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Black Friday deals?

Did any of you do anything special for Black Friday?

In the past, I've offered discounts on appts booked earlier in the day, with the first appt getting the biggest discount.

This year, I decided to go out on a limb and try something new. I only came up with and decided on this idea one week before Black Friday, so I didn't get a lot of time to promote it.

I emailed my whole list of clients, many I haven't seen in years from working at a different location, on Monday, offering Buy One, Get One Free gift certificates if they call or email me between 6-11am on Black Friday.

Started off slow, got the first request by email at 8:40am, then got 5 phone-orders. Between those 6 clients (all of them current clients, none of the long-time-ago clients responded), they bought a total of 20 gift certificates, so I had 40 going out.

I had one appt booked with a new client last night that I also saw just for the first time on Monday and I thought I had emailed her the offer too, though she said she didn't get it. She asked if I would honor that for her anyway during the massage, and I thought about it, and went for it. She bought 4 also, so there was another 8 going out. A total of 48 gift certificates going out and a total income of $1685 (minus credit card fees). I do plan to stash this money as long as possible so I can pay myself SOMETHING when these GCs start coming back in.

It surprised me that despite knowing I'll be giving 48 massages at half price essentially, that I actually feel more at peace, and at ease about my business now, knowing that I WILL have a steady stream of new clients coming in, or at least making the ones that bought them more loyal to my business also. It's comforting to have that in place.

At this point, I am seeing this as something worth doing again in future years. Just hoping the gift certificates TRICKLE, not FLOOD in!!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Olga Chwascinska on November 30, 2010 at 3:08pm

Rachel! Congrats on this success and thanks for the inspiration! I am in Poland, where Dec. 6, St.Nicolaus Day is a huge gift-day and I'm inspired to offer something similar. I like how you announced the deal a few days early but said it won't be available until Friday. I also like the 'better discount for earlier birds" idea and might weave that in somehow.... Thanks again, O.

Permalink Reply by Tiffany on December 12, 2010 at 10:26pm

Hi Rachel,

We did something similar this year, although it had been YEARS since we ran a holiday special. Right now we have four therapists, but will be expanding next month to 6, and wanted to really drive some energy for the new therapists and the clinic in general. We did a Buy 2, Get 2. We have a large list, both clients, and for folks who have signed up for specials on our website, plus we posted it on our Facebook page, our website, and announced it at networking events. We let folks buy them via Paypal Thanksgiving AND Friday, in addition to selling them in the clinic on Friday. We stressed in the message that this is the ONLY time all year we reduce our rates. We are still a little shocked at the participation of the deal...many regular clients decided to buy for most of the year next year...but we were shocked that some people found our page online about the special, and we ended up getting SEVERAL new clients in the mix...and brought in folks who hadn't been in, or had never been in, but signed up online for the specials. Totally blew us away. Next year, we will probably limit the per person purchases, but we will definitely do it again...it generated a ton of buzz in our community, and we haven't seen much of a difference in our usual gift certificate purchases during the month of December.

Permalink Reply by silvana marroche on December 22, 2010 at 10:03am

I know this is a bit late ...hahaha, but since I make products i had a sale on black friday. HGTV featured one of my body scrubs, ROCK ME, so my stand alone site, was smokin! while my etsy site, did eh... ok. I still have a holiday sale going on... www.brisil.etsy.com