Welp, I’m writing this on Cyber Monday and most brands are still spamming inboxes. As they should too. In my experience, the first and last days of a Black Friday promotion are the days that convert the highest number of people—and most times, the final day converts more than the first day.
This isn’t exclusive to Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend either. This is how most sales work with the days in between the first and last day best used to pile on the persuasion about why your product or service is the only thing standing between your ideal customers’ best lives.
But bucking trends and defiling industry standards still has its place. In fact, I’d argue that this is even more important during the biggest sales holiday in the land.
And my recent Black Friday only campaign I recommended for a client further backs up my hypothesis.
How?
Well, long story short: We made 223 sales in one day.
This was, by far, our most successful Black Friday offer. (We ran a few other promos that followed the conventional strategy that are officially ending today but also tracking to convert a much smaller segment of our audience.)
So, what was the secret? Is it better to offer a one-day flash sale with a hard deadline or to stretch it out over the entire weekend?
I’ll let you decide.
But there were a couple of other unique thangs about this one-day sale:
* It only went to past customers, so they needed a bit less persuasive and features and benefits copy than other segments
* We offered this segment a superior deal than our other audiences
* And the obvious one: It relied more on urgency and scarcity than the other deals
Not just because it went to previous customers, but also because it was only one day.
Moral of the story?
Buck trends and ask questions later.
But perhaps more important is this:
While it’s true that I wrote ab-so-lutely killer copy, it’s also true that I simply obeyed the “40/40/20 rule.”
40% of the success is because of your list (in this case, past customers).
Another 40% of the success is because of your offer (in this case, a better offer than our other deals).
And only 20% of the success is because of your copy (in this case, piling on urgency and scarcity instead of features and benefits).
Need help making your next Black Friday the most successful one yet?
Hit reply and let’s chat - it doesn't matter that Black Friday’s a long way away either (because everything you do with email even today can make or break next year’s holiday).
John
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