WP Product Talk
WP Product Talk
Strategies and Tips for a Successful Black Friday sale for your WordPress Products
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Gear up for a lucrative holiday season with the next episode of WP Product Talk, “Strategies and Tips for a Successful Black Friday Sale for Your WordPress Products.” Our panel of esteemed co-hosts—Zack Katz, Katie Keith, and Matt Cromwell—will share their wisdom and experiences to help you prepare for one of the biggest sales events of the year. This episode promises to deliver actionable tips for optimizing your WordPress product sales this Black Friday.

Learn how to strategize, implement effective marketing campaigns, and optimize your product for maximum visibility and conversions. If you’re looking to make the most out of the Black Friday sales frenzy, this episode is an indispensable resource you won’t want to miss.

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[Music]
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hey everyone this is WP product talk the place where every week we interview
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except for this week experienced WordPress product owners on strategies tips experiences failures and successes
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of running successful and thriving WordPress product businesses I'm Matt Cromwell co-founder of givewp and a
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senior director of customer experience at Stellar WP and today I have Katie and
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Zack with me no guests all co-hosts Katie yeah I'm Katie Keith co-founder
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and CEO at b 2 plugins and I'm Zack Katz founder of gravity kit and trusted
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login and today's topic is strategies and tips for a successful Black Friday
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sale maybe we say Black Friday Cyber Monday sale uh maybe we say Black Friday
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Cyber Monday giving Tuesday sale um but it's a good one and we decided to have just us talk about it because uh we all
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have lots of things to say about it so yeah and this is a great topic
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because Black Friday 2023 is just five weeks and two days away so now is the
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time for WordPress product owners to plan their campaign and if you are watching live
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please comment uh we are all here to support you and uh answer your questions because uh we have so much knowledge so
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very much we want to share it with you I I think we really do better when folks are asking questions too I know I do um
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but uh uh let's kick it off so I'm excited to talk about this we Black
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Friday is always an interesting subject overall um and I have heard some folks
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who are kind of like e it's too much effort I'm not going to do it um why should we actually say this is such an
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important subject for product owners to think about um Katie what's your take
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well um whether you like it or not the Black Friday Friday Cyber Monday Etc sale is the biggest shopping day of the
What is Black Friday
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year and it's absolutely huge in the WordPress industry um and a big proportion of companies do take part
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although not all um however most people don't approach it in a very evidence-based way um as far as I can
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tell and very little is done to share data amongst us product owners within the community and so that makes it
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really hard to know what does and doesn't work so I think a big goal of this episode of WP product talk it's for
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us to discuss this openly share some stuff and hopefully start to get the conversation going more
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widely yeah and in terms of numbers like okay it's a big period for sales uh
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November is uh 40% of actually it's 45%
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deviation from average of our sales so like if your average uh if your average sale a month is $100,000 it's $145,000
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uh that's a huge number that's a that's a that's a gamechanging number in terms
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of whether you should focus on this yes you should uh if you do not focus on it you're missing out on a big bump that
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you would uh not get every year if you're doing a recurring product absolutely I think what I also like
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about it is it's a good kind of segue into just thinking about sales and discounts in general um it's it is kind
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of the outlier it's not normal uh it's definitely exceptional uh but if you
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have not done a lot of experimentation with sales and whatnot in the past this is a great way to get started into
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trying them out and seeing how it goes um I think the whole subject of discounts in sales is actually a bigger
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subject that uh we probably should also talk about at some point or another did feel like we've maybe touched on it
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before um but um but this is a good way to get into it uh and experiment Katie I
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really liked what you said about like doing this in a very evidencebased uh
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way I think that's a bit of a unique thing can you lean in on what you mean about that a little
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bit well at Barn 2 we've done Black Friday since
Measuring the impact of Black Friday
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2018 and um so each year I try to measure the impact and learn from it for
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future years so I try to get various data from our campaigns um I look at the
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total revenue during the campaign period during the month of November and I Benchmark that against our previous
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year's sales and also uh I try to Benchmark it against like equivalent periods in say September October when
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there wasn't anything unusual going on so I can see like what Zach said a minutes ago about um deviating 45%
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that's kind of a way to get that sort of information and I look at things like
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what are our highest selling days so that we can see any patterns and where to focus on energies and emails and
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things I look at our average order value which strangely it's not always what you
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think it often goes up during the sale despite offering a discount and that's
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because people are like buying lifetime deals or bundles all access pass type
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things so you think oh 50% sale my average order value is going to be 50%
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lower but actually that may well not be true it may be higher than usual which
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actually does affect knowing that affects some of your decision- making about for example customer acquisition
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cost can you afford to support these people buying at a discount well actually yes you can if your average
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order value has gone up so maybe you shouldn't be so scared about a bigger discount so I find knowing that really
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helps me to plan future sales uh things like if we would do
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email marketing which everybody does on Black Friday we'll get to that later um
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what was the impact of each email like I've noticed our first two emails generate the most conversions and then
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they reduce each emails be beyond that so that helps me to plan how many to send and things you can also look at
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things like unsubscribe rates are you're pissing people off and um that might be a reason to change or reduce your emails
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I look at where our sales are coming from and I think we'll get more to that about that when we look at things like
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roundups later but it's so hard 's always data I don't have that I want I currently don't
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know how our renewals are different from people who bought on Black Friday and I should know that I also don't know how
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many of our sales are new versus existing customers during the sale period And I should know that too so
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always looking to learn other people's data have they found the same as me and what else am I
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missing so much I mean so that's I love the your data focused approach because
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you've been sharing a lot about that on Twitter and you and I have talked about these things before I think it it's so
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helpful because I know that a lot of folks take approach Black Friday kind of like if you build it they will come kind
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of situation um uh where it's like I'm just gonna do a sale because everybody does a sale and oh hooray I got more
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sales um that's the beginning and the end of it but it's really not like uh I love the that you highlighted uh
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renewals in particular I think renewals are the big caveat that not enough folks are paying attention to um I do see
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overall the trend that if people buy things at a heavier discount their likelihood of renewing is a lot less I
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won't say like significantly less but a lot less than your Standard customer um and so you do have to be a lot more
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strategic coming up to the following year with those particular customers uh to try to encourage them to renew um
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that's a strategy that I'll talk about a little bit later um so that's that's a good one um in the wings here not
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particularly a question but we got a a little uh WordPress celebrity in the in the wings here Matt MOS uh is over here
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um I think that's Matt madas isn't that WordPress tutorials for beginners yeah looks like him looks like him but that
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channel name is a little bit different um this is my first time offering sales sponsorship does that count um I'm not
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sure um potentially oh sponsorships oh yes yes yes this is referring to he's
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actually this is great great the wp minute in particular is it's offering uh for folks like us uh cool he's just
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confirmed it is Matt it's a weird Avatar there Matt you got to do something about that um but um he's offering F uh the wp
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men is offering for you to be able to highlight your Black Friday sale um on their Channel which is a cool thing so
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um Matt does good work over there so there are folks that um more and more
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are advertising the Black Friday sales that might also be in n interesting thing we want to talk about um but um in
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terms of how good those are going in terms of how well those actually do promote existing sales there have in the
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past been all these different sites that that just list all of the Black Friday sales in different ways um I don't know
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if that's uh uh been effective for you all but um it's an interesting tactic that I feel like is changing a bit um I
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don't know uh Katie Zack what's your take on those things well yeah I've no noticed this
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year for the first time I'm being approached by a lot of people wanting me to pay to be featured in their Black
How to get featured on Black Friday
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Friday stuff some of that most of that's written articles some is more kind of in
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Innovative things where they post you in lots of different places some is videos
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which is really interesting because um every year I get my assistant to submit
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our deal to dozens and dozens of sites and we've been published on between like
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20 and 70 roundups and we do not track post track sales from them last year we
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were on 24 I think um roundups and we tracked one sale from a Roundup which
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was cables and that is not one of the ones that we submitted our deal to they did it voluntarily and so I'm um maybe
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like really high-profile people like map um it's worth doing but on the typical
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Roundup on a kind of a medium level type WordPress site my experience is it's not
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worth bothering even if you don't pay so why are people suddenly asking for money
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what about uh you Zach yeah that was my experience as well uh last year we got
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zero sales and I think the year before that we got two sales from all the submissions that we did so this year uh
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it's just going to be a nice to have uh it's on our list as things we could do for Black Friday so Monday but there are
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so many other things that we'd rather work on uh and rather spend time on including basic stuff like making sure
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that the page is really good like i' I'd rather do usability testing on our page
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uh then submit to a bunch of deal roundups uh sorry Matt yeah I do feel
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like that that's might be why some folks are trying to ask to have sponsored uh
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Pages now because they are going to put more effort into it and I I did chat with midus a little bit about uh his
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approach and and he is promoting these things in a different way so ideally if you're paying for placement they're
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they're going to do some work to make sure that your your deal gets um highlighted more um but I will say that
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generally speaking because of the way in which Black Friday is a thing that's in everybody's mind whether you're a
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digital product or Nike shoes or whatever like generally folks are like I
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want to buy this plugin anyway I'm gonna wait until Black Friday like they're going to come and they're going to buy
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because they're looking for that discount um they're not gonna it's not going to be because they happen to be cruising some other random blog and see
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your sale I think personally um there might be like you said those one or two that stumbl that way but like they're
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going to come to you because they already know you that's that's been my experience more
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um yeah yeah and I I think maybe for product owners we should kind of back up
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a step and say like okay how do we organize the Black Friday deal campaigns
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like what do we how do we structure them um and I'd love to hear from from both of you yeah yeah I'll jump in um Black
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Friday for us we definitely have prepped uh long in advance um and again for Stellar WP um we have a lot of Brands
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now at this stage and each of these Brands actually came in with a different approach and different ideas about how
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to be successful on Black Black Friday uh Cadence in particular has huge success with their lifetime deals um
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that and that is a bit of a a difference or or unlimited licensing deals I themes also did a lot of that in the past which
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IES by the way is solid WP now if you haven't noticed um little plug um
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because it's been what I've been working on for every day for a long time um but um and and so we've been kind of working
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towards more or less trying to find what we feel like is the right uh mix of best practices for Brands across the board uh
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we definitely prep far in advance um we tend to do a combination of of uh really
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strong uh email marketing uh directed towards a custom Black Friday landing
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page um with also a sitewide banner all over the whole site um that's kind of
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for me the really bare minimum Basics is making sure that you're using your email
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marketing to the best that you can because like I just said a minute ago it's folks who already know you who are
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going to buy on that day I don't think you're going to attract a whole bunch of um people who never heard of you before
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U maybe they've never been customers before but they're they they know you in one way or another so leveraging your
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email um list is a big deal um and then
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um also making sure that there's a sitewide banner everywhere and then there's also a dedicated landing page I
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really think the dedicated landing page separate from your normal pricing page is is kind of a key
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differentiator um because it really allows you you to to give the exact
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messaging that you want to do for this specific sale there's lots of other sales that we've done where we just like
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update the pricing page itself um or individual product pages uh in order to
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say this particular thing is on sale right now um but for Black Friday it's like give them a custom experience make
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it fun make it flashy um make it all about exactly what the details of the sale are because people are really
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looking for the details of the sale like does this apply to my renewal or not am I able to refund it how many site
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licenses do I get all those things become hyper important on the Black Friday sale and so dedicating time and
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attention to those things I think are really important there interesting because we've never
Dedicated landing page
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had a landing page we've just done the banner thing and all of that um and
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we're doing it for the first time this year and I've been really skeptical because you've got to get it designed
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and then you've got to get it coded so it's a fair amount of work but I know you can reuse it so I was convinced by
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my marketing team this year um so we'll see how that goes but I was always sort
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of unclear as to whether it would make a difference to actually have one so we will see that's a good question though
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because you're situation is similar to iconic over on our side and when you are a series of a lot of different products
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um having one dedicated landing page is more challenging um so is your dedicated
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landing page are you promoting all of your products on that page or what is the dedicated page doing exactly well
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like all of our projects we looked at iconics as part of planning hours along with gravity kit and other people I know
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um but yeah it's actually like everything quite similar with like all access kind of more prominent higher up
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and then a list of products lower down um and we've just relaunched our all access because it never sold as well as
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iconic so we're trying to learn um but yeah I think it's kind of like our
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plugins page but with Black Friday branding because we've already got a
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page which lists all of our products so I was like that's the landing page um so
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that's kind of why I was unconvinced um but it's like that but with more stuff at the top yep some of the things you
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can do with a dedicated landing page that you can't do without one is to if you have it tagged using WP Fusion for
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example when somebody views a page you can tag somebody if they come to your page that uh is already a customer you
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can say viewed the Black Friday landing page and if they have you know they're more interested than people who haven't
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and that's a really good way to segment your email list so that um you're sending the right emails to the right
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people and that's one of the things that we've been really focused on for the past few years now is uh targeting our
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emails so that only people who are interested in things get the things they're interested in so if you've if
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you in the last week in our emails you clicked and you viewed a certain page that and then they didn't end up buying
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that's a product that they might want to receive more information on or a special additional discount perhaps um you know
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you can really understand people's intent by the their behavior on your site and the goal is to do that without
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being creepy which is always a little tough but um you know our goal is to provide more value and to make sure that
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we're fitting them with the product that they actually need and they don't necessarily know they need uh so email
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marketing plus tracking uh behavior on the website is a great combination nice
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we have a couple uh supportive comments here I want to highlight real quick um
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haret Aurora says dedicated landing page is a must valid point rocket ship love
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it um and absolutely I I feel like it's really important I do like I said I do
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think it is more challenging for folks like Barn 2 or iconic um where all
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access pass is something for sure but so often you'll have like one uh extension
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that tends to drive a lot of Revenue and the other ones are far less uh it's it's hard to like get all the attention onto
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the thing that people actually want to buy under those circumstances uh this another interesting comment that's
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supportive uh cander badha says I also support Custom Design email newsletters
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and landing page for Black Friday Cyber Monday sales it's almost gives a festive Vibe I absolutely agree I like um that's
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one thing I do really enjoy about the Black Friday stuff is um is being able to make it fun and interesting um and to
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and have some have it be kind of thematic um in one way or another it it does take more effort and more more time
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and things like that but it also just uh it it fits the holiday season I think so
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and Matt mados has a good point about uh the he has in the comments that uh it's
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hard to know it's easy to run a sale if you already have a newsletter uh list that people have signed up for updates
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about it's easy to it's easier to run a sale if people already know you and and that you offer certain products uh I
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would say that this is an iterative process our our first year we didn't have a huge list compared to what we do
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now like uh that Black Friday grows as the company grows and that the always be
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collecting like always always be asking for people to sign up for your newsletter that's a permanent good
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advice because you know your list is your business when it comes down to like being able to promote new opportunities
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for customers to uh buy new products or to upgrade their products your your list
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is something you should be cultivating at all times uh so it's iterative and it
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grows year-over year so if you're just starting out and you're like you sell one thing one one product for Black
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Friday congratulations you sold a product um that's that's 100% uh better
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than it's infinite percent better than not selling anything so don't give up is what I'm saying keep keep growing your
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product business it's going to happen just don't give up yeah yep absolutely
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well let's get through some of um the um important tactics uh we want to
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highlight one I thought was really great uh Katie highlighted on Twitter um she
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said asked uh on Twitter when do you think is the best time to start a Black Friday sale and why and it was a poll um
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Katie tell us a little bit about this poll and what you learned from it yeah so um I've been doing a few tweets
Poll
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lately asking people their experiences about Black Friday and and sharing mine as well to try and pull knowledge like I
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said earlier and one of them was a poll saying when to start it because I've noticed in the last couple of years
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people are often starting earlier and earlier um often even doing like the whole of November or something and as
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swearing by that strategy whereas um I work with Ellipsis um and as my
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marketing company and they really strongly have advised me don't do that you're devaluing your products um keep
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it relatively short so that customers don't see you as the sorts of company that always does discounts and this is
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just one short sale a year apart from that you stand by the value of your products so I did a poll and um
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49% which was the biggest um group said start a week before Black Friday which
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is great because that's what we've decided to do this year already before I did that poll um 34% said start it on
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Black Friday so I assume that would just be like a four- day sale until the end of cyber monday 11% said first of
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November so that would probably be a full month long sale and then there was a few comments about anything in between
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that as well so I thought that was interesting the majority are not saying do a really long sale but that is
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definitely growing in WordPress products I have a it's always
Sales
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complicated when it comes to sales because uh people want to buy your product so let them buy your product
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they you you're telling them you're they're going to be able to buy your product coming up for you know 40% off
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in three weeks you just have to wait that's really not customer friendly is it when the customer is trying to
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accomplish a solution that your products help them solve and you're saying yeah
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I'd love to help you and give you a discount but no you should really wait so we've taken a different approach
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which is uh to start early we we start early we have an early access sale if
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they've expressed interest we give them access early I think this year we're doing something like November 7th or something like that but we just added a
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popup on our website uh where if somebody signs up for our newsletter they get a discount immediately we don't
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want not not necessarily the full Black Friday Monday discount but a discount uh
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because we want to make sure that people are able to accomplish their goals as soon as possible as quickly as possible
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with as little friction as possible so I think that you know withholding this sale for the devalue the concern of
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being uh your brand being devalued I don't think is the right answer if it is
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less good for customers and if customers know that a sale is coming up and they're just like really I personally
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get angry when I'm I'm like come on you know you're going to do a sale just give me the discount now we've all had that
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experience and I think that might be a bigger brand hit than than having a
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longer discount period maybe I'm gonna push I'm gonna push back on that a little bit I have to say because I do
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think that um the sale is limited on purpose um because we can't offer these
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discounts all the time we can't offer them infinitely um like says the average
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order value is higher it wouldn't be if it was infinite though would it that
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you yeah I I definitely think like that it does need to be for a limited time I
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like I voted definitely one week before Black Friday is the best time like that that week of basically um and I
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personally have seen also when we do it the the Monday before Black Friday all the way we' go go all the way until
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giving Tuesday because of give WP um and um the Monday Tuesday Wednesday before
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Black Friday Friday there's sales for sure and it might be a little bit of a lift but it's not huge the big sales
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happen on that Friday but for us for some reason or another Cyber Monday is always the biggest it's always that day
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and it's somehow in people's minds that like that that's that's our day the digital day Cyber Monday um and like
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they're buying shoes on Friday and buying prod plugins on on Monday or something but Monday always is the big
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day for us um and then for give w P it also the Tuesday um as well so and it's
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in that time because we are doing significant discounts um on purpose because I do find that for Black Friday
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you can't do a 25% discount nobody cares about a 25% discount it just doesn't
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work it's not valuable it's not what they're looking for even sometimes um I think it was I think it was Alex from uh
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from Ellipsis that did a big study on how many uh How deep the discounts were and how many folks uh reported what they
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did based on their discount um I think his suggestion was you can't really get away with anything less than 40% but
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doing 40 to 50% um for your products for a short M period of time it does have a
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big impact especially as you scale and you get larger those ticket those sales
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are going to become support tickets as well um and it's really hard to scale
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when you're cutting cost so extremely as well um that's I I would push back on
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that one but I hear what you're saying about being customer Centric and I'm always sensitive to that stuff um I will
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say that anytime somebody reaches out to us in advance is like hey I'm trying to make stuff happen and can you help me
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out we always help them out for sure so it's not as if there's like a hard roadblock or whatever but but um we
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can't do 50% sales all the time that's I do think it Waters down the brand so
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have you had uh special deals for Cyber Monday in the past like as opposed to like so you have
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a 40% sale for the rest of the time and then like a special Cyber Monday sale
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nope because we tried that uh a couple years ago and it didn't really it was a
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lot more work and it didn't move the dial so I just uh was interested in um if you had experience with that that's
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an interesting one like what if it was like you start off at 40% on Friday and
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and then 50% on Monday I'm not sure um so and that's something that we've we're going to do spoiler alert we're going to
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do that this year uh where it's it's always strange to me where you have Cyber Monday and then the sales over or
28:05
giving Tuesday the sales over and then your site just goes back to normal and it's going from like a 100 miles an hour
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to nothing it goes back to less than normal for us it goes back to less than nor yeah and it start so starts the
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horrible month of December and the terrible month of January and so what we're going to be
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doing this year is we're going to be tailing off our sale uh as opposed to doing you know a big sale and a nothing
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we're going to have a a late Comer sale just like we have an early Comer sale um try to incentivize try to smooth out
28:37
that curve because we want people to to buy our plugins and you know if if it
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ends and they know that they've missed a big deal we don't want them to feel bad so if they come to the site and they get
28:49
any discount I think it'll feel better than than having zero uh zero sale after that well that is becoming more of a
Last Chance Sale
28:57
thing I noticed maybe one or two years ago a lot of Wordpress companies say that their sale ends on Cyber Monday but
29:05
then they do like a surprise Last Chance sale and we tried that for the first
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time last year and normally our sales from Tuesday to Friday so after Cyber
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Monday drop by 30% compared to a normal Tuesday to Friday from September October
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whatever but when we did a last chance sale which as that said is a smaller discount than your main Black Friday one
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our sales only dropped 12% instead of 30 so it did soften the blow a bit so I
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think that's worth um considering obviously you don't want to lose the urgency of Cyber Monday but it does seem
29:44
to make some difference to continue a small sale abut but what you said Matt about the dates was interesting because
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we've have slightly different experience about the days like most people are finding Cyber Monday is
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best and we always did until last year when Black Friday did twice as much
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revenue as Cyber Monday I don't know what changed and nobody else I talked to
30:09
said that Black Friday was bigger but I thought that was interesting and I do know sorry no you about um starting
30:18
early we started a week before Black Friday andif 32% of our revenue from the
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sale period came before for Black Friday so Friday to Thursday um and the year
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before 51% of our Revenue came before Black Friday so I think it is worth
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starting a bit before the increase is already building up and the excitement
Extend Sale Date
30:42
the the problem with having everything on Black Friday not everybody's available on Black Friday not everybody's G to be available on Cyber
30:49
Monday like the goal of the sale is to make sure that everybody who's interested in buying our products is
30:55
able to buy our products and does Buy buy our products right so by extending the sale date I think that we also
31:02
extend the opportunity to uh to reach everybody who's interested and I think
31:07
that by having a the shorter the date of the sale the more they going to be uh people who are left un uh unaddressed
31:15
for sure like I I what you know anybody watching right now you're probably not
31:21
the give WP typical customer so I won't be giving anything away but like we we always extend to the Wednesday um after
31:30
which we it we say it's a Black Friday giving Tuesday sale is what we call it so it's always those dates but then we
31:36
always surprise extend to Wednesday um and um and that Wednesday like Katie
31:43
said tends to be a lot better uh when we do that surprise extension but the only people who know about the surprise
31:49
extension are folks who are naturally already coming to our website or who are getting our emails so again it's
31:55
basically a lot like what Zach is saying they either just were busy doing holiday
32:00
stuff and like oh great I'm so glad I didn't miss out um or they just you know are just getting to it for the first
32:06
time they they they knew about us already and just were coming later so I do think that the extension is good we
32:13
also always for the rest of that entire week like Thursday Friday all the way pretty much until the following Monday
32:18
even if somebody's like hey we missed out on your sale we'll give them a discount um so like we we we're we're
32:25
going to continue to always try to help people and be um um supportive of them even when it goes long especially when
32:32
they reach out if they take the effort to ask us a question we're gonna help them get over the finish line for sure I
32:38
think for for us one of the things that we try to do is to approach the customer from their different value propositions
32:44
that we offer like uh so that we aren't sending the same message which is like sale sale sale sale sale sales don't
32:51
matter if they don't know what Solutions you're providing so we try to make sure that they're aware of the needs that we
32:57
will fill by their sales so don't forget the Basic Marketing thing like it's not about you it's about them it's about the
33:03
TR problems they're trying to fill and with our emails because all three of us have products that have we have so many
33:10
different products we're trying to um promote uh that our emails are going to
33:16
be targeting different products different reasons why people will want the products and making sure that that
33:22
we address the whole spectrum of reasons rather than just hitting one thing which is the s
33:27
uh and that's another reason why um a longer sale is easier because you can
33:33
tell a longer story like you can address more of those uh things people the eager
33:38
eager people get it early the people who are skeptical might have a different uh email flow that uh that you might want
33:45
to write so yeah I don't forget to diversify the types of emails you're selling and to whom you're writing the
33:53
emails yep yep yep uh we got a good question here too um let's see haret is
New Product
34:02
asking some good questions which one should we highlight here in order
34:10
yeah one I just chose one to highlight which is uh for new product uh for new
34:16
products is getting people on board more important and converting them next year
34:22
uh just like getting them in and then having it Renew at a higher price or something like attracting users is that
34:28
the way to go for for Black Friday like a $1 for a pro version like a steep
34:33
steep discount just get them in the door yeah I like that question a lot because it it it shows that there's more to this
34:40
sale than just the sale uh this should be the beginning of a customer Journey
34:46
um and um that's something we think about a lot um and truthfully I'm a
34:52
little that's why I'm also a little bit skeptical about the whole thing of like discounting for forever because like I mentioned at the beginning um when folks
35:00
get your product heavily discounted they often are less likely to be renewing the
35:06
following year they're because the the price point is more important to them than um this isn't an assumption this is
35:14
a generalization so but it seems like the price point is more important than than the actual solution the actual
35:21
product itself um so I think it's a lot harder to uh get those folks to stay
35:27
renewing at for givewp in particular our average um uh lifetime uh for a customer
35:34
is somewhere between three and four years um it sometimes it's been all the way up to five years um and those are
35:42
definitely our most valuable customers when they end up being two years or less um they end up often asking a lot of
35:50
support um and costing us a lot on on that side um and always looking for
35:55
discounts at renewals as well well and that can just be really noisy and difficult so um I would like in the on
36:02
if it's a spectrum of like get them in at $1 because you'll get them later at the renewal versus like don't discount
36:09
very much at all I would be like like let me give that a number 10
36:15
is don't discount at all one is is get them at the renewal I'd be like a seven is what I would say I I'd be like at a
36:22
six and a half seven on that scale leaning toward not discounting
36:27
leaning towards just a nice healthy discount yeah right right right not like not too aggressive like1 yeah that's
36:34
where I am there's some evidence that I mean I don't have very good data on this but it's pretty well accepted that Black
Renewals
36:41
Friday buyers renew less uh in the future that's one reason um that some
36:48
people don't like to Discount lifetime deals but if this is going to be a customer that's less lik to renew then
36:54
personally I'm happy to Discount lifetime deals because it's a way of getting maximum Revenue up front so I
37:01
would do the opposite of asking for like one dollar or something because they're less likely to renew um but there might
37:09
be some interesting strategies regarding if you're whole strategies like freemium
37:14
so um hasid also said about um spend the whole year getting people to use your free products Black Friday can be an
37:22
opportunity to try to finally get them to go pro and I think that's a really good point if you have a way of
37:28
contacting your free users that I hadn't thought of absolutely yeah yeah and if you have
37:34
inap messaging uh built into your plug-in like we use help Scout beacons so that people can uh do their own
37:42
knowledge based uh support in app and and we link to things and that opens up in the beacon that's really nice uh help
37:49
Scout and intercom for example offers Beacon as well it's a great way to we
37:54
only do this like once or twice a year to push out messages alerting customers to sales uh and uh it's a great thing to
38:02
build into your products in case you want to use that in the future now that's not going to be Word wordpress.org compatible so um make sure
38:10
that what you do is wordpress.org compatible if you're on.org um but I
38:16
wanted to mention one way that you can get around the $1 for a whole year thing is you could do a dollar for a month
38:22
paid trial as a way to get around that and have that Renew at full price after a month and you can kind of combine The
38:30
Best of Both Worlds there yeah Adrien from Groundhog does that continually and
38:35
he actually has a lot of success with that it's a really interesting model for sure um and I mean I did we talk gosh I
38:43
keep forgetting what we have't haven't talked about but um Chris badet came on and did that one because lifter have
38:49
done a$1 trial for a long time and found it converts a lot better than free trials thank you your historical
38:56
knowledge of our episodes is better than mine that's great um let's talk real
Emails
39:01
quick about emails um what emails to send um and different wording potential
39:07
stuff like that um I'll uh uh I'll kick off um with another tip that came up um
39:16
also in conversation with Katie uh Katie was on Twitter asking about emails for Black Friday and how many do you send
39:22
and things like that uh we have a fun um I say fun we have a strategic initiative
39:27
with our emails for for Black Friday that has worked for givewp for a long time the thing that I hate about the
39:35
Black Friday sales is you really do have to send a lot of emails in order for it to be effective and helpful but you have
39:41
so many people in your list who are not yet customers and aren't going to be customers in November either and if you
39:47
just send a like a just a ton of emails in that time you're going to lose them as subscribers so we really didn't want
39:54
we we wanted to have our cake needed to too so and this was actually a tip that Chris Lemma gave us that we've used a
40:01
lot um and it's essentially from day one we say hey by the way we're going to be
40:06
sending a lot of emails over the next while about our Black Friday sale that's coming up and the first thing that says
40:12
really clearly is if you are not interested in this sale at all click this button and all that button does is
40:19
it takes them to a page that says okay you you won't get our sale emails anymore but you're still opted in that
40:25
that's what that page says and what it does is it tags that customer uh or that that not non-customer that that email
40:32
subscriber as um not interested in sale something like that um and then every
40:38
email that we send out after that is our general list minus anybody who says not
40:43
interested in sale that way they stay subscribed to our to our email but they don't get all those emails either um and
40:51
so it's kind of our have our cake and eat it to kind of situation um we've we've seen good success with that um not
40:58
a ton of folks uh click on the the link uh but those who do stay subscribed and
41:03
we get a chance to sell to them later so we do that as well uh don't forget to
41:10
date those tags so it's not just a permanent tag it's uh doesn't want Black Friday sub Monday emails
41:16
2023 uh because you don't want to just have it be generalized yep absolutely good point um but with that said we send
41:24
a lot of emails um for sure and we try to segment them to different uh folks who are interested in our product for
41:31
different reasons or different ways um and um generally speaking um as soon as
41:38
we usually send one or two emails before Black Friday but as of Black Friday it's usually two emails a day Friday Saturday
41:46
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday um to different segments so and I would it be
41:54
helpful if I went through our email calendar yes sure okay uh so here's what we're
42:03
doing at gravity kit uh November 1 we're doing a save the date email where we're
42:08
uh attaching an IC attachment where people can uh save the date and also linking to uh ability for people to add
42:15
it to their calendar uh and then we're emailing on November 7th for Early Access um for
42:24
people who have expressed interest already um we are then sending out an affiliate
42:29
email on November 9th which we haven't talked about yet but that's something that um that we try to push a little bit
42:36
it hasn't been very successful in the past because we don't nurture our affiliate program well enough um we're
42:43
doing uh a gravity forms uh Summit that I'm not necessarily able to talk about
42:50
I'm not sure you just did though now more I didn't say when or where soft
42:56
announcement is that that's a soft announcement that I'm not able to make we're
43:02
live hi Matt um November Monday so the Monday of
43:08
uh of Thanksgiving we're sending out our sales start email we're sending out another email on Tuesday another on
43:14
Wednesday we don't send out anything on Thanksgiving because some things are sacred uh and then we send out an early
43:23
uh we send out an three emails on Black Friday um one of them is early one of
43:30
them is late and one of them is specifically uh targeted toward the thing that we're going to be pushing
43:36
this month uh which I'm not going to leak early and then Monday we do the same
43:42
thing where we have uh early and late emails giving Tuesday we have another email and then we don't email until
43:49
Friday where we have a last chance email and I we decided not to do a like
43:54
surprise it like guess what we're extending things because in terms of like brand value I
44:00
think that the surprise we extended our sale thing is insincere and I I I've we
44:05
did it last year and it didn't feel good so I wanted to not like trick our customers because that's never like our
44:11
goal so we're just doing a late act like a last chance email uh December 1st and
44:17
that I believe is our summary of emails that we've planned I would love to know
Engagement rate
44:24
the engagement rate of different emails particularly sending was it three on
44:29
Black Friday um whether there's a trigger where unsubscribers go up or conversions go down or up or whatever
44:37
last year the late Black Friday email the late emails and the last chance
44:42
emails were our most successful uh with out of all of them uh
44:47
which was wild for me so uh I think people you know I don't also like to promote fomo and like fear missing out
44:54
and like time urgency like now now now we all we have so much stress in our lives and there's so much people are
45:00
shopping for their families it's there's so much to do I don't want to promote that but like seems like it works we
45:08
don't we don't push that too hard but that's that's one it seems like it does work yeah yeah I I will say I I don't
45:16
think anybody who receives the surprise we extend our sale is like oh of course you did like yeah so why bother the the
45:22
the farce it's like uh let's just say what it is which is like listen is the last chance but it's not the majority
45:29
yet so they won't know you were going they didn't know you were going to do it they wouldn't have banked on that would
45:34
they if they wanted to buy at a discount yeah true and two years ago we actually didn't know we were going to do it it's
45:40
like it really was like well wow it was real
45:45
exactly that's fun well let's wrap it up with some of our uh best advice huh um
45:52
we have um gone a bit beyond our normal time I think I think we can spend a little bit more time on bested bu stuff
45:58
um let's say uh imagine WordPress product owner who has had good sales
46:04
this year it's their first year of doing uh of selling their product and this is going to be their very first Black
46:10
Friday Cyber Monday sale what is your best advice to them right
46:16
now um so my best advice would be to do
Best advice
46:21
it try all different strategies um and yeah maybe we should think about um what
46:28
har sheet was saying earlier about um if you're I think it was them anyway um if
46:34
you're new then maybe you're not quite so established and it might be Matt actually um and you haven't got the
46:41
existing mailing list so maybe you should do roundups maybe you should pay a little bit for advertising and just
46:46
try everything but the key thing is to evaluate it and my top advice and I do
46:53
actually follow my own advice and I don't know know anybody who does is to evaluate it immediately after the sale
47:01
finishes and write a plan for next year based on what you learned so get the
47:07
data write your kind of conclusions about what the data means and then based on that write a project plan for next
47:14
year and I do I promise I do this every year um and then it makes it so much
47:20
easier the following year because it's not fresh in your mind then is it you just want to yeah maybe you some changes
47:26
based on evidence that you've heard since then podcasts you've listened to whatever but having that basic plan for
47:34
next year in place does make a big difference Zach what about you uh I
47:40
would put up your email capture uh popup right now start if you haven't done it
47:47
do it like the build your email list is my best advice and um if that means
47:53
doing a giveaway now or something like try to bring it try try to get as many signups now as possible um because that
48:00
really is the pulse of the Black Friday sale for us is our newsletter list um and I don't do a good enough job we
48:07
don't do a good enough job throughout the year of promoting our newsletter and uh it really pays off at the end uh of
48:13
the year with Black Friday um my second best advice is don't worry too much about it like yes it's a big deal and no
48:21
it's not the end of the world if your sale isn't huge um it's it's uh I think
48:28
177% of our total revenue in the in the week that's that's that's a lot right
48:35
but it's it's there's 83% that isn't there so like uh try something try
48:41
something try something and don't worry if it doesn't work because there's always next year yep uh I totally agree
48:49
Katie took almost all of my best advice already uh I agree with all those things although I am not one who does the very
48:56
next day uh and does all the analysis that's really good advice and I should take it um but I won't I probably won't
49:04
at the end of a big sale like that I'm tired um but my best advice would definitely be when you are new and
49:10
you're doing your big first uh Black Friday sale I just think you have to have you have to go big you have to go
49:16
really big and have fun with it uh because you have no idea what's going to happen and there's no way to predict
49:22
exactly how successful or not successful it's going to be um so you really have
49:27
because there's a lot of noise there's a lot of people doing a lot of big things everybody's waiting for the divy sale
49:33
everybody's waiting for the Elementor sale um like that all that stuff they're G to grab all the attention but if you
49:39
do something fun and different and interesting and weird and just attention grabbing for for fun for the fun of it
49:46
it might actually drive a lot more than you think and this is your one chance to do something really different um that
49:52
honestly at give we did zero zero discounts for the first like three or four years of give WP never discounted
50:00
anything and then we decided to do our very first Black Friday sale and we had so much fun with it we made these fun
50:06
videos it was me and Devon being ridiculous um the page was fun and it
50:12
was huge it for us it was a huge deal so um I think have fun go big uh don't just
50:18
kind of like if if they build it they will come kind of situation uh try to go
50:23
out there and and make something that people will remember um it's a good opportunity I also I love that and I
50:29
absolutely go big be fun do something outrageous that's also e ethical and safe uh but don't like I would advise
50:38
against spending too much time on it it can be an NeverEnding black hole of just
50:44
doing more doing more work video production for example is a great way to to lose a week just right there if you
50:52
spent that amount of time building up your Standard Market marketing plan you're improving your SEO working on
50:58
your products communicating with your customers finding out what new features they want that could result in a way
51:04
better uh result for your business depending on the stage where you are so like don't obsess because it's so easy
51:10
to go to spend too much time and then feel burned out and regret it so I've done that five years in a row except for
51:18
last year uh so I'm like I'm taking we're just copying last year's campaign
51:24
this year like all the graphics are the same we're updating the year because it's such a burden to make something
51:30
fresh and new every year I don't know if the customers know the difference uh I
51:36
hope that they understand that like the the communication that we give them is like is what we can do best this year
51:43
like it's as best as we can do sorry yeah not not everything's going to be
51:49
groundbreaking and and Earth shattering yeah absolutely um we have a special
51:55
comment here I have to say absolutely we are blessed to have Katie on this podcast she is everywhere lately and
52:01
doing so much great and amazing stuff I love the way that people build in public and Katie is a great example of that um
52:08
over the last year um and I appreciate this comment here P Peter ingersol says
52:13
has anyone noticed that Katie is everywhere not only in podcasts but at this very moment Katie's in my Twitter
52:19
feed and in a search result for w Commerce challenge congrats congrats to Katie thanks for being with Kitty as
52:26
always well I'm actually on Matt's podcast tomorrow Matt mados who's watching so there you go there you go
52:34
absolutely uh let's close it out uh what do we got going on next week right well
52:39
next week for our Halloween episode we're going to discuss a topic that I haven't seen discussed in the WordPress
52:46
Community before which is how to plan what will happen to your business if the worst happens and you're not around to
52:52
run it anymore not just if the worst but when the worst happens when the worst
52:59
death and taxes oh my gosh I hope I'm not there next week but I hope you guys show up in H costumes is that is that in
53:06
the works is that no I was thinking of coming in costume yes I don't know if it's inappropriate when you're talking
53:12
about a sensitive uh comment but maybe it will lighten the mood so I've only
53:18
got one costume and it's the one that I wore to word Camp 2019 in St Louis so maybe I'll wear that one
53:25
M yep cool cool well thanks so much everybody special thanks to post status
53:32
as we do every week for being our Green Room we continue to organize there and appreciate their time and support of what we're doing uh if you are enjoying
53:39
this we'd love your subscription we' love your like we'd love you to share this with your friends and family um and
53:45
uh we'll see you all next week have a good one thanks

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