w/ Colby Kane, founder of Aviator USA, a brand known for its travel-inspired apparel
“Honestly, I think my best customers don’t even look at the discounts. They get the email, see the new pants, and just say, ‘I want them.’”
Black Friday: the annual marketing frenzy brands prep for all year. Kurt Elster sits down with Colby Kane of Aviator USA, who has a refreshingly different approach. No cringe sales gimmicks, just a smart, no-nonsense plan. Colby shares his early-access tactics, simple email flows, and why staying low-key can outperform loud, constant discounting. They dig into why subtle beats loud, how to run discounts without gutting brand value, and how a straightforward plan is the real power move. If you’re ready for a fresh, real-world approach to Black Friday, this episode’s your blueprint.
Apps, Tools, and Services Mentioned:
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Omnisend. Do you sell stuff online? Then you need Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend, the powerful yet refreshingly intuitive email and SMS tool that helps you make 73 bucks for every dollar spent. That one's so good it's almost boring. Like watching steady lines go up in charts and up and up. Just automate your email and SMS campaigns with Omnisend. Set it up once, then sit back and watch the sales roll in while you snooze. Oh, you're still awake? Then give Omnisend a try and start getting sales so steady, they'll definitely put you to sleep. Omnisend, your dot omnisend. com slash unofficial shopify podcast. Hey folks, we got Black Friday. Yeah. Happens every year. Again, Black Friday gonna happen to us. And yeah, there's all kinds of marketing tactics, strategies, duper promotions we could talk about, but I think In terms of Black Friday, the one that is by far the most impactful as a channel is email marketing. Email marketing is really what's going to be doing the heavy lifting, and certainly will be, you know, last touch attribution for most of your orders going into the holidays. Well really, probably most of your orders year-round. Email is that powerful for keeping your brand top of mind. And this year, yeah in the past we've had uh experts come on and talk us through their strategy. All those episodes are still relevant. You can go back, listen to those But this year I want to talk to a merchant about what they are doing. And so we have Colby Kane from Aviator USA is going to talk to us about what worked for him in years past. and what he's doing this year because Colby and I put that content calendar together uh together. We worked on it. And so we're gonna go through uh content calendar for your upcoming campaigns for the rest of the year, including uh Colby's personal experience as a apparel brand, challenges and his advice and my experience for you. Uh Colby Kane, how you doing? I'm doing good. Thanks, Kirk. Thanks for having me. Good to talk to you. Oh, absolutely. I have to share. I I went to a conference in LA and I I posted about it. And you reached out to me and we we had not met in person and you said, Hey, I'll pick you up from the airport. I said, Well, I'm either g this is either gonna be great or I'm gonna get killed. And you picked me up from the airport and then took me to a classic car dealership. I'm like, this is the best date ever. Colby, you're the greatest. So
Colby Kane
Thank you. I um when when I heard that you were coming out, I was as you know, I'm a frequent listener to your show. And when you listen to somebody like you, you get to know them a little bit over the podcast, and I know that you're a car enthusiast. So when you said you were coming out to LA, I had just gone to that classic car um uh place in East LA. It's called Beverly Hills Car Club, but it's in East LA. And I took you and I I w I was there just what a c a couple weeks prior. I was like, oh my god, I gotta take Kurt here if I could sell him on it. So yeah, I I was your um Uber driver. I picked you up at the airport, not meeting you. We actually had a great day. I got to show you my LA. Uh which is cool.
Kurt Elster
It really it's genuinely it was very cool. So again, thank you for that. Yeah. But all right, Black Friday. What did you run last year?
Colby Kane
Wow, so um last year um every year I try I try and do the same thing, except last year we just we did our biggest um offer ever, which was basically 30% off store wide. Um and we started that early. Um I think we started it we actually started it a couple weeks prior to the actual Black Friday for our VIP customers.
Kurt Elster
So you did the early bird Black Friday sale. That always a good idea. Recommend this one.
Colby Kane
Yeah, and that's al yeah, that's always a good one, right? And then um And then we actually ran that pretty much that that whole promotion. We ended up keeping it live and running it just to our mailing list, though, um, all the way through Christmas. And Um but if he landed on the site there was no banners or nothing. It j there was a pop-up. Um all of our um email captures were sign up to get the Black Friday pricing. And then we would email you that 30% off code after that. So there's no sale or anything like that on the website. Um but as you know, like all the month of November, the what what had me start so early last year was you know you're on your Instagram and all that and you see that everyone's doing Black Friday earlier. It was like getting earlier and earlier
Kurt Elster
And I was like, oh my God, I better start this now, you know? Well, because everyone's budget is finite. And some people start their holiday shopping in September or October or you know, weeks before Black Friday. and then some people wait until the last minute. But if you're not everyone knows that those sales are coming and everyone knows they can only spend so much cash. And so there's this fear if you're not there early enough that you could miss out on that opportunity, you know, on on someone's wish list. Um what for for context here, we should probably specify what you sell. Aviator sell an apparel brand. You sell my favorite jeans. I am wearing aviator jeans right now.
Colby Kane
That makes two of us.
Kurt Elster
That's all I wear. So you sell uh run me through just quickly what your catalog sells.
Colby Kane
Yeah, so we're our idea is that we make clothing for the travel lifestyle. Um, and it's designed so that you can wear more, pack less, and travel with confidence. So we say that because our um the majority of our tops are all merino wool, which you can wear multiple times from t-shirts and hoodies. And then our bottoms, our pants and our shorts are all um meant to also be designed to be worn multiple times um without washing and they most important feature though that we offer is our um hidden zipper pockets which will keep those pickpocketers out while you're Running through Europe.
Kurt Elster
Oh, I love him. I love the the zipper. Keep my my giant George Costanza wallet safe. We've now that we've established what I should have established in the intro, along with Hello, my name is Kurt Elster. Tech nasty. And this is the unofficial Shopify Podcast. Uh there. There, now we got it. Uh tell all right back to the the 30% off-site wide sale. Started with Early Bird, where that's where you segment past customers, then Black Friday itself, and then just extend it into December. How did it perform? How did that impact your overall sales engagement and yeah, any problems with it?
Colby Kane
Yeah, so what I noticed last year Um was well, so first of all, Black Friday was a little bit earlier last year than it is this year. So last year, Black Friday, I think was I think was about the twenty-fourth of November. Um, and then Cyber Monday was also in November. This year will be a little bit different, but last year, what that did for us last year is our November numbers were actually probably like most brands that did well was we really hit it out of the park in November. And then December came and we noticed it was really not up to par for where we thought we should be. Um and I don't know if it was because our messaging got tired where everyone just took advantage of I mean most likely it's just that everyone took advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the early bird. So the whole it made sense that November was was a super great month for us. And it made sense that no at that December wasn't when we look at the whole picture. Um this year though, um Black Friday, I believe, is November 28th, right? And that pushes Cyber Monday into December. Which when I look at December this year, I'm hoping that it um will look a little bit different than last year. I would imagine um November should still be really strong and great, and December should be a little bit look a little bit better this year. But we're also going to change our strategy with not doing 30% off store-wide from all of November and all of December. We're going to mix that up a little bit this year.
Kurt Elster
So you're right, Black Friday is Friday, November 29th, and then you have a f uh you go over the weekend, Cyber Monday, Monday, December 2nd. And so if we're just looking at you know, sales figures, try you know, trying to keep our our months equivalent, that certainly will help with our reporting. So we don't have that problem that we had last year. Um, so you're talking start to talk about how you're gonna do things differently this year. I want to shift into changes in this year's strategy. But wait, so last year your entire the sole offer of the whole thing was just over and over thirty percent off store wide? I like the simplicity.
Colby Kane
It was yeah, it was very simple. It was easy to manage. Um so what we did though is we, you know, back in like October when we were setting up for the for the um holiday season, we We did all of our content shooting and we had all of our products delivered. Everything was set up in in October. Um where So once November started, we were just ready to go. We had all of our best sellers in stock. We had and and we knew our offer was and we had fresh content for all of our email marketing and for our website. Um and it looked really great. Um so the And then keep in mind and let's remember that I we didn't blast it on the website. It was no, you know, there was no the only thing that you'd see is the pop-up that said subscribe, you know, so new customers would see, oh, subscribe. And get the Black Friday offer.
Kurt Elster
So hold on. So on this you really didn't have on-site promotions or messaging other than a welcome pop-up that was segmented to new visitors.
Colby Kane
Yes, exactly. And then and then we emailed and do you hate money?
Kurt Elster
Like what what was the strategy here?
Colby Kane
The strategy was like if you're on our mailing list, you're getting all that you're getting you're getting notified. And then also like our social media marketing, like all of our um you know, Facebook and Instagram and even our Google ads, we we threw in like holiday specific campaigns.
Kurt Elster
I want every I want that on the site. I want land on the site. I want to be blindfolded, hear Santa as soon as I land on that site, hear jingle bells, and then no matter where I blindly tap with my bloated hooves, I'm gonna land on a landing page that gets me to a deal.
Colby Kane
So that we it'll be more like that this year for sure. Okay, good.
Kurt Elster
Un it yes and no, I think it it changes, um, but certainly post pandemic, you know, when we people the last I think two years have really expected higher discounts to move the needle. And I 30% I think is in there. Like 10's not enough. 15, okay, I'm I'm willing to take a look. 20 I'm interested. And then, you know, 25 and up, definitely.
Colby Kane
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
But it also can't be fake. You can't just be permanently on sale. The Federal Trade Commission is fly said like no more of that that that nonsense. If if your price never changes, that's not a sale. In your case it's a real sale. I'm just I'm just noting that this recent uh recent change.
Colby Kane
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we um so this year like we already actually started um our campaigning a little bit like in October. Like we do one thing that we do is um when Amazon had their big prime October day. There's a midweek, two-day sale. That's when we um started like our pre-holiday offer. Um and it wasn't it was a 25% off two days We never do this. It was on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, I believe. It might have been Monday, Tuesday, but regardless, it was just basically a two-day flash sale. And it was to coincide with what Amazon was doing. And we do this whole messaging like, you know, you don't have to pay a subscription to get um to be prime with us and get free shipping and free returns.
Kurt Elster
So you like straight up just tie it into their prime day.
Colby Kane
We did. Yeah. And I actually got that from um I think we we did that over the summer because they do it twice a year, that Prime Day. Um So we did it, we did a teaser with it and we tested it out back in June or July, whatever it was, and it and it it was really great. It would it did really well for us. We just figured if people are gonna be online shopping those days, people are already tuned. Right? Everyone's seeing the Amazon commercials.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, I'm in shopping mode. Even if I'm not shopping on Amazon necessarily.
Colby Kane
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
R You're saying, all right, we're we're gonna make the Black Friday sale public, meaning it's going to be messaged on the website. I don't have to get into your mailing list to get access to the deals. What prompts that change? How do you think it's gonna help? I think it'll be beneficial.
Colby Kane
Yeah, I th I think that our goal is really just to take out Any and all friction because if listen, if there's a lot of other e-commerce brands that are gonna put you know right on their home screen when someone's going to some website and they're gonna see, oh Black Friday pricing's here now and you know get twenty-five or thirty percent off, whatever the offer is, like I do think it should you should have that plastered right on on the landings page. Um on a probably or a banner on all a sticky banner on all pages that you might land on. Um So that it's really clear. Um, so we're gonna do that, and I do think that's going to help probably hopefully it's gonna help with our new conversions, new customers. um because it'll take out all that friction. And I think we will also possibly not require discount codes. We might So once you put it your shop, you're in your cart, it'll it'll either show already the discount Or we'll do the fla the slash out prices with the new price.
Kurt Elster
I say don't even bother with the automatic discount. Go straight to marking it down. So in your in your Shopify product listing, you make sure that you have your compare at price set and then change the price and then every theme, unless it's really hokey, should automatically figure out this this item's on sale and this is how much. I'm saying that's not for your benefit, for the listeners' benefit. Of course.
Colby Kane
Yeah, I think that and I I do think that's a a great idea. Um It's just one less step.
Kurt Elster
And I think like I think the messaging is clearer because all right, you suggested automatic discount, great, but I'm not necessarily gonna see that discount price until I'm in the Carter checkout with automatic discount. I'd like automatic discount. But for a store wide sale, well then lo if it's a really a store wide sale, let's just price things downstore wide.
Colby Kane
Yeah. But Um and I did notice a lot of brands did that last year. Um I felt like a lot of the e-commerce brands that at least that I shop at um were doing that. And I did find that to be a a good user experience for me anyway.
Kurt Elster
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Colby Kane
Yeah, true. True. Yeah, so we'll so mo most likely that's probably something that we'll probably go that route. Um, but for that limited time. Like I don't want to Um I'm not gonna I don't I don't see us slashing out prices for everybody um the whole month of November and December.
Kurt Elster
Like that's not gonna happen. No, we're not gonna do the whole month, but Yeah, Black Friday.
Colby Kane
Yeah, it might be Black Friday for the day. And it might possibly even Black Friday through Cyber Monday because it for us, like it'll be it's you know, there's work involved and and um going and ch changing all those prices on all those SKUs or the compare prices and then bringing them back. You know, I wish there was just like a switch. I don't have that. I don't maybe there is. I have to look at my iPad. That'd be great if I could just go, just make everything thirty percent off. That would be helpful.
Kurt Elster
No, I honestly the the easiest way you could do it, if you don't have a ton of products, you could use the bulk editor or Export this just to export the products as a spreadsheet, update, import is the quickest way.
Colby Kane
Yeah, the bulk editor is probably the way I'll go.
Kurt Elster
This i is such a common issue. I made a youtube video about it. It's one of my most successful. Ah, I have the t I'll take a look. We'll put that in the show notes. Okay, so do have you had experience on like pros and cons in the past with discount codes versus automatic discounts?
Colby Kane
So um no we almost we we've only God we've only used automatic discounts a couple times and honestly we haven't used them r recently. Like not like not even in the last couple of years. It's always been like a code that goes to our mailing list and um And then not everybody uses it. You know, that's the You get that breakage. You do get that breakage. Like m you know, some some customers, some of our highest LTV customers never use codes, regardless. Oh, these these this new color pant dropped. I want to get them. And there's a lot of people.
Kurt Elster
You're in LA and Yeah, I mean you sp a hundred and fifty bucks for jeans is not the cheapest thing in the world. Uh even I I buy them on sale.
Colby Kane
But I know it's that's a that's also like a tough thing 'cause I mean we make them here, so it and make it a lot of things. Oh I understand. No, they're working on the understand the value in it, right? But like you know on social media we they that no they don't understand the value of it because you know people some people do That CR ads will say, you know, $165 for jeans, that's too expensive. That's a ripoff. I you know, I can get my lease for twenty dollars. There's a huge difference. Yeah, that's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. Um so but anyway, but like we're we're kind of like a you know, I we're a premium brand, but at a I think at a at a at a great price point because if we were a wholesale brand, our price point would have to be much higher than one sixty five. for our best selling genes, right? Like it's it's hard for us to we it's hard for us to have the margins actually to do wholesale at um here's the other thing.
Kurt Elster
Since you have such a high AOV Like 165, you say, all right, the whole store 50% off if your aver if your order values over 200. You do something to that effect where you say you tie the discount to the AOV. And so now to buy to get the discount, I can't just buy a single item. I realistically I have to buy at least two. And so it incentivizes those larger orders. And then you're saving on shipping. All right, so 50% is a little high, as an example.
Colby Kane
That's a little aggressive. Yeah, we've never done that. But um But one of the things that always um because we are going to experiment with a a tier discount, um I eit I think either before or post Black Friday. But most likely it might be for the early bird where um we might do a two hundred dollar price point where it's two hundred orders for two hundred and over or thirty percent off and then orders twenty uh under two hundred will be twenty-five percent off. We might experiment with that. Um my only concern with that is when you know in the in the clothing business is when That just incentivizes people to order two different sizes of the same product. And we know we're gonna get, you know, that they return one. They return one.
Kurt Elster
What do you do about the discount?
Colby Kane
Okay. So that's always a concern with why I've never done the tiered um discount before, but we're thinking of experimenting with it this year.
Kurt Elster
And is the you said we in the the pre-show you said there was an app you were thinking about using for um for managing returns. What was it?
Colby Kane
Oh yeah. So we well currently we use Happy Returns, which has been great. But then a friend, another clothing brand friend here in LA just signed up with Redo. R-E-D-O and um what they do is they add like a little surcharge or fee um to to any order. So when your order shows up in the card, it'll have the product in there and then it'll have like a three dollar surcharge that will say package insurance and free returns. And you can toggle it off, but it's already pre-checked. Um so we'll we'll we might take a look at that before the holiday season, see if it's worthwhile.
Kurt Elster
Okay, so the big change here, last year you kept it simple and straightforward, thirty percent off, and then ran that just over and over from early November on. But it was not messaged on the website, at least not in a very direct way. And so this year the change where you're getting a lot more sophisticated in variety of campaigns. And we're gonna message that on the site and then not use discount codes necessarily. Have it be automatic or more direct pricing. So it's like the whole thing. Easier for the for every customer involved, a little more novel, a little more interesting with a variety, um, and then just more We're gonna surface it more often to more people. More highballs seems good. Like it this seems like a good plan.
Colby Kane
Yeah, no, I think that um what we'll do is um You know, well so for instance for b say we do the early bird and also it's a much shorter season, right, Kurt? Like it I mean it's only four day difference, but it is late and it's getting pushed into s d December with with Cyber Monday. But You know, and then we have Veterans Day, um, which is the eleventh, which is just a right right around the corner. Um, last year, like we were already in our um 30% off at that time. But this year we'll we'll we'll do we'll do a separate Veterans Day sale um on certain products. for that weekend and you know, it might be a military background a a military um discount. Um things we'll we'll do something a little different.
Kurt Elster
And do you use uh GovX or any of those apps for military discounts where they like verify the military ID? No, we haven't. Um, but I think I might
Colby Kane
look into that for this for this year this week.
Kurt Elster
They're popular with merchants. I've I've set GovAx up, you know, it uses verify pass. I've set that up more times than I could count.
Colby Kane
Yeah, we'll do that actually. That's a great idea.
Kurt Elster
Um and it'll let you do more than just military. If you want, it'll also you can include first responders, which I think is very cool, and teachers. You could include features in it too.
Colby Kane
Yeah, that's great. Um, and I think we probably w I'll look into that app for sure. Um And I have to do that very quickly as it's right around the corner. Um and we do have a lot of military peop uh customers um because we we have people emailing us and asking us if we have military discounts and then we always we're just so You know, we l take the honor system. If someone's gonna email us that and say, Hey, I'm in the military, do you have an o military diff discount? Then we just give 'em like we just give 'em the code.
Kurt Elster
Oh, and this I w the big advantage to this GovX thing is just making it self service. You never have to deal with it. One of the things we're thinking that I have been toying with this year, uh, mentally, is Your Cyber Monday offer should be better than your Black Friday offer. In years past, it's always been the case that the Black Friday offer is always the best. And maybe the Cyber Monday offer is equivalent to it. Or the same. In your case, it was the same. What if? You do your Black Friday offer. Everyone assumes that's going to be the best deal ever. Then Cyber Monday rolls around. It's a little better. Right. And so the theory being the people you didn't capture with the Black Friday offer, now you'll get some more folks with the Cyber Monday offer. And the really engaged customers are going to be thrilled. They're like, oh man, an even better deal. And they double dip. They purchase again. What do you think?
Colby Kane
I think there are there's there's two ways to look at that. Like the The well I think it's I don't think it's a bad idea. I think that um but here's the thing. So you have the the Black Friday shoppers that were all urgently going out to buy right away because they think that's the best deal and I never mentioned anything about Cyber Monday being better. So, um, but those people, they get their they get their offer and then on fr on Monday I offer the people the cyber money people something greater and I either exclude the people that purchased on Friday so I don't piss them off Well like hey wait a minute, you know, like I just bought this and now it's better. Like I want a refund. I want to return it. Or can you um Can you refund me the difference?
Kurt Elster
Um, so there's store credit for the difference plus a few bucks. And I guarantee a good chunk of those people just make another purchase.
Colby Kane
That's a good solution. So and then I was thinking we were thinking about that. If I were to do a better off run on Cyber Monday possibly just do a gift with purchase.
Kurt Elster
I love gift with purchase. That is my favorite project.
Colby Kane
It wouldn't be a waste. It wouldn't be a waste, you know, but it would be something useful. You know, not a knickk knack that maybe you would never use. But
Kurt Elster
So sometimes they're just like pro they're like promo trash like you get at conferences.
Colby Kane
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Like a LED keychain. Great.
Colby Kane
Yeah, exactly. So um, no, but we might do something we could do something like that. And then if someone does reach out from Friday, I'd be happy to send them the gift.
Kurt Elster
I think I like that. Okay. And so we do you I think it it's wise that you're considering the Keeping customers happy here. You know, and having a straight for your saying, hey, we're gonna do something that could potentially annoy some people And so what's our strategy there and how are we gonna make it up to them? It's empathetic. The fact that I was like, just get the deal, get the order. And you're like, okay, hold on, you know, what about when we upset our customers? And we've got a couple solutions here.
Colby Kane
Yeah. That's a good I think that's a good solution.
Kurt Elster
Within your campaigns, are you doing any kind of segmentation of audiences? Because that's the I mean you could just exclude people who'd purchased in the last 72 hours on that Cyber Monday campaign, but I think that's doing them a disservice as well, since you're saying, like, hey, you could get this great offer if you want.
Colby Kane
Yeah, I think that um we we're always segmenting, right? Like all the time, um for for every campaign that we ever we do. Um, but I do think that so our strategy last year and for this year will probably be s sending multiple emails throughout the day. Last year I think on Black Friday we did three. You know, one at six AM, one at one PM and then at five PM. Um last And we did that on Cyber Monday as well. So like and and even throughout the weekend we we were setting SMS as well. Like we're we're doing a pretty heavy reach, but if someone opened and purchased um on that first email. They on Friday, they might not get um another email the rest of that day. The d they're segmented out for that day. They might still get something on they might get another thing on Monday, but maybe not this year with the gift we purchase. Right? Um, or maybe they do. Um we'll we'll have to work through that Um but we're we're very aware of um our segments and how we're doing that. Um
Kurt Elster
During this time of year, it's like free for all on everybody's inbox. It's the one time it is it's socially acceptable to be sending a ton of email. You're no longer a spammer. Um but You've also got, you know, this whole time you've got all these email flows running, I assume. You know, you've got a lot of email marketing automation. What do you change those at all? You know, like welcome flow, win back, abandoned cart.
Colby Kane
Yeah, so all of our um we s we turn off our normal um welcome flow um and and our abandoned cart flow, all those uh flows, automated flows, get switched to holiday versions of them, right? Because even uh Even the abandoned cart flow might say, hey, um you have this in your cart. Like say our normal offer is uh is uh you know 15 or 20% off your first purchase. So but during Black Friday that gets that language gets changed to, you know, the Black Friday offer is expiring, right? And then that's thirty percent or wh whatever we're gonna decide. Um, so that gets changed. Obviously the welcome pop-ups get changed as well. So we just talk we we use Clavio, so it's super easy. And we'll we have those um pop-ups already built and we'll literally just turn the turn off the regular ones, turn on the holiday ones. So it's pretty simple.
Kurt Elster
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Colby Kane
You did a good job. It was easy for me to use. So And then you plugged in the details.
Kurt Elster
And so it worked pretty well. Uh w you have So the schedule here, it starts November first, and it ends December thirty-first. There's twenty-one emails.
Colby Kane
Yep.
Kurt Elster
Is that enough?
Colby Kane
No, so I did there's 21 emails, but um you you we did not include or you didn't include and I didn't add a lot of the follow-up emails in here. They're not separated. It's actually more than that. It looks like it looks like our spreadsheet's twenty one, twenty-two emails, but it's actually more than that. It doesn't have as much um like you know on Black Friday I think I did add you're right, I did add like a second email to Black Friday and to Saturday Monday on this list, so those are included.
Kurt Elster
Um but there's there's a lot of things. In a this is a sixty day period, and I was like, hey 20 emails, so an email every 72 hours is not enough. And you didn't even wait a beat. You're like, absolutely, you're right, because we didn't include all the follow-ups. How many emails do you think in total end up going out here?
Colby Kane
Well I I'm honestly like that's a I mean that's a very good question, but I I I would say some some customers can get Or some people that are just people that keep opening but don't purchase, right? They'll get the most. Right? Because they'll get they'll just keep getting everything. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Buyer get off my list. And that might be a hundred.
Colby Kane
That might be a hundred email. So like I'm not sure. And at that point the messaging might be like, listen, I know you opened up ninety-nine of my emails. When are you gonna buy? What are we gonna do? Right? Like that that could happen. But um but a lot of these people like because we because it is segmented, a lot of them aren't going to get some of them won't even won't get all twenty-two that we have in here, right? So It's all calculated and with reason. Um, so there'll be no spam, should be no spam complaints.
Kurt Elster
So let me run through this quickly. It's by the time this goes live, we've already we're already into this calendar. It's running. So on the first, we lead with, hey, new arrivals, new products. We just want to prime the pump on people. Yeah, which we did. We get them aware. Okay.
Colby Kane
We started.
Kurt Elster
And then November 5th, election date, we're gonna do uh we're gonna launch our gift guide. And then Follow up, we got Veterans Day sale, which just a little thing. If you're gonna send a Veterans Day email, don't say happy Veterans Day. F Right? Just like honoring veterans. Just be respectful.
Colby Kane
No, we say more of a thank you.
Kurt Elster
Yeah. I've just I've seen people get in trouble, like misunderstanding intent here. So just be careful with that one if you're not a a veteran yourself. Um and we got okay by the 16th, so midway into November, we do the the pre-BFCM warm-up. Where you say, hey, Black Friday's almost here. Preview our biggest deals of the year. And it's to build anticipated build anticipation. You're just going to preview the deals. Because any on the 16th, like nobody's buying at that point. You'd have to have rocks in your head, right? Like you know, you just wait. If they're on the email list, what are you doing? So we're not I don't think we're cannibalizing sales with that. No, 20 seconds comes around. You could do Black Friday early access for your VIPs. So it's like, all right, get in there. Or should we do that earlier?
Colby Kane
Well, that's I know that's the million dollar question, right? 'Cause this is literally this is just one week before And is that early enough? Because if other if you start seeing on all your, you know, your emails and your social feeds and and on TV that everyone's already shopping and has their offer live, then we don't want to be the last one to the party.
Kurt Elster
And we were talking about segmentation. So maybe it's you know midway through the month, pre BFCM warm up goes to people who uh have not made a purchase yet. And then our VIP customers, people who have made two or more purchases, we give them the early access. And it happens on the same day.
Colby Kane
I think that's a more solid idea. And there's and obviously different messaging, right? So um I think that's great. I think that you have, you know, you have the tune up. Here's the preview for the customers that haven't purchased or people that haven't purchased, but they're on your mailing list. And then at the same time, we could have our highest LTV customers receive an email with the special offer live for them. But if you do that, now we're, you know, and then for the this email, I we would use a code.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, you you're right. You would have to. You could just do it strike through on the whole site.
Colby Kane
Yeah, you have to use a code. And then a and like I said, a lot of those LTV customers that are high don't They might not even use the code anyway. But but you put the code in there and you have the best offer. If it whatever it is, 30% or um whatever we're gonna do, we'll we'll offer it to them with the use of the code.
Kurt Elster
Um then on Then we could do like that Monday before Thanksgiving, we could say, oh, our Thanksgiving sale has started, because no one's really working that week. I don't care what you say Yeah. Um and then we can do Black Fr Wednesday, Black Friday countdown. You're like, oh, it's almost here. And then Black Friday itself in morning you remind them afternoon you remind them. So we're gonna like two go out then.
Colby Kane
Yeah, and then Kurt, just also like this is an an example of where there's some emails missing because if we were to do on the sixteenth, which was the pr preview warm-up on Nov November sixteenth, which is a Saturday, um In theory, like the warm-up people will just get that one teaser, but if we're gonna do the VIPs get a promo offer that same day Then if you if you purchase, then you're not getting you you're done for right now. You're not gonna get another email until you'll probably get a Black Friday email, regardless. That's everything's automatically 25% off or 30% But you but if you open the the 16th, the email of the 16th, did and you're a VIP and you didn't purchase, you will get other emails, um, you know, Sunday, Monday possibly, right? Like s letting them know that it's still early Um, you know, you're still VIP offers is live. Get in there, you know, we're selling out of certain sizes and colors or You know, that that'll be the messaging essentially. So there's so my point is there's more emails that we that aren't on here.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, there's more that aren't on here, and of the ones we've discussed, no single person would see all of them.
Colby Kane
Exactly.
Kurt Elster
But everybody's still getting a lot of email.
Colby Kane
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Uh and they said that we got like Briday Black Friday, and we're doing at least two for that. the following Saturday the very next day small business Saturday. And then that's where you you're like, hey I'm Colby. You know I'm in almost small business. Yeah.
Colby Kane
100%. We did that. We we we always participate in small business Saturday.
Kurt Elster
And then you got the next day, December 1st, suddenly you could say, oh, we got new stuff in for December. And like hopefully there's some like a a color a restock something that you could get people excited about. Because it previously it wasn't available.
Colby Kane
Yes, we and we are doing that this year where there will be product drops throughout the holiday season. And it's to keep people fresh and keep things, you know, yeah just mixed in with the messaging.
Kurt Elster
Absolutely. And then we're going Cyber Monday, same deal. We gotta do two. uh morning afternoon and often you know it's the late the later one that's gonna perform better in my experience. And then for the rest of December you could do Yeah, I like 12 days of Christmas, like some kind of gift guide spotlight. Surely you should have made gift guide content, repurpose that into one or more emails where you spotlight a product about like Why this is a good gift, who this would be a good gift for, because people need ideas. They will at least look and consider it. Um, and then we've got our our holiday shipping cutoffs. That's always a favorite, because that That is genuine urgency. If you're like, hey, this is the last day that I can reliably ship this to you and have you get it in time. That's entirely authentic. And that's what we want when we're dealing with any kind of cutoff. Well, I guess that you could do like one l you know just another general holiday sale reminder in the middle of the December. And then after that, it's like it's too close. You know, th there is no way to guarantee they're gonna get their packages necessarily. And so You probably do. Gift card promotion. These are anemic. They never do super well, but they're good. And we still do it.
Colby Kane
We do it. Yeah. We don't sell a lot of gift cards, but of course, but it yes, it's we do it. It's good.
Kurt Elster
And the people who buy gift cards will or the gift card recipient, I think a majority of them will spend more than the value of the gift card. I think. I mean that's what I've read. Um and then Christmas Eve? Well shit, just send content. Like we've just been we've been hounding these people all month. Hey, happy holidays. And you're just not asking for anything on that one.
Colby Kane
Yeah, and then we do do a um in the past we have done a you know post Christmas um event sale I love these.
Kurt Elster
How'd they work for you?
Colby Kane
It it works great.
Kurt Elster
Everybody's in a good mood. They got cash from grandma in their pocket, right? That visa gift card.
Colby Kane
Exactly.
Kurt Elster
They gotta spend it somewhere.
Colby Kane
Um, yeah, we always do that and it does well for us. And we add in some of our messages, we might add like um style, say we're we soul through a bunch of things. So we'll put those leftovers in our final sale collection and where we're blowing it out. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, really like right place, right time with a great incentive. And then finally, you know, when you're on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, New Year, New Year. You're like, hey, just yeah, everybody's got it's just a a great excuse to switch things up. And if you're like, look, you wanna you wanna switch up your wardrobe, change your style, here you go.
Colby Kane
There you go.
Kurt Elster
All right. This year compared to last year, are you excited, nervous, a little bit of both?
Colby Kane
Definitely a little bit of both. It's always exciting. It's always exciting for sure. And then um
Kurt Elster
And then no and then I mean a little nervous like now what's fun about this, if you're still listening, I will absolutely share this spreadsheet with you an anonymized version of it that you can use for your brand. I've got it in Google Sheets. I'll put it in the show notes and then you open it, click make a copy, and you can use that for the rest of your planning. This is yeah, dear listener. Um, but okay, Colby, last minute tips and advice The what what advice would you give merchants listening who you want to maximize sales and keep customers happy? Where do you think people get it wrong?
Colby Kane
Um I th probably waiting too long to get started and not have a clear vision. Right? It's easy because you get so distracted. Like I get distracted at this time of year with like because there's just so many moving parts in my business. But um I try and stay, you know, we all try and stay focused on the on the right tasks, not get distracted, and start early. So like we already have it strategized, so we're we're we feel pretty good about it.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, when you have it planned out, it gives you control. And that control really helps to alleviate anxiety, doesn't it One hundred percent.
Colby Kane
And then it also what I mean, sometimes too, we did this last year is with like with times and dates of like when we sent emails and stuff, and we'll probably go through that a little bit this year. But we'll like like in football we'll call like a quarterback calls an audible. All of a sudden, you know, we're seeing something and we might see an opportunity like, oh, we need to do this now. Right? So like we there'd be a little bit of that.
Kurt Elster
Do you have an example of that?
Colby Kane
Um d I think last year when we um started so early, we started so early our sale because like we we w weren't expecting to start until about ten days before Black Friday and then I I think we we saw We had everything already set up and we saw all the brands are doing it, so we're like, dang, we better get like send move everything up. We gotta send out our offers now. And then we scrambled just to to to get 'em up and live and make sure that they were segmented correctly and and just go with it. So that happened last year. Um and then this so you never nothing goes according to plan necessarily, right? But
Kurt Elster
But we'll see. Give me one key takeaway that you want someone listening to consider as they they have to approach creating these emails.
Colby Kane
I think uh well I think Consider um you probably already have your strategy, which is great, most of your listeners, and then but I do think um take advantage of Kurt's spreadsheet. Um, because I I think there's it's valuable and compare what you have planned already to what Kurt has planned and what his strategy is, for me anyway. Um I would I would do that and just compare and see make sure it stacks up. Um and then also like last year and years past, Kurt, I we I used your um your planner. You used to do a Black Friday. Yeah, I didn't do it this year. And it was it it was very helpful. Um and since you didn't do it this year, I did download Ezra's. Well, I'm sure Ezra's is great. Yeah, it is it's great. It's uh it's it's it's like a novel. It's really big.
Kurt Elster
But the um the spreadsheet, you know, I think this is the the quick actionable hit. That people need. To be clear, it's free. It's just a it's a Google sheet. Just make a copy of it. Yeah, it's great. Alright, Colby Kane, if someone wanted to wear the very same jeans as Kurt Elster, where do they get them?
Colby Kane
Again at AviatorUSA. com.
Kurt Elster
Colby Kane, Aviator, thank you so much.
Colby Kane
Thank you, Kurt, and uh I'll talk to you over the holiday season, I'm sure.
Kurt Elster
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