#168. BFCM Prep: How to Prep Your Lists and Revamp Flows | Podcast

Vira: 0:40

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, and, uh, Welcome back to part 2 of our episodes with Andriy Boychuk. Andriy, nice to have you back.

Andriy: 0:56

Yeah, we’re on fire today, like to record 46 episodes for the next year.

Vira: 1:03

Pretty much, pretty much. Yeah, no, but I’m like happy to talk to you today about all of the ways to like improve the flow strategy for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and for holiday season. You’re probably like the best person to talk about it. Like, when I think of this, like, yes, sorry, you were saying something?

Andriy: 1:24

Yeah, because I have really big news to share with the audience. And actually, you, you’re not aware. So maybe even you’re like, supposed to, you might say like, oh, Andriy, I don’t want to do this. Let’s, let’s remove it. But this is experiment, 100% experiment. Because for how long we’re doing the podcast, I mean, you’re doing the podcast.

Vira: 1:46

For like two years, three, two years, two, I think. Yeah, two and a half, two.

Andriy: 1:50

Yes, and I believe it’s not fair to kind of to you and to us and to the audience. Like there’s only one way communication. So you you’re talking to you sharing the knowledge, and we’re sharing the knowledge of the guests. So this is just experiment. We’ll see how it works. But we created in WhatsApp, we created community, and for podcast listeners. So if you have any questions to any episode that we have, I’ll be there. If Vira, say—

Vira: 2:24

I’m there. I joined it.

Andriy: 2:26

You’re there. Okay.

Vira: 2:27

Yeah, I’m there. There are like 2 of us, I think, for now.

Andriy: 2:29

Yeah, there’s— so yeah, so please, if you’re, if you’re the 3rd one and listening, please join us so we’re not lonely there. Yeah, so you, you just go to flowium.com/whatsapp. And it will be redirected to that community. We want to just to know who you are. We’re curious to know what kind of questions you might have, what topics you’re interested, and we will invite celebrities, people well known in the industry, brands you want to hear from. And spoiler alert, we’re supposed to have what Neil Patel on the podcast?

Vira: 3:07

Speaking speaking of celebrities next week, you guys, you don’t want to miss next week’s podcast because we’ll have. The one and only Neil Patel. And then basically— Andriy is a big fanboy. Yeah. So I, he actually even sent me his, um, like list of questions to ask Neil Patel. So yeah, that’s, that’s exciting. I’m, I’m really happy to have him on our podcast because he’s the guy that honestly all of us probably was learning email marketing or like marketing from. And it’s such a big honor to have him here on our podcast. Anyways, you guys, next Tuesday, you don’t want to miss it. Well, you guys, you don’t want to miss next week’s podcast, so definitely join us. It’s going to be fun. And if you ever have any topics that you want to learn more about, any questions that you have to us or to the community, send them to that channel. And today’s episode, we will be talking about fine-tuning your lifecycle strategy or your flow strategy for the big holiday season. Think of it like tuning up your car before a big road trip. You wouldn’t want to set off without checking the oil, right? Well, probably it’s not for you, Andriy. It’s not very relevant for you because you’re driving electric car as of lately. But yeah, I still like this analogy. I can’t hear a single— Oh, yeah, actually, I had a Tesla experience myself. We brought our friend’s Tesla to Newfoundland. And for those of you guys who are not from Canada, Newfoundland is like a super, super remote province. It’s like an island in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s actually very close to where Titanic sunk. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but the long story short, there are not so many electric car chargers, not just like Tesla, any chargers there. So that was a challenge. And there was more than one time when we were pulling to that charging station with 1% battery. It was scary, but it was so fun to drive. Yeah. So anyways, back to flows, you guys. Andrey, it’s fantastic to have you on this podcast because you can shed the light on like how to, how to prepare your list and how to prepare your flows for Black Friday, Cyber Monday season. Andrey, what strategies has proven like to be the most effective in building that like anticipation for Black Friday, Cyber Monday season? What’s your take on that?

Andriy: 5:37

Yeah, so this is, I mean, you shared the idea strategy, like anticipation. We need to tease our kind of the biggest promotion of the year. And it worked for the past few years and more and more brands are doing this. First, I heard about this idea from Ezra Firestone from Smart Marketer. It’s not my idea and I’m not sure if it’s his idea, but anyway, he promoted a lot and It works perfectly for e-commerce brands. So the strategy here is you are creating offer, I’m sorry, you’re creating anticipation like, hey, you’re teasing out that Black Friday, Cyber Monday will be the biggest sale of the year or the biggest promo or the biggest, I don’t know, like something you will give it from the entire year. And the goal is they need to opt in to be the first one to find out about this offer. So basically you are building list, your list of people who want that offer. And we do recommend to start doing this starting November 1st. Why November 1st? Because I mean, the day before it’s Halloween and a lot of brands do different kind of slash sales, flash sales.

Vira: 7:02

Mm-hmm.

Andriy: 7:04

product launches, different kind of stuff for Halloween. So we strongly recommend for November 1st, but again, this is generic. So because brand to brand might be different, but starting November 1st, you should start advertising your Black Friday, Cyber Monday upcoming sale. Just make sure—

Vira: 7:28

And I love this idea, yeah.

Andriy: 7:30

Just make sure to turn off all your pop-ups for 10% discount and so forth.

Vira: 7:35

Or don’t, because what we’ve done last year, we pretty much created this strategy exclusively for existing like Klaviyo profiles for existing customers. So what I’ve done like last year with my, with one of my clients, we created this pop-up that captured existing Klaviyo subscribers. And when someone went to the website, they were not shown the regular pop-up that welcomes like new customers, but they were captured with that early Black Friday deals pop-up. And then they went into like an early bird Black Friday flow. And what was funny about that flow is that it consisted of like 3 emails. And the first email was like literally saying like, don’t buy anything today because like the big sale is coming your way. Soon. And guess what? The conversion of that email, the email where literally all we said was like, don’t buy anything today, put maybe something into the, into your cart or like shop around, but like don’t buy anything. The conversion was like something like 4% or like 5%, which is like a lot for this.

Andriy: 8:46

Maybe it was a, was it like teenager brand or something? Because like, if you say something like don’t do, they will do.

Vira: 8:54

It’s the brand for older generation. It’s like the boomers, kind of like people in their 60s, 70s. It’s a supplement brand. And yeah, normally they are—

Andriy: 9:07

So it’s for, you know, like when they receive it, like, you will, how do you say it?

Vira: 9:12

Like, it’s like a protester.

Andriy: 9:13

Who are you to tell me what I should do or not do?

Vira: 9:16

Actually, now when I think about it, don’t tell me what to do. You young people, you young generation. You have it easy. Maybe, maybe it was a reason, but that’s not just like one brand that I’ve tested. I tested this strategy with like other brands. And I would think that like when you’re sending the teaser email, it shouldn’t convert because you’re like literally telling people like, don’t buy anything. This is like more for like relationship building, if anything, right? It’s more like to, to build that trust between the brand and the, and the customer. But actually, it does generate revenue.

Andriy: 9:50

I will respectfully disagree with you and Again, we just, we’ll have a debate, small debate here. The challenge, the problem I see here, we are assuming here that people have that tracking code, Klaviyo tracking code or any other ESP tracking code on their browser. But let’s say if they switch from their desktop to mobile or they clean up the cache history.

Vira: 10:19

Right.

Andriy: 10:20

Cache. cashier. So if that happens, it means that they will see the 10% off, which might lead to bad customer experience.

Vira: 10:34

Right.

Andriy: 10:34

So what I would recommend to do here, turn off the all regular discount, 10%, 15%, 5%, doesn’t matter, and have the early bird opt-in When they opt in, you send them confirmation message and you say, hey, like, congratulations, you will be the first one when we release the discount. But meanwhile you’re waiting, here’s $10 voucher or $20 voucher, which will expire in, let’s say, in the next week or so. And I would strongly recommend to include dollar amount versus discount. There was a brand, I forgot the founder’s name, is the brand called Born Primitive, and they have, they use this strategy and the results were astronomical. The conversion rate for that first email was through the roof. I have a YouTube video where I explaining, it’s something giveaway, just type in giveaway Flowium and you’ll see this video.

Vira: 11:37

Okay.

Andriy: 11:37

And I described how they do it, the full strategy. But I would prefer to do this kind of strategy versus have 2 separate and the pop-ups might show different. But this is my just opinion.

Vira: 11:52

Right. Yeah, no, I like the idea of like marrying the 2 of like combining the Black Friday Cyber Monday early bird opt-in with like the regular one. With this strategy, with like strategy of teasing your Black Friday Cyber Monday deals, do you think like promoting these deals early might turn off like the regular shoppers? Like, say I just like went to the website and I want to buy something, but then I have a pop-up saying like, don’t buy anything today, you’ll get discounts soon. Will it turn me off from purchasing? What’s your thought?

Andriy: 12:57

I mean, if you say we’ll have 50% off during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, so 100%, it will turn the buyers off to buy today. But if you say we have a deal, we will have some kind of discount, Mm-hmm. But you don’t know which, like what kind of discount, I don’t think it will turn off the buyers or people to buy now.

Vira: 13:19

Right, right. How do you promote this approach? Like, where do you tease your Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals?

Andriy: 14:17

Sure. So whatever opt-in forms you have on your website, I would strongly recommend to replace them with this early bird opt-in, like early access discount. Also on all of your regular places, social medias. Also, since you have many automations going on, And if you use, for example, Klaviyo, they have a, how it’s called, a universal block where you can kind of insert the banner and it will update all of your flows, all of your automations. And any campaigns you send from November 1st to the week of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, include in the footer somewhere at the bottom the banner for them to opt in. And if they opt in, make sure to have a dynamic block so they don’t see that block anymore if they already subscribed.

Vira: 15:08

Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. When preparing your flows for the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, well, first of all, do you think that you need to revamp your lifecycle strategy for the holiday season or just like keep everything as is and just like update the pop-ups? Like, what’s your take on that?

Andriy: 15:28

I personally believe you need to create a separate set of automations You can update the existing one, but it might be messy and you might make a lot of mistakes. So I would strongly recommend to have a second set of automation and it’s only 3 automations, not all of them, just 3 automations, a welcome automation, abandoned cart automation, and browser abandoned cart automation. So the idea here, typically brands have discount in welcome, in abandoned cart, and browser abandoned, some kind of 5%, 10%, whatever discount is. So the idea here is to remove all those discounts from those automations because you are teasing this, you will have sales during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. But you might ask, yeah, it sounds great, but doesn’t make any sense if somebody starts abandoning the cart, how can I convert them? So you can play on different human emotions like scarcity. You might say in the abandonment cart, listen, we will have busiest time of the year, like people will start buying like crazy from our store and buy it now because during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, this product might not exist or will be out of stock. So I would strongly recommend to kind of refocus from like sales, from promotion, from discount, from free gifts to scarcity that this product might not be available.

Vira: 17:09

Oh, that’s cool. That’s cool. What I’ve done with some of my brands last year, and I will be doing this year as well, like, for example, in that, like, welcome flow automation, instead of just, like, promoting bestsellers like we normally do, or, like, cross-selling recommended products, we created, like, gift guides just, like, to make their process of, like, purchasing easy, simpler, and to, like, educate them on what we have on our website and to encourage them to shop not just for themselves, but for their loved ones as well. And it just like brings that little nice festive touch to your emails as well. What about like post-purchase sequences? Do you think they are worth like looking into? Do you think they are worth updating at all?

Andriy: 17:56

Listen, I mean, you can create, you can update all of your automations, but it’s just a matter of time. Like right now, I’m not sure when we’re publishing this podcast episode, but now it’s end of September and I—

Vira: 18:09

Right.

Andriy: 18:09

Like yesterday was September 1st and now it’s almost end of September and like day later it’s like will be Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So I just don’t think companies have enough resources. If they do it themselves, they don’t have enough resources unless they work, I mean, with agencies or they have entire team dedicated to email marketing. A funny story, we spoke with one brand like enterprise-level client, and they have entire team dedicated to only lapsed customers in email marketing. So just to group, like, they even have a team inside of team for email marketing, like different departments, like for like acquiring, like nurturing new subscribers versus somebody who lapsed.

Vira: 19:02

Interesting. That’s so cool. I mean, I wonder if it’s effective at all, but it sounds really cool. Sounds really cool. Especially if this team’s like—

Andriy: 19:10

This is how big, big, big, how you call them, big dogs spend money. This is how they do it.

Vira: 19:14

Yeah. That’s a very American thing though. I’ve just like, when I worked with like European teams, even if they’re big brands, they’re just like spend money differently. That’s just like an interesting difference in mentality.

Andriy: 19:27

Yeah, of course. Because they spend like on the, what, on the insurance, like free insurances and like, right, like 2 months of vacation and stuff like that, right?

Vira: 19:36

They don’t have any money left.

Andriy: 19:39

2 months of vacation in one quarter.

Vira: 19:42

That’s true. So Andriy, when do you recommend to launch this like rebranded flows and when do you recommend to turn them off?

Andriy: 19:51

Yeah, so I would recommend to turn off the— to turn them on November From November 1st to November 21st. Why?

Vira: 19:58

Right.

Andriy: 19:59

Because, like, because this is when your early opt-in offer will be live.

Vira: 20:04

So you’re pretty much like turning on the entire like ecosystem, right?

Andriy: 20:10

Yeah.

Vira: 20:10

I mean, I think it’s a very—

Andriy: 20:12

Rookie mistake. Just don’t forget to turn it back on after Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Vira: 20:17

Yeah, that would be nice. What happens after November 21st, Andriy? What, like, what automations do you recommend to have? for that like Christmas season or like holiday season? What happens then?

Andriy: 20:32

Sure. So the automation we just discussed, we call them pre-Black Friday Cyber Monday. So it’s like before the Black Friday Cyber Monday week. So during Black Friday Cyber Monday week, we recommend to update 2 automations, abandoned cart and browser abandoned. And what we need to do there is to reduce the time delays between emails. For example, if your abandonment cart—

Vira: 20:58

Yeah, exactly.

Andriy: 20:59

Yeah, if your abandonment cart has, let’s say, 7 emails and the initial strategy when you created was to send it 1 email per day, for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, reduce timing so they will get the entire abandonment cart maybe in 2 to 3 days. Because remember, we just have limited time. We have only 1 week or some brands even have less. to, to kind of to squeeze the most out of your list.

Vira: 21:29

Right, right. And you’re competing with like so many other brands during that time as well. You don’t want to—

Andriy: 21:36

I like, I like how from Dale from Wine Awesomeness, and he was on one of the first episodes because their strategy, by the way, they were acquired by some other big wine company. So, but their strategy was to send 4 emails per day. And I’m like, damn, like, this is crazy, like 4 emails. And they had a list of, I don’t know, a few millions, like they were acquiring like 200 to 500 per month of new email subscribers. And I’m like, this is crazy. And he said, I’m treating the inbox as billboards, you know, like when you’re driving highway and you see different billboards. So he said, like, this is kind of like You want to be always on top. And same thing during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you want to stand out. So maybe it’s a good strategy for you to start adding emoji at the front of the email or do some crazy stuff to see what works to stand out from the other senders. I recorded another video about adding GIF into your avatar when you send emails. You know, those like avatars which moving. So you’re opening, like you’re scanning your emails and that avatar is moving. It catches people’s attention. So do something.

Vira: 23:02

You mean just like the GIFs, right? Like the animated GIFs or?

Andriy: 23:06

Yeah.

Vira: 23:07

Oh, okay. Yeah, we actually tested this.

Andriy: 23:11

Jot Coffee or something where the bunny was always jumping, jumping through the hoops or something. No, we shared in our great email Slack channel, but it was like probably 3 years ago.

Vira: 23:23

Yeah. Another great automation that I’ve done like last year and I will be doing this year for some of my clients as well is the bounce back automation. Basically, when someone just like purchased something, placed an order, and then literally a few minutes later, they are receiving this like additional promotion for the product that they haven’t purchased, obviously. So for something different, something ideally low-priced but high-margin product. And like last year, my client created like specific holiday bundle that we were promoting. And this like separate products of this holiday bundle, they were great stocking stuffers. And that’s how we like promoted it. You should be very careful though, because different brands have different sort of like thresholds for free shipping. So you don’t want to make your customer pay free shipping, pay shipping twice if you don’t have like free shipping on your website. And depending, of course, on what’s your, what’s your checkout experience is, what’s your like shipping arrangements are. You can do that this way or you can take it to next level and do it through like apps that are doing the upsells after the checkout. Like Rebuy, I think, is doing that.

Andriy: 24:36

Yeah.

Vira: 24:37

And they are actually, they were like one of our, one of our guests on the podcast as well. So pretty much you can like automate this process through checkout and not through And not through the emails. So up to you. There are like different ways to do that.

Andriy: 24:51

Yeah. By the way, we are mentioning a lot of, a lot of like resources, videos, podcasts. So it will be shared under this podcast episode, right? Like with all the links so you can go and check it out.

Vira: 25:09

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Andriy, that’s actually all of my questions. Thank you so much. It was like, I really loved your strategy of like updating the flows and like what to do before the holiday season and after holiday season. And what I also never thought about is that you don’t want to be starting like too, too early because you don’t want to be conflicting with all of this like holidays like Halloween and all of this like fall promotions and stuff like that. So it, it makes sense. Yeah.

Andriy: 25:38

Thank you. You’re— I actually enjoy a lot the, you know, like our conversation, bringing kind of sharing ideas. I learned something new from you. So maybe I will show up more often here.

Vira: 25:48

Yeah. Yeah. You’re always invited except for next week because next week we will have—

Andriy: 25:54

No, actually, you invited me, but I cannot because I’m going to Spain or somewhere. I’m going to Europe for workshop.

Vira: 26:03

He’s going somewhere as always, you guys. But next week we will be talking to one and only Neil Patel. We will be discussing all of the trends in email marketing industry and in e-commerce in general. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be interesting. And Yeah, you don’t want to miss next Tuesday’s episode. Yeah.

Andriy: 26:21

And don’t forget to join the WhatsApp group. You can ask your question, you can ask me questions, you have direct contact. So like, please use this. Yeah, use that resource to kind of to learn from us or we will learn from you.

Vira: 26:40

Yeah. Normally I’m very bad with all of my messengers because I don’t have any like notifications.

Andriy: 26:45

I didn’t either.

Vira: 26:46

So I just like sometimes go like once a month or like once a week and check them, but I will have my notifications on for this one. So I will be there to reply to all of your exciting questions. I’m so excited to talk to you guys. Let’s hang out on that WhatsApp channel. Thank you so much, Andriy. Nice having you.

Andriy: 27:04

Thank you.

Vira: 27:05

Bye. Take care.