Put plainly, below I've complied a list of what I expect from my team the week of Black Friday and what to have in place to make sure you team has your back this week. This big, powerful, year-defining week.
Importantly, let's 1st define "team." Who do these expectations apply to? To me, team here means anyone who is paid to grow the brand. I'm talking our agencies, I'm talking our direct reports, I'm talking our non-direct reports. We need everyone to show up in a big way.
I broadcasted these expectations long ago but it's still the Sunday before Black Friday and you can get this set up with your team 1st thing tomorrow. All good.
Okay, here we go.
MAKE SURE EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT "ONLINE MEANS"
Online does not mean you are slacking me from your phone. Online means you're within arm's reach of your computer throughout the whole weekend. HARSH I KNOW. But, it's an expectation. Do I want you to bring your computer with you to brunch? Yes, I do and I expect that. You need a hotspot. You need to be connected. You need to answer questions on performance after looking at the data in-full.
That can't happen if you're texting with 1 hand. Online means available to move mountains. To edit something in Figma. To unschedule something in Klaviyo. To fix our Triple Whale bot that's sending hourly #s. To pull down an ad that is confusing customers. I could go on! This applies to Thanksgiving day. I'm sorry!
DAILY MORNING MEETINGS STARTING TOMORROW, 11/24 - THE LAST DAY OF YOUR SALE
15-minutes. All agencies, internal growth team, everyone at their computers. Reading yesterday's data out and devising pivots to today's plan. Putting our head's together. The earlier in the day the better so that we can roll out those changes to budgets or to send schedules or to the site ASAP.
And, if performance is good, these meetings matter more BTW. How can we pull up our forecast and run at this quicker?
IRONCLAD REPORTING AND ALERTS
We have multiple layers of reporting and that's just the way I like it. Whatever your reporting is, just make sure you're not susceptible to bugs or to human error. An hourly Triple Whale bot that fires, paired with a pacing doc done by hand, paired with Northbeam updating every 6 hours, paired with looking in platform in Klaviyo, paired with Motion, paired with checking the forecast that updates automatically based on yesterday's tally.
The expectation here is that we check what we usually check, but we double-check it by hand more than ever. I will not be forced into accidental overspend because 1 of our dashboards gave us the wrong signal. Not the time for that!
A DIRECT LINE TO ALL PLATFORMS / TECH PARTNERS
I've spent the last month collecting phone numbers. Down to the Pinterest rep. Because you never know and it's so much better to get that info before you need it. Please get this sorted.
Same goes for your Shopify ecosystem partners. If making a major change to subscription over the weekend, do you have your Recharge account manager's #? Are you providing them the exact time the change happens weeks in advance for them to have it on their radar? You get it.
PIVOT PLANS
This is when the greater team is usually needed. For more ad creatives depending on what's working. For potentially extra email touch-points, depending on yesterday's performance. Can a lot of this be prepped ahead of time? 100% Should you stop yourself from executing on new creatives? 100% no - do not be afraid of change and do not stop yourself from asking for what is needed for performance.
Set that expectation now so that everyone is aware that they may be called in and called up. It's 1-week a year and if we miss it should never be because we left something on the field.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I am soooooo rooting for you and your teams. I sooooooo love Thanksgiving. I sooooooo love my family and want to spend as much time with them as possible. AND, I am going to be soooooo honest with you and say that in this week I pick work. I do it every year. And my family knows that and loves me still. I have a 16-week old baby and I pick work.
The "this is our superbowl" line gets made fun of a lot but it actually is temporary to push this hard and it is the expectation and this week matters most. If you're in charge you better be trying the very fucking hardest. If you're on the team, how you show up this week can accelerate your career. If keeping your computer near you over Cyber doesn't work for you, that's fine but I don't want you on my team.
Simple as that and good luck to all and we're all going to feel so much better in about 9 days so keep at it. Link me your sale. I would love to support as many of you as possible! x
