Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast
Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast
#17 - BFCM 2021: What Worked, What Didn't & Why 2022 Planning Starts Now w/ Kayla Dancaster & Billy Bambao
Before you settle on your plans and strategies for 2022, you're going to want to listen to this episode. Ray has an open discussion with Right Hook's very own Kayla Dancaster, Head of Performance (AU side) and Billy Bambao, Head of Performance (US side), to reveal EVERYTHING that went down during BFCM - the triumphs, the unexpected insights, the nuances, and so much more!
In this jam-packed episode, the Right Hook team doesn't hold back, dissecting various learnings and brand case studies with full transparency - including the BFCM strategies that brought in massive successes for their brands (and which ones did not)!
You'll discover tried and tested campaign strategies that have proven effective for both newer Right Hook clients and long-term partnerships. Plus, you'll find out why early BFCM strategizing could not only yield astronomical gains for your brand, but can also significantly improve your future profitability.
If you're looking to maximize your brand's potential, develop effective marketing plans and scale your business to new heights, then don't miss this episode. Listen now to get ahead of the Black Friday madness and start planning your best BFCM campaign yet!
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Full episode transcript & chapter markers for this episode are available on the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast Buzzsprout page!
0:00 - 0:27 - G&G eCommerce Podcast Theme
This is the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, powered by Right Hook Digital, with your hosts Scott Seward & Raymond Johnston. If you’re an eCommerce brand founder, entrepreneur, or marketer looking to accelerate profitable growth for your business, then listen in ‘cause this is the podcast for you.
0:27 - 0:51 - Episode Intro by Ray Johnston
Ray (0:27 - 0:49) - Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the Growth & Greatness Podcast. This is Ray Johnston. In today's episode, I interview Kayla Dancaster of our Australian division & Billy Bambao of our United States division. In this episode, we go really transparently deep into what worked well for Q4, what didn't work well, we pull back the curtain -- we share it all. You wanna listen to this because this is really a primer for 2022 and how you should be thinking.
0:51 - 6:30 - Introduction of guests Kayla Dancaster & Billy Bambao
Ray (0:51 - 1:01) - Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the podcast, this is Ray Johnston. I have 2 incredible guests with me, 2 people that I spend a lot of time with on a day-to-day basis. Kayla & Billy, welcome!
Billy (1:01 - 1:04) - Hey, what’s going on? Good to be here.
Kayla (1:04 - 1:06) - Hey, Ray, lovely to be here!
Ray (1:06 - 1:16) - So pumped for this one! So, I want you guys, take a moment to introduce yourselves. I know you, I know you very intimately, but a lot of our listeners don’t. I think it’s important that they do. What do you guys do?
Kayla (1:16 - 1:19) - Billy, you take it away.
Billy (1:19 - 1:47) - Hey, everybody! I’m Billy, I’m the head of US client performance and relationships. So, I lead a team of 7 strategists right now on the US side of things. Joined here in, what was it, July 2021, this year, although it feels like 5 years just because of how fast and exciting it is here at Right Hook. I’m super pumped to be here. Thanks for having me on again, Ray!
Kayla (1:47 - 2:10) - Yeah! I’m Kayla, I’m head of performance on the Australian side. I’ve been at Right Hook for, about, 18 months or so now. Again, time flies when you’re having fun, but I’ve been in the agency space for almost a decade now. So, I’ve seen a lot over that time, and there’s something pretty special about the way we do things at Right Hook, particularly around Black Friday, so that’s why I’m really excited to dive into this topic today.
Ray (2:10 - 2:47) - Yeah, great segway! I got the privilege of seeing the things that you guys, your teams did, over this quarter. Like, it was super impressive! I want us to spend some time, just do some post-reflections. We did, in an earlier episode, we walked through our strategy, and this is a strategy that a lot of our team still uses, it’s proven that it works. But, I think, just talking about the wins and the losses that we had, especially the losses, you learn more from losses a lot of the time than you do from wins… So guys, I’d love to hear from you. What were some of the biggest runners that we saw over this time period, and why do you think that it went so hard? Runners, what I mean by that is scale, scalability.
Kayla (2:48 - 3:58) - Yeah, there was quite a few, wasn’t there? I was reflecting on this earlier and there was a couple that definitely stood out to me. Now, this is one of those clients that you have a watch party for. Everyone jumps on an open Zoom, you just watch Shopify go up and up and up, and it was absolutely insane! They have a pretty great, I guess, product launch strategy that they’ve then, I guess, tailored to a sales strategy, which is all-around limited release product drops and it sells out every single time. And they do, they have a VVIP, VIP, and then a public launch. So, watching each of those, I think it was each hour, over the course of, it would’ve been on Black Friday so 6PM, Australian eastern time on Black Friday, watching that first sprint, and then the whole team together, watching the second and the third, it was absolutely insane. They had, I believe, it was their best-performing day? They definitely had their best-performing month ever. For those guys, it’s just a matter of scaling up inventory each month so we could do it bigger and better every single time. It was definitely a really awesome one. Billy, what was one of your favorites?
Billy (3:59 - 4:06) - Aw, man, Kayla, I just remembered, on Black Friday, looking at the ethical competition happening in Slack with that specific brand…
Kayla (4:05 - 4:06) - Yeah!
Billy (4:06 - 4:12) - That seemed to be how it played out with every update that was posted. That was so exciting to watch.
Kayla (4:12 - 4:29) - It was a lot of those ones where, I had screenshots, you screenshot once, and then it just gets better and better and better, it’s like when you see a sunset. You take a photo and then, 10 minutes later, the sunset’s 10 times better and it was just going to absolute new heights which, I feel like you definitely saw a couple of ones in the US too as well.
Billy (4:29 - 6:30) - Definitely, yeah. Was super proud of the team over Black Friday, had a lot of wins. So, overall, we set 24 sales records for brands on the US side. So, when I say records, that means it was either a brand’s largest revenue, single month, ever, or largest single-day, or their best Black Friday ever. And to have that amount of wins is just staggering, and it was just amazing for me to see and witness, this being my first Black Friday here at Right Hook and seeing it done the Right Hook way. Specifically, drilling into those wins, you know, we had a hair product that set a single-day sales record of $629,000 - they only did $59,000 the last year. And then, there was, we had an apparel brand that set a new single-month sales record of $653,000, almost tripling what they did last year, which was around $270K a month. And then, a women’s apparel brand that set a single-day sales record of $841,000, they did just over $700,000 last year. And then, many more wins across jewelry, and tech, and men’s vintage and retro clothing spaces. I think the biggest winners really won because of aggressive list-building, well-timed & well-crafted email offers, simple, strong offers that were either micro-tested or repurposed. They all had strong social presence as well to, kinda, feed into all the excitement around Black Friday and leading up to it. They all did an amazing job of managing their community - they were asking questions, posting comments on all of the ads that we were running for them. And they, most importantly, had a strong buy-in and willingness to go hard with us because it can be uncomfortable when some brands do that, but we’re glad that we have partners that agreed to be pushed as far as we’re willing to push them.
6:31 - 8:41 - Micro-testing and its impact on overall BFCM performance
Ray (6:31 - 6:57) - That’s a really good point, Billy. Let’s unpack them. Kayla, I’d love your input here as well, is Billy, you mentioned a lot of common denominators, and I want us to spend a few moments talking about that because, gosh, we’ve been doing this for years. Kayla, you’re well-experienced. Billy, you’re coming from an agency, you’ve done a lot of good stuff with their brands. I want us to unpack this. Let’s start with, Billy, you mentioned micro-testing, and I think that’s important. I don’t know if everyone understands that so would guys mind unpacking micro-testing? Kayla, you go first.
Kayla (6:59 - 7:51) - Yeah, so this was a really big part of, I believe, the reason why a lot of our brands are really successful over Black Friday. I was reflecting on the clients that, there’s probably a small handful that didn’t hit, I guess, did hit their potential, right, and they were clients that we onboarded within 2 months of Black Friday because we didn’t have the opportunity to actually do those micro-tests. So, we started conversations around Black Friday in June, July. I remember I started Right Hook in July and it was just crazy. They were saying, ‘Within 2 weeks, you have to have a client conversation around Black Friday.’ My head’s like, ‘Black Friday’s 4 - 5 months away. How are we gonna keep this conversation going for that long?’ But there’s so much we needed to unpack, and a lot of that was, micro-testing around different offers, different list-building strategies, different, even just campaign tactics, in terms of how ad accounts were structured, because…
Ray (7:51 - 7:55) - How soon would you start that, Kayla? How soon would your team normally start that?
Kayla (7:55 - 8:38) - As soon as possible. Now, I remember saying to the team last year, ‘Evergreen list-building should’ve started on December 1st, 2020.’ There was no, as early as possible, honestly. But keep in mind, this is our first Black Friday post-iOS. So, everything we’ve been doing all year is, essentially, a micro-test, right? But it was really making sure that we could extract as many learnings as possible pre-Black Friday so that would set us up for success rather than going in completely blind because I know that’s how the new brands can be a little bit going into Black Friday when we don’t have the data to tell us what’s working, what doesn’t, the learnings in terms of offers, campaign structures, what their competition’s doing, all the works.
8:41 - 13:17 - The mindset brands should have for planning and executing a BFCM strategy
Ray (8:41 - 9:07) - Billy, there’s an area that, I think, I really like how you think about things, especially mindset. I’m thinking that one of the brands under your portfolio, on the US side, one of Matt’s accounts that, leading up to Black Friday, they were kind of freaking out, it was too late to turn back, but they’re happy now that they did turn back. When you mentioned mindset, what kind of mindset, especially now that we can do a post-reflection, what kind of mindset should brands have coming into this time period?
Billy (9:10 - 10:30) - I mean, I think the mindset that a brand has to have, like Kayla said, I think she really hit it on the head. There has to be a long-term game thing so, in other words, what I mean by that is you really need to start in January 1st, when the year starts, to have a growth mindset for that year, quarter by quarter, planning by planning. And then, Black Friday is really just a piece of that, right? It’s not, ‘Oh, Black Friday’s coming, how do I need to think differently, grow differently?’ You’re really just taking hype and thinking all year and just applying it to Black Friday. So, Kayla talked a little bit about micro-testing. Sometimes, brands don’t even realize that they’re micro-testing through the year with all the different offers and all the different holidays that happen. All of those holidays and offers and things that you’ve done for the year leave clues as to what’s gonna work for Black Friday. So when it comes to mindset, it means having a trusted partner that you know you can run things by, that you know can handle your money intelligently and responsibly, and, with that, you have to be willing to spend as much as you can. I think one of the biggest things that I’ve heard brands say, coming out of Black Friday, is, ‘I wish I spent more. I wish I did more. I wish I did this more.’
Kayla (10:29 - 10:30) - Every time!
Billy (10:31 - 10:39) - Every time. When I came into Right Hook, I heard that, but experiencing it firsthand now, in the Right Hook setting, the Right Hook way, has been exciting.
Kayla (10:39 - 12:12) - That trust space is really key, though. And that is the conversation that we have with clients every December, post-Black Friday. I remember, Anna and I went through this with one client, and we proposed our perfect and our ideal Black Friday strategy. Now, they were really against it, in terms of the offer. They want a really clunky, really messy ‘buy this bundle and get 25% off,’ where, in reality, they were a pretty new business so you’re not gonna spend $200 on products you’d never even heard of. A couple days after Black Friday, we get that message that says, ‘Okay, you guys are right. I should’ve believed you. I now trust you. Do whatever you have to do. Go with your strategy if you can.’ That’s where we’ve had the conversation again and again with brands going, ‘Okay, I understand now why you brought this conversation up in June, July, why you asked me to run this organic strategy, email strategy, influencer strategy, and the works.’ That ties in to, I guess, my favorite Black Friday campaigns with clients. So, we’ve had 4, 2, or 3s because this year just took it to absolute new heights, and one of those is one of our fashion apparel brands with our strategist Anna. This brand was a client of ours last year. I believe they started around September so it was pretty close to Black Friday and, Ray, I remember we even looked at the creative of this one and we looked back and go, ‘Oh, we did not quite do this one justice. Such a cool brand, we didn’t quite nail it,’ ‘cause it was rushed, right? This year, their Black Friday was 4x what they did last year.
Ray (12:11 -12:12) - That’s insane.
Kayla (12:13 - 12:26) - I know, it’s huge, and I was reflecting on it earlier - what happened throughout the year we’ve launched that because it wasn’t just November that they saw that huge growth. It was from about April onwards, and Anna took over the account…
Ray (12:24 - 12:26) - Oh, so through iOS14, that’s interesting!
Kayla (12:27 - 13:05) - Yes, through. So Anna took over this account in May. What was their biggest factor in influencing their revenue, though, was actually us taking over their email flows, which we did in June. June to July was their biggest growth month ever, and they’ve scaled and scaled and scaled since then, but these guys invest in their organic, they invest in influencers, they leverage us for their email and for their paid channels, and having all of that together… look, we don’t own the whole marketing piece, but we own a pretty good chunk of it, but they understand the importance of having that cross-channel strategy and that’s absolutely why they’ve been so incredibly successful.
Ray (13:05 - 13:17) - It really is incredible. It all feeds into each other. Like, no one channel is directly responsible for the results, it all, kind of, plays into each other. I love seeing those results come through for your team.
13:17 - 20:22 - BFCM offers - what worked, what didn’t?
Ray (13:17 - 13:52) - And I know, we all know, how big an offer is. I love to hear from you guys, let’s just be transparent. What were the offers that rocked? What were the offers that just sucked? ‘Cause I think that’s important. Again, every year, we go through the same thing. It’s a trust piece, right? Some of the brands, they just, I think a part of it is, some brands have been flying by the seat of their pants for so long, or we’re going through that flying by the seat of their pants where they come to a place like this where, we’re, like, very forward-thinking or we’re very structured and we have really good strategy that it’s like, ‘Okay, why should I go through all this effort,’ which is why they apologize. So, let’s talk about offers. What were your guys’ favorite offers? What just bombed?
Kayla (13:55 - 15:11) - There’s one that, from the get go, so this client went live on the Sunday before Black Friday. So, I loved that a lot of this strategist’s, Anna’s, accounts went live early so what we could just focus on is just 4 accounts and get so many learnings from what worked and what didn’t. The client set the offer of 25% off sitewide, which we were strongly for, they’ve never really done a sitewide sale before. They had a few exclusions, like minor exclusions; like, that’s okay, we can get away with that. A few days out, they added, like, layers and layers and layers to the exclusion list, to the point that, there’s no chance you could even, like, sitewide was not even in the cards. I, personally, liked so many dresses of theirs so, on the Sunday when we went live, working with Anna, I was also doing a bit of shopping myself and asking her, ‘Why isn’t this dress on sale?’ ‘Why isn’t this dress on sale?’ All of their best performers were not on sale, so 25% off, and I mentioned this to the team. Honest marketing on Black Friday is really important. If you’re saying sitewide, it needs to be sitewide. If you’re saying up to 70% off, you can’t have everything that’s 5% off and have 1 item that’s 70% off. So, that was a really telling point.
Ray (15:11 - 15:13) - Like a bait and switch, isn’t it?
Kayla (15:14 - 15:48) - Exactly. However, in saying that, the client was okay with the fact that they could leverage that price and move a lot of stock, but when we go right to our next campaign on Boxing Day, when we say sitewide, it’s the boy who cried wolf, right? Is anyone actually gonna go to the site? ‘Cause we saw that traffic was so high. As soon as the EDM went out, as soon as the SMS went out, traffic was crazy, and then it just dropped, and it was dropping so fast, you wanted to just shut the door behind and say, ‘You can’t leave, stay on the site!’ But there’s honestly not much we can do in that situation.
Ray (15:48 - 15:54) - Did that brand pivot? I figured, I can’t remember if that was part of the conversation, but did you guys pivot after seeing that?
Kayla (15:54 - 16:05) - They did add more products or removed products from their exclusions. However, they were still really hesitant to actually take away all the exclusions and run the sitewide offer that we initially planned.
Ray (16:05 - 16:11) - Yeah. Billy, what about you, man? You guys set some smashing records. I’d love to hear what offers rocked and which ones bombed.
Billy (16:12 - 17:35) - Yeah, I mean, to really sum it up, Ray, I would say the brands that really did well, their offers didn’t try to reinvent the wheel, right? They took what worked well, and this goes back to micro-testing and whatnot. They’re eliminating how much guesswork there’s gonna be on Black Friday, right? So, they’re taking what’s worked well through the year, they surveyed their audience, they already know what their audience wants, what their buyers want, their existing buyers, what their new buyers are gonna want. There’s a number of ways to do that, through email, even just through social content. They didn’t isolate Black Friday like it’s this ominous holiday, ‘we have to be brand new and do everything new from scratch, and come up with new offers.’ They went with what they knew was gonna work well, not what they thought was gonna work well. I’ll give you a couple comparisons and examples. So we had one brand, in the retro clothing space, that I know very well, very close to me. He was literally just running surveys all year about all these brands and new products that he’s gonna drop. Just literally lined up all these clothing brands and product collections, all around Black Friday, the top 5 product brands, and just dropped them all around Black Friday.
Ray (17:35 - 17:37) - Good idea!
Billy (17:37 - 18:24) - Every single one of them… Every single one of them sold out. And, on the other side, we had another brand that didn’t do that, they didn’t do any email surveying, you know, we were trying to get them to do it, but unfortunately, this is where mindset comes into play, right? Can you resist your inner voice and not what you think is gonna go well, and just go with what the market says is gonna work well? And they invested thousands of dollars into new inventory and it, unfortunately, isn’t selling. So we’re fighting through that right now, which sucks, but unfortunately, it’s sometimes those things that we have to go through to learn for next year. Q1 is looking promising for them, but unfortunately, Black Friday couldn’t be as big as they would’ve hoped because of that.
Ray (18:25 - 18:42) - That retro business you talked about, I know, you’re pretty close to the chest of the strategy of that brand, ‘cause you know the owner personally. Would you unpack, how exactly did he use those surveys throughout the year to smash Black Friday? Too many brands don’t do that enough, and I think that’s super valuable to unpack.
Billy (18:43 - 20:12) - Yeah, so this goes back to, actually, last year. They were only doing about $150K a year, and they’re about to experience their first million-dollar year. Their main pivot that put them on the course to becoming a million-dollar year, brand, is they were so focused on, ‘We’re gonna be retro, this is what dudes want! These are the clothes, these are brands they care about!’ They launched a couple collections that completely flopped, even though us, including me, ‘cause I helped launch the brand, you know, we were like, ‘What, they don’t want this?’ And so, they switched to a completely different strategy where, literally, every week, they’re just posting content - ‘This or that?’ ‘What do you think of this brand? What do you think of that brand? Which memory triggers your inner child, this one or that one?’ They’re constantly sending emails and then they found out, very quickly, overtime, that, ‘Hey, we’re actually selling a lot of products to females, and moms, and 35 - 50 year old females.’ We need to completely change the way we think about our business, and that goes back to the mindset conversation. Are you willing to make that daring leap if your market tells you, ‘We actually want this,’ to do that boldly, to take you to the next level. So, from there, it was really was just intensive planning and how can we survey even more and give them literally what they want, and that’s how they really catapulted their brand.
Ray (20:12 - 20:22) - What a great example! I’m really happy to just see their success. To go on, like, from 100K a year to a million, that’s a 10x increase in one year, which, if you think about it, 10x, that’s insane.
20:23 - 23:57 - Big BFCM surprises in 2021
Ray (20:23 - 20:31) - I’d love to, let’s dissect whether, our team, the brands we work with, or just results - were there any big surprises that we experienced this year?
Kayla (20:35 - 21:12) - There was one on our land, the Australian side, we had a ring client, and David, the strategist, ran a really great campaign for list-building around a free ring sizer, so you just pay for postage. And it went absolutely gangbusters, smashed it! Lead cost is awesome. We were so confident about this, but the conversion rate on that list was really weak come Black Friday and we definitely expected that to get way higher numbers than they did. Don’t get me wrong, it was successful, but even how strong that list-building strategy was, we definitely anticipated stronger numbers to come through.
Ray (21:13 - 21:15) - What about on your side, Billy?
Billy (21:17 - 21:23) - 2 come to mind. One is, there weren’t as many shitstorms with Ads Manager that I anticipated…
Ray (21:23 - 21:26) - Yeah, fair enough! First year ever, right?
Billy (21:26 - 21:55) - Well, I mean, there were still a few that we had some fun with in Slack about, but not as many as I anticipated. The 2nd, this might sound a little pretentious, but I think it’s super important. I really want to share this. Some of the newer brands that came into the Right Hook world really didn’t realize the weight of Black Friday because they had never gone through Right Hook Black Friday before…
Kayla (21:54 - 21:55) - Absolutely.
Billy (21:57 - 23:15) - They weren’t as aggressive or tuned in to the weight, importance, and game-changing potential of Black Friday, especially you know, when executed to the tee here. So, what do I mean by that? The level of planning and execution that really needs to be put on. How Q4 can really change a business’s trajectory, especially if Q1 is a slower time of the year, you really need to take Q4 and Black Friday extra seriously. And, this is probably my favorite, but how much you learn about your business in Q4 and Black Friday, you know? So, if you really crush it, how much you learn about the hiring you need to do, the inventory you need to invest in, the resources, the marketing budget for next year, the intelligence from the market that you get just because of how much you’re spending and how much data you’re getting back. And then, as a result of that, you’re getting insights into your product. What do people actually care about? That can feed your marketing angles for next year, you know? And life cycle marketing and retention - where are the holes, like are we just relying too much on new customers? Are we doing enough on the backend to really retain them, and if so, which cohorts are converting the best? And I’m gonna stop here, Ray, because I’m just gonna keep going and the podcast timeline’s gonna be done so, those are the key things.
Ray (23:15 - 23:57) - It’s a really good point, man. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it in the way you just explained, but now, looking back over the years, Black Friday and, really Q4, it exposes the cracks, the parts of your business that you’ve been overlooking or you don’t have systems in place, but also shines a light on the best parts of your business as well. So you have the good and the bad, all in one short time period, that really… I have a philosophy. I think Black Friday, typically, always sets the stage for next year, typically, based on what I’ve seen historically. If you 3x, 4x, 5x, that means your next year, you can have the potential to keep that same run rate. If it’s a terrible Black Friday, then you need to take the things that are highly exposed and you have to fix those. Otherwise, you’re gonna have a really hard year afterwards.
23:57 - 32:52 - Changes in BFCM 2022 and beyond
Ray (23:57 - 24:10) - So, diving into that just a little bit deeper, we always change, every year, our strategy, just a little bit. I’d love to hear, starting with you, Billy. How is this previous Black Friday, how is it gonna change how we do things next year?
Billy (24:13 - 26:05) - This is a good, really good topic. I actually like to answer this from 2 perspectives, man. So, as far as changing for next year, here’s what brands are telling us what they want to change. So, they wish they did things like sitewide sales instead of specific products that they thought would sell well, which resulted in, like, last minute pivoting. You know, gifting plays a role there too, as well, because people don’t necessarily only wanna buy certain things from your store for gifts. They might want to buy a lot of different things. That played a factor. I think stronger trust in paid social is what we’re hearing from brands as well, and the strategists on the team. You know, ‘Damn, I wish I trusted Facebook Ads a little bit more.’ This is something we heard more from the newer brands that worked with Right Hook. Honestly, spending more. And then, from the internal perspective, from the Right Hook perspective, even earlier buy-in and planning for list-building, like Kayla’s preaching. Preach, Kayla! I put up my hand to you, 100%! List-building earlier and, especially, forecasting, which, to us as an agency, we’re getting better at forecasting, you know, when you should start list-building, what revenue will you be able to generate based on historical data and then, therefore, what money are you gonna leave on the table if you don’t do it. And, most importantly, I think a big learning is taking the essence, excitement, and that fucking, like, really growth-focused mindset of Black Friday and really trying to apply that to the whole year. One of the things we did this quarter that brought us all together, for one, you know, vivid vision, revenue, or whatever we’re trying to achieve in Q4, and apply that to the planning, the forecasting, annual thought and mindset for 2022.
Ray (26:07 - 26:29) - Yeah, I really like that and you guys have known me for a while. This is my favorite time of the year, I love Q4, and I get most excited about it, but I’m most excited about what it does to our team and the brands. You’re tired of hearing me saying this, but that can be year-round - that same excitement, energy to play, can be year-round. I’m really happy you brought that up. Kayla, what about your side? How is it gonna change your strategy next year?
Kayla (26:29 - 28:49) - There’s a few things. Number 1 is absolutely SMS, non-negotiable for every brand. This was probably the biggest pain point of my mind for the last 2 months, obviously, for me being in Australia. We didn’t have a platform that we’re really confident in. Klaviyo launched SMS in Australia, it was so close to Black Friday for us because we started planning so far ahead so I believe it was September, they launched, and we tested it a little bit, but we’d already sold on to another platform, and we really wanted to push ahead with that new platform so we made it really clean across the board and do all that testing in one, rather than try and split it and learn something new super close to Black Friday. So, that’s something that would have to be a non-negotiable going into next year, any style, campaign. It was huge. I’ve never received so many SMS in my entire life in such a short period of time. I’m still receiving them now. I’ve got so many brands jumping on the SMS bandwagon for the first time. I’m still getting texts, going, ‘How did you get my number? I have never received a text from you,’ but it really did highlight the importance, and we saw the success of that with the revenue, right? There was one example on the Australian side, on that Sunday, when we went live earlier for one of our brands. The client got a little bit trigger-happy and sent the EDM out 3 hours early. We’re freaking out a little bit, ‘This wasn’t the plan, this wasn’t the strategy,’ okay, that’s fine. What that did show us, though, is that 3 hours later, when the SMS went out, it showed the difference in revenue, and there was 30K that came through from the time that EDM went out on that first hour and there was 31K that came through when the SMS came out 3 hours later. Now, obviously, it already had a bunch of SMS lists that’s already purchased, right? They’ve seen the EDM, they’ve had 3 hours, then they get the text. For me, that really just highlights the importance of that channel. The other piece was influencer. So we launched our influencer department a few months ago at RIght Hook. It’s been in the works for a really, really long time, but we wanted to really set it up for success. And there were a lot of our brands that really killed it at influencer marketing strategies. Now, it’s not something that we ran for our clients this year because we’re just an evergreen space for that at the moment, but I know there’s gonna be so much potential for that next year. Not running it…
Billy (28:48 - 28:49) - So much.
Kayla (28:50 - 29:00) - So, yeah, having it all run together, having influencer marketing tied into your paid marketing tied into your retention campaigns as well - I think that’s gonna be a really big part of our strategies going into next year.
Billy (29:02 - 29:07) - Love that, I completely agree on the SMS side. Super-charge my sales, baby! That’s what that stands for!
Ray (29:08 - 29:28) - Yeah, one of our strategies internally is the, it’s the flash sales with SMS, the brands that are running it. I mean, we’ve all seen it, especially this Black Friday, it’s the perfect time when you feel like you’re losing momentum to do a flash sale, it picks right back up. It’s a huge part of our strategy for our brands, especially during this time period.
Ray (29:29 - 30:57) - A couple of things I want to give credit to on the Google side that is definitely gonna change our strategy next year is discovery campaigns. I know, Lally, especially with Anna’s brands on the Australia side, was testing that during Q4 and we’re getting leads at an affordable cost, as well as getting sales from it, but it’s just an additional scale. And then, Andrew, on the US side, under your team, Billy, YouTube, especially for the bigger brands, he’s running YouTube leading up to it, promoting the sale, as well as over that weekend. And why we liked it is because there was a significantly cheaper traffic, only because of competition, so many people were spending money, but it was actually cheaper on YouTube than it was on paid social. Obviously, you can’t run YouTube all by itself, but it was a really great tactic so we’re really curious to find out how can we utilize that next year. And another one, this is actually my personal favorite is, too many people overlook branded traffic. I think branded traffic is, like, the greatest gift a brand can have. And one thing we do, especially on the lead-up, many people, they don’t think about it, but they just run a branded traffic campaign on Google and drive it to the homepage or whatever. Our philosophy is, no, use that traffic to what you wanna push or what you want it to accomplish. So leading up to, for one of our brands, we were running branded traffic to the VIP opt-in for Black Friday and we were getting insanely cheap leads, like 30, 40, 50 cents, super cheap - just taking that traffic and making them do what you want them to do. I’d say that’s one that we definitely want to double down, especially for the evergreen, Kayla, that you mentioned. List-build all year long!
Kayla (30:56 - 30:57) - All year!
Ray (30:57 - 30:59) - That’s something we want to include in our strategy.
Kayla (30:59 - 31:42) - Yeah, there’s one more, actually, that was a really big part of Black Friday this year and I feel like it’s just something ongoing as well in websites, right? When all of our campaigns went live, they were so many little things on each client’s website that wasn’t quite optimal and little things went wrong, and a lot of them we didn’t pick up on until the campaigns were actually live. So getting those website previews ahead of time and being able to tweak that as well, so making sure that we have the client’s web dev team that we’re working in partnership with. The other part of that is locked site - I absolutely love locked sites this year, and we didn’t have a single locked site strategy that flopped. They all went absolutely crazy.
Ray (31:41 - 31:49) - Why? Why do you think that is, and especially, ‘cause I know so many brands are completely adversely against it. I think it’s important that we unpack that.
Kayla (31:51 - 32:49) - Yeah. It was a really interesting one. It’s a fashion apparel brand on the Australian side. They locked their site for, I think, over 7 days. So they had their VIP launch on the first day, which was the Sunday, or the Monday. And then, they kept the site locked for the entire week. Now, they have their best-performing month, their best-performing day, all the works, scaled like crazy, these guys. And, it comes back to what I was talking about before, honest marketing, as well. Because if you’re sending out to your VIP list, ‘VIP offer,’ then you get to the site and that offer is actually available to everyone, is that really personalized? Is that an exclusive offer to you? No. So, I think it highlights that, it is that unique experience. If you get to the site, it’s not open to everyone, it’s just open to you and a select group of people. Now, the site was locked the entire week, but if you put your email address in, the site is open to you. So not only was it great in terms of driving revenue and having that exclusive and scarcity element, it was great for list-building for future campaigns.
Ray (32:49 - 32:52) - Yeah, that’s a really good strategy.
32:52 - 38:27 - Keeping momentum post-BFCM (Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, January, etc.)
Ray (32:52 - 33:17) - And, an area that we haven’t touched on yet, which I wanna go into next, is Q4 isn’t over at the timing of us recording this podcast and so much of it is still, even after Black Friday, a lot of that momentum and success comes from it. I’d love to hear from you guys. A lot of people don’t think about after Black Friday. The brands that you guys have in your portfolio is, how important is the momentum and keeping that momentum as soon as Cyber Monday is over?
Kayla (33:18 - 34:34) - It’s absolutely crucial, and all of our strats who have been with us for 12 months know this so well, myself included. They know that as soon as Black Friday is over, and people put so much effort into this one sale event, that we really push it, as soon as that’s over, what’s next? Do you have a product launch that’s going the next day or within the week? Do you have an extra sale? Do you have an exclusive shipping offer? What are you leveraging to continue those sales and continue that momentum? That’s what I was really proud of the team this year because, in the past, I think people put so much effort into Black Friday and sales drop and that’s when you panic. ‘Now, think about Boxing Day, now think about the works.’ But even in Australia, Boxing Day is too late, that’s 26 days, so it depends on Black Friday, the whole month between Black Friday and Boxing Day. One of the great product launch strategies, that’s probably been the most successful for us, so having a product drop or new arrivals drop that goes live a few days post-Black Friday. The other one, which David’s been running for a couple of clients, has been 12 days of Christmas, and I’ve seen this quite a lot. It’s actually definitely converted me on a couple of brands outside of our portfolio, which is just running a killer flash sale every single day for 12 days.
Ray (34:34 - 34:38) - Wow. Different products, are those different product lines?
Kayla (34:38 - 35:00) - Different products. So 20% off sweaters, 20% off dresses today only, 20% off sitewide, and it changes, but they’re all really strong offers. As I said, that’s definitely converted me on some post-Black Friday shopping myself, but it’s really driven some great results for our clients, particularly in David’s portfolio.
Ray (35:00 - 35:11) - I’d love to see that LTV, if it’s like several people buying over several days, like that’d be fascinating. Billy, what about your side, ‘cause I know you got some brands that are crushing right now, even as well or better than after Black Friday.
Billy (35:11 - 36:23) - Yeah, ultimately, it comes down to bringing the same growth mindset, and if you plan it out, your Q4 properly, you hopefully don’t need to be pivoting, like, right after Black Friday, and thinking, ‘Okay, what are we going to do now?’ It should already be lined up. One of our brands, I think they’re a shining example of how to mitigate the dip that we’re in right now between Black Friday and Boxing Day and Christmas and whatnot. They just, like Kayla said, product launches, but the way that they actually validate those product launches and know that they’re gonna crush it is they’ll launch a bunch of surveys through Q3, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, we’re thinking of launching this or that. What do you think?’ Again, they gather that data, going back to that conversation before about, you know, I guess, future-proofing your product launch. And, so once they know what they’re gonna launch, they’re actually gonna launch a secret store and, to access that secret store, you have to opt-in, but when you opt-in, you’re gonna get an exclusive discount on this launch, on this product.
Ray (36:23 - 36:27) - Is this, like, a hidden collection, or is it a whole different site?
Billy (36:27 - 36:46) - It’s just a hidden collection, yeah. So, it’s a hidden collection, and when you go to that page, you can buy it, you can pre-order it, and what this brand does, they set this expectation, ‘Hey, we’re not gonna be able to ship this out for a month and a half;’ they get all these pre-purchases, and guess what they’re doing for a month - they’re making the product.
Ray (36:48 - 36:52) - Control the logistics and the product on that, like, is it pretty close to them?
Billy (36:52 - 36:55) - Pretty close. Yeah, pretty close.
Ray (36:55 - 36:56) - Yeah, that’s a great strategy.
Billy (36:57 - 37:02) - Yeah, 100%, in the same country. Yeah, definitely. If you’re doing that print-on-demand, it’s not really gonna work.
Ray (37:02 - 37:07) - Oh, you’re waiting for China, there’s Chinese New Year in January, that could be a, timing could be bad, but it could still work.
Billy (37:07 - 37:30) - It could be bad, yeah. You’d just want to do that a quarter then, like give yourself 2 - 3 months as opposed to 1, but yeah. I think it’s brilliant how they do it. They’re getting the revenue, getting the product - market fit validation, and then they just have to really focus on the logistics. And they plot those drops around Black Friday, strategically, to make sure that the revenue stays even.
Kayla (37:31 - 38:18) - Yeah, I love that one. And it reminds me that.going to December, post-Black Friday inventories, is just so damn important. We’ve so many clients that go so crazy with ‘We have some feedback on one of our best-performing campaigns and clients.’ Yeah, that was amazing, but my team are really stressed now. They’re not liking how successful Black Friday was, particularly, at the moment, in Australia, there are huge delays in getting stock here is massive, so making sure that having inventory going into December, going into January, having those new products that are arriving because, otherwise, those sales are gonna fall completely flat. We’ve had multiple brands, we’ve had to pull back spend on significantly because they just don’t have the stock available.
Ray (38:18 - 38:27) - Yeah, that’s a, for sure, killer right there. It’s unfortunate with all the delays that are happening across the board, Australia’s definitely suffering, the US is as well.
38:28 - 42:03 - How should brands prepare for Q1 post-BFCM and holidays?
Ray (38:28 - 38:47) - But, I think it’s a really important conversation too is, keeping momentum up is beyond Q4, coming into Q1. This is actually one of the things I wanna bring up. I think it’s a good segway if you guys are willing, is it’s Q1, how should brands be preparing for Q1 after this high, after this inventory high, that they just went through?
Kayla (38:48 - 38:50) - Billy, I’ll let you take this one.
Billy (38:52 - 39:44) - Oh, boy! Well, intensive planning, intensive planning, not reinventing the wheel. It’s really just rinse and repeat of what you’ve done through 2021, but just taking all of the data, everything that you’ve learned, quarter by quarter, and just applying it to next year. I think a lot of brands, this year, realized that success still lies on the other side of ATT and iOS14. There are still ways to measure success. It’s not all doom and gloom, you can still succeed. It’s not like the COVID climate, and, ‘Oh, we could’ve only succeeded,’ or ‘This bubble has burst now and we can’t succeed that long anymore.’ You still very much can and, so, if you plan extremely well, quarter by quarter, map the whole year out, I think you will do really well.
Kayla (39:44 - 40:42) - Completely agree. It really does come down to planning, and I know when the team is planning in Q4, January is a really big part of that. What is your new year offer? What launches do you have in the first couple weeks of January ‘cause we know that if you don’t have anything, you’re going to see those dips. Yeah, it’s completely dead. So, part of that, I know, our team is really eager into jumping into those planning conversations the moment, come the first couple weeks of January, they’ll be planning out their offers, the launches, their things for every month throughout 2022. That’s where it really comes down to planning. It’s not until you put pen into paper that you realize those gaps. If you say March or April, there’s absolutely nothing there. I’m willing to do something about that, we need to plan. And you offer, and you launch, we need to manipulate dates a little bit to make sure it feeds into this consistent flow. So that way you’re not just having these huge peaks and troughs throughout the year because, for others with inventory, it’s really hard to plan for if you don’t have a consistent stream of revenue.
Ray (40:45 - 41:05) - Kayla, Cory on your team is saying that the team often uses, ‘show me your calendar, not show your revenue,’ ‘cause he’s huge into planning. It’s so true, though. The calendar exposes everything. It exposes where you’re missing things and where you have to plug the gap because it’s, like, in eCom, variety is the spice of life, something new - the new new, the new color, the new bundle, whatever. You need those new things.
Kayla (41:06 - 41:39) - Spot on! I love that you mentioned Cory’s reminder, one of my favorite parts of Black Friday this year, was Cory planning for one of his fashion clients who, the client was due to have a baby on Cyber Monday. So, from June onwards, they had, I think by the end of June, they had their whole Black Friday plan to a tee. They had to be so organized because they knew she was going to labor any time, and she did. I think it was on a Saturday or the Friday when she went into labor and she had her baby. She was sending out SMS campaigns whilst in labor.
Ray (41:39 - 41:40) - That’s next level.
Billy (41:41 - 41:45) - Wow, next level. That’s next level mindset.
Kayla (41:45 - 42:03) - Yeah, they organized to the point where she could just send it herself, because she’s always managed her own SMS campaigns. The planning was why they were so successful, she had a baby that didn’t influence their campaigns or their revenue whatsoever. They had a really good, successful Black Friday.
42:05 - 46:07 - Advice for eCom brands going into 2022
Ray (42:05 - 42:26) - Guys, to bring this home, to wrap this up, I wanna ask each of you a question. Billy, we’re gonna start with you. 2022, we’re hoping it’s gonna be a fantastic year after 2021. 2020 was the best year ever for eCom, 2021 was a little bit rough, 2022. What’s your advice that you would give eCom brands, or your eCom brands that you manage with your team, going into 2022?
Billy (42:26 - 44:04) - The biggest advice I would give a brand, I think it would be… I think it would be to audit the people around you that are helping you grow your brand. That includes your agency, that includes your team, your staff, includes your inventory, your products, your top purchasing customers, and ensure that it’s all aligned to where you actually want to go, because all it takes is for one of those things to pull you down and to hold you back, and you need to make sure that you’re surrounded with the right product, right product-market fit. You do that by gathering feedback from your most loyal customers and also your newest customers, which isn’t talked about enough. Your staff, you need to make sure that you bring in people who really understand your brand, they really understand where you wanna go, and what needs to be done so that it’s not all on you, which will cause burnout and that would hold you back. And then, when it comes to any partners that you hire, like agencies or whatnot, that they really deeply understand your brand, and they know exactly what it takes, and that they can bring fresh eyes to your business to help you reach heights that you can’t reach on your own. I think that’s the biggest advice I’ll give and I think it’s more important than ever because of things like ATT and other, ATT was just the first of many things to drop, and there’s gonna be more things to come. And so, I think the fundamental of what I just said, and the principles of it is going to be vastly important.
Ray (44:04 - 44:12) - Yeah, those new customers, man. You just spent all that money all year long to acquire them, you should be doing a lot of effort to get them to come back. Kayla, what about you?
Kayla (44:13 - 45:13) - I think the biggest part for me would be communicating with clients to have trust in your partnerships. The only, we can only be successful for brands that trust us and that we trust them - it has to be a mutual partnership and it’s not just trust that has to be with every partner that they work with. They need to let their guards down and fully invest in the whole experience because when things work in isolation, we’ve learned that this year from iOS and all the changes there, isolation doesn’t work anymore. Things can’t work in isolation these days so we have to work with our clients to be partners, and a big part of that, clients get quite shocked about that a bit when we go through our CHASSM auditing process, we want to know absolutely everything. We wanna know your operating costs, we wanna know your salaries, how much you’re paying yourself and everyone else around you, because at the end of the day, if your business isn’t set up to be successful, even the best partnership wouldn’t drive that. So it’s having those honest conversations, and that can only happen when you have that trust.
Ray (45:13 - 46:04) - Yeah, and I think it’s important we stop there. I think the reason why we’ve had this conversation a lot with brands is, the reason why is that because we’re truly nosy because, at the end of the day, we just see numbers all day long. It doesn’t phase us. But, really, why it’s important is we care about your profitability, and we have to all be looking at the same numbers, the same spreadsheet, the same P&Ls, so that we know that as we’re scaling you, you’re still profitable. That’s the most important thing. There’s nothing worse than growing all year long and you made zero money. That’s why we stress to focus on profitability. Kayla & Billy, this was an awesome session. It really was. Thank you for coming to the podcast. I just wanna do a quick shoutout. If you’re in the US or from Australia, their team is next level, and so if you ever wanna hop on a call with Kayla or Billy, and you wanna work with their team, you’re more than welcome to hit up Right Hook. But Kayla, Billy, thank you so much. This was awesome!
Kayla (46:04 - 46:05) - Thanks, Ray, for having us!
Billy (46:04 - 46:07) - It was, appreciate it. Always love jamming with you guys! Thank you, guys!
46:08 - 47:03 - Episode Outro
Scott (46:08 - 47:03) - Thanks again for tuning to this episode of the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. I hope you got a ton of value out of this episode and if you did, we’d love for you to leave us a review on your platform of choice and help us reach as many people as we can. Now, if you’re a brand founder, an eCommerce entrepreneur, or an in-house marketing manager looking to accelerate your growth this year, reach out to us at Right Hook Digital. We’re a performance branding agency and we specialize in partnering with eCommerce brands to help them hit their growth goals with maximum ROI. Now, if this sounds like a solution that you need, then check us out at righthookdigital.com and schedule a call with our client partnerships team. They’d love to have a chat with you and see how we can help you grow.
