kurt • 30:06.248
same
Jimmy • 30:06.398
one
Kurt • 30:06.498
sale,
Jimmy • 30:06.548
of those touchy
Kurt • 30:06.998
though.
Jimmy • 30:07.198
things
Kurt • 30:07.684
But we're tweaking messaging and frequency?
Jimmy • 30:10.284
I'm tweaking frequency and messaging. That is correct, because
Kurt • 30:13.384
Okay.
Jimmy • 30:13.434
you don't need to teach people anything when they've already purchased or they love your brand versus you might still have to do some level of education when I'm working with a prospect.
Kurt • 30:23.652
This episode's brought to you by Promo Party. Full disclosure, that's my app. We made it. So here's a Black Friday tip. Skip the 20% off. I know you're thinking about just doing 20% off again. Offer a free gift instead. Free gift when customers spend about double whatever your average order value is. So we checked 300,000 holiday orders. One store ran spend 50, get a free gift three years straight. Their usual order? About $50. Their gift orders? Around $100. Every year. Promo party does exactly this. You set the threshold, pick the gift, and then it drops into the cart automatically. A progress bar shows every shopper how close they are so they keep adding to increase that cart size. Bigger orders without slashing prices or leaking discount codes. Search promo party in the Shopify app store. Install it free. free and have your black friday gift running this week so yeah my segments typically it's like past buyers my engaged cold and vip would be typical
Jimmy • 31:28.190
Yeah.
Kurt • 31:29.220
Or like in recent purchasers, like right there, just we came up with five and
Jimmy • 31:32.520
Yeah.
Kurt • 31:32.970
they
Jimmy • 31:33.120
I mean,
Kurt • 31:33.420
those would all have slightly different messages.
Jimmy • 31:35.120
That's correct. Because they all have different mindsets right now, right? Someone who's a little cold buyer who's been unengaged for the last 365 days or that's the last time you really saw them, you probably need to re-engage them a little bit more by being a bit more aggressive and just being straight to the point, right? Versus someone who you can be a little softer with who's a VIP. You don't need to go into the hard sales pitch because they're here to buy anyways. You can just tell them about all the cool stuff that you have happening right now.
Kurt • 32:01.872
Okay. I'm with you. Do we do anything with SMS?
Jimmy • 32:07.968
Yeah. So look, SMS is not an echo of your email. I think people have started to understand it. It is an urgency tactic and tool. I'm using SMS at the most urgent times because the same thing like email, SMS is getting bombarded, but you've got a limited window that you can send it to. So when I'm launching my sale, I want to tell them, I want to tell them when I'm closing my sale. and I want to make sure that all my intent side where they've abandoned a cart and all those things are working. That's really your three things that are going to be driving the most sales. Obviously, you can still send the blast, so you can still send campaigns. But the reality with most campaigns at the end of the day is that SMS doesn't drive people just end up going to look for the email or they're going to make the decision based on it. What you want to do is make sure that there's some kind of time and urgency place on all of this stuff. And of course, making sure people all know that. anything you're selling or any of the sales that you're doing are expiring at a certain time, right? Just being really time-centric is the most important part of SMS.
Kurt • 33:04.516
okay yeah so very sms timely like treat it i kind of treat it like hey it's like a push notification
Jimmy • 33:11.466
Yeah,
Kurt • 33:11.616
both
Jimmy • 33:12.016
that's
Kurt • 33:12.416
like length tone and when and what you send and then right. we got to pay per message on sms typically so like i don't want to go crazy and i don't want to bother people with
Jimmy • 33:22.366
The
Kurt • 33:22.516
it and
Jimmy • 33:22.766
stuff that
Kurt • 33:23.116
i don't
Jimmy • 33:23.216
I see
Kurt • 33:23.366
want compliance
Jimmy • 33:23.466
brands do
Kurt • 33:23.866
issues
Jimmy • 33:24.066
is insane. You know, they basically try to force their email into an SMS and that. And that is really the most worst way of using SMS, in my opinion, not only at the cost level, but the conversions as well. It is really
Kurt • 33:36.730
Yeah,
Jimmy • 33:36.780
about texting
Kurt • 33:37.130
you get like
Jimmy • 33:37.430
like
Kurt • 33:37.480
the wall
Jimmy • 33:37.630
a friend.
Kurt • 33:37.780
of text message. You're like, you know, I know what happened here.
Jimmy • 33:41.180
Yeah, it's crazy, man. I see it and, you know, knowing the cost and different things, I'm always looking at text going, you spent a lot of money to send me this text and it's not going to do anything for me.
Kurt • 33:51.396
oh it's rough when you see like sometimes i want to reply but there's nothing i can say that won't sound like a sales pitch i'll
Jimmy • 33:57.596
That's right.
Kurt • 33:58.146
reply be like hey i've been doing shopify for 15 years there's you can just change this one thing yeah
Jimmy • 34:02.996
Sometimes it's just that simple, man.
Kurt • 34:05.732
All right, on an unsubscribe rate, what is the rate where you go, you got to pull back or the rate that goes, yeah, this is fine.
Jimmy • 34:12.732
You know, it's a comfort zone. I always tell people like you're typically going to see somewhere between 0.2 to 0.5% of your list up 2.5% of your list unsubscribe at any given time with any given campaign, right? So that you have to know what your general basics are, right? Like that's going to be your averages that most brands have. So if I have. have that average, I'm looking for spikes above that 0.7, 0.9, 1. You know, I'm starting to look for bigger spikes past it. So look at your data previously. What has your unsubscribe rate been on your campaigns historically? Look at it today. And if there's a larger spike than maybe 20, 30% over what you typically see, that is when you need to start looking at and going, where are these people located? And are they unsubscribing because they haven't engaged with you in a year and now they saw your sale? Maybe that might be it. be it or is it because you've just been over sending volume or it's not relevant anymore either way it depends on the type of unsubscribe because not all unsubscribes are equal a vip unsubscribe is to me a very hurtful level versus you know a prospect probably one vip to probably a hundred prospects in my opinion unsubscribing have similar values so you've got to think about where are they and what data do we have to know who they are you and does that tell me the level of seriousness that I should be treating this?
Kurt • 35:28.036
Okay. No, you're right. Yeah, and again, that segmentation is critical to this approach.
Jimmy • 35:33.186
Yeah, you have to be segmenting. You can't do this if you're just blanketing and selecting all and sending to everybody. You'll not know exactly who they are. And so half of this data, more than half this data becomes irrelevant because you have no idea what's going on.
Kurt • 35:46.852
Now, in terms of offer, I think it's like implicit that we're talking about percent off offers. That's going to be the most typical. I think that's what's going to be expected, but not necessarily like last year we had Montana Knife Company shared that they did $1.7 million and that was just on like persona based product
Jimmy • 36:04.902
Yep
Kurt • 36:04.952
drops like, hey, we are launching new capsules as part of Black Friday and that can work well too. And then the example of I'd like to use is Hoonigan. again who did a different free gift with purchase every day of the week to drive repeat purchases you know and then like sometimes it was paired with other sales so just walk me through your thoughts on on offers Promotions.
Jimmy • 36:25.816
So, all right. So you mentioned it already and you guys have done it. So, you know, the new product launch is something that I've been beating on the drum for years about. I mean, I did this in 2013, 2014. We discovered it. And since then, you know, every brand I talk to, I talk about this. Look, your loyal customers, they're shopping. The intent is high. Value is high. In fact, Black Friday, Cyber Monday may be the time where your website gets the highest level of traffic. the intent is high they're not really looking for deals they're usually looking for things to buy right something for myself as a gift whatever it might be so to me a new product launch is probably bar none one of the best things that you can do in the window of black friday cyber monday not enough brands do that i think they think about it too much in clearance sale so then I it starts think, going yeah, to
Kurt • 37:09.164
you
Jimmy • 37:09.214
yeah so
Kurt • 37:10.114
just don't see it a lot.
Jimmy • 37:10.964
you just don't see it it's because people don't oh i need to launch the brand in september because it's slower The product is slower. So I need to launch something to try to spike sales. But to me, if I would have saved that till November, you'd be surprised. You're going to buy a couple discount items, but they might tack on your new product. We sold out every year of our new product launch that we would do the bundle of clothing that we would offer every year that we did it for, I think, four years straight through Black Friday, Cyber Monday by doing this strategy. And then it allows me to set up for a relaunch. or re-fulfillment six months later or three months later or three weeks later, whatever the timing is, and get back out there and say, we sold out, but it's back, get it now. And you create a frenzy because of all the people who missed out and had FOMO from the last time around, right? So new product
Kurt • 37:54.786
Oh,
Jimmy • 37:54.936
launches are
Kurt • 37:55.286
I like that.
Jimmy • 37:55.886
super powerful, right? Then it's positioning to your point. look discounts are discounts everyone and their mother is going to do somewhere between 10 20 maybe up to 50 maybe even crazy 70 discounts but to me this is the time where you just again think about the intent they want to make a purchase they just need to see the deal so you've got bundles what subscriptions bulk buys gift sets free gift of purchase that's a good one tiered spending i mean there's so many ways to build value without slashing the price and i think that that brands just go to discount and to me discount is not the trigger it's like a last ditch effort what you should be doing is trying to figure out how to drive value by increasing the amount they'll spend but the value is so significantly better for them that they think that this is the better way of thinking about it right that's the easiest way to bump somebody and it really is coming down to it and I think people are getting more creative with this but it's really just a hard thing to teach for a lot of people. Yeah.
Kurt • 38:51.384
yeah it's just not what we're used to but yeah do it it's like okay especially the a tiered promotion like spend x get y whether that's a you know a discount a free gift or a bundle you know that having it turns it into a choose your own adventure it's like you know it's going to encourage people to go into higher average order values which you know wins for everybody but it's also it lets them go with what they're comfortable with so i appreciate that about it
Jimmy • 39:16.996
You have to be careful because confusing offers also kill deals too. So make
Kurt • 39:21.746
True.
Jimmy • 39:21.796
sure the offer is clean. You can tell it to a friend and I always tell this, this is a great mom test or a cousin test or something and you can just say, here's my offer. Is that confusing? Just ask someone. You'd be surprised. They'd be like, well, what does this mean? Well, what's that question? You're asking them to be contrarian on it. And sometimes that's all you need to do to understand is my offer clean, which is why I think that people stick. We'll stick these 10, 20, 30% site-wide offers because they don't want to get things confusing.
Kurt • 39:49.572
Jimmy, as we're coming to the end of our time together, what's one thing people should be doing this week?
Jimmy • 39:54.622
Well, I mean, segmentation obviously should be one time thing, but I would say the bigger part to all this is this thing that you've got to think about what I call the post BFCM lag, right? After BFCM, there's going to be a downfall of customers that you need that are not you've pulled ahead, right? You've gotten to spend money with you. But secondly, the bigger thing I think that people forget is that. your job's not done. Your job was just to get them into the door. And a lot of this is all about getting those people into the repeat buying cycle. So to me, the biggest BFCM thing that you've got to think about because they come in at a lower value than your average is to start working on figuring out how to get them to make that second purchase, though it may be Q5 that's coming up or into January, new year, new me. I mean, there's so many things that come into stuff, but make sure you're measuring your BFCM cohort repeat rate. This is something that I tell brands all the time to make sure that you're bringing in the right customer and that's going to allow you to think about next year and you want to do that. And the second thing I tell people, and this is another big one, do change your flows for BFCM. Do them now. Get them ready. Update them. Get them ready for what BFCM is. Faster, more aggressive. You've got to be in front of them more often. So maybe my... abandoned carts, for example, might have a one hour, then a two day trigger, then a four day trigger. Dude, I'm going one hour, six hour, 12 hour, you know, 24 hour, 36 hours. I'm being aggressive and having these flows set up. So when BFCM is here, I've got the most aggressive flows because just like your emails and the number of emails, they're buying intent behavior. The impulse is high. They're going to make purchases fast and you can't give them space at that time. And that's the one. one time it's okay to do that and then be able to go flip back so those are probably my two things that I would give back as like a closing like the things that you should be thinking about
Kurt • 41:42.372
Oh, I love those. Yeah, increasing the duration of send, reducing interval on our flows, especially the abandoned card stuff, hugely valuable. Highly
Jimmy • 41:53.122
Yeah.
Kurt • 41:53.572
recommend it and
Jimmy • 41:54.422
Yeah.
Kurt • 41:54.622
not a tough change to make.
Jimmy • 41:55.572
Yeah. It's not a tough change. It's small changes. And I would also always tell people while you're there, you might as well tweak a little of your emails, put a little holiday thing there, make it seem like it's relevant today and not something they saw seven months ago. months ago.
Kurt • 42:11.196
Amazing. Jimmy, where do we go to learn more about you? I'm loving this advice.
Jimmy • 42:14.496
Yeah. So again, going back to the two things we do, ecomemailmarketer.com, that's where you can sign up for a newsletter if you want to learn more about all things retention. We do a daily newsletter about email and retention. And then of course, my podcast, which is Send It Podcast, you can find us on YouTube. And we drop a weekly pod on core topics like this and we go really deep into them.
Kurt • 42:36.676
Amazing. Jamie Kim, thank you so much. I've learned a lot. Everything I hope for.
Jimmy • 42:43.526
Well, great. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
Kurt • 42:45.976
Thank you.