Q4 holiday sale spike started early!
We planned for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and overall holiday sales several months ago. Everything has been executed/scheduled and we are only a week away! Exciting times.
We are however seeing a very interesting early spike in sales across all brands. Our sites this week performed very similar to last year’s week leading into Black Friday (next week). Is this the new normal for this time of the year and eCommerce sales?
Since this week performed from a metric standpoint like next week sans Black Friday, very excited to see what next week will look like. It seems very clear that holiday online shopping is starting early this year. Carnivore Club, which historically has a very strong holiday sales spike is performing 170% better in the first 20 days of November compared to the same time period in 2019. Now, to be fair, we have made some improvements to the site over the past year so an early shopping season is not the only variable. In addition to that, COVID-19 has increased the relevance of a meat subscription overall.
SubSummit and Cube Awards
The annual SubSummit was held between the 11th and 13th of November. This year it was virtual. While I honestly think their team executed the event flawlessly, I am not a fan of events being virtual. It is just not the same. The value I get from conferences is for the most part only achieved in person. I talk about this in this past article.
SubSummit would not be complete without the annual CUBE Awards, which recognizes brands in the subscription space. BattlBox has hopes to be the Michael Jordan of the CUBE Awards already winning Best Men’s Subscription Box in 2017 and 2019 and Best Marketing Campaign in 2019. This year they removed the gender separation of the Best Subscription Box award combining Best Men’s and Best Women’s into one award. The good news is that even though the coveted award became twice as hard to win, BattlBox took it down. In the honorable mention category, Carnivore Club received its second nomination of an award this year (received one last year as well prior to our acquisition) but was unable to make it happen. For those keeping score at home, that puts BattlBox at 4 Cube Awards total, hoping to make it 5 next year. Carnivore Club is looking to take home in 2021! I also have a sneaking suspicion that a subscription box we are launching on Cyber Monday will have a great chance at a nomination in 2021, more about this below.
For those that watched my acceptance speech for Best Subscription Box, you likely noticed that I spoke about the SUBTA community. SUBTA puts on SubSummit and what they have done for the subscription niche of e-commerce is simply amazing. There is not a week that goes by where I am not having some sort of interaction with a member of SUBTA. Whether it’s just talking shop or bouncing an idea off a fellow member or group, SUBTA makes all of its engaged members stronger through sharing best practices, sounds boards, and comradery.
New Project
Keeping this rather quiet until our launch on Cyber Monday, but we have a new subscription box company in the works. We are launching with 2 ‘offerings’ but will be adding several more in 2021. Through happenstance, we got connected with two ladies (now business partners) that play in a space we do not and we were able to combine the two in an accepted but still awesome way. Super excited to see the progression of this, and I will obviously share more information on it post-launch. Shout out to HulkApps for agreeing to complete our launch in an unrealistic timeframe, you guys are the best (you already know this though).
LinkedIn inbox is wrecked
I had a busier than usual week and opening up social channels like LinkedIn went from back burner to no burner. I see direct messages as they come in through mobile notifications, but if I do not recognize the person or their first sentence is not something to compel me, I swipe it away. I just went through my inbox to clean it up and figured I would take the opportunity to tally the categories of my messages. These are messages that have come in since Monday.
31 Messages:
Agency Sales: 12 (10 Marketing)
Financial Advisor: 5
Software Solution Sales: 4
Podcast request: 3
Recruiter wanting to source for me: 2
Peer wanting to connect: 2
Consulting Opportunity: 1
Just saying hello: 2
With some quick math, 23 out of the 31 messages were ‘sales’ related selling some sort of service. AND BIG SURPRISE, 10 of the 31 messages were Marketing Agencies. I speak about this here, it crazy how many marketing agencies there are and how they are all ‘experts’. Com’on Man (Biden Voice).
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