Episode 111 - Over Coffee: How to Run Promotions like Black Friday Sales
Learn how to time a sale, what to offer at a special rate, why newsletter lists are so powerful, and how to promote a sale like Black Friday or other holiday promotions.
With a slew of holidays around the corner, we’ve got sales on our minds.
People are primed to shop right now. As creative small business owners, days like Black Friday are a fantastic opportunity to promote your products and get a boost in profits before the end of the year.
That said, special sales take planning. In our latest episode of Paper Talk, we discussed the ins and outs of running a Black Friday Sale or any other promotion. You have to think about timing, be careful not to devalue your art, market your sale successfully, and deal with the current delays in obtaining supplies and shipping items.
There’s a lot to cover on this topic, and you can hear all the details about running a successful sales campaign on the episode. Part of our conversation centered around how powerful email newsletters can be compared to social media posts. Here’s a little peek at what you can learn from the podcast with three things you can do to improve your sales emails.
Here’s what you’ll learn when you listen to our conversation:
► How to time holiday sales to best reach your audience.
► Which products are better suited for special discounts.
► What it takes to market a successful sale.
► How to create graphics to promote holiday sales.
►Why you should cultivate and utilize your newsletter subscribers.
Plan Ahead for Marketing Emails
Some people aren’t great at checking their emails every day, especially the email or folder that receives marketing emails from businesses. You shouldn’t be emailing your newsletter list just once about your sale, the night before it happens. Tease it for a bit. Build some excitement. Get it on people’s radars. That means you need to make a plan early on.
“You’ll be surprised at who reads your newsletters because people don’t reply, you don’t know. You’ll be surprised at who does and who cares. Don’t forget about them.” - Jessie
With holidays like Black Friday, people are also slammed with a ton of messages promoting sales. If one of your fans signed up for your newsletter, they want to hear from you, but you also have to help them see your sale in a sea of emails. As we discussed in the episode, there are ways to stand out from the crowd. Your sale can happen earlier than most for that holiday. It’s not uncommon for Black Friday Sales to happen at the beginning of November now.
Whether you choose to start your sale early or stick to a more traditional approach, you need to plan ahead to get emails out on time. Listen to the podcast to hear more about how we time these messages before a sale.
Understand Your Target Audience
Sometimes it’s difficult to know who is reading the emails you send out. Many email services offer insights into how many emails are opened or how many people click on links from your emails, but it can still be difficult to gauge which demographics are interacting more with your messages.
One way to understand who is engaging more is to add something at the end of your email that asks people to reply. Maybe you ask a question or offer to give advice on something you brought up in that message. As Jessie said, “You’ll be surprised at who reads your newsletters because people don’t reply, you don’t know. You’ll be surprised at who does and who cares. Don’t forget about them.”
If you can get a better idea of who is actually reading your emails, you can better tailor your sales for those customers. It’s no use to have a promotion on items that customers aren’t interested in!
Edit Your Emails
You should be double-checking all of your copy that goes out to customers, but we know that it’s sometimes difficult to get things out on a tight schedule. If you want to engage people who are on your newsletter list, though, putting in the time to produce a well-thought out email can make a huge difference in getting potential customers to consistently read your emails and click through to make a purchase when you have something like a special sale.
“Find a really wonderful, quiet, happy moment in your day and write [your newsletter]. Don’t do it when you’re distracted or busy, it’s going to make a not very good newsletter. And also let it sit and then look at it the next day. Reread it...and polish it up.” - Quynh
Here’s what Quynh recommended on the podcast: “Find a really wonderful, quiet, happy moment in your day and write [your newsletter]. Don’t do it when you’re distracted or busy, it’s going to make a not very good newsletter. And also let it sit and then look at it the next day. Reread it...and polish it up.”
Give yourself enough time to plan out your emails for a sale, then take the time to make them personal and polished. You can hear more tips for how to add that personal touch to your emails by listening to the episode.
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