Wednesday, November 8

🗣 Want to get in front of our audience? Start here…

🚨 In today’s newsletter 🚨

• Amazon gets a jump start on Black Friday

• Email strategies for Black Friday

• What’s different about Shopify’s marketplace

Let’s get into it👇

#1 - 📆 Black Friday will start early on Amazon

📰 TL;DR - On the heels of its successful Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon is getting an early start on Black Friday deals. The extravaganza will begin on November 17 and run through to November 27 with deals on big-name brands like Lancôme, Lego, Peloton, and Yeti. Amazon has played around with the length of BFCM deals before, but this year bigger seems to be better. They’re also going big on marketing with spots on Prime Video during NFL games. Alexa will also join in on the fun.

💡 Insight - I think we all knew Black Friday was going to start early this year, based on surveys looking at shopping habits as well as signals we’ve seen from e-commerce brands and marketplaces. It’s up to you to decide when to jump in, but Amazon does certainly seem to be the one who sets the precedent for sales events. Also, although Black Friday is the Hunger Games of commerce every year, this year is feeling extra spicy with splashy marketing, early sales, and consumer expectations for deep discounts amid inflation. May the odds be ever in your favor.

➡️ You can read the article here...

#2

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#3 - 💌 Black Friday email tips

📰 TL;DR - Speaking of the Hunger Games, Black Friday email marketing is a whole different ball game. This guide from Woo looks at strategies to try out for your Black Friday email sends. The big message here is to plan ahead — don’t just send out a couple of “hey we have a discount!” emails. There’s an art to this. A great tip here is to also check out your inbox from last year to get some inspiration from how other brands handled it. From there, this gets into how to craft the right message and some tricks like countdown timers or segmenting your offers. A solid guide all around.

💡 Insight - You already have your Black Friday emails written and scheduled, right? RIGHT? I mean maybe you do, but it’s okay if you don’t, there’s still time. Some of you may also be waiting to see what the competition does before finalizing what deals you’ll be offering. But you should get a move on. Now is when you should slowly be teasing what’s coming for Black Friday, or even dangling some initial small discounts to get people in the shopping mood. You should also have something on your site encouraging email signups to be the first to hear about your Black Friday deals.

➡️ You can read the article here...

#4 - 🛠️ Things worth checking out

📈 ROAS - What exactly is ROAS and how do you calculate it? Find out here.

😎 INFLUENCERS - Here’s a weekly roundup of influencer marketing news and trends to know about.

👀 AMAZON - According to the FTC lawsuit, Amazon allegedly welcomed “defect” ads.

🧵 THREADS - Should your brand have a presence on Threads? This article may help you decide.

🧶 ETSY - Etsy recorded a record-high number of sellers.

#5 - 🔎 A closer look at Shopify’s marketplace

📰 TL;DR - This piece takes a deeper dive into Shopify’s Shop marketplace (which now has a web version) and how it’s different from Amazon. First, there’s no SEO juice here. Shop doesn’t index on Google because they don’t want to take clicks away from your actual DTC site. That’s very different from Amazon. It’s also not trying to create competition among sellers, which, again, is not Amazon’s MO. Rather, it’s largely another way to promote Shop Pay, Shopify’s one-click checkout, and its new rewards program, Shop Cash.

💡 Insight - A marketplace of independent DTC merchants could be pretty cool, but this isn’t really that. If it doesn’t show up in Google, it’s hard to imagine many people starting their shopping journeys on Shop. But I guess that’s not totally the point of it. It remains unclear how much of a user base Shop even has after its mobile debut, so it’s truly hard to say if anyone is actually using Shop the way they’d use Amazon. Nice to have, I guess, but I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about it.

➡️ You can read the article here...