#44 Deividas & Kris – BFCM: Masterplan How to Generate 45% of Your Yearly Revenue in 3 Months

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This is another Kris & Deividas podcast (you know it’s going to be good) and today, they discuss a highly anticipated topic: Black Friday Cyber Monday.

The reason they’re talking about it now is because they just went through repetition for BFCM and generated $500,000 in 2 days, and Deividas says they’re going to generate another $500,000 in the next 2 days.

So, he’s excited about all the strategizing and testing to come.

Deividas says he’s already done 3 BFCM events in the past, which means he knows how to do them properly at this point, but he wants to test 3 more things just to see if they’re working or not:

Live shopping campaigns, Facebook live campaigns, and a giveaway.

But let’s start from the beginning:

What are they going to do NOW?

First, they walk through Kris’ process for BFCM – which covers:

Projections to manage your inventory and what to expect for your revenue.

What can you expect out of revenue?

Kris says they go based off of the percentage of year-to-date revenue from January till the end of September. Whatever you’ve generated during that period, you can expect to hit about 45% on average of your year-to-date revenue. This way, you’ll be able to better manage your inventory.

The buying behavior starts changing in October, says Deividas and he gets ready to start scaling up around that time too.

You can do so by compromising profits for a bit. He agrees with their account founders in advance that they’re going to pre-buy media in advance for October to start increasing their top-of-funnel email list opt-ins.

This way, you start pulling in people into your eCommerce funnels and ecosystem and you’ll sell to them in your emails later.

This way, Deividas recalls they generated $210K from a single email 2 days ago. And 1 day after that, they generated $90K, also from a single email.

2. Testing Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy during October

It starts with your offer – says Kris.

She says they’ve tested multiple types of offers, and the easiest one so far for their businesses has been…

A site-wide blanket discount.

It needs to be higher than what you normally pitch as a discount. For example, if you’re normally giving away 20% discounts, you’ll want to go with a 25% discount with this offer.

If you were to give a blanket discount for your site, people are going to buy more and your AOV might increase by 10%-20% too. This way, your margins don’t get squeezed as much either, you save on shipping, costs, and so on.

When crafting an irresistible offer, you just have to test your offer a lot throughout the year. You can do a discount and then give away a free product to sweeten the deal along with it.

As for the marketing channels, Kris says they do 2 things leading up to Black Friday:

First, to prepare, they start promoting VIP signups where customers get an exclusive discount or a gift.

This has to be a legit, sweet offer that you can’t just give away to everyone else a few days later. Make sure it’s actually scarce too. Deividas says the VIP campaign runs for 1 day (24h) and that’s it. This is still before Black Friday so that you beat other brands on competing on Friday. And when Black Friday hits – you’ll be ready.

In terms of channels, Kris says they focus on email notifications, giveaways, SMS, and live shopping.

With live shopping, Deividas says he’s considering it and plans out his strategy for a live shopping top-of-funnel customer acquisition strategy.

He says they’re also working with influencers, giving them 5%-10% regular discounts they can track of – but they’re scaling down with them a bit because of certain issues.

With giveaways, Deividas says he’s experimenting with a gamification style giveaway where customers get points for certain actions (likes, comments, AND buying products.).

As for SMS marketing, you send a VIP/newsletter signup encouraging your customers to sign up for your SMS channel for extra discounts.

Despite being simple, the bottom of the funnel channels: email and SMS are things you need to expand on as much as possible before Black Friday if you want to make some serious money.

With product launches, it’s good to have some kind of a surprise launch like a new product category. But on the other hand, there are many things that can go wrong…

Next topic: Cyber Monday.

You should start including scarcity everywhere. You do a VIP sale first (24 hours), then a regular sale, and then, you launch another “last chance” sale (“never going to happen again” sale).

You asked, we answered.

Next set of questions they discuss are from the private Sugatan Facebook group (join here).

Who do you target your Black Friday offer to? Warm traffic familiar with your brand, TOF, something else?

Most of the time, it’s retargeting as we’ll be pre-buying media in advance.

It’s a huge project, says Kris. And the project management is sectioned off into:

Media buying team.
Email and SMS marketing.
Copywriting.
Graphics.
Video team.
Giveaway
Website.
Other channels: Influencers, Snapchat, Google,

For email and text strategy, during the VIP signup and giveaways (which happen at the same time), there are 5-7 emails released during that week.

How do you stand out and fight consumer sale fatigue?

Answer: scarcity and having a much bigger list. Variations of offers with your giveaways with a scarcity effect

Your creatives should be very direct. Think large and glittery so that it stands out. But simple so that it’s obvious at a glance.

To increase your average order value, Deividas suggest groping together all your offers (products) in one bundle – the master bundle. This way, he sold 15 bundles at $400 per each.

To keep things running smoothly, Kris recommends having strong project managers that touch on multiple departments. They’ll be reporting under you and keeping everyone accountable for their deliverables and deadlines.

Finally, to test your offers before BFCM, you just have to start in October, or even earlier than that.

You experiment with flash sale launches, product launches, and more to find the winning combination.

Looking for more actionable insights and strategies for your eCommerce BFCM plan? Check out our full article on eCommerce Black Friday to learn how to start preparing for Black Week sales 2 months in advance, the specific marketing channels to focus on, how to optimize your site for maximum conversion, and more practical tips and tricks.

Here’s what we cover during episode #44:

Deividas looks back on the last 3 BFCM eCommerce strategies he worked on, and 3 specific things he wants to test now to see if they’re working
Kris’ process for BFCM: a step-by-step breakdown of
How Deividas generated 140% of last year’s Black Friday event year to date revenue (and why he says he got lucky)
How Deividas generated up to $300K from email marketing in a matter of few days and why he recommends businesses should start pulling in people into their ecosystem in around October
The single easiest (and best) offer that’s worked for Kris when testing Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy during October
How to craft an irresistible offer leading up to and during Black Friday for your eCommerce products
2 Essential thing Kris does with marketing channels when leading up to Black Friday for every account
Deividas plans out his exact live shopping strategy he would use with an influencer (that he’s still considering if he should launch)
Issues with influencer marketing (regarding discount codes) and how Deividas ia handling it
The gamified giveaway tactic Deividas is working on in-depth and one major issue he came across
The dead simple SMS marketing strategy you need to expand before Black Friday
2 Specific channels you need to expand on rightaway before Black Friday if you want to make as much money as possible
Why Deividas follows Occam’s Razor to a T when testing new product launches or different eCommerce strategies
Why you should pre-buy a lot of your media in advance right now if you don’t want to struggle later in November
How to include scarcity in your BFCM strategies: a day-to-day breakdown
Next topic: Using real scarcity in your Cyber Monday marketing tactics
Kris starts answering questions from the private Sugatan Facebook group. Talks about Black Friday targeting, tweaking your offer, project management, email/SMS marketing, and more
What Deividas would do if he had $10K to spend $10K on his Black Friday strategy (simpler than you think)
How to quickly increase your AOV – based on Deividas generating $6,000+ through bundle promotion
Why Deividas says copy isn’t AS important in your ads during Black Friday (and what he recommends focusing on instead)
The only landing page Deividas says they need leading up to BFCM (hint: it’s not even for BFCM)