Nailing the first Black Friday sale 🎯
Black Friday is a democratic event. Marketplace platforms capture all the traffic on other sale days, except Black Friday. My hopes were high. We did 10x of BAU revenue. How? Let's look into it.
👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shantanu and I write about my work. What’s my work? I build businesses. Right now these businesses are DTC brands.
I use the term “DTC” loosely. DTC in strict sense means selling only brand’s own webstore. It is expensive. It takes time. For me, “DTC” simply means a brand selling on own website or marketplace platforms.
Now let’s get started with the biggest shopping festival of the year.
Black Friday sale is called as White Friday sale in the middle east. Ask me why?
See, I have managed peak events ranging from $10 Mn to $100 Mn. However, it wasn’t just me. It was an army of people. This was my first independent Black Friday sale leading a brand, with a team of 2. I was quite excited and for good reasons -
We could potentially scale our revenues by 3x to 5x.
Reset our sale baseline.
Scale much higher AOV.
Acquire new customers.
#1 How did we do?
Let me illustrate this with a chart.
Let’s look at the metrics for the period 24-27 Nov (BFCM weekend). Take note that we started the sale on 20th Nov and ended it on 30th Nov.
Black Friday Revenue (24th Nov) - 10x over BAU day.
Cumulative Revenue - 3.5x over the previous weekend (inc. Monday).
AOV - 2X compared to October | 1.4x compared to first half of Nov.
Conversion - 1.8X over the previous weekend (inc. Monday).
Customers - 3.2X more customers compared to previous weekend (inc. Monday).
You must have guessed, I was pleased.
#2 What did we do?
Simple answer - We focused our efforts and scaled investment in offer and advertising. Here is an illustration.
We began preparations in September, almost 3 months before the D-day. I took inspiration from Nik Sharma, who writes a wonderful newsletter for DTC brands.
Here are some initiatives that did wonders.
Early access signups - Our website popups were modified 3 weeks in advance to collect emails in exchange for early access to deals and secret offers. The signup rate spiked 2x to 8%.
Email blast - We sent out 4 emails on the main days. The whole team protested against this. I had to put my foot down to move it. Revenue attributed to emails was 2x more than Singles Day sale.
Scaled ad budgets by 5X. It was our biggest single day ad spends. It was also the highest ROI day ever. Speaks tons about matching ad spend to market demand.
Increased AOV - Our Black Friday deal was only available on orders above 150 SGD. We got frequent orders above 200 SGD.
Secret deals for subscribers - We sent out extra discounts for larger purchases (500 SGD+) to high value customers.
Meme ads - We brought in more cats and introduced black dogs this time. Cats did well, the dog not so much. We are now introducing ducks into the ads 😂
Lowest ever customer acquisition cost - We achieved 3x lower CAC during the largest sale period of the year. 🫡
Focused on brand dot com - Offer was only valid on our website. We invested 10x more our website traffic compared to other channels.
No stock outs (finally) - I managed to get the inventory up and ready on 24th morning. Had to pull a lot of punches and escalations to make this happen. I believe people still hate me for the constant follow ups and escalations during the week.
Focus was Singapore only. We didn’t have inventory or customers in US. So we paused marketing in US and moved all the budgets into Singapore.
#3 What didn’t work?
It wasn’t all rosy. Its painful to think about all the lost opportunities. Let’s go through them
The US market revenue was zero (on Black Friday!). We couldn’t get inventory live in time. In fact, we were struggling to fulfil orders from first week of November until the end of the month.
Still nowhere near the 3 marketing ROI target - Yes we had the best ROI in months. However, it is very poor. Definitely not profitable and scalable.
WhatsApp campaign couldn’t be executed well - The campaign was set up last minute. It was delivered to just 42 people. Shameful to say at the least.
The website wasn’t optimized for conversion. We migrated to Bigcommerce in first week of Nov (gosh 🫢). It lacked all the conversion driving features we had on Shopline. We did revenue purely due to market demand.
Christmas bundle didn’t see interest - Our Christmas bundle release was delayed. We were hoping to sell high volumes of gift sets.
No hero product or bundle for the sale - This got missed. I forgot. By the time I realised, it was too late.
There are more things that didn’t work. Our CFO will hate me for all the spends we have done this month. Learnings have been strong, though.
#4 What’s the plan for Black Friday 2024?
Hahah, you heard it right. I am already planning for 2024. Here is how I will go about it.
Focus markets - SG and US. I really need to nail US market in 2024.
Introduce secondary markets - We will start advertising in new markets like AU and UK 6 weeks prior to the sale period.
Advertising budget will scale by at least 5x.
Repeat opportunity will be huge. I expect to have a customer base of 50K+ across all channels.
We will be present on Amazon (fingers crossed).
Wider product offering - At least 2x the product selection that today.
Our social validation will rise by at least 100x in next one year.
November was a tough month. I had lost hope that we will do any revenue on Black Friday. Our inventory production timeline was delayed by few weeks. To say the least, it was horrendous. I got a few mini-heat attacks every morning.
However, we ended well. The teams came together and ensured everything was ready before the main day. Thanks to their efforts, we did wonderful.
That’s it for today. Thank you for your consistent encouragement.
It is the 10th month of Out of Singapore. You have been an absolutely amazing reader. As a gratitude, I will give away free products every week this month.
Here are the options for this week.
To claim your gift, please follow these steps.
Reply “Hi, I am {your name}”
State your favourite gift item.
State your favourite post from the newsletter. (just name is enough)
What do you like about my writing (short and sweet answer is welcome)
Your delivery address.
I will deliver the product to anywhere in the world. It’s that simple.
Here are the links to the products -
I cannot stress enough how important my current set of readers are. I am deeply indebted to the simple act of reading my emails each week. Thank you so much!
Next week, I will cover our first offline event at Singapore Marathon. I am so tired after standing for 3 straight days.
Did you think I forgot Jisoo! Never gonna happen my friend. She is my love, hahaha.
Okay, have a great week ahead. Tada! 🫡