SPEAKER_00: 0:00

iOS 26 is released, which is gonna change text messaging. It's gonna filter out. Unknown senders. What is the solution? Is it apps, Discord communities, broadcast channels, or is it like, hey, just like everything in life that you have to do all of it, it's all hard.

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

And you might need to do a lot more to do the same. Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart. Mark, how are you?

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Doing good. How are you?

SPEAKER_01: 0:27

I'm good. I'm very good.

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

It's been a crazy couple weeks.

SPEAKER_01: 0:33

Yeah, we missed last week. Pardon us. Um yeah, it's been a crazy couple weeks just because of obviously the the whole shooting of Charlie Kirk was crazy in its own ways, but it has it seems to have impacted the like there's a strong correlation to impacting a lot of brands' performances right now. And and not necessarily because well, attention is just gone. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It's not necessarily because people are obviously people are mourning that, and you know, but sometimes things happen uh economically, like for example, where gas prices rise and then people get nervous so they slow their buying down. And then there's other things that happen where it's not necessarily a slowing of buying and it's more of a where are people's attention? And right now people's attention it has been on that. Which will be which will be interesting because how much longer that lasts simply due to the fact that one, the shooter has been caught, two he had his funeral as well. Is that on Sunday?

SPEAKER_00: 1:59

Sunday, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00

So I think I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens this week.

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

Yeah, it will.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04

In my opinion.

SPEAKER_00: 2:06

Yes, hopefully. Um but you have a lot of things happening. iOS 26 is released, which is gonna change text messaging. It's gonna filter out. Unknown senders. Yes. So in order to find unknown senders, people have to go and click on this like filter button. Yes. Um, on the top right hand corner.

SPEAKER_01: 2:30

You're essentially just adding it's essentially just added what one extra step. Yeah, kind of like what Gmail has done with their promotion and social folder. So it doesn't come into your primary inbox. So now you have multiple inboxes in your SMS, which is going to be extremely painful for people who are heavily reliant on SMS. So what needs to happen probably the the if I remember right, you might remember the bell curve of you you've got the the typical bell curve of early adopters, you know, versus late adopters. Yeah. Anytime an iOS comes out, it's what, six months before anyone, like everyone fully jumps on it. So even though it's out, you probably won't see the negative impact as much for the next couple of months as more people starting.

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

It'll yeah, it'll be a gradual probably right around Black Friday time. It'll make everything worse over the next two, three months. So for text message signups um and people who haven't saved you. So you're gonna have to take some preemptive measures to A make sure that they're looking for the unknown sender, which is gonna be you, yep, responding to it and then saving the contact.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Yeah, I've heard that that's what they need to do, is they need to actually save the contact.

SPEAKER_00: 3:54

So if they save your contact, you'll be good. So you're gonna have to every company is gonna be different depending on your demographic. But man, see, that just like brought up an idea though. Has anybody tried, instead of doing a text message sign-up, just doing a depending on the platform? Like you know how on Instagram you can have like the community that also pushes like notifications differently.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

I'm sure people have tried it, but uh you definitely don't hear anyone talking about that.

SPEAKER_00: 4:30

I've never seen, I mean, there's not a lot of money to be made there for oh like for like a software to come in and do something with that. But I yeah, I'm curious how that would because it's different than a follower, right?

SPEAKER_01: 4:44

Well, I've had a lot of brands, yeah. I've I've seen I've heard a lot of brands who are doing a lot more with DMs and they're trying to utilize uh like like you have a uh like there's a there's a company, SS company out there called Manny Chat, and you can DM people who are following you in masses. Like what's it called?

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

It's called uh a broadcast.

SPEAKER_01: 5:11

Yes, which is essentially anybody who has an Instagram platform, you know, a f uh a follow a following or a profile, you can create a broadcast channel and invite all of your followers to that where you can do private, you know, have private conversations, private events within a like group channel that only you can essentially moderate. Yeah, I think you can add moderators to it now.

SPEAKER_00: 5:40

I think you can.

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

Um how often people like that are, you know, you like how often consumers are utilizing it, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

I don't know, but there's just gotta be there has to be an easier way for this. Like that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to figure out.

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:01

And and irregardless of how much you preempt this, you're not gonna, your sign-up rates probably won't be what they used to be.

SPEAKER_02: 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:12

Like I'm willing to bet that. Like if you have a sign-up rate, like if you use attentive and you have your you know, your sign-up rates of let's let's say it's 20% or 23% or whatever. Sure. My bet is that it goes down to 18%. Like, yeah. Because you're just gonna have enough people that again, it's top of mind. Like they're gonna say, okay, I just signed up for this, but then they get distracted and then they don't press that filter button, and then that you have enough other things that fill up the unknown senders that they're not gonna see it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:46

This happened to me the other day. Like, I was wanting to buy a cool like throwback University of Utah hat, and I saw an ad for it. And like right when it popped up, I had a 20, it was like, hey, 20% off your first order. And I was like, well, I want to buy that hat, I'm going, I might as well get 20% off. You know, I was gonna buy it without it. But once I saw that carrot of 20% off, so I signed up for my SMS.

SPEAKER_00: 7:13

And then forgot.

SPEAKER_01: 7:15

And it took like 15 minutes for it to get to me. So whether there was an error on the uh on the sender side of things or they just maybe had a too long of a delay and I didn't buy it. But I was willing to buy it without the promo code. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00: 7:35

No, it makes sense. We've seen that before that sometimes the pop-ups actually decrease conversion rates. You know? So I mean we've seen pop-ups totally destroy conversion rates just by swapping it, and if they don't work.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:48

So yeah, this will be something that we're testing in our agency as we, you know, in our accounts, but I do wonder if the solution is just simply get people to buy. Like your best bet is that they actually buy something.

SPEAKER_01: 8:07

I mean, what what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00: 8:09

Your best bet is like just don't if you're gonna offer a discount, just offer the discount and just get them to buy now. Oh, versus like sign up and don't make them get off your website ever. Yeah. Because like if you get their text, you'll you'll get their number when they purchase.

SPEAKER_01: 8:25

Which what so what you could do, right, is what so you could just put it in the thank you message. A lot of people don't do that anymore. So what would happen is when somebody would subscribe in a pop-up in the early days, so back when it was this was like 2016 when we were doing this, you would send an email. So they would subscribe, you would send an email, but on the thank you would be like, oh, it's welcome 10 or welcome 30 or whatever. It would be like right there. And then people stopped doing that so that they would actually jump into their email and go get it and add the extra step.

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

So instead, so what you're saying is like it's almost like reverting back to still sending them the email, right? They're still subscribing to the email and SMS, but you're actually giving them the code right there once they've done it. It's like once they click submit, then it's like, hey, thank you, Mark. Here's welcome code 15. Goes yeah, enjoy your purchase.

SPEAKER_00: 9:19

And then for the people who purchase, then you can preempt them. Yeah. Because they're gonna want to get their order stat. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we So preempting in the order in the purchase is always gonna be easier than before the purchase. Right. Because people are gonna be more anxious about what's going on with their money. Um yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of things. Like obviously, you still want to build your email and SMS lists, like we do know people convert off of those later, and we do know that sometimes there's certain products that have more of a research, discovery, educational phase to it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:57

But these are things that I mean, this is just a new world. Like, we're gonna have to over the next little bit. I think every brand's gonna have to rethink their strategies.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

SMS strategies, email strategies, all their retention strategies, community strategies, really. Yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00: 10:17

Like community strategies on on how to actually get a hold of your customers.

SPEAKER_01: 10:26

Yeah, and it couldn't come at the sign-ups. And it couldn't come at a worse time. Right before Black Friday. Right before Black Friday, where you know, the majority of the people who are gonna return who have bought from you are usually coming back in November.

SPEAKER_00: 10:41

And SMS and email play a huge part in that. So I don't know what the I really don't. I wish I had an answer, but I don't know what the answer is. All I know is there are some things that I know most people haven't tried.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:56

Like people haven't really tried. There's the Facebook groups, and those do great. Like we know with certain demographics, VIP Facebook groups that people join perform better than email.

SPEAKER_01: 11:09

Totally. There's just something weird about a community, and you would think, like, oh, it's a clothing brand, what like you know, or I'm uh shoes or sunglasses, but like there's something interesting about giving people a little space like that, especially in the female market. You recognize it that it's much more powerful if your market is female.

SPEAKER_00: 11:31

Yes. Although it's kind of a different category though, because I'm in a bunch of Facebook groups, but it's all around the outdoors. Sure. So like I'm in company Facebook groups, but it's around like fly fishing gear. And they're useful because it's something very specific to a hobby. It's very specific and it's more of like a pursuit. It's not just like a pair of shoes. Like I wouldn't, I would never be in like a Nike Facebook group. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:03

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Like, could could you start to, you know, part of the conversation we want to take right now is like we want to kind of like mer merge this into hey, what should you be doing to prep for Black Friday? But one of the things that maybe you could be doing to prepare for Black Friday is getting anyone who is in your SMS or email community into a Facebook VIP community. Now there's obvious risks to those communities because they can be shut down at the you know, snap of a finger.

SPEAKER_00: 12:33

Well, it goes, yeah, it goes back to the old argument was owned media.

SPEAKER_01: 12:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:39

Like you don't own your Instagram page.

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

You don't own your Facebook VIP community. But you can now make the same argument that you do not own your email list anymore because at any given time, Apple can make a change that but the World Economic Forum in 2014 said that we'll all rent and we'll all be happy in the future. So I think that's a huge thing that people should and can start doing now, and and whoever's managing your SMS can start building up a community.

SPEAKER_00: 13:06

I just think the old way of thinking about owned versus borrowed or rented distribution is just I it's probably dead. Yeah. Because it doesn't matter if you own it or if it's rented, it it matters that it works.

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

Totally.

SPEAKER_00: 13:22

Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 13:24

So so I think Well, because the argument was the argument was that if if an algorithm changes Instagram can't take it away from you. You're in trouble.

SPEAKER_00: 13:32

It's like, well, you know, we've already gone through 10 algorithm changes and people have already seen, you know, like we've already lived through it, and now we're seeing us get hit on the SMS and email side. So at the end of the day, like what is the solution? Is it Discord communities? Is it you have your own app? You know, having your own app has helped some companies pretty tremendously. Sure. Because your returning customers just use the app, right? And you can do push notifications.

SPEAKER_02: 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:05

And you can incentivize to turn on push notifications for new releases.

SPEAKER_01: 14:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 14:11

So is it apps, is it Discord communities, is it broadcast channels, or is it like, hey, just like everything in life, it just you have to do all of it, it's all hard, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:22

And you might need to do a lot more to do the same.

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 14:25

Right. Right. Whereas like as as email and SMS are getting harder and harder. Let's say you are making a hundred thousand dollars a month from email and SMS by sending out four emails, five emails a month, you may need to send out twenty a month to do the same. Or maybe even less.

SPEAKER_00: 14:45

Or just yeah, you're gonna have to send out more emails. You're gonna have to get more responses, more incentives, more at bats, better offers. But at the end of the day, it's gonna come down to creative and offers. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 15:02

So how about creative offers?

SPEAKER_00: 15:05

Creative offers. Yeah. Taking bigger swings of not standing in, I mean all that. But but yes, Black Friday is coming up. We do know that CPMs always tend to go up dramatically. We know that existing customer spend tends to go up as well. We know that your cost per clicks go up, but conversion rates also jump. I mean, on average. And oftentimes click-through rates jump. Yes. So you're gonna you're generally gonna see like a hundred to two hundred percent increase in CPMs, sometimes three hundred. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 15:40

But you will see also uh 200% in conversion rates. In conversion rate and link click-through rates.

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

And click-through rates. So it all ends up working. Um buyer behavior tends to be the hottest. So how do you properly prepare for Black Friday? Well, number one is get your SMS, like figure out iOS 26 and what that means for your brand.

SPEAKER_01: 16:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 16:08

Because if you're counting on SMS in November, I think you should be sweating and discover what what the actual impact is.

SPEAKER_01: 16:19

Yeah. So some things, some things that you can be doing right now for that. Um, because because uh email's going through the same issue right now, too, right? More and more stuff is getting pushed to promotions. So email, like yes, SMS is getting it is called.

SPEAKER_00: 16:34

So your personal box doesn't yes. And most people, and you just have to remember, we're we're business owners, we're marketers, like we we're looking at all of these tabs just to know what's going on. Most people don't even bother. Totally. Yeah, it's very true. Most people won't even bother to look in a promotions tab.

SPEAKER_01: 16:51

No one does. Unless you are looking for something very specific.

SPEAKER_00: 16:56

Oh, wait, I should, yeah, unless they like have an order confirmation email. But they're like, I don't see that. Where is it?

SPEAKER_01: 17:02

Yeah, so like some things we're working on clients with right now on the email side of things, is we are saying, for example, like there's ways to fendangle getting out of the promotion box. One is you use a lot less imagery. Another is so you're using plain text, like you're going back to, you know, it looks like somebody literally HT, you know, typed it out. So plain text, you're not using words like sales and offers and promotions, because that's what it's scraping and looking for, especially in the subject lines, trying to get people to respond back to those emails. So that's a really, really interesting hack. So if somebody saves an email or stars an email or replies to an email, that shows Gmail or Apple Mail what you're sending to them is valuable and value equals, you know, if you if they get enough of those value signals, it's in Gmail's best interest to put the right stuff in your inbox. Right? And the same same goes with it, it's kind of how ads work for for, for example, Google Ads. The way Google Ads is able to function is let's say, let's say you type in Apple iPhone, like in Google. And if Samsung is paying more to advertise than Apple is, Samsung still will not pop up at the very top. And and it's in Google's best interest to do that that way. And they don't, they don't let just the people who have the most money win. Right. Because if they do start putting the things up that the consumer is not looking for, then the consumer is start to is gonna start to say, Hey, is Google the right search engine for me to work with? Right. So it's the same thing with with Gmail, right?

SPEAKER_00: 18:54

Like which by the way is the same principle in meta. Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 18:59

And it's and the point I'm trying to make is it's the same principle across everything you do, whether it's meta, whether it's Google or Gmail. If you are responding to messages from brands, then that's gonna signal to Google to say, hey, we need to probably start showing more people this. Like people are finding this valuable. So one of the things that we are doing with a lot of brands is like, let's say a brand sells like a product that's slightly more expensive. Have them sign up for a warranty. Like, you know, hey, you have a limited lifetime warranty, but you have to sign up for it. And when they do that, they're gonna get an email confirmation. And you could say something like this, right? You can kind of be sneaky to say, hey, in order to get this warranty, you're not through your final step. Your last final step is you just need to email us back saying received.

SPEAKER_00: 19:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 19:50

And that that seems logical for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00: 19:52

It does.

SPEAKER_01: 19:53

Okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00: 19:55

That's a really good hack.

SPEAKER_01: 19:55

You know, or or hey, I need to save this email. Like, hey, you need to save this and reply received so that our team knows you have it. And you say it like that, and now all of a sudden people are going who anyone who signs up for a warranty, no one's not anyone who's gonna go through the through the uh process of filling out a warranty sheet, which is often time like your name, your email, your address, and your order number. Those are generally the things you need to apply for a warranty. Everyone is gonna click reply back and say received. So prep prepare your emails. I think the other thing you can do to prep on the email side of things in preparation for Black Friday is take your unengaged people and for sure start sending them value-based text mess or uh text-only, not not image emails to see if that will start to re-engage and get them in there in that inbox so that when it does come to Black Friday and you start to promote, promote, promote, something's gonna be happening on the Gmail side where maybe it's gonna start to go into the inbox versus the promotion folder.

SPEAKER_00: 21:03

Correct.

SPEAKER_01: 21:04

So those those are my thoughts on like hey, this is how you can kind of prep to start to get your email back and ready. Not to mention all the things that you just talked about on the SMS side of things. This episode of The Unstoppable Marketer is brought to you by BFF Creative. Let's be real, hiring designers and video editors can get super expensive. And that's what I'm excited about what BFF Creative has done. They've built a subscription design service that gives you the feel of an in-house creative team, but at a fraction of the cost, which I'm sure we all could use right now. From ad creatives to social media posts to video edits to full website designs, BFF gives you unlimited designs and unlimited requests starting at just$1,000 a month. The best part about this is their custom app makes it super easy to submit projects, give feedback, review work, and store all of your creative in one place. As a listener of the podcast, you get 25% off your first two months with code Unstoppable25. That means unlimited creative for as little as$750 a month. Go check them out right now at bffcreative.co.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

What if you told people you were gonna call them for yet? Like what if there was uh an AI bot that could call? So like they're on the phone, they answer the phone call and they save the number.

SPEAKER_01: 22:18

I never would answer a number. I didn't.

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

Yeah, but if you're signing up for something and it says you're gonna receive a call to sign up.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

Yeah, maybe. Because those aren't filtered out.

unknown: 22:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 22:26

It will sometimes say uh what is it, what does it say when it's almost uh potential spam or something?

SPEAKER_00: 22:32

Unknown callers are blocked out. You get a with this new? Yes. Oh. But it preempts them. So it says if you if you're an unknown caller, you have to identify who you are in order for that call to come through.

SPEAKER_01: 22:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

So for example, I've gotten two calls today from I don't know who this person is, but the only reason why I saw it is because they identified themselves. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 23:03

Okay. I think it's an interesting idea.

SPEAKER_00: 23:06

So, anyways, that's just a little what if statement. Who knows if that's valid or not? But I'm just trying to think of how do you get people to just sign up, right? Yep. Um, now ad strategy. So do a quick audit of last year, what you did, what you're expecting to do this year. Um you can get in depth as you want. It's usually going to be involved around like product categories and discounts and conversion rates and cost per from your ads that you did last November during your sales periods, and try to account for what you did through SMS signups and emails and returning customers. And then once you have that channel by channel report, you can start projecting out. Um, a big mistake that you'll see a lot of people make in Black Friday moments is they scale too quickly. So what I personally like to do is after the email goes out, you're scaling up a little bit up to Black Friday before the series, knowing that your performance will dip suck.

SPEAKER_01: 24:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 24:15

From a ROI perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 24:17

But it theoretically will mitigate. So if let's say you're going from$1,000 a day to$10,000 a day, you'll see a huge decrease in performance if you do that. Potentially.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

Potentially. Based on the previous historical. Yeah, there's things like one-day click optimizations and there's some stuff that what you're saying is.

SPEAKER_01: 24:41

Generally speaking, you're gonna want to scale up. Could we get up to three or four thousand dollars a day before we jump there that mitigates that?

SPEAKER_00: 24:47

Correct.

unknown: 24:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:48

So you're gonna want to start scaling up depending on how long your sales period is, too. Some of that factors into it, but just plan on how you scale up.

SPEAKER_01: 24:56

If you generally, if you jump budgets too quickly, it'll totally wreck your 500% increase in CPMs.

SPEAKER_00: 25:04

Yeah, generally. Um, and just performance because it that it sets everything back into learning.

SPEAKER_01: 25:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:11

But one way to mitigate bigger pushes in price or in or in cost or what in expenditure, expenditure in the ad platforms is it depends on the learning, right? So one thing that can help the learning is your emails and SMS and returning customers coming back for the first part of the sale. Yeah. That's gonna get the pixel firing. It can help the learning phase for your budget increase. So go back and look at what kind of budget you should be planning for. It's gonna generally, I mean, we see depending on your brand, sometimes it's a hundred percent increase, sometimes it's a 10x increase in daily budget.

SPEAKER_01: 25:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

Sometimes it's 20, 30, 40x. And if budget, depending on the brand, like sometimes we keep going up as the sale progresses. Yeah. So have a forecast, some kind of forecast ready. Yeah. And plan to spend more.

SPEAKER_01: 26:07

Also look at like when you say forecast, just to kind of add addition some additional things to forecasting. What one thing that I will like to do is I would like to go look at like what my efficiency metrics were for a brand last year. And just FYI, we looked at this before we came in. Efficiency in link click-through rates and cost per link clicks and all that kind of stuff was pretty much sixes from 2024 to 2023. Like when you look at the final metric with you know, the cost per click. Yeah. Okay. And and year to date for 2025 compared to 2024, it's up like 10% cost per clicks. So just uh understand that like things are a little less efficient this year.

unknown: 26:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:53

From from the first touch, not necessarily from the you know, conversion rates are down for a lot of people. So that's a different story. So I oftentimes, if you over Black Friday had a let's just call it a 10 ROI. So for every$1 you spent in ads over Black Friday, you made$10 back. Forecast as if it's going to dip 20% or so. And then also forecast as if it's going to increase like efficiency by 20%. So that's generally what we like to do. So we have just kind of like a here's a sandbag number. So if I want to do a million dollars, this is what I need to spend in order to do that. And if things efficiently get better, then I actually have to spend 20% less. So that's what we kind of like to do oftentimes. And that just sets a good expectation for your brand. Yes, it does. Right. Because things don't always go and notoriously year over year, sale over sale, when we have data for the last five years. The sale data, even though the Black Friday Facebook data seems the same at the top level, year over year it is less. It's just what's been happening for most people.

SPEAKER_00: 28:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 28:09

Especially most people whose sole reliance is on ads. Correct. Different if you have a really solid organic strategy. And or dish, I should other say other distribution strategies.

SPEAKER_00: 28:22

And honestly, we see a lot of people in this situation, but the only way out is through in certain situations. And in this one, you're probably better off just spending more and acquiring more than you are trying to spend less and save whatever it is, the efficiency that you're trying to save.

SPEAKER_01: 28:44

I think a couple other notes on the meta side, I agree with you, is uh don't turn off your evergreen stuff. That's a huge mistake.

SPEAKER_00: 28:52

Um yes, never turn off evergreen. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

Because those ads are oftentimes going to be so much better than the ads that you make specifically for the Black Friday sale. Yes. I think another thing to mention.

SPEAKER_00: 29:02

And as you scale up, try to keep those separate. Yeah. Um generally we'll do like a one-day click optimization off of the Black Friday ads because we're expecting people that they should go buy now. Right. Evergreen versus one can be less than at a seven-day. Yeah. So, but you still want to scale your Evergreen ads because they just do they generally do a better job of of explaining who you are, of selling what you do. Yep. Because a Black Friday ad is like 40% off, 30% off.

SPEAKER_01: 29:34

Also remember that last year's best performers could be this year's best performers too. So you don't have to, yeah, don't reinvent the wheel. Like if something was working really, really good last year. Not saying don't test new stuff, but yeah, I think that's an important thing to trust dynamic in sales too.

SPEAKER_00: 29:53

So flex ads and dynamic ads tend to work very well during sales periods. So trust those. Um last thing is discount amount.

SPEAKER_01: 30:07

Yes. Say it.

SPEAKER_00: 30:10

You are not considered a real Black Friday sell if you're not giving over 30% off.

SPEAKER_01: 30:17

Yes, we've done every year we run a survey at the end. A lot of times we do it before and after. I'm remembering this.

SPEAKER_00: 30:26

People are expecting 30%. And 30% is just like baseline meh.

SPEAKER_01: 30:30

Yes. If it's under 30%, it's like 78% of people do not consider that a worthwhile Black Friday offer.

SPEAKER_00: 30:41

Correct. They will look somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01: 30:43

But if it's over 50%, it doesn't impact the conversion rate much.

SPEAKER_00: 30:51

Correct.

SPEAKER_01: 30:52

Does that make sense?

unknown: 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 30:54

So basically the sweet spot we have found is 35, like the lower the lower end is 35%. To 45%. To 45%.

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

That's a really good sweet spot for Black Friday. If you're wanting to do a sitewide sale.

SPEAKER_00: 31:04

Yeah. Also, don't make it complicated.

SPEAKER_01: 31:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 31:09

I promise you, if you if you're trying to bucket things and make this all complicated, like, oh, 50% this category, 30% other categories.

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

We or spend 100, get 10% off, spend 200%, get 20% off, spend 300, get 50% now.

SPEAKER_00: 31:26

You can do free gifts and like, hey, if you spend X amount of free gift, we've seen bundling work. The yeah, we have tended to see just the performance dips pretty significantly when you're trying to categorize it into too many ways to try to game the system. People just want a flat, simple offer, and then they want surprises. So hey, I'm coming to soar, I know I'm gonna get 35% off.

SPEAKER_01: 31:53

Like I know that getting site wide, this is off.

SPEAKER_00: 31:56

Awesome. No matter what, I'm getting 35% off, but like I add to cart and then I see, you know, hey, if you add if you spend an extra$25.

SPEAKER_01: 32:05

Another pair of shoes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:07

Your total savings is 50% off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:10

Sure. But that's not the offer that they that's led them to say, I'm gonna come back. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:17

The other thing, the other thing that is uh but don't like have it all mapped out and turn it into a big system on your website. We just tend to see conversion rates drop pretty cheaply. Auto apply the discounts too. Auto-apply. Don't make people type anything in.

SPEAKER_01: 32:32

Put it all over your website. You have a lot of people who will just put it in the ads, but they'll be like, Well, I don't want to put it across my my like they're trying to get it. There might be some people who will buy it full price. It's like at that point, it doesn't matter. There's gonna be so you will make your conversion rates will increase so much more if it's blastered all over your site and if it's just auto. Um, one thing I was gonna say, not to not to complicate the offer, but let's say you're doing a 35% off sitewide sale. I really like the idea of giving all of your returning customers an upgraded deal. So, like, hey, if you're if you are a if you are a customer, you know, for all of our our customers, enter in this promo code and you're gonna get a free gift with anything you purchase.

SPEAKER_00: 33:20

Yeah, free gift. And also a deal isn't giving them anything different, it's just giving it to them at a different time. Yeah, for sure. So we've seen some companies have a lot of success with new or returning customers and saying because you're a loyal customer, yes, your Black Friday starts now.

SPEAKER_01: 33:40

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 33:41

Like get it before the rush so you get your stuff just in case it sells out because a lot of times things will. So you can get your package faster on time. Yep. You're not gonna deal with inventory issues.

SPEAKER_01: 33:56

Yeah. I like that. I think another thing really quickly to mention, because we've done this the last four years, is do two, we love doing two Black Friday sales.

SPEAKER_00: 34:06

Yeah, one at the beginning and one at the end.

SPEAKER_01: 34:08

We're kind of like obsessed with this idea where it sucked last year. Well, I shouldn't say it sucked. It was harder last year because we had the elections.

SPEAKER_00: 34:16

And so Yeah, the elections kind of sucked the attention from the first part of November. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 34:21

So normally what we like to do is like first week, first Friday, which I think is the seventh this year. You you launch a Black Friday sale, you call it Black Friday sale. It goes from Friday to Monday, similar to how you would on normal Black Friday. You do your site-wide sale, you don't say we're doing another one. You don't say this is the, you know, you don't say it's the only one either. You just say this is our biggest sale of the year, it's Black Friday sale. And what happens is you compete with less CPMs, which is really nice with lower CPMs. Number two is you get the type A people who are just like, you know, and the people who have mad FOMO who will buy immediately. And then what you do is you actually do a normal Black Friday sale. You do the same discount because you don't want people coming back and saying, you know, you don't want to go 30% off and then 40% off because then you're gonna have the people who bought it for 30% off who are gonna say, I want to return it to get an extra 10%. So you do the same discount, maybe you add a free gifted purchase. Because that, you know, that's not enough for people to like change, you know, their sales strategy or their uh their purchasing strategy. And the beauty of doing the second one is for all the people who had FOMO and didn't buy, they buy immediately because they were like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I missed that T-Mobile sale or whatever. So they go and buy. For all the people who bought during the first one and loved it, you get returners who regretted not buying more for gifts or for themselves or whatever it might be, they buy more. And for the people who waited, because they're like, hey, I just know that this is when I'm doing my stuff. I I know they're gonna do it. You you end up collecting those people who didn't buy, who waited.

SPEAKER_00: 36:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 36:05

I highly recommend you don't there's a lot of people who want to do sales before and not actually over Black Friday to compete. That is a bad idea. We have watched it, we've seen it, we've looked at the data. There is just a buying season where conversion rates are higher over Black Friday.

SPEAKER_00: 36:25

So well, it's the expectation. Most people are expecting the deals during certain times. So make sure they are there. So you you will lose, you will lose out on money.

SPEAKER_01: 36:37

You might you might save on cost per clicks if you do it three weeks before and that and only that. But the conversion rate that will happen over Black Friday, the intent to purchase is so much higher.

SPEAKER_00: 36:52

And we've made that mistake with brands before. So don't make our mistake.

SPEAKER_01: 36:56

Yeah, we have done that for you. Anything else?

SPEAKER_00: 36:59

Mostly it's get your email and SMS in check because you're a large portion of your revenue will come from that. Yeah. And things have changed since last year.

SPEAKER_01: 37:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:09

In both of those categories in ads, be prepared to scale up and have some kind of projection of how much you should spend. Yep. And then give yourself a plus minus 20% on that projection.

SPEAKER_01: 37:23

Yep. Both one way or another.

SPEAKER_00: 37:25

So it could go down or up 20%.

SPEAKER_01: 37:28

Yeah. And then if it goes up, you're prepared to spend the extra.

SPEAKER_00: 37:32

At least, and I'm just saying at least 20%. Yeah, I agree. You should be prepared to spend like even more, like 50% more. Totally. Yeah, if it's working, performance is going. Yeah. And then and then, like you said, just let's make sure you have the discounts in check. We recommend 35% minimum.

SPEAKER_01: 37:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 37:54

You you see a dramatic decrease in conversion rate if it's under that. Yes, you will. Dramatic.

SPEAKER_01: 38:01

Um and we realize there are some brands who sell three thousand dollar products. That's different. A 10% off 15% off deal for stuff like that works.

SPEAKER_00: 38:13

A thousand three three hundred dollars off of a thousand dollars is much different than Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 38:19

Than 10%, than$30 off of$300. Yes. Right. So you usually like it's$500 and below.

SPEAKER_00: 38:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 38:28

I would say that is what that works. Does that sound fair enough?

SPEAKER_00: 38:30

That's fair.

SPEAKER_01: 38:31

So keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_00: 38:34

Like just have that in your in your brain. 30 to 35% minimum. Agreed. But yeah. So that and then the two-pronged approach of two sales periods. Yes. Not running the sale continuously. No. Four day do it, do it Friday to Monday. Two sales periods.

SPEAKER_01: 38:58

Do it twice. You will not regret it. You will regret it if you don't.

SPEAKER_00: 39:04

When doing this in the in this in the stores that have done this, we have seen generally a 30% improvement in overall sales and performance year over year.

SPEAKER_01: 39:14

For the entire month of November.

SPEAKER_00: 39:16

Yes, for the entire month of November, year over year. Slash when you have, you know, sometimes Cyber Mondays on a you know the first or second of but on the on the stores that have wanted to just do an elongated sale, very negligible performance.

SPEAKER_01: 39:30

Yeah, because people like you you're not adding FOMO to get the initial spike and then people come and they're like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 39:39

So it doesn't create the FOMO or the urgency.

SPEAKER_01: 39:41

Yep. And we've also made that mistake.

SPEAKER_00: 39:43

Yes, we have. So it the yeah, the performance of just elongating it was not as good as the performance we've seen by having the two periods.

SPEAKER_01: 39:51

Yeah, I think maybe it was like three years ago or two years ago on the podcast we did like a draft pick for Black Friday on like what you'd pick, and I think I picked that one, which was I think it was three years ago. I was like sale all year or all month. All month. And I was so set on it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:07

And it didn't pan out. And I was wrong. So just know. Those are our recommendations. Okay. Godspeed and good night.

SPEAKER_01: 40:21

Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. Please go rate and subscribe to the podcast. Whether it's good or bad, we want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.