the ultimate black friday campaign
How i strategized a six-figure comms plan and CX ecosystem to support a Black Friday-special SAAS bundle for SalesProcess
OVERVIEW
WHAT BLACK FRIDAY FOR SALESPROCESS LOOKS LIKE?
BRIEF CONTEXT
SalesProcess is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform designed to help entrepreneurs in the B2C market build, grow, and scale their businesses.
We commit to minimizing the barriers to entry by centralizing user experience on friendly, delightful, and seamless design—focusing less on tech as a tool to learn, and more on tech as a tactic to plug and play.
SalesProcess is typically accessible as a touchpoint in the backend of our funnels, but on Black Friday 2023, we decided to sell an exclusive 90-day plan as a front-end offer bundled with some of our best-selling products and training resources.
CORE COMPETENCIES
CONTENT STRATEGY
MARKETING COMMS
SAAS USER EXPERIENCE
CX ECOSYSTEM BUILDING
TIMELINE
1 MONTH DURATION
1 WEEK: PRE-CAMPAIGN PLANNING
3 WEEKS: ACTIVE CAMPAIGN
1 WEEK: P&L DEBRIEF
OUTLINE
MAPPING OUT THE USER JOURNEY FOR THE ULTIMATE BLACK FRIDAY CAMPAIGN
PROBLEM
Selling a subscription model as a front-end offer is a tall order in the B2C market considering how relatively compound buyer hesitation is regarding recurring payments.
Nobody wants to commit to paying a fixed amount every month just by visiting a landing page from an ad… because subscription models are built on the foundation of earned and continued trust.
This is why SaaS companies compensate up-front revenue by offering free trials (freemium plans or plans with usage limits) so users can give their software a test drive. As a result, their costs per acquisition increase as they can only recoup their advertising costs once someone subscribes after the trial. This dilemma even intensifies when a user cancels within the trial period, significantly increasing customer churn rates in the long run.
It's for this very reason that we decided to offer SalesProcess to existing customers who are looped and locked into our business.
Typically in any kind of macro-funnel we launch, we offer two (2) backend touchpoints for our software:
$97
/MONTH
(+ 14-DAY TRIAL )
$997
/YEAR
(SKIP THE TRIAL AND SAVE 72%)
a) a 14-day trial that renews $97/month upon expiry positioned as a post-purchase cross-sell to the front-end offer. (ex. when someone signs up for an event, we offer a SalesProcess trial as a pre-training action step)
b) a yearly plan that renews for $997 positioned as an upsell. (usually visible across post-purchase comms or as an upsell during an in-event table rush)
Given these limitations, the team decided to test, internally (developing our subscription model's risk tolerance) and externally (challenging consumer behavior about the subscription model), the effectiveness of selling SalesProcess as a front-end product.
The problem now is…
HOW CAN WE RECONCILE THE RISKS OF SELLING SALESPROCESS UP-FRONT WITHOUT RESORTING TO REVENUE-EATING TRIALS?
SOLUTION
The short and sweet answer? By making the most out of the Black Friday frenzy.
The idea is simple: consumer behavior is on overdrive at the height of the holiday shopping spree, and nothing would sell out better than an irresistible offer.
That's why we decided that Black Friday is the ideal time to launch an exclusive 90-day access to SalesProcess targeting cold and warm leads.
We created a two-fold solution as a workaround to our double-edged problem:
a) TO ELIMINATE BUYER OBJECTIONS TO A SUBSCRIPTION, we loaded the value of the front-end offer by bundling over (142) of our best-selling tools, training, and resources together with the software.
That way, prospects are incentivized to invest up-front without the fear of incurring billed payments in the next 90 days.
We can also break even by offering “free" trials at a fixed price of $97 without the logistical stress of product development since we'll only need to re-release archived offers for added value. No need to worry about revenue-eating trials when we can already generate sales from them!
b) TO ENSURE WE RETAIN A HEALTHY PROFIT MARGIN, we offered one-time order bumps and upsells at the deep end of the funnel so we can recoup our advertising costs and scale aggressively using backend sales.
GENERATE FRONT-END REVENUE
TO BREAK EVEN
GENERATE BACKEND REVENUE
TO INCREASE PROFITS
As the head of content, I mapped out the comms plan and CX ecosystem using (3) key campaign phases:
1. Waitlist (WARM LEADS & EXISTING CUSTOMERS)
2. Open Cart (COLD/WARM LEADS & EXISTING CUSTOMERS)
3. Cart Close (WARM LEADS)
Structuring this way allowed me to direct the evolution of storytelling over need-sensitive touchpoints across ads, emails, instant messaging, and UI.
I focused on designing an end-to-end email campaign that's able to play on the senses and impulses through stimulating yet strategically sequenced stories.
Furthermore, I ensured that the messaging was clear in the backend. Since we're following a forced continuity model that enrolls our users to the original SaaS plan ($97/month) past the 90-day period, I enforced light UX patterns on all pre and post-purchase comms to maintain stakeholder transparency through and through.
In the middle of each phase, I worked closely with the Digital Team on performance reports to continue iterating our content strategy for optimal returns.
RESULTS
FRONT & BACKEND REVENUE
THROUGHOUT THE MACRO-FUNNEL
446
NEW SALESPROCESS TRIALS
+ 269 CONVERTED 90-DAY TRIALS
AVERAGE OPEN RATES
ABOVE INDUSTRY STANDARDS
AVERAGE CLICK-THROUGH RATES
ABOVE INDUSTRY STANDARDS
AVERAGE REVENUE
PER END-TO-END EMAIL
AVERAGE SALES
PER END-TO-END EMAIL
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves.
Across the macro-funnel, our end-to-end email campaign outperformed all channels with 61.3% of the total front-end sales. Trailing by a wide margin are ads (37.3%), while SMS and Instagram Stories attained 0.7% respectively.
In fact, 72.85% of our strategy calls came from warm leads who interacted via email—helping us ease out the ascension path to high-ticket investments worth up to $25,000, and consequently, clinching us a positive return on ad spend (ROAS) from the get-go.
OPERATIONS
THE HOW'S OF THE ULTIMATE BLACK FRIDAY CAMPAIGN
CORE TEAM
Kalvin Lleva, Content Lead & Supervisor
Ruth Revilla, Content Writer
Ivan Genese, Content Writer
TOOLS
THE BIG PICTURE PROCESS
As a perennial folder-filer and spreadsheet slut (pardon the language), I believe that planning not only predates the process—but also pictures it in permanence.
By picturing the process first, I was able to create a content governance and user journey framework that will direct how we engage with users throughout the macro-funnel.
I adopted an insular perspective that studies the kinks (again, sorry for the language) of our existing customer base to determine possible moments of friction, touchpoints to exploit to maximum effect, and top-performing content buckets throughout the user journey.
Upon auditing our historical campaign performance, I've discovered that email responsiveness peaks during Black Friday, and as such, stands as an ideal touchpoint in mining interactions and conversions.
25%
AVERAGE OPEN RATES FOR BULK BLACK
FRIDAY EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
20%
AVERAGE OPEN RATES FOR STANDARD
BULK EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
That's why I decided to design the comms plan and CX ecosystem around the middle of the funnel (open cart) by making sure we have an easy opt-in process using a waitlist that flows into an end-to-end, Direct Email Marketing (DEM) campaign sent to all of our warm/existing leads in bulk.
Using my personal “Story, Strategy, Stats” content philosophy as the prism of the Ultimate Black Friday Campaign, I created a comms plan and CX ecsystem covering the (3) key campaign phases, each with their corresponding pillars, channel amplifiers, messaging needs, and calls-to-action (CTA).
The framework is linear by design and omnidirectional by function—a lot of it overlaps from one stage to the next. For example, leads can take a shorter route to conversion during the open cart phase as the CTA is a purchase decision, thus eliminating the need to delay gratification and making it easier for us to ascend them to other premium investments.
Beyond the DEM funnel, I also added a fourth phase that accommodates automated lifecycle email marketing designed to…
a) RETAIN a user within the SaaS plan after the 90-day trial period ends
b) ASCEND them to other high-ticket investments (like the $997 Yearly Plan) to drive account expansion
This loops our leads/customers back to our business through upsells, downsells, and cross-sells, and most importantly, prioritizes user education to deliver consistent and moment-to-moment value to our newly enrolled SalesProcess users—reducing churn rates in the long run.
DESIGNING THE DEM FUNNEL
Since I'm responsible for ideating and iterating the end-to-end DEM funnel, I sketched the skeletal framework that will govern my process of writing (26) emails for Black Friday.
I wanted to conceptualize an email sequence that naturally unfolds like a story—with a beginning, middle, and end—but one that mirrors user psychology, what the user is feeling at that point in time, as the campaign matures/marinates over time.
Something to consider is that we will be sending promo emails in bulk to our entire mailing list, which means there's not much room for segmentation and targeted messaging that can potentially rescue our performance rates.
Instead of customizing messages based on audience segmentations, I thought of leveraging the predetermined nature of an email sequence as an opportunity to predict user behavior through clustered content. That way, I'm hitting two birds with one stone:
a) INSTEAD OF CUSTOMIZING CONTENT BASED ON CUSTOMER SEGMENTS, I can design email clusters by categorizing content needs and desired action steps for each campaign phase.
Ex. During the waitlist period, all of our leads are product-unaware. To fill in the knowledge gap, content should present the offer's value proposition as concisely as possible while offering a clear succession path to redeem said value (to opt-in to the waitlist).
b) INSTEAD OF BASHING MY HEAD ON THE DESK THINKING OF WAYS TO KEEP THE BUNDLE FRESH AND TOP-OF-MIND, I can utilize these email clusters to catalog product information, content patterns, and angles accordingly, allowing me to map out the storytelling journey that seamlessly blends from one message to the other.
Ex. Since the waitlist period requires clear and concise messaging, I can designate short-form sales emails to this cluster and reserve more of my storytelling spades for the open cart phase, which is designed to nurture marketing-ready leads to customer success.
Here's what I came up with… (I made it look like a DNA sequence!)
WAITLIST
• STRAIGHT FOR THE KILL: emails spotlighting the offer's value to pre-qualify leads who are interested in the bundle, giving them a chance to waitlist for early access.
OPEN CART
• SELL THE CLICK: emails selling the click to the sales page; no more, no less.
• STORY-BASED: emails communicating the value of the bundle through fun, smart, and psychologically stimulating stories.
• SKEPTIC SOLUTIONS: emails resolving buyer objections to the bundle.
CART CLOSE
• SCARCITY & URGENCY: emails that are all about the FOMO.
While designing the DEM sequence, I theorized that the more an email flourishes in storytelling, the higher its open, click-through, and engagement rates.
However, it will potentially suffer from lower conversions as the relationship between the email and the offer is broader compared to more sales-y emails from the waitlist and cart close clusters due to their narrower scope, shorter length, and simpler content pattern.
OUTPUT
EXECUTING THE ULTIMATE BLACK FRIDAY VISION
WAITLIST
Social Media, Lifecycle Email Marketing, & Direct Email Marketing (DEM)
Warm Audiences
Opt-In to the Early Bird Waitlist!
INSTAGRAM SWIPE-UPS
DEM EMAILS
AUTOMATED LIFECYCLE EMAILS (SENT TO WAITLIST)
OPEN CART
Ads, Social Media, SMS, & Direct Email Marketing (DEM)
Cold/Warm Audiences
Get the Ultimate Black Friday Deal Super Bundle For 99% OFF!
EARLY BIRD EMAIL (SENT TO WAITLIST 1 DAY BEFORE OPEN CART)
DEM EMAILS
FRONT-END ADS, SOCIAL MEDIA, & SMS
Imagine, for a moment, you just turned 99 years old, rocking comfortably in your chair... you're a year older, a year wiser, but your business? 🤔
It's stuck in last year's profits, last year's strategies, and last year's tech.
Now, rewind. ⏪
You're here, today, with the chance to grab the same tools that built that empire, for 99% off.
==> www.SalesProcess.com/blackfriday
Over $43,000 worth of cutting-edge, AI-powered business tools, strategies, and resources that are not just about the now. 🚀
They're about the forever.
With this Ultimate Black Friday Deal Super Bundle, you can get…
✅ AI-Powered Sales Process Implementation Week
✅ SalesProcess AI-Powered Software (3 Month Access)
✅ High Ticket Sales Process Masterclass
✅ The Complete Virtual Event Codex Replay + Worksheets
✅ Omnipresence Machine Masterclass
✅ Access to 142+ Premium Tools, Courses, and Templates
Now, let's bring it back to the beginning. 🔙
You're 99, remember? 👴
Except now, you're not just rocking comfortably; you're the rock star of your own life story.
And it all started with a click, a decision, a leap into a Black Friday deal that never stopped giving. 🖱️
==> www.SalesProcess.com/blackfriday
You've seen the numbers. 😊
You've crunched them in your sleep. 🛌🏻
But still, hesitation had you in a headlock.
WHY?!
This Black Friday, we're slicing through your doubts like a hot knife through butter.
You're not just buying a bundle; you're breaking down barriers. 🚧
With over $43k worth of AI-driven sales tools at 99% off, you're setting yourself up for a future where 'if only' isn't in your vocabulary. 💰🛠️
But here's the kicker – it's now or never.
The clock's ticking, and this isn't the kind of deal that waits for second guesses. ⏰❓
It's the kind that leaves you kicking yourself for what could've been.
So, are you going to be the 'I wish I had' entrepreneur or the 'I'm glad I did' success story? 🤔💼
Click that link. Make the leap. Because when this deal's gone, it's not just gone. It's gone-gone. 🙅♂️👋
==> www.SalesProcess.com/blackfriday
Tick-tock, my friend. The future doesn't do encores. ⏳
CART CLOSE
Retargeting Ads, Social Media, Lifecycle Email Marketing, & Direct Email Marketing (DEM)
Warm Audiences
LAST CALL: Get the Ultimate Black Friday Deal Super Bundle For 99% OFF!
LIGHT UX PATTERNS - TERMS OF SERVICE CHECKBOX FOR SAAS ENROLMENT
DEM EMAILS
ABANDONED CART EMAILS (SENT TO LEADS WHO OPTED-IN BUT DID NOT BUY)
RETARGETING ADS & SOCIAL MEDIA
As you get ready to wrap up November, brace yourself to kiss our “Ultimate Black Friday Deal Super Bundle” goodbye, too…
…because our cart’s closing soon, and we've only got a few bundles left! 🙈
I don't like being the one to bring bad news, but there’s only a little time left for you to…
🚀 Join me for an impactful 3-day session during AI-Powered Sales Process Implementation Week, where you’ll work with me to build, launch, and scale your business using AI.
🚀 Enjoy FREE 3-month access to my top-notch sales and marketing software, SalesProcess. Streamline your funnels, emails, and CRM—all under one roof!
🚀 Tap into my on-demand masterclasses that will help you master selling high-ticket offers and marketing on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
PLUS, access my collection of 142 premium tools and courses, ready for you to plug and play into your business!
In case you forgot, you can get all of these bonuses for 🌟 99% OFF 🌟
Now, if you're not part of the 989 people who received their bundle, I don’t really know what to tell you. 🤷🏻♂️
When it’s gone… it’s really gone.
So, if I were you, I’d secure my bundle NOW by dropping the word “SOLD OUT” — and I’ll give you all the deets to get in. 🔑
CHECK ALL THE PROMOTIONAL & DEM EMAILS HERE…
LIFECYCLE LOOP
Lifecycle Emails
Ultimate Black Friday Deal Super Bundle Buyers
SAAS Retention & Ascension to High-Ticket Investments
LIGHT UX PATTERNS - REBILLING REMINDERS
LIFECYCLE EMAILS - ASCENSION TO HIGH-TICKET INVESTMENTS
LIFECYCLE TOUCHPOINTS - SAAS RETENTION
