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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e commerce, digital marketing and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nick Co Email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics and the insights. All so you can unlock your next hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor.
- [00:33]
B
For this week's episode.
- [00:35]
A
Think about your best friend and how they shop totally different than how you shop online, right? You should never be getting the same cart. Reminder email. That's where Instant AI comes in. In the last few weeks, Instant rolled out AI flows for over 500 brands. The momentum is crazy. And one of my favorite brands tripled their email revenue in just 60 days. That's one of hundreds of wins they've had so far. Here's why it works. Instant can immediately understand who's on your site and what they've been looking at. The discount, the copy, the image, on site promotion, all of it is pulled dynamically into personal email flows. Then it sends it at the exact moment that that shopper is ready to buy. BFCM is behind you and now's the time to build for your biggest year yet. Old and lame retention emails are so 2025. Book a demo by December 31st and get 50% off your first 60 days at Instant One Sharma and set up your brand to dominate 2026.
- [01:31]
B
Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. I'm your host Nick Sharma and today we're going to just recap bfcm. I just had a candid conversation with Simon Wool. Simon is the main guy behind Wool Ventures. It's a growth consulting firm, works with a bunch of brands, especially in that range of going, you know, 1 to 10 million. 1 to 20 million. So I sat down with him and just kind of picked his brain on his overall thoughts on Black Friday. What he saw, did better than last year, what he's gonna look out for next year or do differently. We talked about changing sales mid sale, you know, kind of the lull pre Black Friday and then post Black Friday pre Cyber Monday. You know, we've, we're, I'm recording this on Tuesday, the day before. It comes out on Wednesday, December 3rd. So we talked a little bit about Cyber Monday and what's been working there as well. But overall it's just A good episode to listen to and just get some context on some other brands. What was working, what's not working at the end, started to drift off on a tangent and talk a little bit about some new channels that are working.
- [02:35]
As well as what works with cannabis brands, which is kind of cool because that is the unregulated space, or rather the more controlled space where you need channels that are a little bit more unregulated. So, anyways, a fun episode. Give it a listen. And if you got any questions, you can reach out to myself on Twitter. You could email Simon and. Yeah, have a listen.
- [02:57]
All right, Simon, welcome to Limited Supply. I believe this is your first time. First time here, right?
- [03:03]
C
First time here. Thanks for having me.
- [03:05]
B
Amazing. And I know you kind of as a growth consultant in the space and just over the years, you know, talking about brands, either sharing clients or passing brands back and forth, but do you want to just give a quick intro on yourself and kind of your expertise, what you're good at?
- [03:23]
C
Yeah. Yeah. So I am Simon Wohl. I live in New York. I'm a huge nerd, and I'm really good at growing brands. I can run Facebook ads like the back of my hand. I can run Google Ads like the back of my hand. But I think my biggest, the way that I kind of look at the way that I do things is I'm a growth consultant. I'm a fractional cmo. I'm a fractional head of growth. I've worked brand side, I've worked agency side. I've built brands from scratch. I've sold brands.
- [03:55]
I've built my own brand. Sold my own brand, and just really have decided that helping take brands from either 0 to 1 or 1 to 5 or 5 to 10 is a sweet spot for me and being able to kind of be part of it, grow things, have a say in what happens, whether it's on the CRO aspect, the paid ads aspect, the creative ads aspect, everything within that, if I can touch it, it will grow.
- [04:22]
B
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Like, this episode is going to be great for the brands that are going 1 to 10 or like 1 to 20 and just trying to figure out what channels to test and where to push and all of that. But let's start with Black Friday. So Today's, you know, December 2nd. We're recording this. It comes out on Wednesday, December 3rd. We're right in the middle of Cyber Week. Black Friday just happened. You know, we all kind of felt a slowing down going into Black Friday in Terms of revenue.
- [04:52]
So what did you see on Black Friday? Like, what. What did you see that worked? What didn't work? Was it softer? Was it bigger? What was your overall take on Black Friday?
- [05:02]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, I think the TLDR of this is pretty interesting, right? I think that the TLDR of this is that brands have been going live really early with Black Friday. And I think this was like an ideology that happened, like, maybe two or three years ago on a shift in the way in which we advertised before. In the past, it was no sale, no sale, no sale day of Black Friday, huge sale. And that carries on through the weekend and then even bigger sale, Cyber Monday. Right. So it taught this consumer behavior, taught this consumer behavior of wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Purchase. This year, it seems like we went live really early. I saw brands going live November 1st, and with the same offer that they went live with, continued through the entire Black Friday season.
- [05:48]
It seems like.
- [05:50]
B
Were you seeing that they were going live earlier this year or later or, I mean, compared to last year, really?
- [05:56]
C
What's interesting is. So I saw brands go live from. Really. When I look at the portfolio as a whole, and I look at, like, what I've seen across the board is there was this period of November 1st through the 7th that was like, really high shopper intent. And there were sales going on then. And if you look across that same portfolio and you look across how it performed, from the 7th through about the 20th, it went completely flat. So you had this spike from the first to the seventh and then a dip and stayed that way until the 20th, where then on the 20th, shopper behavior increased again and then spiked again at the end of Black Friday. So basically, it seems like consumers know that the November 21, November 20 deal through Black Friday is going to be always on deal.
- [06:41]
B
I remember seeing that too, at hint. Like we. The first year we did, I mean, this was also 17 and 18. So in 17, we did a really good deal only available on Friday, and on Saturday, you couldn't get it. And the next year, everybody remembered that on Friday is when the best deal is. That's when you buy. And I feel like consumers now, like brands now in general have kind of gotten to that point where it's like, all right, you tease something, like you give them something the week of, but then you still save the real firepower for Friday and something kind of like it for Monday.
- [07:10]
C
Totally, totally. So that's the problem, right? So I think that brands that went live on, like, the 21st maintain that same sale through Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Right. And I'm not saying that's a problem because Black Friday and Cyber Monday were incredibly strong days and there were absolutely spikes. But by keeping the promo the same or keeping the offer the same, you kind of lose out on that consumer and you lose out on that consumer behavior. The brand that I saw the best was about 20% off for the majority of that time period. So, like the 21st, I think through what day was Black Friday this year? Was it the 29th? Yeah. So through the 28th, which was Thanksgiving, they were at that 20% off. Thanksgiving at like 4 or 5pm the sales shot up to the early Black Friday offer at 35% off site wise, their Black Friday 3X, what they did the day before and then there was a lull on Saturday. That Sunday spike was their Friday offer.
- [08:13]
B
Friday offer was the 35%.
- [08:15]
C
Friday offer was the 35%. But it went live Thursday at like 5, 6pm Got it.
- [08:21]
B
And that carried that momentum. Still carried into Friday.
- [08:24]
C
That carried way into Friday. So Friday was like the best day of the year.
- [08:28]
B
Yeah.
- [08:29]
C
Followed very closely second by Sunday into Monday, which was a different offer. And that Sunday into Monday was maintain the 35%. But now certain styles on the site are marked down. So, like you just increase what the sale actually is.
- [08:44]
B
Yeah.
- [08:45]
C
Door busters, if you will.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, we had a lot of. I was just looking at data earlier on the lunar side, and there was a lot of brands that are in that, you know, call it 10 to 15 million revenue range that ended up doing like 2 to 3 million just in. This is what they'll do in BFCM alone, which is a lot greater than what their percentage was last year as a share of total revenue.
- [09:08]
C
Yeah. So, I mean, I think that, like, overall, I mean, this was a good Black Friday.
- [09:13]
B
Right?
- [09:14]
C
Like, this was. Shopify said this was like the biggest Black Friday they've ever had in there. I mean, their stock rebounded today and showed that, funny enough, that they had the outage on a Monday, but it's rebounded nicely. I mean, that being said, I think that the performance was really strong. But I think that if you look at November and the beginning of December, Cyber Monday, I would say that it was probably a really, really strong month for 99% of brands. I think what is interesting is, although in my mind, this Black Friday was softer, right? And I say softer not by revenue generated, but by percentage of revenue generated for the month of November. It was softer, right? Because I think the sales started so early November. Was a strong, super strong month. I look at it year over year for any of the brands I work with. It's up. It's up across the board. But I think that's due to the fact that the sales started so early. And I'm not saying start sales earlier. You can start sales whenever you want. What I'm saying is that Black Friday offer and that Cyber Monday offer need to be higher and hit because that's when people are still shopping. That's where that learned consumer behavior is.
- [10:26]
B
Yeah, totally agreed. You mentioned something about CB2.
- [10:30]
C
Oh, they love to send text messages. I think CB2 sent 50 text messages from Thanksgiving Day through. I mean, I got one 10 minutes ago. That's why I brought it up. Because when we were chatting before, I got another text. But it's crazy. If you go through and like look at it, they've been sending texts with video, text with images. Those are expensive texts.
- [10:53]
B
Yeah, those are expensive.
- [10:54]
C
Yeah. And I mean, this goes back to. There's always. The idea is like you're not sending enough emails. You're not sending enough texts. At a certain point, I think you're sending too many emails. I think you're sending too many texts. But I don't think most brands send enough emails. That is something I truly believe.
- [11:13]
B
How many emails were some of the brands you were seeing sending on average? Do you know?
- [11:17]
C
Yeah. So I think on. On Black Friday, I think most of them had three emails scheduled. That does not include resends, though. So email one would go out at midnight of Black Friday and then you have a resend of that at 7am and then you have another email that goes out at 10am and then you have a resend of that at 1, then you have another email that goes out at 4 and then a resend to that at 7. And that's the kind of cycle there. It. Are you going to get hit with spam complaints? Sure. But like those people's email inboxes are so flooded during Black Friday Cyber Monday. If that email, which doesn't cost you any more to send, drives incremental revenue, then you're doing it, right?
- [12:02]
B
Yeah, totally. I think there's no, there should be no limit to how many emails you send or decide to even spin up, maybe even day of whether it's like a plain text idea or plain text.
- [12:12]
C
Letters from the founder. Yeah, all those are great calls there.
- [12:16]
B
Yeah. A lot of brands were sending like six to eight emails on Black Friday alone.
- [12:19]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [12:20]
B
Which is definitely up like year over year. I would Say, but I think it's great because why not, why not send more?
- [12:27]
C
I mean, the, the key to this Black Friday, and it's like the key to every Black Friday, so if you ask me is, is efficiency, right? Like, you want to spend as much as you possibly can, drive as much revenue as you can, and convert as many people as you can. While every other part of your year might be to acquire new customers, this part of the year, not only is it to acquire new customers, we can talk about that with subscription brands, but it's also to make sure your current customer base repurchases during that time period. This is a way to increase your ltv. This is a way to keep your customers entertained. This is a way to continuously get repeat business. If you have a good sale and you have a good product, you want people coming back and continuing to come back. Because then when you're not on sale and they run out of it or they're not using it, or they stop using and they need it to use it again, then you go back to it. Right. And that's how you build good brand equity here.
- [13:19]
B
Totally. You mentioned subscription. Are you talking about brands that are driving straight into subscription?
- [13:25]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
- [13:27]
B
So how do they handle Black Friday?
- [13:29]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, a lot of the time these brands that are doing subscriptions have an always on offer, right. Like, I can, off the top of my head, I can think of a couple that are almost always 50% off.
- [13:41]
Those brands don't really change their offer throughout Black Friday, Cyber Monday. There are a few of those brands that I work with. That offer doesn't really change. What does change though is what you get with that offer. Right? So whether that's a free gift with purchase, it's getting.
- [14:01]
Like entered in to win either cash or I saw one brand doing it with an Apple watch or like 1 in 30 people is going to get refunded their purchase. Right? Like little things like that. Yeah, little things like that really move the needle, right?
- [14:19]
B
I think that's the big deal. Honestly, it seems like this year, like, I remember when we launched Feastables, the. The biggest driver at first was this giveaway and it was almost like Willy Wonka's giveaway, where every purchase gets you entered to win, like a Lamborghini or a Tesla or something, and there was like 12 or so Teslas we gave out. But then I started to see all these brands doing these like. And you, when you buy, you get tickets entered into a raffle and it seems like that's actually a driver that's been working well. And then I saw Everyday Dose do their offer. It was like 1 in 30.
- [14:51]
C
That was the 1 in 31. Yeah.
- [14:52]
B
And then it was a separate raffle of just winning cash. Maybe it was like, I don't remember how much cash it was, but it seems like this like gamification framework or this concept of gamification has room to be explored and kind of test it in different ways.
- [15:09]
C
So I mean, there's a couple of things and I talk to brands about this a lot and I always say make your product for people who live in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, these big cities. But the way that your product wins is by the Midwest and Central America. Like the center of America, not Central America, the center of America. Jumping in and buying your product. If your marketing is driven for those people and not people who like, I can tell you that people in New York City are not buying a product based on getting their money back. Majority of them are not. But like if you look at someone in Ohio, right, they might be, right? And that's like that might push them over the edge. If your marketing is driving towards the center of America, which is where the more people are going to be congregated, that is how you're going to grow your brand and that's how you're going to grow your product. You create for a small group, sell to the masses, right? And that is how you win. And this goes right back into that, right? So it's like, I mean the Feastables idea, like I can tell you, like, I don't want a Lamborghini, but like it like if somebody wins it, like that's going to be stoked about it. Like they're going to buy the product, right? Because that's amazing for them. But I think like going back to the subscription idea is like if you want to be selling subscriptions, right. It's not changing the offer, right? The offer doesn't change. What it is, is how much value are you creating for someone. And I think that's how you need to look at it. Whereas like brands will give away like a shaker bottle or a hand blender, like AG1 is giving, I think blender one at one, one month free on an app. Like this is how you create this value, right? This is making people want to be part of this program. This is wants people to be.
- [16:55]
B
Feel like there's a community.
- [16:58]
In other ways.
- [16:59]
C
Correct? Yeah. I mean it's like, like what Amex did with Platinum is like, okay, yeah, it's going to charge you $800. But here, here's 1500 dollars in free benefits to using the card.
- [17:10]
B
Yeah, 100. That's a great analogy for it. Going into Cyber Monday, how are you seeing, like, are most of the brands you're seeing, are they or working with, are they shifting their sales completely? Is it exaggerating what was working well before? What are you seeing there?
- [17:26]
C
I think it's a little bit of both. There's certainly an exaggeration. There's like a last chance messaging. This is where you get the scarcity messaging that comes in. This is countdown timers and emails. Countdown timers on websites. This is last chance messaging across the site. This is maybe doing like final markdowns, door busters. Right. Like, this is like clear out that old inventory that you need to get rid of. Mark that down heavily. Cyber Monday was massive day for a lot of the brands. That's actually when I see the emails being sent the most.
- [17:59]
I think we were talking about this before, but I talked to brands about this that I like to time email sends around NFL football games that I find that when people are sitting on their couch watching TV and they get an email from a brand that they want to convert from and it's a good enough sale, they will. So, like the Cyber Monday emails during Black Friday or during Cyber Monday convert like the best during the football game, like 8:39pm Eastern time. And then Cyber Monday is funny because like you look at the day and it looks like a normal day. Like it looks flat. And then you have like 3, 4pm kick in and it's just like massive shoots up. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's like I talked to so many people that actually went shopping during Black Friday this year, but nobody's going to a store on Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is meant for this because you're all working. But Black Friday, people are going shopping and then that sale is there Saturday, that sale is there Sunday. But Cyber Monday take advantage of that onlineness. Yeah.
- [18:58]
B
Okay. Before we get off of Black Friday, I'm curious, is there anything you're doing that's like tactically savvy or interesting or new to. To kind of retain these customers post bfcm knowing that these are people coming in kind of rapidly, they're buying the deal, you know, they maybe been on the fence for a while. Is there anything you're doing either email wise, you're running ads to a specific audience, you know, sending them a postcard. Is there anything you're doing for these customers?
- [19:26]
C
Yeah. So I mean, I think that, I mean, retention is always an interesting aspect, right. And like, I tell people I'm a growth guy. That doesn't mean I don't know anything about retention. Right. So, like, I think during Black Friday, a lot of brands that I work with are doing very specific mailers. When I say mailers, like, it's like the handwritten mailers thanking them for their purchase. Saying like, thanks for like supporting us during this Black Friday.
- [19:49]
I think like, you kind of hit home with some of the messaging. Like, thanks for supporting a small business and not like going to like a big box retailer. Like, we take this really seriously.
- [20:00]
One big thing I like to do is like on Tuesday when you shut off the sales, you still honor the sales if people are going to email you, right? Like, that's like a really big deal that creates a customer for life. They're like, hey, I really missed it. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I can we. Yeah, you're going to honor it, right? Like, the promo code is technically still live, but you're not advertising the promo code. But going back to like the retention aspect, I think it's like following post Black Friday Cyber Monday, it's like letter from the first email that any of these people get, right? That like they get their confirmation, they get their shipping. The first marketing email they get is going to be a letter from the founder. Right. I don't, it doesn't, doesn't matter. Like, that is like welcome to the family, welcome to the team. Like, thanks for like buying our product. Here's how I would use it. Here's what I would do with it. Please let us know if you have any questions. Feel free to email me back. Comes from the founder's email. Replies are not going to go to the founder's email. But like it looks like they will.
- [20:59]
B
Right?
- [20:59]
C
Right. Dylan Ander also taught me this little trick with Black Friday Cyber Monday is the post purchase upsell.
- [21:09]
With it being. I wouldn't talk about that yet. But like post purchase upsell is a great thing. And if you mark it as Black Friday X amount off, it doesn't 10 times better. And if you forget to turn it.
- [21:21]
B
Off, just a little copy change.
- [21:23]
C
Just a copy change. If you forget to turn it off, as Dylan has talked about, it continues to work that well throughout the rest of the year. So while that might not be a retention aspect, that's a really good little tip. There is like, okay, like, leave it. People are going to convert on it. Like if it's like a 50% offer like nobody cares what the copy says.
- [21:43]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [21:44]
C
But like the retention aspect is interesting, right? Because I think, and this goes back two years ago. We talked about like two, three years ago. I don't mean we, but like generally speaking, the community talked about how these people are only bargain hunters. Like this is like the only time they buy is like when it's on sale. Okay. I mean like, I don't understand why that's a problem. Right? Like you have your customer base, right? You have a great customer base. And the only reason that you're able to put your product on sale is because you make enough money to put it on sale without that like having a great sales boost. And.
- [22:23]
The whole point of this is like, I don't look at Black Friday Cyber Monday as a new customer acquisition.
- [22:30]
Time. Right. It shouldn't be early month, the early part of November, I don't know. However, you want to get people in the door, but you want to build this top of funnel and you want to get as many new people in the door as humanly possible. Black Friday Cyber Monday is your time to increase your overall revenue and your blended roas. It is not the time to focus on that new customer acquisition. While you might want to acquire as many new customers as humanly possible, and you should, they are not going to be as great of customer as those who are buying you. Not on Black Friday Cyber Monday. And that's the truth. But the whole point is let's make as much money as possible at the most efficient rate possible, right?
- [23:10]
B
Yeah. Like even if you're profitable for, for a customer buying two orders, it doesn't matter. You're still profitable, you know, and you're still getting people in the door. Revenue in the door. You know, if it's not as good as a customer buying six orders in April, it doesn't really matter. You're still efficient, correct?
- [23:25]
C
Yeah. And the customers, the new customers that you acquire during this time, you can do everything. You can send them an email from the founder. You can get like give them win backs when they turn and give them discounts. They're not going to be as good a customer as somebody that you acquire in September on no discount. Right. Or even a customer that you acquire on a discount not during Black Friday Cyber Monday is still going to be a better customer than a Black Friday Cyber Monday shopper.
- [23:54]
B
Yeah. There's also a good hangover from Black Friday and like deal Bargain hunter shoppers, especially in like consumable food and beverage that halos over into retail and Amazon, which is always a good carryover. Like, you know, the revenue may not shop from you again, but because they tried your product that, you know, half off once, now they go buy it at Target or Walmart when they go on their shopping trip.
- [24:17]
C
Oh, absolutely. And I, I mean I have brands on both Shopify, like, and Amazon. Right. Amazon saw a massive spike in Black Friday Cyber Monday as well. Right. Like, I wouldn't say it was percentage change wise the same amount as Direct on Shopify, but you have two types of customers. You have the Amazon customer and you have the direct to site customer. And it's very clear that you have those. Amazon customers are loyal to Amazon. Direct to consumer. Customers are loyal to direct to consumer. Are there certain things that I buy on Amazon that I would never go to a site to buy? Absolutely. But like I don't even think about it at that point. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that's. Sorry, I think we got a little bit off topic towards the retention piece and I think my point of it is not so much that it's really based on like, I don't really want to look at this is like, yes, do whatever you can to retain these customers. The reality is they're not going to be as good a customers as ones that you acquire elsewhere. So your focus shouldn't be on new customer acquisition during Black Friday Cyber Monday, but it should be on making as much money as you possibly can at the most efficient cost.
- [25:25]
B
Love it.
- [25:27]
A
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- [26:01]
B
What are some new channels, tactics or strategies that you see? I guess one, like you could either speak to what's just working in general or like two, what are things that are kind of in the underground world that you're testing and excited about going into next year?
- [26:17]
C
That's a good question.
- [26:20]
Let's start with the Underground one first. So I talked earlier about like building top of funnel and that gets done before Black Friday starts. That gets done starting September, October. You need to build this Black Friday channel. And how do you do that? And that's building the top of funnel. And how do you build the top of funnel? You get your ads in front of as many people as humanly possible at the cheapest cost.
- [26:46]
I found this. I mean, I didn't find it, so I don't want to take credit for it. But I have been using a platform called zagged recently, which is clipping. And for those who don't know what clipping is, I had no idea what it was. I thought it was like you just take a podcast and like cut different pieces of it and push that content out. It's like literally the exact opposite of that. I mean that is clipping. Right. But the way that I'm seeing it.
- [27:11]
B
Working of clipping with the gambling sites.
- [27:13]
C
And streamers exactly where they would put their logo on it. Yeah. But the way that I see it with brands right now is like.
- [27:22]
You'Re scrolling TikTok and you see a slideshow and it's somebody telling a story about like how like they had this problem and then they solved it. And the way they solved it was with this product. And like that's an ad, but it's done as an ad. So like I worked with this company, they've been awesome. Right. Like, it's super cheap CPMs. I think it's like 3 to $3.50 CPMs and like guaranteed views and you get this huge top of funnel audience. This company zagged.
- [27:51]
And you get this huge top of funnel audience that you get built up over time. And you look at the posts that they do and this post has 2 million views, 8,000 comments. And these comments are people being like, I tried this product. I tried this product. And you're like, whoa, these are not bots. These are not bot views. This is real. I was so skeptical before. I tried it legitimately. I tried it with one brand and I was like, this can't be real. That one brand just took off. Absolute virality. And like you see organic traffic increase. You see direct traffic increase. Yeah.
- [28:23]
B
When you run this strategy, do you think of it as like another view through channel, like a Snap or TikTok or TV?
- [28:29]
C
Yeah, yeah, literally exactly that. Yeah. Because it's really hard to like, you could look at it and like say like, okay, this video got 200,000 views in one day. I saw my site traffic increase by X amount and I saw purchases increase by X amount. Can you assume it came from that? Yeah, but like, is there a direct correlation? No, but I can tell you that like brands that I've seen running this are seeing like probably 25, 30% lower CPAs than brands not running it. And like, difference from the time they started running it to the time they're run. Like, not running it.
- [29:04]
B
Yeah, yeah, I could totally see it working well because it's like basically having a ton of accounts just posting. And I mean, these guys are incentivized to just keep posting until they're. I mean, they get paid on a per view, so like they're incentivized to keep creating content that keeps generating views. It floods the market.
- [29:21]
C
How they do it is a black box to me. Right. But like, I'll look at it in a client's account and there's 400 posts, 4 million views across, like maybe 200, 300 different creators, right? Just posting, posting, posting. And every day it's new content and it's good content that some of these brands are then reposting as their own content. Some of it's UGC videos of somebody like reviewing a product. Like, it's. I mean, I don't know why more brands aren't doing it. And I don't know if I'm just really early to it and finding out about this, but.
- [29:57]
I'm going to keep doing it.
- [29:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, totally. Are there. There's no restrictions there either then with category restrictions?
- [30:06]
C
There's no category restrictions. I work with cannabis brands and because this is technically organic content that's being posted, they can talk about it pretty openly. And the way that it was explained to me is like, okay, we get one account taken down because they don't like the content. We just spin another one back.
- [30:27]
It's not like it's hurting an ad account. Right? Like, right. It doesn't have to be. Doesn't have to say hashtag ad. Right. Like, there's. Doesn't have to have a disclaimer because this is someone's organic content that they are posting.
- [30:38]
B
Right? Yeah, it's. I'm very interested to see how clipping evolves. It's. It's a very interesting channel and I think it's interesting. It's. It's also funny because, like, the same way that like a lot of those, you know, there is, there is like, well, there, there's just platforms that like, they shouldn't be liked by the original platform that's kind of hosting them. Right. And we've seen this in different ESPs even. But then you're like, wait a second, it's actually, it works and everybody makes money from it and it doesn't really like harm anybody in the process. So like, it kind of just keeps happening. Clipping is one of those things where clipping works and it does produce a bunch of content, but it works.
- [31:24]
C
It does, right? I mean, disclaimer. There's certainly content that I've seen posted for brands I don't love. But at the same time, there's organic content that people post about brands all the time that I don't love. So it's like, and I mean, the.
- [31:39]
B
Only stuff that's gonna rise to the top too is stuff that's getting good engagement anyways. Which is kind of why I think it works in the, in this platform too is like, it's not going to get to everybody and be slop. The good stuff is what's going to get to people.
- [31:51]
C
Oh, totally. And like when you're, when you're only paying $3.50 for a thousand views, like, that's incredible, right?
- [32:00]
B
Like, totally.
- [32:02]
C
CPMs during Black Friday Cyber Monday. This is a whole nother discussion. Like what, three years ago? It's like CPMs are through the roof. Okay, great. But so are conversion rates. Who cares?
- [32:12]
I mean, you know me, you know, like, I, I, I'm a straight shooter about this stuff. Like there's like certain metrics that like, yes, we care about and like, yes, we look at. But like, at the end of the day, like, if it's making us money and it's not hurting the bottom line and helping it, then I'm going to spend more into it. So that answers the like, the like under the under the radar channel. But again, I, I mentioned before, I work with a handful of different cannabis brands. I'm seeing Applovin. Like I didn't believe it. I was allowed to advertise on it starting October 1st.
- [32:45]
B
I haven't looked back for cannabis.
- [32:47]
C
Yeah, well, they open, they reopened it up. Right. So they had it in the beta and then like, yeah, so I've been working with it for supplement brands as well as cannabis brands and like really seeing it take off and new customers. I think the biggest concern was that it was returning customers just coming back and purchasing during Black Friday. Again, don't care who's purchasing, but obviously want to be cautious of that. But I certainly seeing Applovin like really take off good CPMs, really high. ROAS seems like a really strong customer, to be honest with you, like across the board.
- [33:19]
B
Yeah, I, I, I've seen pretty good success with Applovin a lot. Some of our, like our, our two biggest Black Friday brands had a, a huge percentage. Like I'm talking 25 to 40% of theirs customers were app lovin this Black Friday season. And I also have, I've seen a lot of those like incrementality studies where the returning customers are a bit high. So I'm excited to see how they evolve because I know there's another supplement brand I just spoke with today. They also said that they're like, they're, they're doing, you know, probably a few hundred million in revenue and they were saying that it's too, it keeps getting their old customers like they don't really need. There's no incremental new from the channel yet. But as soon as they add those exclusions, and I'm sure they will at some point in the near future, I'm excited to retest it for some of those brands. But it's, it's pretty amazing. Like I think they're holding on to some gold. And you know, the other thing it comes down to is like how well you like use it and test it. There's a lot of brands that tested it but like tested it wrong.
- [34:21]
C
I agree. And I think the content, what's really interesting is the content there has to be engaging.
- [34:28]
B
Right.
- [34:28]
C
Like again.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah. People are coming from a very lean in experience. Their game.
- [34:33]
C
Correct.
- [34:33]
B
You know, they're basically like their brains.
- [34:36]
C
It's a non skippable. It's right. It's a non skippable ad. In 15 seconds, give me the elevator pitch on your brand. Right. And like why this person needs. It has to be engaging. They can't skip the ad. Why do they want to purchase it in 15 seconds? And like, I don't mean like do something crazy with a thumb. Stop. The thumb has stopped. Right. Sell the product.
- [34:55]
B
Right.
- [34:56]
C
This isn't a Facebook ad. This is a sales ad which going back to sales ads.
- [35:02]
B
Right.
- [35:02]
C
During Black Friday Cyber Monday. The ads that just literally were a business as usual static ad with the offer front and center were the best performers. Yeah. Without a doubt.
- [35:13]
B
The stuff that was like so obviously saying there's a sale running right here, click on this were the ones that did the best.
- [35:20]
C
Yeah. Don't try and walk me through like why I should buy this product. Like tell me what the sale is, I will go buy.
- [35:28]
Also goes back to like emails. The ideology which is like the one. The emails that I open in my inbox are not the up to discounts. Right. If you tell me that a site is up to 60% off, my brain already says, okay, there's a collection of stuff.
- [35:44]
B
The good stuff's only 10% off, correct?
- [35:46]
C
Exactly. If you tell me it's 30% off site wide, I'm shopping it. I'm shopping it every time. Like, I bought. I bought Bomba socks because they were, I think, 25% off. I got some socks, I got some slippers. I'm really stoked for those, actually. Yeah.
- [36:01]
I love Black Friday. Like, it's. It really is so much fun to do it, really.
- [36:05]
B
Especially, like, on the. On the marketer side. It's. It's sounds so corny, but it's everything we work for.
- [36:12]
C
Listen, it's high risk, high reward, right?
- [36:15]
B
Totally.
- [36:16]
C
I'm either going to get an influx of brands that are going to be like, we hate our agency and they screwed up during Black Friday. Can we hire you? Or I got brands leaving. And you know what? They're not leaving.
- [36:30]
B
Yeah, I think it's this year we did a lot of too, like, on the fly changes. There was just stuff that if we thought we could make it slightly better, you know, change the offer real quick and retest, you know, another email. We did that for one of our brands and it made them an extra, you know, it basically doubled their Black Friday as a result compared to what they were supposed to do on plan, which was still great for them.
- [36:53]
C
Totally. So there's a. And I mean, just to relate to that, there's a cannabis brand I work with that was doing like 20% off site wide or 30% off orders over $100. Prior to that, we had a larger sale running, which was 42% off orders over 150. We dropped in revenue over 50% when we switched to that other sale, the 20% and the 30%. So much so that we scrapped the rest of the Black Friday and went right Back to the 42%.
- [37:22]
B
Keep it.
- [37:22]
C
Ran that through the entirety of it. There were markdowns on site on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but we had plans to do flash sale on the site, but none of it was going to hit the 42%. So, like, why go through that dev work and the pain and the hassle to do it? Just blast the sale. That works. That's what we did.
- [37:43]
B
Totally.
- [37:44]
C
Cyber Monday was their best day of the entire year. So it seemed to work out pretty well.
- [37:50]
B
That's awesome. Anything that you thought.
- [37:54]
You were like, all right, I'm going to do this differently next year or next year. I'm going to do this earlier or change how we approach the process to brief this or whatever it is.
- [38:03]
C
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway this year is Going to be a couple things I think. One is start your sale the first week of November, early Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Kill it. Pull back on your ad. Spend the 17th through the 21st, right? Conserve, get your efficiency up because you're going to spend starting on the 21st, on the 21st through the day of Thanksgiving, have an offer. Spend on the offer on Thanksgiving.
- [38:34]
Increase the offer. Launch the new ads that you'd already built with the higher offer. That's the Black Friday deal. Sell that through to the beginning of Cyber Monday. On Cyber Monday, launch the new ads that you built out. Let those run Cyber Monday. The key here though is don't turn off your old ads, right? If somebody sees a sale that says 20% off and gets to the site and it says 30% off, you just want a customer. You just want a customer. Your ads are really good at getting sales, right? On Facebook specifically, your ads are really good at getting sales. Facebook's really good at what you ask it to do. If you ask it to get sales, it will. Now you have ads that have been working for a week. At this point, there's no reason to turn them off. They have good click through rates, they have people converting on them. Those ads, regardless of the difference in sale, are going to drive people to your site and your site is going to convert them at a higher offer, which is the best thing in the world. So there's like no reason to like blast spend into these new ads. Spend on them. Don't get me wrong, but don't turn off what you have working. Change the on site offer. Make sure the on site offer is clear. Make sure that it's in the cart, make sure it's on the pdp, make sure it's in the hero, make sure it's in the top nav banner. Make sure your post purchase is set up correctly. Make sure all of that like if you create a funnel for somebody to click the wrong promo code, get to your site and check out, you're doing it right. That's the truth. And I think like that's the key. Don't spend money on sales during the middle of November. You're just going to hurt yourself and you're going to wonder why your sales not working. And you're going to try and spend and it's going to be stressful.
- [40:17]
B
And it's honestly every year that happens, everybody's like leading into the season, it's like, oh, it's gonna be, is it gonna be rough? This, it's always year over year. It's always greater, but everybody's like, oh, is it gonna pull back? Recession this? And then it's like, there's that little pop, then it goes really quiet, and then boom, it's right in your face.
- [40:35]
C
Build your new funnel or build your. Build your funnel at the beginning of Q1. Sell that funnel. Make as much money as possible during this time period. This is the time to do it. The most money possible. I mean, the end of December into January is gonna be another time to do it, but this is the time to really do it. During Black Friday Cyber Monday, don't focus on the new customer acquisition. You've already focused on that. Convert these people to increase that LTV time over time.
- [41:03]
I mean, I think send more emails. Send more emails at the right times. Do the CB2 method overwhelm people with text messages?
- [41:14]
Make it fun, right? Like, put your sales front and center. Make it fun. The ads that, like, are memorable to me are the ones that, like, have a sale front and center and make me laugh. Right? Like, they're silly. They catch my eye. Like, I'm like, okay, Brooklinen posted, like, a sticky note that just said 35% off.
- [41:31]
B
Right?
- [41:31]
C
Okay, great. I remember that. Like, that's super simple. Right to the point. Sells me. Yeah.
- [41:37]
B
Awesome.
- [41:39]
C
Keep it simple. Stupid kiss.
- [41:40]
B
That's it. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Simon, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me sharing your thoughts on Black Friday.
- [41:48]
C
Thank you, Nick. Appreciate it.
- [41:49]
B
Oh, where can people get in touch with you?
- [41:52]
C
You can reach out to me through my website@woolventures.com or you can email me at simonoolventures.com w o o l v e n t u r-e s.com Amazing.
- [42:04]
B
Thank you, Simon.
- [42:05]
C
Thank you, Nick.
- [42:07]
B
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on cpg retail and E Commerce. Commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend? And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.