2X eCommerce Podcast

How to Win this Q4 → Kunle Campbell
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Introduction to Q4 Strategies
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[00:00:00]

Kunle Campbell: Welcome to today's episode of the 2x e commerce podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about how to win this quarter four today's October 8th. And we're officially in quarter four, the busiest and most critical time of the year for e commerce.

Big players like Amazon. Walmart and Target are already rolling out early holiday deals as we speak. Amazon prime day is happening right now on October 8th through tomorrow, which is October 9th. Walmart holiday deals are live from today through to the 13th and target started two days ago on October 6th and they'll be running it for about six days into October 12th.

These major retailers are taking action early to capture consumer spending before black Friday even begins. So if you want to maximize your Q4, You need to start early to today. I'll be sharing actionable strategies to help you not only [00:01:00] crush black Friday, but dominate the entire Q4 season. The focus will be on driving revenue and profitability while building long term customer relationships.

So stay tuned.

This is the 2x e commerce podcast hosted by Kunle Campbell.

Kunle Campbell: Okay.

Early Engagement and VIP Strategies
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Kunle Campbell: So I have about eight tips for you in this episode. And I'm going to start out with tip one, which is start early and engage VIPs. So first off, start early. Amazon, Walmart, and Target have already kicked off their deals, and this should inspire you to do the same. Running an early sale for your VIP customers weeks before Black Friday gives you a massive competitive advantage.

Offer exclusive deals, early access, or private promotions to get the best customers. Use email and SMS marketing to build excitement and tease these offers. These efforts will lock [00:02:00] in early sales and help you test your campaigns ahead of the holiday rush and spread your revenue across Q4. Building excitement early can also reduce the stress of relying solely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday for sales.

So start generating those early conversions with well timed offers, allowing you to catch customers before the inboxes and ads become cluttered with competition.

Balancing Profitability with Smart Discounts
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Kunle Campbell: Tip number two, focus on profitability first. With smart discounting strategies. So when it comes to quarter four, we're all tempted by deep discounts, but it's important to balance growth and profitability.

Remember that discounting too heavy will erode your contribution margin and hurt your bottom line. This is why you need to offer tiered offers to boost AOV or average order value. A good strategy is using a tiered offer, spend 100 and then get 15 percent off. And then if you spend [00:03:00] 200, you get 25 percent off.

This pushes your customers to spend more, increasing your average order value while preserving your profitability and the higher your average order value helps balance the additional marketing cost in Q4, especially given how high advertising costs get. The next is bundle products for higher margins.

You can also create product bundles to offer discounts without sacrificing margin. Bundling high margin items with lower margin ones boosts perceived value and moves your inventory while still protecting your contribution margin. The other thing is to avoid over discounting excessive discounts can shrink your profitability, especially when factoring in rising customer acquisition costs over Q4.

You should be cautious about offering across the board discounts that don't align with your long term profitability goals. What I recommend is that you instead focus on protecting your margin by promoting strategic bundles and higher AOV [00:04:00] offers, particularly at the start.

Understanding Contribution Margin
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Kunle Campbell: Tip three is understanding the role of contribution margin in quarter four.

It is so important. So in Q4, if you're able to understand contribution margin, you will preserve long term profitability, especially when you're pouring money into marketing and paid ads and even inventory. Many e commerce brands rely heavily on the marketing efficiency ratio, which is a total revenue divided by marketing spend while your marketing efficiency ratio helps you understand how much revenue your markets and generates.

It doesn't tell you the full story when it comes to profitability, especially with rising Q4 ad cost. The more important metric is your true contribution margin, which I spoke about last week, that accounts for marketing expenses as well. If you remember, Andy Don, the founder of Bonobos introduced this concept, which is particularly important for you, for e commerce businesses in general, [00:05:00] especially during peak seasons like Q4.

The model breaks down like this. You start with your gross revenue, take away the returns to your net revenue, subtract your COGS, your cost of goods sold to get your profit margin, and then take out your shipping and transaction fees to get your gross margin. Finally, take out your marketing expenses, including ad spend, promotional cost and discounting to calculate your true contribution margin.

This is especially important in quarter four when ad cost and discounting skyrocket. For instance, if you generate 100 in revenue, but spend 30 on marketing and then 60 on variable cost, your true contribution margin is 10.

Maximizing Email and SMS Marketing
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Kunle Campbell: Remember, this will guide your pricing and discounting strategies to ensure that every sale drives, not just revenue, but profitable growth throughout Q4 so tip number four is switch your email and [00:06:00] SMS flows and campaigns to holiday mode. So email and SMS. are two of your most powerful tools in Q4. They're channels that will be the backbone of your holiday marketing efforts, especially given the last attribution they often drive. So don't be afraid to send more emails, especially during Q4.

Because the more emails you send and more SMS you send, the more cash you essentially bring customers expect holiday promotions, and we'll appreciate reminders and exclusive deals, flash sales and time sensitive offers data shows that the more emails and texts. You send lead to higher conversion during Q4.

So smart marketing teams, however, know how to segment their audiences to avoid overwhelming customers while still increasing touch [00:07:00] points. So what you want to do is smart segmentation for targeted messages. You can segment your audience. By several factors it could be the last 12 months, based on who spent what in the last 12 months, who spent what in the last three months, you could say, for instance you could create a segment in your email marketing platform and say, could you provide me with a segment of customers that have spent.

over a certain threshold this past one year, or this past 18 months, or this past three months. And those are the people you're going to send your first few offers to. So another way is to look at like the, your the frequency, how many times have they ordered? So let's say you're a high retention business.

You could say, I want to just target the people who've bought more than six times from us this year. This way you send very highly personalized offers you could then create a segment, your own specific segment for your VIP customers that you [00:08:00] push early access to premium deals to for new customers, you could focus on bundling and introduction discounts for past customers who haven't purchased recently, you might respond with a re engagement campaign with strong exclusive offers.

It is important to get your email and SMS, right? My tip five is have a dedicated SMS strategy because more and more people are reacting to SMS faster. SMS is an incredibly effective tool, particularly during quarter four with. 98 percent open rates, SMS ensure that your messages reach your audience, making it perfect for time sensitive promotions, like flash sales, last minute holiday deals, and abandoned reminders.

So you want to also sync your email and SMS. So they work together in harmony. If you're sending an email about a flash sale, follow up with an SMS [00:09:00] reminder. Timing is crucial here. Use SMS for urgent last minute deals or limited offers that need immediate attention. Texts are also great for abandoned carts.

You can send a gentle nudge via SMS to customers who've left items in their carts, reminding them. Of their limited time deal, they're about to miss, for instance, you also want to leverage SMS for personalization. So with SMS campaigns for VIP customers, you can address them by name, remind them of their loyalty points.

And additionally, text, from your CEO or founder can create an authentic connection and further humanize your brand. Over this holiday period.

Leveraging Influencers and Retargeting
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Kunle Campbell: So tip number six is leverage influencer partnerships in your holiday push. I did it for the first time last year and it was phenomenal. ~So in Q4, influencers can give you that added boost.~

~Influencers who you've built a relationship with. With throughout the year can amplify your, I'm going to start this again. ~So in Q4, influencers can give you that added boost. Influencers who have built a relationship with your brand throughout the year can [00:10:00] amplify your holiday specific offers, especially when it comes to promoting custom holiday bundles by positioning your products as the perfect holiday gifts, influencers can create authentic content that resonates with their audience, driving high intense traffic to your site, to maximize impact work with influencers on exclusive discount codes or VIP access the audience values, personalized, genuine recommendations, and it can be a great way to expand reach while still maintaining brand integrity.

Tip number seven, retarget your audience with effective creatives, right? Retargeting is a goldmine as we know it during over Q4. The key here is simplicity and clarity in your ad creative static images. For static ads, often outperform other formats because the offer is immediately clear. Keep your [00:11:00] message clean, direct, and focused on urgency.

Whether it's a limited time offer or countdown or low stock alert. Make sure to focus on warm leads. Those who've browsed your site or added items to their carts, use urgency in your messaging to push these high intent visitors over the line. The well timed retargeting ad can be the nudge that turns a potential customer into a buyer.

Remember our chat in May earlier this year, episode 33, to be specific with Sam Piliaro about scaling from 1 million to 10 million with Google ads. We touched on something crucial, trust signals in your Google search results. Let's dig a little deeper. You've seen those stars next to some websites on Google, right?

Those are seller ratings and they're game changers for e commerce. Let me explain these aggregated ratings come from your customers reviews about their shopping experience on your website. [00:12:00] They can seriously boost your visibility and credibility with potential first time customers on Google search results.

Research carried out by Reviews. io found that seller ratings can increase click through rates on Google Ads by up to 17%. That's a lot of extra traffic. But it doesn't stop there. There are also product reviews that show up on Google Shopping search results which are equally powerful. Unlike seller ratings, These reviews focus specifically on individual products, and they can bump up conversions by as much as 26 percent while improving click through rates by 5%.

Higher click through rates mean lower ads. Which is pretty impressive, right? Now, you might be wondering, how do I get this reviews working for me on Google? That's where reviews. io comes in. They've automated the whole process for e commerce operators like you, from collecting reviews to [00:13:00] displaying them where they matter most on Google.

Reviews. io Doesn't just do text reviews either. They're big on video reviews, which are fantastic for creating engaging user generated content. This stuff is gold for boosting trust and conversions in your Google results. Once you take your Google presence to the next level, right now, you can get 10 percent off your first year with reviews.

Just reach out to the team by a chat or email and mention 2x e commerce. The offer is for new customers only. Terms and conditions apply. It could be just the thing to supercharge your e commerce store and dominate Google search

Optimizing Landing Pages and Post-Sale Retention
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Kunle Campbell: So tip number eight, optimize your landing pages for higher conversions. Don't overlook the power of optimized landing pages over Q4. Whether it's for Black [00:14:00] Friday deals or exclusive holiday offers, creating dedicated landing pages can significantly improve your conversion rates. Your landing page should highlight the key offers clearly feature elements like your countdown timer, urgency driven copy, and festive designs.

Another tactic is to personalize landing pages for different customer segments, use dynamic content to tailor the page for new customers, VIPs or past customers. This personalized approach not only makes the shopping experience smoother, but also enhances conversion rates.

So tip number nine, there's more revenue with post sale retention. So the job isn't done once the sale is made.

Q4 is an excellent time to build long term relationships with your customers. After the holiday rush, continue engaging customers through post purchase emails. Send thank you notes. request reviews and encourage them to join your loyalty program for [00:15:00] future perks. Post purchase emails are also a great opportunity for cross selling and upselling.

If they bought a holiday bundle, consider a complimentary product at a discount. Nurture these relationships into January with exclusive New Year deals or early access to new collections.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Kunle Campbell: So that's a wrap on today's episode of the 2X eCommerce podcast.

I hope these strategies help you set up for a strong, profitable quarter four remember Q4 isn't just about black Friday. It's about executing a well rounded season long strategy that builds both revenue. And long term customer relationships. If you found value in today's episode, please leave us a review and share it with others.

Be sure to subscribe for more episodes where we continue to dive deeper into actionable e commerce strategies until next time. Keep optimizing, keep testing and keep winning this Q4.