Black Friday Strategy for the Power 30 Days of Q4

[00:00:00] Richard: Hey folks, welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffan, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I mean that literally this time because I am here in the studio with, uh, our president, Mr. Luke Austin, uh, sitting right across from me. And obviously this is exciting for me 'cause it's the first time I think I've done it.

[00:00:18] Richard: I think I did one with Tony maybe a little while ago. But just being in person, uh, it's a good vibe, and we're ready to talk about, um, Q4 here with y'all. But Luke, how are you doing, man?

[00:00:27] Luke: I'm doing, I'm doing great. Yeah. Yeah. We're fresh off a little midday h- Hyrox workout. We're-

[00:00:32] Richard: Yeah ...

[00:00:32] Luke: nine weeks, nine weeks out from Hyrox Anaheim, so, um, the, the group of us participating in that, the, uh, the stakes, the stakes are high.

[00:00:41] Luke: Got my pro- Promix protein shake here as a after workout recovery.

[00:00:46] Richard: Of course.

[00:00:47] Luke: Thinking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday- Yep ... Q4. I mean, it's all kind of- You're pumped ... it's all kind of, it's all kind of working. Right

[00:00:53] Richard: on. It's all kind of

[00:00:53] Luke: working right now.

[00:00:54] Richard: And I do wanna clarify for the audience that I'm not one of the people training for Hyrox coming up in nine weeks or whatever, so I'm not gonna sort of steal that thunder there.

[00:01:01] Richard: But, um, yeah, let's go ahead and roll into it. So what we're talking about today is what we call the Power 30, and the Power 30 are the 30 most important days of the calendar for every brand. So, uh, here's the key stat kind of for this, which is that 55% of Q4 website revenue comes in the Power 30, which for this year will be November the 17th through December the 16th.

[00:01:22] Richard: So I guess we could characterize that as, like, a couple weeks before and a couple weeks after Black Friday. Um, so that represents 32.6% of the Q4 calendar, but of course accounts, accounts for 55% of that revenue. So what we wanna talk about today, I think, is obviously the why of it, but maybe more specifically, what the brands that really won this Power 30 span did that other brands didn't do, and Luke's gonna break that down for us.

[00:01:48] Richard: But let's, um, yeah, I'll throw it over to you, Luke. Like, what-- Talk to me a little bit more about this 30-day period and how the best brands take advantage of it.

[00:01:57] Luke: Yeah. So I think there's two, I think there's sort of two, uh, ways to think about th- this conversation and, and the sort of sequence. And one is like, what is the, what is the basic shape of the next two months really that we're headed into, November and December?

[00:02:12] Luke: What are the core moments that are, like, the table stakes, right? Like the, like scaffolding that, that brands should build around. And then from there, this, the second sequence is, okay, what is-- Within that sort of scaffolding and general structure, what are all the ways that brands are taking that to the next level, right?

[00:02:30] Luke: Mm. Adding, uh, making, making the, making the home really their own and, and, uh, and improving on it. So, um, and it, and it's, and it's interesting. The, the, the interesting thing about the, the seat that we sit in at, at CTC and our data set of hundreds of brands and billions of dollars in GMV is naturally larger data sets tend to, um, uh, when you look at the averages across larger data sets, it tends to sort of like smooth out the anomalies, right?

[00:02:59] Luke: And you sort of like get this, like, cluster and the 80 percentile in the middle that's like, oh, like, generally brands do these things, right? Right. Um, but it, but that does two things, which is like the, the 10% outlier on sort of either side are the really interesting cases- Mm-hmm ... that you can sort of pull into, pull into the middle.

[00:03:17] Luke: And, and what it also does for us is it highlights just how wide, when you, when you, when you step back and don't look at the, the data set from like an aggregate average standpoint and really at an individual brand basis, what it highlights is how wide the chasm is- Mm ... between what, how, how people are approaching, um, uh, Q4 generally, offer strategy, creative strategy, email sequencing, like all of the components, um- That there's people doing really, really interesting things that- Yeah

[00:03:44] Luke: we all don't know about. Um-

[00:03:46] Richard: Yeah ...

[00:03:47] Luke: and we're doing it sort of the way that we've done it, and maybe iterating on past years, et cetera. So it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating place to sit in, and I think one that we wanna continue to think about, okay, we have this aggregate data set. That's sort of a baseline.

[00:03:59] Luke: This, the scaffolding step one, but then how do we, how do we take all the really interesting things we've seen from the brands- Yeah ... of that data set to continue to push the envelope and highlight and surface that, um, so that we don't regress to the mean. None, none of us want that to happen. Yeah,

[00:04:12] Richard: yeah.

[00:04:12] Richard: Okay, well let's talk about this then. So what are the key differences then between-- Well, let's talk about what the mean is. Yeah. So what is that average approach? What's the, like let's say templatized approach that people are sort of repeating over the years, and then talk about how the, like a couple of examples of the interesting things people are doing-

[00:04:29] Luke: Yeah

[00:04:29] Richard: to break that.

[00:04:30] Luke: So I think there, there's these core moments over the next two months that every brand should have some moment constructed around that I would, that I would contend is the sort of the, the, the table stake sort of baseline. Um, so starting in sequence from that, you have early November, um, that's gonna be, you know, the start of the month, maybe end of October, the first, uh, week or two of November.

[00:04:55] Luke: This is the first reason that you're giving customers a, a reason to buy, right? Mm. Um, a selective offer, maybe a product launch, um, but you're giving customers a reason to engage in the shopping process early on. Then that'll lead into some VIP or early access version of your Black Friday offer, which will come before the public launch.

[00:05:16] Luke: So depending on Sort of the cadence of your Black Friday launch timing. That could be, um, you know, that could be the Monday, Tuesday of that Black Friday, of that Thanksgiving week or, or prior. Then you have Black Friday, um, that's gonna be the, the, uh, 27th and then through the weekend. Cyber Monday, gifting early December, pre-shipping cutoff, uh, post-cutoff, Q5 year-end, which is post, post-Christmas, um, into the end of December, and then early, early January.

[00:05:43] Luke: So each of those, each of those moments are sort of the core. There should be some messaging, some reason to buy around each of those, uh, around each of those. And, and it's, uh, each one of them na-naturally sort of create this, uh, like VIP early access. Um, it's a specific subset of customers that you're bringing them, um, bringing them something before the public launch.

[00:06:05] Luke: Um, and then Black Friday, Cyber Monday, um, typically you're gonna wanna tier up your offers, right? Where Black Friday's a, a, a substantial offer, but Cyber Monday it gets better in some way. And so each of these have a unique, um, we're not running the same, you know, the same offer through them, but these are sort of the baseline moments that we wanna, we wanna orient around.

[00:06:22] Luke: Um, and then with that, I think the, the, there's the core sort of, okay, the creative email media plan, like we're gonna o-overlay that against the marketing calendar. Um, but this is where I'd start to separate out some of this, uh, some of the sort of baseline expectations around November and December. Um, and I think a good illustration of this is actually on the, on the media buy-in side with Meta.

[00:06:46] Luke: So we've, we've been doing a lot of analysis over across our data set for brands last year, looking at account structure, bidding optimizations in Meta, um, looking at decisions that were made every day, every hour within those accounts and what the expected impact was. And what it, what it highlights, like as an illustration of this, of this point is that, um Uh, there are so much of the time around these days, and we've also looked at, like, all the Slack messages and, and calls that we had over those days, like what, what people talk about.

[00:07:19] Luke: So much of the interaction and brain space over those days tends to go to, "Okay, hey, let's do a quick check-in. How's our spend pacing? What's m- ROAS look like on Meta? What are some tactical adjustments we can make in our media accounts as a result," right? Yeah. "Should we raise the, raise the budget in this campaign?

[00:07:35] Luke: Should we lower the budget? Should we raise the ROAS goal in this campaign?" Um, and what we've seen is, one, making those changes like, um, opening up or lowering your ROAS goal on a min ROAS campaign usually takes at least three hours for that to take into effect. Right. So it's not even actually gonna impact your ad account, um, out of the gates.

[00:07:56] Luke: Um, and, and you spend so much time oriented around, like, trying to come to a decision-making matrix around those sorts of decisions that it takes away from the things that are actually going to really move the needle- Right ... not take sort of hours to, um, to, to come to, come to fruition. So all that to say, I would say the sort of baseline expectation is around these core moments- Mm

[00:08:18] Luke: from early November all the way to early January, having some reason to buy, um, illustrated for the customers, um, that you have a- and then, and then your, your sort of media creative, um, email expectation against those, against those moments as well. Where this starts to separate is when, um, over the course of those days, you can start to take the attention and the focus and the resourcing and the meetings and the Slack messages away from, "Okay, here's our plan.

[00:08:47] Luke: Now let's think about all the tacticals, ways we can optimize the plan-" Mm. "... to actually how can we change and improve upon the plan in real time-"

[00:08:56] Richard: I see.

[00:08:56] Luke: Interesting ... uh, during those days.

[00:08:57] Richard: Okay. So, well, actually, and real quick, just for the record, so we have kind of in summary. So, like, the, the, the core decision-making moments, let's say, on the calendar d- over this period of time is, so there's early November, which I guess technically is outside of the Power of 30, but then there's sort of a VIP early access launch, so that would be in the November 17th range and on from there.

[00:09:17] Richard: Then obviously there's Black Friday, there's Cyber Monday, there's the gifting period, the pre-shipping cutoff, the post-cutoff, and then the Q5 sort of year-end, uh, slash early J- January kind of, like, health and wellness push there. Um, so that's-- those are the core peaks, and if you have those in place, great.

[00:09:33] Richard: But clearly there's, like, a, a way to dis- distinguish yourself from the pack. And so you'd mentioned the difference, well, you sort of phrased it like people focusing on tactically optimizing what they're already doing or, or against these sort of however many, six or seven items, as opposed to making those better.

[00:09:52] Richard: So what is the difference, I guess, between pure optimization and then actually, like, doing something strategically unusual?

[00:09:59] Luke: Okay. So the- There are, uh, a number of, uh, different sets of actions that we could all take at any given moment to change the outcome of, of the brand. Um, and to like-- We could name a list of those and it would take us an hour just to do that.

[00:10:16] Luke: But like to name a few off the bat, um, you can make adjustments to the media budget within your Meta ad account, right? And the tactical campaign setup. You could, um, adjust your email send calendar. So add in some sends, adjust, uh, you know, add in a resend, pull a campaign out. Um, you could create In that new, uh, marketing moment that wasn't previously planned, uh, for the business.

[00:10:42] Luke: Um, and, and you sort of go down the line. But what the, what this starts at, I think, is like the understanding that the highest impact activity over the course when you're in this moment, when you're in the Power of 30 and in the days of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is that your marketing calendar and your offer strategy is going to be the highest lever impact that you have.

[00:11:03] Luke: And yes, you should have enough media spend to fuel it, so you're driving folks to the site, and so they're converting when they get there. You should have enough emails that are also doing the same thing from that customer base. But if you are like ill- As an illustration, um, we tested someone with a brand last year where they, based on inventory, um, and a couple other factors, wanted to exclude their top-selling line from their Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer, which they hadn't done in, in years past.

[00:11:31] Luke: Um, so we launched that, and Black Friday was pacing, uh, uh, less than half, um, of the revenue of the year prior on the same offer, and it should've been, it should've been flat to up at least. Um, that offer was changed on Sunday heading into Cyber Monday to include that core style, and the revenue, the revenue discrepancy was like we're, we're pacing at three times as much- Mm

[00:11:54] Luke: you know, the hourly revenue pacing as we were previously. You, you can't do that by like, "Hey, let's increase the budgets- Yeah ... on Meta," right? Or like even, "Hey, let's send twice as many emails today." Like you're not gonna 3X your revenue.

[00:12:07] Richard: Mm.

[00:12:07] Luke: Now, those are important ingredients to have, but the thing that's gonna change the most is the m- is, uh, related to your marketing calendar and your offer strategy.

[00:12:15] Luke: So I think that's the first thing to sort of acknowledge in this is, okay, that's still the highest lever that you have to play. Um, and then connected to that, the, the attention during this time period, I think there's, there's this, um, uh, there's this idea, and it, it comes up especially with email sends, where it's like, um, people are going to, uh, unsubscribe or start to s- you know, click that this is spam or get annoyed by our communications, or they're seeing way too many of our ads 'cause our frequency is, you know, 2X or whatever on Black Friday or whatever it might be.

[00:12:51] Luke: Where on those days in particular, you cannot be communicating enough- Yeah ... because people are inundated by so many-- We all have 70,000 emails in our inbox, and you deciding to send one or two more emails in the mix of all of those things is not gonna be... The only thing that's gonna, that's gonna change is potentially get you in front of someone who missed all your other three emails because- Yeah

[00:13:13] Luke: all the other things were happening and all your other thousand ads because they got, you know, were, were being served all these other, all these other pieces. So- The, the marketing calendar, finding wa-- the brands last year that, that really did interesting things as it relates to this conversation is that they found ways to create novelty and messaging in real time around their marketing calendar and didn't treat that as the stagnant fixed thing.

[00:13:40] Luke: Yep. Right? Like, this is our offer for Cyber Weekend. This is what we're running. Great, that's set. Now what we're gonna go do is go tweak the meta ad account.

[00:13:50] Richard: Yeah.

[00:13:50] Luke: That's what you're saying. It, it's, it's-- no, the, that's set. The-- how we're thinking about this is that's set. We know what the media budget is. We know what our AMR targets are.

[00:13:57] Luke: We know what the ROAS bids are, and we're gonna give enough budget based on the ex- efficiency expectations, and we're gonna spend the time necessary there. But we're gonna do a lot more through, um, API-based rules and, uh, connections to our system, and that's set. And what we're gonna think about is how do we actually make the adjustments and novelty in the messaging and the marketing calendar in real time- Right

[00:14:19] Luke: over the course of those days to really alter the trajectory.

[00:14:21] Richard: Okay. So, um, obviously, yeah, there's a distinction there between-- and we talked before about, like, Black Friday pacing on-- for meta buying or whatever is sort of an hourly thing. So there is some s- extent to which adjustments may help there. Uh, but overall, like the tactical play, and I talked a little bit about this with Joy, uh, last time we chatted, was just to make more ads and spend more money, right?

[00:14:45] Richard: Okay, so that's fundamentally what it is. Then, well, obviously, what you're talking about is getting creative with the offer. So we have sort of an overall shape to how we talk about some of the points in the calendar that we mentioned earlier. So there's the VIP early access. This is your first time.

[00:14:59] Richard: You're the first people to get access to this new product, okay? And then there's Black Friday, which is-- tends to be a volume play, right? Most people, more people are buying, so you go for volume with your offer. Cyber Monday, w- in the past at least, we've said it's an AOV play. It's like try to get your whales, try to get people to spend as much money as they can.

[00:15:19] Richard: But at less volume on Cyber Monday, or at least that's what you can expect. Then obviously gifting is about, uh, shipping cutoff, last chance to get this before Christmas, uh, and then so on and so forth. So talk a little bit about like beyond just that, how do you get creative within this sort of the, the period with your offers or what are some examples of how people have done that?

[00:15:39] Luke: Yeah. So, well, I'll give a couple examples, and I'll say like the offer strategy itself, there's all sorts of different offers you can run on those days, and so that needs to be... a lot of thought needs to be put into- Yeah ... put into that piece. What, what should be in addition is, um, have a bunch of different ideas of how you can sweeten or change or alter the messaging of the offer in the day.

[00:16:03] Luke: Interesting. Okay. Right? Yeah. So, so we're gonna run, okay, it's gonna be buy two, get one, it's gonna be Black Friday is 30% off sitewide, and then Cyber Monday's gonna be buy two, get one free, and that's an AOV play, right? That's higher AOV. That's a volume play. That's the shape generally the-- got the main major moments.

[00:16:19] Richard: Yeah.

[00:16:19] Luke: Okay, what are you saying at 8:00 AM on Black Friday? Uh-huh. What are you saying at 10:00 AM on Black Friday?

[00:16:25] Richard: Yeah.

[00:16:25] Luke: What are you saying at 1:00 PM on Black Friday? And the default would be like, okay, we'll say like, um, "Black Friday's here, uh, 30% off sitewide." And then three hours later, um, uh, "While supplies still last, 30% off sitewide."

[00:16:40] Luke: Hmm. Like, "Ending soon, 30% off sitewide," right? Like, the offer stays consistent and generally the messaging is slightly altered, and it's like, okay, we have a few emails planned, and that's the best plan. But- Um, how c- how can you make it so that cu- people are engaged consistently through those, through those time periods?

[00:16:58] Luke: So couple examples. So we had, we had an apparel brand, um, where they did VIP hours. Um- Hmm ... and they did this, they did this- Mm ... uh, VIP hours on, on Black Friday where they would go, they had their baseline offer, and then they would go up to 50% on selected styles over these VIP hours. And so they would, they would have customers come to the site, right?

[00:17:18] Luke: And like, uh, I forget what their core offer was. I think 30% off. Um, it was, it was a range based on their, uh, based on the different products they had. But let's say 30% off. They had customers coming for the core offer, right, shopping around, and then you'd have a VIP hour over the course of 60 minutes where you'd send out an email, send out an SMS, um, that you'd be doing stuff on organic social, and you would have 50% off select style.

[00:17:42] Luke: Mm. So a smaller group of those. And so you get the sort of morning tranche of people, and then two or three hours later you're doing this and it's creating more interest. And those people- Yeah ... might be coming back, right? Because they bought some stuff and then, "Oh, now it's 50%, I'm gonna buy some more stuff," right?

[00:17:54] Luke: Um, and then continue to add styles through these VIP hours that they drove- Interesting ... throughout the days. Then on Cyber Monday, um, uh, they did, uh, uh, free shipping plus to gift, plus a gift with purchase, different gift with purchases over the course, over the course of that day, um, based on, uh, based on what, what availability, um, they had.

[00:18:16] Luke: Um, another, another brand, they did, um, 30% off site-wide, excluding some of their core hero products, right? So it's like, let's say you sell leggings and like, you know, 80% of your sales are black leggings, like maybe that's excluded, right? And you do like a really h- deep discount on like all the other colorways.

[00:18:35] Luke: Um, but then they would do hero product flash- Mm ... uh, sales during, during that day. And so they'd have email, SMS, socials, and then obviously everyone coming through the ad traffic, if they're s- they're seeing this happen, um, on the site where there's going to be these hero product drops that happen over the course of the day.

[00:18:54] Luke: And so it's just in continuing to engage people and think about different ways to interact with them, um, over the course of, o- over the course of that day. And so- Mm-hmm ... hero product flash sales over the course of that day, where certain hero products were also, uh, uh, thrown into, um, having an offer in addition to their sort of core 30% off almost site-wide sale, um, that they were running.

[00:19:16] Luke: And then third example, um, this is like, I think probably the, the furthest version of like being as nimble as possible in this way. Um, but, um, over the course of Cyber Monday Um, this founder just had, was r- ripping off plain text emails, and every hour was doing a different gift with purchase based on in- live inventory and what you've seen.

[00:19:37] Luke: Interesting. So we're looking at, okay, here's, here's product sales that are coming in. Okay, we have some of this inventory from the release in, back in June. For the next hour, everyone that buys $100 worth of stuff is gonna get this thing.

[00:19:49] Richard: Yeah.

[00:19:50] Luke: Let's go. And send two, three emails an hour about this.

[00:19:53] Richard: Yeah.

[00:19:54] Luke: Like people are like, "Oh, should I send three or five emails that day," right? And you're like, what... Like, you're running a diff- it's a different sale every hour. You can s- you can send an email, you can send an SMS, you can have it on your socials. The brand could be going live, like when we think about TikTok Live and Instagram Live.

[00:20:08] Luke: Like, you could be live all day- Mm-hmm ... and have something new to say, and people would wanna hang out and track along- Yeah ... with you because you have these things going on. And the, the media plan has to be dialed, the sort of core email, SMS plan, the creative, that all has to be there. But as much as you can set-- And again, we're, we've done a lot of analysis, and we're doing a lot of work to set the sort of operating, um, approach for how we're making intra-day media buying decisions, what we're looking for in terms of ROAS versus AMER relationships at every hour of the day.

[00:20:39] Luke: So I'm not saying like discard this stuff, it doesn't matter. Like we're- Yeah ... going deep on this stuff to fr- be able to free us up during those days so that that is done really, really excellently, um, while, uh, so that we can focus on these higher, these higher impact levels. Because the reality is like for most brands, you spend 80% of the day on Black Friday, Cyber Monday talking about these decisions and these tactical executional media buy and adjust this in the campaign structure, and it takes five hours to take, take, uh, you know, effect in the ad account anyway, and actually doesn't change the business, and you could've spent those- Yeah, yeah

[00:21:09] Luke: that 80% of the time on, on the other activities.

[00:21:11] Richard: Interesting. So there's some blending of like... Okay, so some of this is done live, and obviously in the context of having done preparation across a number of different operational things. But then also, it sounds like there's clearly some of these are like prepared in advance of this idea of like, here's how we think Black Friday is going to...

[00:21:29] Richard: Or maybe I should ask, do they do this, where Black Friday has a certain peak at a certain time in the morning, Cyber Monday has a peak at the end of the day. Is there some like calendar then built out for the day for some of these offers, or is a lot of it really ad hoc? Or like what, kind of what, how's the split there?

[00:21:44] Luke: I think there, there are very few brands that are actually doing, doing this at the level de- described in terms of- Yeah ... and so I'm sure, I'm sure there are, uh, some brands that have this, um, planned out on a really granular level. But like having, having a comms plan by hour with unique marketing and offer strategy over the course of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, um, and, and, and also over Power of 30, like you could break it out to these like, these like eight peaks that we talked about- Mm-hmm

[00:22:12] Luke: right? Is, is not, um, is not a typical- Sure, sure ... practice or expectation still. So I th- Yeah ... so that, so that's where I think it like it creates white space, and that's where we saw brands last year where it was like, oh wow, this is what Consumers are inundated with messaging during that day. And so the challenge is how can we increase the output of communication, um, around a really good offer for them, but to do that in a novel way always- Right

[00:22:42] Luke: over the course of that weekend. How can we do this very differently? Change the offer, change the messaging, change the channel. Like, what are the ways that we can make this, um, unique to the customer? Um, and so I think there's, there's a lot of opportunity, um, to, to be able to do that. Like, yeah, here's our, here's our hourly- Yeah

[00:23:00] Luke: comms plan over starting at 6:00 AM on Black Friday, 'cause yeah, those are the biggest, biggest hours are the morning. So here's our hour- hourly comms plan. Here's the channels we're gonna go. Here are some offers we have lined up. Here's based on our inventory, here are some things that we can pull in for gifted purchases.

[00:23:14] Luke: Here's some ways we can, um, we can, we can sweeten the deal related to our core baseline offer, um, that, that could take it to the next level.

[00:23:21] Richard: Yeah. No, that's interesting. Um, okay. What... And r- real quick, what are some of the factors driving like some of the more off the cuff decisions? So you mentioned the guy just like ripping out these plain text emails based on inventory levels, so that's sort of an obvious one.

[00:23:35] Richard: But is there any other like signal that you were-- that the brands who are doing this well are reacting to And kind of building these offers off of, I guess.

[00:23:45] Luke: Yeah. So in- inventory's gonna be the major constraint for most brands of like what, what is available and what makes sense from a margin standpoint.

[00:23:53] Luke: And so having some understanding of how much value likely related to an AOV threshold do you need a consumer to be able to spend to make sense for- Mm ... whatever additional thing you're throwing in, right? Yeah. Um, uh, and then, uh, but, but then there's other, other ways to do it that aren't related to inventory where, um, the discount gets better at higher thresholds over the course of the day, right?

[00:24:16] Luke: Like that'd be AOV tiering sort of, um, uh, discounting strategy, but that just you, you just have it change over the course of the day and have it, have it fluctuate. Um, uh, and then other, and then other things as well like, um, shipping if it's meaningful for the brand, um, and including that at different, at, at different levels.

[00:24:35] Luke: Um, so yeah. But there's... I-- What I'd say is like the, the level of, the level of creativity as it relates to this, this strategy is like, it could just continue- Yeah ... to expand. So I think the constraints- That's interesting ... the constraints prior are everything to be like, "Okay, what could make sense-

[00:24:53] Richard: Mm-hmm ...

[00:24:53] Luke: um, for us, and should it be a lot of gift with purchase strategy when we're adding this?"

[00:24:57] Luke: The, the, the tension is like you don't wanna confuse a consumer over the course of this time period as well, right? Right. So you'd... going from like this hour we went to a gift with purchase, and the next hour we did buy two, get one free, and then the next hour we did 30% off site-wide excluding core styles, like you've lost the thread a little bit, right?

[00:25:13] Richard: Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:13] Luke: But if it's, okay, what we're gonna do is this is our core strategy, and then we're going to have different gift with purchase in these different hour blocks- Yeah. I see what you're saying ... throughout the day, right? Or, um, or, uh, uh, or this is our, uh, yeah, this is our core offer, and then at different AOV tiers throughout the day, we're going to be adding in additional styles into that offer, but having something that people can follow along.

[00:25:34] Luke: Like people want- Yeah, yeah ... people want a narrative and something to be connected to outside of like, "Hey, remember that 30% off site-wide?" Um, and of course, like if that's the messaging and it's like every day it's like, "Reminder, 30% off site-wide. Second reminder, 30% off site-wide," there should be hesitation to send, you know, five, seven emails- Yeah

[00:25:52] Luke: over the course of the day because like you're, you're saying the same thing in the same way.

[00:25:55] Richard: Yeah. Um, no, yeah, right. So at, at the very least-- Or, or really, I guess what we're saying is like there's ought to be variations on a theme as opposed to doing something completely, completely novel across the course of the day.

[00:26:06] Richard: Yeah. So there's some sort of, um, there's some sort of through line or restriction on what the offer could be, and then you work creatively within that to, to build out the offer that would make sense or that would be interesting to people.

[00:26:18] Luke: Yep.

[00:26:19] Richard: I think one thing I like about this is that on, so the surface it sort of cuts against some of the advice that we've given about not complicating your offer, but really what this is, is like Instead of, let's say tiering-- Let's doing AOV tiers, right?

[00:26:32] Richard: Yeah. This is a great example. Yeah. Where it's like you, you say, "Hey, here's five AOV tiers. You buy two, you know, spend 100 bucks, you get X. You spend 200, you get Y." Yeah. Yep. It would be like you show them one at a time, for example, across the course of the day. So instead of one complicated offer, you're really doing five simple offers that are being shown one at a time, so it's the only thing that people are ingesting at any given moment across the course of the day.

[00:26:54] Richard: Yes. Right? Um, so anyway, I think that's maybe a good way to sort of frame how you, how you as a brand need to think about the restriction and then the variations within it, but- Yeah ... um, cool. Anything else that you wanna hit on this?

[00:27:08] Luke: I think, uh, no, I, I would, I would just the, I would just say this is the, the bar continues to be raised, and I think in past years what we've Talked about and what continues to be the narrative is like holiday is happening earlier and earlier, right?

[00:27:25] Luke: Yeah. Like it's like Christmas is earlier and Black Friday's earlier, which is, which is true and gonna be the case. But I think the thing that's more true is people's-- the, the amount of really good content and things that, uh, things that we have competing for people's attention is just getting more and more.

[00:27:42] Luke: Yeah. Right? Like, it's more competitive related to these things, and what's happening with TikTok Live especially, um, and what's happening with live shopping generally is like that, uh, this-- like brands are running 24-hour live seven days a week- Yeah ... just selling consistently and finding different ways on a 45-second loop to be like, "Cool, we have like a wa- a watermelon here, and we're gonna like carve out the watermelon," and, "Okay, next 45 seconds we're gonna like do this," like, these ways to get people engaged.

[00:28:09] Luke: And the, the bar is just continually being raised for this, um, that I don't think this is as much of an indication of like, oh, okay, what-- You know, it's so hourly calendaring versus daily calendaring is thing now. It's like- Mm ... always on unique messaging content creation is just where like all of this is, all of this is happening.

[00:28:29] Luke: Yeah. Right? And it's, um, the re- I, I mean, maybe sort of perspectives on all of this aside, like the s- the fastest growing sales channel outside of TikTok Shop right now is Douyin, which is China's TikTok Shop.

[00:28:41] Richard: Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:41] Luke: And it's, uh, almost 80%. The, the founder of Yuka the other day, he was like, "Almost 80% of Douyin shopping is done live."

[00:28:49] Richard: Yeah.

[00:28:49] Luke: So if we believe our world's headed in some version of that direction, then like that's you know, like that is the-- that is where this converges. Um, and it doesn't stop at, you know, hourly messaging iterations even. Yeah.

[00:29:03] Richard: Right. All right, so one step down a path towards being on all the time, and, uh, that's already kind of, kind of where we're at.

[00:29:09] Richard: So, but anyway, I think like in summary, this is the sort of important step everybody needs to be taking this year if you want to sort of outshine the competition. So again, the Power 30, uh, we're calling this like the 30 days from November seven- the 17th to the 17th, basically November to December. And amongst that or across that you have your sort of early VIP gifting thing before the, the weekend, then you have Black Friday, you have Cyber Monday, and then you have sort of the shipping cutoff.

[00:29:36] Richard: And across that is about getting creative around those four, um, initiatives and doing it in such a way that you can continue communicating anew with your audience without boring them essentially. So, um, cool. All right. Well, I think we can leave it at that. Anything else you wanna say? No. Leave it there.

[00:29:56] Richard: All right. Cool. Well, folks, appreciate y'all joining us. Um, again, if you wanna work with us across this Power 30 period and more, uh, cometsandco.com, hit the Hire Us button, let us know you're interested in working with us. We would love to build out this type of plan with you. But all right, until next time, folks.

[00:30:12] Richard: Take care.