Maximize December Sales With 3 Mini-Holidays

Hello, Email Einstein people. Welcome back to Flowium podcast. I'm your host, Vira Sadlak. Today here with my co host Andriy Boychuk.

Andriy, say hi. Hi everybody. And we are recording one week before the busiest week of the year and everybody's exhausted. And here I just said that like all our clients decided to change a lot of things before one week before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which is.

They're just being adventurous. They're just being adventurous. But we like them. Yeah, I mean obviously we're trying to do our best.

If we look tired, that's because we are. But I've been checking some of the numbers for some of our clients and I mean they look really good. Like I'm comparing them to last year. I don't want to jinx anything, but so far so good.

So everything we've worked for for so long paid off. But today we actually want to continue our conversation about what happens after BFCM. It's like one of those topic is like life after death, like what, what happens next? It's a big definitely.

But today we want to talk about three major events that you want to plan for in the month of December. Once you are done with your Cyber Monday, once you are done with your Black Friday sales, there are three events that you definitely should not overlook. So two of them I know, so the first one and the last one I know about it. But the second one, this is the first time I.

I'm hearing about this. So Vira, you will be probably covering that topic and I will be asking you a lot of questions because is it new holiday? Do you want to disclose the holiday you are talking about? No, no, not yet.

No, it's not new but it's very like European/Canadian and it's just started happening in America. So we'll get to it. There is a little story behind it as well. But yeah, let's start from what happens after your Cyber Monday.

So Cyber Monday is done. The busiest weekend of your year is probably over. What happened next? What happens after Monday, you guys?

Tuesday. Tuesday happens after Monday. And you know how they should call it? I mean I know the official name but they should call it like extended Cyber Monday sales because that's literally what it is.

I barely any brands are actually finishing their sales on the day of Cyber Monday these days. And a lot of brands are extending. That being said, brands who have that giving back aspect in their brand ethos, they do use Tuesday after Cyber Monday as the Giving Tuesday. Andriy, do you want to tell a few words about what it is?

Like what's the story behind it? What's the hype about? Sure, sure. So I don't know exact details how it happened, but the general story is like Black Friday is very consumer based like holiday like where people are spending as much money as they have preparing for holiday season.

Then Cyber Friday, sorry, Cyber Monday was invented but Giving Tuesday, this is when you're doing things not for yourself but you're g back to the community, to your. To whatever cause you want. And I, I personally believe it's a great opportunity. Even if you don't have a giving aspect in your brand, it's a great opportunity for you to partner up with a non for profit organization.

First benefit, you will raise some money for specific cause and second, you will get probably new customers from that promotion because you will be promoting that as well of the non, that non for profit will be promoting your brand. So there's some kind of partnership cross promotion. But the goal here is not to make sales. The goal here to make donations and.

Make sales as well. Because I know that a lot of brands are actually using it as an opportunity to drive that extra revenue. Because I know some people are like still shopping for their like holiday gifts and stuff. But you're absolutely like on point that this is kind of like this holiday is switching the focus from that like consumerism, like consumer heavy Black Friday, Cyber Monday towards giving back which Christmas season is supposedly about.

But we do have a few really cool examples here. This one from Outdoor Voices, this is the, I think the Pets Pets brand and they constantly support the ASPCA. So the shelters for pets. And they basically use this day just like to feature the fact that Outdoor Voices is proud to support the ASPCA on a continuous basis.

Right. So it's not a once a year thing for them. But if you do have that aspect in your business, definitely do talk about it. Not just on this Giving Tuesday, but throughout the year, but especially on Giving Tuesday.

Yeah. This is a really, really cool email. Really sweet design and I like it a lot. Okay, well Andriy, this is like the second email we will be reviewing is from Brent Mask.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's A I think the first company who did this, the first company that was so market widely, it was Toms, the shoes company. Oh yeah.

Back in like 2000s. Yeah, yeah. But I don't think they do it only for giving Tuesday. They do it like all like even now if you go, if you buy a like pair of shoes, they will donate pair of shoes.

And I think this company atoms like playing around that like you buy a mask, donate a mask. And I believe this was around COVID. At times because mask Andriy, you'd be surprised. It's actually one of the recent emails, believe it or not, it's not the COVID one and people still do wear them and I mean they are donating the, the masks to.

Their masks are like reusable, rewashable and they're like donating them to low income neighborhoods, shelters, schools, nursing homes, to the places where people are can actually like still still use them. I do like the concept from the next brand called Sonus. As far as I know. I think it's like the speakers brand or something like some kind of like the audio.

Audio speaker's brand. But I did like this angle. Well, first of all they are donating like 1% of their sales on that day to the planet. So they like support certain organization.

But I do like that they actually made a spotlight on like choosing the like new products. So they are basically like spotlighting. They are, how do you call it, like refurbished. Certified refurbished products.

For those of you guys who are like don't know what certified refurbished is because I didn't know. Maybe it's just. Maybe it's just like my language barrier. But it's basically when you can buy the product directly from the business.

The product will be covered by all the standard warranty and everything. But it will be slightly cheaper because it's refurbished. So meaning someone probably purchased it, return it within two weeks period. It's barely used, it's new.

And I love this concept. Honestly all of my computers and I do have a lot of them over the years been purchased this way and it does, it does work really well. Yeah, Apple does have this like refurbished and it doesn't, it can be even broken. But they, they fix it and it's now certified.

Like they have a warranty for that Republic. Yeah, they fix it. They give you like a full, full warranty. So pretty much you're getting yourself like a identical product for like a less money.

But I do like that Sonus has kind of used that day to feature the fact that they do have this refurbished Collection on their website. It looks very. It looks very giving back to me. What do you think, Andriy?

No, no, like I. I would like. I like the concept but honestly I don't like this email. It looks.

Until you told me it's they trying to highlight the refurbished products, I would never notice that. So I would make that block pops differently. Like either with a design or with attacks or do something different. Because right now everything in line and that blocks does not stand out.

Or maybe that block in the middle was some. I don't know what. What it is like speakers. It threw me off.

So basically I love the idea differently. Yes. Yeah, agree, agree. Yeah.

Maybe they could have done something better with like the header to put some information on top. Maybe I would like prioritize the why choose like new over the sound that gives back or like reorganize it. But overall I do like this idea a lot. This email I'm very like turned about.

So Giving Tuesday. Basically this is an email from Coffee Roasters, Brooklyn, New York. It's a Giving Tuesday. And bas basically they said that today you can donate to a charity of your choice and we will be giving you a $6 off code to use for December 2023 order.

This is like an older email. What I don't understand is like why didn't they automate this process? Basically you have to submit the screenshot of you donating $6 automatically. I would probably.

They don't have a back end to that organization. Well, no, I mean, why wouldn't they give the discount code up front saying something like we are giving you $6 off your next order and you can use like that money towards basically like towards your next purchase with us or something like this. I would give the discount code up front. Do you know?

Yeah, but with the incentives for them to donate. Well, some people would, some people wouldn't, but people would still probably use that discount code and it would generate you more revenue. So it's just like I like the concept, but I don't like how manual it is. So I almost would give the discount code up front and ask them kind of like trust them to do it if they want to.

Yeah, I mean sometimes the friction is positive for people, you know, like they, they need to experience some friction to, to get some value out of it. If you just give them the discount code and they're like, oh, like that's it. But if you. They go to that organization that donates and do the snapshot, like I know it's.

It's like your conversion Will not be as high. But if you have a lot of follow, if you have a lot of subscribers, I mean I think what I don't like here about this strategy is they have too many organizations. They have what like 5 organization. I would probably like focus only on one.

It's just much easier. But again, who am I? Yeah, but that's the whole point of their campaign, right? So you can like donate to any organization or use one of this like five organizations as an inspiration.

These are the organizations that we donate to. But yeah, I mean you can do something elaborate or you can like literally have one hero image with a quick call to action like Charity Water organization did. By the way, they were our podcast guest like a year ago or even two years ago and they were amazing. But I do like this email.

It's like very simple, very to the point and it's very on brand for, for them. So basically they just like have an image of like one girl. It says like it's Giving Tuesday. Give clean water.

1 of your donation brings clean water to people in need and then one CTA give now that's it you guys, simple as this. You right now you're opening the Pandora box because like before examples before you gave us was from e Commerce Brands D2C. And this email is from the non for profit and this one is not about like sales because I'm as you know, I'm on a board in one of non profits and I can confirm that Giving Tuesday is for some reason the best year, is the best day of the year in terms in terms of donation.

People giving like crazy that day. But yeah, I think that's why like clear Charity Water does it like simple email because people will donate anyway. So we just let, let's send them. And I like about Charity Water if we're talking about them that they specify 100% of your donations bring clean water.

Because some organizations get like 5%, 10% as a management fee like an admin cost. And for them it's 100% of your money which is like big selling point. Right. But this email, to your point Andriy, is not very typical for them.

I like screenshot at like a typical email that they have and that they send. And usually they lead with some kind of like a storytelling. It's very visual, it's very like nicely like organized, packed with value, packed with like community aspect and stuff like that. But on the Giving Tuesday they chose to go with like this format specifically.

And I kind of appreciated about this email. It's almost like a pattern interrupt. This Is very different from what they usually do. And I think that's one of the reason why email like this would stand out and would work.

Yeah, no question about standing in doubt. Cool. Okay, well, now you guys, let's talk about the Monday after giving Tuesday. I kind of like that every Monday in December and every Tuesday in December now have names.

Names. It's kind of funny. But the Monday after that, believe it or not, also has a name. It's called Green Monday.

And we've probably been talking. Why Green? Glad you asked, Andriy. But seriously, I came prepared.

So there are few theories. And actually like eBay, good old eBay. I don't even know if they still exist. Probably they are, but I haven't heard about them in a while.

EBay, you know, this platform that was popular like back in. I haven't heard about them. Oh, you know what? Once I was banned lifetime from eBay.

What did you do? We were actually not me, but there was a person close to me. My sister was selling counterfeit sweet juicy or something. Oh my goodness.

And she was selling on her account and she was banned for life. And she was like, oh, let's use my brother's account. She used mine and I was banned for life. Oh my goodness.

So they are like in North Korea, they're banning your like entire family, right? If you broke the rule, the entire family is banned from the in. From the email. No, no.

She starts selling from my account, like selling from my account. So it's like it was. It was not just because she related to me, but. Well, I hope it was worth it.

Andriy, all I have to say, I hope it was worth it. But basically the term Green Monday was reportedly created by eBay back in 2007 as a way to represent the rush of last minute online shoppers. And eBay noticed that this is the day where people are spending a lot of money. And because American dollar is green, I don't know why people say it's green.

To me it's like dirty grayish green. But because it's like green or it's considered to be green. And people are spending a lot of their green dollars on December 8, the Monday after Black Friday, Cyber Monday. That's how the green Monday naming started.

So it's not green because. Why people spend money on December 8, it's because. Of all of the last minute shopping that people are trying to finish before like Christmas. And for a lot of brands, they use this kinda as a cutout date for like last orders.

For some brands it's like closer to like 14ish. But I mean you're not the only person who are like shopping that day. Everyone is like shopping or finishing their shopping around like the second Monday of December. That's why the sales are high.

Regardless of whether you're doing the sale or not on that day, whether you have promotion or not, you do need to talk to your customers on that day so they like are being reminded about your existence. Because reportedly or like based on all of the previous years we've done this, this is like literally one of the biggest days of the year for us. This is crazy. Probably like Black Friday is the first one.

Sometimes it's Cyber Monday, but Green, Green Monday is always the third which is kind of crazy. Basically it's like last, last day to ship kind of campaign. Correct. For some of the brands, not for everyone.

So depending on what your fulfillment is like. But for brands with like a longer, longer kind of life cycle, this is like one of the last opportunities to kind of remind about the purchases. So we have a few cool examples here. So we have this brand from soft service packages or something.

So yeah, so this is basically the skincare line and like body care line and they put together this email where they are kind of featuring both like the order buy section as a reminder to purchase but also like a recommendations for gift giving which I think it's very, very appropriate for this type of emails. And I love that because I love this section about order by and they show you the three dates and basically in other words they telling you there will be two more times they will remind you and you have kind of right to send them another email when it's 19th and 20th.

No. And for a lot of brands, even though a lot of brands will have like rush deliveries and overnight deliveries, if you want to promote like a standard free shipping or something, Green Monday is like a good, good time to do that and a lot of brands are doing that. Like literally if you just like go through really good emails or like love emails, you'll see that this is almost like became a standard email for a lot of E commerce brands. What I do like about this emails is that sometimes they do combine that reminder with like the kind of like a gift guide or recommendations of what to purchase.

So I think it's, I think it's very clever and very like appropriate for that time of the year. What do you think of this email, Andriy Everlane? This is like literally this is like the email. Oh really?

So there's, I thought it was just the top five. We think all of our products are great, but these are the best sellers. And so there's no continuation. No, there is like a footer I think with like social media or something.

But this, I think that's it. Like that's the email that I found on one of the Shopify blogs. But basically yeah, I mean even if they have included the products, I think this hero image alone is very powerful even though it does not feature any product. But just like imagine having this with like a cta.

I like, I think they would benefit. From having agree if they have only this. It just sparks enough curiosity for me just to collect to check out what are the top five products. Right.

And if you would like send it to some kind of like top sellers selection or something, I think it's like a really powerful. But even if you want to go like a different route and experiment, explain the benefits of each of your best sellers, I think this would be still a really good angle to take on Green on Green Monday because people are like indecisive, right. And you want to, you want to make their shopping easier. And I think this is how my husband shops.

Like honestly he do trust all of this like recommendations from emails. So yeah, I think it's a very fitting email. So for me to this email to be effective the number one top product like no other choices, right? Just like analysis paralysis.

Listen, I was recently shopping. Remember the last podcast we recorded about gifts? You know when you add things to to your cart and they giving you one gift for free. And I recently was shopping for some kind of journals and and they were adding something for free and I was, I was clicking remove, remove remove and I was like was reminding me about you that you're taking all gifts and I was trying to remove it and I couldn't.

So I love a good I would receive some gifts. Yay. Andriy, I'm like so happy for you. You will experience the joy of online shopping in 2025.

But anyways, even if you guys did kind of past that Green Monday, a good, a good opportunity would be to talk about your gift cards. If you have like an online gift cards, we typically send this both on like around Green Monday, but also closer to the actual Christmas day because there will be some people who will not finish their Christmas shopping in time. So something like this would be perfect for like the day before Christmas or like even Christmas Eve or something Like a really short email reminding to purchase gift cards.

What is also crazy about gift cards and that's something I didn't realize is that it's pretty much like free money for the brand because most of these gift cards or a big portion of it are never being used, which I didn't realize. But then my client show me like literally the stats of like how many credit cards or not credit cards, gift cards were actually used. It was something like less than, less than 50%, which is crazy to me. But it's, it is what it is.

Have you ever received a gift card or some kind of gift voucher in your lifetime? I did, I did. And, and I. Did you use 100% of them?

No. That's the thing. Because you don't like. I mean you appreciate them, but it's not like it doesn't feel like like you would spend the same money.

It's like, yeah, one time my friends got me voucher for zorbink. You know what zorbing is? No, it's very random. But it's this basically like this big like a human sized balloon and you get inside and then they then throw you from like some kind of like a hill or something.

And I still have it. And I'm like it's so Vira of you to do that. I'm like still debating whether or not I should use it. I'm like, I don't know, it's like giving me some like major hamster vibes.

Just before you do this. Yeah, probably. But yeah, if you guys, if you just want to go like a good old discount code route, Green Monday is definitely the day to do that. So you can do the discount codes, the free shipping, gift cards, reminders of different things that they can purchase or.

Yeah, but my favorite kind of emails are definitely the gift guides. And I just like this header. One of the creative agencies, last year they put together the blog about last minute passive aggressive gifts. So like a passive aggressive gift guide.

And I don't know what's in that gift guide, but I would totally open something like this. If I would receive something like this, I would totally like click on it for sure. And by the way, on our YouTube channel as well on our website, if you go to blog section, we have a bunch of resources about gift guides. How to create either physical version or email version.

We show examples from big brands like Amazon, other closing brands. So check it out. And yeah, so we invested a lot of resources in the last two years to build those for you for free. Cool.

So there you have it. The two main holidays and one little one that Andriy did not know about. So just. I knew about boxing.

Okay. Oh, sorry, you're talking about Green Monday. Green Monday that I wasn't aware of. Okay, sorry but continue.

Cool. And going to. No, I was actually talking about Boxing Day because I thought that for some reason you didn't know what Boxing Day is. But anyways.

No, I didn't know what Green Monday is. Boxing Day. Okay. No, but honestly I don't know what Boxing Day is.

But at least I heard about Boxing Day. Okay. Okay, good, good. Well, what do you think of when you hear the naming like Boxing Day, like why do you think people call it Boxing Day?

I mean I always thought it's about like put things back in boxes, gifts that you don't like in return. That's a good. Well, but I wasn't sure how, how can you market it to make more some money? No, there are actually like so many crazy theories about it because I thought that it was like Boxing Day like a box, you know, because like the sport that people are like, I don't know, fighting for good deals.

No, it's not, it's not the, it's not the legit theory. It was just like my theory which turned out to be like a. Not, not a legit theory at all. Like sibling boxing.

It's my gift. No, it's my gift. Pretty like this. Yeah.

But I think your theory is like closer to the actual, to the actual story of how this holiday started. But I think it originated back in UK where like this rich families were giving boxes with gifts to their, to like workers and servants and everyone the day after Christmas and they were also giving them the day off because, because on Christmas Day they obviously needed all of this like servants and, and workers and everything. So that's how it started. But right now it became this like big, big commercial holiday at least in Europe and in Canada.

I don't think it's like that big for the US yet, right? No, no, I don't think it's like huge. But basically many of us have a servant so it's like it's. Yeah, probably that's the reason.

Yeah. But basically British brands, European brands and Canadian brands they use it or basically all of the Commonwealth countries they use this day to do like a side wide post Christmas sales. So basically like your winter clear out or clearance sale or something like this. And I actually noticed that a lot of brands have started doing it in US as well.

They just don't call it Boxing Day. And they usually like started closer to like 27th, 28th of December but they try to sell out all of their either like winter stuff which is like crazy to Me, when brands are like selling out winter stuff in like December and they're like, that's your last chance to purchase like winter stuff or like getting swimming suit in like July. It's impossible because they all started selling like October stuff. But it is what it is.

And that's basically how like European brands are using this day to sell out all of the Christmas collections, winter collections and all of the slow moving inventory, to be honest. So about this delay or like messed up, messed up like month when you're buying seasonal thing. It was a one year I was trying to put some decoration in my house for Halloween and like of course, three days before Halloween I went to Home Depot like a store and it's like everything's Christmas. And I'm like, are you kidding me?

It's like it's October. Yeah. No, this is, this is how it works. It's starting like earlier and earlier.

And I was always thinking that in America you guys wait until like Thanksgiving to put together all of the like the Christmas decors and because in my mind growing up in Ukraine, all I knew about America was from the TV shows Friends. And they were also like watching this like Macy's parade and after Macy's parade, they were doing Christmas trees. But apparently it's not, it's not the case anymore. So the trees are going up sooner, the sales are starting sooner, everything is happening sooner, people are shopping more, people are shopping longer.

And yeah, you guys do not over overthink this. Everything's going to be okay. But definitely prepare for December as well because it's an excellent opportunity to make extra revenue. Yes.

December 26th, I can bet that in Manhattan we should call it like Christmas Tree throwing day because like on December 26th, whole street. Yeah, like December 26th is like really back, back when we were celebrating like old style Christmas once where we didn't have much money. On 26 I picked up the Christmas tree in Manhattan, put in my house and it was good for New Year and like old Orthodox Christmas. Yeah, Christmas, that's so funny.

Yeah. Here in UK it's kind of like the same. A lot of people are waiting until the New Year's, but they do have this service that comes and pick up your tree for free like every Saturday of the month or something. But the first time I moved to UK, I remember that we were throwing our Christmas tree at like the end of January.

We were procrastinating and the magnolia trees were blooming already in London. So we were like throwing away our Christmas tree. But the Magnolia trees were blooming because London is not that cold, right? So the magnolia starts in like January or beginning of February or whatever.

But yeah, guys, here you have it. Three great opportunities to generate some like extra revenue, do some good in the world. And I do have like, just like a super short quick three reminders for BFCM. Just like three little things that we did over the years or the mistakes that we did over the years.

We were thinking to do like the entire podcast about like the checklist of things that you want to do. But I just wanted as a friend to remind you about three things. Do not mess with your DNS right now. Please do not.

Last year it happened to one of our clients and it broke their entire like strategy. We had some like issues with deliverability. So please do not touch your DNS. Please do turn off your smart sending unless it's a part of your strategy.

And the third thing that I just wanted to remind you because we reminded about it to all of our strategists here and all of the project managers. If you do have some like discount delivering flows, do turn them off for the holidays unless it's like a part of your strategy. But these are just like a three quick reminders. Yeah, yeah.

And a few things for me. If you use Klaviyo and you have a special offers for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Turn off those forms. There's a feature available right now in Klaviyo where you can schedule forms to be turned off.

And I think there's what we are just said, turn off the flows. But I think there's also way easier to schedule to be turned off or maybe set some filters. When the day is X it will become inactive. You've got this guys.

You've got this. We are almost there. All of the fun, all of the fun preparations are behind us. So now just like sit, enjoy and reload your Klaviyo or ESP page.

That's my favorite thing to do. How the revenue is growing watching. We ask you also to join us for the next the last episode of the year 2025. We have a big announcement for you, so please join us for the next episode.

Stay tuned. Thank you so much and enjoy your BFCM. Bye bye.