Wednesday, November 22

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🚨 In today’s newsletter 🚨

• Customers are in fact willing to pay for delivery

• What to expect this BFCM

• How to write AI prompts that are actually good

Let’s get into it👇

#1 - 📦 Delivery demands may be easing

📰 TL;DR - Well, here’s some good news. According to this survey, at least some shoppers are okay with paying for delivery. One-third (which is 62% more than last year) said they’d be willing to pay at least $10. For Gen X and Boomers, three out of four said they’d be okay with $20 or more. As well, the majority of shoppers don’t seem to expect rapid-fire delivery. Most said three to five days, rather than two days, is fine. However, this survey also found that people expect great deals.

💡 Insight - This suggests that consumers are catching on to the fact that free shipping isn’t really free — the price is just baked in somewhere else. Putting this all together, customers are okay to pay for shipping if they get a good deal, so paying a lot on top of a shipping fee is a lot less palatable. I think this also applies to delivery speed. Temu and Shein prove that people are willing to wait a long time for delivery if it means they get a great deal with free shipping to boot. I would also assume that if you pay a significant shipping fee, you expect that order to arrive pronto. Slow and expensive? That’s a bad combo.

➡️ You can read the article here...

#2 - 🥇 BFCM should be a win

📰 TL;DR - There’s been a ton of surveys and predictions and whatnot about Black Friday—Cyber Monday, and this article distills a lot of them into one place. The overarching theme is that things look good. Retail sales are expected to be higher than last year, and online sales look stronger, too. One interesting thing is that although people have higher shopping budgets, they don’t expect their money to go as far. So yes, they may spend more overall, but they expect to get fewer items for that price than in previous years. Another tidbit is that people are planning to spend more on gift cards.

💡 Insight - I think the general pessimism caused by inflation makes this a better year than ever to lean into the value of your products. Create the feeling that people are making the most of the money they’ve set aside for the holidays. You don’t need to be the cheapest, you need to be the smartest buy. But it’s also true that shoppers are extra hungry for deals this year and the trend has been to extend sales. Don’t just offer good buys on BFCM, save some juice for between Cyber Monday and Christmas.

➡️ You can read the article here...

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#3 - 🤖 AI prompts for e-commerce

📰 TL;DR - This is a deeper guide to writing AI prompts to use in e-commerce. It goes beyond something simple like “write me a marketing email” and gets into how to really fine-tune those prompts for your brand and needs. We’re talking prompts that are multiple sentences here. It also shows the difference in quality you get between a basic prompt and a more thorough prompt that includes asking for specific messaging, mentioning certain features, or incorporating keywords. Nice.

💡 Insight - This is really thorough, useful, and displays how AI can be super powerful. A lot of people have put out pretty basic lists of AI prompts for e-commerce, but this digs into how to actually make the best use of something like ChatGPT can do. Try it out yourself and remember, the more info you can give the AI, the better your results will be. Just don’t forget to edit!

➡️ You can read the article here...

#4 - 🛠️ Things worth checking out

😎 INFLUENCERS - Here’s a roundup of influencer and creator trends.

🥫 KIM K - Kim Kardashian’s private equity firm has made its first investment in a line of fancy sauces called Truff.

👻 SNAP - Amazon and Snap are partnering to trial e-commerce within Snap with an AR twist.

💃🏽 TIKTOK - According to this, one-third of Gen Z shoppers will make a purchase on TikTok for Black Friday.

🔥 TEMU - Temu is basically burning cash in a bid to challenge Shein and Amazon for BFCM.

#5 - 🌍 How Black Friday went global

📰 TL;DR - Black Friday is the day after US Thanksgiving so you’d think it would only be a thing in the US, but you’d be wrong! Black Friday has spread globally, most notably to Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. And other countries have adopted their own versions to coincide with more local themes or special dates. But it’s all sort of the same thing — a pre-holiday sale extravaganza.

💡 Insight - This is an interesting read generally, but it also has some insights into what shopping holidays are practiced in different regions. If you sell to any of those countries, it’s a great idea to localize your sales and marketing, especially if Black Friday isn’t the term used there. Although I think it’s fair to say that many people around the world are aware of Black Friday and know to look for deals this time of year.

➡️ You can read the article here...