Come BTS with me and see EXACTLY how I lay out my email marketing schedule for my shop sales! If you’re hosting a Black Friday Sale, this post will be perfect for you — I’ll show you my Google Doc, give you my best tips that WORK, and tell you exactly how I lay out my email marketing strategy!

 

 

Email Marketing Schedules for Digital Products during a SALE!

I absolutely LOVE hosing sales in my digital product shop! Inside my shop I provide templates, trainings, and resources for creative business owners all around organizing, project planning, goal setting, etc.

I have a variety of products and so I know how tricky it can be when you have quite a few products in your shop! You want to be sure that your marketing can highlight the products that you want to highlight and pitch them WELL. So, to help you get there, I thought I’d break down for you a sale I’ve recently had in my shop – my Q4 Flash Sale!

My Google Doc

I’ll break down my Q4 Sale Doc that you can duplicate for yourself to use in your own sales! Here we go!

Dates

On the top of every Google Doc I include dates of the sale & the email schedule. This was a flash sale, so it was very short & sweet! We did 4 emails, but I use this same rhythm regardless of the sale period.

This allows you to break down what your schedule would be. If you were doing a longer sale period, I would typically take breaks and not send daily emails… it’s nice to have some breaks mixed in there for your audience. You can still be pushing on social media even if you’re not sending an email! But it’s better for your list to have a little breathing room… so don’t worry, you don’t have to send an email every day to make the sale count.

Sale Details

This is where I list all the details I’ll need for my email sequence — it’s where you want to think about your strategy. This is especially important if you have multiple products in your shop (meaning anything more than 2 products). If that’s the case for you, I want you to think about an anchor product.

An anchor product is the foundation of what your sale is built on. (For example, in my Q4 sale my anchor products were my Quarterly Cure Bundle & Quarterly Calendar.)

When you’re deciding on your anchor products, you really only need 1. I did it a little differently and had 2 this time because I was really leaning into the fact that it was the last quarter of the year and there was still so much more they could do using these products!

Once I have my anchor products, I include a heavy emphasis on them throughout my emails. This allows me to feel like my messaging has some sort of focus even though I have almost all of my products on sale.

If you have multiple items for sale, what is the anchor product for you? Which ONE product that you want to come back to?

For anchor products, I would consider:

• Time of year (What makes sense to sell right now?)
• Overall product suite (What makes the most sense for your audience?)
• A low ticket product (Is there an entry point into your sales funnel you can capitalize on?)
• Signature product (What are you known for?)

Pricing

Next up I put whatever the discount is.

I love to keep thinks simple. I want to do one discount across the board on all products. It’s simplest for me to communicate, plus on the back end it makes my life easier. So I’ll usually say 30% off all (or most) products, or something along those lines.

I do haver some clients who will split their sale and do 30% off masterclasses and 40% off templates or something like that where we tweak the pricing a little. But I always come back to whatever is simplest is best.

For my Q4 Sale, I did 30% off everything except my calendars. My calendar isn’t ever on sale. They’re such a low ticket offer and it’s a personal preference of mine to never put them on sale. So that was the simplest and best way for me to host a sale this time around.

Actual Email Copy

You can see how I format here. It’ll say which email it is, the subject line, preview text, and then the copy below.

Email 1: Introducing the Sale

This email introduces the sale. I utilized in this one my brand messaging around the beginning of Q4 (What do you want to see happen before the year ends?), and then gave an overview of all of my products. This essentially introduces the sale as a whole to my audience. It’s a great strategy to take in the first email of your sale. Remind people what you have.

You know your business more than anyone else, you know the ins and outs. your audience might have forgotten. So this is basically a reintroduction email.

Email 2: My Anchor Product

For this email I wanted to push the calendar because of the low ticket offer and the fact that this is a revised quarterly calendar with an update this year. So my second email focused on the Quarterly Calendar. It talks about the overall sale, but with a very heavy emphasis on the calendar, its importance, and reason why they should get it.

Email 3: My Second Anchor Product

For me this looked like my Quarterly Cure Bundle, the signature product in my product suite. So I wrote an email just on this product — what’s inside and what they can expect when they grab it — and then I also am reminding them about the discount and the rest of the products that are 30% off as well.

Email 4: Last Email

This one is sent with just 4 hours left in the sale. I keep it short & sweet to remind them on all of the products and that they’re saving 30% on almost everything if they shop today!

I will use graphics, especially for those who skim, that includes an overall/generic image with the percentage off I’m offering. This way if it’s a quick glance they can remember it ends tonight and to grab it now.

Rinse & Repeat

Again, this was a 4 email flash sale but you can take this process to write a 6 day, 10 day, even 12 day sequence. You can think through what would be good to anchor (reminder: you only need 1!). Put all of the rest of the products in your suite on sale so you can still talk about them and touch on them, but then use brand messaging for the sale itself.

I’d love to help!

What other questions do you have about email marketing for a shop sale?! I’d love to talk through them!!