The holidays are here and you know what that means……Shopping! We’ve been brainstorming ways to bring the feeling of excitement that bubbles over on Black Friday right to your shop. We’ve come up with some ideas.
Using one of these ideas will benefit you in two ways:
- You can be assured all of your items will be posted and ready to go on time and your shop will be in perfect order for your sale.
- It will help generate that Black Friday/Cyber Monday excitement that makes them the busiest shopping days of the year!
DOORBUSTER
To our best knowledge this technique was invented by the ever-luminous Julie Prestsater. The basic idea is that you create a brand new private Facebook group but don’t approve anybody until the moment when you want shopping to begin. This allows you to upload all of your inventory days in advance, with calm, so that everything is nice and tidy when you approve your into the group. It’s an easy way to guarantee that your party will start on time.
Of course, you wouldn’t be able to use this technique for every sale because people will eventually get sick of having to join all of your new groups. But for a big, special event like Black Friday/Cyber Monday this can actually generate more interest in your party.
Here are some detailed instructions for how to do this:
- Create a private group where you are the only member.
- Upload all of your inventory before the party.
- Act like it is your store front that people are going to line up outside and wait for hours to get in. Decorate it, have your graphics all set. Get your sizing charts in a place people will be able to find them.
- Advertise your “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” store on your VIP page and your Instagram. Get people pumped and ready to go.
- Ask your shoppers to request to join this special group to participate in your special sale (you could have a lot of giveaways or LuLaCash floating around in your private Black Friday group to entice people to join). Let them know that the store will “open” at a certain time.
- When you are ready, approve everyone all at once and let them have at it!
- Make sure you stress the rules of the party beforehand so they know whether the links or a sold comment receives the items and remind everyone to sign into ShopTheRoe before claiming so the program can track their purchases for them.
STR PARTY
This approach is similar to the Facebook Doorbuster group. You have a bit more flexibility in how you want to “open the doors” with an STR Party. Your options are:
- Create a public party but don’t share the link with anyone until the scheduled opening.
- Create a private party, share the link in advance, but don’t approve anyone until the scheduled opening.
- Create a public party, share the link, but don’t add anything to the party until the scheduled opening.
All three methods accomplish basically the same thing, so just pick whichever one you like the most.
Whichever method you use, remember to advertise, advertise, advertise your party beforehand! You can even create a little countdown using the Christmas countdowns that have been floating around on Facebook, or a website like itsalmo.st.
Another fun idea is to add some free items or discounts in your party. Just add them to your Amelias, for example, so that customers have to dig through the whole album to find them :).
This is such an exciting time for Lula Shoppers. Let’s make this experience a good one for them 🙂