Eric Farmer:  Thank you, Josh. And thank you guys for battling the rain. Got a small crowd today, but appreciate you being here.

Yeah, we have does anyone, is anyone here familiar with Retention. com? Do you use it? So Retention. com’s identity resolution software helps Shopify merchants recover lost shoppers and increase Klaviyo flow revenue by 2 to 3x. We expand your email list by identifying website visitors, even if they don’t fill out a form, which is cool.

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Okay, a little bit about me. I live in Pleasant Grove. We’ve lived in Utah about 14 years, I think. I’m actually from Colorado originally. We have four kids. That’s my wife in the back there. She’s being supportive and joined me today. And we have a golden doodle just like everybody else. I’m the CEO of Wallaroo Media.

We help D2C brands. Three, three kind of main things. We do creative strategy and build that ad creative for them. We do the media buying and then we build high converting landing pages. So own that whole, the whole funnel for our clients. And I’ve been doing this since 2008. When I’m not doing this, I like to be outdoors.

Like to hike, bike, and anything out there. So if you don’t like blood or you’re eating, don’t look at this next slide. Cause two weeks ago I had probably the worst bike crash I’ve ever been in. So that’s what my nose looked like and my back. My shoulder is still really hurt. I have a separated clavicle [00:02:00] from my my, my scapula.

Don’t punch me in the shoulder or the nose and we’ll be good. Feel free to connect with me. Twitter, LinkedIn. And we’d love to connect online. So here’s the agenda for today. We’ll go through some stuff from last year. Black Friday. So that’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday. If you don’t know the acronym.

We’ll go through what ad, the ad should look like. How we can increase your AOV. What your offer should look like. And the timing. Alright, so last year 52 million consumers worldwide purchased from independent brands powered by Shopify. And that was a 12 percent increase from 2021. That continues to grow year over year.

Shoppers spend climbed across many countries, with consumers globally spending on average about 102. I think that’s good to know because if you’re, right now, know that your AOV is maybe 50 or 60, [00:03:00] around this time of year, consumers are willing to spend more. You could create an offer that…

Pushes that to around a hundred bucks, and your conversion rate might not suffer because of that. So Black Friday saw the highest shopping volume moment during the weekend, with peak sales of more than 3. 5 million per minute at 12 o’clock a. m. on Black Friday. And then these are the top cities, London, New York, Los Angeles, United States.

United Kingdom and Canada top countries. If you are a US only store, and eventually you want to go international this is good information for that. Probably best to expand into Canada, United Kingdom, and then I would add Australia to that. And then these are the top three product categories by sales volume last Black Friday.

Apparel and accessories, health and beauty, and home and garden. Okay, so by now pay later usage, so those are [00:04:00] apps like Affirm Klarna. Did any of you guys use those? Was up 78 percent the week of Black Friday. What that’s saying is you should definitely consider using those apps, having them in your checkout, because people are spending more, probably needing, cash is tight, and they need, they need to be able to spread it out over maybe four months or something.

That being said, you have to have a minimum of $50 to even have it on there. So if your average order size is like $75 or over that, it’s probably a good idea. 73% of Black Friday cyber money sales were made on mobile. So my recommendation here is make sure your site’s obviously mobile friendly, which is a lot more common nowadays.

But what you should do is go into your analytics, look at like maybe where 80% the devices of like where 80% of your sales are coming from. [00:05:00] And you should own those devices as a company. And so whenever you make site changes, whatever, look at the UX UI of all of those devices. Because that’s where people are buying from, and obviously mobile’s huge. Okay. Moving right along here so the ad. Is anyone, just raise your hand if you’ve heard of the IADA framework before. Awesome. That means you can learn something today. Grab attention, pique interest, create desire, and take action. These are examples for Black Friday, for each of these things.

You grab attention. Black Friday exclusive 30 percent off site wide, right? That’s going to peak people grab people’s attention. Peak their interest, discover the must have men’s dress shirt of 2023. People are like what is this must have dress shirt? And then you create that desire, feel more confident than ever in board meetings.

And then [00:06:00] have, that call to action at the end. Buy Yours Today While Supplies Last. So that’s just a, an example of that framework. And that’s just how we think as human beings. And so this is a great framework to use. In your ad copy make sure you’re using power words, is what we like to call them.

That trigger, specific emotions or reactions from people. So FOMO, right? Fear of Missing Out. With exclusivity, limited time this is essential, you can literally just say, don’t miss out, and then the urgency behind that, right? Hurry, today only, a flash sale, 24 hours only, last chance to get this what’s not on here but it’s a good one is only so many left.

And then promotional is obviously a big one and you can see there lots of the words to use. Okay, so with your ad creative. There’s a variety of ad types. And you want a [00:07:00] variety. You don’t want to just use statics. You don’t want to just use videos. If I’m, let’s take meta, Facebook and Instagram as an example.

They want you to be, they want you to have a variety. Because it’s a better experience for their users. If they know that you, that a user is, close to buying. They’re going to show your ad to that user multiple times. But they don’t want to have to show the same ad to that person. They want, they want a variety.

Because it’s just a better experience. They stay on their site longer. And Facebook will reward you with a cheaper CPM if you do this.

Okay, so here’s we’re going to talk a little about the creative. So these are like your traditional creatives, right? So these are just static they have bold text on them that very quickly you know how much you’re getting off, what the sale is and that’s really it. People probably aren’t even reading the copy.[00:08:00]

Something you can also do is take all of your ads that have worked throughout this year or in the past, and just throw your Black Friday, Cyber Monday messaging on an existing ad that’s worked really well. So these are two clients of ours. You can see the dough, cookie dough. All we did was add the 20 percent off messaging.

It was, everything else was the same. It had been a really good ad throughout the year. And then with LeafShave, we just add those two green lines at the top. 15 percent off Cyber Monday. Everything else was the same.

Alright, this is a huge one. DPAs, Dynamic Product Ads. You definitely want to optimize that. And you can do it at the ad level. You can see in these two examples. The You Suck at Golf when there’s a frame. You can actually create that frame in the ad [00:09:00] level that says, so as they’re swiping through the carousel, Black Friday.

It’s just reminding them, this is a sale. 30 percent off. Get a gift with purchase. And then with this Beckett Seaman in one in the corner, you can see that, that sticker. So that’s also, you just have to have the… Little JPEG image and upload it. And so that’s not a Black Friday one. I couldn’t find one to use, but it could say 30 percent off or something in the corner of all the different products as they swipe through.

Okay. Onto AOV. Let’s talk about AOV. All right. So bundles is an amazing way to increase your AOV.

One of the coolest things to do is combine top selling products. With maybe underperformers or something that’s about to expire. Cause you can, people want those top performers, and then, but you can combine it with something that maybe isn’t moving. Inventory is stagnant, you need to push through it, so just [00:10:00] combine them.

They actually pay more for that top performer that they want. They get the lower performer, and you get rid of your inventory, maybe it’s expiring soon, right? For Black Friday, it’s important to include at least a 20 percent discount. If, right now, if I were to go to most e commerce websites, I could probably get either a 10 or 15 percent discount, or maybe even 20, just by signing up for their email list.

If your offer isn’t stronger than that on Black Friday, it’s whatever. Because people there’s no urgency behind that because consumers think I can get that any time of the year. Make it feel exclusive, call the bundle something cool. You’re our VIP, this is our VIP pack. Limited edition.

Some good ones that we use is like a starter pack, because if it’s a, if it’s a new customer, and they don’t really know what to buy, you’re telling them, hey, this is the thing to buy. This is [00:11:00] how we introduce our, people to our products. And this is the best this is everything you need to get going.

You can get really specific. For example this wasn’t e commerce, but Bed, Bath Beyond has done, they did a dorm bundle in their stores. College kids would go and just they’d have this bundle, it’s called the Dorm Bundle for freshmen, and you just buy it all. And it’s really easy, they’re like, oh, this is everything I need right here.

And it removes a lot of thinking from the consumer’s brain, and they’re just like, I need that. So obviously price it higher than your current AOV. You have to do the calculation, we’ll get into that a little bit. And then put free shipping threshold 20 percent over AOV. An example of that is let’s say your AOV is 50.

You want your AOV to be 80 for Black Friday. You can market it, put the bundle at 100, 20 percent off, so then it’s still 80, but then that’s still [00:12:00] 30 more than your normal AOV. So you’re winning, customer’s winning, all around win. Actually, so this is an example of that. And this is the best framework to use.

Let’s say your AOV is 50. You want your… Bundle price point to be 150, which is great, right? That’s three times your normal AOV. You need to have 250 worth of value in that bundle. But you can still market off 40%, so they feel like they’re getting an incredible deal. You’re tripling your AOV, and these numbers obviously have to work with your margins, your gross margins, whatever those are.

But this is a great one to use. Okay, so tiered promos. This one makes it a little more complex. I like to keep things simple, but this also works. Let’s say your AOV is 60. You can say spend 100, get 20 off. So they know they’re getting, okay, 20%. If you spend 200, [00:13:00] you get 50 off. If you spend 300, you get 100.

And that percent off increases a little bit with each tier. And then keep in mind, three tiers is probably the max. Don’t go more than three. And typically consumers are thinking, what’s the least amount I can spend, but save the most? And so what this does, is it gets people to buy that second tier a lot of times.

Maybe they’re not willing to spend 200, but they’re willing to spend 150, and they feel like, okay, I’m still getting 25 percent off. This is a good one. And that’s how you want to use tiered. So gift cards is a great one. And the reason why is you can actually increase your AOV without discounting.

And the reason is, let’s say you’re, again you have the 60 AOV, you can say spend a hundred, so they actually spend a hundred, your AOV increases by like 67%, but then they [00:14:00] get a 20 gift card, a 25 gift card, whatever, again, you guys, you can Works with your finances. Then you can have that gift card expire, I don’t know, probably 90 days is better.

Give them time, to not have to buy right away. But what that does is it brings them back to your site within the 90 days. And they’re going to want to spend at least the amount of the gift card, usually more. So you’re getting them to come by again. That second purchase is actually when they’re getting…

The discount, right? They’re using that 25 gift card. You just have to remember to send them emails because if the gift card expires, that’s a bad experience and they’ll be mad at you.

Okay, so those are the top ways to build an offer around increasing your AOV. But let’s specifically dive into the offer itself. Simplicity is key. Attention span is at an all time low. They’re getting hit with tons of ads.[00:15:00] Competition. Is that an all time high? That real estate, that ad real estate is more expensive than ever this time of year.

Create one offer. Don’t have all these offers at the same time. That makes it confusing and complex. And after they click on the ad… They’re trying to remember everything.

So percent off typically works better than dollars off. The reason why is that people don’t have to do math. They can immediately think, Okay, I know exactly how much I’m saving on this product.

32 percent off versus 30 percent off. Even though they’re getting that 2%, You might want to just say 30. It’s easier to remember. And that 2 percent doesn’t matter in the consumer’s mind. Something that we’ve seen work well for consumables, and, if the example here is, you’d use dollar amounts if you’re talking about unit, like price per unit.

Coffee for example. They could see the price point, and let’s, I don’t know, [00:16:00] 60 or whatever for a bag of coffee. Maybe that feels expensive. But if you say it’s only 2. 21. And then oh, that’s not so bad. I spend five or six dollars when I go to Starbucks. This is actually way cheaper. So that, that helps alleviate price points.

And same thing with the protein, just same example. You break it down, you help them understand, oh, per use, it’s actually not that bad.

Okay, so if you are using a promo code, which most brands do, make sure that when they click on in the ad, It’s auto applied. Now if your site isn’t set up to do that, I’m, I don’t know a site that isn’t this day and age, but if you do use a promo code, or sometimes, so we have a client who’s opening up a sale seven days before it’s an early, an early word thing, right?

So it’s not site wide, you have to have the code Because we’re just running [00:17:00] ads. Make it simple. They can remember it right away. Because it’s not going to be on the site everywhere. Remember, it’s just from the ad. They have to put it in when they get to the cart. Just has to be super simple. Five characters and you can even make them feel special.

This is the VIP 25. Cool, I’m a very important person. I’m going to buy this.

This is a really good one for ads and email. Just being very transparent and saying, Hey, look, this is our biggest sale of the year. You are not gonna see another sale from us like this again. And if you never discount, if this is like the one time of year you do, then you just tell them. This is our only sale of the year and consumers think I know I’m gonna be buying from this company eventually.

I might as well buy right now then and get it on sale. Works really good in email. [00:18:00] Subject lines, and then again, an ad copy or even overlay text in the ad.

So these are the top four most popular discounts. You got your site wide sale. That’s pretty common, and I like those as a consumer. You just don’t have to think. It’s okay, 30 percent off no matter what I buy. Do a free gift with purchase. With that one, you just have to, make it very clear that, what they’re getting, and then it needs to be auto.

Included. So they click on the product, add to cart, the gift is automatically included. Don’t make it hard. The tiered promo, which I talked about, and then we haven’t talked about this one, BOGO, which is buy one, get one. Buy one, get one free if you can afford that, or buy one, get one 50 percent off, are very typical.

And that’s, what’s cool is that can also increase AOV. Or, they’re getting more product from you, but it’s just a different way to [00:19:00] message percent off, if you think about it. But, BOGOs work really well.

Alright, so if you are normally sending traffic to the homepage collection page, product page, definitely consider building an offer landing page. Okay, that talks about the offer and just answers these four questions. You, it has to answer these questions. Obviously, what’s being sold. And then, as consumers, we’re pretty selfish, let’s just be honest.

We’re always asking, what’s in it for me? Especially if I’m gonna give you money. How does it benefit them? What gives this brand credibility to sell me on this product? A great way to include that is with third party reviews. Consumer reviews, throwing that on there. Video testimonials work really well.

And then also if you’ve been in any publications, or anything like that, gQ [00:20:00] recommended our product. And then, this is huge, this time of year. How soon will I get it if I order it today, right? And the closer we get to Christmas, the more people are going to care about that. If you don’t have that, it can actually deter people from buying from you.

Cause they’re just not sure if it’s gonna be under the tree for Christmas. That’s huge. And that alone could increase your conversion rate.

Alright, so last on this, just cover your bases. Once you have your offer figured out, put it the header on your website. No matter what page they go to, 30 percent off. Sitewide sale, or whatever your offer is. And, free shipping. Meta, meta shops. If you’re using TikTok, TikTok now has shops.

Make sure all that’s the promotions in there in your catalog. And then with Google, that would be a Google Merchant Center. You [00:21:00] can put a promotion in there. Okay, so this one’s cool. If you guys are using influencers or creators to create UGC content when you’re negotiating whatever with them, make sure that you get the ad rights so that you can use their content in your ads, in your business manager.

Some influencers are super picky about this and if you don’t get those rights, then it’s exactly, you can only use it for exactly what they said, which is like maybe a story, or one post, organically, which then you don’t even reach that many people. Get the ad rights, then you can use it whenever you want.

And then, whitelist their content, right? The creator… They give the brand access to their business manager so that you can use their audience, which is amazing. You’re literally tapping into a whole new audience, which you’re obviously using that influencer because their following is your target demographic.[00:22:00]

Okay, so this is last section, so timing of your offer. So this is just an example. I should have said this at the beginning, but if you connect with me on LinkedIn, DM me, I will send you this, so you don’t need to take pictures or anything, I’ll send you this whole deck. One Week Before Black Friday.

Now this is like more complicated to think about it this way, but this works. The reason I want to show this is like the frequency of when you should be… Showing things to your, to consumers. Open up your offer 15%, most loyal customers. Make them feel so special. You do the weekend before or Black Friday.

Start your offer, you do ads, emails, SMS. If you have an app, which is really cool. If, your customer is willing to keep your app on their phone. One of the best ways is a push notification that you can take advantage of and cheapest, right? And [00:23:00] then you can actually have the sale only be on the app and not your website for maybe, a couple days before it opens up to everyone else.

And you really make those app users feel special. It’s a way where they’ll want to keep the app on their phone because then they know they’re getting early access and everything’s going to be in stock for them. They’re not going to have to worry about stuff running out. Black Friday, save your best deal.

You’re typically gonna want, so that you go hard, okay? You gotta go hard. You can’t annoy people enough on Black Friday because they’re expecting it. We’re all, I know I’m gonna get a hundred emails, okay? I’m not annoyed at you, I get it. Midnight, 8am, like 4pm, 10pm, four emails. Don’t forget, and then oh, I’ll get into it in a bit.

I’ll skip what I was gonna say. Keep that sale going through the weekend. It’s just expected. If you’re not running a sale just expect lower conversion rates. [00:24:00] But you’re paying a premium for those ad placements. Cyber Monday, I have mixed feelings on this. You could keep the same sale going through Cyber Monday.

If you want to change things up, even just change up the messaging. So instead of Black Friday, it says Cyber Monday. That works. Or you can have a whole new offer. The only thing with that is… In your ads, if you’re changing out your ad, it has to learn, it has to go through the learning process. But if it’s been learning all weekend, it might do better.

If you keep with the, keep the same ads going through, through Monday. Another thing to think about or remember is if you’re just spending a ton, you’re pushing more budget, maybe you’ve doubled or tripled your budget for Cyber Monday. And it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and you’re just like, man, where…

Where’s all the revenue? People buy like tons of revenue will come in. Until midnight. 9pm to [00:25:00] 12pm like 12am. You gotta hold strong. And keep that budget going. Because people, they saw your ad at work, school, wherever. And they’re like, I don’t have time to buy this right now. I’m gonna do it tonight.

They get home, they eat dinner, they put the kids to bed. Then they start shopping. But you have to get in front of them. All day long. And then also, keep the promo don’t just shut it off right at midnight. You get those last minute shoppers, and it might be a bad experience if they were ten minutes late.

If you can keep it open for a couple hours, or Hawaii time, then that, that helps some stragglers get in there, and then they feel good, because they got the sale. Giving Tuesday is a thing. If you want to worry about that or not typically people focus on a charity and they’ll donate 10 percent of profits to a charity, and if you’re, if if you’re, there’s a really strong mission behind your brand[00:26:00] obviously pick a charity that you’re

Okay, so holiday, last thing, I think we talked about that. But that shipping deadline is so important. Okay, so here’s some bonus email SMS tips. Kyle, don’t get mad at me. So more is better, like I said. You email multiple times. Use scarcity. So this is what I was going to talk about. In the subject line, the first email is only 500 available.

And I don’t know how much you want to fudge the numbers here, or, be honest, but three hours later you email again and say, there’s only 300 left, and then four hours later, we’re down to 150, only 150 left, and then, 10pm, we only have 45 left in stock, by now. And I don’t know, every email they’re just like, ugh, getting down there, should I get it or not?

And then they create, you create that FOMO and that urgency right away. And make sure it’s in the subject line, because [00:27:00] that’s a lot of times what only I think people are reading. So build your list. This is something that you could be doing right now for your Black Friday sale. With ads, you can have lead gen ads where people are just giving you their email.

But it can literally say hey, Sign up now to get early access to our Black Friday sale. And then you know people that are actually signing up they want to know what your deal is. So then when you email them, they’re not gonna be annoyed or bugged. And they know that they signed up for your email.

And then check out retention. com. So I’m gonna do a little shout out to our sponsor today. Because they help grow your list. And then we talk about this, but give early access, have the VIP sale. And this is cool, you can… Send a personalized email from the founder or CEO, saying hey, so and thank you for being a loyal customer of X brand, and, that can come off as very genuine and heartfelt [00:28:00] signed, founder.

And then, lastly, remember, now’s not the time to run tests, okay? Plan on some big A B test during Black Friday. Nope. Go with what’s been working already. If it worked last year, just do it again. And don’t, you don’t need to worry about testing anything. Go big or go home. So this is this is the pinnacle of the year for e com.

The slower months throughout the year, which is kinda right now, September, October you’re rewarded in Q4 for that work. Basically saying don’t leave any money on the table. Go big and then don’t worry about your brand reputation this time of year when it comes to discounting a lot of brands we work with brands that really struggle to discount which I’m okay with I don’t like a ton of discounting personally Because you actually train your customer to only buy from you when you’re on sale [00:29:00] So throughout the year like I don’t really I’m not a huge fan of discounting but this time of year It’s just expected Apple even does it now, right?

They’ll give you gift cards when you buy something or if you buy it from Amazon or Costco, it’s it’s cheaper. You’re not gonna cheapen your brand if you just do one sale a year. Okay just really quickly, we’re all human, right? We’re all very busy. We all have a lot of problems.

And that’s really what we’re thinking about throughout the day. When you as a brand have just a few seconds, actually, on average, 1. 7 seconds, to grab someone’s attention, and they’re thinking about all their problems you have to answer this one question. Answer this question in the consumer’s mind.

Why should I care about this? As soon as you can.[00:30:00] And I think that’s it. Hope you enjoyed that. You can scan this actually. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I will send you this slide deck. A Black Friday, Cyber Monday swipe file of a ton of cool creative. We use a tool called Foreplay. Weird name.

But, if you’ve ever, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, it’s really awesome. We pull in tons of creative from competitors to show our clients here’s what your competitors are doing, or here’s some good ideas for creative. I’ll send you that file, and then we have a PDF of just top ad types that we’ve, we know work.

And that’s it. Thank you guys for coming.