Tag: Promotions

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#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

marketing
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

Welcome to episode 47, where we’ll discuss our top tips for training your marketing team. Our co-founder Alison will dive into the importance of ongoing education and training in the agency and marketing space. At UMAI, our approach has always been to hire & train bright individuals with potential and focus on ongoing education for our team. We’ve developed our own comprehensive training course, drawing from our decade of experience as in-house marketers, as well as in our marketing agency. In this episode, Alison will share key insights to elevate your marketing team’s skills and help your brand scale. Let’s get started! 🤓
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 2:37] UMAI Marketing’s top tips for training marketers
[2:38 – 5:14] Tip 1: Document Everything
[5:15 – 7:52] Tip 2: Incentivize Continued Learning
[7:53 – 10:41] Tip 3: Onboarding and Ongoing training
[10:42 – 11:31] Check out our Marketing Training resources!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the Black Friday Cyber Monday Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:58] 
Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode number 47. We’re calling it Our Top Tips for Training Your Marketing Team. Alison here, and I’m here to talk to you about something that is near and dear to our heart, and really something that every single one of our team members values as well. That is ongoing education and training. It’s very important if you’re in the agency or marketing space. So when we started UMAI, Karen and I knew that we wanted to find talented, smart individuals with potential, but not necessarily experts in their field. We’d rather hire someone smart and savvy rather than, say, field experts who may not be a great culture fit, and give them the training and education that they need to develop their skills.

So from the beginning, we drilled building out SOPs for everything, and even created our own course to train anyone, including our team, how to be a great marketer. We put everything we knew in this training course that we learned from the past 10 years of being in-house as well as in our own marketing agency serving multiple CPG brands at the time. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be sharing a few of our best tips on how to train your new marketing hire or get your marketing team to the next level to help your brand scale. All right, let’s get into it.

[2:28]
Tip number one, document everything, especially anything that is repeatable or anything that you know is the best way to do something that you want the rest of your team to follow, or something that is inherently difficult or the average person would need direction. Documenting it is going to speed up that process for anyone on your team. Most of these documents come in the form of a written SOP, or standard operating procedures, or we use a lot of video, so video captures using Loom or a screen recording via QuickTime Player is great. As you start collecting all of your SOPs, all of your video how-tos, create a library of them. For example, ours is stored in a Google Drive folder, and we have sub-folders with all of the different marketing levers that we pull, so like one for social media, one for email, and we try to use keywords so someone can come into our internal SOP Drive folder and quickly search for exactly what they need.

These have become super handy, obviously when we bring and onboard someone new to our team, but also with interns. We have generally three-to-six-month intern contracts, and it could get overwhelming retraining every quarter, so instead what we do is we give them exactly the SOPs that they’re going to need, exact videos that they’re going to need, and they can get started right off the bat. And final thing about documenting everything. This was something that Karin and I ingrained in our team, every single person that came on, our first hire, we said, “Everything you do, we want to see an SOP for it,” and this just made it super streamlined. We could review those SOPs instead of shadowing that person for a week. We could just look at their SOP and say, “You should do it this way. This way would be faster,” or we’d learn something new. And then if that person went on to a different role and we hired someone else, they had everything that they needed upon onboarding, so a huge thing to do when you’re starting a company or an agency is to drill that into your team, “Do it yourself. Write as many SOPs. Do as many videos as you can,” as you go through different processes.

[5:15]
Okay, tip number two is incentivizing continued learning. Sometimes, the education and the value of learning alone are incentive enough for marketers. Generally, marketers love learning. It’s really part of our job. But if you can find out what incentivizes your team beyond just the value of education or beyond just getting better at developing their skills, then you can better ensure that your team is constantly learning, improving, and evolving, which is only going to be great for your own business.

For example, we give our team a yearly stipend for them to spend on any new course to take, so they’ll just know that they have a certain amount of money a year. Sometimes we go over it, but they will just come to us and be like, “Hey, I think I really need a course on project management. I think I’m taking too long to get things moving through a Basecamp, or our project management system. I think if I took the time to learn more, then we could be even more streamlined as a team.” And it’s like, “Okay, do it. Let’s go. Here’s your money. We’ll buy it for you,” and generally, more of the team members step up and also take someone’s course too.

We also have no-call Fridays, because Fridays, for us, if you do need to take Friday off, go for it, but having a quiet Friday allows our team to reserve some of that time to learning, online learning through courses, reading, email newsletters, blogs, et cetera, so Fridays are generally our time to learn. 

And then the final thing I’ll say about incentivizing continued learning is we do a quarterly anonymous survey to our team. If you have a small team, it might be difficult to know, to be anonymous, but making it anonymous just helps people know that they can be as honest as possible, and we simply just ask them, “What motivates you to do a good job?” And a few other questions. And the answers are all over the board. Some people, it’s money. Some people, it’s just words of affirmation. Some people just need to know that they’re supported by the team, and that they are supporting their own team, which is awesome. So really try to dive in and understand what each person needs to be better, work harder, et cetera, because it’s not always what you think it’s going to be.

[7:53]
And then finally, tip number three is onboarding and ongoing training, so ensure your onboarding is the best user experience possible. Onboarding your team, you should spend a good chunk of your time making sure it is streamlined and easy to comprehend, so take your time onboarding new employees, and let them shadow the person who is currently doing that role for as long as possible. For our team, onboarding lasts eight weeks, so what happens in week one is just getting a deep dive, downloading all of the materials. We have an onboarding deck, with videos and links to everything, just getting familiar, meeting the team, things like that. And then shadowing starts, and shadowing lasts around four weeks, so they’re going to shadow the person who is currently doing that job for four weeks. If you can do that on your team, the more time they get to see how the job has been done, the better, and during that shadowing period, they also start providing feedback on what they think could be improved, what could be better. It’s always great to get new eyes on a role that’s been in existence for years, and maybe hasn’t changed that much or evolved.

And then after that four-week period, the next four weeks are them kind of stepping into a leadership role, stepping into that role, and having the person who previously had that role shadow them. So they might be on any client-facing calls or team calls, but silent, and then providing feedback after the call, and then they’ll also have a weekly call, usually with the person whose role they’re taking over, just to talk through any questions, or any feedback, or anything that they think could be better with the role.

But it also doesn’t stop at onboarding your team, especially for marketers. As things change constantly in this space, so if you want your team to stay current and optimized, it’s important that you provide ongoing training or continued learning, so sending your team to things like marketing conferences, having them sign up for webinars or other virtual events, or doing like we do and giving them a stipend or purchasing a online course for them. While this is maybe an additional upfront cost, it is absolutely worth the investment in not needing to rehire and onboard again. That takes a lot of resources to do, and it’s better to have retention with your employees, so having to rehire and onboard is obviously losing a lot of valuable time, and we all know that time is money.

[10:42]
All right, y’all. That is it for our top three tips for training your team to stay current and continue to create better and better marketers. Investing in your team is investing in your business, so if you’re ready to make an investment in training or continued marketing education, you absolutely should check out the Consumer Goods Growth Course. It’s the digital blueprint that will allow you to train your marketing team and drive consistent sales for your CPG, and you can do it all in just six weeks. It’s what we use to train every single person that comes on our team. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to umaimarketing.com/training, and as always, you can DM us on Instagram @umaimarketing if you have any questions after listening to this episode.

Karin Samelson: [11:32]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM @umaimarketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.

Alison Smith: [11:50]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#46: Mary Ruth’s Promo Email Deep Dive

promo email
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#46: Mary Ruth's Promo Email Deep Dive

We’re talking about boosting your Q4 profitability! 🤑 As we gear up for the exciting holiday season, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, now is prime time to start laying the foundation for your most successful sales quarter ever. And guess what? It’s time to start planning your promo emails!

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to create promo emails that get you results; we’re talkin’ opens, clicks, and SALES! We’ll look at a successful example from MaryRuth’s Organics, and we’ll share three key tips for writing effective promo emails: urgency, social proof, and simplicity. 

Let’s dive into the world of promotional emails and seize the sales that lie ahead. Success is just a few clicks away – so let’s get started! 📩
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 1:47] Introduction to promo emails
[1:48 – 3:25] Mary Ruth’s Organics killer promo email strategy
[3:26 – 5:15] Tips for creating effective promotional emails
[5:16 – 7:50] Three promo email must-haves
[7:51 -9:06] Closing + BFCM Kit is now available!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the Black Friday Cyber Monday Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#46: Mary Ruth’s Promo Email Deep Dive

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:58]
Hi, y’all. I’m here to keep sharing tips on how to make Q4 your most profitable quarter yet. Black Friday, Cyber Monday planning is in full swing and it’s the perfect time to dive in and start setting up the groundwork for the biggest sales of the year. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking all about promo emails. So to start, we’re just going to talk about what a brand that we really love, who kills it with e-commerce did, and then give you some tips on what to do with your emails coming up. So we are going to be talking about MaryRuth’s Organics. It’s a supplement company that has supplements for babies, toddlers, adults, just about everybody, and their e-commerce really crushes it.
 
[1:48] 
What they did, they had four daily emails over four days, hyping the sale on Black Friday through Cyber Monday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. They didn’t have an early sale or anything like that, they just did it for those four days last year. The emails were super short and sweet and contained large headlines detailing the promo, included lots of social proof in the form of testimonials and they had plenty of product blocks to encourage folks to click through and purchase. Product blocks meaning pulling in from Klaviyo and it’s your product in it, it shows the pricing and it has a button to click and shop now. Subject lines were really straightforward and three of the four subject lines featured the promo really prominently. They also included some urgency, with language like, “Limited time,” and “Extended,” and the use of the hourglass timer and alarm clock emojis to really just push opening it right now, getting the product right now and utilizing the sale. The CTA buttons, the call to action buttons were really active. They used active language like, “Shop sale now,” and “Bundle up,” to encourage increasing average order value and bundling and, “Last days to save,” again with the urgency and, “Save now.” So that is a really high look at what they sent last year. 
 
[3:26]
But you’re asking, “Hey, what am I going to do this year?” So here are some additional tips. How many emails should I send during my promo? What we generally say is it depends on how long your promo is. So for shorter promos, send an email every day, if you’re able, just like MaryRuth’s did, they had a four-day promo and they sent an email every single day. For longer promos with a longer duration, send a reminder email at least every two to three days, depending on how long it is.
 
You want to make sure that it’s top of mind for your customers and they’re getting reminders often, especially it’s longer. And you might be asking yourself, when should I send these emails? What we want you to do is test your sends throughout the year and find the typical day and time that you get your highest opens and clicks. So there is some preliminary work that you need to do. You need to be testing a lot during the entire year to make sure that you know the data, you know you have the analytics that tell you, “Hey, send it on Mondays. Send it on Wednesdays. Send it in the mornings. Send it in the afternoons to be able to get the highest opens, clicks and revenue from your emails.” Make sure at the very least though that you have an email going out the day your promo launches, an email going out 24 hours before it ends and then make sure to resend your emails to non-openers. That first and last one are super important to sending to non-openers. So you can do that on the backend, you can toggle and segment based on if they’ve opened, clicked or just generally engaged with your emails. 
 
[5:16]
And what should be in those emails? The three things that we want you to focus on with your promo emails is urgency, as we’ve discussed. Social proof, like testimonials showing that other people like your product and the people that are reading your email will as well. And keep it simple, a simple design. You want to make sure that everything is above the fold. A click to your website, all of the important details, no one has to keep scrolling through their email to be able to figure out exactly what you’re offering them.
 
And then a few subject line recommendations. Keep it straightforward and direct. You don’t need to get all fancy with your language here, just keep that copy super straightforward and direct and put the promo details front and center. If you’re offering 50% off, 40% off, 30% off, make it very clear in your subject line that that’s what you’re doing. And then again, I’ve said it once, twice, three times already, I’m going to say it a fourth time, add in some urgency, especially for those last couple of emails you sent. “Last chance to get this deal. Last chance to get the biggest deal of the year.” And then there’s an option to add in a first name field to really make your customer feel special. Think of yourself as a consumer. When I get an email in my inbox that says, “Hey, Karin, open this for 50% off.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, no problem. I will. I’ll get on it.”
 
And then some call to action recommendations. Again, use active language. You can also test using second person pronouns like you, your, yours. And an example of that is, “Get your discount now.” It just has that personalization and connection to the person reading your email. You can also test using your most bold, branded colors and make sure the color contrast is really there. So for example, try to avoid using a yellow call to action button with white font on it. You want to make sure it’s bold and super easy to read. And add those call to actions throughout the email. Put them everywhere, put them in buttons, put them in hyperlink in the plain text, put call to actions everywhere to get somebody to click through and purchase. And of course, as mentioned, make sure to have at least one call to action above the fold. So that can be a tiny, thin banner at the very top of the email, it can be a hyperlink if it’s a plain text email, it can be a call to action button right underneath a header text.
 
[7:51]
So those are some super basic examples of how to send, what to put in your subject line, how to design the email. And never forget those three things that we mentioned, it’s that urgency, social proof and simple design for your promo emails and you’re going to crush it. So if you want to make Q4 the most profitable quarter yet without the headache of not knowing what to share and when, we’ve made it super easy on you, you now have access to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit. It’s a comprehensive checklist that details all of the assets that you need in order to execute a high converting profitable holiday promo. Or just about any promo really.
 
It’s the same strategies we’ve implemented to make our clients millions in revenue over the years. The kit also contains done-for-you templates that allow you to plug in your brand info, export and schedule with a few clicks of a button. Check it out now at umaimarketing.com/bfcm-kit. That’s umaimarketing.com/bfcm-kit. Now let’s go get those sales.
 
Karin Samelson: [9:07]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [9:25]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

Hi there, CPG friends! Welcome to Episode 45, where we’re diving deeper into how to choose a successful promo offer for your brand. With Q4 just around the corner, it’s time to gear up and make some serious cash! And guess what? We’re here to equip you with the best tips and tricks to make this sales quarter your most successful one yet.
 

Today’s episode is extra special because we have our amazing team member Carley Jones joining us to share her promo expertise and insights. Together, we’re going to unleash six revenue-driving tips that will help you pick killer promo offers, and set the stage for a profitable Q4.

So buckle up; next stop: choosing your Q4 promo offer. 🎉

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 3:50] Introduction to Planning Your Q4 Promos
[3:56 – 5:55] Tip 1: Test Promo Offers First
[6:54 – 9:09] Tip 2: Determine Your Promo Profit Margin
[9:10 – 13:59] Tip 3: Determine Your Web Needs
[14:00 – 20:06] Tip 4: Keep it Simple
[20:07 – 22:42] Tip 5: Test Messaging
[22:43 – 28:34] Tip 6: Don’t Overdue Sales!
[28:35 – 30:03] Closing + How to Work with Us!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Apps mentioned –

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the BFCM Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, Umai Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Welcome to Episode 45, Six Tips for Picking a Killer Promo Offer. We’re going to be talking about our promotional offers to get you ready for the lovely Q4 season. Q4 is generally, the biggest sales quarter for brands like yourself to make a large chunk of change. So we are here to get you prepped and eager to put together the best sales quarter yet. Today is an extra special episode, as we have our team member, Carley, on with us today. Welcome, Carley.
 
Carley Jones: [1:41]
Thank you.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:43]
Yay, Carley. How are you doing today?
 
Carley Jones: [1:47]
I am good. I’m excited to be on my first podcast ever.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:53]
Ever, I know.
 
Carley Jones: [1:55]
Glad it’s with you guys.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:56]
How have we not had you on? I don’t know. But for anybody who’s listening, leave a extra special review saying Carley was your favorite guest ever, so it can live on. But Carley Jones has been with UMAI for a really long time. How long has it been now, Carley? Three years?
 
Carley Jones: [2:16]
Almost three years.
 
Alison Smith: [2:19]
Almost three years. I’ll file it.
 
Carley Jones: [2:20]
The end of this month.
 
Karin Samelson: [2:21]
Oh, it’s so crazy. We’ve only been around for five, so more than half of that time. And we’re so thankful for her. Carley started on as our marketing coordinator, creating a lot of content for us. She has a side hustle, she’s amazing at photography, and then she moved into account management. So, a lot of our old clients definitely know Carley, and current clients, really. Now, she is our project manager here at UMAI, and she helps us execute some amazing promos for our current clients.
 
Carley Jones: [2:53]
Yeah, it’s crazy. Time flies when you’re having fun. I can’t believe it’s almost three years. Thank you, guys.
 
Karin Samelson: [3:00]
Three years is a long time.
 
Carley Jones: [3:03]
A very long time. Very, very proud of that, and all of the growth and stuff that we’ve had. So yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I know that it’s a super, super busy time. It’s Q3, so we’re all gearing up for our Black Friday, Cyber Monday campaigns, but just keep in mind that these tips can be applicable for any sort of promo, throughout any quarter. Keep that in mind as you’re listening to this or watching it.
 
Our recommendation is, typically, one major promo per quarter, with smaller segmented offers each month, and we’ll obviously get into this a little bit more, but Black Friday, Cyber Monday should be your biggest sale of the year, to really, really end that year strong. So, let’s get into our six tips for picking a killer promo offer.
 
Tip number one, this is, test promo offers ahead of time for big sales seasons. We typically don’t recommend testing new offers on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. You really want this sale to do well and testing offers can go really well or really bad. So, do it ahead of time, figure out what works for your audience, really.
 
So, let’s say that you want to run a tiered offer for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. We’d highly recommend testing a smaller threshold during a Memorial Day sale or a Labor Day sale, to determine which of those tiers would work best, and then replicate that offer later on with different pricing thresholds. This can really, really help you determine what your audience is going to respond best to.
 
Alison Smith: [4:49]
Yeah, I will say, not only what you just said, Carley, to help understand what customers will respond to, but also there’s so many different web apps and things that have to get integrated and it’s just almost like a trial run for you or your team too, to make sure this isn’t going to be an absolute shit show day.
 
Carley Jones: [5:12]
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely a lot easier if you’ve tried something before and you know what apps work, and you know what customer service issues you could potentially have, and then rework from there. So, definitely important to think ahead and test ahead.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:28]
Yeah, and who wants to be stressed out during the holiday season? These are literally called Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday promos. No one wants to worry about this. We don’t want you to worry about it, so.
 
Carley Jones: [5:39]
Yeah.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:40]
We have a wide variety of folks who we chat with and learn alongside, and some brands are brand new. Brand, brand new. Either they haven’t even started their branding, they just have this concept, or they’ve just launched last month. So, what advice would we give to a new brand that just launched and doesn’t have very much sales data to work off of?
 
Carley Jones: [6:04]
And we’ve experienced this a few times as well, as an agency, and we definitely recommend starting with building email leads and test segmenting offers there. Your best bet to determine what’s going to work with your audience is to run some sort of email AB test, with a percent off offer versus a dollar off offer. And the winner of this test can really help determine which type of offer would be good to move forward with. Regardless of if your audience is a hundred people or 50 people, you can always see what the winner is and move forward from there. Like we said before, I mean, it really is all about testing, when it comes to that.
 
Karin Samelson: [6:43]
Now, we can go in-
 
Alison Smith: [6:45]
That’s our motto.
 
Carley Jones: [6:47]
Yeah, just keep testing. That’s what we always say, and it’s definitely one of the biggest rules that we abide by.
 
We can go into tip number two, now. This is, determining your promo profit. To do this, you will have a formula. You’ll need to first determine your gross profit margin. To get this, use the formula net sales minus cost of goods sold or COGS, divided by net sales. Then you’ll need to pull in your average order value. This can typically be pulled from Shopify or some sort of reporting software. And once you know your gross profit margin and your AOV, you can then play with percentages and dollars off, to see which offer will fit within your profit margins. We do have a calculator for this. I’m not sure if it’s something that we’ve shared, but definitely can. This could help determine a tiered offer like we mentioned before, where it’s a multiple dollars off or percent offs, that are stacked on one another. Or, even be used to help determine a free shipping threshold as well, just based on your profit margins.
 
Alison Smith: [7:57]
Yeah, so that calculator that Carley just mentioned, it is our Break Even Calculator. We’ll add it to the show notes, so that you guys can input all your numbers. And it’ll basically, tell you how much you can spend to acquire a customer, what your profit margin’s going to be. And also, I know we just threw a lot of formulas and weird abbreviations and things at you, so we’ll break all of that down in the show notes. No need to make notes, it’ll all be there.
 
But, okay. So for newer brands or brands that haven’t launched yet, but they’re prepping for launch, they have no idea what their AOV is. They can just use their COGS to understand how much they can discount or spend to acquire a customer and break even, right?
 
Carley Jones: [8:48]
Yes, you can definitely just go off of that cost of goods sold. That’s a really good base to make your profit margin off of, to really help determine what’s doable for your brand. And it’s also good, because once you have an idea of what your offer can be, then you can actually get into the nitty-gritty and promo logistics, and all of that.
 
So that kind of segues us into tip number three, which is, determine if a promotional landing page is needed. This will really depend on what your offer is and how robust that offer is. If it’s a simple 15% off site-wide sale, the answer of needing a promotional landing page is probably no. A website banner with a clear CTA would more likely suffice in that instance. But, if you really, really want to hit it out of the park for a sale like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we definitely recommend it, having a landing page, regardless of what that offer is. This makes it super, super simple for your customers to purchase and get the discount that they are actually looking for. It just keeps URLs simple. It keeps your homepage simple. It really, really simplifies the whole process, whenever you have that landing page.
 
Alison Smith: [9:59]
Yeah, absolutely. Because you can hide things like menu at the top, so people aren’t going off and clicking off. It’s just like they’re there, they’re focused, they know where to click, and that’s all you want.
 
Carley Jones: [10:11]
Yeah.
 
Alison Smith: [10:14]
But, yeah. So let’s talk more about web stacks. Love some apps. So what are your favorite apps and software? What are we currently using for landing page builds?
 
Carley Jones: [10:30]
There are so many, and honestly, it really just depends on what integrates seamlessly with your Shopify plan, if you’re using Shopify. Personally, I prefer Show Grant Shogun. It’s an app that integrates really, really seamlessly with most Shopify themes. So we usually will use that for promo landing pages or early bird opt-in pages that are related to promos.
 
We’ve also used PageFly in the past. It can be a little bit tricky to use this platform, but it does have a drag and drop feature that makes the actual design and build of a landing page super seamless. To keep it easy, you can also just do existing product pages that you have, or collection pages if it’s a site-wide sale or something, and make super slight edits to headers, to include the sale offer language. You can also include price markdowns on the actual page or creating a percent off banner in Canva to add to the page. The possibilities with that are super, super endless, and usually look a lot more natural because it’s an actual product page for your site that matches your theme. But whatever you decide to do, just keep it simple.
 
Alison Smith: [11:43]
Another one of our mottos. Yes, keep it simple, smarty. That’s like, it’s so easy as a marketer or just a business owner, entrepreneur, to just be so into shiny object syndrome, wanting to test it and do it all. So we often have to remind ourselves when we’re building out promotional launches, wait, someone always asks, “Is this too complicated? How do we just make this really streamlined and easy?” And generally, when you do that for promos, your revenue’s going to be higher because if you are confused, your customer is likely going to be confused.
 
Carley Jones: [12:28]
Absolutely.
 
Alison Smith: [12:31]
So I will also mention some other apps that we’ve used in the past and we like to. And this just kind of goes back to why you want to test your promo before, because sometimes you’ll want to use Shogun for instance, but it doesn’t connect with another app that you need to use for this promo. So that, it’s so important to make sure everything’s going to work together. So some other ones we are Instapage and Zipify. I think Zipify, is that Ezra Firestone’s? I think that might be his product. And then also-
 
Karin Samelson: [13:08]
Hey, Ezra, give us some commish if anybody use Zipify.
 
Alison Smith: [13:13]
Yeah, we need that affiliate. And then also we wanted to share our little sneaky tip to find what your competitors are using for their promos, or just all the time for conversion rate optimization. So to do this, all you have to do is go to your competitor’s website and then right click with your mouse, and then choose Inspect, and then it’ll just be a bunch of code and stuff. But in that code, you can actually find out exactly what your competitors are using for popups, or any plugins, or anything that will help with conversion rate optimization. So if you feel like getting sneaky, use that little tip, but okay, let’s get into tip number four, Carley.
 
Carley Jones: [
Sneaky. I love it. So like Alison mentioned before, she mentioned KISS. So tip number four is, keep it simple. Complicated promo logistics can really lead to a customer service headache. Trust me, you don’t want to launch an offer and then immediately receive 60 customer service inquiries about a broken link, or an invalid promo code, instead of seeing sales or 60 happy customers. It can really, really just put a huge damper on things. And if your promo isn’t successful from the start, it can be really, really hard to come back from that, because then you’ll have to send oops emails or an oops SMS, which can be successful. But if you don’t have to deal with that stress, just make sure that things are running smoothly ahead of time by keeping it really, really simple.
 
We almost always will recommend utilizing automatic discounts for most offers when it’s applicable, to avoid that probable misspelling or user error that comes along with using promo codes. No matter how simple a code could be, like Welcome 15, you’re still going to get customer service inquiries about it. You’d be surprised. So if you can avoid it, definitely do so.
 
If you do have to use a promo code, we highly, highly recommend creating something called an addended link. Shopify will actually automatically make this for you, now. They used to not, but now they do. You can actually make these yourselves with a Google URL builder or something, and use it across platforms to promote your offer. What it does is it attaches the code, whatever you made in your platform, to a unique URL, and applies that code to someone’s cart automatically, as long as their cash is clear. If it’s not clear, it won’t automatically apply it. So there can be some issues there, but it does avoid the promo code debacle that sometimes happens.
 
Karin Samelson: [16:07]
Yeah, and if you’ve been selling online or have ever done a promo before, you know how easy it is for people to make mistakes because it’s a constant. You’ll constantly get people like, “Why isn’t this code working?” It’s like, “Well, because you didn’t put it right.” So just making it super easy for them so that you make more money. And we’re all about working smarter, not harder, and keeping it really simple. And we know that apps can make our lives so much easier, and make a really positive difference in our campaigns. So what apps would you recommend to make this process just even more seamless for potential customers?
 
Carley Jones: [16:45]
Yeah, so some apps are better than others, so definitely do your research. Do it on your own. Look at the Shopify store, look at what reviews people have, and also just ask around to your network and see what people are using. Testing apps ahead of time is really going to ensure that there are no bugs. The last thing you want to do is install an app, thinking it will work on the day of a promo, and then it goes live and it crashes your checkout page. That’s happened. That’s happened, because some apps do have bugs.
 
So some of my personal recs that have worked well for our clients in the past, there’s an app called Bundler that works with most Shopify themes, and it allows you to create sort of mix and match bundles and stacks discounts on top of them automatically. So it can be a really, really easy way to make bundles for your page.
 
There’s an app called notably, Tiered Discounts that does exactly that, and it’s one of my favorites. It does operate using codes, but it actually applies to the cart automatically, and stacks to create a really, really awesome tiered discount feature. And, it pops up when you’re getting close to that threshold. It’s just super interactive and it’s done really, really well for some of our Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos.
 
Karin Samelson: [18:04]
Carley, real quick, what is a tiered discount?
 
Carley Jones: [18:07]
So it’s like anytime that there’s a percent off or a dollar off discount that’s stacked. So let’s say you do 10% off 35, and then 15% off 45, and so on, and so on. You can have as many stacks as you want with this app, which I found really interesting. But, we’ve found that over the years of using these tiered discounts and this app in particular, that the mid-tier code, so whatever your middle offer is, if you have three, usually gets the most uses out of the higher and lower tier codes that aren’t used as much.
 
This can really help with AOV, if your pricing thresholds are set a little bit higher. So knowing your profit margins comes in handy when developing discounts like this. So yeah, just a little tidbit that your mid-tier is probably the one that’s going to be used the most. So make sure you set that threshold where it’s going to help your AOV out a little bit, because there’s just something with consumer behavior and consumer psychology where it’s like they see the lower one and they’re like, “Oh, I want to spend a little bit more and get a little bit of a better discount,” but then maybe the higher one’s too much. So the mid-tier one just comes off a little bit more appealing.
 
Alison Smith: [19:18]
Yeah, it’s always great to give people choices, but lead them to what you want them to do. And with our tiered discounts, I believe how we think about it is when there’s three tiers, the first tier is usually around our normal AOV, and then the second tier is like 20% or so more, and then we go from there for the third-highest tier, if that’s helpful for anyone. When you’re actually trying to set these, obviously, test them for your own business, every niche is going to be different. All these talks about apps is making me hungry, too.
 
Karin Samelson: [19:59]
Oh, my God.
 
Alison Smith: [20:00]
I’m like, mm-mm, apps.
 
Karin Samelson: [20:03]
Whoever is editing this, please keep that. Please keep that in.
 
Carley Jones: [20:07]
Now let’s move into tip number five. So this is, pay attention to how the promo is worded. How the offer is presented to a customer can really make or break the potential of getting a sale. For some, 15% off is less attractive than a dollar off offer and vice versa. Testing, like we mentioned in step one, will really help determine what your audience responds best to. With our clients, it really just depends. Some of them, percent off offers work better, some installer off offers work better. It really, really just depends on that audience.
 
Creating a sense of urgency is also key to adding to your promo messaging. Someone is way more enticed to buy if they know a sale ends in 24 hours, versus a sale that lasts seven days. For instance, they may see one of your emails and not buy, since they know the sale is going on through end of month. So keep hyping that scarcity, and set a time limit until that sale is gone for good. It’s really, really important to have that sense of urgency across your promo assets.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:17]
We as consumers, we’re not just marketers, we’re consumers too. And if you give me a deadline, I’m going to want to purchase. I don’t want it to end without me getting something I’ve been looking at. So I love that tip. And even more so, what do you feel about timers on emails or on the website’s cart pages?
 
Carley Jones: [21:40]
Definitely recommend having something, some sort of countdown timer. There’s a ton on Shopify. There’s some that can even be integrated with your email platform. The one that I am used to using is called Countdown Timer Ultimate. There’s so many, but it can really, really get the message across that this sale is ending soon and you need to make your purchase now. And definitely recommend having that on either your main website page, where it’s just a timer that’s ticking. I’ve even seen them on the little header bars. Not header bars. Those are called something way more legit than that, but like the top bar.
 
Karin Samelson: [22:20]
Announcement bar.
 
Carley Jones: [22:21]
Yeah, announcement bar on your webpage. Definitely having them added to your cart at checkout so people can see when that sale is actually ending. And then of course, on those product pages or your landing page like we mentioned before, to create that sense of urgency. So that app was called Countdown Timer Ultimate. We’ll have it linked in the notes. But yeah, now it’s time for our final tip and it’s a big one, so keep that in mind.
 
Tip six is, don’t train your audience to expect a sale. You’re probably thinking that we just spent all of this time talking about promos, and best practices, and what to do and what not to do, but please, please, please remember to use promos sparingly throughout the year. You do not want to train your audience to only buy when there’s an offer on the table. They’re just going to wait till you send the next promo email or they run across your next promo ad. And that can really, really hinder getting sales.
 
Timing for promos will almost always vary, but you don’t want your customers waiting for the next week long sale to purchase. You have to create that, “I need to order now,” feeling, since they don’t know the next time that it’ll be discounted. Obviously, we all know consumer behavior. People are expecting a sale on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. That’s a little bit different. Sometimes they will wait, but other times they’ll be like, “Okay, I need this now. I’m going to buy.” Getting customers to buy at full price will be a year long effort.
 
But keep in mind that, promos can still sweeten the deal for certain customer segments. So if you have people who’ve never bought but keep engaging with you or adding to cart, this is when those abandoned cart emails will come in super handy with offers attached, or enticing returning customers to buy after a certain period of time that they haven’t. So, that’s where win back offers will come into play. It really, really just depends on being strategic and not always offering a site-wide sale, all the time to everyone.
 
Alison Smith: [24:25]
We talk about segmentation all the time, but it’s just so important to hit the right person with the right offer at the right time. But it’s also so easy to fall into kind of like a dopamine trap with promotions, as a brand owner or marketer. You’re sending your list a really great promo deal, and then a ton of money rolls in within a 48-hour period. And it feels good, and you’re like, “Wow, I want to do this all the time and just get a huge cash infusion.” But really what Carley’s talked about is, what you’re doing is you’re training your list to expect it all the time if you continue to do this. And then sales are just going to start dwindling between these periods, and you’re going to be attracting only low value customers, versus creating a brand that’s full of super engaged lifetime fans.
 
So Carley, let’s talk about what the right range of promos for a CPG, D2C brand is throughout the year.
 
Carley Jones: [25:31]
Yeah, outside of those Evergreen offers, like we mentioned, so the win backs, your welcome email flows, manning carts, all of that, we’d recommend having two to four major site wide sales a year. If you go the two sales a year route, having a summer and fall sale is typically the way to go. Just kind of break it up by season. Fall sale will obviously be the Black Friday, Cyber Monday time, but if you opt for four sales a year, this typically will equal out to one sale a quarter, which is what we try to do for our clients. And, can include New Year’s, Memorial Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then holiday sales.
 
These can vary. The timing of these can vary, based on the brand that you have. If you have a brand that is applicable to kids’ products, maybe having a back to school sale makes a little bit more sense, than a Memorial Day sale. Really, really think about what your brand is, and your mission, and who it is that you’re targeting to determine these four sales a year, because it’s going to be different.
 
This does not mean that you can’t run a promo every month, because you can to specific audiences, just not everyone. Maybe hit your top engaged email list with a flash sale, or entice a non-purchaser segment with the deal that they just can’t refuse and it gets them to buy. The promo possibilities are super, super endless, and you just have to find what works for your audience and keep refining it.
 
One of the tips that we don’t have on here is really looking back at past promotions. Look at what you did before and see what performed and replicate it again. It can be really, really easy and simple to do that.
 
Alison Smith: [27:17]
Yeah, so just to kind of recap what Carley just said, because it is so easy and we see it all the time, where people are just like, “Oh, I want to run another sale, another sale.” And then you create so much more work for yourself, too, if you become that brand and you’re just constantly doing that.
So kind of a recap is, we recommend two to four site-wide sales, and that’s where it’s visible on your website. You’re maybe running ads, you may post on social, and you send emails. And even within all those things, you can still segment with email marketing. You still can segment out who exactly you want to send to, to make sure that you’re getting good deliverability. Same with ads. You want to make sure you are spending money that’s going to make money, so you can still do things to kind of reign it in.
 
But, two to four site-wide promos max a year. Everything else can be to a very specific list, and no one else knows it’s happening on the rest of your list. And that’s really cool. You can get really, really smart with your segmented little promos that you can run.
 
Karin Samelson: [28:35]
Awesome, guys. Okay. So that was a lot of information all at once. And so, just to recap all of the amazing tips that Carley has shared for us today. Tip number one, test promo offers ahead of time for big sales seasons. Tip number two, determine your promo profit. Tip number three, determine if a promotional landing page is needed. Tip number four, keep it simple. Tip number five, pay attention to how the promo is worded. And tip number six, don’t train your audience to expect a sale.
 
Alison Smith: [29:06]
That’s right. I hope everyone got a ton of value from these six quick and dirty tips to run a great promo. And if you’re ready to make this year your most profitable year yet, we are now actually taking on our Q4 clients. So we’re accepting new clients for Q4. I believe we have three spots left at the time of this episode. So, if you want to come work with us, you can apply on our website. We’ll help you reach your ideal customers, we’ll help you optimize, strategize, and create high performing social email, and ad content and campaigns for your brand. So to do that, you can book a call with us at umaimarketing.com/profit. If you also go to our website, there should be a little form that you can click on and fill in, and we’d love to chat with you.
 
Karin Samelson: [30:04]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram, if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [30:21]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass, and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

We’re diving into the exciting world of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 🎉 With Q3 just around the corner, it’s time to gear up and start mapping out your holiday promotions to end the year on a high note.

In this episode, we’ll be taking a look back at last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign we executed for a skincare client. In this BFCM case study episode, we’ll review how we planned, executed, and analyzed the biggest sales event for D2C CPG of the year! And how we secured this client an impressive 80% increase in revenue year over year.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be armed with valuable insights to help you plan your very own killer Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or holiday sale. Get ready to take your sales to new heights! 🚀

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 2:12] Introduction to our Black Friday, Cyber Monday (BFCM) Case Study
[2:13 – 6:52] Set Your Goals and Debrief
[6:53 – 8:17] Prioritize Value and Education Before Launch
[8:18 – 10:14] Master Testing and Optimize
[10:15 – 11:38] Audit Your Channels
[11:39 – 15:17] Organize, Plan, and Create Assets
[15:18- 18:00] Create an Early Bird Phase
[18:01 – 22:31] Execute Your Launch via Email, Ads, Organic Social, and Web!
[22:32 – 30:36] Recap: Analyze Your Goals and Determine Where You Succeeded or Missed the Mark
[30:37 – 31:47] Closing
 

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#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Hello everyone and welcome to today’s episode. Allison here. Today, it is just me and we are talking Black Friday, Cyber Monday. As we all know, we’re heading in into Q3. We know what that means. It’s time to start planning your holiday and Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos to close out your year strong.
 
In today’s episode, we’re going to look back at our Black Friday, Cyber Monday promo from last year for a client in the skincare space. This client is a small, two-person team who created a super strong brand using social media alone, and we were brought in in 2022 to execute their emails and social ads to really capitalize on all the organic hard work that they’ve been putting into their business. We’ll talk about what worked for this CPG brand’s BFCM, Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotion that garnered an exciting 80% increase in revenue from the previous year so that you can also plan a killer Black Friday, Cyber Monday or holiday sell yourself.
 
[2:12]
All right, let’s get into it. The first step that we did and that you should also do before starting to execute your promotion is setting your goals and also debriefing from last year’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or holiday promo. You’re going to want to review what worked and what didn’t from your previous promos. So if you don’t already have all that data, pull it into a sheet or a document and add the timeline, what offers you use, what channels you use, and really understand what worked, what didn’t, what channels you didn’t even need to execute. Really think about what you’re capable of executing for this year and try this time to just focus on a few of the highest ROI channels for promotions rather than too many low-return, high-effort channels. That’s something we see a lot for smaller or medium-sized brands even. They make promotions too messy with too many moving parts and it ends up flopping.
 
Obviously, our goal for everyone is to get them omnichannel, but it’s better to execute really well on a few strong channels than execute and flop on too many channels and stress yourself out. So something to consider. When we did this for this brand, we looked back at top performing promos in the past and we identified four different offers that worked really well and had high revenue from our customers. The first one was a tiered promo. A tiered promo is usually there’s three different cart values with different percents attached to them. For example, save 10% when you order $50 or more, save 15% when you order $75 or more, and then save 20% when you order 100 or more. That’s what we call a tiered promo. We also saw that bundles worked really well. So bundling skews that are alike or products that people generally buy together, bundle them together. Usually when you do this, you’re going to be able to offer a more significant discount that’s really attractive.
 
And then the third offer that worked really well for this brand was a free gift with purchase. Usually, the free gift is after they purchase a certain tiered amount or if they purchase a certain bundle or skew, they get a free awesome gift as a reward. And then finally, seasonal or small batch or limited edition products did really well for this particular brand.
 
So we were identifying these four different offers and analyzing them to see what we wanted to run with for this year’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday. After we did some of that offer and promo analysis, we went ahead and started setting our goals. We set a primary goal of increasing our revenue by 20% when compared to the previous period last year. 20% is pretty much a standard increase for a lot of brands. We didn’t have a lot of historical data to go off of, hence using a pretty standard 20% here.
 
And so after you set your primary goal, which generally is going to be sales or revenue, then it’s important to set your secondary and tertiary KPI goals. These are the KPIs that are going to help you measure along the way as your promo unfolds and are more of the actions that get you to that end goal, that end primary goal. For us, they were increasing our average order value for ads by 20%, another 20% standard increase. We wanted to hit a combined ROAS, return on ad spend of 400%. We wanted to make $17,000 in our email promo campaigns alone, and we wanted to hit a 2% click-through rate with our email promo campaigns. So you can see that the secondary and tertiary KPI goals are specifically different channel goals that will help us get that end primary KPI of a revenue increase.
 
[6:53]
After you have set your goals and done some analysis and debriefing of your previous promos to understand what resonates with your customers, the next step in the process is to ensure that you’re currently or have plans to give value and education before your pre-launch or pre-promo starts. Really the quarters before Q2, Q3 should really be about giving value to your leads, to your followers, establishing that trust and then giving them the best pre-purchase and post-purchase experience possible to really establish that know, like and trust. So your emails and your social media and even your ads at this point should not be super salesy. Your goal is still to gain sales, but you’re not really running promos or big discounts or anything like that. You’re really speaking about the value of your product, your brand’s mission, using social proof like that to make the sale. You’re not going headfirst into promos at this point. Again, you’re giving a lot of education throughout your ad creatives and your email and your posts as well. At this time, before your pre-promo launch, focus on giving value and education.
 
[8:18]
Okay, and then next we get into the test and perfect stage. After we’re ensuring that we are set up to give value in the months and weeks before we start the actual promo campaigns, we do need to ensure that all things are functioning across all the channels that we use. We need to ensure that our website conversion rate was optimized and it was fast. For this client, we ran a speed test, which you can also do for free with Google PageSpeed. We also installed an app called Lucky Orange. It’s like a heatmap that you can install on your website. I believe they have a free version as well. You can watch people actually go through your website, go through your checkout flows, everything and see if there’s any issues on your site that people are getting stuck on or that are bringing your conversion rate down.
 
We then tested our different offers that we talked about just before those four different offers that we identified and we tested them two small segments of our top engaged leads. We didn’t use our bigger promos and bigger discounts because we reserved those for Black Friday, Cyber Monday maybe one other time a year. We don’t want our audience to expect that kind of discount. We tested those different types of offers with a smaller level or smaller discounts, lesser valued gifts. So highly encourage you if you’ve planned earlier enough to test out different offers to your top engaged email leads, see what they’re going to like best. You can even survey your list and ask them what they want this Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
 
[10:15]
After we did the testing, we also audited our email automations. We audited our ad campaigns and our social media channels to ensure that everything was firing correctly and deliverability was good. We wanted to make sure our ads were optimized, there was no issues with any of the pages that we are linking to and that our social channel’s bio was… the bio description was optimized for search. And then finally we researched and decided on our web stack or the web apps that we’d need for the promo. That does take some time to, if you’re using Shopify, to sort through all the different apps that they have and find the right one that actually connects with everything that you needed to connect to. So get started on that early, but look for apps like if you need an announcement bar that talks about the sale sitewide, if you need a cart upsell app to help people hit certain thresholds, if you’re doing like a free gift with purchase, if you need a sales page builder for this particular promo. So think about all the things that you could use over this promo period that would really help increase your conversion rate and then go ahead and install them and just make sure that they actually do what you need them to do because we’ve run into that a few times.
 
[11:39]
After the test and perfect phase, then we get into the organizing, the planning, and the actual creation of the assets in these campaigns. We decided on which offer we wanted to move forward with, which was, for this brand, we went with the free gift with purchase. If they purchased over $100 with a product, they got a free really awesome $25 gift. The gift we chose, we even put some thought into that as well. The gift we chose was a great stocking stuffer or it was something that anyone would want as their free gift. So it was kind of a universal great gift. We decided on that offer, then we made a what we call a promo brief.
 
A promo brief is it’s really great if you’re working with a team, an agency, or even riding solo. It’s just a quick one-page document or a quick Google Sheet that outlines the promo start and end dates, the URLs that you’re going to send all traffic to, the links to all of your asset folders, like your email assets, your social assets, your ad assets, and then any other important notes about the promo. It’s really your and your team’s one-stop doc to get a full rundown of everything that you need to know to execute so that you’re not stressing on promo day, wondering where files are or where you’re sending traffic or anything like that. And then you can also use this sheet or document that you created to come back to to make notes on when you’re debriefing on what worked and what didn’t.
 
And then as part as the organization and planning process, we then added all of the assets we needed into our content calendar. We just filled in the different days on our calendar on when these assets would go live on email, ads and social media so that we had a visual representation as well on the timeline of this promo. We decided we were going to need four emails, four ads and four social media posts that we were going to repost to stories as well. And then the messaging and creatives that we made for this promo really spoke about hyping the promo. We talked about the value of the product and the free gift and the benefits it would provide to the customer. And then of course we talked about the scarcity and urgency, that this is limited time, we often run out of stock, things like that.
 
If you’re wanting our assets for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday promos, we actually will be launching our Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit very soon. It’s going to have Canva templates for emails, Canva templates for ads, Canva templates for social media. It’s going to have a sheet for all of your KPI and goal tracking, a place to do your promo briefs and debriefs, and then also a pre and post promo checklist and a few other things too. It’s basically everything you need to have a successful promo. If you do want access to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit when it comes out, send us a DM on Instagram now, @umaimarketing with the letters BFCM and we can tell you more about it. Moving on though.
 
[15:18]
After the organized plan and create phase, now we get into the pre-launch phase. We call this our early bird phase, and this is really about asking people to raise their hand and tell you that they want to buy your product. Our strategy for this promo was to gain existing and new leads about two weeks before the promotion started to get a super engaged list ready to send the promo to first. As we knew, getting these people on an early bird list was going to help increase deliverability of our emails and likely lead to an increase in earnings per recipient. With ads, email and social, what we did is we announced that folks could go sign up to our early bird list and get first dibs on accessing the sale. All we did was make a super simple landing page to capture and tag these leads with Klaviyo. The copy was made to get the lead excited for this sale and it was like coming soon and dramatic. Also, show them love by giving them an exclusive first peak at the promo, first dibs on the promo.
 
So it had both of those elements for the copy. And then to do a pre-launch early bird strategy, simply just send one, maybe two emails to your list and do the coming soon hype that they would be getting exclusive first access to this offer. Send that email to your entire list and direct them to that landing page where they can opt in and get tagged with the early bird segment. And then for ads, run prospecting and retargeting ads to that same landing page. Getting people to pre-opt in. The cost per lead on ads should be, if you’re sending to a landing page, around $3 for totally new cold audiences. Retargeting, it should be even less. Or you can run an on Meta lead form type of ad where they just opt in straight on Facebook and Instagram. Those cost per leads are $1 to $2. They’re super-duper cheap. So you’re not spending a lot of money gaining these leads. And then on social, you’ll just post just like similar to your email or your ad that your followers can go to the link in your bio and sign up to your early bird landing page to get first access to your sale. That’s the early bird strategy. 
 
[18:01]
Now, we’re going to get into the actual launch. We created three emails total announcing the promo. They spoke on the value of the products, the scarcity of this promo, and then finally hyping on the urgency that the promo was ending soon. We sent the promo announcement and all other promo emails first to our early bird segment. So the early birds were in their own segment then to our top engaged leads. Your top engaged leads are generally people who have interacted with the last three to six of the last emails that you’ve sent. And then finally, our third segment that got the email was the rest of the list. But you want to keep them separated because they’re going to have different levels of deliverability and you want to ensure that as many people as possible actually get the email in their primary inbox. That’s why we practice this type of segmentation for promos.
 
We also practice resends. Instead of creating more emails, which you absolutely can do, we won’t hold you back, but if you don’t have time to create six emails versus three, what we do a lot of times is we just resend the same email at a later date with a different, hopefully juicier subject line to people who didn’t open the initial email. Because if they didn’t open that initial email within three to six days, they’d probably already archived it. They’re probably not going to read it. So try getting their attention again with just a new subject line and it’s going to be a brand new email body for them. They likely have not seen it.
 
And then with ads, we created three ads for the actual promo. They were UGC style ads. We are really a UGC native first agency. That’s just what works and converts for CPG brands on Meta. These ads introduced the promo and the free gift, the benefits of the free gift. We also added testimonials, showed how to use the products, and it had a really strong call to action and we were sending the promo emails and the ads straight to our collections page with more details about purchasing $100 worth of product to get that free gift. And then for organic social, we use the same messaging as above in different high-performing formats like using reels and carousel posts. For social, you can add that link in your bio and use that call to action to tell them to go to the link to shop.
 
Again, for web, since this was a cart threshold offer of $100, like I mentioned earlier, we created a collection for this offer with the details just at the very top of that collection. And again, we sent all traffic here and then we also used an announcement bar to highlight the promo if someone landed on any page organically on the website so that they could just click that announcement bar, gets taken straight to the collection where they got some information and were able to directly shop. The reason we didn’t use a sales page for this is because it was an order threshold product. If you are doing something like just a bundle or something a bit more specific, absolutely test using a sales page if that’s something within your wheelhouse. Sales pages generally are higher converting than your original regular website because a lot of times you’ll remove a lot of the clutter, like menus and extra things like that, and it’s just a very focused way to get someone to buy.
 
We also used a cart upsell app. If you just search that in Shopify app store, you should find plenty. But that helped customers reach the threshold. So every time they added a product to their cart, a little sidebar popped up and it said, “You are $55 away from getting your free $25 in value gift.” That really helped people understand where they were at in getting that free gift and help them increase their cart value. That was a pretty broad recap of the strategy that we used for this client’s 2022 Black Friday, Cyber Monday. 
 
[22:32]
We talked about our goals in the beginning, so let’s recap and see how we did. With revenue, we ended up knocking our revenue goal out of the park. We had a goal of a 20% increase, but we were able to secure an 80% increase in revenue when compared to the previous period. Our biggest revenue driver was actually attributed to our ad campaigns. We made over 50% of our revenue from ads alone. We had a really great cost per acquisition before our promo started. So our evergreen ad campaigns had a really good cost to acquire a purchase. We knew our audiences really well. We had tested our audiences a lot. We had tested our best messaging and creative types months beforehand and leading up to the sale. So our ad account was very much optimized at this point. I want to make that clear. We had a very optimized ad account.
 
We also started our promo ads earlier than any of our other channels. Ads started before we announced on email and social media. A lot of people start their Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos either on that Friday or like the Thursday before. We started a lot earlier to ensure that we had better deliverability with our ads in the auction. Because with the ad auction over this time period, it gets slammed and there is no room for any player, costs start to rise. We started only ads earlier because we knew this was going to happen, and that allowed us to really secure more touch points to drive people to purchase. It allowed us to slowly optimize these promo campaigns versus just dumping a ton of money per day for four days. We got to kind of spread out the budget and increase it slowly as we saw profitability.
 
[24:37]
If you’re planning on running ads for a Black Friday, Cyber Monday or holiday promo, really in the post iOS 14 world, it does take a bit longer to optimize your campaign. So we would recommend, if possible, trying to launch those campaigns earlier than any other channels where you’re going to announce the promo. And then our secondary and tertiary goals. First up is average order value. We were able to hit over a 30% increase in average order value month over month versus our 20% goal, which is awesome. That was huge for us, and that was a huge reason for our revenue being so successful. Also, our ROAS goal, return on ad spend goal, we set it for a 400% return on ad spend. We were able to hit 450%. So we were 50% more than our goal. Let’s kind of break that ROAS down. We generated 345% returns on our completely cold prospecting audiences and attracted tons of new customers via this promo for even higher lifetime value down the road. So really great returns on brand new people, especially for a promo and for the first time hearing about this brand. And then our retargeting campaign had a return of ad spend of 5.5 or 550%, which is right in the range that we wanted it to be, which is awesome.
 
I will say a note on prospecting during promos, that means like going out and targeting cold people who don’t know about your brand. These types of campaigns generally need a minimum about $100 a day for them to work. So if your budget is a lot lower than those requirements, we would recommend just focusing your efforts on retargeting your list during a Black Friday or other promo at this time until you’re able to spend around the $100 a day mark. And then another one of our goals was our cost per acquisition goal. Because we launched our ad campaigns early, we were able to optimize the campaigns throughout the month, which was something that I think we’ll likely do again if the budget is there. We actually saw a $2 cost per acquisition reduction month over month. Our goal here was just keep cost per acquisition the same because we do know that it rises during this time. So a reduction was a fantastic bonus. I think a big reason on how we did this is of course we retargeted with I think around 20% of our ad budget. The remainder of our budget went to prospecting for this promo, and we actually used a completely open audience. We didn’t use any lookalikes or interest groups. It’s because we knew that our pixel was well seasoned, our account was well optimized. With that open audience, that was the biggest driver for our reduction in cost per acquisition. It was really important though that we had enough budget to actually optimize and drive down cost per acquisition. So remember that note that if you’re not around the $100 a day mark, you’re not able to spend that much on your ad campaigns, focus on retargeting for now. 
 
[28:12]
And then finally, our email revenue and click-through rate goals. We just nearly missed our click-through rate goal. I think our goal was a 2% click-through rate for our promo emails. We hit 1.7, but we did exceed our email promo sales goal by over $3,000, which is great. Overall, the email promo campaigns generated $20,000 in extra revenue for the promo alone, which we considered a win even though we didn’t hit the click-through rate goal.
 
With our emails, we really got straight to the point with these emails. Email promos generally just, you can highlight the sale. The copy can speak about value and things like that, but it should be really clear when someone opens a promo email, what the offer is and where to click. That’s really your main goal here. We also tested all of our subject lines to get the highest opens and used our client’s top send times too. So even if you’ve done all the subject line and send time testing beforehand, I would still recommend creating at least two different subject lines, testing send times at the time of sending these promos and allowing your email platform like Klaviyo to test this. What we do generally is we test the subject lines and after 20% of the list has been sent, Klaviyo will choose the winner and send the remainder 80% of the list with the winning subject line.
 
And then going back to missing our click-through rate goal for our promo emails. What we think happened here was our resends did drive down this metric. Remember, we would resend to non openers, but these resends also did help us exceed our revenue goals. So it was kind of a win-lose there. After looking at the data, we think we could have increased our click-through rate and actually hit our goal and maintained our revenue on our resends if we didn’t resend the entire non opener list, but instead resent to people who didn’t open and are more engaged. So something to consider if you’re going to test resending your email this promo or holiday season.
 
[30:37]
That’s a wrap up our Black Friday, Cyber Monday case study. We hope you enjoyed this case study episode and hopefully got some fresh ideas. If you’re ready to make this year your most profitable yet, we are now taking on Q4 clients and would love the chance to work with you. We are here to reach your ideal customers, help you optimize, strategize, and create high performing social email and advertising campaigns for your brand. Let’s make your Q4 the most profitable yet. Book a call with us at umaimarketing.com/profit and we would love to chat. Thanks for listening y’all.
 
Karin Samelson: [31:24]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. While you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [31:34]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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