_{“You’ll do better if you have passion for something in which you have aptitude. If Warren Buffett had gone into ballet, no one would have heard of him.” – Charlie Munger @ Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, 2008}

I love this quote from Charlie Munger. We all posses something no-one else does: our individual uniqueness. And while we may shame the same talents or aptitudes as many others no-one shares your uniqueness. Pursue what you have a passion for, apply your uniqueness, create your own lane.

Firstly, I hope everyone who was running a BFCM campaign saw huge success, got some family time and recovery time afterwards. We go again for the holidays and NY! (Don’t forget those shipping date cut offs).

In the 4 years of running BFCM as an agency it was our most successful & least stressful which I have the killer team at Flight Performance and our amazing clients to thank for.

According to Statista: Black Friday generated $9.8 Billion in online sales, a 7.5% increase on 2022 while Cyber Monday generated $12.4 Billion, a 9.6% increase on 2022. With a somewhat bleak economic backdrop hovering throughout the year, these are big increases.

Some agency stats for November across the agency:

Here are some of my main takeaways/lessons:

Treat your VIPs like VIPs

We saw specific success with brands who really leaned into their existing customer base early. Treat your VIPs like VIPs - giving them first look, first choice not only performed well but further builds brand affinity.

Your existing customers, especially for higher repeat purchase / LTV focussed brands (fashion & apparel, beauty, health & wellness being our main verticals)

BFCM is no longer a 2 day party

Each year brands have tested launching their campaigns early mostly to stand out, avoid the competitive nature of limiting themselves to a 2/4 day window. There are a few things you have to have in place to make this work: the right promotion structure to either sustain or adjust throughout the month, the right levels of inventory to support, the right pre-messaging to your consumers: as many will wait for BFCM to make purchases believing they will get better deals.

We saw brands who went early performed well and were able to not only sustain but increase sales during the prime BFCM shopping window.

To help, there were both phases of promotions + supportive creative, emails and landing pages to support.

Bundles for the win

Bundles as a core promotional offering, with 2/4 tiers in different AOV buckets performed really well and the higher AOV made for great economics. Key here from the brand side was stacking hero products with lower sell through products, allowing them to shift through the lower sell through items.

Build awareness early

Even for brands who launched early, warming your audience to the upcoming promotions paid off big time. The trade off is potentially lower sales as people will wait until the promotions hit, however we saw that the revenue trade off was more than worth it.

Specific data capture, pre-messaging to current customers: consumers know that their favorite brands, brands they have checked out but not purchased from are GOING to be launching sales (very few don’t) - a-lot of purchase decision making is done way before actual BFCM so the pre-messaging gets you front of mind when the promotions launch.

I’ve been saying this ALOT to our clients and the brands I talk to but the rise of organic social media, the rise of ‘brand’ marketing, which is sometimes seen as a dirty word in the world of performance marketing really makes a difference. Having a strong organic social presence was largely deemed unimportant when growth could simply be achieved through good media buying but the game has changed and with platforms like TikTok, YouTube (with shorts) and still Instagram, is so powerful in increasing overall brand awareness so your ads aren’t their first touchpoint or at least build upon touch points.

Of the clients we work with, there were some commonalities with those who saw the biggest success, and a strong organic presence and heavy up during BFCM was one of them.

Understand your customers and data for better planning

One of the reasons we trended so accurately against our revenue and performance metrics was through analysis and understanding of our clients consumer behavior: during and in the build up to BFCM. Analyzing cohorts to determine the level of repeat customers following initial acquisition, YoY cohort analysis for specific BFCM insights. It allowed us to properly determine and dictate spend in the lead up to BFCM.

Test earlier in the year

One of our fundamental philosophies to a successful BFCM is to test earlier in the year and double down during BFCM. This meant testing landing page positioning and structures, ad creative types, influencer partnerships.

Establish your most optimized version and double down on them during BFCM.

Brands who did this saw a big lift in overall success, specifically on Landing Page conversion rates (against a baseline is obvious but also YoY against BFCM 2022).

Creative Optimization

Foundational to our creative testing is leveraging the reporting from Motion. For BFCM we not only lead with promotional copy we looked at historically top performing Hooks, creative formats, creators, influencers and made this a core part of our BFCM creative strategy.

Taking the 1-2 punch of your top historical hooks/creatives, apply punchy promotional copy. Evergreen ads also performed well: they always do as, owing to my point earlier on people making decisions early? Those are the ads they have seen previously and have waited for the BFCM campaign to start.

BFCM is a BIG time for gift shopping: across the board one of our best performing creative messaging types was gifting.

According to Shopify 64% of people surveryed said that they would use BFCM as an opportunity to purchase gifts for the upcoming holidays!

If you didn’t use this for BFCM, use if for the upcoming holiday period and next year. Thank me later.

Do your own wrap up

If you havent already: gather all the data, insights and learning from your BFCM campaigns and write it out in detail. 2024 is right around the corner, and the lessons from this year can be used and applied for next year.

The United States is grappling with a mental health crisis. 

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), approximately one in five adults in the U.S. experiences mental illness in a given year, translating to over 51 million people. 

The prevalence of major depressive episodes among adults has risen steadily, with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reporting a 17% increase from 2019 to 2020 alone. 

These statistics underscore the growing urgency to address mental health concerns on a national scale.

As demand for mental health services surges, there is a pressing need for comprehensive and accessible mental health resources, as well as destigmatization efforts to encourage individuals to seek help without fear of judgment. 

Leon Mueller is CEO and Co-founder of Bloom, an app that teaches you to be your own therapist with self-guided video classes that help you learn and practice therapy tools & techniques designed by leading therapists with a mission to help 1 billion people improve their mental health.

Covered in the episode:

Links below for the full episode.

YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Supercharge your team’s creative workflows with Motion & bridge the gap between media buyers and your creative teams.

Motion has been a game changer for the agency and our clients:

Check it out HERE

Thats a wrap for this week! Thank you so much as always for subscribing and reading. Means the world.

Have feedback? I’d love to hear form you on what you enjoy, what you don’t or what you’d like to see more of in the newsletter so drop me a note!

Until next week…

-Daniel