Do New Customers Need to Be First-Order-Profitable During BFCM?

[00:00:00] Luke Austin: depending on what your offer strategy is, but if you start running your offers that early, like it's going to, you're likely going to leave. Some of the sort of cultural hype demand moment of the BFCM time period on the table.

So try try to have something around an organic product oriented moment over the course of October that is people buying because it's a new, cool thing, but it's a full price rather than people buying for an offer, right?

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[00:01:07] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome. Welcome to the D two C hotline. This is your direct connection to hot Takes, to cold truths, and a real e-comm advice from some of the best in the biz. I'm your host, Richard, the Professor Gaffin. Call or text, eight six six dtc 2 2 6 3. Get those burning e-comm questions answered. Again, that's 8 6 6 3 8 2 2 2 6 3.

You can leave a voicemail. You can shoot us a text. Whatever's easier, ask whatever's on your mind. D two C wise, our operators. Standing by and speaking of which operator number one. He's ready to go. Tony the chopper shop. Tony, what's going on, man?

[00:01:43] Tony Chopp: I'm, I'm locked and loaded. Richard, I, I told you I had some McDonald's breakfast which is like a, you know, a rare treat for me, but I was just feeling a case of like, Hey, let's go for it this morning. A big cup of coffee and a sausage McMuffin. I'm ready.

[00:01:58] Richard Gaffin: Hell yeah. I'm loving it. I'll say that much. All right, and our other operator here. Operator number two. Luke Austin, the weatherman himself. Luke, what's going on, man?

[00:02:06] Luke Austin: I did not start out with a McDonald's breakfast.

[00:02:09] Richard Gaffin: No.

[00:02:10] Luke Austin: risky way to start out a day.

[00:02:12] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, it could go either way, for sure.

[00:02:14] Luke Austin: right? It's

[00:02:14] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:02:15] Luke Austin: you take the risk at the beginning of the day, and then after that you just feel unstoppable.

[00:02:19] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's not so much that it'll give you energy, it's just that the fact that you overcame it will give you the confidence to sort of the day, right?

[00:02:27] Luke Austin: Yes. Like I did whatever. I, I did what I wanted to,

[00:02:30] Richard Gaffin: Huh? I.

[00:02:31] Luke Austin: it was only positive. And I can, anything, the world's my oyster now.

[00:02:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, there you go. Speaking of confidence, Luke without a hat, this is the first time I think I've ever seen you on a podcast without a hat person. Maybe, but mean, it's been a long time. What's, what was with the choice today?

[00:02:45] Luke Austin: I cut it.

[00:02:47] Richard Gaffin: Cut the hair. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:48] Luke Austin: And now I, so

[00:02:49] Richard Gaffin: you don't need it anymore?

[00:02:50] Luke Austin: had very long hair and have worn a hat

[00:02:52] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:02:53] Luke Austin: pretty much exclusively for the past year, year and a half. And so now with this level of hair length, even if you're waking up multiple times a night with a newborn and roll out bed in the morning, you can just rock it.

No hat.

[00:03:07] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, I mean that's exactly why I do and don't wear a hat. So if you see me with one, it's because I haven't gotten my hair cut in too long. And if you see with without one, it's 'cause I just did. But

[00:03:15] Luke Austin: Yeah.

[00:03:16] Richard Gaffin: not, not everyone can have such sculpted hair as Mr. Tony Chop. What is your secret, by the way, Tony? What?

[00:03:23] Tony Chopp: McDonald's breakfast.

[00:03:24] Richard Gaffin: guess so. with that, we'll jump right into it, folks. You know what we're here for. We're here to answer your e-comm questions. These two guys are full of McDonald's slash they just got a haircut, so they're ready to go. We have two kinda longer ones with sort of multiple questions here, so we'll jump into it right now. Here's our first one. Here's a, this guy's having a little bit of fun, but let's, let's give it a listen.

[00:03:43] Speaker 2: Hey, D

[00:03:44] Speaker: two C hotline is this thing on. D two C hotline is this thing on, um, calling in as a e-commerce brand operator who has consistently seen a new customer revenue and volume decline year over year for the last couple of years. Uh, and the, the other problem I'm facing is, uh, new customer profitability and.

I'm trying to decide what, uh, I should prioritize, uh, if not both, uh, do I want to continue to see my new customer revenue decline? But ensure that my new customer cohorts are profitable or should I push harder for, uh, flat new customer revenue or, uh, ideally new customer revenue growth at the expense of that, uh, new customer cohort profitability.

Thanks so much and looking forward to hearing back from

[00:04:36] Speaker 2: you and the team.

[00:04:38] Richard Gaffin: All

[00:04:38] Tony Chopp: Well, I don't think you really have a choice, right, Luke? I mean, the new customer file can only shrink. So far, and then it's zero.

[00:04:46] Luke Austin: Yeah, I think in the, in these conversations there's, there's always, there's always going to be some trade off in terms of the profitability against the, the longer term objective. So I think the, the core question in any of these conversations is. What is the time window in which you are trying to maximize profitability? If it is. Two months from now through the end of the year for whatever that event might look like, then potentially it's not, not the right move and the level of investment to be able to bridge the new customer revenue and start to see growth, there is going to be a hindrance to that. Likely. It's not that short of a timeframe in terms of the business objective and what you're after, and it's over the next year, 2, 3, 5 years, that we're really looking to grow the business, in which case you have to have that purview because there is going to be that short term pain for. Long-term gain in terms of the, the impact of that, that customer cohort. So it is the, it is the customer cohort that is gonna require the most investment. And it is going to take an investment over a period of time to get the new customer. back to a place where it sets you up for a trajectory in a longer time period for where the business wants to be. That needs to be clear to everyone. The time period in which you're needing to maximize profitability needs to be fully agreed on. And then from there you can start to align on what the, what the specific strategy against it should be. But that is going to be the case. Everyone needs to be on board, otherwise you start to enable whatever, enact, whatever strategy you aligned on. And. A week in, two weeks in start to see, Ooh, things are a little tighter. The ME r's a little lower, the A cost is a little higher. This is, you know,

how long is this gonna continue for? Let's pull back so we can round out the month at the EBITDA number. There there's gonna be, there's gonna be a short term impact.

[00:06:32] Tony Chopp: And one thing I want to add too is like,

when, when you're talking about investing into the business,

that doesn't necessarily have to mean media dollars. So if, if the caller's calling and

talking about what sounds like a multi-year trend

Of new customer file shrinking,

I'm assuming you've tried

many, many media tactics and probably offer strategies, et cetera, et cetera,

and the investment.

That you are probably need to be making is in product development and

what, what are you actually selling to the market

potentially? What do you think about that, Luke, as a way to think about sort of pairing with your idea about what are you trying to, when are you trying to maximize this return that you're making Over what, over what timeline?

And if your timeline is, like, let's just say hypothetically, let's say you're operating on a five or potentially time tenure timeline, or maybe this is a business that you're gonna, that you're not planning to exit necessarily, but planning to maintain ownership and use it, use it as your source of income that that might be a totally different type of investment.

[00:07:39] Luke Austin: Totally.

[00:07:40] Tony Chopp: what?

[00:07:41] Luke Austin: Yeah, and I think, and I think it's important in the context of those questions and that exercise to understand. To understand what the goal is and what time horizon, because if you're, if you're really. And then, and then sort of bucket each of the investment activities relative to that Like, an example maybe. Okay, we are going to, we are going to make an investment over the next month. So the, the classic one, right, like a head of Q4, we're gonna fill the funnel in September. So we're gonna make an additional investment. We're gonna increase our ad budgets, you know, 20% what they normally would be, or 15% into these upper funnel channels, CTV podcast.

And we're gonna make additional creative investment as well so that this next month's going to take a hit, but then the next two months following are gonna be really strong, right? Or Q4 is gonna be really strong as a result. So that's one bucket of activities that's like sort of. up your media spend plus creative investment and media of creative investment. There's another bucket of investments, which is like, we are gonna develop a whole new product category, and that is going to be a thing over the next several months that we're gonna work on collaboration with other brands. That's a larger investment from a financial standpoint and a has a longer time horizon, but the. Potential impact of it is much greater as well. Right. And, and then you can go down the line as well of like, we're, we're gonna build out an or an organic affiliate strategy. We're doing product seating and build out our own in-house creator network, and we have all these, and it's gonna be the next three months to capture that. But it's important again, the time horizon and the amount of gap because. If it's like the business over the next five years, we're wanting to see a dramatically different outcome than we are currently. Then the like plus up the media spend and churn out 50 more creatives this month is like, that's gonna like get you closer to the next couple months numbers.

But like that's not a big enough swing to get there, right? So that's why getting clarity on the gap is so important is the first step, because the activities that result from that are gonna live in completely different categories of investment and time horizon.

[00:09:40] Tony Chopp: It, it sets the rules of the game.

[00:09:42] Luke Austin: Yep.

[00:09:42] Tony Chopp: And they can be dramatically different depending on if you're operating on a, you know, we're, we're trying to exit this business in 18 months, versus this is what we're gonna do for the next 10 years of our life,

[00:09:51] Luke Austin: Yep.

[00:09:52] Tony Chopp: or whatever.

[00:09:54] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, part of it, it sounds like, it's like the, the time horizon that our caller is speaking about to a larger problem than simply a matter of like how you're allocating media dollars or whatever. That at least sounds like it's kind of like the fundamental kind of basis of, of some of your answers here.

Is that more or less a good summary?

[00:10:13] Tony Chopp: Yeah, I wish these callers would call in too, so we could like ask them questions,

[00:10:18] Richard Gaffin: Do

[00:10:18] Tony Chopp: you know. Let's see. Is Richard, see if we can, let's see if we can get some real life interaction. 'cause we have some, all of these things like need follow up questions.

[00:10:28] Richard Gaffin: Right.

[00:10:28] Tony Chopp: There's for sure there's like media sort of questions like, you know, how much UGC style, greater content, content, are you working through your media accounts?

Like how good is your signal throughout all your, your media ecosystem? You know, what, what exploration have you done past you know, can sort of. Really low funnel conversion, optimized campaigns. Like, have you, have you tried to stretch up into a little bit more awareness? What, what is, what is the brand's premise and, and the audience that you're trying to reach and, and where, where are those people in, in the world?

Like, other than obviously they're on meta and, you know, so social channels, but where does your customer exist and spend their time and how can, I mean, what's the story you're trying to tell them and how, and how can we get that in front of them?

[00:11:13] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Well, no, I mean, that's a good point. Maybe we put together a, a live call in show at some point here just to get folks to actually, so they can actually answer some of these questions back because we can sort of speak in, in broader brush strokes, which is like that, kind of like the rubric of at least saying like. like the timeframe over which this has been happening, which is a couple of years that suggests that there's a specific type of issue that we can speak to. But yeah, definitely being able to dig into the specifics of what you're doing would be helpful for that, so,

[00:11:40] Tony Chopp: It sort of suggests to me if that, if that is the case, it sort of suggests to me like that a couple years ago the brand had something that was working and they haven't had a lot of innovation since then. That that's kind of like, would be my guess.

[00:11:54] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. All right. Anything else you guys wanna hit on this one? No.

[00:11:59] Luke Austin: am good.

[00:11:59] Richard Gaffin: All right. Sounds like. All right, let's move on to our next voicemail here. So has a couple more questions in, but let's uh, let's, let's roll here.

[00:12:07] Speaker 2: Hey

[00:12:07] Speaker 3: guys,

[00:12:08] Speaker 2: just wanted to

[00:12:08] Speaker 3: start off by saying. Um, I love what y'all are doing with the D two C hotline. Q4 is quickly approaching us, and I have a few questions centered around creative promotions structure and timing. Uh, first, you know, what creative themes do you guys recommend for Q4 gif guides, bundles, promos, um, when thinking about promotions is the best test offers, you know, ahead of BFCM.

Um, how, how do you, you know, structure warm up campaigns to build out that remarketing pool before BFCM? And lastly, how early should we start running holiday specific creative? Um, any oversight here would be greatly appreciated. Again, uh, I love what you guys are doing over here and, um, yeah, cheers.

[00:13:00] Richard Gaffin: All right, so a number of questions in there, but primarily breaking down like. Generally speaking, our approach to BFCM. So where do you guys wanna start?

[00:13:07] Tony Chopp: I mean, there's a couple principles that I think are really important. So, number one, if there's any, if there's any point at all ever in the year where you want to make some investments in media that are not a hundred percent conversion focused, where you're intentionally trying to reach. Closely connected people.

Like, so maybe it's an add to cart campaign, maybe it's a lead gen campaign. Maybe it's anything that stretches out your reach now is the time to do it, for sure. That's, that's like premise number one. And, and to, this kind of connects to the, the previous question about like the time horizon and what, where, how you're thinking about operating.

Under, under most circumstances we're, we're very rigorous about operating to a contribution margin outcome on a daily basis. If there's ever a time where you wanna stretch your wings a little bit, spread out your investment, it is leading up into this cultural buying moment. The other premise, and Luke, I've heard you talk about this a bunch of times, and I, I think the idea of.

Having offers throughout Black Friday and Cyber Monday that have some differentiation, but that's that stack in a way that's part of the normal behavior that consumers expect. So for example, the Cyber Monday offer being larger, more attractive than the Black Friday offer. We've seen, we've seen folks do this really well over the years.

And then the other, the other piece of the puzzle is. For me, I, I think the offer, offer testing and offer design is not something that you're, you're

going to figure out right now on October 1st. Hopefully you have

some ideas about what, what works for your audience and where you want to go.

Um, we, we are always, I'm always a big fan of.

Trying different ways to capture perception of value. So gift with purchase is like the obvious example,

but it's not the only way. Bundles are another great way to, to,

to put value together. All that's gonna do when you think about gift with purchase or bundles is potentially

allow you to have a higher a OV, allow you to run

with a more aggressive media targets and push more volume in this moment in time.

Make the investment now.

Stack your offers

bundle gift with purchase.

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[00:16:14] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Let's so do you look, because I know like you've had some perspective, like you kind of alluded to Tony around this sort of differences structurally that you might wanna have between your Black Friday and your Cyber Monday offer, that type of thing. So what offer specifically, maybe like what are we thinking this year?

[00:16:29] Luke Austin: So there's two camps you could be in. One is like, be very thoughtful and have a, a story, a narrative that you bring your consumers in that spans. September through December, you know, and into the new year or the other one. Just run your best offer ever and hammer it as hard as you can over the course of time period.

And, and candidly, I think that decision is more brand specific. Like, I don't think there's like a Oh yeah. Do the, like very thoughtful sort of storytelling because the, the challenge is it's sort of. our perspective on multi-touch attribution tools comes into play, which is the consumer journey is not linear.

Like, it's not like you have a group of, oh, 10% of your customers interact with each of your channels in this specific way every time. Everyone has a unique journey. And so the reality is whatever your grand master plan for, call it September through December looks like in terms of your offer strategy and creative and media plan, et cetera, consumers are going to feel it in a really different. Way individually, right? Like no one is going to come in and go down every single step and every single channel in that way, and interact with every, every offer. Now is something very real about the consumer demand at different points in time. Right? And just the sort of like cultural moments that Black Friday, cyber Monday create that holiday gifting around Christmas crates, and then even into Boxing Day and then into the new year.

Like there's, there's real sort of like cultural expectations and demand where like you're the, even if you run your best offer and you run it in. You run it beginning of November, it's not gonna do as, as well as it will Black Friday, cyber Monday, just because of the, the, the moment and, and people holding out for that time period, which is what Tony's alluding to, which is really important to consider and, and these decisions. So given that exists high level. Is tends to be a lot of folks sort of on, on the line, right? Like sort of just like waiting, kind of like prior to Q4 on the line. And that spans into October to some time period, and then late October, so call it like second half of October into the back half of the month is when people really start to ramp up into holiday specific messaging.

Not offer strategy, but holiday specific messaging around the holiday collection or holiday styles or. Winter, winter winter styles catalog, et cetera. And then that will go into your early. November sort of pre Black Friday, cyber Monday, early bird offers that then wraps up into Black Friday, cyber Monday.

So the broad, the broad strokes is you want, you want some marketing message and the creative against the market message, and then the distribution on the media channels that capitalizes on each one of those moments, which is you need something unique in September into early October that helps to get people interested in your brand for some reason, so that when you get to holiday, they're, they're aware of who you are in some context. And that's why you see a lot of brands do giveaways during that time period. It's why you see a lot of brands engage in larger influencer strategies and do upper funnel media buys. I think that's a very brand specific question, but get some engagement of those people on the line to be some unique way then into October.

Ideally, you have some sort of holiday specific. Scent of your candle or scent of your deodorant or style of your shirt that you're launching, that like that is a holiday. Specific things because people are starting to talk pumpkin and, and PSL and and s'mores are everywhere. So like you, you need, you need. Something to speak to the styles of the season and the sense of, of the season starting in October, then November, it's like end of October, beginning of November is when is when the offers start coming to play, and ideally those ramp up into. Cyber Monday as the culmination. Now if you're a really heavy gifting brand, your December might be bigger.

So this is like caveat for that. But they, you, you need to think about where's the focal point? Where's the, where's the peak, the highest peak in this whole trajectory, whether it be Cyber Monday or, you know, December 15th prior to gifting. And then what is the sequence to be able to ramp up to that period, which is better and better offers.

But but likely less optionality is like sort of the two levers that you have to pull in the context of this, right? You're gonna get a better offer later, but you likely will have less selection available in terms of the sizes or the colors of the scents available to you. That's the decision you have to make.

So you're gonna get 20% off now and you can choose from anything, but two weeks from now, you're gonna get 35% off everything. And but there won't be as much in stock, right? And so those are the levers to play with the specific offers and the functionality and the messaging, and whether it's. Buy two, get one, or whether it's a gift with purchase, whatever, like those can all be sort of, more brand specific, but something unique to speak to and get customers interest in the brand in September and offer the creative relative to it holiday specific catalog collection, new product launch around October, timing, then ramp up in November to your peak through the levers of higher offer, less optionality, vice versa.

[00:21:28] Richard Gaffin: Right. So I mean, like, did, did any kind of go back to our, the specifics of our callers question? 'cause there were a lot. Questions within this one question about like how early should we start running holiday specific creative? So in a sense, it sounds like essentially October, but it would be around these sort of like seasonal specific product drops, like that type of thing.

[00:21:48] Luke Austin: Yes. Yeah, yeah. In, in most cases, because you don't, you're, if you start running the off, depending on what your offer strategy is, but if you start running your offers that early, like it's going to, you're likely going to leave. Some of the sort of cultural hype demand moment of the BFCM time period on the table.

So try try to have something around an organic product oriented moment over the course of October that is people buying because it's a new, cool thing, but it's a full price rather than people buying for an offer, right?

[00:22:20] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, so, so one other thing I wanted to call out here too was. His question around like how do you structure or warm up campaigns to build out that remarketing pool before BFCM? So it sounds like what he's getting in here here is like a little bit more on the tactical side, which again, maybe he's barking up the wrong tree there, but what he's kind of like pushing for is like, yeah.

So how do you kind of shift the structure of the account leading into that period?

[00:22:46] Luke Austin: Yeah, so anyway, I didn't, I didn't close the loop. To be clear. In me closing the loop would be, don't think about any of that stuff. Think about this, this mapping of the thing, because

[00:22:56] Richard Gaffin: Right.

[00:22:56] Luke Austin: you're filling up the remarketing bucket in that way is you have some specific offer in the form of giveaway or a big influencer campaign or whatever it might be that gets people interested in your brand for some specific reason, and you have creative map to that, and that's running in your account. Those are people that are getting interest in your brand for some reason. Not specific to an offer

[00:23:17] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:19] Luke Austin: comes around later on, not related to the account structure that you're running now, the only thing I'd add into this and from numbers standpoint, is A MER target will likely be lower in September than it will be in no in November.

And it, and it. Probably should. I'm trying to think of what caveats there would be to that, that rule and that way you're being more aggressive on acquisition because of the payback and you have less dis a lower discount rate, all of those things. So that would be fi sort of from a financial and metric standpoint, the thing that you likely would look at.

[00:23:53] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Now, Tony, I did see you sort of nodding your head a little bit when I was talking about account, account structure. Do you differ in some way to this or are you roughly on the same page?

[00:24:02] Tony Chopp: No, I mean, we're saying the same thing just in different ways. I I have a question for you all. Do you right now, do you have. Any Black Friday Cyber Monday purchase ideas in your heads.

[00:24:16] Richard Gaffin: No, not at all. I mean, other than like certain things that I'm interested in buying, but I haven't thought as far as like, I'm going to buy, I'm gonna wait to buy this for later, I guess.

[00:24:28] Tony Chopp: Yeah, so, so I do, but it's actually not specific things, but it's brands, it's brands that I'm getting introduced to and I'm experiencing their, their products on in social. And I have like a little, a little list and go, go ahead and at good luck attributing that. Have fun to, to the point of like, you know, your multitouch attribution software is, is whatever.

So, and this is, this is kind of like the, the.

[00:24:56] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:14] Tony Chopp: ish days, which I, which I agree with.

If there's a time to go and have something to talk about and try to cast a a little bit wider net, you're gonna reach people like me who are poking around looking for ideas, and then we're gonna come and find you on Black for, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna come and look for these brands on Black Friday, probably through a Google brand search.

[00:25:35] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, no, no. That, that makes sense. It's like there, there's a certain Yeah. An inability to kind of understand. The ways in which this kind of awareness marketing right now is going to play into the season in a little bit. So I think like it would be helpful to get into, move away from these sort of generalities into specifics of like, what are examples of brands that you've seen do this well?

And I'm talking specifically about what you're talking about Tony, like making them, making yourself familiar over these next, like the September, October period of time.

[00:26:05] Tony Chopp: Yeah, I mean, GU Gusted keeps hitting me with this t-shirt ad that I just, I'm like, I'm gonna go buy this, this of course, like it's an eight pack. Okay. So what was I talking about before? Bundled eight pack of t-shirts. They look great. It's the, the, the picture is like. Beautiful. And now I wrote it down.

I have a little list. I write down the brands Guston. I, I knew about them before, but they're, they made it into my into my Black Friday, cyber Monday sort of idea category for my, for my dad. 'cause he loves t-shirts and he wears

[00:26:37] Richard Gaffin: Oh, there you go.

[00:26:38] Tony Chopp: boring one. So I'm gonna give 'em an eight pack of pretty colored ones.

[00:26:41] Luke Austin: There's gotta be some. There's gotta be some tool out there that you can do this. Like it helps you curate your list. Like here's all the brands I'm interested in and then suggest the right times to buy based on the offer strategy based on last year's e email cadence and offers they had live and like, okay, gusted buy on Thursday night before Black Friday, cyber Monday on their VIP email list.

Okay, this,

[00:27:04] Tony Chopp: We should build this. This is good.

[00:27:06] Luke Austin: it's gotta be out, it's

[00:27:07] Tony Chopp: So you wanna know, the thing I'm most excited about in the whole world I think is Shopify. It's got, it's got a thing going on with open a OpenAI and they're gonna build a universal cart. So meaning that I can cruise around the internet and add stuff to my cart and it's like a universal shopping cart everywhere.

And I just, I don't know why somebody's never built this before, but apparently I, the way that I dream that it's gonna work is like I'm gonna talk to GPT and I'll be like, Hey, I'm building. I wanna build this. Shopping list for my you know, black Friday, cyber Monday. I wanna know when the best deals are help that, help me figure that out.

And it's gonna hook API style into Shopify's backend and like the, the cart is gonna exist in GPT as opposed to it being a cart on somebody's website or on Amazon or whatever else. Everything's gonna change with commerce. Not to get too like crazy for everybody, but it's,

[00:28:03] Richard Gaffin: Yeah,

[00:28:04] Tony Chopp: it's all, it's all gonna be different in the near future.

[00:28:06] Richard Gaffin: it to hot take corner yet, but.

[00:28:08] Luke Austin: Feed. Yeah, feed. So Tony, feed your list, your Black Friday ness to chat GPT. See if it'll give you the playbook based on last year's strategy, like what, what days to buy to get the best deals on all the things. I

[00:28:19] Tony Chopp: Yeah,

[00:28:19] Luke Austin: you a really good,

[00:28:20] Tony Chopp: well, you know, the, you know the truth of this answer, it's, it's bas deals. Are, are the last point in the thing, but the best sele. But the trade off is selection. So if you pull the trigger at like early in the week, like before Thanksgiving, you're gonna get the good selection. But if you want the absolute best price, it's wait until Monday.

But as, as are most things in life, it's not, it's not a one or the other, it's a, you know, decide. Decide and go. So. I probably do all my shopping on, I, I usually don't like to wait until Cyber Monday for, for whatever reason. I get a little bit of anxiety around the outta stock thing, so I'm, I'm a Friday morning kind of guy.

I go,

[00:29:03] Luke Austin: really?

[00:29:04] Tony Chopp: mm-hmm. Yeah,

[00:29:05] Luke Austin: I had you pinned as a Thursday as a Thanksgiving guy.

[00:29:08] Tony Chopp: no, no, I'm,

[00:29:09] Luke Austin: why, but.

[00:29:10] Richard Gaffin: Are

[00:29:10] Tony Chopp: no, I'm

[00:29:11] Richard Gaffin: once upon a time, a Black Friday camper?

[00:29:14] Tony Chopp: camper. No, I never did that. No.

[00:29:17] Richard Gaffin: no. Just, just the eCom space. Huh.

[00:29:19] Tony Chopp: Yeah.

[00:29:20] Richard Gaffin: all right. Well, I, I think like, that note, this might be a good time for us to, to take a little pivot to hot take corner, just because it sounds like, Tony's already predicting that everything's going to change, so that's something.

But let's let's go to you first. Look, you got a, you got a hot take for us.

[00:29:36] Luke Austin: Everyone should, should switch to template only, template only emails rather than HTML coded emails prior to Black Friday, Saturday, Monday.

[00:29:46] Richard Gaffin: So unpack that a little bit.

[00:29:48] Luke Austin: It. There are cases where, brands are customizing are customizing their email output via HTML and coding each individual email. It takes a lot more time. There's, and there's more complexity and more room for error as well, et cetera. There's a lot. Typically the draw is. There's more customization, like it's like a headless site.

Like, okay, I can do all these unique things, but there's a trade off in terms of the production timing and the functionality. and I haven't seen the tradeoff to be worth it. In either case, headless websites or HTML quoted, quoted emails where the the speed and the depend dependability of a template email where it's drag and drop in a design. Is, it is just is just the right decision for most brands. So having that in place prior to the holiday rush could give you a leg up.

[00:30:41] Richard Gaffin: Alright. I like that. No, that's a, that's a solid hot take. So those brands who are holding onto their custom templates or whatever, or like their HTML coded throw that out the window. Go get your Klaviyo template or whatever. Drop your logo into the box. Yeah.

[00:30:54] Luke Austin: For the one, the one email a month that you want to do that one wacky thing with, and you want the custom customizable capability, it's not

[00:31:00] Richard Gaffin: Yep.

[00:31:01] Luke Austin: It's just not worth it. No one, no one notices it.

[00:31:04] Richard Gaffin: I love it. I love it. All right, Tony, what you got?

[00:31:07] Tony Chopp: Now go to all your stuff, make all your offers and all your special creative, but your evergreen ads, what, whatever ad is the mo, the biggest spending ad in your account right now is likely to be the largest spending ad in your account for Black Friday and Cyber Monday as well.

[00:31:21] Richard Gaffin: That's right.

[00:31:22] Luke Austin: that, that was gonna be the one I, I was, I was gonna, I was gonna say something along the lines of like, don't make any Black Friday cyber money ads. Like, just make greater content, like make lo-fi video with creators and just put your offer on your website.

[00:31:34] Tony Chopp: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:36] Richard Gaffin: There you go. Yeah. Quick, quick and dirty. Does it, I think for this, because everybody like the, you're not convincing anybody of anything, I think on Black Friday is maybe a good way to put it, right? Like they're already there to buy, so you might as well put it in front of them as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Is that a fair summary of that?

[00:31:53] Tony Chopp: Yeah, I mean, I, I think what I think what Luke and I are both saying is like, complex complexity is the enemy. It really, it really is. And the, the more simple you can execute, the more you can focus on getting your, getting your message out in front of potential customers. And the more, the more sort of different, you can do that with, with creative that speaks to different people, the better off you're gonna be.

[00:32:15] Richard Gaffin: Love it.

[00:32:15] Luke Austin: think it's.

[00:32:16] Richard Gaffin: All right folks, well, I think that's gonna do it for us. I will as always leave one non eCommerce hot take with you, which is that cars should be illegal in the downtowns of most American cities. Every city should be like Disneyland. It would be more fun that way. That's, I'm just gonna leave it at that. alright folks, well I think that's gonna do it for us. If you have any questions and if you want them answered on the pod, you can call us. Leave us Avo voicemail 8 6 6 D two C 2 2 6 3. You can shoot us a text there as well if that you'd prefer to answer or ask a question that way. And we might read your question on a subsequent episode.

Now, we also may have a live call coming up later. We will let you know of course, if that's happening. But in the meantime, for Tony, the chopper, chop and Luke. Weatherman Austin, I'm Richard, the Professor Gaffen, signing off. Take care everyone. We'll see you next time.