Playbook to execute on Online Promotions
Happy Wednesday!
As many of you know, holiday sales are the bread and butter of DTC. They bring your existing customers back to you in flocks, excited to make a purchase and score a deal. But throughout the year, there are a ton of these opportunities, even for brands that feel like they donât want to âdiminish brand equityâ which, in my opinion, isnât a legitimate nor a data-backed thought. With todayâs newsletter, I want to walk through how I think about promotions and sales, how to run them, what to take into consideration, how to set goals, and everything in between.
If youâre spending dollars to acquire customers, or even just getting a ton of traffic to your website, youâre collecting a ton of emails and phone numbers that have probably never made a purchase with you. So in addition to existing customers, switch your thinking to realize that promotions are an incredible opportunity to get new customers too. Think about it from personal experience⊠when itâs October or September and you want to buy a Dyson Hair Wrap or AirPods, youâll likely just wait until the big Black Friday sale. Now if you are someone who lives in an elite bubble, would think this way, think about how many other people think this way too.
On January 1st of every new year, you and your team should create a rough strategy around the major moments that you will want to run promos around for your brand. You should have some ideas and concepts in mind, but also be flexible and play off whatâs happening in the culture at that particular moment in time, as you work on your final offers, copy, landing pages, and ad creatives for your sales.
The typical holiday calendar in the US to pay attention to is:
New Year’s Day: January 1, 2024
St. Patrick’s Day: March 17, 2024
Easter: April 9, 2024
Mother’s Day: Second Sunday of May
Memorial Day: Observed on the last Monday of May
Father’s Day: Always falls on the third Sunday of June
Fourth of July: July 4, 2024
Amazon Prime Day: Date varies each year
Labor Day: Observed on the first Monday of September
Halloween: October 31, 2024
Black Friday: November 29, 2024 (always falls on the day after Thanksgiving)
Cyber Monday: December 2, 2024 (always falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving)
Christmas: December 25, 2024
New Year’s Eve: December 31, 2024
There are a few other holidays in the US that you could also consider, but this is the primary list. If you are not in the US, you should use your own national holidays as a guide, but also remember US takes every opportunity to make money, and theres a good chance some of these are celebrated internationally.
When thinking about promotions and sales, I like to think about all the puzzle pieces involved in planning and executing the promotion:
Whatâs the budget to drive awareness of the promotion?
Whatâs the goal (new customers, hitting monthly revenue goals, sell-through a SKU)?
How much inventory do I need if my sales projections are correct?
Where are we pushing the sale, and to whom?
What does my LP look like?
Whatâs my offer, copy, and ad creative?
And whatâs my email and SMS strategy/sequence pre and post purchase?
How are we segmenting or tagging these customers after the sale?
This is what should be top of mind for every important sale campaign, regardless if itâs a holiday or not. All this information makes the execution of the promotion 10x easier when you get copywriters, designers, website merchandisers, and the ops team involved to help go live.
For the goals of your campaign, you could have a few depending on what your business is trying to maximize/prioritize at that particular time.
Depending on the month and the state of your business, you would want to:
Acquire new customers
Re-engage lapsed customers
Reward repeat customers
Drive more subscriptions
Sell more bundles
Sell inventory thatâs not moving
Cross-sell existing customers to a new product/category
There are a bunch of potential goals, you just have to pick the one thatâs most relevant for your business at the time, and design everything around it (the offer, the merchandising, the distribution channels, etc.). I think most operators know this, but email still drives 20-30% of all revenue for e-commerce brands.
Once youâve picked the sale day, and identified the goal of the sale, you need to decide on the product merchandising (what products are you going to push) and define the offer.
As far as the product, you should think about whatâs relevant during that particular season for your brand. The best brands will go above and beyond here and make custom variants or colorways or a âholiday bundle setâ that is designed to go with the sale.
This holiday tea set from Vahdam India is a great example of a holiday promotion. They have a custom product with a custom offer and a custom LP designed for EOY/Holiday/Christmas and New Year sales.
Just from the product merchandising, I can assume this was probably a fantastic promotion to run to people who have tried the product once and didnât come back, existing customers who want to try other flavors, and new customers who want an easy way to sample 24 teas at once, before deciding which to continually purchase.
When it comes to making the offer, donât make this too complex. Sure, you might sit at your desk and think, âWe should do something really cool and innovative!â Most of the time, thatâs a horrible idea. Think about how many promotional emails, texts and ads someone sees already; keep it simple (KISS), stupid. Instead of requiring someone to use their brain power to figure out your promotion, respect that you only have so much attention from someone, and use that attention to get them excited about what you have to offer. Donât make someone spend 10 seconds trying to understand what your promotion is, or when the discount kicks in.
Here are some KISS offer structures:
A percentage off one product, one collection, or the full site
A gift with purchase
Buy one get one free (BOGO)
Buy one get one X% off
Free expedited shipping, or free shipping if you donât normally offer that
A new colorway or variant
A discounted or limited availability bundle
Mystery box or mystery bundle ($40 box, with $100 of value)
There are many ways to go. Pick one that makes the most sense, execute, and learn.
Ads and Inventory
One of the hardest things to plan for is ads and inventory. If you are spending profitably, the cap on your spend is basically determined by how much inventory you have available to you at that time. If you are projecting a big holiday sale, you will need to order excess inventory in advance to prepare. This is tough since you donât want to over-order and be stuck with piles of remnant inventory that didnât sell.
Thereâs no perfect formula for knowing how much to order. In the early stages, this is a lot of gut feeling, but as you get more sophisticated, youâll establish a baseline of traffic, conversion, and sell-through, depending on the type of offer. It sucks when youâre out of stock, but itâs a part of the ups and downsâdonât hate yourself for it, everyone goes through it.
Also, in closing, I do think that itâs incredible that so much economic activity happens during these holiday periods. Consumers are typically off work, relaxing, and they are inspired to buy. Holiday sales (especially BFCM) are always a huge driver of topline revenue in almost every DTC brand Iâve seen. So with that in mind, donât underestimate the impact that the right holiday sales strategy can have.
Thatâs about it for today!