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Welcome to today's episode of the Bring business to Retail podcast. There is one week until Black Friday. 

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Are you ready? 

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Have you been listening to my Black Friday series? Whether you're all in or you're adopting an anti Black Friday strategy like the one Toby from Shopify shared with us just a few weeks ago? You still? 

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Need to be. 

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Promoting even if you are not participating in the crazy cyber weekend, you have to be promoting. So this week's episode is short and Sweet. But before we jump in, if you really wish that someone would just come in and wave a magic wand and do the holiday season for you. 

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Well, I can't do that, but I've. 

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Got the next best thing. 

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My ultimate sales bundle includes a plug and play e-mail scripts, a super quick walk through of how you can create a crazy successful sales campaign in a weekend, a pricing calculator, a discount calculator to make sure that you are still profitable along with a social media caption bake and a bunch of other super helpful tools. 

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To make this your best holiday season ever and right now it is a crazy 90% off. Grab it before it's gone over at selenite.com/BF CM right now let's jump into this short but sweet episode. 

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Good. 

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I want you to put a timeline on your action, so if you did listen to my Q4 success Blueprint episode, what we did was we mapped everything out. We reverse engineered what was going to happen and when because timing is everything. 

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You don't want to just be pushing promotion there willingly. 

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Oh wow, we and it's in cash flow. Let's run a sale. No, you can't be doing that in this period of time because if you are just doing alcohol promotions, you'll either end up with promotional burnout or you will end up just losing sales because people aren't paying attention or people aren't getting the amount of emails that they need or. 

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They aren't seeing the products that they need when they walk into your store. I talk a lot about e-mail because e-mail drives customers and and use their e-mail and then say I'm using e-mail with SMS into. 

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Tangibly, I know one of our five exes was just saying recently that her customers don't want emails. They just want SMS. I don't know about you, but I delete hundreds of emails every single day, whereas an SMS I still look at and it's funny. I've been getting SMS's from. 

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1. A furniture store recently and I was like, I don't even the dining table. I don't have any chairs, but I haven't unsubscribed. I haven't replied. 

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Because I'm waiting. I'm waiting for something in particular. When I see that promotion, I will be clicking. So when I say e-mail throughout all of my episodes, please feel free to interchange it with SMS. So we need to create a carefully planned promotional calendar, which means. 

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You need to space out your office to build anticipation and to avoid overwhelming your audience. Think of it like the perfect movie. There's the hero's journey, your promotions need to be like that as well, something big and then tapering off your means and. 

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Tapering off this is not just about picking random products or random dates. It's about crafting a strategic timeline that keeps your audience engaged without overwhelming them. So what does that look like when we don't want them unsubscribing? So what does that look like? Let's talk about. 

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The holiday shopping calendar for want of. 

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A better word. 

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According to the NRF, 40% of consumers started their holiday shopping before wait for Halloween. 

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No, I am not that person. I am not that prepared. I am a December kind of person. Maybe I will buy something in the Black Friday sales if I already know that I'm that's on my list of things in my my ideas in my head, but realistically I'm a busy person. I am that. 

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And I am at last minute shopper. 

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About 40% of your customers and hesitant guess to think that that number is going to be much higher this year as people look to spread their spending out as people are waiting for the deals to come up. People are tightening their belts and so they want to be knowing that they've got the best. 

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Value. But there are people out there buying for. 

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This means before the Jackal lanterns have even gone on and well before the Black Friday, southern Monday sales with your customers tightening their belts, I can see that that is a much, much more likely trend to continue upwards this year. And that means that your. 

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Online needs to start way earlier than you think. So what? I thought it would be happy to do is walk you through a bit of a timeline of what that might look like in early October. 

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You could start teasing out your holiday offerings now. Maybe that's a sneak peek of products or hints about upcoming deals. This isn't just the best time, I think to be pre loading your customer database isn't the time that you use to increase your e-mail subscribers and increase your customer database so the promotions that you are running. 

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In early October, might be focused around increasing customers, not just about products or just about sales or discounts. When we get to that kind of late. 

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October early November. 

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You might want to launch your holiday gift card because this is setting the stage for your promotional season. Remember, the whole season of promotions coming up well, I will say that what I have noticed is that the Black Friday promotions which used to start you know a week or two out. 

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Before black. 

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Today seemed to be starting much earlier. In fact, some retailers are starting their Black Friday promotions at the beginning of November. Maybe that doesn't work for you, and I'm not saying that that's exactly what you should do. But what I am saying is you need to be keeping track of the kinds of deals that your competitors are using. 

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And bring their customers in because it might mean that you need to pivot a little. If you've had a big retailer, just do the same promotion that you wanted to do, but with a bigger. 

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Discount then maybe that's not the best promotion fee to run you might. You will need to be flexible, but you might need to change these things as you go. You may also need to change your timeline, so thinking about being prepared if you are going to start your Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion the week before. 

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What I can tell you? 

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Is that any advertising costs will be through the roof because Black Friday supper Monday is the biggest trading time in the entire year. Many businesses will make more in those four days than they make in this whole for the whole rest of the quarter combined. So the. 

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That photo promotions should be your best deals. They should get a lot of hype and they should get a lot of excitement and they should be the promotions that will bring in the most amount of money for you. 

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Then we move through to early December saying what you're going to do in early December is focus on those last minute shoppings and procrastinators like me. So what am I looking for if I'm going in December, things like fast shipping times. I want to make sure that it can get to me when I can easy returns and exchanges the ability to buy it. 

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In stock right now, whether I am shopping online or I am buying in person, I will go to the effort of going to the mall and as I say that if you're watching this video, I am rolling my eyes at the same time because you would think someone who is in retail loves shopping. 

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My friend, I do not love shopping and I do not love. 

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Shopping. 

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At Christmas time anymore, all the holiday deals come out and I'm not that kind of person. And so you need to be thinking about what would I want? What would this kind of person who is waiting till the last. 

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Minute. What is? 

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Important to them, what do they value? 

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And then when you hit mid-december, when you're hitting that 15th of December, maybe the shipping times are just about up communicating shipping times are really important. But at and that could be a whole promotion end of itself. Remember promotions don't have to just be sales promotions don't just have to be about. 

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It could be a whole promotion around the fact that your shipping deadline is approaching, and then when you hit mid-december. So I think 15th of December wish that we were promoting things like gift cards and digital products. And for those truly last minute spenders like me. And if I know. 

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Easy tip if I'm now getting into the head of a last minute shopper if I know. 

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That I'm going to buy a gift card for somebody. I will cry also not buy it until Christmas Eve or even Christmas morning. Why? Because I want my recipe to have the longest amount of time possible to be able to redeem that gift card. That I'm not saying everybody thinks like me. I'm just trying to give you a little bit of an insight as to. 

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What I'm thinking when I'm buying these gift cards so do not think that stopping your emails on the 23rd of December or even 24th of December. 

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It's an option you could be sending our emails on Christmas Day promoting. 

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Gift cards I. 

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Mean I don't know about you, but we've had those situations where the girlfriend of someone came that we weren't expecting. And you're like, oh, I really should get them something cheap. Gift card. You a cheap gift card and an easy gift card. 

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So you can just buy online, so do not forget that people. 

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Are human and we have a lot going on and some of these certain circumstances and situations and some of us. 

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Just planning forget. 

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Now, within this framework, we need to strategically space out all of those individual promotions and you can. 

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Start to see why. 

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Now we've talked about what we have 5-5 or six different. 

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The times that you can promote and we didn't even factor in Halloween, Thanksgiving, father's. 

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Day all that. 

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And so when you might decide you will start to say that it's probably the old mode of promotions have been, in fact you may have promotions happening on top of each other and here's where the concept of promotional posing comes in. You may not have heard of that, but instead of a constant barrage of deals, it's really about creating those pace. 

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The proportion. 

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Activity followed by the quieter periods and having those different types of campaigns having the customer acquisition campaigns. 

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So, but that was an up followed by a period of maybe just some updates and no range and things like that and then followed by things like sales. So this is what keeps your audience, your customers anticipating what is next without feeling bombarded. Now one of the reasons I don't like going to the mall. 

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In at Christmas time is I don't have sensory issues and I don't know anyone who has sensory issues. 

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But just the constant barrage of things like sale in every single window, all of that is just way too overwhelming. Which is why you, actually an online shopper more than anything else. You don't want your customers to feel like they're being bombarded either. If you do this promotional policy, you will find that they are much more likely to spend. 

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Lava then wait around to see if there are better deals elsewhere or just unsubscribe. What might promotional posting look like? Well, you might run a three day flash sale. 

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And then you might just follow that by a regular regular content. Maybe it's a product review, maybe it's featuring one of your customers. It's not a call to action, which is buy my stuff. Then you might have a one day exclusive offer for your VIP club members and start to see here the importance of planning because. 

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You might have. 

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Two campaigns running at the same time, 1 to your everyday customers and one to your VIP. 

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Is all of that takes planning, so hopefully you can see that prior planning gives you peak performance to four peace. 

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I hope you can another crucial aspect of your timeline is leveraging scarcity and urgency. If you aren't aware of former everyone's welfare, right, the fear of missing out, it is so powerful in market. 

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Studies show that emails with a sense of urgency have a 14% higher Click to open rate, and they have a double the transaction rate of e-mail twice as many transactions will occur from emails that have a sense of urgency. So think about. 

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Your messaging, it doesn't matter if it is in your window, it doesn't matter. This is why we're seeing wild stocks last 24 hours. Only Slash sale 3 days only. All of that. 

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Is fear of missing out. So think about how you're going to incorporate firmly into your messaging, and it could be 24 hour sale or well stocks list. Or for the 1st 20 customers only or only 12 available. But here's the key. You've got to make. 

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Sure that these. 

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Limited time offers or limited product offers. 

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They have to be genuine because customers can support fake urgency and. 

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Mile away, I mean. 

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I got a team you every now and then. I don't like buying from there. But every time I go there to have a look at something, I've clicked on Google shopping and I've clicked on something on the TV website and it says buy in the next 4 hours for free shipping and the little ticket going on right. You have free shipping your time like this is just being yes. 

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Customers can spot that stuff from another way. And honestly, if you avoided, if you avoid their trip. 

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List they will just unsubscribe, they just will stop shopping with you. A well planned out timeline is about avoiding burnout, but also creating that narrative arc for the holiday season that keeps your customers coming back for more. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this has been a timely reminder for you. Reach out and let me know. 

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If you like these bite size. 

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Episodes or not? Because my goal is to create the content that you want and need, and just remember if you need an almost done for your holiday sales campaign in the box, head on over to my ultimate sales. 

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Bundle which is. 

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A crazy 90% off for a limited Black Friday time. Grab it at Silverlight. 

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Com forward slash B afcm and of course I'll make sure that there is. 

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A link to. 

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It in the. 

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Show notes Salenaknight.com/Bfcm for my ultimate sales funnel and I will see you on the next episode.