Don't Build a Bigger Black Friday List. Build More Black Friday Customers.

Alrighty, let's imagine we have two businesses.

They are selling very similar products, they're similar size, they have same customer, and both of those are owners taking Q4 very seriously this year.

They've started early.

Business A has spent September and October focused very heavily on building their customer database.

They have thousands of new customers in their database.

They have lots of people seeing the brand.

People are clicking through to their website.

They're following on Instagram.

They're opening emails.

They might be saving products in a wish list.

They might have visited the website three, four, or even five times.

And the owner is looking at that database thinking, this is fantastic.

500, 1,000, 2,000 new people.

Black Friday is going to be huge.

except most of those people still haven't bought anything.

Now that starts to matter as Black Friday gets closer because if someone has been following you for six, eight, 12 weeks, they've opened your emails, they've seen the product, they've been to the website and they know who you are and they still haven't found a reason to hand over their money, What you are now relying on to get them over the line during Black Friday is, well, for a lot of businesses, the answer is going to be a discount.

And it's probably going to have to be a hefty discount, 20, 25, maybe 30%.

Now it's those kinds of discounts that make them get out their credit cards and buy.

Now, think about what has happened in your business as a commercial enterprise.

You paid to acquire that person.

It doesn't matter whether it was through organic channels or through meta ads or Google ads, every single customer on your list comes with a cost.

You've got to pay for your email platform.

You spend time creating the content.

You've written the emails.

You've nurtured these customers for weeks.