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Black Friday Brand facebook ads Fashion Long Read

Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Don’t Be That Brand.

BFCM. The time of year all brands, customers, and agencies have firmly imprinted in their minds as the cooler months roll in..
The time of year when some brands can accumulate in a SINGLE DAY what they may accumulate in several months leading up to it.

As a consumer, you will be hit from all angles, often by brands you had never even heard of, all vying for your attention, and your hard earned cash.
It’s the time your inbox receives an onslaught of “Our Cyber Monday sale!” emails, sales announcements, and your Instagram turns into a boxing match between your favourite brands.

It’s an epic time of year, absolutely. One of which we absolutely buzz off and get a thrill like no other when we see 6X, 7X, 8X+ ROAS at top of funnel. And then of course, we get all hands on deck to scale the living sh*t out of it as each hour goes by, with us chomping away to try and hit record sales months for our brand partners.

However, there is a flip side.
A big flip side which can be disastrous, and put your brand in a tricky place if not methodically thought out.

Riding on the hype train of Black Friday, Cyber Monday is a potentially disastrous decision if you follow every competitor’s lead without sensitivity to what your audience expects and wants to hear from you, and one of which if not carefully curated ahead of time, can leave you scrambling away with a lacklustre campaign that fails to hit the hype.
It’s a mega traffic time of year, which can lead to endless unsubscribes, unfollows, and potentially even bad feedback scores and ‘spam’ hits on your ads.
…We aren’t about that life.

Last year, we gave 3 top tips to maximise your sales.

This year, these tactics provided will do exactly that once again, and possibly even to larger effect than what was seen in 2019.

This year, we will provide 3 tips to ensure you don’t get it horribly wrong when it comes to your BFCM strategy..

 

1. If It Feels Wrong, Don’t Do It.

If you’re planning out your BFCM outreach right now and it feels slightly uneasy as a brand, or you straight up feel like you’re only doing it because it’s BFCM, we would recommend putting on the brakes.
If you have those negative feelings about your outreach, it’s likely that your audience will feel that way too on the receiving end.
There’s nothing cooler than a brand that thoughtfully decides not to follow the herd on a very herd-inducing stretch of days like BFCM.
This is not to say don’t do anything however, because if you do nothing you will undoubtedly miss the moment on what could have been an epic sales busting week for your brand. But rather, what I am trying to get across here is that you can dare to do differently. It doesn’t have to be a blanket site-wide sale (although for the majority, these work a treat) There is no ‘need’ to do high discounts if your brand isn’t totally aligned to that and it feels wrong, would hit the margins way too much, or maybe you just don’t need to do them; this is pretty much only if you are Christian Dior. Most brands reading this however, should be doing something.

Some food for thought here is to think around how creativity can induce larger volumes of sales, such as bundling, or tiered discounts based on amount spent.

 

 

If it doesn’t feel right to you to hop on the BFCM train in the way you think it should be played, get creative and think through what your audience does want to receive from you on a day when they’re traditionally asked to give. This brings me to my next point..

 

2. If You’re Going To Do It, Do It Right.

By this, we mean don’t be stingy.
A measly 10% off or a ‘free shipping for BFCM’ promo is not a promo for BFCM.
This is like turning up to a Halloween party with a scream mask and a bin bag, you may as well not have even turned up.
The discount needs to pack a punch, be ‘wow’ worthy, and something in which will entice a buying rush like when Yeezy drop a new pair.
The trick here, is to do something that will get your audience processing orders faster than they ever normally do, in a FOMO inducing state.

It’s easy to know if you’re winning when it comes to this, because within 15 minutes of you putting the offer live, your jaw will be dropping to the floor with the amount of ‘dings’ you get from Shopify.
If you haven’t experienced this, the chances are your BFCM of last year failed to hit the hype levels required to pack the right punch, and you don’t want to miss the opportunity once again in a year in which e-commerce will hit all time transaction highs.

When thinking through your business’ BFCM plan, I challenge you to backtrack and ask yourself if your audience would debate the offer being strong enough, or something they could easily pass on and move on to a competitor.
As a business, your primary responsibility is to produce income, and so knowing your customer and your demographic is fundamental here to knowing how to play BFCM, and how to get the adrenaline flowing from your customers when they see that glossy ad served up to them on their Insta feed.
Be the business that listens to its audience year round, and you will know what would be the best bet.

 

3. Don’t overcommit. (Don’t be that brand)

Only produce what you can keep up with.

A lot of email and social media ghosting happens on BFCM; brands that have barely sent any emails, do 1-3 IG stories a day throughout the year all of a sudden bombard you with emails on BFCM and have an IG story that looks like Tetris. As soon as BFCM is over, like a ghost, they disappear from your inbox as quickly as they came and you get little to no value throughout the other months of the year.
Using your email marketing purely as a tool to make announcements is old school, and completely useless for today’s consumer, and one of which will dwindle your subscriber list faster than you brought them in.
There is enough clutter in people’s inboxes – if your emails have no utility to audiences other than as bait for them to spend money, they will sense this, and you’ll lose them. Especially so with this point, you need to ensure that if you are to send a ton of promotional content, you are ready to keep this up to a similar level once the hype settles and the period is over.
As soon as the middle of December rolls around, you need to ensure you keep it up in a way that is true to your brand.
One saying we have at The Normal Company is that LTV is the master metric. Do not jeopardise your long term stature for the short term shiny dollar, ensure you can carry everything out in a moderation that suits you, suits the brand history of marketing, and the future in which you plan to continue the distribution.

If you want to captivate and engage with your audience in a meaningful way, start off by sending useful content in your emails and boosting its intrigue for your audience.
Does your audience want to receive brand updates, funny memes, helpful information about sustainable fashion, a cause in which you back as a brand, or useful advice that suits why people buy your product?

Show up to your customer in a way in which best reflects your brand, the tone of voice in which you wish to be perceived with, and a manner in which you would be proud of seeing when looking at it’s content, context and value to the audience.
Selling your products or services, especially on BFCM requires a nurturing process more often than not. Don’t think that just because you’re giving out a once-in-a-year discount that your audience will let you skip over the fundamentals of what makes them want to buy from you.
Create a vibe, an aesthetic unique to you, a feeling which your customer is a part of, and you will forever have an audience which is actively on the lookout for your discounts, and ready for you to drop that email bomb on them as they not so patiently press refresh every 10 seconds on November 27th.
What I have described here, is that high LTV brand which dominates it’s market.
When you have an audience like this, you have what we call a superbrand.

Before BFCM comes around this year, start sending the emails and doing the work now to build an engaging conversation between you and your audience. Well, tbh you should have been doing this way before now, but creating a hyped and engaged audience is the firepower you need which will front-end-load your campaigns before you’re even thinking about them. It’s the surefire way to boost the success of any BFCM play you put out there, in a way in which your competitors could only dream of keeping up with.

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Black Friday Fashion

Black Friday: How to Win in 2019

The mad rush that is Black Friday and Cyber Monday is upon us. We are prepping our ‘Normal’ brands for some huge revenue busting figures come the end of it all. It’s expected to be a year bigger and better than last year, which heaved in a record of $6.2 BILLION in the US market in online sales alone. 

But, with every brand scrapping for the attention of the end consumer, will your brand REALLY hit those targets you set out to?

Here’s our Normal Company essential tips to soak the most out of the shopper frenzy..

1: Start Hyping NOW

A Black Friday promotion when done correctly, creates FOMO and drives impulse buys better than any other time of year. However, the brands that really win at this game are the ones that give their followers, email lists and previous customers a little heads up.

Why does this work? 

It’s the simple hype strategy, with the edge of the first mover advantage.

Remember, you are battling with 1000’s of other stores for those credit card details come the start of the weekend, and if you leave it too late, you are susceptible to being pushed out of the way by the stores that capture your customer’s attention first. If you can get in early, and create some hype about what is to come, you already have your customer’s attention, and are wetting their appetite by letting them browse the site, already anticipating making the purchase once the discounts become available.

Who does this well? 

Maniere De Voir as you can see here, have been hyping their massive 70% off promotion since the 17th November. This would have generated some huge intrigue and anticipation, allowing their loyal fans to essentially know what they are going to be in for, ahead of time. This has been done in such a way, it is similar to an event. A ‘save the date’ hype strategy which will have their customers on the edge of their sofa, with their wallets ready.

Maniere De Voir Black Friday Promotion

You can bet that their revenue figures will hit some very interesting numbers after BFCM.

2. Have Instant Offers

Black Friday is all about discounts and deals, and you’ll be dealing with seasoned shoppers who want to get the best deals and products for their money. So with this in mind, you need to place your deal in full view; from the moment people land on your site, add items to their cart and even after they’ve checked out.

The key here really is a key principle of success here at The Normal Company; make it easy.

Make things as easy as possible for customers to buy from you. Ramp up that conversion rate by eliminating as many barriers of sale as possible and guess what? You will get more sales.

When people have to search for deals or codes, especially during a big rush such as Black Friday, this creates a barrier which is most definitely unwanted for you, as the customer might end up going to a competitor if they cannot find a good enough promotion. So, you’ll need to give people instant access to discount codes, and make them easy to see. Spam that thing all over your social media, bang it on the front page of your site, and put it on every page as a banner. Promote it like a Kardashian, and break the internet. Don’t hold back.

A prime example, is Hot Topic. 

Click on their site and you are not going to miss their 30% discount offer. As a shopper lands on their site, there will not be a single person that will be missing this, and so this will get them into buying mode instantly.

Hot Topic 30% discount

3. Anticipating things to BLOW UP? Get your customer service ready. 

As an online shopper, you expect good, fast and reliable customer service. Especially at this ripe time of year when a ton of online sales are gifting; customers want to get it right first time when buying for someone other than themselves. LivePerson did a study revealing that 83% of online shoppers actively seek out help while they shop online.

If you have a scarcity of customer service on your website it will only fill your shoppers with doubt and make them uneasy about completing a purchase. At this peak part of the season when you are wanting some big revenue pumps, you need to be prepared for an influx of customer enquiries and questions. Be on hand, and invest into your site to ensure that you have everything a customer would need in order to have their questions answered, and fast.

You need to have your live chat, FAQ’s, size guides, customer support lines and returns policy as accessible as your offers for Black Friday. If any of these integral parts is unavailable before a sale, it’s most likely to be unavailable after a sale, and thus will create doubt, and leave you without the sale.

ASOS are killin’ the game when it comes to fashion e-commerce, and we are constantly reviewing why, in order for our brands to be ahead of the market. One key factor in ASOS’s rapid expansion and growth, is that their ASOS Stylists Live Chat is always on hand. If you have specific requirements such as particular sizing or needing any form of advice, you literally feel as though you are in a store, speaking with a genuine stylist.

Shore this stuff up, and get maximum ROI and conversion rates.

ASOS Stylist Chat

Happy BFCM!

The Normal Company x

Categories
Fashion SMM

Carousel Posts; The Secret Weapon for Engagement?

Ever sitting there with ‘Gram-Whiplash’ thinking what the hell just happened with the time?

You went to check Instagram for a couple of minutes to pass the time, only to end up losing 48 minutes of your day…

Your favourite influencers and brands probably had something to do with that.

…and the main culprit for attention grabbing and sending you down a deep, dark rabbit hole?

Carousel posts.

In 2017 Instagram launched this new carousel format, which allows users to add up to ten images or videos to a swipeable single post. It didn’t take long for the new feature to gain popularity, especially in the influencer and fashion space which expectedly, adopted it in a warm embrace.

Additionally, high roller brands have been quick to pounce, using the carousel to promote look books, entire collections in one post, and capsule wardrobes in one ‘gram.

Attention is a key metric for brand success. If you don’t have it, you don’t have an audience, and if you don’t have an audience…

…You’re irrelevant.

Some of our favorite influencers that our brands at The Normal Company work with are out there showing brands why they’re missing out if they haven’t made carousel posts a regular and integral part of their content flow.

Influencers leverage the feature to add an extra layer to their partnerships, and showcase everything from their carefully procured trips to Hvar, selfie styles in the bedroom mirror, to 5 different ways to wear a blazer in Winter 2019.

With this becoming a top trend to stay relevant, and with the average engagement per post being around 35%+ on a standard post, (The Normal Company campaign analytics September 2019) we highly recommend that you stay ahead of the curve, and get your influencers to post your products in a carousel layout.

Giulia Nati’s account @giulianatiofficial posts mainly single image shots, however to mix it up she will post carousel images that depict a ‘story’ of her day, or in this instance on a brand collab, the carousel image comes into it’s own to showcase how the front and back of her outfit is truly unique, giving an instant experience with her audience as to how unique her particular daily wear is.

Giulia not only knows how to work her angles in the latest fashions, but she knows how to put her content to work too, which makes her a very good choice for our luxury womens labels to work with on a consistent basis.

The data on the back of these posts is astounding, and when used in comparison to single image content posts, we also see the back end metrics lining up nicely for us to add in our Normal Formula, to scale brands in this peak part of the calendar. High quality traffic gets generated, which allows us to fully leverage the influencer collaboration to maximum capacity and sales ROI.

There you have it; the hidden lever for content performance on Instagram for some of the top brand influencers.

With the Instagram algorithm always swinging in strange ways, you need to up the ante when it comes to how you collaborate with influencers to get maximum returns. Influencers work, and always will work, but only with the right system in place and staying ahead of your environment.

Categories
Fashion SMM

Why Beauty Brands Are Pretty Money.

The beauty industry is changing, expanding at a rapid rate, and having more investment ploughed into it by the day.

And, investment firms are taking notice.

This, is why Beauty Brands are Pretty Money right now.

According to a recent report from Nielsen, 96% of traditional beauty retail channels (meaning brick-and-mortar options) are controlled by the top 20 cosmetics manufacturers. But, on the contrary to this, 86% of e-commerce channels are controlled by companies outside the top 20.

What does this mean?

Opportunity for the space is ripe.

Smaller beauty e-commerce brands (mostly online only) are dominating the online marketplace for direct-to-consumer sales. And now, we see that outside investors are dipping their toes into this sea of new waves.

In 2018 alone, US-based companies in this beauty sector raised a record amount of funding, and 2019 is set to produce another record breaker.

The total of $900 million was the figure for the year, with 2017 being $634 million.

That’s almost 30% increase in investment.

So, why are cash rich investors swooping in on beauty companies specifically? It’s partly because businesses that specialize in cosmetics and other personal care products are getting good at using technology to sell their products. They are also at the forefront of where the world is; social media.

Beauty brands that perform well, are performing well because they KNOW the online landscape and have used it to their total advantage.

Because, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t exist.

These ‘small’ online only brands are the new ‘go to’ for investors for this reason. They are innovative, forward thinking, always producing new content to beat the rest and stand out, and have a strong understanding of the online ecosystem which is the foundation for commerce going into 2020 and beyond.

As an example of a big hitter, we may want to look at Glossier.

Glossier for instance, launched its makeup on Instagram before it even had its website.
The brand founder Emily Weiss said at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2018 that more than 70% of millennials purchase beauty and fashion products through Instagram. We personally believe this will be 80-90% within the next 24 months.

YouTube, and anything video related such as IGTV is also a major platform for beauty brands. An average of more than 1 million beauty videos are viewed on the video site every single day, according to a BBC report. That’s up from averages of 800,000 per day last year and about 500,000 in 2016.

A separate conclusion for why private investors and investment firms alike are into beauty companies right now is that they’re paying attention to what customers want, and how they want it.

Beauty consumers are increasingly drawn toward personalised beauty products, including those that offer a variety of shades for a diverse customer base. In early 2017, Shiseido bought MatchCo, a venture-backed startup that makes customisation software meant to help users find products that match their skin. Mented Cosmetics specializes in makeup made for darker skin tones. And singer Rihanna is the founder of Fenty Beauty, which provides foundations meant to work with all skin tones around the world.

Personalisation is key in this new world when it comes to just about anything, and the beauty niche is definitely paving the way for this future.

Myles Broom

The Normal Company

Categories
Fashion Long Read SMM

Fashionable E-Mail Marketing MUSTS.

For an eCommerce fashion label, you may have your instagram content on point. You may have ALL of the best models & influencers draped in your logo..

..You may have thousands of customers buying from you consistently.

BUT, what are you doing on the email front?

Poor email marketing & systemisation is a huge culprit we see between a brand in which dominates it’s sub sector, contrasting that in which fails to even scratch the surface on the potential sales volume it should be getting. At the normal company, our process relies on having a super sleek back end, specifically when it comes to email marketing.

Email becomes one of the most important communication channels with your customer when it comes to not only driving sales, but recouping them.

Why? Email marketing lets a label reach out to prospective and current customers with offers, news, product launches and more. It’s also a key tool to reignite interest, and capture the sale when it is in limbo.

If you are a fashion eCommerce brand, or any brand for that matter in any space, you need to listen up to this checklist below, and make it a focal point for your back end. Now.

1. Have a sexy subject line

The days of ‘ALL CAPs’ are gone. These actually trigger the spam filter on a lot of mailboxes, and you may see this yourself with a poor delivery & open rate.

In 2019, it’s all about being on trend, relevant, and actually of interest.

To win the open rate, you have to be gentle and subtle in your subject line without overselling yourself. Remember, that people respond to phrases that we use in our everyday life because it is more human.

No one wants to receive an email which literally looks like a marketing email, no matter what brand or store you run.

So, What exactly should you be crafting up for your subject line?
Personalisation, relevance, personality.
The key is to describe what is inside your mail, in a sleek pocket size way.

You need to create the ‘WOW’ moment, immediately as you only have a split section to do so, before your customer scrolls away from you.

2. Content, Content, Content.

It’s simple really. If you don’t have good content, there’s no ‘why’.

You need a strong WHY to enable a conversation, and enable the hook back into your site, and those products in which are most relevant to your potential customer.

When you get your e-mail opened, welcome your customer with an attractive visual. Something enticing, and something bold.

Tom Ford does this incredibly well:

Provide a relevant landing page in the Call to action of the visual. Avoid linking everything to your home page, as this essentially creates unnecessary barriers and hurdles for your customer to trawl through, in order to get where they want.

Normal Tip:

A short and sweet customer journey, wins.

Your graphic curation in your marketing email should be attractive and the text should be highly visible, punchy and striking. Do not forget to optimise the same for mobile views as 62% of emails are opened and read on mobile.

3. The personal touch.

Here’s a question to ask yourself:

“Am I connecting with an individual, or scatter-gunning to the masses?”

Ask yourself, and you may want to go back to the drawing board. Often there is a hit and hope strategy at play with most email marketing we see, and brands in which we coach on this aspect when it comes to driving all time high revenues.

When you hit schedule, you are not just mailing an offer or information, you are mailing experiences.

You are connecting..

.. or disconnecting.

How will you produce a personalised message? How will you really hit home to that customer as they sit at home and browse Gmail?

Address the customer by name, or make recommendations based on browsing behavior.

Don’t just sell, give fashion tips on colours for the upcoming season, trends, how THEIR personal taste is being seen on influencers etc.
It is the extra effort in being friendly that makes all the difference to be more engaging and give the customer a great experience, which will separate you from the herd in that email box.

M&S Email Campaign

M&S do this terrifically. So much so, it’s as if we produced it right here at Normal!

Everything about their broad email marketing is on a ‘non salesy’ front. It’s personal, it’s professional, and it sparks intrigue.

4. If you’re not doing THIS, you’re bleeding money.

Cart Abandonment Emails.

This right here is your second, third or fourth chance to get those abandoned carts over the line.

We see time and time again an ineffective strategy here for many brands, and it’s one in which once we bring it to light, it’s a real face palm moment (for us, and them).

It is frustrating is when customers abandon their cart, but rewarding when you can make them complete their purchase with cart abandonment emails.

According to SalesCycle, eCommerce brands who sent cart abandonment emails received 46% open rate leading to 35% of the returning customers completing their checkout processes.

Cart abandonment emails, ideally, should be sent soon after the customer abandons the cart, and a follow-up email of the same in consecutive days. (Read our 10 Best Practices Of Abandoned Cart Emails for an in-depth explanation.)

Must include elements of a cart abandonment email:
Image of the abandoned products in the cart
A headline which mentions the product of interest
Recommendations for further products
Concise CTA
Something which makes them say ‘oh go on then!’

The proof is in the scale.

One of our fashion brands who we took on last month, had zero abandoned cart processes in place. They were losing out.

So, we put it to the test and found the following once we applied our Normal email strategy & comprehensive system:

Within 1 week of setting up, our email marketing generated an EXTRA £11,540.93 in revenue.
This was directly from our abandoned check out email marketing, coupled with intuitive facebook & instagram story ads.

So, tell us it’s not worth waiting any longer?

Conclusion:

These are the 4 basic and fundamental factors that fashion brands should consider in executing their email marketing. Today.
Even if you are a smaller brand,, with these context in mind, you can slowly work your way up to achieving more click-through rates, ROI, and ultimately a larger revenue at the end of it all.

Email marketing: The trend which is not going out of fashion any time soon.