This month, I’ve been working with our Inner Circle members to create a plan for 2021, a plan to get them to their goals.

The plan starts with just four things.

First, identify your starting point:

Where are you starting from?

What does your business look like right now? What has it looked like all year, month by month?

This is important, but because it forces you to set your goals based on data, not dreams.

It also allows you to set realistic goals that are achievable. This will help you grow your momentum, instill a sense of success, and set you up for more success in the future.

And that brings me to the second thing:

Get back to the basics.

 Remember, there are three stages of e-commerce.

• Traffic
  • You need at least 3000 web visits/month to get one sale a day
• Conversion
  • Is your add to cart rate 4% or higher?
• Reliable Revenue
  • Are you in control of your marketing? Having a marketing plan in place is the best place to be.

Now for the third thing, it’s simple, but few people do it:

Find what works and do more of that.

Find the clues, use your data, repeat, re-invent, and double down on what is already working in your business. Take the time now to reflect and make notes on what has brought you success this year and, do more of that.

Start by looking through your email campaigns and going over your Google Analytics. Make a list of what campaigns had the most success and then before you consider new strategies, maximize the ones that have worked well in the past.

You should even start to plan how you can slot them into your calendar and how you can make small tweaks to make it look different to your customer.

And lastly, and this is something that we could all do more of:

Focus on Traffic.

If you really want to grow your sales by 25% next year, focus on traffic every single week. Track and measure it. Set your traffic goal 25% higher for Q1 and then make it happen.

Remember to look at where your traffic comes from, see how those people behave, and put your effort into getting people back for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th time!

Because 3000 web visitors is just a starting point.

Let me leave you with this, what would it take to increase your traffic by 25% in Q1?

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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With Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales behind us, it’s now time to turn our focus to finishing the year strong.

Believe it or not, there is a way to get solid sales in December without a massive effort. All while keeping your sanity. 

Here’s the trick. Get people back to your site, and do it quickly, while they’re still looking for gifts. 

I’m talking about Returning Visitors. Returning Visitors are twice as valuable as New Visitors. 

Think of it this way, New Visitors are the lifeblood of our business for growth.

Returning Visitors are the lifeblood of our business for conversion (sales!).

You can see by my results below. Compare the Conversion Rate for New Visitors, to the Conversion rate for Returning Visitors

And so, when December rolls around, and people are already buying, this is the time to double down on your efforts to get more Returning Visitors.

Let’s talk about how you do it, check out this video:

Here’s a snapshot of the playbook:

1.To attract your Returning Visitors, use urgency as your hook. It’s your friend. What’s the last day you are shipping for a pre-Christmas delivery. Start talking about it everywhere, on Social Media, in Email, and in Text campaigns.

2. I want you to focus only on a few best selling items. This is not the time to be talking about all the things. Because people need clarity. Repetition brings clarity.

3. If you spend money on ads, shift a bigger portion of your budget to your warmest audiences:

• Website Visitors
• Email list
• Engaged on FB
• Engaged on IG

I want to caution you, recency is a big factor in conversion. So a 30 day audience is perfect. That said, if you have small warm audiences, you’ll need to use up to 180 days.

If you’ve had success with Google Shopping in the past, this is a great time to make sure you’ve got it running, and maybe even up the budget. Google Shopping is search based, and includes retargeting.

4. Use Email and SMS Marketing. Decide how many products you can feature. Give each product at least five days. For example, if you send a single product email, make sure you use a large and clean image of the product. Then use the ‘just in time for Christmas’ delivery hook, highlighting the last day to ship. Adding in a testimonial to demonstrate product benefit is also extremely valuable.

Example of a subject lines:

• 10 days left. Grab the socks that they’ll celebrate all year round. (our shipping deadline is Dec 15th)
  
• Ditch the stress, we’ll deliver the perfect gift for you  (get your order in this week)
  
  
  Send Day 1 – to your list.
  Send Day 2-  different subject line, but to non-openers
  Send Day 5 – people who opened, but did not buy.
  Then start again with Day 1.

5. Social media posting with links or shopping enabled is free!

Last thing:

Don’t stop, just change the conversation. There are still lots of shoppers in December, use your strategy all the way through.

Implement all of this, and you will see your Returning Visitor climb and you’ll feel confident that you’re spending your time and money wisely.

Great strategy to use year round!

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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I think you might love this.

Last week I ran a sponsored email collaboration with Pink Poster.

We both agreed to create discount codes for each other’s audiences.

I really wanted to make it easy for the Pink Poster audience to get their discount.

So without thinking it through, I created an automatic discount – duh! 

Everyone who added an item to the cart got a discount. My mistake.

But as it turns out, I learned something super valuable.

Of course, I started getting more conversions. But in truth, I’ve offered deals that are way more attractive than the 25% I was offering this time around.

Even so, my overall conversion rate jumped by 92%.

And my mobile conversion rate went up a whopping 123%.

And that’s when I realized the mistake I’ve been making.

You might be making it too. Watch the video to hear what happened.

Here are the details:

I’ve been expecting my customers to do too much. I have a newish, not so engaged audience.

And so I need to make it dead easy. Copying and pasting a code on a phone can be tricky.

At my stage, clarity is more important than the offer.

→ I need to tell my audience what I’m offering, in multiple places, not just in an email.

And, user experience is also more important than the offer.

→ I need to meet my visitors where they are, and not make them jump through hoops.

→ I need to ensure that both the offer and the process to claim the offer is crystal clear.

→ Going forward, I’ll make it super easy to claim the offer and shop my site.

Here are a few actions you can take to implement a more user-friendly experience.

Eliminate the need for codes whenever you can

→ Use an automatic discount or simply reduce the price.

→ Use a sticky banner with an offer. (I just added tutorial for Inner Circle Members in the classroom)

→ Create hero images that clearly show the offer.

→ Use Social Media posts to share the offer.

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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Do you know how many leads you get from your pop-up each month?

If you’re not focused on what’s happening with your pop-up, you might be leaving money on the table.

And if you don’t have a pop-up, you’re definitely leaving money on the table.

At my new store, Sock Doggo, emails collected from my pop-up are responsible for more than 20% of my sales.

And it’s all automated. I don’t have to do anything beyond checking in on it now and then.

So it makes sense for you to spend a little time on this.

Watch the video to see the recent change I made to my pop-up that has improved my conversion rate by 2%.

Here are the 3 reasons you’ll want to run and check your pop-up today:

Reason #1 Email converts better than any source of traffic. Period.

In almost every case, traffic that comes from an email converts better than traffic from any other source. Once you know that, it becomes clear that you owe it to yourself to make sure you grow your list every single day.

Reason #2  Getting a pop-up in place, and making sure it’s converting well is perfectly aligned with the work you do every week. 

Here’s what I mean:

You’re working on getting traffic to your site every day. When you have a pop-up on your site, you’ll automatically collect email addresses when people engage with your pop-up. Want more emails? Send more traffic.

Reason #3  It is automated. 

This is about as close to passive revenue as you’ll get. The key is to get a pop-up set up and add in a short welcome series as an automated funnel. Even if people don’t buy when they sign up, you’ll have an email series in place, warming them up until they’re ready to convert.

The big question most people have is:

What’s a good conversion rate for my pop-up?

Industry stats say that people have to see your pop-up an average of 3 times before they sign up.

Engagement (Opt in) rates average 3% across all e-commerce.

But that’s not good enough for us. We’re in a different category. We’re specialists, and we are focused on driving the best quality traffic to our sites.

We need to shoot for engagement rates of 5% – 9%.

And the 4 mistakes I want you to avoid?

1) Make sure your offer has top billing and is scan-able.

2) Avoid multiple pop-ups and if you use an Exit Intent pop-pup, check your mobile view. They tend to pop up many times during a session. Make sure your pop-ups don’t appear as soon as the visitor lands on your site.

3) Deliver the reward on a success message while the visitor is still on your site. Don’t make them leave to get their discount by email. Deliver it by email as well as on the success message.

4) Make sure your pop-up is easy to close. Have others test it. Don’t risk bounces because someone can’t close your pop-up!

Want to learn more about how you can maximize your pop-up?  Check out this podcast episode- Three Reasons You Should Check Your Pop-Up Today. You can listen here on Apple Podcast or here on Spotify.

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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