EP 283 - Gemma Bonham-Carter

Ellen Yin1h 2min

Ellen Yin

00:00

You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 283, over the most recent Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, seven figure online education founder Gemma Bonham Carter pulled off one of her most profitable campaigns yet, raking in $155,000 in just five days during her 2024 deal week with the multi product lineup, Gemma leveraged pricing, novelty and daily urgency to drive record breaking results. This data heavy case study gives you the full debrief on all the levers that made this work, list size, promo calendar, page visits, offer selection, conversion rates, the breakdown of all the purchases and any other nosy details you could possibly want to know about this launch. Gemma even shares an AI powered gift for you at the end to help you replicate your own five days of deals campaign. So stay tuned to grab yours. Welcome to Cubicle, to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host. Ellen Yin, every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.

Ellen Yin

01:36

Welcome back to the show. Today I am joined by my dear friend Gemma bottom Carter, we have a really exciting case study in store for you today, all around Gemma's $155,000 Black Friday deal week, all the behind the scenes. And I have, you know, kind of a unique perspective on this too, because I actually bought her Black Friday in a box program that teaches you how to do what she does for her own deal week. But we'll get all the numbers and all the details for you in just a moment. Welcome Gemma, so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Ellen, super stoked to have you. Well, for those of our listeners who are meeting you for the first time, we always like to start with the Cubicle to CEO story. So what is your catalyst that led you to entrepreneurship, and what was that final thing that made you go, Okay, I'm jumping in full time. Yeah. I mean, the catalyst was not one thing in particular. I was working a really standard nine to five job in public health. I was going down a very academic route, but like, always had that itch to do something creative on the side. So this was a million years ago, but in 2010 I started a blog because I just needed something for, like, right brain Gemma to get into. So I started a blog about, like, the projects we were doing around our home, like a DIY blog. It wasn't year until years later, when I started having my kids, where that real catalyst moment came in for me, and I was I can tell you the exact moment I was pregnant, like almost fully do, my belly was basically touching the steering wheel of my car as I'm driving home from the office, commuting, and it is gridlock traffic on the highway. It is so hot. It's the middle of summer. I had my daughter in August. We have no AC in this tiny little car we had at the time. My windows are down, this sweat is dripping down onto this giant belly of mine, and I was like, no more like this, commuting this, working from the office thing, like I just felt it so deeply in my bones that that was not that, that that ain't it for this girl like that was not for me, particularly when I had this baby coming, and I just really pictured, like, a different version of being home with my kids than, you know, dropping them at daycare and going to my nine to five job. I didn't love my job enough right to make that kind of move. And so it was during that first mat leave with her where I had the most fire in my belly, I think that I've ever had of like, make it work, like, monetize, whatever we're doing here, start bringing in income. I gave myself that year of maternity leave in Canada, we get, you know, a nice 12 months of maternity leave. So it was like, that was my moment to, like, make it happen. And I did. And I can't say that I, you know, started this business with all clarity of the offers that I would sell and all the things, but I was making enough money from all the different things I was trying to, like, not go back to my nine to five after, after that mat leave. And from then on, has, like, continued to grow. And obviously, now I'm the founder of, like, an online education company helping online entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Well, I love that you actually have a distinct moment you can recall that was like the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. I feel like a lot of people, it isn't like a instantaneous or overnight decision. It kind of, you know, slowly builds over time. But I love that you have that story, and I also love that your background is in blah. Blogging. I also kind of like ventured my way into this online space, in blogging, but I was, like, a failed blogger, while you were actually a successful blogger. I think I wrote like five blog posts, and then I was like, Ah, I'll come back to it. And then I never did well. I feel like maybe you were just smarter. And you were like, this ain't where the money is. Like, let me get to something faster. I was just like, you know, kept going, which, no, the end turned out fine, but it was a longer journey, maybe than than other paths I could have taken. No, I think it's, I mean, we Gemini and I have, you know, hung out in person several times. And I do remember when we were in Europe this summer, happenstance that sounds so fancy, like we vacation to Europe together. She was already there. I was just visiting for a couple weeks, but I remember you saying that blog actually, that you started so long ago, still, to this day, generates some passive residual income, even though it may not be significant in comparison to the seven figure education business you've built. I think there is something to be said about those efforts, and it, you know, it wasn't for not absolutely and besides the Yeah, I still make like an Amazon Associates check and a check from the display ads that are sitting on my site to this day, and I haven't published anything in years, which is definitely a nice little side effect, but almost the bigger underpinning there was that I really think it gave me so many of the skills that I needed to grow the business that I've grown today. Like, really, I learned everything about content marketing and personal branding and those early blog posts that I did, like they were DIY tutorials I was honing my skills on, like, how to teach people things in those blogs, yeah, you know, and I've now turned that into what I run today, which is, you know, really something I could never have imagined. Well, it's incredible. And let's get into the $155,000 Black Friday week, because that's huge. I know for a lot of people, a six figure launch is, you know, something they really aspire to and and work hard for. So before we get into the actual specifics of this past deal week in 2024 I kind of want to give our listeners, like, a quick zoom out of the history of deal week. So how many years have you actually run this promotion? And what's like? The high level overview of what deal week looks like to the consumer and how it operates. Sure, let me address the first part, which is, where did it come from? Where did it originate? So back in 2019 I was making this pivot from teaching e commerce to fellow bloggers, which is like, that was my first course that really kind of took off was, was how to launch e commerce stores. So I was pivoting from that to teaching about online course marketing. And Black Friday was around the corner, and it was like, also coming to the end of the year, you know, and you're like, Well, what do you want next year to look like? And I was like, Man, I really just want to make this pivot. I really want to start teaching online courses and everything to do with marketing them. And I think this is my opportunity to to pre sell some stuff. So actually, what happened was I was wanting to make the pivot. I wanted to put offers out there and kind of validate them, like, are there people in my existing audience who you know aren't even fully aligned with where I'm going? But I knew that maybe some were. Are there people in here that are going to buy these sort of ideas for offers that I have, and can I validate them during Black Friday? And then I also saw Amazon running their daily deals. You know, this is like something Amazon does Now often, right? Like weeks and weeks and weeks before Black Friday hits. Now, we've, we've got the daily deals happening on Amazon. I don't know about you guys, but I like, will refresh my Amazon every day to see, like, What's is it? What's the vacuum today that we're running on daily deal? You know, whatever it is. So I kind of married these two ideas and decided to do this five days of deals. It was very much a scrappy experiment. And of the five days that I put out that first year, three of them were things I had not created. They were ideas where I wrote a couple paragraphs about what I intended them to be, but really just put them out there as an idea. And that first year, I made sales all five days. I ended up bringing in $8,800 over the course of that five day period, these were products ranged from $19 to the top end was 400 so they weren't like, high ticket. And for me, it gave me that validation of like, okay, great. I have, you know, five buyers for this thing, seven buyers for that thing. My January of 2020, was an absolute disaster, because I had to create way more than I had planned to create. Like, I kind of thought one or two might be a dud, but I went ahead and delivered on all of them. So yeah, I maybe don't recommend that moving forward, like lesson learned, but in the end, those have become some of my signature offers. Like one of those, it was course creator School, which was has been a sort of a foundational offer. In my suite now for years, and that was something that I sold with a paragraph that first deal week so, and then, to sort of cut a long story short, I tried something else in 2020 like I just did a different style for Black Friday. It was like a bundled deal with some co collaborators. But in 20 it was okay. But in 2021 I thought, You know what, I'm gonna go back and try that five days of deals again. So I did it again. It again. I did about 11k that year. I think part of the reason for having a lower, maybe not as much of a jump as I'd hoped, was that it I did all low ticket products that year. They were basically all under 100 maybe there was one that was closer to 200 but like all very low ticket Yeah, in 2022 I taught the campaign style to my students inside of passive project, which is my kind of high touch program. Bunch of them ran with it. I did something else again with a co collaborator. All of my students crushed it. I was like, Damn, why? Why didn't I do my own campaign style? So in 2022 I came back to it, did a mix this time of high and low. So on that year, I added in like five spots for some one on one boxer coaching for 1250 you know, I really played with the high low that year, and ended up doing 91k so 2023 I was like, this, is it like that? You know, I am never not doing this again. And then, of course, that brings us to 2024 where we did 155

Ellen Yin

11:21

so incredible seeing the the journey. And I think it's actually really encouraging for people to see that it wasn't always this giant exponential growth year over year, like it took a couple years of incremental growth and honestly straying away and finding your way back each time to reach the level that you have now. So I think that's actually really encouraging. And I really want to reiterate for our listeners the main takeaway that I got from what you just shared is that this week, this deal week, but just the Black Friday time of year in general, is honestly one of the best times to test new offers, to experiment with new things, like even when I did my Black Friday deal week, you know, inspired by yours, same idea, like I was doing it as a test, actually, not necessarily of offers, but, you know, a functionality of it was our first time offering a cart feature, where people could add multiple items to cart and do one transaction. So I just really want any of you listening to realize what an incredible opportunity is to capitalize on being able to validate concepts and ideas that maybe aren't fully fleshed out during this time of year where everyone is super primed to buy. So thank you, Gemma, for giving us that history with the high level overview of how deal week actually operates as a sale. Can you just quickly share? So it's five days of deals. How does it work for the consumer? Yes, five days of deals. You're promoting one offer a day, and those deals go away at the end of the 24 hour period. So you're not sort of adding on, or it's not five deals that are available across all five days. We are sort of expiring them at the end of the 24 hours and then reopening the new one the next day. And then I like to bring them all back for Cyber Monday as one final day, and you can maybe leverage or layer in something new or different or a bonus or something on that Cyber Monday, if you want to, or just bring them all back, the structure is really simple but very intentional, right? Because each offer is likely aligning with a very specific segment of your audience and need and that sort of staggered release. It also allows you to tailor the messaging. It's like, I don't need to be talking about all five of my things at once. I can have the time to really talk about each thing one at a time. So and like we've mentioned, use the things in your offer suite, pre sell new things, fill slots of your one on one offers or done for you, offers, bundle things together. You can have fun playing with what those five offers look like. Yeah, for you this year, this past year, in 2024, what were your five deals that you ended up curating? Yeah, I was really pleased with how these came together, so I didn't do any one on one offers like I had the year before, with sort of a day of Voxer, any kind of coaching offers, just because that didn't line up with the bandwidth that I knew that I would have coming up in 2025 so this year, I played with my high low still, but all within the context of like courses. So first one was million dollar emails. This was an existing product that I have called the email fix that I sell for 199 already, but I basically bundled a bunch of extras to make it more exciting, more enticing, but kept it at the 199 price point. The second offer was a brand new one. So here's my version this year of like pre selling something was an offer called AI dream team, and this is my newest offer teaching entrepreneurs how to really leverage custom AI assistance for faster, better and cheaper business operations. This one blew me away. I'll tell you how much it made in a second, and let me just get through the five first and that one was priced at 1497 Yeah, and then I came out with course creator School, which is one of my flagship signature ones that I've been selling forever. We ran it on a discount at 699 so basically the urgency there was, like, lowest price ever. No, not real sort of new bonuses or anything of that nature, fourth day standard price for that just 997, okay, so that is about like a, what, 30% discount, percent, yeah, okay. Is that typically the the discount like range that you you see be effective for this type of promotion? Yeah, I think it can't really be less than that. But I play with discounting and with adding bonuses, or, like, bundling things in a new and fresh way. So it's not that you have to slash your prices on everything. For instance, the Voxer offer that I did in 2023 like, that's just not something I offer. So I didn't slash prices. It was just like, hey, I never opened my calendar for these, I'm making five available, right? And I sold them at my top tier price. So you can play with what the urgency, where the urgency comes from, right, right. Day four this year was my lowest ticket. So it was an offer that I usually sell for 77 that I discounted to 44 and it's called Brand Book in a day. It's essentially a quick win, like mini workshop on how to build your brand guidelines using AI. And then my last one was my signature higher ticket close proximity membership called passive project. And that's for, course, creators like scaling beyond six figures. And that one we sold at 2997, which is, which is a discount, like, it's a 5k year program. So we slashed the price on that on day five. So of those, AI dream team was the clear winner, pulling in 94k alone. And I don't think that was like a coincidence. There's a few things there. Like number one, I had been positioning myself as an AI kind of expert in this space, having hosted two seasons of my summit AI unlocked, where we've had like 10,000 participants come and, you know, really see me as a leader in our particular world of online course marketing in terms of AI. So I think I'd position myself well. And then I also focused more on the pre launch content, talking about AI dream team like as we led up to deal week, I talked more about that topic than anything else. So many of the buyers of this new offer were also long time followers and buyers. I'm sure we all have them in our audience, right? It's the people who are like, Yeah, I buy everything you do. Gemma, sign me up, and then also business acquaintances who saw me as like a go to person on this topic. So that was the winner. Do you want to know about like my where I feel like I do you're reading my mind, but I actually want to ask you a question about this, because it was such a runaway winner. Is this going to be a new flagship program for you, or do you feel like it was kind of a one off offer for this, for definitely flagship. I felt that in my bones before even running this deal week, I was like, this is where things are going in 2025 for me, I felt it really strongly, and this was the confirmation that I needed to just like, yep, Gemma, follow the gut, you know, like always, listen to what she's saying. She knows. So that this will definitely become, I think, like in 2025 what will happen for me is my two big ones are AI dream team and passive project. One is around, yeah, back end, AI operations, and one is about marketing. And so those two things will remain my my big ones, but interestingly, passive project, which the year before had been the runaway success during deal week. This time, it kind of underperformed compared to how it had been the year before. So it still generated like 37k in 2024 but that was about half of what it did the year before. And I really think this came down to, like, I did not promote this at all during the lead up, because I was focused on AI dream team. So there is a lesson here in if you're spotlighting one offer, it can potentially dim another, even when both are kind of strong, right? So yeah, lesson learned there. That makes sense. And like, you know, AI dream team is kind of like the shiny new toy for your community, right? Because it's never, they've never seen it, whereas passive project has established itself over the years. And so I guess, I mean, there's always more people that could join, but I'm sure it also, the fatigue is not necessarily the right word, but it's like they've seen it before. So it's not as I feel like the the shininess of it isn't, isn't as big there for the offers that maybe didn't perform as well. Was that anticipated on your own? Like, were you kind of knowing going in, like, oh, okay, it's probably gonna sell modestly. Or did any actually surprise you that underperformed? I guess, be. On passive project because it was halved this year. I mean, I don't know that I would say it was. It felt surprising necessarily. I think I probably anticipated that passive would be down given the focus on AI dream team. Maybe I didn't expect it to be quite as much. So a lesson learned for me there would be to spread out the pre launch a little more evenly throughout the offers that I know are coming to sort of get people ready for those. And in terms of like, when you look at what brought the most revenue throughout the week, the one that had the smallest revenue was Brand Book in a day, the little $44 one, we generated about 5k from that offer. So you could say, oh, that one underperformed when you're looking at just bottom line revenue, but it's really important to think about, well, no, actually, like that was 102 buyers, and a lot of those people will then go on to purchase my higher ticket things. And I, I see it happen all the time in my business. So it's important, if you're running a deal week like this, to also think about like, the long term return that happens even when some of the buyers might be lower ticket.

Ellen Yin

21:08

I couldn't agree more. I think that like to your point, if you're comparing, you know, a $2,000 program to a $47 product, it's not an apples comparison was Brand Book the deal that had the highest number of unique buyers during the week, or was there another one that surprised? It was okay. It was Yeah. And what's interesting is it's also the one that I've been getting so many fun messages from people, like gem. I went through it. I made that brand book like I was shook, you know, just like the nicest messages, you know. And you think those are gonna come like, of course, I get nice messages from the people who buy the high ticket things, too. But sometimes those quick win products, I don't know, can just also really open up the conversation quickly with those audience members who end up buying, yes, I agree. I actually really enjoy creating and consuming quick win products more than, like, long term containers. So there's definitely, I think, a specific type of consumer that that extra appeals to. So I agree, great bit of insight outside of launching AI dream team and it being such a, you know, innovative product that your audience was primed for based on, you know, like you said, the lead generation you've done through your two AI themed Summit. Is there any other factor that you think significantly influenced 2024 being your highest revenue year for deal week? Yeah, this is a great question. I think there's a couple of things. So one, it's not my first rodeo. So like the audience knows that I do a deal week, they're expecting the deal week. I think that really does play into the success that we saw in 2024 and I've seen this also with my students, right? The ones who have repeated their deal weeks, some of them now are going on year three, like they're just a year behind me, right? And we've seen it with them, too, of this like incremental increase year over year. So there's definitely a power in the rinse and repeat of this strategy with your audience, I think also for me, just particularly with AI dream team that was perfectly timed, right? Like AI is a hot topic, my audience already trusted me as an authority in that space. So that was just an audience alignment piece that I think helped me this year, I also, more than ever. In 2024 had an intentional pre launch. So sometimes I have been doing this at the last minute, and it's like three days before, and I'm not following my own rules about, you know, warming up the audience. I took my own advice this year, and I did not just wait until days before, right? I was teasing about it for a long time before deal week actually happened. And I think there's also this funny thing of because I was selling Black Friday in a box, which Ellen you mentioned, is kind of like this mini resource that I have on how to run a campaign like this in your business. And I was selling that all through late September and October, because I was selling that, running ads to it, etc. It's like everyone in my world knew that, of course, I would then be running a Black Friday campaign, right? So I just think that those, for me, like it, played into it really nicely as well in terms of getting my audience ready. I also just think when we're talking about revenue, bottom line revenue, I think the fact that two of my deals were higher ticket, like over $1,000 made a huge difference to the bottom line. So if you're listening, you're like, Well, how do I have a big revenue week? Know that you probably can't have a giant revenue week if you're only selling $22 or $47 products, unless you have huge volume in terms of audience. So that's just something to keep in mind 100% and I will echo that with some of my own data. I recorded a private debrief of my Black Friday deal week for our C Suite members inside our loyalty membership. But. So to add on to what you're saying here, Gemma, I think all of our products were pretty low ticket, like, definitely under $200 the only big, bigger. And I wouldn't, I still wouldn't even consider this high ticket, but it was like the one that was made it to four figures was a $1,000 sponsored bonus episode on Cubicle to CEO. And the interesting thing about that is, I actually limited that to 12 spots, so it had a pretty clear cap there as well. So we had a large volume of buyers, but it was, to your point still like, I think our grand total was like 24,000 and so again, it was a little bit different. I ran my deal week, and you know this because we privately voxered about it, but just for our listeners to have context, I ran it a little bit different than Gemma, because I was just trying to test this new cart feature. So my objective was different, and so I actually let people have, like, the full week to buy any of the offers, because I just wanted to see what kind of combinations and arrangements people would bundle together on their own. So I think that's another thing to consider too. Is like, go in with a clear intention of like, what is the purpose of this deal week, as far as how it supports my business goals, and if revenue is your number one item, then you definitely want to pay close attention to what Gemma's saying here about choosing your offers wisely to actually support a goal like that. So love that you're so prepared with the data, and we're about to get even more into the weeds. So listeners get excited. Let's really dig into some of these nitty gritty numbers. First off, I think our listeners would be really curious to know, for a launch of this size, what is the overall traffic that was actually sent to the page during this week? Like, how many visitors landed on the deal week site? Okay, so here's where I put on my like, hat of shame, because we switched to show it, literally, like, just before running deal week, we'd always run it on lead pages, we switch to show it, and we didn't put the GTM code in, so we there's, like, a tech glitch. Nothing got tracked from that perspective. However, I knew this question was coming, so here's what I've done to try and, like, give some context. We do know that. So I the largest amount of traffic that went to that site was via my email list, and at the time I was my list was around 27,000 subscribers. Those are like the people who we actually sent the emails to. So there were people who weren't in my welcome sequence, and they were like active subscribers. Of those 27,000 roughly, we got around a 1% click through rate. It was just under 1% click through rate sort of on average from those emails. So if we take the 1% and assume that we had 2700 people land on the page, according to that, we had 246 buyers, so that roughly means a 9% conversion rate, I would probably say it's maybe it was maybe closer to 7% like, let's, let's round down just if there was additional traffic that came via ads or social or whatever that looks like. But I hope that can give Yes, some context to the numbers. I think that's probably really encouraging, actually, because, I mean, I know you're talking about, like, unique people that landed on the page. I mean, those 2700 people, some of them could have, you know, gone to that page like 50 times just one individual checking it out. But if we're excluding total view count, we're just looking at the number of unique users who landed on that on that site. I think that's actually really encouraging in the sense that, like, yes, 2700 people is a lot of people. But it's also not like this number that just feels completely unrealistic, right? We're not saying, oh, Gemma had to send 100,000 people to this page to get 100,000 plus launch. And so I think these are the types of numbers that people usually don't know for themselves, like they don't know how much traffic they're actually sending somewhere. So when things maybe don't perform as well as they hope they they kind of, like, look at it as, oh, my offers aren't good. Or, like, I'm, you know, something about themselves, when really it's, like, it could just be a traffic problem. So like, definitely make sure that's something you kind of look at. That's really helpful to know average conversion rate. Okay, so seven to 9% and then what were the total number? You said, 246 people. 206 buyers. Yeah, across in total, all offers. How many people bought more than once? Do you happen to know that? Yes. So we had about 15% of buyers purchase more than one product, and they, unlike Ellen, where you have like that cart functionality, like they had to come back on that second day or third day, or whatever that was, to buy those additional products. So I feel like that is kind of also just like a nice nod to the fact that, yeah, there's people in my in this audience who like, know what they want, and they know to come back and get it, and they're listening, you know, struggling to turn your promotions into real profits. Gemma Bonham Carter has the solution. You. Didn't know you needed she's created a free AI assistant that helps you plan an incredible five days of deals campaign, whether you're launching something new, running a flash sale, or just need a revenue boost during a slow season. This isn't just for Black Friday, by the way. It's a strategy you can use year round. And here's the kicker, when you download the AI assistant, you'll unlock a special offer on Gemma's best selling program, Black Friday in a box. It's the ultimate tool kit for turning quick campaigns into major revenue, ready to drive more sales and do it all with ease. Grab the free AI assistant today at Gemma, bottom carter.com/ellen that's spelled Gemma, G, E, M, M, a, Bonham, B O N, H, A, M, Carter, C, A, R, T, E, r.com/ellen, we'll also drop that link below in the show notes, your biggest sales campaign could be just a few clicks away.

Ellen Yin

30:54

And one thing I noticed, just as like an observer of your deal week, that I want to call out for our listeners, is you had this like, Add to Calendar button on each offer. So just for those of you who've never seen something like this, it was like, if you went to the page, obviously you could only buy that day's offer, but like the other ones, you could still see what was upcoming. Just the buy button didn't work yet, but in its place was this option to add, like, a reminder for yourself to come back the next day for that day's offer when it went live. And I just thought that was so brilliant, I cannot take the credit for that. That was all thanks to Katie, who is the founder of rebel and rise. So she's a show it designer, and she actually created, like a Black Friday in a box show it template that it was actually available for purchase outside of Black Friday in a box, but I used it as well for my page, and that was all her idea. So, yeah, thank you. Did that require any other, like, Widget Plugin, or was that, yeah, there was, I can't remember what it was called right now, I could go and find it for you, but there was, yeah, a little bit of a setup there, okay, but she made it really easy with, like, clear instructions. Have you heard any anecdotal feedback from your buyers that that was actually helpful? Or do you feel like you kind of just are going to continue doing it just because it's easy? I didn't hear any feedback. That's a good question. But yeah, I feel like I feel like, why not? Like, if it's relatively easy to set up, why wouldn't you have it? So, yeah, yeah, probably we'll keep going. So then, if we look out at the whole week, what's that purchase flow look like, for example, like, did it kick off with this big bang where everybody's, like, coming in hot and then kind of, you know, Peter out and then come back again at the end? Or did you see pretty consistent flow throughout the week? Did it rise incrementally? Like, what did that overall flow look like I saw a pretty consistent flow. I would say, roughly throughout the week. I do like to start the Monday with not the highest ticket offer. I usually like it to be, sort of doesn't have to be the lowest, but maybe mid. And you want it to be something that is probably going to be really exciting for your audience. So for me, that million dollar emails, one people in my audience, they they know and they know me for email marketing. They love my emails. Typically, like they This has always been something that I can sell fairly easily. Is anything related to email marketing? So that bundle, it was fresh. It was, you know, new for them. They'd never seen it before. So I like to start the week with something like that, because then it also gets your motivation up, and you're like, okay, yes, we've kicked this off. We're going things are things like, you know, people are buying, and you come into that week with that really positive energy as well. So we saw pretty good sales and traction throughout the week. I think the lowest number of sales was actually course creator school. Doesn't surprise me one bit, because that also has been around for such a long time that it's like, when people want it, they know it's there and they buy it. So to they aren't necessarily waiting for Black Friday deal week, you know, yeah, yeah. And then oh, and I wanted to just mention a huge percentage happened again on Cyber Monday. So bringing them back for Cyber Monday was a really successful strategy. I think it accounted for actually 24% of total sales. Wow. That is really significant. Do you feel like the the loyal audience members that you've had for years on your list who know to anticipate Black Friday deal week, since they know typically that the offers come back on the last day? Do you ever find that some people, like literally don't buy all week because they want to see all of the deals, and then on Cyber Monday, they come like guns a blazing, ready to purchase all the things at once? I mean, maybe they do, but they're not telling me about it. I will say I do share the deals up front, so it's not a surprise what the deals are going to be. And the reason for that is that I actually want my audience pre purchasing in their head, like, okay, yeah, I definitely am going to want Thursdays, or I know I'm going to want that Tuesday offer, so I release them a week in advance. And so, okay, the Cyber Monday thing, it I think that most. People if they know they want the thing they're buying it on the day, because there's no guarantee that I'm going to do the Cyber Monday, right? It's a bit of a surprise and delight situation. So I think what the Cyber Monday really scoops up are two things. One, the people who just ignored their inboxes that whole week because it was so noisy, and they were all on American Thanksgiving, we get a lot of like notes from people who were like, Oh my gosh, thank you. Like, I, you know, yeah, I didn't get it in time. And you know, they're so appreciative that we bring it back for a day. And then I think the other pocket of people are the ones who, oh, they were on that fence. They were so close to hitting that buy button, and then something in them just made them pause, and then they've had a little bit more time to think about it, and then they they're feeling confident. They're like, No, I know I wanted it. I'm gonna go ahead and purchase it today, right? No, that makes a ton of sense. I forgot to ask you earlier when you said, you know about 15% of the total buyers bought more than once. Do you have any data around people who bought everything, like, all five offers? You're super, oh my gosh. I haven't, but that is such a good thing to go and look up. I didn't see. I do try and, like, watch the names kind of come in. I can't say that. I remember seeing a name across all five days. But yeah, yeah, that's a that's something. I might just go do some homework on that and circle back, and maybe, if we could make that something fun. Oh, Ellen, you're giving me new ideas. Maybe it's like, if you buy all five products, you unlock a bonus, like, surprise bonus six thing. I think that would work. So great. I actually did something like that for our deal week, because it was like, cart based, and people could be adding multiple, you know, offers to cart all week I did like fast action bonus, like first, like five people who hit 500 or more in their cart, first 10 people who hit, like all five. You know, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was like, I definitely built in rewards and incentives based on the purchase value, or people who purchased all five things, or were the first to purchase, or whatever. And so I definitely think you should do that. I think your audience in particular would resonate really well with that. I love that. Yeah, I will try that next year, and I'll report back you guys. Yes, it'll be a follow up. Yeah. And one other thing that you do on your deal week page, which I think is really interesting and unique, and I kind of want to get a better sense of you know why you do it is at the bottom of your Black Friday deal week sales page, there's a whole section where you actually have affiliate based offers. So, like, you're an affiliate for them. I actually was lucky enough to be one of the offers listed there. But you have, like, I think this year you have, like, a couple people that you like reference, who are also running a deal week. So you sent them to their website, but then you also had, like, some of your favorite tech tools and whatnot. Have you always done that, and for this past year in particular, how did that impact your overall launch revenue? Or do you not count it in that total? Yeah. Okay, good question. So I initially, to be quite honest, the first year, 2019 when I ran this, I started it right from there, and probably because I just lacked confidence thinking that people were gonna buy my own stuff. So I was like, well, let's hopefully make at least some affiliate sales and get some revenue in that way. And then, and then, honestly, just kind of stuck. Because then I thought, well, if I'm spending the time and the energy trying to get this traffic to this page. I don't if there are great sales happening. A, I don't want my people to miss it and B, I don't want to be sending additional content their way via email. Maybe it's on social, whatever it looks like to also tell them about these deals, these affiliate deals, I'd rather just have it in one page, and if I'm sending them to that page anyway, that's my big focus of that period, is just to get people to that page. Well, that's where it should be, right? So to your point, Ellen, you could scroll down to the bottom. Of course, I'm listing my own things first, and it kind of lives at the bottom of the page. And yeah, I pick, like, a handful of honestly, often they're like friends of mine who are also creators, who I think their offers line up so well with what I know my audience wants. So that's usually, sort of informs my decision making there. And then the Tech offers that I list are really usually just the things that I have loved the most that year from a tech perspective. And if they are running a sale, I want my audience to also know about it, because, yeah, usually my people, they want my same tech stack, right? Like you were sort of aligned on that, and I do not count this in my total revenue from deal week. It really sits in like a separate category for me, but I think I'd have to go back and pull exact numbers, but I looked at some anecdotally before we hit record, and roughly made around 5k from those affiliate sales across those different offers. And for someone like you, Ellen, or people who are maybe invested in other businesses, maybe. Maybe this is a place where you can, like, do a nod to some of those other companies, right? Yeah, actually, that's so true. I didn't even think about that this year. I didn't have, I didn't have any, like consumer based products in it, because I also did like a affiliate section, but it was all tech based platforms, mostly that I recommended. But you're so right. It would be really interesting to test putting some of my angel portfolio companies at the bottom next year, just to see what that crossover looks like. Because most of our buyers, obviously, in our community, are founders and entrepreneurs, but they're still people, so, like, they still utilize, you know, lifestyle products and whatnot. So yeah, you're giving me ideas too. I love,

Ellen Yin

40:39

I think one year, I listed, actually my like Amazon affiliate storefront or something, and it was like, here are all the things I love the most on Amazon. So if you do want to go and check those out and see if there are deals running on any of them, like, here's a quick link. And just as a hot tip for anybody listening who does have an affiliate account with Amazon, if someone adds one thing to cart from your recommendation, but then adds like, 12 more. You get cookied on those 12, yeah? So, like, your your affiliate revenue can really I used to laugh about this being a blogger, because I would be like, Hey guys, like, I used, you know, these cabinet pulls or whatever, and they're like, dirt cheap on Amazon, like a, you know, 30 pulls for like $30 or something ridiculous, and then someone would go and add like, a $700 sink or faucet or something, and I'd get such a good payout. And I was like, Damn, that just worked so in my favor. So yeah, of all of the affiliate programs like Amazon is kind of a really nice one from that perspective. And we know everyone buys stuff on Amazon, right? You don't, you open your cart, and then you're always, like, adding extra stuff, yeah? Def, I mean, it's definitely that's like a little bit of a sink hole in that. That regard, they really get show with a buyer psychology, okay, 5000 is not insignificant. I mean, that is really impressive. Was there a standout affiliate that you feel like really? I mean affiliate, not affiliate, not a person who was affiliating for you, but like a deal that you promoted on the affiliate side that really stood out. I often make a decent chunk, usually from my Thrive cart affiliate link, because my audience knows that I use it. They're seeing it on every checkout page I have is a thrivecart checkout page. And if thrivecart runs a sale, so many of the people on in my audience who've been kind of thinking about it, that's the moment they'll purchase and so and I offer bonuses that go along with it too. So yeah, it's usually thrivecart, and there were a couple others in there, but that one accounts for the most for sure. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I want to impact the promotion side, because I'm sure a lot of people sitting here are like, wow, this is incredible. I want to run something similar. You talked a lot about how the pre launch window is kind of like almost make or break in terms of the, you know, the significant back end results, how long is your pre launch window and how, I mean, I know there's like, Okay, I'm gonna take this back one step. There's, like, an official pre launch window. But like, when is the first time you mentioned, like, breathe, the word deal week to your email list, prior to running the sale? Yeah, I think probably at the very end of October, you would hear me start saying things like, Well, that might be coming in deal week, or look out for deal week. Or if I, let's say, for example, the AI piece, if I was saying something about or writing some kind of piece of content that at all talked about what I was doing with AI, I would put a little teaser being like, keep your eyes peeled for what's happening during deal week, right? And so these little things are starting to happen in October, for sure. And then by early November, that is when kind of that official pre launch moment kind of starts. And my content is very much aligned with where we're going with deal week. And I will also say we've had so many students now run this Black Friday in a box campaign strategy. And one of the pieces of feedback that we we collect a survey every year, and this year, I really analyzed it deeply. Thank you. Chat GBT to like, analyze what everyone was saying and the trends and all that. And one of the things was, there was such a clear correlation of the earlier like Gemma, the earlier I started my pre launch, and the more warming up I did, the better my deal week was those went hand in hand, as did the people who have more engaged, larger email lists, had a better deal week. Those were like the two things that, if I could say, had any sort of impact on you'll have a good deal week if it was, like, good pre launch and a good email list, yeah. So grow your list and talk about your things often and well before, which, as a procrastinator, is pre launch is definitely my weak spot. So I totally related when you were, like, some some years, it's like, Oops, like the. Is happening, but I'm really glad that it was intentional in this past year during the actual, actually, before I ask this, you said that you actually show them the exact deals, like one week prior to when car opens for the first deal, right? But you're talking about deal week, kind of like, as a general idea, weeks before that, you've got it correct, yeah. And in terms of, like, What do you mean when you're talking about a Gemma, what I mean is, in emails, also in my podcast episodes, I'll just casually, like, mention it as a teaser, and then even in my social posts, like, you know, they're not, sort of, get ready, it's coming, but it's woven throughout, right? You're just referencing like, name dropping Exactly, okay? And then during actual deal week, what does your promotion schedule look like? How many emails are you sending out for each day's offer? Are you posting on social? Were there any ads or affiliates involved helping to promote your deals? Yeah, great question. So during the week itself. From an email perspective, there are emails going out, of course, every single day and actually twice a day. And I know some people are like, Oh, Gemma, don't make me do it. Don't make me send two emails in one day, like my list is gonna hate me. I'm here to tell you they are not. Everybody understands if someone is a Negative Nelly about it, they can either not open those emails or they can unsubscribe. We don't need them there if they're not going to be excited for us, it's all good. Two emails a day, one in the morning, announcing What's the Deal of the Day. You know, give some context about it. This is kind of your like facts and features moment too. Of like saying what's included and then a reminder email at the end of the day. And those can be incredibly short, and it's just like, Hey, Ellen, you've got three hours left. Like, don't drop the ball in this one, go put it in your cart and, you know, see you tomorrow, kind of thing. And a lot of people hesitate on sending the second one. I can tell you that they perform like we saw a huge influx of sales, and it's not just me. We see this in our student community as well, the huge influx of sales that happen in the last hours of every single day. So it's incredibly worth it. When I first started running deal week, that was my promotional schedule, like it was just emails. That was all I could handle. I did nothing else. Now that I've done this a bit, right? And I can rinse and repeat some stuff we have layered on social. So we also do it's usually two posts a day. One post is very again, facts and features. It's like, here it was a carousel this year. So it was like, here's day two, and then next thing is the name of the thing. Next slide, you know, here's what's included next slide, comment, whatever, to get your hands on it. You know, very, very basic. And then paired that with a reel that was a little bit more of like a hot take, or a hook or something that was a bit more engaging, related to that day's offer. So that was the promotional schedule. And I don't think I I'm trying to remember, from a podcast perspective, we might have dropped one episode at the beginning of the week saying something like, it's live, but it's not like we were dropping an episode a day. That would be like phase four or something. I could we'll see. If I ever get there. I was gonna say I'm very curious about the test that I've never like launched through my podcasts before. So even, I mean, there's so many times where we run promotions and sales in general that we don't really talk about here on the show, just because it is such a education first show. But I would be really curious for someone to like, go hard on launching via podcasting and see, like, how that translates as a medium compared to like a list or social media content. So we'll have you back if you ever reach space for I'm game. I'm game. Let me you had also asked me about whether I used any affiliates, and I just wanted to mention I did not use affiliates. I actually haven't really used that strategy much in my business on the whole so, no, didn't do that, but we did run ads. So I want to mention that, because I think that's important, I ran largely like low budget retargeting ads. We spent just over 1000 USD over the course of the entire campaign. So there was actually a little bit of warming ads, and then the kind of, like driving right to the sales page ads during the actual deal week. And those ads tracked about 11k in USD revenue, so roughly, like a very good, healthy ROAs, Yeah, huge. And ROAs. By the way, if some of you have never run ads, it's just return on ad spend that's huge. But you're saying it was all like, kind of, I mean, besides the warm up ads, it was all kind of like back end, like people who had already landed on the page but didn't buy you were retargeting them to come back. Yeah, right. I don't think this is the moment to try and, like, be getting cold people. Into your world and have them purchase something. Because when you look at the sales page like we're not giving it's not a long form sales page per product, right? This is a quite a short little sales blurb, essentially with a buy value of each product. Yeah, about each product. So your audience really are the people who have already built the know, like and trust with you. You don't need a long form page to sell each of these things. And so, yeah, going for cold audience probably wouldn't be my recommendation for this campaign style,

Ellen Yin

50:32

right? Okay, super helpful. And just who? Amazing. ROAs, seriously, like, especially during that time of year, my ads manager is like, quite happy to share that one, as you know, like a case study. That's so good, so good. Well, this has been immensely helpful. I want to wrap up this conversation on a hot take, because you and I love to have these conversations, you know, privately. So I thought, let's bring some to our listeners. Here's, here's here's a hot take I want to ask you about. So what's most interesting about deal week is that you sold like we've referenced several times your framework for this via a low ticket product. I think it was like $97 called Black Friday in a box in the weeks leading up to, you know, this big sale. So lots of business owners bought it. Some people decided to host their own, including myself, obviously mine. I kind of feel like I was like a black sheep. I wasn't the perfect student because I did it differently, but only again, because I had a different objective. But next year, I think I am going to run it the traditional way for actual revenue, not just testing like cart. But anyways, this led to a massive influx of deal weeks showing up in my inbox and a lot of other people's inboxes this season, compared to probably years past, where it was maybe just a handful of people. And I did hear some rumblings on threads from, you know, just a few disgruntled consumers or peers who were like, why are there so many five day deal weeks in my inbox? Like, who's teaching this? Or whatever. So I want to know, of course, you can't please everyone. There's no way to ever please everyone. But what is your perspective on this? Do you have any regrets about kind of opening the doors on your framework to so many other business owners and kind of maybe risking your own getting lost in the noise? Or are you like, No, I'm ready to double down on this even more and sell even more Black Friday in a boxes next year. Okay, first of all, short answer is, I am here to double down. Longer answer is also, it's funny, like I didn't see that on threads. I wish I had so I could have chimed in and be like,

Unknown Speaker

52:30

it's me. I'm the

Speaker 1

52:32

problem. It's me. Perfect. Tailor, Chip, totally right. Unity,

Ellen Yin

52:37

dang it. Maybe I should use that as an ad next year, it could actually be pretty fun. Like, hey, I'm the annoying girl that is responsible for whatever, you know, joke like satire on yourself. Yeah, 100% okay, writing that down on my notebook for later. But here's the thing. Like, we know this, sales are everywhere. Right during Black Friday. This is not new or exclusive to like, the five days of deals kind of idea. And I really think saying people should run deal week campaigns, it's like saying target shouldn't run Black Friday sales because Walmart is right. Like, yeah, that would never happen. Shoppers are expecting sales during this time. It's up to each business owner, right, whether you're whatever niche you're in, big or small, it's up to you to show up in a way that resonates with your audience and how you want to show up as the founder. So I think what's important also to remember is like we are operating, and I say this, we as in like you and I, Ellen, and probably a lot of the listeners, are operating in this echo chamber of like the digital marketing space, 100% and if you're in this industry, then yeah, your inbox is probably like ours, and a lot of our marketing peers might have been sharing similar strategies, and we were maybe flooded with it, right? But when I look at my student audience like it extends far beyond just the people in the digital marketing space, I teach this framework to people in niches where running a deal week is totally novel, right? And it's really fun, because I see their results that are incredible, like actually my biggest case studies. So I know these numbers because I really studied their particular case studies well, so I can learn from them too, but we're talking 52k in a week, 75k in a week, 94k in a week. Like really big numbers. Those are from clients in the real estate niche, the creative writing niche, the copywriting for therapist niche and the Ayurvedic wellness niche. So I think it's just we need to have the context of, like, what is the echo chamber we're hearing this in? And then also, like, be able to big picture it and remove ourselves from that. So for me, I'm like, I'm doubling down on teaching it. I'm not stepping away from it. I really think it's a power. Framework, and when it works across industries like that, for me, gives me so much fulfillment to teach something that helps entrepreneurs like hit their revenue milestones and grow their businesses and serve their communities better. Like one of my students, the one who's in the creative writing niche, he's like so he's like a coach for authors. And he really feels like, when He does this every year, it's like a gift for his audience, because he's offering incredible his his offers at incredible prices. And like he feels so excited to send all those emails that week, and his his audience responds. So yeah, yeah, that was my long version of my Yeah. I'm doubling down on it hot day. I am so glad you were game to answer this question, because it is so important to have that reminder about the echo chamber and the bubble and just to realize too, that, I think over these last few years in particular, because, you know, we've been just burdened as humanity by so many awful things that have happened, you know, wars, disasters, like all the things. I found it interesting, the public narrative on when is it right to sell, or how much can you sell without it being, you know, egregious or turned off, or, you know, whatever. It's interesting, I feel like small business owners are definitely held to a different standard than the mass corporations that actually do on I mean, this is a blanket statement, but for the most part, those are the real culprits and exploitation and whatever it may be, right? And so it's very interesting to me that, like you said, no one's up in arms that you know targets running the a 100th sale of the day, and like is bombarding you from all sides, but the small business owner who like this is how we pay our bills and make a living and pay other people right on payroll, or whatever. It's like, people get so upset when it's so easy to just delete an email that you don't want to read or just ignore your inbox if you don't even want to look at it. And here's my hot take, and then we'll truly wrap up. I just want to say this for our listeners, I probably am a rare identity or character in this regard, but I love I looked forward all week to reading people's Black Friday emails, because I learn so much during these type of, like, hyper sales weeks, reading tons of different people's emails and getting lots of new ideas for like, how do they talk about things? What kinds of products are people selling? It's like amazing opportunity to do market research in a very passive way. And so I opened and read, probably, like, everybody's emails, just because I was so interested to hear what they had to say and why they were saying things they were saying. So anyways, that's that's just another thing too, to think about, like, instead of looking at as a burden, maybe for some of you, maybe look at as an opportunity for you to learn and expand and grow and support your peers. Because, hey, we're all in this ride together. I couldn't agree more, and I do the exact same thing. Ellen, obviously, for anyone running a five days of deals, I'm definitely opening those emails, because I feel like I'm like, it's like, live student case study moments for me, yeah, but I do the exact same thing. And and then if there are moments when you want to turn it off, right? If you don't want to be in entrepreneur kind of brain mode, you do, and that's okay, too. And I think just I wanted to add one quick thing to your point about this sort of challenge of small business owners who are, yeah, held to a different standard of when we sell, when things are going on in the world, or what have you. I also think there's something there about the fact that we run personal brand businesses, and there's like a face to our business. I feel like there's something different, because people can cling to it as us, as a person, versus as a company. And so that's fair. I don't know if that accounts for all of it, but there you're, there's something there, like, we don't hold the big companies to the same standard, because we don't see them as a person. They're just like a logo. This is, this would make, I think, for, like, a really interesting round table discussion. So I might have to, like, come up with some way for us to with other friends and peers have have a larger discussion around this. But anyways, thank you for for entertaining my hot take question. Gemma, thank you so much for sharing with such detail and so much data. I know. I appreciate that a ton, and so do our listeners. Where can people continue to connect with you? Hang out in your world? I would love if you wanted to come on over and hit subscribe to the course creator show. If you are a podcast listener and that's how you like to consume content, head on over there and hit me up on Instagram at Gemma dot, bottom Carter, I'm sure Ellen will drop all of the links in the show notes. But I also wanted to mention that I have a deal week AI assistant that I wanted to gift Ellen's listeners for free. Yeah, so you can try the link. Louis Gemma, bottom carter.com, forward slash Ellen. And basically what it is, it's. It's an AI assistant that's been trained on this framework, on this strategy that we've been talking about today. So you can go on in there and type in a little bit about who you are and your business, and it will help you ideate those five offers, what you should price them at, etc. And so it's a really fun tool to just like kind of play with, because remember, you can do deal week at any time of year. So if you don't want to wait until Black Friday and you want to do one at a in a different season around, I don't know, your birthday or your business anniversary, or whatever that looks like, have fun with this tool and kind of try to come up with, like, use it to come up with five really great offers. And what I'm also doing is I will attach in the email that comes with access to the AI assistant, I'll also attach. I took, like, a screenshot of my 2024, sales page because it's down. Now, you can't, like, go back and see it, but that way, I thought your listeners, Ellen, could, like, see they could actually visualize what that sales page looks like. Thank you so much. Yes, I know we have a lot of visual learners, myself included. So having that as a reference point will be amazing. And you guys what an incredible deal. Definitely take Gemma up on this offer, because I have a feeling this will probably turn into a paid product, maybe even for her next deal week. So credit. Well, it's free for you. And I just also wanted to encourage any of you listening who are intrigued by this idea, you don't have to wait until next November or Black Friday to run a deal week like you can run a deal week anytime. It could be for your birthday. It could be in the middle of July. It could just be, you know, you're having a slow revenue month, and you want to, you know, test this out and experiment. So have fun with it. Don't create this box or rules for yourself. I think this is a really excellent tool that can help spark a lot of different ideas for all of you. So, Gemma, thank you so much. And like she said, everything is going to be below in the show notes, so just go, click, click all the links. Thank you for tuning in, and we will catch you all in the next episode. Thanks for having me.

Ellen Yin

01:01:59

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