How we ran an 18k Black Friday Sale

If you're an ecommerce store owner, then you know that the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is one of the biggest weekends in the Pre-Christmas sales calendar.
​
While this weekend is a great opportunity to increase your Q4 revenue, it’s also getting harder and harder to stand out amongst the crowd.
​
Running a successful black friday sale takes planning and preparation, but it's well worth the effort. So if you want to learn how we ran an 18k Black Friday campaign for one of our clients, then read on.
Here’s what we achieved:
-
18k total in sales revenue
-
10.21 ROAS from a $200 Facebook List Builder Campaign
-
Over 2.5k in sales from a list of 198 people
​
The results we achieved for our client came from careful planning, preparation and a multi channel marketing approach for this particular campaign.
We used a combination of strong organic social media and email marketing and used Facebook and Instagram Advertising to support this.
​
Below is a summary of the steps we took and the lessons we learned from this campaign.

Are you ready to run Facebook and Instagram Ads like a pro?
​
Grab our Ultimate Facebook Ads Guide for E-Commerce Stores Here and learn the exact strategy we use to generate 5 figure months for our clients
1. Create an irresistible offer
You have to understand the consumers are so inundated with promos and offers at this time of year it’s incredibly hard to stand out.
You cannot go out to your audience with 10% off or even 15% off, this type of offer just isn’t strong enough now days. Plus it’s exactly the same offer the 10 other stores are doing.
For this campaign we went out with seconds and sample stock at 70% off the RRP, and there was still some margin left in there for profit (also a lesson on why it’s so important to cost your products correctly).
At a minimum I would go out with 30% or more off particular lines or buy one get one 60% off. Seconds and Sample stock always work well and you can mark these down 40% or more.
​
2. Audience Warm Up
​
This is a crucial step that is often overlooked by store owners.
You have to let your audience know early that you are going to be running a sale AND what and when to expect all the info.
Most people are bombarded with information in their email inboxes and social feeds every day. You have to let them know early that there is something exciting happening and that they need to check their inbox on x day/date and time.
We began warming the audience up for this campaign two weeks prior to launch, and if I’m honest I would probably extend that out another week.
This included social media posts but also a list builder campaign to a cold audience using facebook and Instagram advertising. We created a new list in Klaviyo for this campaign along with a 3 part welcome flow to help warm them up. The total spend for this list was $200 and we returned that spend more than 10 fold.
This list although small also performed better than the regular lists and segments we had set up, proving why campaign and launch list building is so important.
​
​
​
​​


3. E-mail Campaigns
​
We ran multiple e-mail campaigns to multiple segments and lists using a variety of subject lines and content.
And we started early! The first campaign warm up e-mail went out 4 days before the promo began, then another one the day before, the night of, the day after, two days after and 2 final call emails.
Every email generated revenue.
Do not underestimate how important email is to your overall marketing strategy, and when we are in peak ecommerce sales periods you will need to send more than usual.
4. Retargeting Ad Campaigns
​
Because we had begun building out our cold audience in the weeks prior to the Black Friday campaign; by the time campaign week rolled around we had a decent size retargeting social audience comprising of our email lists, social engagers, and website traffic.
With a strong offer and an already warm audience the retargeting campaign were essentially the icing on the cake for this promo.
Running Facebook Advertising Successfully is no accident. Even with the constant changes the ad platform is constantly rolling out three things remain the same.
​
1 – Facebook advertising still works, just in slightly different ways to before.
​
2 – Having a deep understanding of the problem your product solves or the desire it creates is the best way to generate interest and intent.
​
3 - A multi channel marketing approach is always best practice. Paid advertising works best when complimented with email marketing and a good organic social media strategy.
​
If you have not been achieving results with your own paid advertising and you are ready to bring in a professional to level up your business, we offer a range of services that can help.
​
Simply book in a discovery call here and let's talk.
​

Ready to Run Facebook Ads like a pro?
Get your copy of our Ultimate Facebook Ads for E-Commerce Store below and learn the same strategies we use to help our clients grow to 5 figure months and beyond.