[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey everyone. Welcome to a very special live episode of WP Product Talk. Uh, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Uh, right around the corner we're gonna. Deep dive into how WordPress product owners can stand out during the noisiest week of the year. Uh, we'll share what's working, what's not from our perspectives, uh, how to turn short-term sales into long-term growth.

[00:00:31] And, uh, stick around, uh, because we also have quite a few exciting announcements that you're not gonna wanna miss today as well.

[00:00:42] This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management, and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go-to podcast.

[00:00:57] Zack Katz: Oh fuckers. Shit.

[00:01:01] Matt Cromwell: This,

[00:01:03] Zack Katz: oh God,

[00:01:05] Katie Keith: that is even better than when Jack was smoking at the beginning of an episode.

[00:01:09] Zack Katz: Was he Okay. Uh, sorry, folks. Uh, mask, click have consequences. I meant to click on the background window and it swore and made this.

[00:01:19] Matt Cromwell: Not safe for Children episode. Um, yeah.

[00:01:24] Zack Katz: Alright, well I've been wanting to actually talk to Matt about this. Uh, I think that this should, that our show should be, uh, explicit and, uh, this is my introduction to that concept.

[00:01:34] Yeah.

[00:01:34] Matt Cromwell: Yes. It's a new, it's a feature, not a bug of the show for sure.

[00:01:38] Zack Katz: Yeah. Favorite Black Friday, y'all. Uh

[00:01:44] Matt Cromwell: uh Hey, everybody. I'm Matt Cromwell, founder of WP Product Talk, which, uh, yeah, that, that's a, and I'm

[00:01:51] Zack Katz: Zack Katz, uh, person who is trying to click, uh, window in the background. Uh, founder of GravityKit.

[00:02:01] Katie Keith: And I'm Katie Keith, uh, CEO and founder of Barn two Plugins.

[00:02:07] Ian Misner: And I'm Ian Meisner, co-founder of Kes.

[00:02:10] Matt Cromwell: And as you could tell, we are co-founders of, uh, WP Product Talk and co-hosts. And, uh, we are talking about Black Friday today. And, uh, with all the f-bombs possible, let's like, like drop it. Like we should mark

[00:02:25] Zack Katz: this episode explicit actually, uh, because PI Friday brings out the, the F bombs in all of us.

[00:02:30] I think it does. Yeah.

[00:02:32] Katie Keith: I may have just tweeted what happened again.

[00:02:35] Matt Cromwell: Thanks Tea. Um, well we're talking about Black Friday, but. First, uh, there's a couple big fun announcements. Um, today is actually a pretty meaningful day for me personally. It's actually my very last day at StellarWP. Um, I wrote about it on my personal blog.

[00:02:53] Uh, go ahead and take a look over there. It really sums it up as far as what's going on for me. Um, but overall I'm taking some time to explore and reflect, um, and keep building things that I think are well worth. Building. Uh, and part of that means, uh, I get to invest more in product doc going forward. So I am excited about that opportunity, um, and hang out with these, find folks more and more.

[00:03:14] At least nag them on Slack. So, um, there's that. Um. Another big announcement is that we have decided to kick off a road to 10,000 YouTube subscribers. Um, and this campaign is funded, baby. This is a funded campaign. Um, today I published an article on product talk, uh, announcing, uh, our exclusive growth partner, which is FIUs.

[00:03:42] Um, and, uh, they're gonna help us and empower us to reach this road to 10,000 subscribers. So, huge thanks to FIUs for stepping in as our exclusive growth partner. Uh, you'll hear more and more about that, uh, over the next weeks. Uh, but FIUs takes a. Care of selling and licensing your software so you can focus on building amazing products.

[00:04:02] Uh, check out the, the, um, article on the product talk website today, uh, for all the details there. With that in mind, folks, uh, quick favor before we jump in. Take a quick second if you're on YouTube right now and click that subscribe button. Why? Because we're in a road. To get to 10,000 YouTube subscribers, the easiest way for you to help us is hit the subscribe button.

[00:04:24] It only takes you a second, but it makes a huge difference. Thank you very much. That's all of my crazy announcements. I think my camera is not focused either, I should say fuckers.

[00:04:39] Just obligatory. Obligatory. There we go. Um, all right, so, um, let's kick it off with some, uh, comments, uh, specifically about Black Friday. I, the first big question that I always ask folks, um, is whether or not they're doing a sale or not at all. Uh, I know some folks who don't. Um, and, um. I think we all do.

[00:05:05] Right? Everybody here is doing one, right? Yes. Um, but let's ask the question and, uh, come with our, our best, uh, um, opinions on why do this or, or are you missing out if you don't do it? Uh, who's, uh, who's up first? I have, I have. An order here. Zach, you're up first. Why do it? So, uh,

[00:05:25] Zack Katz: why do it? Uh, because people expect it and they come ready to shop.

[00:05:30] And if you, they come to your website on Black Friday, cyber Monday, black Friday week, and they don't see a sale, well, guess what? You're probably not gonna get. Uh, conversion that day when every other plugin out there is having a sale. So it's a big missed opportunity. Um, one of the things that we did initially was I didn't like the concept of Black Friday because I felt like it suli Thanksgiving, which is a beautiful holiday in the United States.

[00:05:55] Yeah. It's the one time in, in our country where we're supposed to be thankful and, uh, not focused on consumerism. And Black Friday has officially in my mind. Ruined Thanksgiving. It, I was fighting against it for as long as possible. Uh, but I gave up. I had been trying to do, uh, like giving thanks sales instead of Black Friday sales.

[00:06:16] I didn't want to use the term Black Friday. Mm-hmm. Um, it's done. I, uh, we're we, everything's Black Fridays ever Monday. Um, so yeah. Yeah. I fought against it for as long as possible, but there's no reason to. Uh, yeah. It's what people expect and if you don't do it, I think you're missing out on big money.

[00:06:31] Yeah. Katie, what about you?

[00:06:34] Katie Keith: Yeah, we've been doing Black Friday sales since 2018. I think. Um, it just feels like you're leaving a lot of money on the table if you're not, there are arguments, um, against that though, for example. Um, I've seen people say that if you don't do a sale, then you might actually get an increase.

[00:06:54] Anyway, um, so like, because everybody's buying plugins then, so maybe they'll buy yours even if you're not doing a discount. But I dunno what the evidence is of that. And the best evidence I've seen is, um, it was a couple of years ago now, but I did a podcast after Black Friday one year on what was Do the Woo and is now Open Channels and Leslie.

[00:07:17] Sim was on it at the time. She was the owner of Newsletter Glue, which she's now sold. And she was saying that she didn't do a sale for Newsletter Glue. And the reason was that she, um, had, she said it was a very specific plugin that it fundamentally changes how people interact with their newsletter. It's not something you buy on impulse.

[00:07:39] You need to really build it into your work. Flow. And so people would therefore buy her particular plugin at the time that they want it, whenever that is in the year and whatever the price. So she felt that for her specific product, it wasn't appropriate and she did not see any increase in sales or traffic that Black Friday.

[00:07:59] So the argument that you're gonna get more sales because everybody else is doing a sale, doesn't necessarily hold true because she didn't measure an increase. So, uh, I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I've put a link to that discussion in the show notes on our YouTube. So not the show notes, the description on YouTube, if anybody wants to watch that after they finish watching this episode, of course,

[00:08:23] Zack Katz: yes.

[00:08:24] I would argue that, uh, even if that is the case, that, okay, so you're going to be, you have a plugin that requires a lot of buy-in, a lot onboarding, configuration, a whole chain of your process. Okay, so sell a lifetime plan, and if people don't end up using your product, that's fine. Uh, just have a different refund policy.

[00:08:41] You can still try to have something, uh, structured so that you can take advantage of Black Friday traffic, uh, and people looking to buy, even if you're not aligned properly with the, uh, normal incentives for Black Friday.

[00:08:56] Katie Keith: Yeah, and in fact, I think she's largely gone in that direction since, because we had her on this show recently to talk about a lifetime introductory offer that she did for her new products.

[00:09:07] Matt Cromwell: Ian, what about you?

[00:09:08] Ian Misner: Yeah, I mean, my main answer is gonna actually echo a lot of what Zach said. The users expect it. You need to show up and provide what people expect from you at that time. Uh, I think that what Katie, you referred to with Leslie's notes, uh, does echo in my experience as well. You know, we have a lot of extensions that just do very utilitarian.

[00:09:27] You know, I've, I've encountered a problem and I found this to solve it. People aren't buying that because it's on sale. It's not the reason. But that being said, like. If people are looking for you during Black Friday season and you're the only person without a sale, they're going to Google around to look for the discount, to find it, whatever.

[00:09:46] Even if like, even if you're like hesitating on discounting, you should find a way to make that increased perceived value along this period of time, at minimum. Yeah. And

[00:09:56] Zack Katz: you don't have to have a sale on Black Friday, but maybe offer an additional something that you wouldn't normally. Like a promotion is different than a sale, and I think everybody should have a Black Friday promotion regardless of a, of a discount.

[00:10:08] Matt Cromwell: That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Some sort of incentive in one form or another. Yep.

[00:10:12] Ian Misner: Well, I will throw in though, for many years we sold only on the WooCommerce marketplace, and we didn't promote any sale at all. Right. Like they did like a 30% off whatever I, I don't know what they're doing this year. But we didn't send an email.

[00:10:26] We didn't notify people. The price just went down and the sales went up. And you know, may maybe lean into the user expectation even if you don't put a ton of work into it in those scenarios.

[00:10:37] Matt Cromwell: Yep. Interesting. Yeah. I will say that at Give, um, originally for a long time, GiveWP, we didn't do discounting of any sort.

[00:10:48] And it goes into what Katie was saying before, that it, there is some times where the product itself kind of justifies or de justifies the, the sale in different ways. Um, I. I felt like, you know, our primary audience was nonprofits and we should be providing them the best pricing all year round all the time.

[00:11:11] Uh, if we have the ability to offer it for, uh, a more affordable rate, we should give it to them all the time. So for at least. The first four years of give, we didn't do any discounting of any kind. Um, and then at some point we had people who actually were asking, are you gonna do a Black Friday sale? Are you gonna do a Black Friday sale?

[00:11:30] And um, and we did this big release, uh, uh, for our first Black Friday sale. Which was, um, I did this sneaky, funny tongue in cheek video where I was pretending like I was running a sale without Devin knowing about it. Um, and it was really funny and it was a lot of fun. We had this big landing page and it was like the best revenue we had over any four day period that we ever had in the history of.

[00:11:56] So all of our thoughts and feelings about like, oh, it, you know, let's be affordable all the time. It didn't matter, like

[00:12:04] Zack Katz: mm-hmm.

[00:12:04] Matt Cromwell: Consumer practices are consumer practices. Um, psychology

[00:12:08] Zack Katz: is

[00:12:08] Matt Cromwell: psychology. Yeah. Like, um, so we've done one every year since then. Um, and, um, we do, we have done a little, few different spins on it because, you know, black Friday became now also.

[00:12:21] Uh, what is it? Weekend Warrior Weekend like there's, they have, they have things for the Saturday and Sunday too. I forget what they're called. The small business

[00:12:28] Zack Katz: Saturday.

[00:12:28] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. And then there's Cyber Monday of course. And then for nonprofits it's actually giving Tuesday. Yes. And so we try to lean in on the Giving Tuesday side of things.

[00:12:37] That's giving Tuesday sale, not necessarily a Black Friday sale, things like that. So caveats. Um,

[00:12:44] Ian Misner: yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's really interesting. To hear like the first year you finally did it was a big deal. I think for any of us though, if any of us could manufacture the user expectations for our products that we just get for free around Black Friday.

[00:12:59] We would spend a huge amount of money to make that happen, right? Like if we could create that expectation and that demand, it shows up for free once a year. So just lean into it. And you know, love to hear Matt, if you're with your experience, that they held true even in the nonprofit space. It's really interesting.

[00:13:16] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And

[00:13:19] Zack Katz: we tried setting up, uh, we tried doing a June sale and so did gravity forms and, um. You know, the only people who have been able to make this work through persistence is Amazon with their Prime Day thing. It takes Amazon level, uh, marketing power to make people wanna do anything In the middle of the summer, it's, uh, black Friday is the sale time, and you can, you know, Halloween is becoming available as well.

[00:13:45] Like that's kind of, I see that as kind of an extended Black Friday period, but. Uh, making it work other times of the year for us hasn't worked. Like you can have sales regularly throughout the year, but don't expect them to perform like Black Friday.

[00:13:58] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. We got a comment here from Marcus Burnett, uh, echoing what Zach was saying actually about incentives.

[00:14:05] Marcus says, if people aren't looking for your product as an impulse buy, sell them a digital gift card on Black Friday, so they'll come back to you when they need your product later. That's a super smart tactic. What do you guys think of that one?

[00:14:18] Zack Katz: Yeah, I, I'm a huge fan of this and especially for those who run like a digital, um, uh, uh, an in-person brick and mortar shop.

[00:14:27] Uh, I'm huge on, on gift cards 'cause people don't use all of them normally. Uh, so even if they do use them, they, they have like a, you know, two bucks left on the gift card. Anyway. Yes. Great idea, Marcus. Yeah, that's particularly

[00:14:41] Katie Keith: interesting for WordPress products 'cause we don't typically sell gift cards, but it could work.

[00:14:47] So let's say you are an agency or a developer, that you build sites for clients regularly. You don't need something for a project now, but you know, you've probably got one coming up, but maybe it won't go ahead. There's lots of reasons actually. It doesn't have to be a gift thing does it? It's more about, um, I want.

[00:15:04] To get this product later, so maybe I can buy the card now. Particularly care credit multiple products. 'cause they don't know which one they want yet.

[00:15:13] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:15:13] Ian Misner: Yep. Yeah, I mean our, our ticket WC Black Friday offer is actually including a bundle that includes account funds and a couple of things that we're, we're telling people to do exactly that.

[00:15:23] So, um, yeah.

[00:15:26] Matt Cromwell: That's cool. Okay. Fun,

[00:15:27] Zack Katz: fun. Yeah. And just it, I realize, okay, what if, uh, in your Black Friday sale bundles, um, is this what you're doing, Ian? Where like, it it includes a $20 voucher for your next purchase. So instead of trying to say, here's a discount code that you could use, we're actually.

[00:15:42] Ian Misner: In our case, we have an extension for WooCommerce that does that, and we're giving away that extension.

[00:15:46] Oh, really? We'll plug it right now. What are you

[00:15:47] Zack Katz: doing?

[00:15:48] Ian Misner: It's account funds for account funds for WooCommerce. It's uh, one of the ones we acquired last year. It's had a lot of updates and improvements. Basically it just stores, it's a custom payment gateway and it stores the. The record of, uh, cashback program, or you can reward people for a variety of actions they take on the store.

[00:16:07] Uh, so we're just, we are, we're doing a sale too. We're not just bundling stuff, but we're just giving away that extension with checkout wc, uh, for buyers during Black Friday. Uh, with the logic being, I mean, this is advice for our, like our audience too. It's not just about taking advantage of the sale. You know, the big sales day is important, but how do you make sure that that customer comes back in December or January?

[00:16:29] That's what, you know, that's the advanced tactics around Black Friday. You know? Yeah. Attach, attach them to you instead of just, you know, cashing in one day a year. Right?

[00:16:38] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. That's cool, that's cool that you have a product like that. Um, check out Kestrel folks for if you want that feature on your website.

[00:16:47] Ian Misner: And to be clear, I didn't mean I, I I didn't come in with the intent to plug. I just, you know, the opportunity was right there.

[00:16:53] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Um, well, I mean, now Katie has a new product idea too, so.

[00:17:00] Um, all right, well, let's jump into the meat of what we wanna talk about the most here, honestly, is, uh, most effective tactics for a successful Black Friday sale. Um, we definitely have, um, a few different things, um, uh, going on in terms of, uh, ideas and, uh, suggestions. Uh, Katie brought a ton of information, uh, that she can share with us, but, uh, so let's.

[00:17:26] Let's hear from somebody else first. Zach, Ian, um, what's your take? What do you have, do you have like a, some must haves in terms of, uh, the Black Friday sales stuff?

[00:17:35] Ian Misner: I actually, I'm gonna jump in first 'cause I probably have less experience than Zach or Katie in running Black Friday sales. Like I said, we just let WooCommerce handle the workforce for many years.

[00:17:44] Um, last year was our first like, big year pushing it on our own. And the thing that surprised me most is how, how much people let you email them. During that period of time, you know, we're really doubling down on that and going as personalized as possible, you know, at risk of over segmenting. So that way, you know, we're, we're, again, the user expectation gives you permission to maybe do too much

[00:18:09] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:18:09] Right

[00:18:09] Ian Misner: now. So really lean in, but you know, don't just blast everyone with the same junk all the all over. Yeah. Spend an extra couple of days really diving deep on, you know, what's the best offer, the best unique messaging. For each group. And yeah, if anything, I've overdone it. You know, we only got like seven, 10,000 people on our email list.

[00:18:29] Um, and we're just doubling down on. Too many segments and too much personalization.

[00:18:34] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. I'm gonna piggyback on that a little bit because I do think email continues to be the biggest driver of our, uh, black Friday sales. Um, one of the tactics that I learned from, actually from Chris Lema a long time ago is, um, to, uh, to put in every single Black Friday email.

[00:18:55] Uh, a quick little call out at the top of the email that says, if you aren't interested in our Black Friday promotions, click this button and that will take you somewhere on a page that says, Hey, thanks, we, we noted that you're not interested in the Black Friday sale, but what it really does is it tags that contact as, um, black Friday optout or something like that, and then all of your future.

[00:19:17] Um, segments, um, are excluding those folks. This is the best way to, like Ian says, to email that your set your, your email list a lot without burning your subscribers. Like they want to get your content, they just aren't gonna buy from you during Black Friday. And that's fine. Um, if you, if they want to buy from you, um, and you.

[00:19:40] Burn them during this sale. Um, then you're, maybe you're losing out on a future sale, um, where they are gonna buy at maybe a higher price in the future. 'cause they're gonna forget they're not gonna be in your email list anymore. Um, and but keeping them in there and they get your cadence afterwards, um, is a great way to make sure that, um, you're not burning them out on it.

[00:20:02] So, um, if your, if your email platform doesn't. I'll provide you the ability to tag somebody when they click on a specific link in your email list. Now might be a good time to find a different email provider, so

[00:20:15] Zack Katz: yeah. Or maybe a couple of months ago.

[00:20:17] Matt Cromwell: Yeah,

[00:20:18] Zack Katz: we, we do that too. Uh, before Black Friday starts, we send out a dedicated email or, and we also include it in a, at the top of our newsletter that people also subscribe to just saying like, Hey, lots of emails are coming.

[00:20:31] The key is though. Um, that before your Black Friday email blitz. And yes, Ian, uh, people. I, I bought socks from Bombas. They're my preferred sock provider. I get email, like, if I don't under subscribe, I get an email a day about the socks. Like every single day of my life they will email me about socks. I don't need new socks every day.

[00:20:55] Um, so. That's not even Black Friday. Multiple emails per day, per Black Friday. So yeah. Uh, we ended up, uh, keeping on, ramping up our emails, uh, per day and it continued to work. Yeah. Like, so we don't wanna be spamming people and if we're not in front of people and giving and, and asking for their attention, they're going to give our, their attention to us.

[00:21:18] Yeah. So it's an opportunity to get in front of them. Um, make sure to e warm up your email list, black Friday. Is that result of your marketing campaigns throughout the year? It's not the beginning of them. Yeah. It's not the, the only thing you need to have people trained to say, oh, that's a GravityKit email.

[00:21:37] I'm going to open that. So that is another thing. Make sure you aren't only starting to send emails on Black Friday. Start right now. If you're watching this and you haven't been doing this, send any email

[00:21:48] Matt Cromwell: and make sure you'll get. Make sure you know who in your list is not a customer already, um, or who in your list.

[00:21:56] I is not a, a customer of one of your products that you can also sell. Like Yeah. Um, you know, that's another thing you have to warm up ahead of the Black Friday time is, uh, making sure that you know how to segment, uh, correctly so that you're not sending a bunch of sale emails to. Folks who have already bought, and you're gonna lose those folks, you know?

[00:22:16] Zack Katz: Well, and the, the, that's the people, it's overwhelming to talk about segmenting. Uh, when you think, like Ian's talking about like going, doing deep dive into segmenting. The question is, uh, have they already are, are they prospective customers or are they existing customers? Are they cold and you, you just that there's, they used to be customers, but they canceled.

[00:22:38] And that's another list. So like. E even if you just start with those three things, uh, trying to, are trying to sell for the first time, trying to upsell or trying to recapture them. Those are the good like three lists. Focus on doing at least that. Yep. Yeah, that's

[00:22:53] Katie Keith: the thing is what are you offering to different groups?

[00:22:56] So we used to have the same email to everybody, just whatever, discount off all our plugins, and then we thought that might really annoy some existing customers. They've already bought what they want and or maybe if they've. Only bought recently that will create regret. So for a while, we excluded anybody who bought in the last 30 days from our Black Friday emails, because that was the refund period basically.

[00:23:22] So they would be entitled to get a refund and repurchase. So, but what we do now is that we think, okay, well what value can we still get from them? Um, so instead of just saying. Discount off everything we say. What about um, upgrading to the all access pass or buying a different plugin? We might send a tailored email 'cause we know which plugins customers have already bought.

[00:23:46] Of course, this only applies if you have multiple plugins, uh, like cash or. Actually GravityKit or barn to do you know, what they bought. So you can recommend a very complimentary plugin. You can recommend a lifetime upgrade, like never have to renew again, source of messaging or upgrading some more licenses.

[00:24:04] So the key is offering your existing customers something which will not cause regret that they feel they were ripped off originally. Mm-hmm. Whereas new customers, it's a very different message. PO potential customers.

[00:24:16] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:17] Ian Misner: It's

[00:24:17] Matt Cromwell: a good one.

[00:24:17] Ian Misner: Yeah. I just want to piggyback on that with, uh, there's this subset of people, it's relatively small that every year they cancel around Black Friday to take the deal again.

[00:24:26] Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think our instinct is to sort of like, get mad about it or whatever. First of all, I don't do anything to prevent it. If people do that, you know, please don't do it on purpose because I said so, but just who cares. But ultimately we do what Katie does here so that we can try to try to prevent that and try to make it feel maybe a little bit like.

[00:24:45] Less acceptable to do that. So we have like, um, actually you did mention this, Katie, but adding multiple site licenses I think is the easiest way for a traditional WordPress company to just add value and, you know, add. A significant discount to adding additional sites or just literally give them to, to the people who are likely to do that, who cares, right?

[00:25:06] Yeah. The support burden is relatively small, but, um, we have multiple tiers of our single product in some cases as well. And so, you know, upgrade discounts that are actually better than the discount people get coming in the door. Uh, that way they have a meaningful incentive to, you know, they are your customers, so they get a better deal on an upgrade instead.

[00:25:27] Yeah. And that way they're losing something if they cancel and repurchase. Basically

[00:25:32] Matt Cromwell: we actually do a early renewal campaign ahead of Black Friday. We, um, find all of the folks who bought during the Black Friday period the previous year, and we send them dedicated emails, the ones who were subscribers, of course, um, to say you can renew early, um, and.

[00:25:50] Essentially like 13 months of, uh, this, uh, subscription for 25% off. Basically. They normally would have, you know, bought last year at like 40 or 30%. Um, and you know, they're tempted to do the whole cancel and then repurchase at the 30 or 40%. Again, we try to get 'em to do like, let us give you an extra month and at 25% off not the full discount.

[00:26:15] Um, we get that money up. Front, um, they get the coast through the Black Friday period, um, and then the following year they're gonna, um, renew at the, at the top rate. Um, that has for us, seemed to be a pretty good cadence. Um, I don't know that it prevents everybody from canceling and, and renewing, but again, we kind of don't care about that as much like Ian says as well.

[00:26:40] But I do think that the, the early renewal campaign overall has been a good boost ahead of the Black Friday sale for us.

[00:26:47] Zack Katz: I love that idea. And also I want to encourage people to make sure that you have tagging set up. Um, like we use WP Fusion to sync with our, uh, CRM like, uh, our email newsletter service called Drip.

[00:27:01] We're moving away from Drip. That's another story. But, uh, so, and we have it set up so that every time anybody lands on the Black Friday page, if they are logged in or they, they've been logged in in the past, uh, they get tagged in Drip for Black Friday, 2025, that they've seen that page. So that we know that they are at least interested enough to visit the Black Friday page.

[00:27:22] Nice. And that's different than opening, that's different than opening email. Uh, that's different than clicking the link in the email. This means they've come to our page somehow during the sale and looked at something. And that that is an indication of interest and that is a good indication that they are going to be, uh, able to re be remarketed to, um, and emailed more.

[00:27:42] And toward the end of the sale, we have rules set up so that if you haven't clicked on any of the emails, if you haven't looked at the Black Friday page, if you haven't visited checkout, um, then you won't get another email. We don't wanna just spam you, like, we want to make sure that, uh, we are giving you the opportunity to purchase as you have expressed interest in doing.

[00:28:01] Matt Cromwell: Here's, here's a good question for you all. Um. Do you do a dedicated, like, like Zach just mentioned, a dedicated Black Friday landing page every single year. Um, and I mean, some of us of course, like Katie, have multiple individual products that like, are you gonna, you can't really sell everything from one landing page.

[00:28:23] Um, are you updating the. Product pages individually. Are you doing, you know what, what? And, alright, you know, we'll talk about sitewide banners and things like that also, but like, I'm curious about the landing page aspect.

[00:28:35] Zack Katz: You walk into a store, let's say you celebrate Christmas and you walk into a store and it looks like Walmart in the middle of, you know, may, that's not gonna be very exciting.

[00:28:46] If you walk into a store and it's got Christmas trees and wreaths and uh, ornaments and decorations, it gets you in the mood. Black Friday, that doesn't look like Black Friday isn't as exciting. So again, I would suggest that this is a psychological thing, um, having a landing page, even if it's looks exactly like the rest of your site, but it has a black background, that's enough.

[00:29:06] Uh, I would, I would recommend doing that.

[00:29:08] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:29:10] Ian Misner: Yeah, I'm just Ian, sorry. I was just gonna jump in and say, I, I don't think we've done nearly enough in our first year, uh, as far as, you know, really putting up the window dressings. Mm-hmm. Uh, we check out wc, we do replace the pricing page and all of that gets.

[00:29:22] Replay, everything becomes new for Black Friday. Um, because that is like the, the biggest individual sales page we had. We spent a lot more time on it. Um, but like Katie, we do have a big suite of variety of things and, and we put a banner up, you know what I mean? Like we put a single banner up letting you know the discounts there, uh, and again emails and that was about it.

[00:29:42] Definitely room to improve there.

[00:29:44] Matt Cromwell: Yep. Katie,

[00:29:46] Ian Misner: what do you do? Yeah, we landed

[00:29:47] Katie Keith: more each year. I held off on creating a landing page for years. It was mostly 'cause my mastermind group were going on about them every year. So it was all Zach's fault and I felt like I was doing something wrong by not having one.

[00:29:59] But since we started doing one probably two years ago, we haven't. Our Black Friday sales have been the same as before. We haven't noticed a measurable improvement, but it's convenient. But it's convenient to have somewhere to link to if you are submitting to roundups. I think we should discuss that more.

[00:30:18] La Oops,

[00:30:19] Matt Cromwell: sorry.

[00:30:21] Katie Keith: Where have we gone

[00:30:25] Matt Cromwell: messing?

[00:30:29] Katie Keith: So if you are going to be submitting to Roundups, for example, um, that are publishing the top 50 WordPress Black Friday deals, and we should discuss roundups as a separate topic, then it's good to have one page to send them to. For example, so we have a landing page, but we also put a extra banner obviously at the top of this site, but also above our pricing tables.

[00:30:52] We have a Black Friday banner to try and make it more prominent.

[00:30:56] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. That's, that's what I wanna seg segue to real quick, um, is, uh, sitewide banners. And I have, uh, some examples here. Um, if I can get, yeah, that worked. Okay. Uh, these are not recent. These are from 2022, honestly, and I want to ke do this this year.

[00:31:15] I'm gonna go around to all the shops and take some screenshots, uh, but like. Different, um, places did, uh, different kinds of emphasis. And, um, you could see here when you land on site ground, it's basically like a whole site takeover. It's not like a banner or anything. It's like if you land on their website, you're gonna get, um, a whole.

[00:31:36] The whole experience. Um, this is liquid web, uh, you know, a similar idea, but not the whole entire, uh, page. It's just this big giant, uh, hero at the top of, uh, of the homepage here. Uh,

[00:31:50] Zack Katz: I don't think that's, uh, black Friday enough for my,

[00:31:52] Matt Cromwell: like, it's kind

[00:31:53] Katie Keith: of boring, isn't it?

[00:31:54] Zack Katz: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Matt Cromwell: It just looks like a, a deal, you know?

[00:31:56] Yeah, it does look a little bit like, um, I can skip over this. Um, and here's Nexus. This is also 20, all of these are 20, 22 examples. That's a tiny little

[00:32:06] Zack Katz: banner. Not big enough.

[00:32:07] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, a tiny little banner up at the top. Um, and then there's the, the ticker tape one, um, as well. Not Black Friday. I

[00:32:13] Ian Misner: legitimately, I didn't see this one actually.

[00:32:16] Yep. We had, I, yeah.

[00:32:18] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Um.

[00:32:20] Zack Katz: Couple other. And by the way, for those who are not watching on the video, Matt Cromwell is scrolling through a bunch of screenshots.

[00:32:25] Matt Cromwell: Yes,

[00:32:26] Zack Katz: true, true.

[00:32:27] Matt Cromwell: Uh, for all you listening on podcast platforms, um, this one is from PlayStation. Um, again, big hero, uh, and it just screams, it just says Black Friday, uh, indispensible, uh, or unmissable deals.

[00:32:42] Um, I like this one. I love the, the neon colors. Um. I'm a glutton for neon, uh, WP Engine did like a, a big modal takeover. Um, so, which I hate personally though.

[00:32:55] Zack Katz: Okay, y'all, if you don't have popups, uh, grab popup maker right now. Set up a popup. Build your email list right now. Start gathering emails for Black Friday.

[00:33:05] Promote your Black Friday sales with popups even if you don't do popups for the rest of the year. Install, activate. Set it up right now.

[00:33:12] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and this one is, who is this again? Oh, this is Bose. I also looked around at other, like non WordPress shops for what they were doing. Um, this one does not scream Black Friday, but it's definitely a sale.

[00:33:29] It just says, hurry up. Um, which I don't know. I didn't, I didn't love it.

[00:33:33] Zack Katz: And there's a, there's a text in the background that says, yay. And it should be saying Friday. That's, yeah, Friday. That's my punch up on that. Friday. Friday. Um.

[00:33:42] Matt Cromwell: Uh, elegant themes. I've talked with them quite a bit. Um, that, uh, black Friday for them is always the absolute largest, most significant weekend of the entire year.

[00:33:54] They all worked like basically 24 7 over the whole weekend because of how much. Traffic and questions and account services issues they get for the whole time. So it's a big deal for them, and they do a whole homepage takeover. You could see here save big when you join today. Um, of course their whole, uh, model is more of like a, a membership type of subscription thing.

[00:34:17] So, um,

[00:34:18] Ian Misner: I do love on that one, the, the two six, the next 260 buyers. If it's a real countdown and that goes away, I like that a lot. If it's a lie, I hate it. Yeah,

[00:34:27] Matt Cromwell: it's real. I love it. Yeah, that's right. So we tried to do units left. Claim this offer well, yeah.

[00:34:33] Zack Katz: Awesome. Motive has a, I forget raffle press is what it's called.

[00:34:36] Um, and we tried raffle press for a couple of years and didn't find it actually worked, and it was really annoying to try to incentivize, like, share this and you get some votes and like mm-hmm. So we did another thing, an early bird sale where we had a certain number of units left and it never sold out, and it looked kind of pathetic.

[00:34:55] Mm-hmm. Um, so I would recommend if you're not as big as, uh, you know, elegant themes, make your, make it 10, make it seven, uh, make a very small number that will sell out so that the urgency is there.

[00:35:08] Ian Misner: Yeah, like the early bird email, like before Black Friday, you know, the first 20 people get whatever that

[00:35:15] Zack Katz: Yeah, the first five, like make it really, and if people get bummed out and they email you and say, oh, I missed it, can I get that discount?

[00:35:23] Give it to them. Like, that's the whole point. But, uh, make it so that people will feel the urgency.

[00:35:29] Matt Cromwell: I don't know if I just messed up or something, but when I went to apple.com in 2022, they did not have a Black Friday thing going on. Uh, but of course I am a PC and Android for forever kind of guy, so I don't know.

[00:35:44] Does Apple just not do the Black Friday stuff? I

[00:35:47] Katie Keith: don't think so. You never get discounts on Apple products?

[00:35:51] Zack Katz: Yeah. Yeah. They have an Apple shopping event.

[00:35:54] Ian Misner: Yeah, I actually think they do the gift card thing sometimes. The Marcus recommended actually, they don't want to devalue the premium brand, so they send, that's what,

[00:36:02] Matt Cromwell: that's what it is.

[00:36:03] It was only this thing about gift cards and I was like, what I didn't understand,

[00:36:07] Zack Katz: they do it through their reseller providers. So like Target offers it, Costco offers it, but uh, they don't themselves offer discounts on their own products, I think.

[00:36:14] Matt Cromwell: Interesting. Interesting. Uh, restream is the platform we use for streaming our podcast.

[00:36:21] And, uh, they basically just had a, a site wide banner and their pricing was updated. That's, uh, what they did. And it doesn't scream a lot here. You could see it says Cyber Monday up in the banner and it says get 50% off all plans and there's a timer. I feel like that's like the best practices for a site wide banner.

[00:36:39] Um, but um, yeah, um, it's pretty straightforward. I think, Matt, we have

[00:36:44] Zack Katz: a report from. From Mohammed who says those elegant themes units are real. Well, thanks for the update.

[00:36:51] Matt Cromwell: Nice. That's good to know. I mean, it feels like it would have to be like 250. I, I just,

[00:36:57] Ian Misner: I just wanna elaborate on the, it being real is that there's a lot of stuff you can find in like, um, you know, blog posts and stuff, but manufacturing urgency.

[00:37:07] Yeah. And I'm all for it. Be honest. You know, do it for real. Just, yeah.

[00:37:11] Zack Katz: Don't lie. Don't urgency. You don't wanna lie to your customers. That's not a good relationship to, to have. Yeah.

[00:37:16] Matt Cromwell: Urgency is important for sure, but real urgency, not, uh, not fake

[00:37:20] Ian Misner: urgency. Yeah.

[00:37:21] Matt Cromwell: Commit.

[00:37:22] Ian Misner: Yeah. And to, to Zach's point, I know the number that, that can be real.

[00:37:25] And, you know, set that up. Yeah.

[00:37:28] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Look at this, uh, Elementor one though, they definitely, like, there's a banner that's huge. Cyber Monday sale up to 30% off a timer buy now. And the whole entire hero is all Cyber Monday. I personally also, I like leaning in on Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday. I mean, like, technically I don't think people really care, but technically Black Friday is really about like the targets and the Walmarts and the, the physical products.

[00:37:55] Cyber Monday is for us, like we kind of should be embracing Cyber Monday a lot more. And traditionally, I will say on the stellar side, uh, cyber Monday is by far the biggest sale day. Uh, it, it beats Black Friday by a long shot. Interesting. We

[00:38:10] Katie Keith: alternate. It's sometimes Black Friday, sometimes Cyber Monday.

[00:38:14] Matt Cromwell: Interesting.

[00:38:14] Zack Katz: Yeah. Yeah. So Matt, let's, let's move on to. Uh, talking about what the most effective tactics are for running a successful sale in, in addition to having sitewide banners and having good landing pages. Yeah. Well,

[00:38:27] Matt Cromwell: I mean, this is one of the tactics that I was trying to lean in on. 'cause I, I'll just say that like that's the context for what I was saying is this year the.

[00:38:37] Um, stellar. Um, all, all of the stellar brands are essentially focusing primarily on a site-wide banner everywhere. Um, no landing pages and all the pricing pages are updated with like a slash and all that kind of thing. And my thinking for behind all of that is that people are going to come to your site for Black Friday no matter what.

[00:38:58] Um, and. If you have to like do a ton of work for a landing page and whatnot, you're putting, you're pushing your view viewers to a different page to check out, and you just don't know if it's effective or not. But your product pages that you use every single day, you, you know that they work, you know, so the banner should push them to one of your product pages or your primary pricing page.

[00:39:24] Things like that, and that's just updated. I think it's kind of like in my mind, the bare minimum of, of what the onsite experience should be as a tactic. Sitewide banner that has, uh, a countdown clock, uh, that says Cyber Monday or Black Friday, really clearly that shows the offer. It has one button. I mean, the whole thing would be a, a clickable thing, but it has one button that takes them to the page that you want them to, to check out on the most.

[00:39:50] Um, that's, that's kind of my take. I, I, I think the landing page thing, I'm for sure, it depends on the product, um, and the various product offerings. But I think an extra dedicated landing page is maybe just not important. I'm not sure.

[00:40:06] Katie Keith: Yeah, what, what you said is a bit trickier if you have multiple products because you don't just have, if it's a site-wide banner, you don't just have one destination.

[00:40:14] Yeah. So we used to link people to our all plugins page, but that's not a particularly interesting page really. So, um, I quite like that. But another thing to consider with this, you mentioned updating the pricing tables with crossed out prices and so on, is that there are two ways to do your Black Friday pricing.

[00:40:32] There is updating all your prices with, with sale prices, basically, so you cross out the price and show the original. And there is not doing that and having a coupon code in usually your head of banner. And one year I did one of those things and the other year I did the other and I did not measure a difference in conversions either way.

[00:40:53] So we now just do the coupon code method and like I said earlier, we also put a banner above the pricing table so that the coupon is dead obvious to people. Uh, and because we got the same conversions and that's. It's a bit easier, but interestingly, we get a lot of sales from people not using the coupon code, so they're paying full price.

[00:41:13] And I'm not sure why that is, but it's interesting.

[00:41:17] Zack Katz: Yeah, same here. We've had that, uh, experience as well. So we use a plugin called sitewise Sales by Stranger Studios, and it gives them the, uh, this is one reason to have a landing page is it says you can auto apply the coupon if people visit the landing page.

[00:41:32] And then, uh, but show the banner all the time. And if they don't visit the landing page, they don't get the discount. Mm-hmm. Uh, same experience as you, Katie. We had maybe, I think 30% of customers not use the coupon code. Mm-hmm. Which it's a lot. It's a lot. And uh, maybe, you know, but then they end up 10% of those got in touch with us and asked for the, for a refund after the fact, which is fine.

[00:41:55] Of course we'll do that.

[00:41:56] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Interesting. I, I tend to be of the mind that the discount should be auto applied, um, because I think I had been as well.

[00:42:04] Zack Katz: Then, uh, people said, we wanna give you more money, and I, I don't wanna stop them.

[00:42:09] Matt Cromwell: Sure, sure. Like, but

[00:42:11] Katie Keith: we also offer different discounts. So for example, we have a special discount for email subscribers only, where if they spend $250, they get a bigger percentage.

[00:42:21] So if we were auto applying, that would become a bit harder, wouldn't it? Because we want them to have different codes. Uh,

[00:42:28] Matt Cromwell: do you feel like that that tactic works though? Is that useful? Do you feel like that that actually generates more conversions that way? Because that, that, my whole thinking is that the simpler the sale, the, the higher the conversions, um, on and

[00:42:43] Katie Keith: website.

[00:42:43] Yeah. But in, in the email, you can get away with a bit more. And we did get sales to that code as well as the normal code.

[00:42:51] Matt Cromwell: Hmm. That's interesting. But then they have to manually fiddle with a coupon code and all that kind of thing. Yeah,

[00:42:57] Katie Keith: yeah.

[00:42:58] Matt Cromwell: But

[00:42:58] Katie Keith: we found the same conversions when they did and didn't have to manually enter a code.

[00:43:03] Matt Cromwell: They feel special 'cause they got a special code. There

[00:43:06] Katie Keith: might be some positive psychology. Yeah,

[00:43:08] Matt Cromwell: yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That is interesting. I wonder like, I mean, uh, it gets a little bit tricky. The sitewide sale that everybody gets is 30%, but if you're an email subscriber, you get 40%. Um, I wonder how that, if

[00:43:23] Katie Keith: you spend a certain amount

[00:43:25] Matt Cromwell: mm-hmm.

[00:43:26] It's an incentive

[00:43:27] Katie Keith: to raise the order value.

[00:43:28] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm. Interesting. Interesting. I like it. Katie, pair this a little bit with your lifetime deals stuff because selling, uh, lifetime deals heavily discounted is also a bit of a, of a, you know, controversial subject a little bit. Um, but everybody I know who does lifetime deals, they sell the majority of them on, uh, black Friday.

[00:43:52] Um. So, uh, if you don't know everybody, Katie wrote a great piece on the WP Product Talk blog about the economics of lifetime deals and how it pans out for her. We also have a great episode with Leslie Sim about it, that she just did one. We have all kinds of info on lifetime deals. Um, we did a yay or nay episode, lots of it, all the all to say.

[00:44:12] Um, Katie, what's your take Lifetime deals on Black Friday.

[00:44:16] Katie Keith: Yeah, I think that's a particularly good time to sell lifetime deals because, um, historically fewer. Percentage of customers that buy on Black Friday are going to renew in the future. That's because of things like impulse purchases. They're less likely to become longtime customers.

[00:44:33] So my view on that is that if they're less likely to renew, I want to maximize that initial sale price from them. And lifetime deals are one way to do that. Some people worry about the extra support burden, uh, but the. Data that I just published on the WP Product Talk blog showed that lifetime customers do not need more support than annual even over many, many years, at least at Barn two.

[00:45:00] And also people that buy, join Black Friday are probably less likely to need support because while I want. Them to use our product. I accept that some people just collect lifetime deals because that's a thing that they do. It's a hobby, like collecting domain names you're never going to use or something like that.

[00:45:18] So I don't think you need to worry about the supports particularly. Um, so, uh, just a quick stat last, uh, normally we. 5.6% of our sales are, are lifetime. Black Friday last year it was 15.2%. Yeah. So we tripled nearly the number of lifetime sales, um, which I think is good because it increases that average order value.

[00:45:44] Zack Katz: Yeah. Um, one of the things for lifetime sales that I just thought of now, uh, that App Sumo does is they have a cutoff where if you don't activate your license within a certain amount of time. Uh, your license expires. So you could, they, they, you buy a lifetime license, but if it's not used, it's not a lifetime license, uh, anymore.

[00:46:05] So that is an interesting way that we could approach it where it's like, okay, you could buy a lifetime license. You don't get support unless you activate it within the first 60 days of the, uh, after purchase, something like that. I

[00:46:16] Katie Keith: doubt that has any practical impact though, because those people are unlikely to request support in the future either.

[00:46:22] Zack Katz: That's a good point. Uh, and it might help, uh, incentivize people to get set up and up and running with their, your plugin and actually using it like. Maybe that's a good way for us to do, uh, selling annual licenses is if you don't activate your license within 90 days, you don't get support.

[00:46:39] Matt Cromwell: I, I have been thinking about licensing a lot lately, and I think there's a lot that could be done on that front for sure.

[00:46:47] Um, and, but that's, I think it could, like so many folks don't even realize that they have a license when they purchase from us. You know, they're like, I got the zip file. I upload it now. I'm happy. And they don't even think about it enough. Um, it could get really tricky and just really end up. It's something that Prius makes easy.

[00:47:03] MIUs actually does a good job there. They're one of the few, you know, um, another comment here from Marcus, which I think is a good subject to talk about, um, and he has a spicy take, which I'm going to disagree with. Marcus says, digital products should include Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Terminology for SEOA hundred percent agree with that.

[00:47:21] Uh, and they should run the sale from midnight on Friday to the following Wednesday, and he says, of course. Tell your customers that they only have until Monday night, and that's what I'm gonna be, we were just all talking about truthfulness and everything. Um, little

[00:47:37] Zack Katz: white lies though. Everybody knows.

[00:47:39] Katie Keith: I I agree with Marcus on that and I've, I've got data to back it up.

[00:47:44] Matt Cromwell: Oh, of course you do. Uh,

[00:47:46] Ian Misner: I think there's a, there's a way to thread the needle a little bit there though. And, uh, I actually, after Monday, I actually do think it is a good idea to offer a slightly worse sale. For a few more days. Yeah. It's like the last chance offer. Um, so you're still telling the truth, but you are definitely, uh, encouraging people to pay more attention next time around.

[00:48:08] Matt Cromwell: Mm, interesting.

[00:48:09] Zack Katz: Yeah. The Monday for us is not Monday for everybody. Um, so in terms of time zones that we, we give, we give at least 12 hours of padding whenever we do stuff. Yes, we do. Yeah.

[00:48:20] Matt Cromwell: I'll say I think, you know, we're talking about urgency. That's the thing like. We're saying the sale ends Monday. If the sale ends Monday, the sale should end Monday.

[00:48:31] But what I also say is that we have the discount code and our discount code that is auto applied throughout the site. It's still. Um, it still works through the whole week, right? So if somebody actually grabbed the discount code and tried to apply it later, um, it would work. And we do that on purpose because people will often be like, oh, I wanted to buy and I couldn't.

[00:48:54] And, and they're coming into account services and they're, they're just like, Hey, use the code and it works. Um, so the sale officially sitewide is not applied anymore, but if they still want to use it, they can do it, no problem.

[00:49:07] Zack Katz: Which is exactly the point that. N-E-K-E-N eight nine says, with lying in the customer's favor, winky emoji.

[00:49:14] Um, it's not only the customer's favor, Matt, you make a great point that it's also your support people's favor.

[00:49:20] Matt Cromwell: Yes.

[00:49:21] Zack Katz: Um, that's, you wanna reduce the amount of support tickets. You wanna make it as easy as possible for people to do what they're trying to do. While reducing friction on all sides, your customers and your teams,

[00:49:31] Matt Cromwell: if somebody has to reach out to support and like average response time, you know, right now we push it so hard that we're down to like an hour, uh, by email during working hours, uh, which I think is amazing.

[00:49:44] But like average email support time industry-wide is three to four hours. Uh, if they have to reach out and ask for support to get through the checkout in a way that they want to, and it takes three to four hours just to get an answer. You've already lost them. Like you're losing it. Yeah. There's no reason.

[00:49:59] Like, just make this stuff easy. Make it easy. So

[00:50:03] Ian Misner: I do wanna poke at one more thing that Marcus said though, starting on Friday, uh, we actually do start earlier as well. Yeah. But for people on the, the email list specifically. So here's the,

[00:50:14] Zack Katz: in

[00:50:14] Ian Misner: the we, everybody

[00:50:15] Zack Katz: knows it's coming. Yeah. Everybody know. You're telling people it's coming.

[00:50:18] You're telling people it's coming. Wait, wait, wait. If they wanna buy your product, have your sales start earlier. Yeah. Give them a discount. Yeah. Then you don't have to worry about them. You don't have to email them for the rest of the Black Friday sale for goodness sakes. Make your sales start way earlier.

[00:50:32] Sorry, Marcus, than, uh, than Friday at the, at least the whole week. Probably the week before that too. The week after. The whole point is to get people access to your products and have them give you money in exchange.

[00:50:45] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Let's,

[00:50:46] Zack Katz: let's, let's stop pretending like it's some sort of, uh, like religious ceremony that's happening on Friday.

[00:50:52] Ian Misner: No. Our support people do have a coupon code they can give out for the exact offer. Like already. I mean, we don't, yeah, yeah. Just ask for, yeah.

[00:51:01] Zack Katz: How did any reply that says, here's, here's the code. What's that, Katie? Uh,

[00:51:05] Katie Keith: it's worth starting early. I haven't done as much as like starting on the 1st of November, which a lot of companies do.

[00:51:11] But, um, there we start a week before Black Friday, normally, and last year 57% of the new sales we received during the whole campaign came before Black Friday. So that's the six day period from the previous Friday to the Thursday before. So that shows it's definitely worth doing. Um, and also regarding the.

[00:51:34] Um, abandoned cart emails. We've already, uh, amended our abandoned cart emails to start offering people the deal because they might be abandoning their cart because they're waiting for Black Friday. So we've just decided this year for the first time to offer abandoned cart people the, the full Black Friday discount now, because that might be why they abandoned their cart.

[00:52:00] But regarding after the sale, uh, yeah. We always say ending on Cyber Monday, which as Zach said, we, that is basically midnight Pacific time 'cause that's the latest time zone people are likely to buy. And then we do a surprise last chance sale. Yeah. Uh, which as Ian said, is a lower amount. It might be 30 instead of 40%, for example.

[00:52:24] But it is worth doing. So when we have done, not done that in previous years, like three years ago, we had a massive drop in sales from the Tuesday onwards. Whereas when we and that, and what I mean by that is the sales are lower than they would be in a normal Tuesday to Friday at any other time of year.

[00:52:45] When we had a last chance sale, we had 58% more revenue on that Tuesday to Friday than on a normal Tuesday to Friday. So I think that really does help to keep the momentum up.

[00:52:59] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. We have an interesting comment here from Peter Ingersoll. Um, do you all have any. Comment on this one. Do you have, he asks, do you have any data regarding buyers who are self-managed single site DIYers bloggers versus agencies and freelancers?

[00:53:15] Ian Misner: It's a good question. I don't have anything Black Friday specific. I have a lot of data across the product. Has anyone looked at this for Black Friday? Specifically though,

[00:53:24] Zack Katz: for us in retrospect, we, we don't have data, like proactive data on I, in retrospect, it seems like people who bought lifetime licenses.

[00:53:33] At a discount. Mm-hmm. Uh, show up a lot and help scout. They, uh, like, and that might be just the few who contact us. And I imagine that it's not like Katie's done the research and it actually lifetime customers do less, require less support. Um, but they are also heavy users when they do use it. So, yeah. Um.

[00:53:55] They, they are. That's our, that's my experience. Uh, is that the one, the few that, uh, that show up in support are very heavy users?

[00:54:02] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:54:03] Ian Misner: On our biggest product we have, it's like 60% of sites come from agencies and freelancers, but it's still only about 20 to 30% of buyers. 20. It varies, you know, period to period.

[00:54:14] Um, I've never actually tried to slice that around a Black Friday sale though. And I'm actually gonna make note of that to look into, to see, to see if, is it the same mix or different? Uh, it'd be interesting to. To check.

[00:54:26] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Well, we, let's jump into, uh, um, best advice. We are kind of towards the top of the hour here.

[00:54:34] Um, let's, uh, keep it kind of tight. What is your best advice for folks who are running their Black Friday sale right now? Uh, like what is, like the one thing that you think is the most important aspect of a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday sale? Let's go the other way around this time with Ian.

[00:54:54] Ian Misner: If your plan's not done, do it right now.

[00:54:56] You know, you're already too late. If your plan's not done,

[00:54:59] Zack Katz: don't, don't even have a plan. Just start doing stuff right now. Yeah.

[00:55:03] Ian Misner: And then, uh, really related to that is I, I think we all kind of have the constraint of time and the opportunity cost of all the various things you could do. Um, you know, number one, the emails are gonna be the things that move the needle most spend the time there.

[00:55:15] Uh, stuff like those roundup posts that everyone sees, and you're probably getting emails about them. Uh, if you want a random backlink from some site for the rest of the year, you know, feel free to throw it out there. But those aren't gonna do much for you. No. And they could absorb a lot of your time.

[00:55:31] Matt Cromwell: Yep,

[00:55:32] Zack Katz: yep.

[00:55:32] I think I, we got literally zero traffic from Roundup posts last year. Yeah. And we were, we were in a few, yeah. Zero. Yeah, zero.

[00:55:40] Katie Keith: I had one sale once from Codeable Roundup, and that is of years of tracking these.

[00:55:47] Zack Katz: And it's so much effort and it's really annoying to fill out all those stupid forms. Yeah. Yeah. I

[00:55:51] Ian Misner: will throw out there, there's a, kero was a new domain last year, and you know, the opportunity to go submit on a whole bunch of sites that are well established.

[00:56:00] Because it's Black Friday. It didn't help us with Black Friday at all, but I'm sure it didn't hurt just because of the

[00:56:05] Matt Cromwell: opportunity warming up the domain, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Why not, right? Katie, what about you? Best advice?

[00:56:12] Katie Keith: Um, my best advice is don't be scared of doing discounts because you think, oh, if I do a 40% discount or something, I'm gonna get 40% less revenue per sale.

[00:56:26] That's actually not true because if you offer multiple license options, and I've seen this year after year, you end up having about the same average order value because people instead put that extra money into your lifetime or your multi-site options. So don't be scared of doing slightly bigger discounts.

[00:56:43] I mean, don't go crazy. Make sure you're always profitable, but you might be surprised that your average order value is the same or higher, even with a big discount.

[00:56:53] Matt Cromwell: Love

[00:56:53] Zack Katz: it. Yeah, that's a really good one. And mine is, uh, yes, emails are the key. And if you do nothing else, at least send three emails. Just send.

[00:57:04] They don't have to be masterpieces. Put 'em in Chatt BT, tell it to tone it down and then send those. Like that's fine. Do something there, but, and make sure you have abandoned cart setups. And I'm not just talking about one email for your abandoned cart, your abandoned cart flow on Black Friday. Is a whole nother email, uh, flow where we have like, uh, abandoned cart in recapture.io.

[00:57:30] Uh, we have like five or six emails that are sent out, specifically only turned on during the Black Friday sales and then turned off after. Uh, whereas we wanna make sure to recapture because they have shown they want your product at a discount. So give them the discount. That's, uh, so make sure you have abandoned cart set up as well.

[00:57:48] Matt Cromwell: Love it. How about you? Mine is to make the whole, uh, checkout experience as. Dead simple as possible. Um, if they come to your site and they don't know where to go, they don't know how to apply a discount code, they don't have, if they have any trouble with the checkout at all, you're screwed. You're just absolutely screwed.

[00:58:09] You did a big sale and you got less, um, uh, actual conversions than you wanted. Uh, you ha you're going for volume. You're going for volume. Volume has is the key here. Um, and so you have to just make it like. Dead simple. I, if it takes you longer to go and update every single pricing page or every single product page to have to reflect the price correctly or to have a discount code, auto applied, and all that kind of thing, I think it's worth it.

[00:58:35] Do it anyway because it just is gonna make it just like click done. And revenue, um, and check

[00:58:42] Zack Katz: out sitewide Sales Plugin by Stranger Studios. Uh, it does that for you. It works with EDD and WooCommerce, I believe.

[00:58:48] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's a good one. So, cool. Cool folks. Well, this was a great conversation. I think it was, uh, some different tips than what we did last year.

[00:58:57] Um, I'm gonna try to do a bit of a roundup of all of our advice over the years, uh, for folks. Um, but, so watch the blog for that. Uh, if you are enjoying these shows. Please do us a favor, hit that subscribe button. We're on a road to 10,000 subscribers and you can help us. And a special thanks to FIUs again, uh, for being our growth partner.

[00:59:18] Katie, what are we doing next week?

[00:59:20] Katie Keith: So next week Zach and I will be talking to Melissa, love, who is a. Fellow word presser on the island of Majorca where I live. Uh, she's from design space, and we're gonna be talking about how to navigate your way around selling an add-on to someone else's products. She sells cadence add-ons.

[00:59:39] Zach sells gravity forms add-ons, and I sell WooCommerce add-ons. So between us, we should have a lot of useful advice to share.

[00:59:47] Matt Cromwell: Love it. Thanks so much everybody. We will see you next week. Bye bye bye.