STOP: Analyze These 3 Crucial Buyers Post-BFCM to Maximize Q4 Profit

Summary

Perpetual Traffic Podcast Summary

Episode: "STOP: Analyze These 3 Crucial Buyers Post-BFCM to Maximize Q4 Profit"

Hosts: Ralph Burns (CEO, Tier 11) & Lauren Petrullo (CEO, Mongoose Media)
Date: November 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on the essential post-Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) analysis that marketers and business owners must conduct to ensure sustainable profitability into Q1 and beyond. Ralph and Lauren emphasize that the real work begins after the sales event, not only in dissecting campaign results but also in segmenting buyers to inform smarter strategy for the rest of Q4 and planning for 2026. The conversation is lively, blunt, and tactical, highlighting the pitfalls of "vanity metrics" and offering detailed breakdowns of the three critical buyer segments every business should assess after BFCM.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Post-BFCM Analysis Matters

• Many businesses focus only on top-line revenue from BFCM, but Lauren warns that celebrating without proper analysis can lead to long-term losses.
  • Lauren: “You cannot build on the success of this year's Black Friday. If you wait till next September…they’re going to mess up their profitability for all of 2026.” (00:00, 06:20)
• Campaigns should not be deemed successful purely on revenue spikes or "bigger than last year" numbers.

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2. Three Crucial Buyer Segments to Analyze Post-BFCM

Lauren lays out a framework for sorting BFCM customers into three distinct groups based on their purchase history:

A. The “Goodwill” List: Recent Buyers (Purchased within 90 days pre-BFCM)

• These customers would have bought anyway; BFCM just gave away margin to existing loyalists.
  • Lauren: “Right. So that was just—you just lost. You gave away money. Okay, that's your giveaway money list.” (19:52)
• Action: Focus on getting reviews, moving to subscriptions, or loyalty programs to recoup the lost margin through brand equity and LTV.

B. The “Reactivated” List: Lapsed Buyers (Last purchase was 91-180 days pre-BFCM)

• These are buyers who needed an incentive or reminder to return.
  • Lauren: “That 180-day list that didn’t buy in the last 90…either you failed to market to them, or customer service failed to deliver on the promise.” (21:15)
• Action: Discover why they left, what brought them back, and devise re-engagement or winback strategies.

C. The “At-Risk or New” List: Stale or First-time Buyers (More than 6 months since last purchase or brand new)

• These are the most expensive to acquire, often resulting in net loss per acquisition during BFCM.
  • Lauren: “I’m going to assume every customer acquired from that list was at a loss.” (23:54)
• Action: Closely monitor repurchase velocity and develop onboarding/nurture campaigns.

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3. Profitability vs. Revenue: Avoiding the 'Stupid Offer' Trap

• Many “successful” BFCM offers are “lazy”—highly discounted, margin-eroding, and unsustainable if not analyzed by profitability.
  • Lauren: “Your marketing team should not be dictating your sales strategy and your discount... your CFO has to give clearance on it.” (15:08)
  • Ralph: “I have to ask…how profitable were you?…that is kind of the purpose of business, if I’m not mistaken.” (08:27)
• Don’t offer across-the-board, deep discounts without segmenting products (e.g., clear out expiring stock but don’t discount best-sellers unnecessarily).

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4. Immediate Next Steps: What Should Marketers and Business Leaders Do?

A. Review Revenue Targets & December Adjustments

• Did you hit your (not inflated) BFCM targets?
• Set new targets for December.
  • Lauren: “First, let’s say, did we hit our revenue targets? …What revenue target adjustments do we need to make for the month of December?” (09:39)

B. Aggressively Segment and Analyze

• Pull lists in your CRM (Shopify, etc.) by recency and frequency of purchase.
  • Ralph: “This is the time to do it because…you can go into your Shopify store…actually figure these numbers out.” (19:08)
• Separate customers by average order value (AOV): Bulk (Costco buyers) vs. Discount-driven (Walmart buyers).

C. Tailor Post-BFCM Messaging and Campaigns

• Goodwill/loyalists: Prompt for reviews, push subscriptions, reward loyalty.
• Reactivated: Personalized re-nurture.
• At-risk/new: Nurture and incentivize a second purchase (key for profitability).
• Lauren: “The best way to compensate for that loss of margin is to earn it back in brand equity and in subscription.” (25:44)

D. Monitor Repurchase Velocity

• Track how quickly/if BFCM buyers return to purchase again—critical for understanding true campaign ROI.
  • Ralph: “That velocity to repurchase, super important… it starts right now, really.” (33:46)

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5. Special Focus: Q5 Opportunity

• The “Q5” window (Christmas to New Year’s) offers the lowest ad costs and high consumer attention for regret-driven or “missed out” purchases.
  • Lauren: “It’s the cheapest time you’re going to buy ads on social media ever. …they are ready and they have regrets from whatever they did not get for the holidays.” (09:39)
• Tailor special campaigns for this window, especially for Gen Alpha/Gen Z.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “Lazy Discount” Problem:
  • Lauren (15:08): “If you’re giving 60% off everything, that's lazy. That's like using an adult coloring book for…your marketing strategy—there’s no plan there.”
• On the Purpose of BFCM Offers:
  • Ralph (17:41): “Was it profitable? Was it not profitable? People might not really know…Sales having come in, whether they're profitable or not, is sort of the question mark at this moment in time.”
• On the Power of Data Analysis:
  • Lauren (32:23): “This is actually everything. Because you're analyzing the profit and loss of how did Black Friday Cyber Monday do? But you should be doing this anyway on a regular basis just to be able to identify opportunities.”
• On the “Sugar Rush” of BFCM:
  • Ralph (37:33): “It’s not a sugar rush. It really is…part of your overall business strategy. And this is 10 or 15 years of experience doing this…”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [06:20] – Why BFCM planning should start months ahead, not next September.
• [09:39] – Reviewing revenue targets post-BFCM and Q5 planning.
• [15:08] – “Stupid offers,” margin traps, and the CFO’s role in promotions.
• [19:08-21:18] – Detailed walk-through of segmenting the three crucial buyer groups.
• [25:44] – How to compensate for lost margin: subscriptions, reviews, and brand equity.
• [28:32] – Differentiating bulk (Costco) vs. discount (Walmart) buyers and relevant strategies.
• [33:46] – Why tracking repurchase velocity after BFCM is essential to real long-term growth.

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Action Checklist (Immediate Next Steps)

1. Segment BFCM buyers into:
   • Goodwill / existing loyalists (last 90 days)
   • Reactivated (91–180 days)
   • At-risk or new (180+ days or new)
2. Identify bulk buyers (Costco types) vs. deal-seekers (Walmart types) by AOV.
3. Analyze sources of BFCM revenue — and profitability — using actual cost and margin data.
4. Set aggressive December and Q5 targets and campaigns based on analysis.
5. Customize retention, upsell, and review-generation campaigns for each segment.

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Tone, Style, and Speaker Dynamic

• Direct, banter-filled, and jargon-savvy.
• Ralph keeps the discussion strategic and grounded in agency experience; Lauren leans into tough truths and tactical frameworks, both seasoned with humor and bluntness when calling out industry pitfalls (especially “stupid offers”).

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Final Takeaway

Black Friday/Cyber Monday’s success—and its ability to build a profitable Q4 and 2026—does not end with high sales numbers. Detailed segmentation and profitability analysis are critical, particularly identifying which buyers will yield long-term value. Use the data surge from BFCM to make smarter choices now, not after mistakes show up in next year’s books.

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“Black Friday Cyber Monday sales is over for your customer. But it is not over for you, the business owner.”
— Lauren Petrullo (34:33)

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Transcript

[A]

You cannot build on the success of this year's Black Friday. If you wait till next September, a lot of people are going to be like, yay, I made all of this revenue in November. And then they're going to mess up their profitability for all of 2026.

[B]

How do you measure success from Black Friday? And then what do you do in this time right now?

[A]

We've talked a lot on the show, Ralph, about marketing performance indicators that matter, right? Your ncac, your naov, your mer. Like the numbers that help you not break the. But the piece that I want, if you're listening to Take Note, is.

[B]

Hey, before we get into today's show, just a quick reminder that we are still offering the Creative Diversification package over at tier 11. 30 plus creatives per month, five to seven variations every single week. Plus you get the media buying and the tier 11 data suite for free. This offer is through the app end of the year and now is the perfect time for you to meet with our team and plan out your Q1, Q2 and Q3, exactly like we're going to be talking about here. The learnings that you will gain from Black Friday Cyber Monday. This is the opportune time to talk with our team about how you can Crush it in 2026 using creative diversification. It's the biggest breakthrough on Meta since ads in the news feed back in 2013. Once again, you buy the Creative Diversification package, you get the media buying and the Tier 11 data suite for free limited time offer through the end of the year. Check it out over at tier11.com forward/cd.

[A]

You're listening to Perpetual Traffic.

[B]

Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside my amazing not even frazzled, not even upset, not even lacking sleep co host Lauren.

[A]

E. Petrulo, founder of Magus Media and very dear friend to someone who's got a bigger nose than Pinocchio right now. Like what? It's November. What are you talking about? Sleep. That's a five letter word for someone else who's not in Black Friday Cyber Monday chaos.

[B]

Well, we are right in the middle of it right now. So as of this recording, we're actually pre Black Friday and you look great for somebody who hasn't slept in like two weeks. So. But anyway, we're going to be talking today about lessons learned a bit, how to measure success on Black Friday Cyber Monday. Because as of when this recording is actually going to air, you, the business owner, you the director of marketing, you The VP of Marketing are going to be right in the smack dab middle of or the beginning part of the holiday season post Black Friday Cyber Monday. So we're gonna be talking about all that here in just a second, but little shout out here. Just got a nice email this morning which mentions me and you and I think, oh, it's great. Yeah, I know we really do need to read more reviews on air because we always say that we will, but we never do. But we will in the future. The point is this is that got a great email from Lisa Russo who said, thank you so much. I love the podcast with you and Lauren both. Both of you have a great dynamic and it's always jam packed full of great info. So I'm saying that for you so because I know right now is sort of a challenging time for a lot of things within Mongoose Media. So having said that, we're right in the middle of everything right now.

[A]

But no Friend November. Right now.

[B]

No Friend November. I can't believe you're at a conference. Like, what is Ryan Deiss thinking throwing a conference in the middle of Black Friday, like Cyber Monday week? Is he insane? Just, it's clear to me he doesn't do anything on Black Friday. Cyber Monday, he like takes me off. Although he used, he has a team. He used to have a great webinar on Black Friday.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

He used to do that with Molly, you know? Yeah, it was amazing. It was like a three hour webinar.

[A]

It was like the best thing on Black Friday.

[B]

On Black Friday.

[A]

Oh, shoot. You know what? I have a webinar on Black Friday.

[B]

Oh, maybe you're. Maybe you're it.

[A]

Oh, I didn't even realize it. Like I'm doing like, we're doing webinars now every Friday and I'm like, oh, no, that means there's one on Black Friday. But the reality is, is Black Friday is the easiest day of the whole holiday. It's Thanksgiving that's the hardest because all of your US based team, like none of them want to work. But that's like you're potentially launching if you are doing Black Friday specific ads or different creative. And it's the biggest day. So it's just before people sign off, especially our like corporate clients, they're clocked out at 3pm on Wednesday before. So if something comes up, it's an emergency.

[B]

Yeah. If you need some kind of change the last minute, forget it. It's not. It's like, it's a very stressful day, especially in the US but thank God for overseas workers or non us, you know. Tell me.

[A]

Yeah, our Canadian team. Oh my gosh, we love that their Thanksgiving is in October. Thank you. Thank you, Canada.

[B]

So good. It's a great holiday, by the way. We have family up in Canada. We get invited every single year for Canadian Thanksgiving. We've never done it. I'm dying to go. We had something happen this year again. But anyway, that's not it. That's not the point of today's show. So if you're a VP of marketing, you're a cmo, you're a director of marketing, this show is for you because. And. Or if you're the CEO running the whole damn thing, doing all the marketing yourself, we're going to give you some lessons learned from maybe phase one to a certain degree. Maybe some offer lessons that you've seen that maybe didn't work out so well or maybe just weren't really that great to begin with. But more importantly, how do you measure success from Black Friday? And then what do you do in this time right now? So I know that was a lot of questions all jumbled together, but I know you've got a lot of things sort of spinning around in that head of yours. So attack any one of those in any sort of order you'd like.

[A]

The piece that I want, if you're listening to Take Note, is at the time of this record, like when you're listening to this, Black Friday is over.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Only for your customers. It does not end for you, the business owner. And if you think, oh, good, what a relief. Pause, breathe, slap that stupid notion out of your head. Because the reality is, is you cannot build on the success of this year's Black Friday. If you wait till next September, I will argue till I'm blue in the face. Black Friday starts in July. June for planning, July for solidifying your offer, getting leads in August, testing a soft Black Friday offer with Labor Day and then pivoting after Labor Day sales to find new audiences, continue to build it so that you have a successful Black Friday. The reality is, though, this year, looking at Black Friday, you have to understand your numbers. Otherwise I think a lot of people are going to be like, yay, I made all of this revenue in November. And then either screw their revenue up to February because they've sold a bunch of bundles, they're going to mess up their profitability for all of 2026 if they continue to just guess at what Black Friday could be. And they're going to invest in the wrong channels, the wrong Audiences the wrong messaging if they don't understand and dial in. What was the true effect of Black Friday to their profit line? Yeah, I hate Black Friday. Hate it. Hate it. Cheapest evil. Yeah, cheapest way to lose money. You give away all of your margin and you pay the most you'll ever get for customers. And the large majority of the time, the people that are buying for Black Friday are never going to buy from you again unless you actually manage how is Black Friday? And then you start looking at what is the velocity to sales from someone that's new that came in for Black Friday for their second purchase. If you review the commitment of the people that came to your Black Friday offer from whatever their previous engagement was with your brand, if you got subscriptions, Lord help me, I hope you had a subscription acquisition play for Black Friday. Or what was the point? Any second. Okay, this is no friend November.

[B]

So is this, is this stupid offer time? Are we hitting on that? Because we're, we're, we're airing this. This is the first week in December now, right? So Black Friday's in the rearview mirror. Like, I think there's a couple of different things and I'm going to try and control your ranting here because I know you're sneakified. But like, how do you measure success? Because this is, this is always the thing. It's like, hey, how was your Black Friday? Like, oh, Great, we sold 50% more than we did last year. I'm like, well, how profitable were you? You know, there's always like that qu. I hate when I talk to clients and I have to ask these sorts of questions, but I mean, that is kind of the purpose of business, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, there is your purpose, your hire, you know, your, you know, your wise Simon Sinek. But the end of the day, I mean, you are trying to acquire customers, acquire them at a profit and, and actually get them to buy more often and over and over again so they become loyal customers and advocates for your brand. I believe that is the goal of business, if I'm not mistaken. So how do you sort of measure all of this craziness, like, after the fact, like in the first week of December? Like, what, what kind of conversations do you have with clients?

[A]

So I think the main conversations of clients is like, when did we hit our revenue targets? Because that's where we have to start. What were the revenue targets? Did we hit them? And what are December's revenue targets? Because we have this. When Black Friday is this late, we go straight into holiday season. If you're E Commerce, you have the get it before Christmas deadline. So the post office says it must be done by December 15th or December 17th. So you have this like big race for E Commerce people. You have Q5. So a lot of people want to rest their laurels. So it's kind of like, hold on. First, let's say, did we hit our revenue targets? Okay, what revenue target adjustments do we need to make for the month of December? And then before everyone wants to go on break, go on holiday, we need to make sure that we are super aligned with what are our holiday sales, what is our Q5 plan and what capacity do you have to sprint into the final end of the year? Because a lot of folks will neglect Q5, which is Christmas Day to New Year's Eve. Some people will argue that it extends as soon as like that last day to ship. But that's exclusively for E Commerce. For me, Q5 is Christmas Day to New Year's Eve. It's the cheapest time you're going to buy ads on social media ever. When there's the most amount of time that people are on their devices. Especially, especially for gen Alpha and younger gen Zers. They're home from college, they're not distracted, they are ready and they have regrets from whatever they did not get for the holidays. They have gift cards, whatever they're going to spend and they're in a pre planning, pre New Year, new me. So, so it's the greatest time and the cheapest time for you to get in front of people. So as soon as Black Friday ends, we have to review revenue targets. We have to align on what our December goals are. We have to affirm what resources are available because a lot of clients, they check out. I know most of my friends as agency owners, they close their office for two weeks on the 23rd and like, great, we will sweep up your lunch. But that's, that's okay. Like how they like celebrate the holidays, that's on them. But so that's the first type of the conversation. And then the shift this year in the conversation is going to be like, okay, let's look at your Black Friday numbers. We've talked a lot on the show, Ralph, about our MPIs, right? The marketing performance indicators that matter, right? Your NCAC, your NAOV, your MER. Like the numbers that help you not break the bank when scaling. You want to scale profitably, not scale at a loss. We have to analyze, was our Black Friday Cyber Monday success scaling at a loss and if so, what is the cash that we have now allowed us to what's our Runway to compensate for that loss and what is our reacquisition strategy for anyone that came in from Black Friday? That has to be the second conversation. Target revenue alignment on December. Now we have to look at what Runway do we have before we reacquire that scalability that we had in October, November at a loss to back to a profit so that we're not just reliant on a cash influx in OND October, November, December time, but can have a sustainable business through 2026.

[B]

So the. The retrospective analysis done right now is really is you're looking at top line. You're not even. I. You have not talked about gross profit, net profitability for Black Friday Cyber Monday because in most cases I have to assum with these steep discounts which 40%, 30%, 20%, 60. I've seen some 60% like those are probably not profitable. However, you need to make your Black Friday Cyber Monday campaigns irresistible enough to stand out in order to get the revenue. However, you're not mentioning profit here. Is that something that a business should be looking at or a marketing department at this point?

[A]

Now we're talking about stupid offers.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah. So a lot of people will offer.

[B]

I've never seen stupid.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the ones that someone suggests things it's a really good idea because I saw it on TikTok or because someone else in their industry is doing the exact same thing. Well, they're doing it. It must be good. Really. It's like when you look at people with bigger houses than you and you're like, oh my gosh, they must be doing well even though they're in their mortgage debt to their eyeballs. Okay, stupid offer time.

[B]

Welcome.

[A]

All right.

[B]

You don't have any personal experience with this? There's no frustration I sense in your voice.

[A]

Absolutely. My clients are perfect. They never make silly offers. Ever, ever, ever, never.

[B]

Well, at least they're making offers. That's good.

[A]

Oh, you know what? Let's change the bar. You're right. The bar is, are they having an offer? That's right. So like I think right now with Andromeda and with so many things that are changing, the best opportunity is agency. Partners and brands together can remove resources off of the media buying because so much of that is now in strategy. And you can apply that towards creating new messaging, creating new angles and creating new offers. Making new offers does not necessarily mean giving away a different discount. You can bundle stuff together. It's having a new Offer and selling something. More options you give to the sell, the more opportunity you can take in receiving cash collected or the 16 digit swipe. So creating offers, you're right. If we, if we lower the bar and say, did you have an offer this holiday season? Yes or no? If you did, awesome. And then if you've done offers before now, I'm going to hold you to a different degree and say like, okay, first question. If anyone's like, did I ever make a stupid offer for Black Friday? My first question to you is going to be, who made that offer? Who decided the offer?

[B]

Can you give me an example?

[A]

So let's say you're doing a 60% off offer.

[B]

60% off everything in the store, right?

[A]

Oh, God. Oh, sorry. Hold on. Calm down. Well.

[B]

I know I have seen like, that's. I haven't seen one of those in quite some time, but I. We did have a client for years and years that at a perpetual 60 off, all they really did is just jack up their prices.

[A]

JCPenney?

[B]

No, no. Walmart. No, it was actually. It was in the, it was in the per. It was in the fitness space, believe it or not. Okay, so it was fitness equipment. So anyway, 60 off all the time. Anyway, bad deal eventually went out, of course.

[A]

So why. Well, hold on. It's a great deal in the eye of the consumer, especially if you're already an existing customer. Because I am rewarded so well for waiting. Where I think the challenge is like. So I'll go back to the first question. Who came up with the idea that 60 off probably came up from a marketer because the marketer is going to have so much success selling 60% off the whole store. It's just easier for them. Your marketing team should not be dictating your sales strategy and your discount. You can give suggestions, but if your CFO does not come into the conversation, you could be giving away a loss that you're not prepared to handle in the 2026 fiscal year. And what I mean by that is if you're giving 60% off everything, that's lazy. Okay. That's like using an adult coloring book for. As your marketing strategy. Right? Like it's. There's no plan there. We're not doing a paint by numbers, just playing like, okay, this is fun and relaxing. What we want to do is get into the physics behind it, such as we can have some products as high as 60%, but you still need to have net profit on each individual sale. If you have a consumable good with an expiration date you need to liquidate that inventory as fast as you can, and you can give those steeper discounts because having that loss of inventory and paying that storage won't be worth it. So I'm okay if you take a loss, if you were going to take that loss anyways for the product not moving. But I'm not okay if you're applying that same discount at a loss to some of your best sellers that people would be buying anyways. Your offers can be supplied from marketing, but your CFO or the person who knows the numbers, who's looking at the profitability has to give clearance on it.

[B]

Got it. That's a big differentiator right there. That's a major difference between just 60% off. But we're using that as our sort of stupid offer right now. But if it is on a consumer product that is refillable, needs more like initial sale, subscription.

[A]

Talk about I'm gonna have a different style for subscription for.

[B]

Well, I'm trying to nail down, like, people are listening to the show right now, and they're trying to analyze did I have a good Black Friday Cyber Monday or not? Where our sales were up, but I don't really want to know. Like, my books don't really close until probably the middle part of the month. But I have to figure out, okay, was it profitable? Was it not profitable? People might not really know. So sale having come in, sales having come in, whether they're profitable or not is sort of the question mark at this moment in time. What do you do next? However, even if you took a loss for Black Friday Cyber Monday, and you had a great Cyber Monday Black Friday, because your sales were great cash inflows, great revenue.

[A]

Okay, so let's. Let's say you did the 60% offer. You didn't think about looking at discounting inventory that's expiring, moving inventory that hasn't, like, lifted anything like that. You're. You're not part. Let's just say you did 6% off. The thing that you want to look at next is, okay, let's look at who gave you that money, right? I need you to break out your list and segment it. How many of the people that bought from you bought within the last 90 days? How many of the people that bought from you on Black Friday bought 90 days or more, and how many people that bought from you hadn't given you any money in over a year? For me, if you have people that haven't.

[B]

Say that again. Actually do that breakdown just a good. Because I think this is really, really important. This is the time to do it because I don't know as if you're going to get a P and L for November by the time you're listening to this. But like you can go into your Shopify store, you can go into your back end and actually figure these numbers out. So break that down again for me.

[A]

Yeah. So even if you're a, if you're in the service based business, this is if you're brick and mortar, depending on what your CRM allows you to know. You want to understand how many people that bought from Black Friday had previously purchased from you within 90 days. Okay, those people, we'll give them a name. Those people that bought with you in 90 days are the people that would have given you money anyways. Right? So that was just. You just lost. You gave away money. Okay, that's your giveaway money list.

[B]

You give away money.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, it's okay. We'll call them your donor list. Right. Like there's your nonprofit list.

[B]

You, you feel good, Some goodwill perhaps?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Your goodwill. You're. It's your non profit. You're nice. Making the world a better place and rewarding the people who are with you. Okay, so that people, those that bought from you within 90 days, we're going to give you more money anyways. How much more? That could be debatable. But they were going to give you money anyways, assuming you got a good product or service.

[B]

They just got a taste of everything at a discounted rate or through a bundle or whatever it happens to be.

[A]

Well, if they bought from you in the last 90 days before the Black Friday. Sorry, let's be clear, right? If they bought from you the last 90 days, they already liked your product enough to come back, Right? Or they liked your service enough to come back, or they enjoyed their in person experience enough to come back.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Which is, again, it's. I'm calling you. They would have given you your money anyways. How much we don't know yet. Okay, so then we're going to look at how many people, ideally because they took advantage. So that, but then we. That's. That's layer three, Ralph. Right. Okay, so the first layer is looking at the segmentation of your audience. You are. It's okay, but it's good because you know exactly where this conversation is going. And if you're listening and you're getting ahead of it too awesome, you're following along well. If not, you got to play it back at half speed.

[B]

That's why I'm asking you to repeat yourself. Okay, so people who bought from you in the last 90 days pre black Friday.

[A]

Pre Black Friday.

[B]

Anyway, you just gave them a gift. Okay. That's group.

[A]

So you have to look at specifically those that bought in your Black Friday offering. If they, if you didn't discount because we're assuming everyone has everything was discounted. If people that bought non discounted stuff, we're gonna, we're, we're looking at assumption anyone that bought your Black Friday Cyber Monday offer. That's what we're looking at. If it's your whole website, that's anything in your Black Friday Cyber Monday sales period. So 90 days before they purchased in the sales period had they had another purchase. Awesome. We're calling them your donor goodwill list. We'll be nicer. The goodwill list. Thanks for being a customer. Right. Okay, then we're going to look at who did not buy within the last 90 days, but bought the 90 days before. So they bought once in the last six months but not so recent. This list is the person that like when we have that segmented list, this is a list that's ripe with potentially customer service that can give you an understanding of why they didn't rebuy. Did they not like your product enough at the full price, therefore they're only buying it at a discount or did you not market to them enough that they forgotten like oh, okay, this discount, good reminder. I'm going to get it. That 180 day list that didn't buy in the last 90. So that's like 91 to 180. That list is your opportunity list. And your Black Friday Cyber Monday is great for them because either you failed to market to them or your customer service failed to deliver on the promise of your product or service.

[B]

You reactivated them, you reactivated them at a distance.

[A]

It's important that we segment them because when we connect with them after Black Friday, we are going to be measuring the velocity to their next sale. Okay, so then what we have is anyone who hasn't bought in at least six months, like we're going to like six months plus. These are people that maybe never bought from you. These are people that maybe bought from you forever and a half ago. We have to look at those three different lists and see how much of our Black Friday Cyber Monday sales came from those audiences.

[B]

That's a super easy thing to do. I mean provided that you have a serum that can actually pull this information, you can do it easily within shopify, but stratify that out. Okay. And on that. So the actions you would take here, first week in December, you're now looking at those lists. First one, basically, goodwill list. Next one, you kind of got them back. You reactivated them to a certain reactivated list, but hasn't bought. 180 days plus. What would you kind of. They're different. They're.

[A]

Yes, this is a list where. Yeah, this is going to be the hardest list for you to go after. This is the list where I'm assuming you have a net loss because maybe they're new customers, which is great if you have new customers because then you get to like kind of restart a different period. But we're specifically looking at like Black Friday MPIs, right. Because that list, if they have not bought from you in more than six months or ever have bought from you, I'm going to assume that every customer acquired from that list was at a loss. Now, potentially, you didn't give away a huge discount and your 60% still like, you just have insane margins. Excuse me, you have outrageous margins. But that's my assumption. Anyone that hasn't bought from you in six plus months is assumed at a loss. And if they previously bought from you before, so even say you break that up as like never bought from you or previously bought from you before, you have been paying and investing in marketing on that list. So now we've got those three set up. You can say like four if you want to count the new new people because then they're even further than the six months they've never bought from you. The next layer that we're then going to look at is you need to start looking at that list and see what is the average velocity to a repurchase. The people that bought from you, that goodwill list, all of them, your marketing efforts to them should be on getting reviews and building that list to being a subscriber. If you have a subscription available or renewal of your service or a repeat loyalty program, the people that bought from you in the last 90 days and participate in your Black Friday Cyber Monday offer, your efforts need to be focused on evangelizing them into a review or into a subscription. Because if you gave away all that goodwill discount and they would have bought from you already, the best way to compensate for that loss of margin is to earn it back in brand equity and in subscription.

[B]

A little bit of reciprocity to a certain degree. But also the subscription play is a key one. If you do have a subscription, which you and I love, subscription models, of course, like, who wouldn't.

[A]

Predictable money.

[B]

Yes, predictable money always Good. So all right, so these are all like campaigns that you would do. I'm thinking email first but then I mean a little bit harder to do with ads. But like really this is like an email follow up sequence. Maybe SMS to a certain degree. Like you're stratifying these out with different messaging options here between now and we're also dealing with like time crunch here because you're talking to maybe a lot of E commerce brands. They gotta ship stuff. So it's like you can't market, you're off or fulfillment.

[A]

There's a lot of services that do it. So the thing that you wanna look at these 90 days, you have to build brand equity. Cause this is the pot. Like you've lost money, you've lost money that you're supposed to get your opportunity. Cost is high, but you can leverage it stronger. So when I would then break that apart. If you're E commerce, how many people like you need to figure out what's your average order value and then how many people bought over the average order value. So we're going to split that again. So you have your goodwill list. We want to split it again. How many superseded your average order value and how many just took another one? So that one like if they just took another one, they like, they're like, okay, they're just opportunists. But if they bought more than that, did they potentially buy out the additional revenue that they would have gotten in December, in January, in February? Because a lot of people be like, I'm going to bulk up. Are they the Costco list? So if you break your goodwill list you have who were Costco buyers and who were like regular performers. So again it's like you then you have to like be mindful of what that forecast is and then look at that list and look at their behaviors. Because if they bulked up, are they like what I would do if you have that Costco goodwillist? Yeah. Whether it's email, whether it's sms, whatever, those pieces mindful of textbook, mini TCPA for sms, but all of those components into it. If you have those Costco buyers, you need to start telling them why these are the best gifts. You need to get them to not consume this solo but become evangelist referrals. Pass those out to their friends and neighbors so that you can get them to rebuy.

[B]

So we're really talking about like AOV above the average. Those are your Costco buyers because they're bulking up and then AOV below average, which you need to know these by the way, you can get all these NPIs if you don't know what the hell we're talking about over at tier11.com MPI and I believe it's still live at perpetualtraffic.com MPI either way, you can get the checklist there. All right, so you're stratifying these two different buyers and the AOV below. I'm gonna playfully say those are the Walmart buyers because they're just looking for.

[A]

Okay, yeah, I like it, I like it.

[B]

You got Costco, you got Costco's, you got the Walmarters.

[A]

Okay, Walmarters. I love it, I love it. I love that we're co creating this together. Okay, Amazing.

[B]

I like this.

[A]

Let's go back.

[B]

Everybody listening likes it, but people are.

[A]

Well, we're talking to each other and this is our call, so.

[B]

That's right, nobody's listening. Don't worry. Quarter of a million people every month, no problem. All right, so those are two very different. So you've stratified out the list into your three segments, which I already went through. Now you're looking at AOV average. Aov, we're not talking about Nov here, probably, but let's just say AOV new average order value.

[A]

We're looking at regular average order value with compensation. Like, you might have to take a mirror of it. So you could choose your average order value for the Black Friday holiday. If you're giving 60%, your average order value is definitely going to be different. If you're regularly doing $48 and you're giving 60%, 60% of $48, I'm not going to play that math. We'll just say it's $32. Then at $32 being the average order value, let's say they maybe go up a little so they buy 40 instead of 48. You can choose. I'm not getting nitty gritty with you in your business. And like it always, it depends the two best words for any marketer. So looking at those, like, having said that, regular offer, easy.

[B]

The offer has a lot to do with this too. So, like, if you're listening, you're like, well, wait a second, I did a bunch of bundles, so my AOV is greater than for everyone. What do I do there? But if I did discounting and maybe with the purchase option to be able to buy in bulk, that's a whole different set. So it sort of does depend on your offer. With a bundle, you're looking at aov, which is probably going to be Higher no matter what. If that was what your offer, potentially.

[A]

It depends on the size of the bundle. Like the always. It depends. And so there's no blanket answer for everyone, which is why, fortunately, you hire people to look actually into your business.

[B]

That's it. Yep.

[A]

So when we're looking at that, you understand we've got the Wal Mart and we've got the Costco folks. What I want you to do is now you look at that and you can see what percentage of your Black Friday Cyber money success came from those two divisions. And then what you want to do is monitor closely their behaviors over the next three months. Those Costco buyers, if you have people like, also look at the exceptions, like, I haven't done this, and I'm not saying to throw it into LLMs and just like, have AI do the analysis. I can't make that recommendation because I haven't done it myself personally. But it could be something that you could try. It's like, hey, find me who is the highest number of people. Like, you might have someone that could be wholesale opportunities in that list. You might have someone that could have an affiliate opportunity in that list. Those Costco buyers, if you have someone that's like, ooh, they went above and beyond, what's great is to look at the exceptions and see what those individuals were.

[B]

That's a really good point. So a client of ours always scans their shopify for these buyers that are like, buying. They sell certain specific types of cases, like, more than, I think it's like 15 or 20. They're like, wow, that is a wholesale opportunity.

[A]

So they arbitrage or it's arbitraging you and fighting you.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, there is that. I mean, I suppose I mean, that kind of thing.

[A]

But they're saying 15 cases or more wholesale, for sure.

[B]

Well, they're saying, all right, well, I'm going to call that person and see if we can set up a wholesale arrangement with them and see exactly why they purchased. And it's been. One of the best things that they did is just making those, you know, being able to sort of dissect your list. And I think this is something that business owners are like, or maybe marketing directors. Just like, we're too busy to do this. This is actually everything. Yeah. Because you're going. You're analyzing the profit and loss of like, how did Black Friday Cyber Monday do? But you should be doing this anyway on a regular basis just to be able to identify opportunities you.

[A]

You get. But what's good is you have a huge amount of data that you can pierce through. So if you're not doing this regularly, this is something that you can try and then maybe work into your quarterly planning and work into your quarterly. We don't a lot of our listeners, I don't know if they have data analysis teams, I don't know if they have growth strategic support on their current accounts, like if they're, whatever their service provider is doing. But all that to say, like, yeah, what we're saying now for Black Friday is something that you could do progressively, but if nothing else is important to evaluate the efficacy of your Black Friday Cyber Monday offer. So if we're looking at those Costco's, you find those, maybe they're wholesale opportunities, maybe they're arbitraging you and they're going to hurt you later. Maybe it's fraud. I mean, we don't talk about fraud, but especially on the Black Friday Cyber Monday, like those things happen. So anyways, it's always important to look at your exceptions. So we're looking at the exceptions for Costco. And then what you want to do is monitor their behavior over the next 90 days. Look at that list. Are they engaging with your emails? Are they continuing, continuing to engage with your brand? Have your email team evaluate, like, how is this segment performing? Because again, this is where in 90 days from now are they. What is the velocity to a repeat sale from those lists on average? And you can say it in like, great, if you can get someone to rebuy your product at 30, 60 or 90 days after Black Friday Cyber Monday, you won.

[B]

You have won. But that velocity to repurchase, super important. So. But it starts right now, really. I mean, this is, this is what you should be, this is what you should be analyzing so you can plan out. Literally, you're talking about like planning out your first quarter of 2026 here in a lot of ways.

[A]

And pre planning if you're going to give that same offer for Black Friday next year. Because just repeating the same offer is easy. But is it profitable?

[B]

Did it work? It might have increased sales. That's like the illusion of success.

[A]

Yes. All of this cash makes anyone happy and then what happens? You go buy a Lamborghini and the tax man comes. You're like, mistakes are made.

[B]

That is true.

[A]

I'm not speaking specifically about any certain client. Definitely not speaking specifically about a certain past client. Anyway, to that point, it's really important to be mindful that, like my takeaway for today's episode is Black Friday Cyber Monday sales is over for your Customer. But it is not over for you, the business owner. Let's take some time, let's look at it. You and I have talked specifically about, you know, the goodwill audience and the Costco and Walmart and ways to look at them and see what's potential for those. If anyone finds this type of stuff interesting, I am totally open to us sharing like more of how we can look at those other audiences and ways to re engage them and to understand the profitability of a post Black Friday. But I'm going to put it on the listener. You guys have to tell us you want to leave good comments, leave good reviews, Spotify or. And we'll let you know.

[B]

Yeah, especially on the YouTube channel. This has been tremendous and I think. I know you have to get back to work. So do I, I suppose. Thankfully my team is doing a really good job this year, so. But I do remember. I know, go teams. Thank God for the teams. But yeah, I mean this is a crazy time of year. But yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned here and I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about this specific part of the analysis post Black Friday Cyber Monday because most people are really just sort of focused on the vanity metrics and like yeah, that's it. And then don't really do anything with it and they just repeat the same mistakes. If they stay in business like year after year at one client, like I said, they eventually did not stay in business. The point is this, is that there's a ton of data that's there. It's all in your CRM. You just have to be able to stratify it out here. And I think you've done a really good job of like being able to look at the three different type audience types and then figure out your average order value. Depends on like all of this depends. It depends on what your offer was. Was it a pure play discount, Was it a bundle? What was it? You know, service based businesses, e commerce business, digital products businesses, all of those sorts of things. Taking all that into consideration. But now is the time to do the analysis. Maybe take a Saturday and do it. Go into your CRM. It's going to be worth it, you know.

[A]

Yeah. Or partner with your agencies. They might be able to help you and it's a strategic conversation and all hands meeting again. A lot of the things that like Ralph, you and I even provide, like people will hire us or our hands, they'll hire our team to do the media buying, to do the email execution to do the creative content strategy and all those pieces. But some of these, like, bigger things, are conversations that the CMO should be leading. They're conversations that your growth strategist, if you have that as a service or if you're bringing on consultants for it. Like, this is kind of the stuff that gets missed because we get so excited by this huge amount of cash. But I'm going to invite you. I know we have matured from it. I'm not saying that, like, we've always been doing this. This is just how we have been graduating over the years to ways that we can best confirm that what we did wasn't a sprint of success, but a part of a marathon of growth.

[B]

Right. It's just not a. It's not a sugar rush. It really is. It's part of your overall, like, business strategy. And this is 10 or 15 years of experience doing this. So it's like, this is the real deal. So, anyway, this is great. Obviously, we'll leave links in the show notes for anything that we mentioned here. If you don't have the MPI checklist, check that out over at perpetualtraffic.com MPI or tier11.com MPI download that sucker. Integrate it into your business. Share it with your entire team. And of course, wherever you listen to podcast, leave us a rating and review. And we really appreciate everyone who does listen and keeps this show going every single week. And it's, you know, we do it for you because we're trying to teach people how to do things the right way. Lauren E. Petrulo. Because there's a lot of people out there that are teaching this stuff the wrong way.

[A]

Yes. Rob H. Burns.

[B]

Yes. Now that you know it's an H or an H. Petrillo MBA with a little, you know, computer person. Click on your link for your profile. And we had to do this all through Metrics that Matter and Growth that Scales. And that's how we do this show here. So anyway, on behalf of my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao till next show. See you.

[A]

You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.