Strategies and Tips for a Successful Black Friday sale for your WordPress Products

[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey everyone, this is WP Product Talk, the place where every week we interview. Except for this week, experienced WordPress product owners on strategies, tips, experiences, failures, and successes of running successful and driving WordPress product businesses. I'm Matt Cromwell, co-founder of Give WP, and, uh, senior Director of Customer Experience at Stellar WP.

[00:00:58] And today I have Katie and Zach with me, no guests, all co-hosts, Katie.

[00:01:04] Katie Keith: Yep. I'm Katie Keith, co-founder and CEO at Barn2 plugins.

[00:01:09] Zack Katz: And I'm Zach Katz, founder of Gravity Kit and Trusted Login.

[00:01:13] Matt Cromwell: And today's topic is Strategies and Tips for a successful Black Friday sale. Maybe we say Black Friday, cyber Monday Sale, uh, maybe we say Black Friday, cyber Monday, giving Tuesday sale.

[00:01:26] Um, but it's a good one and we decided to have just us talk about it because, uh, we all have lots of things to say about it. So.

[00:01:34] Katie Keith: Yep. And this is a great topic because Black Friday 2023 is just five weeks and two days away. So now is the time for WordPress product owners to plan their campaign.

[00:01:46] Zack Katz: And if you are watching live, please comment.

[00:01:49] Uh, we are all here to support you and, uh, answer your questions because, uh. We have so much knowledge, so very much we wanna share it with you.

[00:01:58] Matt Cromwell: I, I think we really do better when folks are asking questions too. I know. I do. Um, but, uh, uh, let's kick it off. So I'm excited to talk about this. We, black Friday is always, uh, interesting subject overall.

[00:02:12] Um, and I have heard some folks who are kind of like, eh, it's too much effort. I'm not gonna do it. Um, why should we actually say this is such an important subject for product owners to think about. Um, Katie, what's your take?

[00:02:26] Katie Keith: Well, um, whether you like it or not, the Black Friday, cyber Monday, et cetera, sale is the biggest shopping day of the year and it's absolutely huge in the WordPress industry.

[00:02:37] Um, and a big proportion of companies do take part, although not all. Um, however, most people don't approach it in a very evidence-based way, um, as far as I can tell, and very little is done to share data amongst us product owners within the community. And so that makes it really hard to know what does and doesn't work.

[00:02:57] So I think a big goal of this episode of WP Product Talk, it's for us to discuss this openly, share some stuff, and hopefully start to get the conversation going more widely.

[00:03:09] Zack Katz: Yeah. And in terms of numbers, like, okay, it's a big period for sales. Uh, November is, uh, 40% of, actually it's 45% deviation from average of our sales.

[00:03:23] So like if your average, uh, if your average sale a month is a hundred thousand dollars, it's $145,000. Uh. That's a huge number. That's a, that's a, that's a game changing number in terms 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 you would, uh, not get every year if you're doing a recurring product.

[00:03:48] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. I think what I also like 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 of the outlier. It's not normal. Uh, it's definitely exceptional. Uh, but if you have not done a lot of experimentation with sales and whatnot in the past.

[00:04:07] This is a great way to get started and into trying them out and seeing how it goes. Um, I think the whole subject of discounts and sales is actually a bigger subject that, uh, we probably should also talk about at some point or another. Did I feel like we've maybe touched on it before? Um, but, um, but this is a good way to get into it, uh, and experiment.

[00:04:26] Katie, I really liked what you said about like, doing this in a very evidence-based, uh, way. Uh, I think that's a bit of a unique thing. Can you lean in on what you mean about that a little bit?

[00:04:38] Katie Keith: Well at Bond two, we've done Black Friday since 2018. And um, so each year I try to measure the impact and learn from it for future years.

[00:04:51] So I try to get various data from our campaigns. Um, I look at the total revenue during the campaign period during the month of November, and I benchmark that against our previous years. Sales and also, uh, I try to benchmark it against like equivalent periods in say, September, October when there wasn't anything unusual going on.

[00:05:13] So I can see like what Zach said a minutes ago about, um, deviating 45%. That's kind of a way to get that sort of information. And I look at things like what are our highest selling days so that we can see any patterns and where to focus our energies and emails and things. I look at our average order value, which strangely, it is not always what you think.

[00:05:38] It often goes up during the sale, despite offering a discount, and that's because people are like buying lifetime deals or bundles or access. Past type things. So you think, oh, 50% sale, my average order value is going to be 50% lower. But actually that may well not be true. It may be higher than usual, which actually does affect knowing that affects some of your decision making about.

[00:06:04] For example, customer acquisition cost. Can you afford to support these people buying at a discount? Well, actually, yes you can if your average order value has gone up. So maybe you shouldn't be so scared about a bigger discount. So I find knowing that really helps me to plan future sales. Uh, things like if we, we'd do email marketing, which everybody does on Black Friday, we'll get to that later.

[00:06:29] Um, what was the impact of each email? Like, I've noticed our first two emails generate the most conversions and then they reduce each email beyond that. So that helps me to plan how many to send and things. You can also look at things like unsubscribe rates that you're pissing people off, and, um, that might be a reason to change or reduce your emails.

[00:06:50] 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 roundups later. But it's so hard. There's always data. I don't have that I want, I currently don't know how our renewals are different from people who bought on Black Friday, and I should know that.

[00:07:08] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm. I

[00:07:09] Katie Keith: also dunno how many of our sales are new versus existing customers during the sale period. And I should know that too. So always looking to learn other people's data. Have they found the same as me, and what else am I missing?

[00:07:25] Matt Cromwell: So much. I mean, so that's, I love the, your data, uh, focused approach because 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 helpful because I know that a lot of folks take, uh, approach Black Friday kind of like. If you build it, they will come kind of situation.

[00:07:43] Um, uh, where it is like, I'm just gonna do a sale because everybody does a sale and oh, hooray, I got more 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, renewals in particular. I think renewals are the big caveat that not enough folks are paying attention to.

[00:08:00] Um, I do see overall. The trend that if people buy things at a heavier discount, their likelihood of renewing is a lot less, I 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 strategic coming up to the following year with those particular customers, uh, to try to encourage them to renew.

[00:08:21] Um, that's a strategy that I'll talk about a little bit later. Um. So that's a, that's a good one. Um, in the wings here, not particularly a question, but we got a, a little, uh, WordPress celebrity in the, in the wings here. Matt Ros, uh, is over here. Um, I think that's Matt Ros. Isn't that WordPress tutorials for beginners?

[00:08:41] Um, yeah,

[00:08:42] Katie Keith: looks like him.

[00:08:42] Matt Cromwell: Looks like him. But that channel name is a little bit different. Um, this is my first time offering sales sponsorship. Does that count? Um. I'm not sure. Um, potentially. Oh, sponsorships. Oh, yes, yes, yes. This is, uh, referring to, he's actually, this is great. The WP Minute in particular is, is offering, uh, for folks like us.

[00:09:03] Uh, cool. He's just confirmed. It is Matt. It's a weird avatar there, Matt. You gotta do something about that. Um, but, um. He's offering fo uh, the WP Min is offering for you to be able to highlight your Black Friday sale, um, on their channel, which is a cool thing. So, um, Matt does good work over there. So there are folks that, um, more and more are advertising the Black Friday sales.

[00:09:28] That might also be an interesting thing we want talk about. Um, but, um. In terms of how good those are going in terms of how well those actually do promote existing sales. There have in the past been all these different sites that, that just list all of the Black Friday sales in different ways. Um, I don't know 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.

[00:09:52] Um, or no. Uh, Katie, Zach, what, what's your take on those things?

[00:09:58] Katie Keith: Well, yeah. I've noticed this year for the first time I'm being approached by a lot of people wanting me to pay to be featured in their Black Friday stuff.

[00:10:07] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. Um, some

[00:10:08] Katie Keith: of that, most of that's written articles. Some is more kind of in innovative things where they post you in lots of different places.

[00:10:16] Some is videos, which is really interesting because, um. Oh, every year I get my assistant to submit our deal to dozens and dozens of sites, and we've been published on between like 20 and 70 roundups and we do not track post track sales from them.

[00:10:35] Mm-hmm. Last

[00:10:36] year we were on 24, I think, um, roundups, and we track one sale from a roundup, which was Codeable and that is not one of the ones that we submitted our deal to.

[00:10:46] They did it voluntarily. And so I'm, um. Maybe like really high profile people like Map, um, it's worth doing. But on the typical roundup on a kind of a medium level type WordPress site, my experience is it's not worth bothering even if you don't pay. So

[00:11:05] Zack Katz: yeah,

[00:11:05] Katie Keith: why are people suddenly asking for money? What about, uh, U Zach?

[00:11:09] Zack Katz: Yeah, that was my experience as well. Uh, last year we got zero sales and I think the year before that we got two sales from all the submissions that we did. So this year. Uh, it's just going to be a nice to have, uh, it's on our list. There's things we could do for Black Friday, cyber Monday, but there are so many other things that we'd rather work on, uh, and rather spend time on, including basic stuff, like making sure that the page is really good.

[00:11:33] Like, uh, I, I'd rather do usability testing on our page. Uh, then submit to a bunch of deal roundups. Uh, sorry. Yeah.

[00:11:44] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I do feel like that that's might be why some folks are trying to ask to have sponsored, uh, pages now, because they are gonna put more effort into it. And I, I did chat with Meris a little bit about, uh, his approach and, and he is promoting these things in a different way.

[00:12:00] So ideally, if you're paying for placement, they're, they're gonna do some work to make sure that your, your deal gets, um. Highlighted more. Um, but I will say that generally speaking, because of the way in which Black Friday is a thing that's in everybody's mind, whether you're a digital product or Nike shoes or whatever, like generally folks are like, I want to buy this plugin anyway.

[00:12:23] I'm gonna wait until Black Friday. Like they're gonna come and they're gonna buy because. They're looking for that discount. Um, they're not gonna, it's not gonna be because they happen to be cruising some other random blog and see your sale. I think personally, um, there might be, like you said, those one or two that stumbled that way, but like, they're gonna come to you because they already know you.

[00:12:42] Uh, that's, that's been my experience more. Um, yeah.

[00:12:47] Zack Katz: Yeah. And I, I think maybe for product owners, we should kind of back up a step and say like, okay, how do we organize. The Black Friday deal campaigns. Like what do we, how do we structure them? Um. Mm-hmm. And I'd love to hear from, from both of you.

[00:13:03] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, yeah, I'll jump in.

[00:13:05] Um, black Friday for us, we definitely have prepped, uh, long in advance. Um, and again for Stellar wp. Um, we have a lot of brands now at this stage, and each of these brands actually came in with a different approach and different ideas about how to be successful on Black, black Friday. Cadence in particular, has huge success with their lifetime deals.

[00:13:26] Um, that, and that is a, a bit of a, a difference or, or unlimited licensing deals. Ithe also did a lot of that in the past, which I themes, by the way, is solid wp. Now, if you haven't noticed. Um, little plug. Um, 'cause 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 towards, more or less trying to find what we feel like is the right, uh, mix of best practices for brands across the board.

[00:13:54] Uh, we definitely prep far in advance. Um, we tend to do a combination of, uh, really strong, uh, email marketing. Uh. Directed towards a custom Black Friday landing page, um, with also a site-wide banner all over the whole site. Um, that's kind of for me, the really bare minimum basics is making sure that you're using your email marketing to the best that you can because like I just said a minute ago.

[00:14:22] It's folks who already know you, who are gonna buy on that day. I don't think you're going to attract a whole bunch of, um, people who've never heard of you before. Um, maybe they've never been customers before, but they're, they, they know you in one way or another. So leveraging your email, um, list is a big deal.

[00:14:39] Um. And then, um, uh, also making sure that there's a site wide banner everywhere, and then there's also a dedicated landing page. I really think the dedicated landing page separate from your normal pricing page is, is kind of a, a, a key differentiator, um, uh, because it really, uh, allows you to, to give the exact messaging that you wanna do.

[00:15:02] For this specific sale. There's lots of other sales that we've done where we just like update the pricing page itself, um, or individual product pages, uh, in order to say this particular thing is on sale right now. Um, but for Black Friday, it's like, give them a custom experience, make it fun, make it flashy, um, make it all about exactly what the details of the sale are, because people are really looking for the details of the sale.

[00:15:25] Like, does this apply to my renewal or not? Am I able to refund it? How many site licenses do I get? All those things become hyper important on a Black Friday sale, and so dedicating time and attention to those things I think are really important there.

[00:15:41] Katie Keith: Interesting 'cause we've never had a landing page, we've just done the banner thing and all of that.

[00:15:47] Um, and we're doing it for the first time this year and I've been really skeptical 'cause you've got to get it designed 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 my marketing team this year. Um. So we'll see how that goes, but uh, I was always sort of unclear as to whether it would make a difference to actually have one.

[00:16:11] So we'll see. Well

[00:16:13] Matt Cromwell: that's a good question though, 'cause your situation is similar to iconic over on our side and when you are a series of a lot of different products, um, having one dedicated landing page is more challenging. Um, so is your dedicated landing page, are you. Promoting all of your products on that page, or what is the dedicated page doing exactly.

[00:16:35] Katie Keith: Well, like all of our projects, we looked at iconic as part of planning hours along with Gravity Kit and other people I know. Um, but yeah, it's actually like everything quite similar with like all access, kind of more prominent, higher up and then a list of products lower down. Um mm-hmm. And we've just relaunched our all access 'cause it never sold as well as iconic, so we're trying to learn.

[00:16:59] Um, but yeah, I think it's kind of like our plugins page, but with Black Friday. Branding because we've already got a page which lists all of our products. So I was like, that's the landing page. Um, so that's kind of why I was unconvinced. Um, but it's like that. But with more stuff at the top.

[00:17:18] Zack Katz: Yep. Some of the things you 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 example, when somebody views a page.

[00:17:28] You can tag somebody if they come to your page that, uh, is already a customer, you can say, viewed the Black Friday landing page. And if they have, you know, they're more interested than people who haven't. And that's a really good way to segment your email list so that, um, you're sending the right emails to the right people.

[00:17:45] And that's one of the things that we've been really focused on for the past few years now, is, uh, targeting our emails so that only people who are interested in things get the things they're interested in. So if you've. In the last week in our emails, you clicked and you viewed a certain page that, and then they didn't end up buying.

[00:18:03] That's a, a product that they might wanna receive more information on or a special additional discount perhaps. Um, you know, you can really understand people's intent by the, their behavior on your site. And the goal is to do that without being creepy, which is always a little tough. Mm-hmm. But, um, you know, our goal is to provide more value and to make sure that we're fitting them with a product that they actually need and they don't necessarily know they need.

[00:18:26] Uh, so. Email marketing is, plus tracking, uh, behavior on the website is a great combination.

[00:18:33] Matt Cromwell: Nice. We have a couple, uh, supportive comments here. I wanna highlight real quick, um, ha sheet. Aurora says, dedicated landing page is a must valid point. Rocket ship. Love it. Um, and absolutely. I, I feel like it's really important.

[00:18:49] I do, like I said, I do think it is more challenging for folks like Barn two or iconic, um, where all access pass is something for sure, but so often you'll have like one, uh, extension that. Tends to drive a lot of revenue and the other ones are far less. Uh, it, it's hard to like get all the attention onto the thing that people actually wanna buy under those circumstances.

[00:19:12] Uh, this another interesting comment that's supportive. Uh, seconder Badia says, I also support custom design email newsletters and landing page for Black Friday, cyber Monday sales. It's almost gives a festive vibe. I absolutely agree. I like, um, that's one thing I do really enjoy about the Black Friday stuff is, um.

[00:19:31] Is being able to make it fun and interesting, um, and to, and, 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 and things like that. But it also just, uh, it, it fits the holiday season. I think so.

[00:19:47] Zack Katz: And Matt Eros has a good point about, uh, the, he has in the comments that, uh, it's hard to know.

[00:19:55] It's easy to run a sale if you already have a newsletter, uh, list that people have signed up for updates about. It's easy to, it is easier to run a sale if people already know you and, and that you offer certain products. Uh, I would say that this is an iterative process. Our, our first year we didn't have a huge list compared to what we do now, like mm-hmm.

[00:20:15] Uh, that Black Friday grows as the company grows and that the always be collecting. Like always, always be asking for people to sign up for your newsletter. That's a permanent good advice because you know, your list is your business. When it comes down to like being able to promote new opportunities for customers to, uh, buy new products or to upgrade their products, your, your list is something you should be cultivating at all times.

[00:20:42] Uh, so it's iterative and it grows year over year. So if you're just starting out and you're like, you sell one thing, one, one product for Black Friday. Congratulations. You sold a product. Um. That's, that's a hundred percent, uh, better than, or it's infinite percent better than not selling anybody. So don't give up is what I'm saying.

[00:21:02] Keep, yeah. Yeah. Keep growing your product, business, it's going to happen. Just, uh, don't give up.

[00:21:07] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Well, let's get through some of, um, the, um, important tactics, uh, that we wanted to highlight. One I thought was really great, uh, Katie highlighted on Twitter, um, she said, asked, uh, on Twitter, when do you think is the best time to start a Black Friday sale?

[00:21:25] And why? And it was a poll. Um, Katie, tell us a little bit about this poll and what you learned from it.

[00:21:31] Katie Keith: Yeah. So, um, I've been doing a few tweets lately asking people their experiences about Black Friday and, and sharing mine as well to try and pull knowledge, like I said earlier. And one of them was a poll saying when to start it.

[00:21:45] 'cause I've noticed in the last couple of years people are often starting earlier and earlier. Mm-hmm. Um, often even doing like the whole of November or something. And they're swearing by that strategy. Whereas, um, I work with ellipsis, um, and as my marketing company, and they really strongly have advised me, don't do that.

[00:22:05] You are devaluing your products. Um, keep it relatively short so that customers don't see you as the sorts of company. Company that always does discounts and this is just one short sale a year. Apart from that, you stand by the value of your products. Yeah, so I did a poll and um, 49%, which was the biggest, um, group said to start a week before Black Friday, which is great 'cause that's what we've decided to do this year already before I did that poll, um, 34% said start it on Black Friday.

[00:22:37] So I assume that would just be like a four day sale until the end of Cyber Monday. 11% said 1st of November, so that would probably be a full month long sale. And then there was a few comments, um, about anything in between that as well. So I thought that was interesting. The majority are not saying it do a really long sale, but that is definitely growing in WordPress products.

[00:23:00] Zack Katz: Mm-hmm. I have a, it's always complicated when it comes to sales because, uh, people wanna buy your product, so let them buy your product. 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 in three weeks. You just have to wait. That's really not customer friendly, is it?

[00:23:22] When the customer is trying to accomplish a solution that your products help them solve and you're saying, yeah, I'd love to help you and give you a discount, but no, you should really wait. So we've taken a different approach, which is, uh, to start early. We've wor we start early, we have an early access sale.

[00:23:41] If they've expressed interest, we give them access early. I think this year we're doing something like November 7th or something like that. Hmm. But we just added a pop-up on our website, uh, where if somebody signs up for our newsletter, they get a discount immediately. Mm-hmm. We don't want, not, not necessarily the full Black Friday, cyber Monday discount, but a discount.

[00:24:00] 'cause we wanna make sure that people are able to accomplish their goals as soon as possible, as quickly as possible with as little friction as possible. So I think that, you know, withholding this sale for the devalue, the concern of being, uh, your brand, being devalued, I don't think is the. Right answer if it is less good for customers and if customers know that a sale is coming up and they're just like, really?

[00:24:25] I personally get angry when I'm, I'm like, come on, you know you're gonna do a sale, just gimme the discount now. Yeah. We've all had that experience and I think that might be a bigger brand hit than, than having a longer discount period.

[00:24:38] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Maybe I'm gonna push, I'm gonna push back on that a little bit, I have to say, because I do think that, um.

[00:24:46] The sale is limited on purpose. Um, because we can't offer these discounts all the time. We can't offer them infinitely. Um, like it, it says

[00:24:55] Zack Katz: the average order value's higher.

[00:24:57] Katie Keith: It wouldn't be, if it was infinite though, would it? That's, well, have you tried.

[00:25:04] Matt Cromwell: I, I definitely think like that it, it does need to be for a limited time.

[00:25:08] I, like, I voted definitely one week before Black Friday is the best time like that, that week of basically, um, and I personally have seen also when we do it, the, the Monday before Black Friday, all the way we'd go, go all the way until giving Tuesday because of give wp um, and um. The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, before Black Friday.

[00:25:28] There's sales for sure, and it might be a little bit of a lift, but it's not huge. The big sales happen on that Friday, but for us, for some reason or another, cyber Monday is always the biggest. It's always that day and it's somehow in people's minds that. That's, that's our day, the digital day, cyber Monday.

[00:25:47] Um, and like they're buying shoes on Friday and buying product plugins on, on Monday or something. But Monday always is the big day for us. Um, and then for give WP it also the Tuesday, um, as well. So, and it's in that time because we are doing significant discounts, um, on purpose because I do find that for Black Friday.

[00:26:09] You can't do a 25% discount. Nobody cares about a 25% discount. It just doesn't 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, from Ellipsis that did a big study on how many, uh, how deep the discounts were and how many folks, uh, reported what they did based on their discount.

[00:26:30] Um, I think his suggestion was you can't really get away with anything less than 40%, but doing 40 to 50%. Um. For your products for a short uh, period of time, it does have a big impact, especially as you scale and you get larger. Those ticket, those sales are going to become support tickets as well. Um, and it's really hard to scale when you're cutting costs so extremely as well.

[00:26:56] Um, that's, I I would push back on that one, but I hear what you're saying about being customer centric and I'm always sensitive to that stuff. Um, I will 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 out? We always help 'em out for sure.

[00:27:12] So it's not as if there's like a hard roadblock or whatever, but, but um, we can't do 50% sales all the time. That's, uh, I do think it waters down the brand. So

[00:27:22] Zack Katz: have you had, uh, special deals for Cyber Monday in the past? Like as opposed to like, so you have a 40% sale for the rest of the time and then like a special Cyber Monday sale?

[00:27:34] Matt Cromwell: Nope. '

[00:27:35] Zack Katz: cause we tried that, uh, a couple years ago and it didn't really, it was a lot more work and it didn't move the dial. So I just, uh, was interested in, um, if you had experience with that.

[00:27:45] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's an interesting one. Like what if it was like you start off at 40% on Friday and, and then 50% on Monday, I'm not sure.

[00:27:53] Um, so,

[00:27:54] Zack Katz: and that's something that we've, we're going to do. Spoiler alert, we're gonna do that this year. Uh, where. It's, it's always strange to me where you have Cyber Monday and then the sale's over, or giving Tuesday the sale's over, and then your site just goes back to normal and it's going from like a hundred miles an hour to nothing.

[00:28:11] It goes back to less than normal for us, it goes back to less than normal. Yeah. And it start, so starts the horrible month of December and the terrible month of January. Mm-hmm. And so what we're going to be doing this year is we're going to be tailing off our sale, uh, as opposed to doing. You know, a big sale and then nothing.

[00:28:31] We're gonna have a, a late come sale, just like we have an early commerce sale. Um, try to incentivize, try to smooth out that curve because we want people to, to buy our plugins. And, you know, if, if it ends and they know that they've missed a big deal, uh, we don't want them to feel bad. So if they come to the site and they get a, any discount, I think it'll feel better than, than having zero, uh, zero sale after that.

[00:28:55] Katie Keith: Well, that is becoming more of a thing I noticed maybe one or two years ago. A lot of WordPress companies say that their sale ends on, uh, cyber Monday, but then they do like a surprise last chance sale. And we tried that for the first time last year and normally. Our sales from Tuesday to Friday to after Cyber Monday dropped by 30% compared to a normal Tuesday to Friday from September, October, whatever.

[00:29:24] But when we did a last chance sale, which as Zach said is a smaller discount than your main Black Friday one, our sales only dropped 12%. Instead of 30. So it did soften the blow a bit. So I think that's worth, um, considering. Yeah. Obviously you don't want to lose the urgency of Cyber Monday, but it does seem to make some difference to continue a small sale.

[00:29:47] Absolutely. But what you said, Matt, about the dates was interesting because we have slightly d. Experience about the days like most people are finding Cyber Monday is best and we always did until last year when Black Friday did twice as much revenue as Cyber Monday. I dunno what changed and nobody else I talked to said that Black Friday was bigger, but I thought that was interesting.

[00:30:13] I do know, sorry.

[00:30:15] Matt Cromwell: No, you.

[00:30:17] Katie Keith: About, um, starting early. We started a week before Black Friday, and F 32% of our revenue from the sale period came before Black Friday. So Friday to Thursday. Um, and the year before 51% of our revenue came before Black Friday. So I think it is worth starting a bit before the increase is already building up and the excitement.

[00:30:42] Zack Katz: Mm-hmm. The, the problem with having everything on Black Friday, not everybody's available on Black Friday. Not everybody is gonna be available on Cyber Monday. Yeah. Like the goal of the sale is to make sure that everybody who's interested in buying our products is able to buy our products and does buy our products.

[00:30:58] Right? Yeah. So by extending the sale date, I think that we also extend the opportunity to, uh, to. Reach everybody who's interested. Yeah. And I think that by having a, the shorter the date of the sale, the more they're gonna be, uh, people who are left un uh, unaddressed

[00:31:15] Matt Cromwell: for sure. Like I, I what, you know, anybody watching right now, you're probably not.

[00:31:21] The Give WP typical customer, so I won't be giving anything away, but like we, we always extend to the Wednesday, um, after 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 always surprise extend to Wednesday. Um, and, um. And that Wednesday, like Katie said, tends to be a lot better, uh, when we do that surprise extension.

[00:31:47] But the only people who know about the surprise extension are folks who are naturally already coming to our website or who are getting our emails. So again, it's basically a lot like what Zach is saying, they eat there, just we're busy doing holiday stuff and like, oh, great, I'm so glad I didn't miss out.

[00:32:03] Um, or they just, you know, are just getting to it for the first time. They, they. Knew about us already and just were coming later. So I do think that the extension is good. We also always, for the rest of that entire week, like Thursday, Friday, all the way, pretty much until the following Monday, even if somebody's like, Hey, we missed out on your sale, we'll give 'em a discount.

[00:32:22] Um hmm. So, like we, we we're, we're gonna continue to always try to help people and be, um, uh, supportive of them. Even when it goes long, especially when they reach out. If they take the effort to ask us a question, we're gonna help 'em get over the finish line for sure. So

[00:32:38] Zack Katz: I think for, for us, one of the things that we try to do is to approach the customer from their different value propositions that we offer, like, uh, so that we aren't sending the same message, which is like sales, sales, sales, sales, sale sales don't matter if they don't know what solutions you're providing.

[00:32:54] So we try to make sure that they're aware of the needs that we 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 tr problems they're trying to fill. And with our emails, because all three of us have products that have, we have so many different products we're trying to, um, promote, uh mm-hmm that our emails are going to be targeting different products, different reasons why people will want the products, and making sure that, that we address the whole spectrum of reasons rather than just hitting one thing, which is the sale.

[00:33:27] Uh, and that's a another reason why, um. A longer sale is easier 'cause you can tell a longer story. Mm-hmm. Like, you can address more of those, uh, things, the people, the eager, eager people to get it early. The people who are skeptical might have a different, uh, email flow that, uh, that you might wanna write.

[00:33:46] So, yeah, I, I don't forget to diversify the types of emails you're selling and, uh, to whom you're writing the emails.

[00:33:54] Matt Cromwell: Yep, yep, yep. Uh, we got a good question here too. Um. Let's see. Harsh sheet is asking some good questions. Which one should we highlight here? Um, in order? Yeah,

[00:34:10] for new product highlighted one.

[00:34:12] Zack Katz: Chose one to highlight, which is, uh, for a new product, uh, for new products, is getting people on board more important and converting them next year. Uh, just like getting them in and then having it renew at a higher price or something like attracting users. Is that the way to go for, for Black Friday?

[00:34:31] Like a $1 for a pro version, like a steep, steep discount, just get them in the door.

[00:34:36] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I like that question a lot because it, it, it shows that there's more to this sale than just the sale. Uh, it should be the beginning of a customer journey. Um, I. Um, that's something we think about a lot. Um, and truthfully, I'm a 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 get your product heavily discounted, they often are less likely to be renewing the following year there because the, the price point is more important to them than, um.

[00:35:12] I, I, this is an assumption, this is a generalization, so, but it seems like the price point is more important than, than the actual solution, the actual product itself. Um, so I think it's a lot harder to, uh, get those folks to stay renewing, uh, give WP in particular, our average, um, uh, lifetime, uh, for a customer is somewhere between three and four years.

[00:35:37] Um, it sometimes it's been all the way up to five years. Um. And those are definitely our most valuable customers when they end up being two years or less. Um, they end up often asking a lot of support, um, and costing us a lot on, on that side. Um, and always looking for discounts at renewals as well. And that can just be really noisy and difficult.

[00:35:59] So, um, I would like in the on, if it's a spectrum of like, get 'em in at $1 because you'll get 'em later at the renewal versus like. Don't discount very much at all. I would be like, eh, like, let me give a number. 10 is don't discount at all. One is, is get 'em at the renewal. I'd be like, a seven is what I would say.

[00:36:20] I, I'd be like at a six and a half, seven on that scale.

[00:36:24] Zack Katz: So leaning towards not discounting.

[00:36:27] Matt Cromwell: Leaning towards just a nice or like healthy discount.

[00:36:30] Zack Katz: Yeah. Right, right, right. Not, not, not too aggressive. Like $1.

[00:36:33] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. That's where I'm

[00:36:35] Katie Keith: at. There's some evidence that, I mean, I don't have very good data on this, but uh, it's pretty well accepted that Black Friday buyers renew less.

[00:36:44] Uh, in the future. Yeah, that's one reason, um, that some people don't like to discount lifetime deals, but if this is gonna be a customer that's less likely to renew, then personally I'm happy to discount lifetime deals because it's a way of getting maximum revenue upfront. So I would do the opposite of asking for like $1 or something because they're less likely to renew.

[00:37:07] Um. There might be some interesting strategies regarding if your whole strategy is like freemium. So, um, Hashid also said about, um, spend the whole year getting people to use your free products. Black Friday can be an opportunity to try to finally get 'em to go pro, and I think that's a really good point if you have a way of contacting your free users that I hadn't thought of.

[00:37:32] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely.

[00:37:33] Zack Katz: Yeah. Yeah. And if you have in-app messaging, uh, in built into your plugin, like we use HelpScout Beacon so that people can, uh, do their own knowledge base, uh, support in-app and, and we link to things and that opens up in the beacon. That's really nice. Uh, HelpScout and Intercom, for example, offers Beacon as well.

[00:37:52] It's a great way to, we 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 build into your products in case you want to use that in the future. Now, that's not going to be word do, uh, wordpress.org compatible. So, uh, make sure that what you do is wordpress.org compatible if you're on.org.

[00:38:15] Um, but I wanted to mention one way that you can get around the $1 for a whole year. Thing is you could do a a dollar for a month paid trial. As a way to get around that and have that renew at full price after a month. Mm-hmm. And you can kind of combine the best of both worlds there.

[00:38:31] Matt Cromwell: Yep. Adrian from Groundhog does that continually and he actually has a lot of success with that.

[00:38:37] It's a really interesting model for sure. Um, and I mean, I did, did we talk, gosh, I keep forgetting what we have and haven't talked about, but um, yeah. Chris

[00:38:46] Katie Keith: Bad came on and did that one because Lifter have done a $1 trial for a long time and found it converts a lot better than free trials.

[00:38:54] Matt Cromwell: Thank you. Your historical knowledge of our episodes is better than mine.

[00:39:00] That's great. Um, let's talk real quick about emails, um, what emails to send, um, and different wording, potentials, stuff like that. Um. I'll, uh, uh, I'll kick off, um, with, uh, another tip that came up. Um, also in conversation with Katie. Uh, Katie was on, on Twitter asking about emails for Black Friday and how many do you send and things like that.

[00:39:23] Uh, we have a fun, um. I say fun. We have a strategic initiative with our emails for Black Friday that has worked for Give WP for a long time. The thing that I hate about the Black Friday sales is that you really do have to send a lot of emails in order for it to be effective and helpful. But you have so many people in your list who ha are not yet customers and aren't going to be customers in November either.

[00:39:46] And if you just send a like a. Just a ton of emails in that time, you're gonna lose them as subscribers. So we really didn't want, we, we wanted to have our cake and eat it too. So, and this was actually a, a tip that Chris Lema gave us that we've used a lot. Um, and it's essentially from day one, we say, Hey, by the way, we're gonna be sending a lot of emails over the next while about our Black Friday sale that's coming up.

[00:40:11] And the first thing that says really clearly is, if you are not interested in this sale at all. Click this button and all that button does is it takes 'em to a page that says, okay, you, you won't get our sale emails anymore, but you're still opted in. That it, that's what that page says, and what it does is it tags that customer, uh, or that not, not non-customer, that, that email subscriber as, um.

[00:40:35] Not interested in sale, something like that. Um, and then every email that we send out after that is our general list minus anybody who says not interested in sale. That way they stay subscribed to our, to our email, but they don't get all those emails either. Um, and so it's kind of our, have our cake and eat it to kind of situation.

[00:40:55] Um, we've, we've seen good success with that. Um, not a ton of folks. Uh, click on the. The link. Uh, but those who do stay subscribed and we get a chance to sell to them later. So

[00:41:06] Zack Katz: we do that as well. Uh, don't forget to date those tags so it's not just a permanent tag. It's, uh, doesn't want Black Friday, cyber Monday emails 2023.

[00:41:17] Mm-hmm. Because you don't wanna just have it be generalized.

[00:41:19] Matt Cromwell: Yep. Absolutely. Good point. Um, but with that said, we send a lot of emails, um, for sure, and we've tried to segment them to different, uh, folks who are interested in our product for different reasons or different ways. Um, and, um, generally speaking, um, as soon as, we usually send one or two emails before Black Friday, but as of Black Friday, it's usually two emails a day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

[00:41:49] Wednesday, um, to different segments.

[00:41:51] Zack Katz: Yeah. So, and I, would it be helpful if I went through our email calendar? Ooh, yes. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Uh, so here's what we're doing at Gravity Kit. Uh, November 1st, we're doing a save the date email where we're, uh, attaching an ICS attachment where people can, uh, save the date and also linking to.

[00:42:14] Uh, ability for people to add it to their calendar. Uh, and then we're emailing on November 7th for early access, um, for people who have expressed interest already. Um, we are then sending out an affiliate 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.

[00:42:36] It hasn't been very successful in the past because we don't nurture our affiliate program well enough. Hmm. Um. We're doing, uh, a gravity forms, uh, summit that I'm not necessarily able to talk about. I'm not sure.

[00:42:51] Matt Cromwell: You just did though. I just did. Now we have to hear more. You just did. I didn't say when or where.

[00:42:55] Is that a soft announcement? Is that it? That's a soft

[00:42:58] Zack Katz: announcement that I'm not able make. No, we're

[00:43:01] Katie Keith: live.

[00:43:03] Zack Katz: Hi Matt. Um, November, Monday. So the Monday of, uh, of Thanksgiving. We're sending out our Sales Start email. We're sending out another email on Tuesday, another on Wednesday. We don't send out anything on Thanksgiving because some things are sacred.

[00:43:19] Hmm. Uh, and then we send out an early, uh, we send out three emails on Black Friday. Um, one of them is early, one of them is late, and one of them is specifically, uh, targeted toward the thing that we're going to be pushing this month, uh, which I'm not gonna leak early. Ah, and then Monday we do the same thing where we have, uh, early and late emails.

[00:43:45] Giving Tuesday we have another email and then we don't email until Friday where we have a last chance email and I, we decided not to do a like surprise it, like guess what? We're extending things. 'cause in terms of like brand value, I think that the surprise we extended our sale thing is insincere. And I, I, I've, we did it last year and it didn't feel good.

[00:44:07] So I wanted to not like, trick our customers 'cause that's never like our goal. So we're just doing a late act like, uh, last chance email, uh, December 1st. And that I believe is our summary of emails that we've planned. I

[00:44:23] Katie Keith: would love to know the engagement rate of different emails, particularly sending, was it three on Black Friday?

[00:44:30] Um, whether there's a trigger where unsubscribes go up or conversions go down or up or whatever.

[00:44:37] Zack Katz: Last year, the late Black Friday email, the late emails and the last chance emails were our most successful. Hmm. Uh, out of all of them, uh, 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 and like time urgency.

[00:44:56] Like now, now, now we all, we have so much stress in our lives and there's so much people are 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. Yeah. We don't, we don't push that too hard. But that's, that's one It seems like it does work.

[00:45:12] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:45:13] Yeah. I, I will say, I, I don't think anybody who receives the surprise, we extended our sale is like, oh, of course you did. Like, yeah. So why bother

[00:45:21] Zack Katz: the, the, the farce? It's like, uh, let's just say what it is, which is like, listen, this is the last chance. Yeah, but it's

[00:45:27] Katie Keith: not the majority yet. So they won't know you were going to, they didn't know you were going to do it.

[00:45:33] They wouldn't have banked on that, would they? If they wanted to buy a discount.

[00:45:37] Matt Cromwell: Yeah,

[00:45:37] Zack Katz: true. And two years ago, we actually didn't know we were gonna do it. It was like, it really was like, well, wow. It was real. Exactly.

[00:45:46] Matt Cromwell: That's fun. Well, let's wrap it up with some of our, uh, best advice. Huh? Um, we have, um, gone, um, a bit beyond our normal time.

[00:45:55] I think we can spend a little bit more time on best advice stuff. Um. Let's say, uh, imagine WordPress product owner who has had good sales this year. It's their first year of doing, uh, of selling their product, and this is gonna be their very first Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. What is your best advice to them right now?

[00:46:18] Katie Keith: Say, I would say my best advice would be to do it, try all different strategies. Um, and yeah, maybe we should think about, um, what Harshi was saying earlier about, um, if you're, I think it was. Um, anyway, um, if you are new, then maybe you're not quite so established and it might be Matt actually. Um, and you haven't got the existing mailing list, so maybe you should do roundups.

[00:46:43] Maybe you should pay a little bit for advertising and just try everything. But the key thing is to evaluate it and my top advice, and I do actually follow my own advice, and I don't know anybody who does, is to evaluate it immediately after the sale finishes. And write a plan for next year based on what you learned.

[00:47:06] So get the data, write your kind of conclusions about what the data means, and then based on that, write a project plan for next year. And I do, I promise I do this every year. Um, and then it makes it so much easier the following year because it's not fresh in your mind then, is it? You just wanna, yeah.

[00:47:25] Maybe you'll make some changes based on. Evidence that you've heard since then. Podcast, you've listened to whatever. But having that basic plan for next year in place does make a big difference.

[00:47:37] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:38] Zack Katz: Zach, what about you? Uh, I would put up your email capture, uh, pop up right now. Start. If you haven't done it, do it.

[00:47:48] Like the build your email list is my best advice. And, um, if that means doing a giveaway now or something, like try to bring it, try, try to get as many signups now as possible. Um, because that 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.

[00:48:07] We 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 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, it's not the end of the world if your sale isn't huge. Um, it's, it's, uh, I think 17% of our total revenue in the, in the week.

[00:48:33] That's, that's, that's a lot, right? Yep. But it's, it's, there's 83% that isn't there. So like, uh. Try something. Try something, try something and don't worry if it doesn't work. 'cause there's always next year.

[00:48:46] Matt Cromwell: Yep. Uh, I totally agree. 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 next day, uh, and does all the analysis.

[00:48:59] That's really good advice and I should take it. Um, but I won't, I probably won't 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 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 really big and have fun with it, uh, because you have no idea what's gonna happen and there's no way to predict exactly how successful or not successful it's gonna be.

[00:49:26] Um, so you really have, 'cause there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of people doing a lot of big things. Everybody's waiting for the divvy sale. Everybody's waiting for the Elementor sale. Um, like the, all that stuff, they're gonna grab all the attention. But if you do something fun and different and interesting and weird and just attention grabbing for, for fun, for the fun of it, it might actually drive a lot more than you think.

[00:49:48] And this is your one chance to do something really different. Um, that honestly at Give, we did zero discounts for the first like. Three or four years of give WP never discounted 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 videos.

[00:50:07] It was me and Devin being ridiculous. Um, the, the page was fun and it was huge. It, for us, it was a huge deal. So it, I think have fun, go big. Uh, don't just kind of like. If, if they build it, they'll come kind of situation. Uh, try to go out there and, and make something that people will remember, um, because it's a good opportunity.

[00:50:28] Zack Katz: I also, I love that and I, yeah, absolutely. Go big, be fun, do something outrageous that's also ethical and safe, uh, but don't. Like I would advise against spending too much time on it. It can be an never ending black hole of just doing more, doing more work. Video production, for example, is a great way to, to lose a week, just right there.

[00:50:52] If you spent that amount of time building up your standard marketing plan, you're improving your SEO, working on your products, communicating with your customers, finding out what new features they want that could result in a way better. Uh, result for your business, depending on the stage where you are.

[00:51:08] So like, don't obsess 'cause it's so easy 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 last year. Uh, so I'm like, I'm taking, we're just copying last year's campaign this year. Like the, all the graphics are the same. We're updating the year because it's such a burden to make something fresh and new every year.

[00:51:32] I don't know if the customers know, uh, the difference. Uh, I hope that they understand that like the, the communication that we give them is like. Is what we can do best this year. Like it's as best as we can do. Sorry. Yeah. Absolutely not, not everything's gonna be, uh, groundbreaking and, and earth shattering.

[00:51:52] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. Um, we have a special comment here. I have to say. Absolutely. We are blessed to have Katie on this podcast. She is everywhere lately and 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, over the last year. Um, and, uh, appreciate this comment here.

[00:52:11] P Peter Ingersoll says, has anyone noticed that Katie is everywhere? Not only in podcasts, but at this very moment, Katie's in my Twitter feed and in a search result for WooCommerce challenge. Congrats. Congrats to Katie. Thanks for being with us, Katie, as always.

[00:52:26] Katie Keith: Well, I'm actually on Matt's podcast tomorrow, Matt Madero, who's watching.

[00:52:30] So there you go.

[00:52:32] Matt Cromwell: There you go. Absolutely. Uh, let's close it out. Uh, what do we got going on next week?

[00:52:39] Katie Keith: Right. Well, next week for our Halloween episode, we are going to discuss a topic that I haven't seen discussed in the WordPress community before, which is how to plan what will happen to your business if the worst happens and you're not around to run it anymore.

[00:52:54] Zack Katz: Not just if the worst, but when the worst happens. When the worst

[00:52:58] Matt Cromwell: death and taxes. Oh my gosh. I hope, uh, I'm not there next week, but I hope you guys show up in, uh, costumes. Is that, is that in the works? Is that No,

[00:53:08] Katie Keith: I was thinking of coming in costume. Yes. I don't know if it's inappropriate when you're talking about a sensitive, uh, comment, but maybe it'll lighten the mood.

[00:53:17] So I've only got

[00:53:18] Zack Katz: one costume and it's the one that I wore to Word Camp 2019 in St. Louis. So maybe I'll wear that one.

[00:53:25] Matt Cromwell: Hmm. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Well, thanks so much everybody. Special thanks to post status as we do every week for being in our green room. We continue to organize there and appreciate their time and support of what we're doing.

[00:53:38] Uh, if you are enjoying this, we'd love your subscription. We'd love your, like, we'd love you to share this with your friends and family. Um, and, uh, we'll see you all next week. Have a good one. Thanks a.