S14 E10: The BFCM Tactics That Actually Worked

0:00Nik:Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

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1:07Nik:Then it sends it at the exact moment that that shopper is ready to buy. BFCM is behind you and now's the time to build for your biggest year yet. Old and lame retention emails are so 2025. Book a demo by December 31st and get 50 % off your first 60 days at instant.one.sharma and set up your brand to dominate 2026. Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. And today, we're going to just recap BFCM. I just had a candid conversation with Simon Wool. Simon is the main guy behind Wool Ventures. It's a growth consulting firm. Works with a bunch of brands, especially in that range of going 1 to 10 million, 1 to 20 million.

1:51Nik:So I sat down with him and just kind of picked his brain on his overall thoughts on Black Friday, what he saw did better than last year, what he's going to look out for next year or do differently. We talked about changing sales mid-sale, kind of the lull pre-Black Friday, and then post-Black Friday, pre-Cyber Monday. I'm recording this on Tuesday, the day before it comes out on Wednesday, December 3rd. So we talked a little bit about Cyber Monday and what's been working there as well. But overall, it's just a good episode to listen to and just get some context on some other brands, what was working, what's not working.

2:28Nik:At the end, we started to drift off on a tangent and talk a little bit about some new channels that are working as well as what works with cannabis brands, which is kind of cool because that is the unregulated space or rather the more controlled space where you need channels that are a little bit more unregulated. So anyways, a fun episode, give it a listen. And if you got any questions, you can reach out to myself on Twitter. You can email Simon and yeah, have a listen. All right, Simon, welcome to Limited Supply. I believe this is your first time here, right? First time here. Thanks for having me.

3:04Nik:Amazing. And I know you kind of as a growth consultant in the space. And just over the years, you know, talking about brands, either sharing clients or passing brands back and forth. But do you want to just give a quick intro on yourself and kind of your expertise, what you're good at? Yeah. Yeah. So I am Simon Wohl. I live in New York. I'm a huge nerd and I'm really good at growing brands. I can run Facebook ads like the back of my hand. I can run Google ads like the back of my hand. But I think my biggest, the way that I look at the way that I do things is I'm a growth consultant. I'm a fractional CMO.

3:45I'm a fractional head of growth. I've worked brand side. I've worked agency side. I've built brands from scratch. I've sold brands. I've built my own brand, sold my own brand, and just really have decided that helping take brands from either 0 to 1 or 1 to 5 or 5 to 10 is a sweet spot for me. And being able to kind of be part of it, grow things, have a say in what happens, whether it's on the CRO aspect, the paid ads aspect, the creative ads aspect, everything within that. If I can touch it, it will grow.

4:22Nik:Yeah. I think that's a great point. This episode is going to be great for the brands that are going one to 10 or like one to 20 and just trying to figure out what channels to test and where to push and all of that. But let's start with Black Friday. So today's December 2nd, We're recording this. It comes out on Wednesday, December 3rd. We're right in the middle of Cyber Week. Black Friday just happened. We all kind of felt a slowing down going into Black Friday in terms of revenue. So what did you see on Black Friday? What did you see that worked? What didn't work? Was it softer? Was it bigger?

4:58Nik:What was your overall take on Black Friday? Yeah. So I think the TLDR of this is pretty interesting. I think that the TLDR of this is that brands have been going live really early with Black Friday. And I think this was like an ideology that happened like maybe two or three years ago on a shift in the way in which we advertised. Before in the past, it was no sale, no sale, no sale. Day of Black Friday, huge sale. And that carries on through the weekend and then even bigger sale Cyber Monday, right? So it taught this consumer behavior. It taught this consumer behavior of wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, purchase.

5:34This year, it seems like we went live really early. I saw brands going live November 1st. And with the same offer that they went live with continued through the entire Black Friday season. It seems like...

5:50Nik:Were you seeing that they were going live earlier this year or later? Or I mean, compared to last year, really? What's interesting is, so I saw brands go live from really the, the, when I look at the portfolio as a whole, and I look at like what I've seen across the board is there was this period of November 1st through the 7th, that was like really high shopper intent. And there were sales going on then. And if you look across that same portfolio and you look across how it performed from the 7th through about the 20th, it went completely flat. So you had this spike from the 1st through the 7th and then a dip and like stayed that way until the 20th, where then on the 20th, shopper behavior increased again, and then spiked again at the end of Black Friday.

6:32So basically, it seems like consumers know that the November 21st, November 20th deal through Black Friday is going to be that always on deal.

6:40Nik:I remember seeing that too at Hint. Like we, the first year we did, I mean, this was also 17 and 18. So in 17, we did a really good deal only available on Friday. And on Saturday, you couldn't get it. And the next year, everybody remembered that on Friday is when the best deal is. So that's when you buy. And I feel like consumers now, like brands now in general, have kind of gotten to that point where it's like, all right, you tease something, like you give them something the week of, but then you still save the real firepower for Friday and something kind of like it for Monday. Totally, totally.

7:11So that's the problem, right? So I think that brands that went live on like the 21st maintain that same sale through Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And I'm not saying that's a problem because Black Friday and Cyber Monday were incredibly strong days and there were absolutely spikes. But by keeping the promo the same or keeping the offer the same, you lose out on that consumer and you lose out on that consumer behavior. The brand that I saw the best was about 20 % off for the majority of that time period. So like the 21st, I think through, uh, what day was black Friday this year was the 29th. Yeah.

7:51So through the 28th, which was Thanksgiving, they were at that 20 % off Thanksgiving at like four or 5 PM, the sales shot up to the early black Friday offer at 35 % off site-wise their black Friday, three X to what they did the day before. And there was a lull on Saturday. That Sunday spiked back up.

8:12Nik:Was their Friday offer? Friday offer was the 35 %? Friday offer was the 35%, but it went live Thursday at like 5, 6 PM. Got it. And that momentum still carried into Friday? That carried way into Friday. So Friday was like the best day of the year. Followed very closely second by Sunday into Monday, which was a different offer. And that Sunday into Monday was maintain the 35%, but now certain styles on the site are marked down. So like you just increase what the sale actually is. Yeah. Door busters, if you will. Yeah. We had a lot of, I was just looking at data earlier on the lunar side and there was a lot of brands that are in that, you know, call it 10 to 15 million revenue range that ended up doing like two to 3 million just in this is what they'll do in BFCM alone, which is a lot greater than what their percentage was last year as a share of total revenue.

9:08Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that like overall, I mean, this was a good Black Friday, right? Like this was, I mean, Shopify said this was like the biggest Black Friday they've ever had in their, I mean, their stock rebounded today and showed that. Funny enough that they had the outage on a Monday, but it's rebounded nicely. I mean, that being said, like, I think that the performance was really strong. But I think that like, if you look at November and the beginning of December, Cyber Monday, I would say that it was probably a really, really strong month for 99 % of brands. I think what is interesting is, although in my mind, this Black Friday was softer, and I say softer, not by revenue generated, but by percentage of revenue generated for the month of November, it was softer.

9:58Because I think the sales started so early, November was a strong, super strong month. I look at it year over year for any of the brands I work with, it's up, it's up across the board. But I think that's due to the fact that the sales started so early. And I'm not saying start sales earlier. You can start sales whenever you want. What I'm saying is that Black Friday offer and that Cyber Monday offer need to be higher and hit because that's when people are still shopping. That's where that learned consumer behavior is.

10:25Nik:Yeah, totally agreed. You mentioned something about CB2. Oh, they love to send text messages. I think CB2 sent 50 text messages from Thanksgiving day through, I mean, I got one 10 minutes ago. That's why I brought it up because when we were chatting before I got another text, but it's crazy. If you go through and like, look at it, they've been sending texts with video texts with images. Those are expensive texts. Yeah. Those are expensive. Yeah. And I mean, this goes back to, there's always the idea is like, you're not sending enough emails. You're not sending enough texts. At a certain point, I think you're sending too many emails.

11:06I think you're sending too many texts, but I don't think most brands send enough emails. That is something I truly believe.

11:12Nik:How many emails were some of the brands you were seeing sending on average? Do you know? Yeah. So I think on Black Friday, I think most of them had three emails scheduled, right? That does not include resends though. So email one would go out like at midnight of black Friday. And then you have a resend of that at like 7am. And then you have another email that goes out at 10am. And then you have a resend of that at one. Then you have another email that goes out at four and then a resend of that at like seven. And that's the kind of cycle there. Are you going to get hit with spam complaints? Sure.

11:49But like those people's email inboxes are so flooded during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. If that email, which doesn't cost you any more to send, drives incremental revenue, then you're doing it right.

12:01Nik:Yeah, totally. I think there should be no limit to how many emails you send or decide to even spin up maybe even day of, whether it's like a plain text idea or just something. Plain text, letters from the founder. Yeah, all those are great calls there. Yeah, a lot of brands were sending like six to eight emails on Black Friday alone. which is definitely up like year over year, I would say. But I think it's great because why not? Why not send more? I mean, the key to this Black Friday, and it's like the key to every Black Friday, so if you ask me, is efficiency, right? Like you want to spend as much as you possibly can and drive as much revenue as you can and convert as many people as you can.

12:39While every other part of your year might be to acquire new customers, this part of the year, not only is it to acquire new customers, we can talk about that with subscription brands, but it's also to make sure your current customer base repurchases during that time period. This is a way to increase your LTV. This is a way to keep your customers entertained. This is a way to continuously get repeat business. If you have a good sale and you have a good product, you want people coming back and continuing to come back because then when you're not on sale and they run out of it or they're not using it or they stop using it and they need it to use it again, then you go back to it.

13:15Right. And that's how you build good brand equity here.

13:18Nik:Totally. You mentioned a subscription. Are you talking about brands that are driving straight into subscription? Yeah, absolutely. So how do you, how do they handle black Friday? Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of the time, these brands that are doing subscriptions have an always on offer, right? Like I can, off the top of my head, I can think of a couple that are almost always 50 % off. Those brands don't really change their offer throughout Black Friday, Cyber Monday. There are a few of those brands that I work with. That offer doesn't really change. What does change though is what you get with that offer, right?

13:53So whether that's a free gift with purchase, it's getting entered into win either cash or I saw one brand doing it with an Apple Watch or like one in 30 people is going to get refunded their purchase. Right. Like little things like that. Yeah. Little things like that really move the needle. Right. I think that's a big deal.

14:19Nik:Honestly, it seems like this year, like I remember when we launched Feastables, the biggest driver at first was this giveaway. And it was almost like Willy Wonka's giveaway where every purchase gets you entered to win like a Lamborghini or a Tesla or something. And there was like 12 or so Teslas we gave out. But then I started to see all these brands doing these like, and when you buy, you get tickets entered into a raffle. And it seems like that's actually a driver that's been working well. And then I saw Everyday Dose do their offer. It was like one in 30. That was the one in 31. And then it was a separate raffle of just winning cash.

14:56Nik:Maybe it was like, I don't remember how much cash it was. But it seems like this like gamification framework or this concept of gamification has room to be explored and kind of tested in different ways? So, I mean, there's a couple of things. And I talk to brands about this a lot. And I always say, make your product for people who live in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, these big cities. But the way that your product wins is by the Midwest and Central America, not like the center of america not central america the center of america jumping in and buying your product if your marketing is driven for those people and not people who like i can tell you that people in new york city are not buying a product based on getting their money back majority of them are not but like if you look at someone in ohio right they might be right and that's like that might push them over the edge if your marketing is driving towards the center of America, which is where the more people are going to be congregated.

15:59That is how you're going to grow your brand. And that's how you're going to grow your product. You create for a small group, sell to the masses. Right. And that is how you win. And this goes right back into that. Right. So it's like, I mean, the Feastables idea, like I can tell you, like, I don't want a Lamborghini, but like, like if somebody wins it, like that's going to be stoked about it. Like they're going going to buy the product, right? Because that's amazing for them. But I think like going back to the subscription idea is like, if you want to be selling subscriptions, right? It's not changing the offer, right?

16:31The offer doesn't change. What it is, is how much value are you creating for someone? And I think that's how you need to look at it. Whereas like brands will give away like a shaker bottle or a hand blender. Like AG1 is giving, I think, blender one month free on an app. Like this is how you create this value, right? This is making people want to be part of this program. This is wants people to be, feel like there's a community aspect around it.

16:57Nik:Yeah, you almost feel like you got a rebate in other ways. Correct. Yeah. I mean, that's like what Amex did with Platinum is like, okay, yeah, it's going to charge you$800, but here, here's$1 ,500 in free benefits to using the card. Yeah, a hundred percent. That's a great analogy for it. Going into Cyber Monday, how are you seeing, like are most of the brands you're seeing, or working with? Are they shifting their sales completely? Is it exaggerating what was working well before? What are you seeing there? I think it's a little bit of both. There's certainly an exaggeration. There's like a last chance messaging.

17:31This is where you get the scarcity messaging that comes in. This is countdown timers and emails, countdown timers on websites. This is last chance messaging across the site. This is maybe doing like final markdowns, doorbusters, right? This is like clear out that old inventory that you need to get rid of. Mark that down heavily. Cyber Monday was a massive day for a lot of the brands. That's actually when I see the emails being sent the most. I think we were talking about this before, but I've talked to brands about this, that I like to time email sends around NFL football games, that I find that when people are sitting on their couch watching TV and they get an email from a brand that they want to convert from, and it's a good enough sale, they will.

18:15So the Cyber Monday emails during Cyber Monday convert the best during the football game, like 8.30, 9 p.m. Eastern time. And then Cyber Monday is funny because you look at the day and it looks like a normal day. It looks flat. And then you have 3, 4 p.m. kick in and it's just like shoots up. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's like, I talked to so many people that actually went shopping during Black Friday this year, but nobody's going to a store on Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is meant for this because you're all working, but Black Friday, people are going shopping. And then that sale is there Saturday.

18:52That sale is there Sunday, but Cyber Monday, take advantage of that online-ness.

18:57Nik:Yeah. Okay. Before we get off of Black Friday, I'm curious, is there anything you're doing that's like tactically savvy or interesting or new to kind of retain these customers post BFCM, knowing that these are people coming in kind of rapidly, they're buying the deal. You know, they've maybe been on the fence for a while. Is there anything you're doing either email wise, you're running ads to a specific audience, you know, sending them a postcard? Is there anything you're doing for these customers? Yeah. So, I mean, I think that, I mean, retention is always an interesting aspect, right? And like I tell people, I'm a growth guy.

19:32That doesn't mean I don't know anything about retention, right? So I think during Black Friday, a lot of brands I work with are doing very specific mailers. And when I say mailers, it's like the handwritten mailers, thanking them for their purchase, saying thanks for supporting us during this Black Friday. I think you kind of hit home with some of the messaging, like thanks for supporting a small business and not going to a big box retailer. We take this really seriously. One big thing I like to do is on Tuesday when you shut off the sales, you still honor the sales if people are going to email you right like that's like a really big deal that creates a customer for life they're like hey i really missed it like i'm sorry like i can we honor yeah you're gonna honor it right like the promo code is technically still live but you're not advertising the promo code um but going back to like the retention aspect i think it's like following post black friday cyber monday it's like letter from the first email that any of these people get, right?

20:32That like they get their confirmation, they get their shipping. The first marketing email they get is going to be a letter from the founder, right? I don't, it doesn't, doesn't matter. Like that is like, welcome to the family. Welcome to the team. Like, thanks for like buying our product. Here's how I would use it. Here's what I would do with it. Please let us know if you have any questions, feel free to email me back. Comes from the founder's email. Replies are not going to go to the founder's email, but like, it looks like they will. Right. Um, Dylan and also taught me this little trick with black Friday, cyber Monday is the post-purchase upsell, um, with it being, I wouldn't talk about that yet, but like post-purchase upsell is a great thing.

21:15And if you market as black Friday, X amount off, it doesn't 10 times better.

21:19Nik:And if you forget to turn it off, just a little copy change, just a copy change. If you forget to turn it off as Dylan has talked about, uh, it continues to work that well throughout the rest of the year. So while that might not be a retention aspect, that's a really good little tip there is like, okay, like leave it. People are going to convert on it. Like if it's like a 50 % offer, like nobody cares what the copy says. Yeah, totally. But like the retention aspect is interesting, right? Because I think, and this goes back two years ago, we talked about like two, three years ago, I don't mean we, but like generally speaking, the community talked about how these people are only bargain hunters.