This case study explains how we helped a local business generate a 74.61% increase in Valentine’s Day sales in 80% less time.
If you’d like to create a windfall of sales for your company this Valentine’s Day (or any day for that matter), you may find reading this a great use of your time.
Everyone wants to flip on Facebook and Google Ads and watch sales flood in. Sometimes from the way experts talk about it online, it seems that easy. If you are not sizing up, it may even feel like you are doing something wrong.
But if you wear all the hats or have a small team not immersed in digital marketing all day long, it can be hard to identify why your sales aren’t where they can be.
With the right strategy and insight, building a sale doesn’t have to be a struggle, nor do you have to wonder if your ad budget is going out of control.
This case study should help you run your sales more consistently and predictably over time, even if your business faces slow seasons. Just rinse and repeat.
$17k In 4 Days
Out of respect for the client, we’ll keep their details private. This Valentine’s Day sale was for a local, service business limited by their capacity. Our marketing plan included three emails, along with a paid advertising strategy through Facebook, Instagram, and Google.
We developed a landing page for the offer that included a free gift with their purchase in limited qualities to create more urgency to purchase. For the email campaign, we kept it light, simple, and to the point. The first email told them the sale was coming, the second let them know the sale was live, and third reminded them that it was closing that day.
For the ad spend, we played things a bit more conservative, because it’s a smaller market. With that said, we averaged 8x ROI across all ad platforms. The result was $17,750 in sales.
Compared to the previous year, this was a 74.61% increase in sales, but this is the kicker: The sale took 80% less time. We shortened the sale from 20 days to 4. When our clients launch sales, we like to see them discount their product for the least amount of time possible. If their product is always on sale, what is the incentive to “buy now”?
Get a 6.76% Bump In Sales
You may find there are times where the offer for your customers is inhibiting their ability to spend more with you. If you have a good ecommerce platform, you can utilize cross sales, order bumps, and upsells.
There is also a very simple way to reward your buyers. Send them a thank you email. We sent all buyers from the clients’ sale two follow up emails thanking them for their purchase, while offering a different limited-time, limited-quantity deal.
In this instance, we saw an over 70% open rate on this two email sequence, with no unsubscribes. We think you will see similar results if you reward your customers for purchasing during your sale.
Let’s shift gears for a moment so you and your team can see how to put these ideas into practice to improve your next sale or evergreen offer.
The Beginner’s Mind
Have you ever noticed how valuable it is to have an outside perspective on something when you are so close to it?
When thinking about your sales, ask yourself, “Where can my beliefs be holding me back?”
This process is like hiring someone to fix your bathroom. What may take you a significant amount of time and stress to do on your own, may take someone else just a few days with the right tools and experience. Rather than believe that it’s impossible to get your bathroom fixed, believe that it’s possible by seeking out the paths to getting it done.
What we’re getting at is your beliefs on what is possible may define your reality. If you are always hitting the same goals with ease, they aren’t big enough. By stretching your goals, you allow room for your teams to ask the right questions in order to get there.
What is your sales goal? What would be a stretch goal and push the limits of comfort? Write them down and share with your team to get everyone on the same page.
Analyze Historical Data
One of the most important things you can do right now is download your customer reports, especially if you did a sale last year around this time. Whatever sale data you’re looking at, search for the story the numbers tell.
- How many people bought last year?
- What days and times did they buy?
- What was the average order value?
- How did the emails perform?
- When is your audience most engaged?
- How many mobile vs. desktop buyers?
- How many clicks to the sales page?
- What was the conversion rate on your offer?
If you are not tracking these things, it’s okay. But you want to start immediately, even if you may not use it for a while. By allowing it to collect in the background, it will come in handy when you need it.
What you’re looking for are ways to increase the revenue from a sale, while decreasing the fatigue of sales—meaning the sale doesn’t eat into day-to-day revenue, or the next sale. You can start by seeking the greatest opportunities. For example, if your open rates were 10%, you have an opportunity to make a huge impact by bringing it up to 30%.
Decide which dials you want to turn, and which are not worth you or your teams’ time. Another important thing to pay attention to in your data is whether or not your sales are negatively impacting your day-to-day sales.
This often comes from products always being on sale in some form. It conditions customers into undervaluing the products they purchase. Here’s a good example: you get the same 15% off coupon in every email from a certain business. It’s accessible, yes, but there’s no urgency.
When there’s a sale always happening it can encourage lethargy in customers to “wait for the next one.” Shortening the sale and being clear with customers that the sale is happening is the best way to score on the sale, while lessening the impact on the day-to-day revenue stream.
Got the data you’re looking for? It’s time to build out the bones of your new sale.
Write a Hypothesis
In this case, we thought that we could make more sales in less time by increasing urgency. Building anticipation for the deal, and rewarding customers would also drive increased reach and investment from them. As we were parsing the 2020 data, we saw the story being told, and made an educated guess on what we think is possible with the resources available.
Formulating your hypothesis allows you to create a better offer and launch plan.
If necessary, adjust your sales goals. And be sure to set your stretch goals, because you want to ensure you can handle a sale taking off.
Craft Your Offer
Your business may be very simple with one SKU, and you may find it difficult to get creative because there’s a limit to how much it can be discounted. Are there any ways you can add value to your offer, rather than further discount?
It may sound silly to ask, but what do people buy on Valentine’s Day? You could spend a few hundred dollars to buy a free gift that they get with a purchase. You could partner with other local businesses that would give you something for free in exchange for some free advertising with the sale. Maybe they will want to promote you back.
Get creative here and keep it simple. Consider it part of your advertising budget.
If you’re working off what was originally an “always on sale” mentality, it’s important to step back and redraw what your offer looks like. Determine how the offer will look moving forward. What are the incentives for purchasing? How much will it cost, and how many will they get? Are there terms for the deal they need to be aware of? What can be done to add value?
With your offer drawn out, you can begin moving with speed.
Build a Launch Plan
A solid launch plan is key to keeping all the moving parts of your sale in one place and organized.
This contains important information including terms, links, timelines, schedule, ad budgets, due dates, targets, and anything that’s important for the team to know. Make sure every piece is approved by the project lead or CEO, because more work can be done ahead of time.
Think of this process as if you’re building a runway, so you can fly your sale right to where the customers are.
This can be a simple shared Google Doc containing links to every email, ad creative, sale and landing page copy, social media post, or other materials necessary for the launch.
If you don’t have a template, you can use this one.
As part of the launch plan, you will decide what pieces you will move forward with and what you will not. Over time, you may find that it does not make sense to run LinkedIn ads, or you want to keep social media clear from making posts about your sale.
We tend to over-prepare. What are the worst case scenarios? What if ads get flagged? What’s the backup plan if the shopping cart goes offline on the biggest sales day? Plan for all this, even if the worst is unlikely to happen.
For particularly big sales, we’ve implemented strategies to prime the audience to buy. In the month leading up to it, we’ve run ads to help buff the number of people in the email list. Don’t stress about executing this perfectly, as it’s a bonus strategy.
The important thing is that you are keeping clear documentation, no matter what. You will have real data and assets to reuse for the next one.
Create All Assets
With a launch plan in place, you now have the 10,000 ft. view of your sale, offer, and everything it’ll need to be successful. Creating the assets is the easy part. Treat your copy, ads, and pages with care, recheck and triple check to ensure that the value is present.
We usually create ready-to-use drafts of these assets, and then send them to the client or decision maker for approval.
Once everything is approved, test your emails, ensure your ads are approved ahead of time—especially if you have a short sales window. It’s important to schedule everything out in advance to give yourself some leeway to catch mistakes or further optimize.
Great habits leave you in a great place for your sale. Build the runway and leave a little wiggle room for adjusting on the fly. One of our most successful sales we chose not to send the last email we had written, because it wasn’t necessary.
Then, when it’s time to launch all you need to do is…
Press Go
You want everyone on your team to know the sale is going down. That means customer service is informed and they know how to handle ordering issues and buying questions. Who will be monitoring the emails and comments you get on the ads?
Your team should have their fingers on the pulse of the launch to make sure it went off without a hitch. By scheduling in advance, with the proper team members in the loop, you can disconnect and let it all happen.
To ensure your sale is as successful as possible, consider what post-sale organization you may need. Does your sales page expire when the sale is over? What will you do with the hundreds or thousands of people that come to the expiration page?
Think about a consolation offer you can give them. Whether they buy on time, or get the “late” offer, consider including an opt-in prompt so you can collect their information for the next deal. Operating this way with sales can help you integrate them naturally into your business’ flow, rather than worrying they might eat into your day-to-day volumes.
Decompress
These strategies need one more critical piece to succeed: the decompress conversation. A good amount of work, ideation, and preparation went into your sale, which means it’s increasingly important to understand what worked and what didn’t. How do we do it?
With ads we prepare a media report for ourselves and the client. We allow the new data to tell its story, so we can further iterate and improve in the process until we’ve created the most powerful sale possible. How can we shift the offer? What would encourage customers to spend more next time? Why did some unsubscribe? Where can we optimize for better open rates?
Also, what can you do to serve this new influx of customers better? Can you turn some of these into positive reviews for your business? Keep the momentum going!
Do this while the thoughts are fresh, and record the conversation so you can revisit for the next sale. You will be busy and back to normal business, and next thing you know it’s a new year. You won’t want to be wondering what you did well the year before.
At this point you can whip out your Zoom call, launch docs, and reports to save yourself a ton of time by keeping good practices.
Get Help When You Need It
If you have a plan, but you don’t feel you can properly execute it, it never hurts to consult with someone who does. They may have the resources, or see how to make your next big offer happen.
We’re happy to talk through any of your promotional details to make your sales far more successful than you can do on your own.
If you think we can help boost your sales, book a free call with us today.
Now get out there and make a splash!