12 things to please have on lock for Cyber Monday…. 🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️
1️⃣. Test your theme again once you switch to your Cyber Monday theme. Bank an order yourself. I don’t care if you trust whoever set up your discount code or automatic discount. I don’t care if you know the team wouldn’t forget to link the hero CTA. It all needs to be checked and I’ve caught mistakes like this on some of my favorite sites to shop ALL WEEKEND LONG. Don’t waste hours on the most important day of the year fixing a mistake that can be solved by checking it yourself.
2️⃣. Make sure your free shipping threshold is apparent no matter where the customer lands on your site. I was shopping on Jenni Kayne yesterday, and there was NOWHERE that showed what dollar amount unlocked free shipping. It wasn’t in the hero. It wasn’t in the promobar. It wasn’t in the cart. It wasn’t in the checkout. It wasn’t on the PDP. I COULD GO ON. I know it wasn’t because I checked everywhere and my $132 sweatpants looked a lot less compelling with shipping charged. You’re not allowing people to upsell themselves if they have no dollar amount to shoot for.
3️⃣. Switch your popup to your Cyber Offer with SEASONAL creative. It’s not enough for me to have a popup on site that reflects the correct % off. It needs to be SPECIFIC and updated to THE DAY. Cuts does this well except the popup that fired today (Sunday) speaks to Cyber Monday, but it fired over a hero today (Sunday) that says Black Friday Sale Extended. WHICH IS IT? Tomorrow, it’s Cyber Monday. Make that clear. AND, MAKE EVERYTHING MATCH.
4️⃣. Now, to contradict myself. On your site, yes – we need cohesion. But, for your ads, you are not allowed to kill off creatives that are performing just because they say Black Friday and not Cyber Monday. 1 of my best ads today (Sunday) says BLACK FRIDAY CAME EARLY. Do I hate that? Yes, of course. I’ve already launched BLACK FRIDAY EXTENDED versions of it. I’ve already launched BLACK FRIDAY OFFER ENDS SOON versions. I’ve already launched BLACK FRIDAY IS HERE VERSIONS. I’ve already launched HOLIDAY SALE and CYBER WEEKEND VERSIONS. But, Meta has found a pocket for the BLACK FRIDAY CAME EARLY ad and it’s our #1 and we’re not going to turn it off until it stops beating out the “better timed” creatives. We follow the data. Even when it’s cringe.
5️⃣. Make sure you’re up really early. I feel like this goes without saying but you’ll be able to tell early on how you’re pacing against last Cyber Monday on an hour-over-hour basis. Yes, the momentum will come at night when everyone is off work. But, if you wake up at 5am and you’re already behind, schedule another email and plan another text and increase the spend on what’s working / replan your mid-day scale budgets. It’s easier to find this out at 5am than it is at 9am. I’m sorry. Sleep sometime soon.
6️⃣. If you plan to end your sale at midnight Tuesday morning, consider leaving it on til mid-day Tuesday. There’s a lot of buyers’ remorse on Tuesday morning. Leave your discount codes active and see what you can squeeze. You don’t even need to push people to the extension. Just let it ride. Or, last year 1 of my brands made 100K on Tuesday morning and their site was converted back to evergreen – but the discount code remained active and they sent an SMS to subscribers and said – ONLY FOR YOU. SALE EXTENDED UNTIL 12PM ET.
7️⃣. Don’t drive any traffic at 100% to a net-new experience. If you have a Cyber Monday landing page you believe in, great. 50% of email traffic to it on your 1st send. Dupe the ad set and split the budget 50-50 between the LP and the page that’s worked best for you all weekend. Just because a page is optimized doesn’t mean it will hit. Can’t risk it on the big day. Whatever page wins, divert more traffic to it.
8️⃣. Keep evergreen ads running. But you already know this.
9️⃣. Don’t focus only on Meta. My weekend has been a surprise. For almost all of my clients, we’ve shifted budgets to TikTok, Google, and Snap because Meta wasn’t beating TikTok ROAS for example. Keep an eye on this tomorrow, and it doesn’t matter what your budget plan was. Be channel agnostic. BTW, Snap started to tank on Cyber Saturday for a few of my brands so more budget left Snap and went to TikTok.
🔟. Update your flows. Right now. To your Cyber offer. You’re driving a ton of net-new traffic and the 1st automated email they receive from you better be SPECIFIC TO THE MOMENT. If you didn’t do this all weekend, that’s okay, do it tonight. <3
1️⃣1️⃣. Remerchandise your site to the weekend’s best-sellers, not to showcase inventory you wish would move. You’re spending so much $ to get the traffic to the site, show your heroes and don’t give prime real estate away to weekend under-performers. Also, if something is sold out, shift it down. I know you think it drives urgency to have it there, but if I get to a site and half is sold out, I feel like I’m getting the leftovers and I always want the thing I can’t have and I always go look somewhere else.
1️⃣2️⃣. If you’re having a slow hour and need a pop, do something like this (Chamberlain Coffee). Plan this today. Yes, I know it’s Sunday but that doesn’t matter it’s CYBER SUNDAY. Not easy to throw together and test tomorrow. Get it ready should you want it / need it.
This is the only email like this I got all weekend. Meaning it’s not done enough. Do it tomorrow and make your own momentum.
