128: How to Plan a Successful Black Friday Promotion with Brittany Long

Hi there.

Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital product accelerator one on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you be bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan that tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable freedom giving business you dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply. I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. In this podcast we go deep into product and marketing strategies for digital product creators. We cover everything from digital product creation, how to market and sell your digital products, and just as important, how to find your ideal customer. Let's jump right into our show.

And today my special guest is Brittany Long with Win with Systems. And Brittany is known as the Queen of Evergreen. And she helps brilliant but overworked entrepreneurs create passive income through automated evergreen email sequences so that they can experience consistent financial prosperity without working 24 7. And Brittany, thank you so much for joining me. I am super excited to chat with you and we're going to be talking about how to plan your Black Friday sales promotion. And Black Friday is right around the corner in just a few months. So this is a very timely discussion. So thank you so much for joining me.

Absolutely, my pleasure. And you know what? Black Friday, sometimes it feels like it's far away when it's a few months out, but all of a sudden it's like next week. And so everybody needs, you know, to start kind of preparing now.

Well, and that's actually a question I have for you. You know, we are recording this. It's the end of September. Black Friday is in November. How soon should we start preparing for our Black Friday sales promotions?

So really you want to start emailing your list as soon as possible to warm them up. Asking them questions and requesting that they reply is a great way to warm them up. It's a great way to show your It's a great way to show like Gmail, Yahoo, those kind of things that this is somebody they want to hear from. And so by asking them to reply to your emails, it helps your domain reputation, your deliverability. It's great all around. It's more likely that they'll actually see your emails when it becomes Black Friday, you in their inbox instead of their promotion or spam folder. So really, right now, as soon as possible, as soon as you're listening to this, it is a good idea to start warming up your list.

So we're going to start warming them up. When would we actually start emailing them or giving them a heads up? I should say that we're going to have this awesome Black Friday promotion coming up. What would you recommend there? Give us an idea of that timeline.

So there are a few ways to go about this if you want to have Black Friday. There's a few ways to do Black Friday I should say. So if you want something that is just on Black Friday, then letting them know about a week in advance, starting to kind of tease what might be happening, getting them excited, getting them on a wait list is especially great if you have a high ticket item. Same thing with when you're doing Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Great for high ticket. If you have something like e commerce product or Digital product doing 10 days of deals or 10 days of sales or doing something called gray. November is also a great option. So if you do great November, that means that for the entire month of November they're getting sales and deals. It could be different deals every day or even the same one every day with different bonuses as well. And so whenever you start, we want to look at about a week, two weeks out, we are teasing what's going to happen. You're getting them excited about the, you're getting them on a wait list. And if you have something high ticket, even showing them a catalog of what might be coming out that they can look forward to.

So that's a good point. And so definitely a few weeks prior to that, you were going to start warming them up, teasing them, letting them know what's coming down the pipeline. So let's kind of go back to the beginning. So now we're in September when somebody's listening to this, it might be in the beginning of October. And let's just say we need to kind of map all of this out. What would you, where would you suggest that we begin?

So I would say look at, look at what you want to happen over Black Friday for yourself. And I Know that might sound counterintuitive. A lot of people are like, start with your audience. But ultimately, if you aren't enjoying what you're doing with it, the chances of you following through and it being a good sale are a little bit slimmer. So what we want to look at is what, what kind of lifestyle do you want to be living around that time period? Uh, for example, for me, I don't want to be working really around that time. It's. It's time for my family and I. I want to bake. I want to soak up all the fall goodness. And so for me, I want to have everything kind of done ahead of time. Um, and not only do I want to have everything done ahead of time, I want it to be full of ease and enjoyment. Um, I really like creating content, so I'll probably create content ahead of time. But that's because it's something that I like. If that's not something you enjoy doing, then you can just do emails. But look at it, look at it like, what do I want to experience during that time? Um, and then start from there and work backwards. So what do I want to experience? After you kind of decide what you want that time period to look like, the next thing is to map out, what's my offer name? What is the deal? What. What kind of discount am I giving? Typically, we don't see bonuses doing as well. We see discounts doing better because that's what people are really expecting with Black Friday is some kind of discount. So what's the discount going to be? Why is this extra special? What time is it going to? Or what day and time and time zone does it start? What day, time and time zone does it end? Then we want to look at object. What are the reasons people will say no to this offer? We want to start mapping those out. The next thing we want to do is look at micro angles. What are reasons that people need this offer? How will this offer help them? After we've mapped out all of those things, the next thing that we want to do is get really clear on your calls to action and your subject lines. So we want it to be something really juicy, something that's going to ooze with curiosity for the subject lines, because they're going to see a lot of emails coming in on Black Friday and around Black Friday. So how are we going to set ourselves apart? I always use subject line.com. so my first step with subject lines is to look for curiosity. So what's something that's going to open A loop for them that they'll want to shut. So usually they open it because they want to find out what's happening or something that's just going to get out that curiosity. We also see subject lines with the words Black Friday doing really well, especially on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Black Friday. And then after I've done that, I'm looking at the call to action. I want to be super, super clear and at multiple points within the email. Once I've done that, then I'm going to start writing my emails out and filling everything else in. When I write my emails, I'm going to take pieces from that and use those as social posts. If you have a VA or somebody that can help you create the graphics, a graphic designer, you can have them take the words that you want to pull out and turn those into like quote cards or carousels. If you want to record stories, you can record those ahead of time. But those are usually the steps that I take. It feels, I know it feels like a lot, it sounds like a lot of. But if you can even do it for maybe 30 minutes a day for a few days, you'll knock it out in no time flat.

You definitely gave us a lot to unpack there. And one thing I do want to go back where I was like writing everything down as you were talking, but one thing I do want to go back to is you mentioned that discounts tend to work better based on your research and what you've done with your clients tend to work better than bonuses. What would you recommend for discounts? You know, around Black Friday versus discounts that we might offer, you know, other times of the year.

So if I'm doing a discount on Black Friday and I have a digital product or something else that isn't going to require any additional costs for me, I want to make it as easy of a yes as possible. And I see that also as a way for them to get on my email list, get in the door. Well, I guess they might already be on the email list. I'm thinking of social, but I want to use it as a way to get them in the door. So for me, with my like digital products, for example, I'm going to make it as big of a discount as I humanly can and still make a teeny tiny bit of money. I'm also going to have some upsells and stuff so that it kind of evens out with the average order value. But my main goal is to get to transform them from haven't bought yet to a buyer during that time period. And so I do huge, huge discounts. And then for if you're offering a service, I do discounts on those two. I don't ever go over 50% on those kind of discounts because it just like it just doesn't make sense financially knowing what my hard costs are. But those kind of discounts, I also add bonuses too as well if I'm doing a service. So I do a discount and then I do a bonus on top of that.

Okay, the other thing that you mentioned was we needed to outline the start and the end. And you know, I think a question that a lot of people might have is how long, you know, if I'm selling like an online course or membership and I have a discount on that or some type of digital product because that's the majority of people who are listening that that's what they're going to have. How long should this promotion be? Should it just be three days? Should it be a week? I mean, what are you seeing that works best for these type of offers?

Typically Thursday night or Friday morning, starting there and then doing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and then ending either Monday night or Tuesday morning. So I wouldn't go past that five day mark if you're doing a digital product or something like that because we often see that it's just a little bit too long. Uh, but by going that long instead of just doing one day, by going that long, it helps you still be around when some of the other offers are starting to taper off without it being around for too long.

And there's a lot of people who are also emailing, you know, our, you know, the people who, that we might be elling emailing to during that time period because that's the hot, you know, those are the hot days. Right, right. What do we do to stand out in all of those emails that are coming at our, you know, our deal customers?

So it starts before it starts with that warm up. So asking them questions that will help you get into their inbox instead of the promotion tab, that's the first thing. The second thing is subject lines that are curiosity driven subject lines. They'll be interested to read subject lines that might surprise them, even something that's outside of the norm. So instead of on on Monday, for example, instead of saying it's Cyber Monday, saying Happy Birthday, here's your deal, even though obviously it's not their birthday, but something that's going to make them kind of stop in their tracks for a second. And then the other thing I was going to say is warming or sorry, not warming them up, do that. But also telling them what's coming ahead of time so they can get excited, building that anticipation, teasing what's happening next so that when they see your email, they're excited to open it, excited to read it. If you can even make it. Some, like some kind of game. Some other things you can do is to have a giveaway ahead of time. I really like doing this. It helps re. Engage my list. It makes me feel really good. I know sometimes people feel bad sending all the emails that you know you're supposed to, quote, unquote, send during that time period. So if that sounds like you doing some kind of giveaway ahead of time, it helps you feel really good because you're, you're putting something wonderful out into the world and you're, you're giving before you're asking. And so that's something that I'll do sometimes. That's something I recommend a lot of my clients to do, especially ones that are like, oh, but I feel bad emailing. That's a great way to kind of get out of that headspace.

Well, and that's, that's a good question and a concern that a lot of people have is I'm going to, I'm emailing a lot. They know that they need to email a lot during this time period, but really, how often should they be emailing? So let's just say that their promotions going from what you suggested, maybe that Thursday night until all the way into either Monday night or Tuesday morning, how often are they emailing?

So if you're doing Thursday night to Tuesday morning, I would do one on Thursday night, one on Friday morning, two on Saturday. Typically Saturday and Sunday are going to be your lower days. So having two on Saturday with some unexpected bonus is a great way to beef up some of your sales over the weekend. One on Sunday and then typically I would do two on Monday and then two or three on Tuesday. If it ends on Monday, I usually do three on Monday. If you're ending Tuesday morning, it's a little bit different. Probably want to keep it open till like Tuesday afternoon. I was thinking because of, because of the time zones, but doing something like that, it is a lot of emails, but we see that that amount of emails usually doing best.

So we're sending out a lot of emails. We're definitely going to get unsubscribes. Should we be worried?

No, that's, I mean, unsubscribes are normal. There's a few things you can do to avoid that, doing some kind of giveaway or something like that, that that like offers something before you're asking for something that can help reduce unsubscribes. Also putting a note in there at or at the bottom or both even that say something like, hey, we're going to be doing a Black Friday deal. If you don't want to hear more about that, click here. You know, no hard feelings. We understand by giving them an option to opt out, it allows them to basically unsubscribe from that series of emails, any Black Friday emails, but still say subscribe to your list. So they're only getting what they actually want to be getting. So that's a great way to do it as well. And then also letting people know ahead of time, hey, there's going to be more emails than normal and here's where you can opt out of them, you know, and you'll still get our other emails and then we'll be done. We'll start on this date. We'll be done on this date. Just giving them a heads up. And this is something Jeff Walker talks about a lot in his book in his program launch. But giving people a heads up about it helps reduce the unsubscribes as well.

So I love that tip. And Brittany, any last minute advice do you have for us as we work to plan out our Black Friday sales promotion?

I think the biggest thing is to get started earlier than later. The more you can have done ahead of time, the easier it's going to be for you, the more enjoyable it's going to be for you. You can spend time with your family while, while you're seeing sales come in in your inbox. And so I think a lot of times people think Black Friday has to be this super stressful thing, but the truth is it doesn't have to be stressful at all. It can be really fun and you can feel really good about it.

And I hear you're a furry friend in the background and we love dogs around here, so no worries on that. Brittany, can you tell folks where they can find you? And I think you also have a service that you work with clients on the Black Friday sales promotions.

I do, yeah. So you can find me on Instagram, the Queen of Evergreen. You can also find me at winwithsystems.com, which is our website and on YouTube under Brittany Long. I have purple hair there. I actually have brown hair now, but my picture is purple hair. And so that's where you can find me. And then, yeah, we Work with people who are like, I don't want to write emails. This sounds stressful. I know I need to. I know I need to send emails out. I want a cash injection during this time. Maybe you want to give yourself or your team a bonus. Maybe you just want to have extra money and that's cool too.

But we all want that, right?

Right. Right. If that sounds like you and you want to use Black Friday as a way to get more people to transform from on your list to buyers and then also just having that cash injection, we work with you to write all your emails for you. We look at your offer, make suggestions. We can even suggest on upsells, downsells, things like that so you can get a higher average order value. And then from there we actually write the emails right then and there. You get it back within a few business days and you are good to go. And so there's no stress at all for you. It's easy peasy and done and you can really enjoy that season, that holiday season, instead of feeling stressed out or feeling behind or feeling like, oh my gosh, I have so much to do. You just get to bake or cook or eat or whatever it is you like to do at that time of year.

Well, Brittany, you have certainly motivated me to go work on my Black Friday promotions. I realized, you know what, I have got to get going on this. But thank you so much for joining us and have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.