I hope all you e-commerce enthusiasts had a wonderful holiday! As promised, I'm here to give you the scoop on the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
Like most small businesses, our Freddie and Co. team spent last week prepping for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Meg and I knew that with so much retail competition, the weekend's success would be largely dependent on our promotional offer.
Since we're giving all the proceeds to charity, we didn't want to offer any deep discounts that would lessen the donation, but we had to figure out something that was equally compelling. Most of our Freddie and Co. customers are by default MailChimp customers, so we asked ourselves,
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We knew that if anything would incentivize people to buy, it would be a brand new holiday Freddie, so we decided to offer one free with every order. On top of that, we offered free shipping and also promoted our holiday gift bundles to showcase the best deals.
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We sent our Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails out earlier than usual, at 7 am, and boosted our reach on social media with paid posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Not surprisingly, our Black Friday Facebook post performed best, with 141 engagements.
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Wherever possible, we linked to our promo details page to encourage customers to read the offer details and prevent any confusion about the giveaway. We wanted to make sure they knew that the offer was available while supplies lasted and that their free Freddie would be distributed at random. Fine print can be a little clunky, but it's best to be transparent with your customers.
On the night of Black Friday we were frantically checking the stats. Our email alone generated 88 orders, and people were still shopping! Then, on Saturday morning, we learned that we had set a new daily sales record of $2,668.92, surpassing our grand opening day sales. Black Friday really was our biggest day of the year!
Our highest grossing item was the Baron Book Bundle, which generated $852 in sales, and our top-selling item in terms of quantity was the Topog socks at 70 units.
We continued to promote all weekend via social to keep the momentum going. As Cyber Monday came to a close, we had a total of 286 orders and $5,335.31 in sales from Friday through Monday, which made November our highest selling month yet. Success!
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Meg was so excited that she was texting me from across the pond on vacation (but honestly, I think it was just because she missed me). She'll be back next week to tell you all about our stint with paid advertising. So long!
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