Matt Edmundson: Well, hello there and welcome to the e-Commerce podcast
with me your host, Matt Edmundson.
Now, today's episode is a little bit different.
Oh, yes.
It is a little bit different.
If you're a regular to the show, you will know or will have heard me talk
about e-commerce cohort, which is a membership group for E-com entrepreneurs,
uh, and owners that I, I think everyone in e-commerce should join.
That's just me's personal thing, but you know, that's just the way it is.
Uh, and so, uh, I thought today we would do a little bit of a mashup.
Now this month we have been, uh, talking about Black Friday marketing in cohort.
And so every month we kind of have this q and a section.
And so I thought we'd do that as a podcast and then I thought, I need an expert.
Oh, yes.
And then I thought, who better to have in on the show then the amazing
Chloe Thomas who has been on the guest, who has been on the eCommerce
podcast several times already.
Uh, and Chloe, we, a few years ago we did this sort of Black Friday
chat, so I thought, let's get Chloe again, from e-Commerce Master Plan.
Now I'll read your bio, Chloe, and then we'll get into it.
Uh, Chloe is a globally recognized e-commerce marketing problem solver,
author of several bestselling books, keynote speaker and host of both the
award-winning e-commerce Master Plan podcast and keep optimizing podcast.
Chloe is no round legend and actually Chloe.
Mm-hmm.
. What I'm really psyched about is this week we actually met for the first
time.
Chloe Thomas: WE did Yes.
Full on in real life, in person chat.
Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: Rather than just Zoom or whatever software
it is we're using these days.
Chloe Thomas: It
was, I
know, I know how tall you are now.
. I know that.
Matt Edmundson: It's always a really
interesting piece.
Uh, what happened, uh, was Chloe arranged this week, uh, for several
of us ecom podcasters in the UK to get together for breakfast in London.
Uh, in London.
In London, . And it was brilliant actually.
It was really good to see everybody.
Um, so there was Nick wasn't there was no, I trust that.
Yeah.
Nick was there.
Tim was there and James was there.
Right.
All from various e-commerce podcasts.
We links them all actually in the show notes.
Give 'em all a good shout out cause they're all top blokes.
And you were the only lady in the group.
How was that for you?
Chloe Thomas: Well, it Was pretty much my normal life really.
No, it's, it's interesting cuz there aren't, there aren't that
many women e-commerce podcast around podcasters around the globe.
And, um, it was the first ever time we've done it and I am working on getting some
women to come and join us next time, but there aren't that many to pick from.
Um, and um, and I think, I think women have, um, more of a, will it
be worth it, uh, filter than men do.
Matt Edmundson: men are just like, there's food.
I'm there.
What's wrong with you people?
Chloe Thomas: There's,
there's food.
It's fine.
I'll, Yeah.
Cool.
Um, no, I, I think women have more of a, can I be bothered to
go to London for this or not?
Will this be worth it or should I just stay in the office?
But I may be massively stereotyping that, but, um, but no, I, I grew
up with, um, with brothers and, um, best mates at uni were all boys, so
I'm I'm all right amongst the boys.
Yeah, it was okay.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it was lovely actually.
It was lovely to see
everybody and meet everybody.
So thank you for arranging that.
Uh, that's cool.
And it was all quite coincidental in terms of timing.
I thought to myself, what I should have done was taken like four or
five microphones down and plonked them in the middle of the table,
And I said right!
We're gonna have a conversation.
Uh, and then never did, uh, we never talked about podcasting, which was
the irony of that, that meetup.
Chloe Thomas: No,
no.
We did, we did manage to talk a little bit about eCommerce, but
almost not at all about podcasting.
Um, but I think it, I think very good.
Was a good first meeting.
And we'll do, we'll do more,
I think.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Yeah.
We will.
I'm looking forward to it.
Right.
Let's get into these questions cuz we have quite a few questions about Black Friday.
Uh, and so thank you for being with me again in the, in the q and A section.
So, um, Let, Are you good?
Are you good to go with this?
Jump straight in.
Chloe Thomas: I'm ready to Go.
I have been, I've been talking about Black Friday for probably
two months now and Okay.
I think this Black Friday has changed, or the tone of conversation has changed
more this year from when we started talking about it to now than ever before.
So, um, it's very cool to be doing something that's going out quite quickly.
Yeah.
To give people the, the right advice.
As of now,
, Matt Edmundson: it may change.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah, you probably will.
Matt Edmundson: probablyWill.
It is funny isn't it, because it's time of the year.
You, you're running your eCommerce site and you're
thinking, Oh crap, Black Friday.
And you, you've, I know a lot of people that have done that.
I'm just putting it off, putting it off, putting it, and now they're going
and it's getting closer and closer and they're starting, the cold sweats
are starting and so, um, it, it, it tends to be a common theme around
this time of year.
Chloe Thomas: Well, it is.
Difficult piece.
You know, normally I, I always won't wonder when should we put
out our Black Friday content?
When should we put it out?
Because to be honest, everyone should be starting to plan Black Friday
from the week after Black Friday.
Right?
That's when your planning should start.
Yeah.
And you should by the end of August for, you know, not if
you're not a massive retailer.
By the end of August, you should have your plans locked down.
Know what product you're discounting, what the discounts are gonna be,
what the segments are, what the marketing methods are, and then
you've got a solid foundation on which to twist and pivot, which you're
inevitably going to do this year.
Anyone who was, who was good in inverted coms and who had their plan
in place by the end of August, It shouldn't be what you're putting in
place, what you're actually gonna run.
It should have changed by now, um, in one way or in one way or another.
So it's kinda like that irony.
If you have, you should start planning early.
So you are in control, but being in control means changing
your plans quite regularly.
So this is one of those years where if you're not a planner, you've
got quite a massive get outta jail free card because plans have been
rewritten so many times, possibly come off better than the rest of us
. Matt Edmundson: But it's not a strategy we advocate.
Advocate.
Maybe it's one of those things, isn't it?
That the longer that we've been going on, the more Black Fridays
we've done certainly as Brits.
Cause it's not a common, it wasn't a common thing until
a few years ago, was it?
Um, and the, the sort of, the more we get used to it, the more comfortable
we are, seem to be feeling with it.
And I think the better off we are preparing for now.
I think I feel more prepared for Black Friday than I ever have done.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah, I think I, I think there's, there's
kind of two reasons for that.
One is that we've kind of realized, and Black Friday has evolved, so as
it can be whatever you want it to be.
So there's movements against Black Friday.
There's definitely a movement against the big blanket discounts that only
last for 24 hours and things like this.
So there's definitely, um, I think everyone now feels like
they have permission to create the promotion that works for them.
And then the second side of it is, I think we as an industry have got much
savvier, organizing the operations side of it, you know, um, changing the
postage methods, changing the messaging on speed of delivery, working with
our couriers, our three pls, our own in-house warehouses to be ready and
to manage that bump when it comes and.
Those third parties, we use couriers, um, uh, software, uh, the, um, simply
the, you know, the three pls, et cetera, have become a lot better prepped for
that being a very, very busy weekend.
So I think those for me are the two bits.
We've become smarter at the op side of things and we've also started
creating our own version of Black Friday rather than just doing something silly
Matt Edmundson: I like that.
Rather than just doing something silly.
Yes.
Uh, no, I think it's very
true.
There is nothing stupider as a business than going, Oh look,
everyone else is doing that.
I'd better do it too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, nothing stupider.
So, um, yeah, don't do the silly thing.
Do what works for your business.
Yeah.
So first tip right there, right?
Uh, . So question number one.
These questions by the way, are in no particular order.
So, uh, I've not, I've not done that due diligence and gone, I'll
put these in a logical order.
I've just whacked them on a piece of paper.
Uh, and so
Chloe Thomas: well, and Matt and that if this goes like any of our other chats,
we'll probably be answering question 20, um, by accident in question one.
Anyway, , so, you know,
Matt Edmundson: yeah, more than likely, uh, and we probably
won't get to question four.
Uh, see the thing that will probably happen.
So some of these are quite, uh, detaily type questions.
Voucher codes.
Should you do voucher codes, uh, for your Black Friday off for yes or no?
Pros and pros and, uh, cons.
Chloe Thomas: Pros are that it enables you to give the offers to the people
you want to give the offers to.
In theory anyway, you know, if you want to, If you've got limited stock
and you wanna give the best discounts to a selected segment of customers,
then a voucher code is a great way to do that because they're the only
ones who've got the voucher code.
It's also a good way of protecting a bit of margin, because even if you give the
customer a voucher code, some of them will forget to use it and will pay full
price or whatever it is anyway, so I think they have a really good role to play.
The downsides of it, it will lower response rate because, People won't
have a voucher code and it will inevitably get picked up on a voucher
code website, which means all your carefully targeted segmentation and
margin control and marketing channel control methods will go wrong.
Um, and it will end up, you know, the sales will end up getting
double count in different places.
Now if you've got a massive overstock and you desperately want
to clear it, then that's fine.
But if you haven't got much extra product and you are trying to use what
margin you can afford to give away in the best possible way, then you've
just gotta be really careful with that.
So, I, I definitely wouldn't be running in that scenario.
I definitely wouldn't run a voucher code that lasts for
the whole month of November.
Mm-hmm.
. But I might run a voucher code that's 24 hours only for this group of
customers because when it's short time bounded like that, you've got
less CPI to other marketing channels.
Yeah, that's very true.
It depends, Matt.
Matt Edmundson: It depends.
It depends as
all these questions, this just answer all the questions.
It depends.
Uh um, no, it's totally right.
I mean, I remember once we did a voucher code around Black Friday, uh, and it
did get onto a voucher website and we came in and saw thousands of people
had used this code and we were like, Oh my Lord, what on earth has happened?
We didn't , I just didn't expect it.
And so we spent days trying to pick up the pieces from that.
The other thing that I've found with voucher codes, Chloe, I don't
know if you've seen this, is, is actually people you can give out
voucher codes and it does give you some more cuz people don't use them.
But those people can then contact customer service and go, I'm terribly
sorry I didn't use my voucher code, which increases around Black Friday.
The workload on your already busy customer service team, yeah.
Uh, quite dramatically.
And um, And we've noticed actually with voucher coasts, not only does
customer service increase, but customers can feel a little bit cheated.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah, it can.
They're one of those tricky things.
These days I tend to advise against using them, um, generally because
there's all these nuances that people miss, you know, extra work
on customer services and so forth.
Um, there are now, uh, apps like AI chat bots and negotiation chatbots, which can
reference the database to give people back the va the coupon code so they can go,
Hello, have you forgotten your voucher code, and then give you a voucher code.
But of course, that's also gonna pop up to people who you never give
about code to in the first place.
And I've seen other retailers having in the check.
You know, you've got the promo code or the voucher code box and then having
a link underneath it that goes, Have you forgotten your voucher code?
Click here.
That just gives them a voucher code, which can be a good ploy if you are heavily
embedded in voucher codes as a business to make sure you get the checkout.
But if you don't usually use them, you're just giving margin away at that point.
Yeah.
So there are, they are a tricky little game voucher codes, I suppose.
They're a tricky little game to play.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, they are.
And I, and like you say, it depends, doesn't it, on what's right for
your business in your customers.
Um, like I say, for us, I just know over Black Friday, our customer
service team are already rammed and whenever you use voucher codes,
you are gonna add to that problem.
Uh, and so you just have to think that through a, a little bit.
Yeah.
Um, so I think this year actually we decided not to do voucher codes.
Um, you're just gonna, the offer is what the offer is, and actually we're
gonna do different landing pages.
. Um, and so we drive
track the way of doing it.
Yeah.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
A little bit more work up front.
Yeah.
But there's the message, one less box to fill in, which
should increase conversion rate.
Mm-hmm.
, you can segment your marketing and point people to the correct landing pages.
Then you can make it a little bit more exclusive, cuz you can put exclusive
on the page, reiterate the deal.
So yeah, I think that's, um, if you've got the time to set up the landing
pages, a much more controllable way of running your offers.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'll let you know.
Chloe Thomas: Well, and also presumably if you're doing it with landing
pages, you can actually have a unique SKU on sale so you can limit the
amount of stock you've got for each.
So if you were only planning on selling a hundred of your thousand
units at that discount, you don't come in and discover it's ended up on
a voucher code site and you sold all a thousand, which was your stock to
last you through toward May, February or something at that discount level.
So, um, yeah, look, control is always good on Black Friday.
Matt Edmundson: It is.
And scarce actually doing things like we've only got a hundred
and people can see a countdown on the website is very, very good.
That sort of scarcity, is it, it isity, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That sort of scarcity mentality type thing, isn't it?
And you kind of, you do have those countdown times.
So yes, landing pages give us a little bit more control.
There is a little like, say a little bit more work up, up the front.
Cause you have to think about who am I, who I do in this landing page for, Right.
You have to segment, um, and then figure out the different offers, but.
, it's actually a lot more straightforward for us cuz we've
only got a small SKU catalog.
Um, as opposed to, we don't have the beauty company anymore, so
I've not got 10,000 beauty products that I need to think about.
Um, it's, it's much more straightforward.
So, um, so yes, uh, voucher codes.
There you go.
Okay, So sh here's a question for you.
Why, why did this question, should I keep capturing emails during a site-wide sale?
That's an interesting, I'm not quite sure they entirely mean,
but have a go answering that.
Chloe Thomas: I would assume that means should I turn off my email sign up
or should I, should I go fully tunnel vision on getting the sale rather
than try and get an email account?
So I'm gonna assume it's that.
Yeah.
Um, no, you should still be, um, aiming to collect email addresses cuz there will
still be people coming to your site who aren't yet ready to, uh, to purchase.
And who do go, Oh no, the offer's not quite what I wanted
it to be or No, I'm not sure.
Julie would actually like that.
I'll sign up and I'll get it because you might convert them later.
Um, assuming you are still running that, I would just be careful of being aware
of what codes or offers, if any, you've got on the email sign up and I might,
um, I might pause a, a, um, signup popup.
Might pause a signup popup.
I might not, would depend on the brand, but if you are not pausing it, so you're
expecting quite a few signups during that time period, I might change the
first email in that welcome campaign to.
It's Black Friday, amazing offers only last until Saturday
evening or whenever it is.
So you are just going, you'll get the rest of our welcome campaign
later, but you need to know about our Black Friday office now.
Um, and you know, and if you've got any restrictions on, you know, someone who's
just signed up, doesn't get your normal broadcast, and you've got a load of
normal broadcast about Black Friday going out, I'd remove that restriction as well
because they are arguably your hottest, some of your hottest buyers at that point.
Mm.
But yeah, I would still be, I wouldn't turn off email collection.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that.
The one, the one thing maybe I would turn off is the popups that I, again, I
see them a lot, you know, put your email address and get 10% off, especially if
you're already discounting on the site.
Um, you might just want.
Rephrase that or, or re redo that.
Um, but like, yeah, And again, this is where actually landing
pages is really helpful.
So you, if you're sending your existing customers to a different
landing page or you know, the best customers to this landing page, you
don't obviously need the email sign up, uh, because they're already there.
Right.
Um, but when you are using, uh, like with our paid media campaigns, we know
where all the new customers are going to.
So we might wanna make the email sign up a little bit more
prominent maybe on that page.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
And you might, um, you know, if you've got specific landing pages for those
new customer acquisition campaigns, you might, uh, run and be running a delay pop.
So you or an exit popup so it doesn't come up unless they wanna leave
that page and not take your offer.
Um, so yeah, be a, being a little bit strategic about it and just thinking
through, hold on, what, how does this campaign affect our activity?
And um, and if, if you're only running a one day Black Friday and you're a small
team, I'm just gonna put this out there, just, just so you know, you can just
go, It would be really nice to rebuild our welcome campaign, but actually
let's just turn it off for 24 hours.
Yeah.
Um, or it'll be really nice to rebuild all of that, but that's
not gonna be worth it for us.
Feel free to know, be as, do as much or as little of what Matt and
I are talking through here, cuz some of this is quite big business.
Um, crossing the i's and dotting the T stuff.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Some of it you definitely need a team for, uh, would be, In fact, one of the things,
um, Chloe that's come up in cohort.
Uh, in the, in the, we do this workshop in cohort, and one of the things, in
fact, this month I did the workshop, one of the things that we talked
about in the workshop was you can have permission to not do Black Friday.
Yes.
You, you can, and you can just feel the weight just disappear off a number of
shoulders, just kind of going, Oh, really?
Yeah.
Okay.
So there are questions around that and, and you mentioned this at the start.
So, um, what advice do you give to people who go and go, I don't
know if I wanna do Black Friday?
, Chloe Thomas: if you've got a good reason not to do it, don't do it.
I mean, and a good reason could be it doesn't fit with our brand, it
doesn't fit with our sales model.
Um, we only have a limited amount of stock.
Uh, during the pandemic, I was doing a lot of work with, uh, Wentworth Jigsaw
Puzzles who manufacture their own jigsaws and who were really struggling for stock.
So they didn't do Black Friday.
Mm-hmm.
. It's because that was the right decision for them.
Um, other brands I've known haven't done it and they've still had great sales
days on that day because the cus their customers were holding their spend waiting
to see what the offers were and when there wasn't an offer they bought anyway
because that was the product they wanted.
There is a, there is a big, um, customer intention to spend money on that
day, whether you run an offer or not.
So you will probably see a sales uplift even if you don't do anything.
Yeah.
But you don't have to, or you might do something tiny.
Like we've got, you know, we've got some, you know, you basically rebrand your sale
as your Black Friday offers in, clear out some stock you wanna clear out or
you, you know, you, you, you look at the dead stock in the back of the warehouse
and you do some mystery boxes, you.
Content's worth a hundred pounds, we'll charge you 20 pounds for it.
And you, you know, your finance director's going, Yes, we finally cleared that
dead stock and turned it into cash.
You have permission to do it, to leverage that customer buying
intent in whatever way you want to.
Even if that means doing nothing and just feeling quite smug.
Um, yeah, , whilst everyone else is running around
going,
Matt Edmundson: everyone's going utterly crazy.
We actually ran some tests at Jersey, um, on Black Friday, some Black Fridays.
We did stuff and some Black Fridays we didn't.
And what we found was that yes, when you did Black Friday off sales
increase, but when you didn't do Black Friday sales, sales also increased.
Cuz like you say, that buying intent now, they increased more
when you did do Black Friday office, but your margin was a lot less.
Uh, and so we found actually, if we were protecting margin
and also we were protecting.
, um, cuz a lot of our customers that would buy on Black Friday would buy more.
Right?
So they'd increase the average order value then, but that means they wouldn't
be buying in January, which is when we normally would expect them to buy.
So I'm offsetting the future purchase a little bit.
So when we weighed all of that, um, together, we actually, with the
beauty company, stopped doing Black Friday because it was more profitable
for us as a business not to do it.
Now we, we did engage the customers leading up to Black Friday and let
them know what was going on and we found actually doing offers closer
to Christmas was better for us.
Um, but yeah, it was a really, really interesting experiment for us to do.
And so that permission to not do back Friday, as Chloe said, if it's not right
for your business model, don't do it.
There's no
pressure.
Yeah.
There's no rule book that says you have to run Black Friday.
No.
It's your business.
You make the rules.
So what are some of the, um, campaigns that you think if you are gonna do
Black Friday, some of the offers, some of the campaigns that you've
heard talked about this year that you think actually they're, they're
quite clever or they're gonna win or,
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
Um, yeah, it's a difficult one this year in particular because I know there's
a lot of businesses who have overstock because they weren't anticipate the
point where they place the orders.
They weren't anticipating the slowdown of the economy that they have
experienced in some sectors already.
Yeah.
So they've got stock, they need to clear into cash, in which case going big and
deep with Black Friday is good because you, you need the cash, even if the
margin's bad, you need the cash or you're not surviving the year potentially.
But then there's other brands who are doing, um, who are doing quite well.
Or doing better than average who are having to make these decisions.
So I think we're gonna see a really mixed up campaign.
The piece of tech that I'm most interested in seeing the results of
is one I only came across a couple of weeks ago at E-Commerce Expo.
Hmm.
Which is called Nibble.
Have you come across Nibble?
Okay.
So Nibble is an AI chatbot that negotiates with your customer.
Matt Edmundson: Yes.
I, This is why I was looking slightly conf, cuz I'm like, this sounds familiar.
And I'm thinking, is that the negotiation software?
It's
Chloe Thomas: the negotiation one.
Yeah.
Which I think if it's deployed in the right way could be amazing.
And there are some amazing case studies and they're, you know,
they're busy gathering people to test this on Black Friday for them.
And I think it could be, you know, we talked about, you know,
is your voucher code missing?
If you've got a chat bot going, do you, would you like a deal on this?
Mm-hmm.
And it knows the remit can go to, in that product, it should have a very positive
impact on conversions and it should save a bit of margin here and there.
If I wasn't doing Black Friday, you know, a big Black Friday event, I might deploy
it just on Black Friday for a laugh.
You know, not for a laugh.
Sorry for a good, for a really interesting test.
Yeah, yeah.
And go.
It can take 10% off if a customer delays for X amount of time on the site and
isn't checking out, go, Were you hoping we were running a Black Friday deal?
Sh don't tell anyone, but we could do something.
What would you like type thing.
So I'm, I'm very intrigued on that because I haven't seen that.
I haven't ever seen that done effectively.
I've seen dynamic pricing and that kind of stuff played around with, but
I think that could be very interesting and I'm hoping we will see some
good segmentation because there's no excuse not to do good segmentation.
Not anymore.
No.
Um, but, We shall see.
, I suppose
Matt Edmundson: that's the, that's the crux of the matter, isn't it?
So goods, so good segmentation, right?
How would you de define good segmentation?
What are some of the segments that you would be looking at?
Uh, for e-commerce brands?
Chloe Thomas: Caveating this with it.
It depends on, you know, how much you've got to shift, how much
margin you give away, what your overall business targets are.
But I would be, you know, trying to, trying to find the offers which
are gonna turn inquiries who haven't previously purchased into buyers.
Mm-hmm.
. So Black Friday's one thing, it's a chance to get the people who've been sitting
on the fence all year to get off that fence and spend some money with you.
Yeah.
So I, and you know, and if you've, I was gonna say aggressively, if
you've been cleverly gathering email addresses all year, then you
should, you know, have a decent size list to be sending that out to.
The other thing I would be doing at the moment is I would be focusing on,
um, kind of reactivation campaigns, because when the economy's a bit tougher,
people are more likely to spend money with businesses they already trust.
And your past customers, those who've lapsed, should be ready to trust you.
Mm-hmm.
to, uh, buy again.
So it should be an easier conversion.
Therefore, you shouldn't need to use to give away so much
margin to get that conversion.
And if you can reactivate them now, it's the end of November when we hit Black
Friday, you still theoretically got time to do another sale before the end of
the year, and certainly to get them back in to help you with the sale clearance
and everything that comes next year.
those are the two pots I would focus on most heavily, getting that right for them.
Um, and I would also make sure that within all those marketing messages, as
well as working out the right promotion and the right products to be shifting, I
would be using a lot of the kind of the neuro marketing language within it all.
So, fomo, scarcity, deadlines, new exclusive, Yeah.
Yeah.
Social proof, all that kind of stuff.
Because that's the, it's the grease that oils the checkout.
And if you get those right, then I reckon I have no stats to back this up at all.
I'm sure I could find them if I went and read a couple of books, but if
you get them right, then you can, you should be able to protect a bit of
margin and increase your conversion rate, because that's what they do.
They are, they are things which we as humans are programmed
to reactivate well to.
Mm-hmm.
, so they should.
Theoretically you should be able to reduce, to reduce your promotion
rate, save a few more percentage points of margin by using those
rather than having to go deeper.
So a bit of clever copywriting, a bit of decent design work, and you
can protect a bit of margin as well.
And I think that's the winners this year will be those who manage to
get the sales whilst protecting as much margin as possible.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, I agree.
I agree.
It's um, I like that.
I like that.
So, And I like, I'm really curious actually, to see if I
do go on any websites and come across that negotiating software.
I've seen it work a couple of times and I've, I've tried my hand
buying something once with it, just having, I was just totally crazy
with it, but it was just good fun.
Um, and it does create that talking point, doesn't it?
That whole Yeah.
Negotiation thing.
So really keen to see if that comes, uh, a little bit more to the forefront.
Very good, very good.
Um, so on in cohort Chloe, one of the things that we talked about was
building trust, uh, with your customer.
Um, conversion rates, obviously for first and foremost all about trust.
How much does this customer trust you?
Um, what, 29:what are some of the ways that people can increase trust on the
website for say, the first time buyers?
Chloe Thomas: Social proof, most obviously.
Um, but social proof comes in so many different flavors.
You know, you've got.
The overall score of the site, you know, four and a half stars out of whatever
on whatever platform you're using.
You've got actual quotes from actual customers to put in places and I would
take some control over what appears on the homepage and what is on your emails.
I know you can get widgets that just feed things through, but I would take
a little bit of control over that and maybe go, this is a particularly
good one we're gonna put on that banner when people land on the site.
Um, I would also, you know, make sure you've got that on individual products.
We hear from all the sources in the world that one review on a
product page massively increases the conversion of that product page.
Go find some of that.
Um, make sure you know you've got it on product.
If you've got best selling products or products you think should be best sellers
that haven't yet got any reviews, work a bit harder on trying to get those in play.
And then also, you know, we see increasing amounts of, uh, U GC or user
generated content photography and video.
You've got that.
Use that in the marketing.
Use it on the website as relevant to get that customer giving
a real view of your product.
So that's kind of the, the big kind of user generated content,
the big social proof stuff that comes from your customers.
Then you've got the social proof that comes from PR and places
you've been featured, famous customers, that sort of thing.
Um, I watched a presentation by Biscuit Tears last week who have a quote from
Claudia Winkleman saying, um, if you don't like biscuit ears, there's something.
Basically, I paraphrase, if you don't like biscuit ears,
there's something wrong with you.
Tell customer services, they have my number.
We'll have a chat about your problems, , or something along those lines,
which is just like, it's on brand Claudia Winkleman and yeah, totally.
and she is so on brand for their cu for their, their company as well.
I would have that all over their homepage and on every email.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, famous customers, quotes, places you've been
featured include some of that.
And then, um, one of the things which gets kind of neglected on the trust
front can often be founders story.
How long you've been around, how many orders you've shipped, how
many happy customers you've had.
Cuz you know, if you are trying to commit, convince those new people, you
need to do everything you can to show them that other people have purchased
your products and been happy about it.
Yeah.
Anything you can do to show that and to reveal the humanity behind the
business should work well for you.
Yeah, but don't, Absolutely.
Don't try and put it all on one page though.
, you know, make it balanced.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
. Now this reviews thing is an interesting thing, isn't it?
Because especially.
. Um, if you are gonna be doing an offer on some stock that you've got
and they, and you haven't got reviews on that stock, you, you've got a few
weeks to go and get them, but not many.
You need to, you need to go and get those.
Really.
And I think, I mean, it depend on your website, doesn't it?
And my experience is you need probably at least between five
and 15 to get going with, and
Chloe Thomas: well, you say that, but um, at the same event that Biers were
speaking at someone from John Lewis was speaking and she was saying they, if they
had one review on a product, it increased the conversion rate of that page by 10%,
I think was the number she was saying.
Yeah.
And I had, uh, the person who was in charge of reviews at Argos on the podcast
Oh, is that couple years back, back now.
And Diane.
Matt Edmundson: Joanna, Joanna Steel.
Yeah.
Yeah, so
Chloe Thomas: not dianna.
Brilliant.
Joanna Steel.
And she was saying how even a one star review on a product
increase the conversion rate.
So, so yes, there, there's certainly some, you know, a flywheel impact
that happens after you get a certain number, but to get one is brilliant.
If you've got a group, you know, if you've managed to build a community of
some description of particularly great customers, loyal customers who you can
talk to, sending out an email to that v i P group and saying, Oh, you know, if
you've got 'em in a Facebook group or something else, um, or, you know, the
founder's got a good Instagram following, put one out going, We're gonna be doing a
great Black Friday offer on this product.
If you've bought it, we'd really appreciate a review because it
will help us sell more units and help the new customers understand
the real benefits of the product.
I bet that will work if you're build, you know, if you've got those
customers who love it, direct them.
Tell them you need their help.
It's a very powerful way of getting people to do things over and above.
Just ping out another boring review request email, you know, send it, read.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Send it from a good group of people.
Don't fake it.
Please don't fake it.
Um, it's morally bad if nothing else.
Wow.
Matt Edmundson: Just, it's just wrong, isn't it?
It's just, let's just, it's just wrong.
Don't do it.
Um, be genuine, be authentic, but just go and get people to review your product.
Um, I would agree that one review is good.
We found in our testing that the same sort of thing, actually one view
makes a big difference to conversion.
And then when we sort of, depending on the product is if we sort of
hit five to 15, that would take it to the next sort of stage.
Um, and so we always have the little groups, the little groups of hardcore
fans, uh, and we're like, Right, let's go get these guys to write reviews.
And if we were ever doing a new product, we would send the product out and
go, Please review this product even before we've launched the product.
Um, and so, yeah, all kinds of little tricks that you can do.
But I like Jeff Founder's Instagram thing.
Put it out there.
People will review it, it's not a problem.
Uh, but they get your reviews,
Chloe Thomas: you know, you could even use it.
Double bubble bump and send out an email to your VIPs going, We'll give you X
percentage off this product if you can buy it and leave a review in the next week.
Yeah.
So you get like a little mini uplift before then you use
that for the Black Friday bit.
Yeah.
And if you're gonna do that, don't bother tracking whether they get ran
leaving your review or not, but do send them an email reminding them
that they got a discount for a review.
But you know, slapping your customer's knuckles for not having the time
to put a review when you gave them some money off is not a good idea.
I feel that at times of stress and everyone's tired
like they are at the moment.
It sounds obvious, but it needs to be said sometimes.
Matt Edmundson: It it does.
It does.
Yeah.
We don't need to police this, uh, to the crazy levels sometimes.
Um,
Okay, so question, another question here.
Chloe.
Tips for selling after Black Friday.
, Chloe Thomas: all the normal stuff, guys, , all the normal stuff.
Um, it's, I think this is one of the things which people who are newer to
the industry get that kind of fear of, Oh my God, the customers will,
will remember it was 20% off on Friday and they won't buy it on Monday.
As a human being in your own buying, have you ever done that?
No.
, you've just gone, I'll just buy it on Monday.
So business carries on as normal post Black Friday.
But the good, the, the great thing is you should have some fresh buyers,
maybe first time buyers, second time buyers, third time buyers who want
and are ready to buy from you, who are having that good experience.
So the first thing, I guess is make sure they have a good
experience from, from that sale.
So the parcel arrives on time, customer services ready to help them with delivery
if they need it, et cetera, et cetera.
And then carry on with all the normal marketing that you would normally,
that you do in the run up to Christmas.
And it's.
Simple and straightforward.
Is that really?
Yeah.
By mis you think, Matt?
Is that too obvious?
Matt Edmundson: No, no, no.
Obvious is good, Chloe obvious is good.
And I, I do wanna jump in here a little bit and say, Listen, if
you're on cohort, don't worry.
We're recovering this, uh, in next month's sprint.
So, uh, we are gonna, you know, how do you write your welcome sequences
and all that sort of stuff for your new customers post Black Friday.
Um, but yeah, I think you're totally right.
I think it's, it's all the straightforward, normal
stuff is just do it.
Well just treat people how you want to be treated and they'll keep coming back.
Now you are gonna have some people who are, um, How can I call 'em?
They're just the bargain hunters.
They're just out for the bargain.
They're gonna buy cuz it was super cheap or whatever.
And after that they almost become a waste of space.
That's fine.
Just take 'em off your email list and leave 'em alone.
They might come back black next Black Friday.
Uh, and that's okay.
You know,
Chloe Thomas: the one thing I would do is I would have some postcards
printed or some a five flyers that have a, an incentive to buy
before Christmas that goes in all those parcels of the Black Friday.
Um, lot.
Yeah.
It might be a free delivery on your next order or a, uh, you know, a
free upgrade to Speedy Delivery.
Or it might be a, here's five pounds off your next order.
That looks like a fiver or something.
But just to put that in there, to kind of, as they open it, they go, Oh yeah, I could
buy more before Christmas, couldn't I?
Just to remind them that they don't have to forget about you until January.
They could do something that's got your last order dates for Christmas
delivery and that sort of thing on it.
And any key messages, you know, if you, if you find the Black Friday, people are
mainly buying for themselves point out.
You can do gift deliveries.
Yeah.
If you do gift deliveries and, and things like that.
So a, a visual reminder in that unboxing experience that you are
allowed to buy again from me this year is, um, a very, very cheap and
highly cost effective marketing.
Matt Edmundson: Very good.
Very true as well.
Very, very.
I like that.
Put it in the box.
Let them know it's fine.
I saw IKEA do this once, uh, really well, not online.
Uh, but I, I remember a couple years ago they did this offer where if you bought
a Christmas tree from them, and I can't remember the price of the Christmas tree,
let's say it was like 70 bucks, right?
If you bought the Christmas tree off them for 70 bucks, they gave you a
70, uh, pound gift voucher, right?
You kind of think, Well, I've got a free Christmas tree.
But of course the gift voucher had to be used between, you know, 2:36 PM
and 4:32 PM on whichever day they had their slowest sales throughout the year.
I mean, there was, I mean, it wasn't quite that bad, but there were some
strict terms and conditions with it.
Um, and you can do things like.
That.
And we, we've done it in the past where it's like, well this is really clever.
If you spend this, we will give you this sort of obscene amount of money in
a gift voucher if you spend it between here and here and this time or that time.
Um, and I've seen gifts with purchase work really well with this as well.
So it's like if you buy from us before Christmas, um, then, uh, this gift
voucher entitles you to get this.
We did it with candles cuz candles were easy and everyone wants
a candle at Christmas, right?
Mm-hmm.
, uh, the candles were sold on the site for like 30 bucks.
I can't remember what it was.
It was like 22, actually.
22 pounds, something like that.
Um, but we were like, If you use this gift voucher, we'll send you a
candle free of charge with any order.
Um, and they're like, But the candle's worth 22 pounds.
I could buy something for 10 pounds and get a candle for 22 pounds.
Yes, you could.
I don't think you, I mean, there was maybe one or two people that
the majority of people didn't.
And um, and that worked really, really well as well.
So yeah, those sort of added value things, I think work.
Work insanely well.
Chloe Thomas: Free Gifts are hugely powerful when you get the free gift right
and when you buy the free gift, right?
Mm-hmm.
. So a free gift, you are in control of how much it's costing you.
Mm-hmm.
, which is awesome.
Um, so the, so on that side of it, make sure it fits in your normal parcels.
Cause you, it's not incredibly heavy either cuz that's
gonna cost you more money.
Yeah.
You don't want some causes more delivery problems.
So if your parcels usually go through the letter box, don't get
a free gift that's the size of a mug, cuz that's gonna be a problem.
Yeah, I know it worked for sports Direct, it's not gonna work for everybody.
Yeah.
Um, then you and you buy it.
Well, so like a free gift if you, if it's should, should only
cost you a couple of pounds.
Yeah.
Like literally one or two pounds.
Find something really low cost so you are totally in control
of how much that's costing you.
And then, A free gift, like your candle mat should be something which
can be re-gifted really easily.
It's like a vanilla product.
Anyone is interested you, you know, it's one of those things which you
stash in the bottom drawer for when you've forgotten someone's birthday.
Um, you know, it's back when I worked for PAs, it was stuff like draw liners
and uh, pori and things like, it was just that really vanilla, Oh God,
it's the mother-in-law's birthday.
What am I gonna give to her type scenario Or that can be self used for yourself.
So bath salts, um, candles, note look cards.
I'm probably dating myself with my past times knowledge here.
But, um, yeah, those sort of things or socks or hand warmers or, you know, yeah.
All these things which can be used or can be regifted so the person's
not going, Oh, but I don't want that.
They're going.
Or I could use that, or I could give it to X, Y, or Z person.
So it's useful to them.
Otherwise it's got, you know, no power at all.
So yeah, cheap universal appeal and fits in the parcel and then go for it.
Matt Edmundson: I like that fits in the parcel.
The amount of times we've.
Yeah, it's so easily done.
We've, and you, you did, you've got this great offer, this give with
purchase and you go, Oh bugger, this doesn't fit in this LA box.
I now need a new box to go.
Ah.
Chloe Thomas: And he's gone off a bracket in the postage pricing
and it just like, Oh, it costs
Matt Edmundson: me, you know, whatever, a buck to buy it.
But it's like 14,000 pounds to ship the blinking thing.
I'm never doing that again.
And that was always, that was one of the things actually
we learned with the candles.
Uh, you know, we gave decent size candles the first year and we're
like, We're not doing that again.
Cuz they weigh an absolute ton.
So we, you go with the smaller ones and Okay, now that makes a bit more sense.
Um, so these things you learn
Chloe Thomas: and hopefully we are fast tracking that for everyone
listening a little bit anyway.
Yeah,
Matt Edmundson: absolutely.
Um, next question.
Do you treat Black Friday differently to Cyber Monday?
Chloe Thomas: Depends on what your objectives are.
And how much time and effort you have within your business.
Um, if you've got, if you're running, you know, promos that run
on specific product lines and you're gonna try and keep it interesting.
So you've got a lot of stock to clear.
So, you know, like day one is product X, day two is product y,
day three is Product Z and so forth.
Then yeah, you're gonna be promoting a different product, moving it
onto the homepage, focusing on that landing page, et cetera, to clear it.
So you might cycle through offers in that way.
Uh, you might change the banner on the homepage to switch it from
Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
Um, and you probably change the messaging in the emails.
Do you need to run a totally separate promotion?
No.
Be kind to yourself.
Um, , you know, fundamentally change a couple of graphics.
You've gotta create a different email anyway, but don't feel
like you need to come up with a whole raft of different deals.
Yeah.
You know, or, or you might do, you might have something in your back pocket, which
is, if we've not cleared as much stock as we wanted to, or the sales haven't
come in on Monday, we'll add a extra five pound off or an extra free delivery.
Or an extra free gift Yeah.
To every order just to get those who are sitting on the fence to move off.
But no, you don't.
You can do a Black Friday, Cyber Monday event, you can just do a
Black Friday event and just have it lasting as long as you want.
Yeah.
It's your, your event.
Do what you
need to do.
Matt Edmundson: Exactly.
Exactly.
Very good point.
So, I mean, not like for five hours, but Fair enough.
So the, um, so be kind to yourself I thought was top advice, Right?
Uh, uh, during this crazy busy period for me, Black Friday.
Um.
I think of it now as a two week event rather than just a one off event.
And we, we plan for Black Friday according leads.
It's like the week before and the week after, and we have to think about these
sort of two weeks, um, rather than just thinking about Friday and Monday.
Uh, for me, I, I, I do like to think of it as a much bigger thing.
So here's a question.
What are , So I've not actually read this question, but I should
have read it before it came on , um, before I had the record one.
What are some of the worst Black Friday fails you have seen?
Chloe Thomas: Ah, I mean, there's, there's no one who specifically comes to mind.
Okay.
So I'm not naming and shaming here, but the ones that make my heart sink
is when I see a, we've taken 40% off everything , and you're like, unless
you are this close to going under, , there is no excuse for doing that.
It's a bad idea.
Yeah, because you will have some stock that you've got like three months coverage
of, and some stock you've got one week's coverage of, and some stock you've
accidentally got 12 months coverage of, you know, So the discount level shouldn't
be the same across everything else.
You know, which products you wanna clear, which ones you don't want to
clear, you know, um, you know which customers you want to give the best
offers to, or you, maybe you're in a big acquisition, so it is gonna be something
that's, you know, open to everybody.
But yeah, 40% of everything, not a good idea.
The other one, which I've seen, I can't remember who did this, but someone did
this, is they, they closed their website for the day as an anti-Black Friday piece.
Matt Edmundson: Oh yeah.
Ray, the outdoor clothing brand.
And it just had the notice, didn't it, saying We're outdoors,
Why don't you come and join us?
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
It wasn't them, but that's a really good one.
Okay.
There was someone else who'd done something very similar and it's like
you just destroyed your SEO and all your links and created a whole pile of work.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, by all means, say if have a big banner that goes, We are
not doing any Black Friday deals.
Um, but don't, don't shut the website.
That's just silly.
Yeah.
And it will pay, It won't pay you, pay you back.
It will be a plane in the net, in the neck.
You'll be going, Oh, well, our Google traffic's disappeared.
Yes, it has.
And then someone will have forgotten to turn off the ad spend, so you'll
have spent a load of money sending people to a landing page that will
have an impact on your algorithmic performance in your ad campaigns as well.
Is just, Yeah.
Don't, don't do.
And to be honest, if you wanna take a stand against Black Friday, do
something like, we're not running Black Friday, but we're gonna plant
a tree for everyone who orders today.
Mm-hmm.
. Or if you've got a high aov, we're gonna, you know, for every 10 orders we get,
we're gonna save an acre of rainforest.
You know, do something like that.
Or we're gonna give money to local food bank.
Do something more interesting than just going, We're not, Yeah.
If you are gonna make a point of not, if you're just gonna carry on
as per normal, that's totally cool.
But if you're gonna go, We're not doing Black Friday stays, There's no discount.
Do something good.
Instead of discounts.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Come.
Yeah.
I like that.
I like that we, we often talk about promoting charity.
You know, if you're gonna not do Black Friday, just use it as an
opportunity to promote charity.
Yeah.
Um, and, and, you know, help, help some good causes.
Why not?
You know, the world needs everyone to help out.
So, um, so that's, that was one question.
So what are some of the worst Black Friday fair You've seen?
And I would agree right, the, the 40% offsite wide thing I just think is lazy.
It's just lazy.
Yeah.
It's just lazy marketing and it's, it's just like, ugh.
Although I am personally quite tempted to buy that
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
I will take advantage of your stupidity
Matt Edmundson: if that's what you want.
I'm, I'm, I'm all for it.
Yeah.
Chloe Thomas: I'm there.
I'm
Matt Edmundson: there.
Yeah.
So I, No, I agree.
I, I agree with you.
Some of the other things that I've seen, which just in just beggar's
belief, things like, um, you know, where they've put an offer.
Uh, for a product which they don't actually have in stock.
Yeah.
Why, why, why, why, why, why?
I can't buy it.
Email me when it's back in stock.
No, but today is the day I get the 40% off.
Why can I not buy this now?
Chloe Thomas: Exactly.
If you are gonna put products up that you think might go out of stock
during the day, then you need someone there ready to shift that product down
the page, remove it from the Black Friday deal, put something else in.
If you're doing that, do not send out an email that details the products.
Send out an email that says CR Black Friday offers on our
special Black Friday offer page.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. That just, that's where the one source of information is.
It's, you know, it's depressing all year round to see outta stock
product at the top of a page.
It's even more depressing on Black Friday when you and your team
are put in a load of work Yeah.
To try and sell stuff and then you've put the wrong product or you put Yeah.
Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: There is something, um, that I call the mum test.
And this is where whenever we put together our landing pages or our
offers, I'll send them to my mum and I'll say, Mum, do me a favor.
Buy this and tell me what you think.
Just to see if she can do it.
Cuz my mum, God love her.
She's not the most technically smart person in the world.
Um, but she's, she's a beautiful person, right?
So, you know, she has giftings in other areas, let's put it that way.
She makes a mean Sunday roast.
Now, the reason we do this is because the amount of times we've come to
Black Friday and something doesn't work because it's not been tested
thoroughly or properly is unbelievable.
Right?
And so these are, I don't think they're the worst Black Friday fails,
but they are, The common Black Friday fails is actually, there's just
not been enough adequate testing done on the offers that you've got.
And it just, for whatever reason, doesn't work.
And the, and the poor boys and girls sat there and customer service are just going.
Chloe Thomas: Like, like a voucher code that only works with caps
lock on . That's when that happen.
Um, a voucher code where there's lots of zeros and and os Yeah.
And no one's quite sure which one you put
Matt Edmundson: in os and ones Yeah.
Yeah.
And all that sort of stuff.
You Oh, come on.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
And all those kind of bits or, uh, you've created some smart links.
Clever idea.
You can track it all, but no one checked the smart links.
Um.
So many things.
It's just
Matt Edmundson: All the fundamentals, isn't it?
All the basics that people just forget because life is
so busy around Black Friday.
Um,
Chloe Thomas: but oh, because you, you've done it a hundred
times this year, so it'll be fine.
And then you're like, Oh dear.
Matt Edmundson: No.
And the one day isn't is Black Friday and you, Yeah.
You don't want that, do you?
You don't want that.
We've all
Chloe Thomas: done it.
, Matt Edmundson: uh, question I, uh, so internationally, um, so not just to
the UK but to international markets.
Does Black Friday work in international markets?
Should I do this internationally?
Chloe Thomas: Depends on the countries.
Um, I, I don't know if it works in all countries.
I would have a look at what your competitors in those countries are doing.
Fundamentally though, people like a discount, so I suspect
it will work to some extent.
Um, yeah.
Yeah, I wouldn't go to the effort of creating separate homepages, you know,
unless you are like 80% sales in country that hates Black Friday and 20% sales
in the uk, then I might do separate landing, you know, separate homepages.
But otherwise I'd just keep it simple.
Don't over complicate.
Yeah,
Matt Edmundson: yeah.
No, I'd agree totally.
I, I would assume it works since nationally and just like,
I would assume it works here.
Um, I dunno, it's not
Chloe Thomas: like, I mean, Mother's Day you have to care about, because
it happens on different days.
And yeah, people will go, Why are you sending me a Mother's Day
offer if you send it out at the wrong time to the wrong country?
Yeah.
This isn't Mother's Day.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, not Mother's Day is not, and Father's Day
actually, the amount of people that write in and go, I hated my dad.
Why are you sending me this offer?
Oh yeah.
He was like, Oh, okay.
Anyway, maybe that's the subject for another podcast, , but yes,
uh, Black Friday's, Black Friday, all over the world, isn't it?
I'm just going down my questions here, Chloe.
I think we are all, Have we covered them all?
I think so.
Um, oh, one question here, someone sent in, uh, I'll let you answer this one.
Um, are you planning on buying anything this Black Friday?
Are you an avid Black Friday purchaser or are you too busy checking out
what everyone's doing to buy.
Chloe Thomas: I'm, I'm not, I, I , I tend to not buy anything on Black Friday
because I'm in the office for the day.
So I don't think of anything.
If I see any great software deals, I'm a sucker for a good software deal.
I may, um, I may spend on that.
Um, but I tend, I think thinking now, there's nothing on my list of things I
want to buy at the moment that I will be organized enough to buy on Black Friday.
there's nothing I've got like on a wait list.
There's, I won't be doing my Christmas shopping that week.
Um, yeah, I will just, I will mainly on Black Friday, I will mainly be
going, Gosh, I'm so glad I'm not running Black Friday marketing
campaigns , because I know.
Unbelievably hard work that is, so I will be trying to be very quiet
and not annoying my audience by giving them things to think about
when they've got far too much to do is to be paying attention to me.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I'm with you.
I'll be in the office.
We'll be working really hard on the e-commerce websites.
I, I tend to try and avoid, unless there's, I have a really specific
purchase, I tend not to browse Black Friday looking for bargains because I'm,
I'm a sucker impulse purchasing and so I'm gonna come home and smacked in the head
by my wife for spending way too much money on stuff that we didn't actually need.
Um, and so I, I've learned to safeguard myself and, and not,
uh, browse on Black Friday.
If there's something specific, which I don't think there is this year actually,
if there's something specific that I'm looking to buy, I might look at it.
Um, . But other than that, I, I personally am too focused in on,
on work and, uh, and, and try not to spend our hard earned money on
stuff that we don't actually need.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah.
Yeah.
That is, um, that's the thing.
It's like, I'm thinking there's not, there's nothing we really need at
the moment that I need to go, um, Black Friday crazy about, I mean,
I've gone Black Friday crazy in the past when it first started happening.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
We all did, didn't we?
What are some of the, uh, can I ask, what are some of the impulse purchases that you
made that you regretted on Black Friday?
Do you remember any of them?
I don't.
Chloe Thomas: Oh, can I remember any that I regret?
I don't think so.
I mean, like the, I clearly remember the back in, back in the early two
thousands, Amazon was d did kinda like countdowns to Christmas just before
Black Friday came here, and we would sit in the office and we all got utterly
obsessed with what Amazon was selling.
And I, I still have a, um, a ceramic black rotary watch.
That I bought, which, I mean, it's a lovely watch.
I don't wear black.
Didn't really wear black at the time.
Dunno why I bought it.
. Um, it's very shiny though.
It's quite nice and shiny.
But yeah, there's been, and I've come, come quite close
to buying some other things.
I don't, Yeah.
Oh, and a, a uh, a Sony MP3 player.
Oh.
They got a lot of use for a couple of years and then, um, I
don't even know where it is now.
You just don't need
Matt Edmundson: it anymore, do you?
Last year, I, I bought, and I know I bought it, uh, cause
it's still set on the cupboard.
I never, for whatever reason, I bought a Snow Globe bottle of gin, which
I thought make a great gift for.
Wow.
Dunno what I was thinking.
Dunno what I was thinking because the gin is awful.
, is it?
Yeah.
It's like, Oh, it was, I suckered in by the novelty factor.
Like here, Chloe, I have, I have a watch, which I've never really
worn because it looked better on the screen than it did on my wrist.
Uh, yeah.
And does this bit like, ugh.
So I had a little bit of buyer's remorse on that.
So there are definitely a few things that I've purchased on Black
Friday that I kind of went, Yeah,
Chloe Thomas: it's very easily done.
I mean, and not being to sound too, too soy, but I do, a little bit of
me goes co you're trying to help eCommerce businesses, so buying
when they've discounted to the max, probably the wrong thing to do.
Matt Edmundson: That's very true actually.
Yeah.
But remember a week later when their prices are back up to.
Chloe Thomas: Yeah, but then I also am like, Yeah, but it
discounts a discount, discounts.
Don't we all
Matt Edmundson: need to save the money, don't we?
Chloe Thomas: If they put it out there,
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Yeah.
They must be happy.
It's one of those, isn't it?
And I, wherever possible, and this is not me being moralistic, but
wherever possible, I will try and buy from a local, I won't say local,
I mean British based e-com website.
That's not Amazon, and that's not, you know, one of the big chains kind of
thing, because I like to, to support businesses like mine, if that makes sense.
So, um, I, I idealized to do that.
So if you can do that, buy for whatever country you are in and buy
off a smaller guy than Amazon and Walmart and all the big guys, right?
Just be different this Black Friday.
Just putting that out there.
Well, Chloe, I think we've got through all the questions.
Um, for those that don't already know, uh, that don't already
listen to the podcast, one.
, why not to, uh, you know, the four people on the planet that
don't actually know about you.
Chloe, how do people reach with you?
How do people connect with you?
Chloe Thomas: Cool.
So you can find everything I'm up to via e-commerce master
plan.com or find me on LinkedIn.
I'm, uh, Chloe Thomas, and you'll, you'll probably fail.
Fail to not find me.
If you search Chloe Thomas on LinkedIn, I'm quite easy to find.
Um, and, uh, I've got the two podcasts, e-Commerce Master Plan, which is an
interview with a different e-commerce, uh, person every Monday and keep
optimizing where we focus on a different marketing method for a month at time and
interview a different expert each week.
So, um, yeah, you can find that on all the user podcast players.
But eCommercemasterplan.com is where you'll find all the
details about everything.
Matt Edmundson: Absolutely.
And do check out Chloe's podcast.
It is great.
Uh, and you do, I mean, you do learn lots, which is, this is the whole point
of the whole thing, isn't it, really?
It is.
So, Chloe, thank you so much for being.
The show.
We will, of course, link to you and all your info in the show notes as
well, which you can get along, Uh, you can get on the website for free.
Uh, I've, I've just lost the ability to talk now.
Uh, eCommercepodcastnet.
Oh, it's descending quickly.
Uh, Chloe, I'm on that bombshell.
I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna read the sign out stuff.
So thank you for joining me.
Uh, you've been an absolute legend.
Chloe Thomas: Uh, it's been brilliant to be here.
I always love chatting with you, Matt, and, um, I think we've helped everyone a
Matt Edmundson: lot.
Yeah, absolutely.
We totally have.
So there you have it.
Uh, what a great conversation.
Huge.
Thanks again, Chloe, for joining me today.
And also don't forget to check out, uh, the show sponsor e-commercecohort.com,
uh, for this sort of more information about this new type of community,
which you can and probably should join.
If you're an eCommerce.
Uh, be sure to follow the eCommerce podcast as well as e-commerce master plan
wherever you get your podcast from because we've got lots of great conversations
lined up leading up to Christmas.
And I don't want to, I don't want you to miss a single one of them.
And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first person
to tell you, dear listener, you are.
Uh, yes you are.
Uh, the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media.
You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.
The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Josh Catchpole,
Estella Robin and Tim Johnson.
A theme song was written by Josh Edmundson and My Good Self.
And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head
over to the website eCommercepodcast.net, where coincidentally you could also sign
up for our newsletter and get all of this good stuff delivered direct to your inbox
totally free, which is also amazing.
So that's it from me.
That's it from Chloe.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Uh, have a great week.
Have a great Black Friday.
Uh, I'll see you next time.
Bye for now.