In this data-packed episode, Brett Curry and the OMG Commerce team break down the most successful strategies from Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024. From optimal discount levels to timing strategies, the team shares real insights from hundreds of millions in tracked revenue across Amazon, DTC, and email channels. If you're already planning for next year's holiday season (and you should be), this episode delivers actionable insights you won't want to miss.

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Key Takeaways:

• The "sweet spot" for discounts: Amazon sellers saw the best results at 25%+ off, while DTC brands found their optimal range between 15-25% - unless going big at 50%+ (with surprising data about why the middle ground underperforms).
• Why individual product discounts outperformed site-wide sales across multiple channels, with specific insights about how this impacts Google Shopping ads and conversion rates.
• The shift to "Cyber 12" - Why the seven days before Black Friday actually outperformed the traditional Cyber 5 period on Amazon, and how to adapt your 2025 strategy accordingly.
• Critical timing insights for email marketing - Why the ninth email often outperformed earlier messages, and how follow-up campaigns frequently beat initial launches.

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The combination of broad trends and specific tactical insights makes this a valuable episode for any ecommerce brand looking to improve their holiday season performance in 2025!

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction 

(03:33) Global Sales Trends

(08:16) BFCM Trends Nobody Saw Coming

(19:11) Strategies of Top-Performing Brands

(24:54) Analyzing Year-on-Year Deal Performance

(30:20) Successful Campaign Examples

(34:00) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

• Christine Shiloni
• Bill Cover
• Ghost
• Ryse
• Shopify
• Triple Whale
• Why Your Prices Are Probably Wrong - Episode 255
• Live Bearded
• CRBN Pickleball
• Manta Sleep

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more

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Transcript:

Brett :

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and this is the Black Friday, cyber Monday recap edition. It was a wild ride. We're going to look at Cyber five, cyber 12, which is a new concept for some. And so this is going to be a high level look at how things went globally, how things went for our clients, what did the winners do, what did the losers do? How can you harness these learnings for your next sales events? And as we begin to plan for next year, because hey, when we're in retail, we're either in holiday, we're prepping for the next holiday, we're thinking about holiday dreaming about it. It's always on our minds. So with that, first I just want to do a quick health check. How's everybody doing? Mental health, physical health? Have you slept any? And with me on the pod back again. Everybody's a repeat guest here. We got Christine Shalon, Amazon director. How's it going, Christine?

Christine:

I'm good. How are you doing?

Brett :

Doing good. Doing good. We got Bill Ver Google Director. What's up Bill? Hey, how's it going, Brad? Good. Good. And Nick Flint, you're back. You were just, you're fresh off a podcast appearance, so you're like all warm and loose. Email and retention director, how's it going? Two in one month,

Nick:

That

Brett :

Might be a record. Two in one month, man, man, it's like you're basically a co-host at this point. So I asked a question, then I introduced you, but would love to hear your answers. Are you sleeping? How do you feel? How's the team? Are we still riding high or what's our status?

Nick:

It's no coincidence that within Arm's Reach is an energy drink for me. That's how it's going.

Brett :

And we are not endorsed nor sponsored by any energy drink. But Nick, what is your energy drink of choice?

Nick:

I'm a flavor addict, so my two go-tos are Ghosts and Rise. Both them have killer collabs

Brett :

Rise. Nice. Bill and or Christine, what is your caffeine source of choice and does that shift during the holiday season?

Christine:

I need to regulate my caffeine. I need to keep it pretty level, more than one cup of coffee and things go off the rails.

Brett :

We were just talking about how Christine is loud, intense, in a very good way. So you've got to make sure too much caffeine and it's too much.

Christine:

No, it's not fun for anybody now.

Brett :

Okay, yeah, what about you? For

Bill:

Me, if it's before noon, then coffee black and I might drink a whole pot. And then if it's afternoon, like right now, my

Brett :

Peppermint tea. Peppermint tea, man, I love that. I feel like so much of that conversation just really describes who you guys are, describes your personality, and a quick couple sentences is really, really great. I lean more caffeine as well, but I like to throw some healthy fats in there. And I'm with you, bill. If it's before noon, I can crush a whole bunch of it and I feel pretty good. So we're going to get into some specifics. We're going to get in the D two C side looking at Google Performance and some year over year numbers and just what we saw with our clients. Same with Amazon, same with email. But before we do that, I want to unpack a couple of global numbers that I think are really interesting. So Shopify, of course, they do their Black Friday, summer Monday tracker, you can follow along live and there's an hourly minute by minute sales tracker, which is super cool.

So I do recommend next year following that if you've not done that up to this point. But the Shopify data showed there's 24% year over year growth in terms of GMV. So obviously Shopify is not fully tracking someone's profitability and things like that. I think they generally know it, but 24% year over year growth from a GMV standpoint, 11.5 billion in sales tracked through Shopify. As of this recording, Amazon data's not outsourced, going to rely on our client data for Amazon. Also, I like looking at Triple Whale because Triple Whale, they're one of our partners we love. Triple Whale is a third party attribution tool, but also they got a lot of GMV running through their platform. So 2.02 billion tracked over Black Friday Cyber Monday. Total ad spend 313 million. Just a quick note. So 200, 2 billion in revenue, 313 million in ad spend. What's the merr on that? Anybody want to anybody do quick math in your head or paper Bill? You can use paper. I just don't use a calculator. More on that in a second.

New customer revenue, 59% of total revenue was from new customers. So kind of underscores that, Hey, black Friday, cyber Monday is a good time to drive new customers, although more nuance than that in just a second. 40% then was returning. But really the new versus returning depends wildly on category. And so this does skew if you are a repeat purchase type product, so food and Bev, some health and beauty, that's going to lean more returning customer. And then other one-time purchases are more new customers. So Art and Baby led the way with 60 and 64% of the shoppers over Black Friday. Cyber Monday were new customers. Food and Bev, only 41% of Black Friday Cyber Monday shoppers were new to brands. And then Health and Beauty about 55%. So super interesting there also, anybody want take a, well, first of all, anybody do that MER calculation? If you're all like, dude, that was Lam, I'm not into math, so let's just skip it. But anybody do the mecal?

Bill:

It's got to be like a 0.000 something, right?

Brett :

Well no, no. So it's 2 billion in revenue on 313 million in ad spend. So it's a little over a six, right? It's a little over six. Six X mer. Anyway, everyone at home was like, that was a lame segment. I won't do math on the spot anymore. Okay, it's fine. But anybody wants to see a guess what category led the way with the most sales? This Black Friday cyber money according to Triple Whale. So obviously lots of ways we can look at this data, but according to Triple Whale data, which triple whale's generally D two C brands, some omnichannel brands, not massive enterprise brands, but these are bigger Shopify and big commerce stores. I want to take a stab at what was the number one leading category?

Nick:

I'll guess Home Goods.

Brett :

Home Goods that did crack the top five. That was number four of the top five.

Christine:

What my guess supplements.

Brett :

So I'll throw them with health and beauty and that's kind of, it's a big category, health and beauty, but that was number two. Health and beauty is number two.

Bill:

I will guess apparel.

Brett :

There you go. So actually this is a weird breakdown. Clothing was the number one, but then they have fashion and accessories as number two. And I'm not really exactly sure how trip wail delineates, I mean the accessories piece. That makes sense. And then anyone wanted take it? So we got clothing, health, beauty, fashion, accessories, home goods. Anyone take a stab at that fifth category Pet? Ooh, that's a good one. But no, Christine, this is how you spend probably most of your evenings during the school year. Alcohol, I'll let you know. How did you know? Actually I was doing sporting goods. I know Christine's a big soccer fan. Her son is a great soccer player. I was leaning sporting goods, but yet after that then we got

Christine:

So much not good during. Not good during that. Yeah, we do not. So no, we

Brett :

Do not want enjoy high school soccer. I mean maybe we do with the help of lots of wine. It's round upon, it's round upon. Yeah, so alright, well let's dive in guys. So I thought it might be interesting to start with what were some surprises, some unusual things you saw either in the data or anecdotally during this season? And Christine, I'll start with you on the Amazon side.

Christine:

So two things. The first seven days saw the peak performance starting from November 21st, which those are three more days than we had last year. And the second, which I thought was really interesting is of our top performing brands, 60% of their total revenue came from deals. So extrapolating from that, those who ran deals, they were winning the day on Amazon, they're also looking at a percentage off of at least 25%. Those who went in at 10 or 15 didn't really move the needle. So 25% seemed like the sweet spot to get conversion.

Brett :

Yeah, let's talk about a couple of things related there. This year, 2024, black Friday, cyber Monday happened a full week later on the calendar. Cyber Monday was in December this year, which is unusual. And so sales have been trending that they would start earlier and go a little bit longer. It's been the trend over the last several years anyway, but this year especially more people are tracking that Cyber 12. And so the way you think about Cyber 12 is it ends on Black Friday and it's the 12 days prior to that. So basically a week before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. And so here in 2024, that started on November 21st and then on December 2nd. And so yeah, what's interesting, so the two biggest days looking at the Amazon data, the two biggest days, no real surprise, were Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the seven days leading up to it were bigger than the five days of the Black Friday cyber Monday. Now I know it's more days, but it's still interesting because there have been some years where the Black Friday, cyber Monday, that Cyber five just crushes everything else. And so the early days of the sale were pretty strong, very strong in fact on Amazon.

Christine:

Well Amazon, if you wanted to run a deal to cover Black Friday, a seven day deal, you had to start the previous week,

Brett :

Had to start early. And so Amazon's thinking, yeah, Amazon's probably thinking how do we level out demand? How do we grab more of the wallet? How do we make sure we've got all our deals in place? I'm sure there's probably several motivating factors on Amazon's side, but yeah, they force you to get those deals

Christine:

In

Brett :

Sooner. What about from your perspective, bill? What was surprising on the D two C slash Google side of things?

Bill:

Yeah, for sure. So I agree starting earlier and earlier, you've got to play the game. You've got to jump in when Amazon is jumping in and when the rest of the retail world is jumping in.

Brett :

I mean, think about it, Amazon really kind of sets the stage. If you look at July prime day, that's now a shopping day for everybody. Walmart gets on board, our clients get on board that are not on either platform. So if Amazon starts things early, everybody else pretty much falls suit.

Bill:

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think lean into it. I think if you're going to jump in early, go ahead and launch with that Cyber 12 in mind. Go ahead and launch on the 21st. It doesn't mean you have to start promoting right away though. In fact, I would recommend launch it on the 21st, make sure the promo code works, make sure everything looks good on the search engine results page on the digital shelf, make sure Facebook, Google, YouTube, everyone is all cylinders are ready to go. And then start promoting that sale through email and through YouTube and through Facebook and all of those. What was surprising, so Christine already kind of threw out a discount number 25% and above, or sorry Christine, you weren't seeing anything from what, 10 to 15,

Christine:

10 to 15,

Bill:

You're recommending 15 to 25. Yeah, that's interesting. And so on the D two C Shopify side, what we saw when we analyzed all of our client's data is that the sweet spot is 15 to 25%. Anything over 25% doesn't seem to result in additional top line revenue.

Brett :

Interesting. You're just eroding margins at that point. So you go past 25%, you're only hurting yourself. That's super interesting.

Bill:

Exactly. So people will act on 15 to 25%, but they don't seem to act in a bigger way when you get to 30, which is interesting because over the past few years a client would ask me, how much should I discount? And I would say, oh, 30, I walk that back now I would say 15 to 25% should cut it. However, when you get to 50% and above, so we had some that were running like 50% off, 55% off, then the numbers just skyrocket. Amazing top line. Amazing, Rowan.

Brett :

Interesting.

Bill:

Yeah,

Brett :

Interesting.

Bill:

So you have this dead zone from 25 to 50,

Brett :

Man, so that's really good insight. So 15 to 25% for D two C, you're likely in the money, you're probably getting a nice lift in sales, you're probably protecting your margins a little bit. That dead zone of 25% to 50, don't go there. Don't even do it. Right. If you're going to go bigger, you got to go really big or just stick with 25 render super insightful. Love that. Nick, what about you on the email SMS slash retention side? Obviously this is a huge time of year for leaning into that email list, but any surprises?

Nick:

What still blows my mind is how many people are purchasing when Monday rolls around for Cyber Monday. I see the backend of our calendar and they've gotten eight emails about this sale already. And somehow number nine on that Monday is what gets set to buy

Brett :

The ninth time's the charm. Yep. I was going to buy, but it didn't. Yeah, why do you think that is, Nick?

Nick:

I think it's busy during the holidays. So as you're getting ready for Thanksgiving that week leading up to it, you're having guests come over, you're buying food, you're cooking, you're laying stuff out, you're getting everything ready, and then that weekend hits, you've got past Thanksgiving and now it's say, all right, I'm unwinding now I'm kind of shifting into Christmas mode. Alright, I'll start again. Come that Monday. And a lot of people, not us of course, are shopping while they're at work, so they're on their laptop shopping at work instead of working and that full week they might have off so they don't back into the office until Monday and it's time to procrastinate and start spending money.

Brett :

Totally, yeah. Yeah. I mean Cyber Monday, there was a time, I think everybody on this call probably remembers it when Nick, you would've been really young, but when we would maybe wait and shop on Cyber Monday where we had the high speed internet, right? Shop it at home over the weekend we got slow internet, but Monday we're back in the office high speed and we're shopping away. But I think one thing that underscores Nick is a lot of times we make the mistake of just not communicating enough, just not reminding enough, just not sending enough emails and enough SMS messages and we're like, whoa, man, I already sent three people are going to be sick of hearing me. And our feedback is usually they didn't see two of those, they missed them completely or they read one and they were busy but they were having a Turkey hangover or whatever. And so you got to hit 'em more. And yeah, sometimes the ninth time is the charm, so sometimes we give up a little bit too soon. So that's great. Any other surprises on the email SMS side?

Nick:

Based on the naming convention that we set up, the campaigns, we try to make it super easy for us and the brand owners to be able to look into Klaviyo or their chosen SMS platform and to see what's name the campaign and how's it doing. And we'll have something like Black Friday Live or Black Friday follow-up or Cyber Monday live. And a lot of times the follow-up campaigns were the ones beating the initial launches. So just like what you said, we got to send more, make sure you're setting those follow ups.

Brett :

Yeah, the follow-ups where it's like, okay, hey, that's almost leaning towards, I'm about to miss it, right? So I know you launched it, but now it's the follow-up, I might miss it. So I'm going to take action now. A couple of things that I pulled from the data that Christine and team put together on the Amazon side. So if you look at the first part of the Cyber 12, so the first seven days, basically the week leading up to Thanksgiving, 46% year over year growth. So big growth year over year. Cyber Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday only up about 36%. So much slower growth still good still let's get excited about it, but we did pull a lot of those sales forward. Other big wins that you saw, Christine during the Cyber 12 or during that Cyber five weekend?

Christine:

I think one of the bigger wins that our team had was selecting these deals early.

Not everyone has an opportunity to even run a best deal, which is a seven day deal. So getting in there, our team was in there making sure our clients knew what was the making sure we grabbed whatever we could. That was number one. And then backing that up with Prime exclusive discounts. So although a best deal or a lightning deal, they were our best performers by far. We did have a few brands that leaned in more on Prime exclusives. Again, they ran at 25% and that was actually our third highest generating deal. So if you're not selected to get a best deal or a lightning deal from Amazon, lean in hard on your prime exclusives. What we do though is I have the team checking them daily to make sure there's no pricing errors. So when we go live, everything is live. They can get a little tweaked sometimes. So we like to go in, check them, make sure everything's running perfectly. And one tip about a prime exclusive, if you don't know it is it will automatically pause if you have a lightning deal running. So Amazon will not let you double dip on that deal.

Brett :

That would help

Christine:

It

Brett :

Help protect your market.

Christine:

It gives you a badge and everybody wants to see a red badge that improves your click-through rate. So Prime exclusive is my second tip.

Brett :

Cool. Cool. So let's think about this. What did the best brands do this year, 2024 versus those that really underperform? Then I'll open this up to everybody, but Nick, you want to maybe go first on that one?

Nick:

When they were omnipresent across everything, that's when we saw the best results. So instead of just saying, Hey, let's send out some emails and SMSs about our Black Friday sale proactively, they had planned out, this is our social media campaign ideas, this is our paid ad side, this is what we're doing on the website, this is what we're doing for emails. And that way all those different touch points are another way to get your customer to buy because they might see it on Instagram and then go to your website. They see that banner on the site or if they are on any kind of paid ad platform, they're seeing it there and clicking through to your site. So the more in your face you can make it, the better they even got pretty deep with some influencer strategies, making sure all their influencers associated with them. Were posting those deals on their stories. So hey look, we're everywhere. You can't miss it at that point.

Brett :

So you got the marketing calendar, so of course you're hitting 'em with email, but you've also got your ads on Facebook and on Google ads, remarketing ads, and then also the organic content. So getting influencers to also post and comment about the deals and about the sales. Love that. And actually I was just buying my two youngest kids, they're playing basketball this year. I was just buying this dribbling training thing and I started the checkout process, had to go do something else, so I, I was responding to a paid social ad, but then it was email that actually got me to close, but there's so much going on that if I'd just seen the ad and kind of started the process but didn't finish it without the email, I might not have actually purchased it or might've waited until later and who knows if it would've happened. And so really great. Bill, what about from your perspective, what did the best brands do, those that had the biggest results versus those that really struggled? Do you want to compare and contrast that?

Bill:

Yeah, that was another interesting thing that we found in our data as we looked across all of our accounts doing Google and YouTube, so the best brands, the ones that really killed it now sitewide sale is very popular, did very well also doing sort of the tiered discount. If you put this much in your cart, you get this discount. If it's this much, you get this discount. That does very well. However, something interesting, what beat both of those, at least across our accounts in our data, is discounting individual products. And now, and it is a clear winner in our data and we had small brands doing it and we had very large brands doing it. And so what's interesting though, I wonder if the reason that works so well is because the discount is clear to the consumer. Because if you look at any discount whatsoever, the better you communicate the discount and the deal going on, the easier it is for the consumer who has a lot of things they're looking to buy, a lot of things going on, they're being bombarded all the time. So when you're discounting an individual item, it's right there on the product page, it's right there in the cart, it's very clear that you're getting a discount that this is rare, this isn't evergreen pricing. And so I wonder if that's why it does so well, because just right there in front of you.

Brett :

Yeah, it's really interesting. And so you saw that through the different channels within Google, so YouTube search shopping?

Bill:

Yeah, you look at our data holistically, but I do kind of like a walkthrough to see how does this look to the consumer? And so it's definitely characterized by, okay, we'll say cherry picking products, but I'm sure there's strategy there, like a product with the best ROI or a bestseller or whatever it is, but we'll say it's individual products, not like a category, not like a site-wide sale, but individual products that are discounted and it's like strike through pricing, red, discount price, add to the cart, cart slides over, you see the discount right there in your cart or your checkout. And that did the best.

Brett :

Yeah, it's interesting because I think that this specific product with this deal, very clear deal on this product kind of helps eliminate decision paralysis or decision fatigue where if I'm just saying, Hey, X percent still got to go decide what I'm going to get, and it's maybe just not as clear or as compelling where if you tell me, Hey, this comforter, which I'm buying a comforter for my wife, hopefully she doesn't listen to this. I don't think she listens to the podcast, so that's one of the guests. But if they said, Hey, this one is on sale, I'm like, great, that's the one I want. All right, done. I'm buying it. Right? Versus the other angle, just sitewide discounts up to whatever. It can work too for sure. But I like that specific offer on a specific product. It's really good.

Bill:

And I'll add one thing to call out about that. So we're promoting across YouTube and everywhere display and all that stuff P max. But when you run it that way, it's going to show up in your ps, give or take some caveats I could throw out there, but it's going to show up in your ps and when people are doing comparison shopping across multiple brands, you're going to see that promo price in the shopping PLA on the Google search engine results. I think that influences behavior as well.

Brett :

Totally. So yeah, PLA is product listing ads, Google shopping ads, if you will. And really if someone's searching for a product online, they're either going to Amazon or they're going to Google most likely. And so getting that promo attached to a product, it's going to show up in those Google shopping results very clearly in a very compelling fashion as well. Any insights guys? And it's cool if there's not, but did any specific channel, like any specific ad type inside of Amazon or any specific ad type inside of Google really shine or was it kind the usual suspects

Christine:

On the Amazon? It's usual suspects?

Brett :

Yeah, yeah, always sponsored product is always going to be

Christine:

The product. Always

Brett :

Going to win day.

Christine:

We all know the ccpc is through the roof, but we kept our ACO down, which was good. But

Brett :

Yeah, if CPCs go up and conversion rate goes up right along with it, then it doesn't matter. You protect the same ACOs or the same roas yet sponsor products, usually 60 to 70% of our, usually six 7% of our total spend is sponsored products. So it sounds like

Christine:

That

Brett :

Remain the same.

Christine:

Exactly. One thought process on the decision making to run a deal or to not run a deal besides your margins, et cetera, is if you're not running a deal, you're still paying the high cost per click and you're not going to generate the sale, you're not going to have the conversion that you need that if you are running something. So it is something to consider when you decide to potentially maybe sit it out, you're still going to have to pay the same price to display somewhere on your advertising. So God, I just want to make a conversion, maybe take the little hit and participate.

Brett :

Yeah, there's some math you can run there. And I had a podcast, I'll look at the number of the episode, but basically where you can run pricing optimization calculations. And so basically what you have to look at then is based on how you change your price, how the conversion rate would need to change. And I think that's worth looking at, especially if you know, hey, the CPCs are going to up 20, 30, 40%, maybe double in some cases what has to happen to my conversion rate for the math to work? So yeah, and I think it'd be really interesting for someone to look at because it seemed like guys based on, and this is just anecdotally based on what I heard from you, but also from the team, there's a lot of people experimenting with their deals. So the deals for a lot of our clients were not the same this year as they were last year. And so now you've probably got two clear case studies of here's how this discount worked conversion rate, here's how that discount worked in conversion rate, and now we can do some calculations. Am I right in saying that we see deals that were different this year than last year?

Christine:

Yes, only because of the date range also. So it's not necessarily comparing an apple to an apple any longer, it's more the timeframe starting the week earlier, but the actual deals were about the same. It's just what you decided to participate in. So a good exercise for us is, okay, let's take all of the brands from this year and last year. What did they do 23, what did they do in 24? And then extrapolate what actually performed the best. And now we have our 2025 roadmap.

Brett :

Got it. So the discounts on the Amazon set discounts were kind of the same.

Christine:

They were pretty much the same. Amazon pushes the discount for a lightning deal or a best deal based on your lowest price and last 30 days.

Brett :

Got it. Episode 2 55, Byron Myers from Glimmer, which one of my favorite episodes. But while your prices are probably wrong and he kind of walks through how to determine your optimal price, but I think now if you've got at least a few years of sales data around the holidays, take a listen to that episode and then work on tweaking your price

Christine:

For

Brett :

Next year. What did you see on your side? Bill deals mostly the same this year, meaning clients did the same thing they did last year. Do we see a lot of clients experimenting?

Bill:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think we were getting better, our clients were getting better at being simple and being clear. I think we had a lot of complex deals. I think on our end we also get better because when someone brings us the complex deal, it's complex for us to promote and set up. And so we up our game a little bit each year as we learn how to work with those and communicate those to the customer. And so we do see ebb and flow. Some people, some brands might have been just D two c e-commerce last year. They can do whatever they want now they have to sell into retail and they're confined to map pricing or something, so they can't run a big a discount.

Brett :

Yeah, right. Yeah. We've seen 'em with a couple of our larger retailers where their Black Friday, cyber Monday weekend was down a little bit, whole holiday period is up and profits are really up, but it's because they've pushed hard into Walmart or other retailers. And so they're like, Hey, we can only, now we're just all in agreement. We can only discount a certain amount. So that's impacted online sales a little bit, but over total sales, total profits all up. So that's the real

Bill:

Need for sure. And kind of some fun stuff, like last year we convinced some brands who had never run a discount whatsoever to go ahead and run something for Black Friday. It brought this huge wave of sales, and so now they're all about it. And so customers are watching for Black Friday from some of these brands like, oh, I'm going to buy this Black Friday. And then they run a discount. They haven't run all year and it just cleans up

Brett :

Any callouts on what was the best performer that we saw. And we can be on the Amazon side, we need to be close lipped or keep it close to the vest, so to speak. But what did we see any callouts for what was the best? And the one I'm thinking of, bill on the Google side is live beard. And obviously we can't give away any of their sales data, but they crushed it this year and they did not go simple with their offer. They went over the top. But any insights there?

Bill:

Yeah, definitely. And so that comes down to good communication. They started planning months in advance for what this was going to be, how they were going to structure their landing page and so on and so forth. So yeah.

Brett :

And what was their offer? You want to kind of walk back through and you get all the details right,

Bill:

Was a sitewide sale plus a chance to win a truck, a Ford Ranger I believe. And so

Brett :

Ford Raptor. Ford Raptor, big difference. Big difference Bill. Big difference. Yeah. Come on now. Come on. Everybody wants a raptor. Not everybody wants a ranger. No offense to the Ranger drivers out there, but Raptors, dude, that's primo.

Bill:

Yeah, no, for sure. And so yeah, live Bearded was a really good one. I'll also shout out to Carbon Pickleball. They did very, very well, and so I don't have the numbers in front of me. They did very, very well,

Brett :

Which we don't want to give away. Yeah, I tell numbers anyway. Percentages you find I guess. But yeah, man, what a great year for pickleball and shout out to the guys at Carbon Pickleball, CRBN. We met them Christine when we were at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle and people were giving away paddles. These are really good paddles, they're really good. And then we connected with the guys from Carbon and now they're clients, so super, super fun there.

Bill:

I also just want to throw in there, manta Sleep did very well. We were very excited to see the results on Manta sleep.

Brett :

Dude, big shout out to Manta Sleep. I have focused a lot on how do I improve the quality of my sleep because I think the data is just there in overwhelming fashion that that's how you, it's really one of the keys to longevity, to productivity, to being able to handle stress, all those things to be able to work out. And I know you guys are the same Nick, I hear you talking about a lot, but Manta Sleep, yeah, those are sleep masks, right? To help create the fully dark environment and maybe some other sleep enhancements.

Bill:

Yeah, it's the Ford Raptor of sleep masks.

Brett :

Nice, nicely done. Ford Raptor of sleep masks and so really helped them crush it and they're benefiting one from great marketing and a great partnership with OMG, but also I think there's just a collective understanding of I need to prioritize my sleep and make that a bigger area focus. So really good. Nick, from your perspective, any specific deals you want to call out that kind of won the weekend or won the sales period?

Nick:

Not necessarily a deal, but just how to help your brand stand out during this busy season where everyone's blasting everyone with different sales is a follow up email or text. Probably email because you get a little bit more room to work with to everyone who purchased during that Black Friday sale, just thanking them and showing some appreciation. I think commerce could be a little bit more two way. So instead of just blasting it with 20% off, 25% off, get your little list of has purchased during Black Friday and say, Hey, as a small brand, we appreciate it and we're getting all those orders shipped out and we hope you enjoy it.

Brett :

Love it, love it. Alright guys, we are just about out of time. Any final callouts suggestions or recommendations as we wrap up the pod?

Christine:

The week between Christmas and New Year's? This is prime gift card season, so if you're holding onto some inventory that if you unfortunately didn't move it, consider running a deal over that timeframe because it might save you some long-term storage fees in the end.

Brett :

Yeah, it's great. People maybe didn't get exactly what they wanted during Christmas or the holidays or maybe they just got cash and now it's burning a hole in their pocket. They got a gift card they can use anywhere Amazon gift card and so have 'em spend it on your product. 100%. Love that.

Bill:

I will say go with the Cyber 12 model next year for this year it would've been 1121 through 12 two I think we said. And use those first two days on the Shopify side to soft launch. Make sure everything's click in on all cylinders and then really go heavy on the promotion. Do the majority of your spend on Black Friday and then whatever is left on Cyber Monday, just go big on Cyber Monday.

Brett :

Yeah, and one other quick call out that I can't remember if I said earlier, but want to underscore it on the Amazon side, cyber Monday won, it was bigger than Black Friday or any other day on the D two C side. Black Friday is the winner and we've seen that consistently year in and year out that for D two C, Shopify and or Big Commerce stores and the like Black Friday is the winner off and on Amazon, it's Cyber Monday.

Bill:

Correct? I did look at 2023 data and Black Friday was the winner in 2023.

Brett :

That's why. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Closing tips, remarks or comments? Nick Flint.

Nick:

Just like how you should be splitting off everyone who purchased during this timeframe and setting up a little thank you. Think about everyone who's engaged but didn't purchase. There's probably a huge segment of your list that falls into this. You just hit 'em with your best offer the year and they still didn't buy. So internally, get together with your team and say, what could we do to get these people through the door? It might be selling at cost. I mean, it's never fun, but you try to get them in the door with a discount, it didn't work. Let's go ahead and get this product in their hands. At least you break even or get a little bit more personable with it. For a supplement brand, they're taking this list and they're emailing them saying, what are your goals for 2025? We'll help you put together a custom supplement stack. They're going to get hopefully a ton of replies and they're going to get them squared away of the new year.

Brett :

Love it. Awesome. Well, thank you guys. You delivered the goods as always. And hey, if you're listening to this and you're saying, my holiday has not been as strong or as stellar as I'd hoped it would be, and so next year I need to do something different and I want that to start right away, reach out to us. We would love to work with you. We know that everybody is kind of planning thinking about Q1 and beyond. And so hey, if you want Christine and the OMG Amazon team running your Amazon and really unlocking growth there and turning that into the powerhouse that you want it to be, or if you want Bill and team running your Google and YouTube and opening up a new channel of growth there, you're like, Hey, email is not at 40% of my revenue and growing like it should be. And you want Nick Flint and team to look at the email, then reach out to us because the time for us to do a strategic review audit. Kind of look at your game plan for the new year and help you take it to the next level. So reach out to us. We'd love to work with you and with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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