00:00:00 Speaker 1

Hey there and welcome to today's episode of the Bring business to Retail podcast. Well, it's finally here the biggest money making weekend of the entire year. Now last year on Shopify alone, merchants hit a record-breaking 9.3 billion.

00:00:18 Speaker 1

Dollars in sales.

00:00:20 Speaker 1

And that was a 24% in.

00:00:22 Speaker 1

Please on 2022 now I'm not sure.

00:00:26 Speaker 1

And I don't.

00:00:27 Speaker 1

Think anybody is quite sure how this Black Friday is going to pan out with all of the interest rates and the cost of living crisis, all of these things are going to affect how much people are spending, but it can go one of two ways.

00:00:42 Speaker 1

It could increase because people are looking for bargains and it could decrease because people don't have as much money to spend. So as you know, somewhere by Friday.

00:00:52 Speaker 1

The experts there are still a little bit unsure as to what's going to happen. If you've chosen to participate. Is that your inbox and your cash register is ringing? Even if it's a digital cash register, which means you're busy. So I have kept this episode short and sweet.

00:01:12 Speaker 1

I could have a bunch of promotions on the go, so this makes bite size episode includes my tips to making sure that those campaign.

00:01:18 Speaker 1

Bringing the money and don't lose your customers and as much as it can feel like you are too busy to do this. Trust me when I say putting aside a few minutes a day to realize this will significantly impact your results, or listening to this bright size episode.

00:01:41 Speaker 1

#4 is about measuring your results because you know that I am a firm believer that most of your problems, in fact, nearly all problems can be fixed by looking at the data. Measuring the results isn't just a nice to have, it is a must have for business success. So here.

00:01:58 Speaker 1

Is how I approach it.

00:02:00 Speaker 1

Every promotion that you will do should have an end goal. Now it is not always about sales. Some of the things we talked about is doing the promotion to build your customer database or doing the promotion to maybe reengage your existing customers. Remember the point of mapping out your promotions is so that your customers aren't being bombarded. You have to have that.

00:02:20 Speaker 1

Posting in place, keep your customers interested without overwhelming them. In order to do that, we need to establish a baseline before your promotion to even kick off.

00:02:30 Speaker 1

Have baseline metrics and all of your KPIs, because this is going to give you the comparison to measure your holiday performance against and you can do this by looking at your historical data. What I like to do is couple that with industry benchmarks, so places like shopping center and clothing, animal health industry benchmarks for pretty much.

00:02:51 Speaker 1

Everything.

00:02:52 Speaker 1

And they will have industry benchmarks for the holiday season as well. So looking at what are other people in your image doing, what are the people in the beauty industry doing? What are the people in the pet industry doing? What are these numbers that you should be basing your KPIs off and putting those targets in place with?

00:03:11 Speaker 1

Once you've had that.

00:03:12 Speaker 1

Work out what's important. So we so ties back to where you are running the promotion customer acquisition promotion is going to have very different metrics that are important to product launch promotion. The information you need might be the customer acquisition cost is way more important for customer acquisition promotion than.

00:03:32 Speaker 1

You can't abandon it, right? If you're running a product launch, you might want to know your car abandonment rate. That would be key. But it's not key to something like a maybe key, but it's not going to be top of mind.

00:03:44 Speaker 1

Through a customer acquisition strategy. So knowing what is important, don't just collect data for the sake of collecting data. And Speaking of data, make sure that you submit your data. Don't just look at the overall performance, break down your data by. Let's just take those examples. If you're doing a product launch.

00:04:05 Speaker 1

You might want to look at which sizes or which colors or which shapes sold best. If you are looking at a product launch, maybe you might want to look.

00:04:15 Speaker 1

Which of your customer segments spend the most amount of money or which of your customer segments were the most engaged with it? The new customers who were brand new to your brand or visit the customers who have been around for a long time, was it the customers that spending versus the customers that don't spend more? Where did they come from? Was it organic, was it paid?

00:04:34 Speaker 1

The e-mail was it social? How did they shop? Was it on mobile? Was it on desktop? This granular view can give you the insights that you need and things that you would otherwise miss.

00:04:46 Speaker 1

And then, however, we start when you have remembered the important data, not just all the data, there's no point having data if it's not useful, or if you're not going to look at it. But when you have this data, it will help you read online where you're spending your money. It will help you adjust what you're posting on socials and the messaging in your promotions moving forward. So set up your schedule.

00:05:06 Speaker 1

Through regular reporting now.

00:05:08 Speaker 1

I'm going to go through files, say.

00:05:10 Speaker 1

During Black Friday and Sunday Monday, your reporting should almost be hourly. I know it sounds like a lot, but you need to be adjusting if something is working well, you want to be able to do more of it. Remember, there's a really good chance if you are in the Black Friday, Cyber Monday space, there's a good chance that what you make.

00:05:30 Speaker 1

In those four days, it's going to be more than you make in the whole world, so you can see why understanding what is selling, what is not selling and being able to adjust things like your speed or sending out a different e-mail is really important. I also think that during a product launch you should be looking at.

00:05:48 Speaker 1

And then for the rest of the time, you probably want to be looking at weekly for the holiday season to share these reports. Share these with your E COM team with your in store team with your paid ads team. Make sure everybody is aligned and on the same page because what's working in one channel may not be working in another channel or what is being utilized in one channel might not be being utilized in another channel and they might be able to pivot.

00:06:10 Speaker 1

And put those change changes in place.

00:06:13 Speaker 1

Really, really quickly.

00:06:14 Speaker 1

Remember the goal to measuring data is not just to collect data for the.

00:06:19 Speaker 1

Data it's to gain actionable insights. It's allow it's to allow you to pivot when necessary. Every metric that you track should have an action attached to it. If it doesn't, then you don't need to be tracking it. Do you need to spend money? Do you need to spend less money?

00:06:37 Speaker 1

If your e-mail open rates are low, maybe you need to read out your subject lines. Maybe you need to do some more testing if certain products are underperforming, perhaps they need better placement. Maybe they've just been not highlighted. Maybe need to do a promotion on them. Every metric should have an action that you can attach to.

00:06:57 Speaker 1

So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action if you're a social kind of person. Follow me at the Selena night and make sure to leave a comment.

00:07:11 Speaker 1

And let me.

00:07:11 Speaker 1

Know and if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you.

00:07:16 Speaker 1

Some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action. Then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice, because the more reviews the show gets.

00:07:29 Speaker 1

The more independent retail and e-commerce stores, just like yours that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community and a win for your customers. I'll see you in the next episode.