The secret to better promos

Yo! Paperboy here 🗞️

Quick share: I saw this email from Abercrombie last week and it inspired me to make something similar for some of our clients. It’s a stupid simple email that feeds dynamic “you may like” products, but makes a lot of sense for apparel brands with deep catalogs and lots of new. For the right brand you can recycle this monthly without it getting stale (Abercrombie does it weekly).

How to get more out of your promo calendar

I recently had a new client come to us with a promo-heavy brand.

They complained that despite their great offer, they just weren’t seeing that much uplift.

Their last agency was running 2-week-long sales.

We tweaked their sales to be maximum 1-week-long, but in most cases only 3 or 4 days, with occasional 1-day flash sales.

Their sales became far more efficient. They were doing the same number of sale days in a month, but seeing 2x more promotional revenue as a result.

And the reason comes from a very simple insight:

The first and the last day of a sale are typically the strongest.

And by extension the first and last email in a sale are typically the strongest.

Why?

First day: people get the dopamine hit of a sale.
Last day: people have fear of missing out.

In the in-between days, your sale is boring. Your customers already know about it and either 1) purchased, 2) are procrastinating on it or 3) decided they don’t like the sale.

Even the best in-between days with A+ interesting content won’t come close to your first and last sale days.

So here’s how we work around this at Bedford.

1. Keep sales short

2. Keep messaging in the first and last email tied to best sellers and the sale only

3. Work in unique content in the in-between days, ideally tied to featured sale items. E.g. deep-dive into ingredients, recent testimonials, us vs. them, etc.

4. Don’t share important news during in-between days (new arrival, big restock, etc.)

5. Always send last chance messaging to your engaged non-purchaser audience on the last day

How do I pick sale duration

There is no perfect answer.

My only rule is for sales that you anticipate to perform weaker than others (e.g. a clear-out sale on a poor performer), keep it short. I’ve never seen a clear-out sale outperform expectations. It always does way worse than you expect.

For sales that are expected to be a big deal, you could run it for 1 day, or run it for 7. It depends on a number of things: inventory on hand, brand perception, time of year, etc.

Quality of sale matters

If you spam your customer with crappy offers, they will stop opening your sale emails.

If you hit them with offers on products they want, they’ll be more likely to open the next offer email.

It’s the same rule as all of email: the likelihood of someone opening an email drastically increases if the last email you sent was engaging.

So if you’re going to send clearance-style emails or offers that are a little more specific, try to segment them down a bit.

Use flash sales to AB test

Not sure what offer works best for your brand? Use July and August to run two big 3-day flash sales. ABCD test 4 offers and see what works best.

You should have one or two reliable offers you can rely on come BFCM.

1-day flash sale mechanics

If the offer is VERY good, send 3 emails on a 1-day flash sale.

Morning: “Flash sale today only - expires at midnight”

Afternoon: “Flash sale - ending soon!”

Night: “Flash sale - ends in 3 hours!!!”

If the offer is not very good, take out the afternoon email and restrict the night email to only those who are hyper-engaged.

Prime Day(s?): July 8th-11th

Whether you’re a sale-heavy brand or not, you should be sending emails July 8-11th.

Amazon dumps hundreds of millions of dollars to make people aware of Prime Day. Consumers will be on their phones shopping.

And when they’re tired of browsing their Amazon app seeing the exact same deals as three months ago…

They should be getting your email.

A few email ideas for things that Amazon can’t do but you can:

• Focus on local/small-business/human customer support/buy direct angle (a lot of folks hate Amazon)

• Run a sale that matches the Prime Day timing (start a day early or end it a day later)

• Run unique bundle offers Amazon can’t (free gift with purchase, buy more save more, etc.)

• Send a “No sale today” email

• Send a “No sale, but we’re refunding 1 in 5 customers today”

Warning: If you decide to run a sale during this period, don’t call it the Prime Day sale (unless you like getting sued by Bezos LLP).

And before you ask…

No I’m not a fan of sending email and SMS traffic to Amazon.

Sure you might get a nice sales bump from Amazon, but you’ve just dumped a high-margin list of customers into your lowest margin channel.

If your boss is pushing you to do this and you want to keep them happy, you could segment out any buyers in the past year and anyone who has subscribed to your list in the last 30 days. This ensures it only reaches unengaged people or those actively hunting for deals.

Does this sound familiar?

Struggling to send consistent emails?
Not 100% confident in your flows?
Been meaning to fix your popups for months but never quite get to it?

I’ve got you.

My team and I at Bedford can handle it all. We’ll help you clean up your retention strategy so that you’re not winging it going into BFCM this year.

We’re opening up a couple of spots for new clients. If you’re a 7 or 8-figure growing brand looking for support, book a free discovery call with me today!

Meme: Every DTC Marketer this week

That’s all for now,
Paperboy 🗞

p.s. Did you like the newsletter? Hate it? Reply and tell me why! I read and reply to every message.

This newsletter is free thanks to:

AfterSell - Upsells that drive AOV without hurting CVRs

I use AfterSell with 7 and 8-figure brands at my agency. I would never promote a product I don’t personally use.