Don’t Commit These Sales Crimes On Black Friday
Read this before your business launches its Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale this year.
Whenever Black Friday and Cyber Monday roll around this time of the year, I prepare myself for all the marketing and sales crimes that are about to be committed.
This is the time of year when you hear from brands you had no idea you were still subscribed to. When your inbox receives an onslaught of “Our Cyber Monday sale!” emails, sales announcements, and other unnecessary garbage.
It’s the time of year when businesses lose a good chunk of audience if they don’t play their cards right.
Riding on the hype train of Black Friday, Cyber Monday (I’m going to shorten this to BFCM for ease in the rest of this post) is a potentially disastrous decision if you follow every competitor’s lead without sensitivity to what your audience expects and wants to hear from you.
You can lose a handful of email subscribers, social media followers, and more within a span of a week if you thoughtlessly move without tact during this high-traffic time.
It’s a strong sales month for many brands, but equally a high audience attrition time.
To guide you through a BFCM experience for your customers that don’t send them packing, here are 3 major no no’s for your startup’s BFCM plan this month.
If It Feels Sleazy / Pointless / Out Of Character, Don’t Send It
If you’re planning out your BFCM outreach right now and it feels sleazy / pointless / out of character for the brand, or you straight up feel like you’re only doing it because it’s BFCM, stop right now.
If you have those negative feelings about your outreach, it’s likely that your audience will feel that way too on the receiving end.
There’s nothing cooler than a brand that thoughtfully decides not to follow the herd on a very herd-inducing stretch of days like BFCM.
If it doesn’t feel right to you to hop on the BFCM train, get creative and think through what your audience does want to receive from you on a day when they’re traditionally asked to give. This brings me to my next point in the next section.
Don’t Have A Sale If No One Wants A Sale
This is a bit counterintuitive but hear me out. Not every brand should have a sale on BFCM, nor does every audience type want a sale.
When thinking through your business’ BFCM plan, I challenge you to backtrack and ask yourself if your audience would even value a sale right now.
Your audience may not be interested in discounts from you, but be interested in something else like a new product or a free event. Or maybe they don’t want anything at all! Some audience types may love to get a break and not have you contribute to the noise of BFCM.
As a business, you should entertain the idea that BFCM may not be a sales event that is right for your brand. It is ridiculous to use the same playbook that every other business is using during BFCM when each business has a different audience with its unique wants and desires.
Be the business that listens to its audience rather than listens to what its competitors are doing.
Court, Don’t Ghost
A lot of email ghosting happens on BFCM — brands that have barely sent any emails throughout the year all of a sudden bombard you with emails on BFCM. As soon as BFCM is over, like a ghost, they disappear from your inbox as quickly as they came.
Using your email marketing purely as a tool to make announcements is old school, and completely useless for today’s consumer.
There is enough clutter in people’s inboxes — if your emails have no utility to audiences other than as bait for them to spend money, you’ll lose them.
If you want to captivate and engage with your audience in a meaningful way, start off by sending useful content in your emails and boosting its utility for your audience.
Does your audience want to receive interesting stories, funny memes, helpful information about sustainable fashion, or useful advice and tips in their inbox for their business?
Show up to your audience’s doorstep with something they want to eat up content-wise — only then will they be receptive to welcoming you in their home and hearing about what you have to sell.
Selling your products or services, especially on BFCM requires a courtship process. Don’t think that just because you’re giving out a once-in-a-year discount that your audience will let you skip over courting them. They’re not a cheap date.
Before BFCM comes around this year, start sending the emails and doing the work now to build an engaging conversation between you and your audience. It’s the surefire way to boost the success of any BFCM play you put out there.
Want to turn your startup chase into a victory lap? My Friday morning emails will help you get over your Crux.
