An in-depth recap of my birthday flash sale for Top Squarespace SEO (online course)
Coming in HOT today with a really fun blog post, cause I’m another year older and another year wiser! 🎈
Earlier this week, I celebrated my birthday (on November 4th, it’s scorpio season baby) which is and of itself is pretty fun - but this year, I went all out!
I decided to celebrate this special occasion with a flash sale of my online course, Top Squarespace SEO!
This was the first time that I’ve ever run a flash sale and I learned SOOOO much during the process - seriously it was so much fun but it also meant that I had to master a whole new skill!
As such, I figured this would be a neat & actionable post for anyone who’s also interested in online marketing, experimenting in their business or trying something different with their online course :)
Alright so let’s talk flash sales.
In theory, they are pretty simple.
You just go all out and market/sell a product (or service, I guess) for a short period of time.
All your marketing efforts go towards that one sale and you want to spread the word as loudly and widely as possible! Everything else gets put on hold, it just chills on the back burner for a little while until the flash sale is over.
But if you’re like me and you’ve never run a flash sale before, then you probably have NO CLUE how to actually run a flash sale haha!
I mean, I figured I would need to make some changes to my website to announce and promote the flash sale for Top Squarespace SEO and I knew I’d likely send out some emails to my list… but beyond that, I was in the dark.
Because I was a flash sale first timer, I was basically starting from scratch and that meant I needed to learn everything and plan it all out ahead of time if I wanted the sale to be a success.
Luckily for me, I found several really helpful flash sale guides and templates online (thank you, Google!) and from there, I was able to hack together a pretty effective marketing plan and strategy.
So that’s what we’re going to go over in today’s blog post!
I’m sharing a lot of really actionable advice here so hopefully this helps you out if a flash sale is something you’re interested in trying out in your own business!
Ready to dive right in? Get comfy, this post is a long one :)
Related: An in-depth recap of how I launched and marketed my first online course, Top Squarespace SEO
Why did I decide to host a flash sale?
There were a few reasons I decided to run a flash sale of my online course, Top Squarespace SEO:
My birthday was coming up and I wanted to celebrate 🎂
I hadn’t opened enrollment to the online course in several months
I recently added LOTS of new content to the course and knew that this would be a great way for my audience to get in on it before I increased the price during the next enrollment period (late November 2019)
So yeah, the stars aligned and I figured “what the heck, let’s try something new”!
That’s one of the best things about running your own business, you can experiment and try new things out just because :)
New course content added to Top Squarespace SEO
I recently added the following new lessons, guides and bonus resources Top Squarespace SEO:
Knowing and understanding your ideal audience and attracting them to your website through SEO guide (VALUE $50)
Image guidelines and best practices for SEO (VALUE $75)
Guide to SEO copywriting (VALUE $75)
SEO and responsive design guide (VALUE $50)
New video lessons & tutorials on event and product descriptions, index vs regular pages, Google My Business, URL redirects and more!
TOTAL VALUE: $250
I know, right? Wow, so much goodness.
If you haven’t already, be sure to read this blog post where I explain and break down the process of how I actually created all this (amazing) new course content:
Remember, this is an in addition to the pre-existing core content of the online course!
All this new course content was worth a celebration (because it’s soooo good and worked hella hard on it) and it paired perfectly with my birthday.
Birthday Flash Sale Pricing
During the birthday flash sale, people could purchase Top Squarespace SEO for only $297.
This was the same old price which meant that people got $100 in savings (because the price of the online course us going up to $397 the next time I launched the course, in late November 2019)
IN ADDITION to the special pricing, people would also get in on over $250 worth of new course content - without paying anything extra for it!
So yeah, the birthday flash sale was the best deal I have ever offered on Top Squarespace SEO. Without a doubt, it’s the best value & price combo for Top Squarespace SEO that my audience has ever had 🎉
Planning for the birthday flash sale
In mid-October, I was flipping through my calendar and remembered that my birthday was coming up soon on November 4th (same as P Diddy, Matthew McConaughey, Bethenny Frankel and my beloved Jeff Probst).
Since I’m always down for any reason to celebrate, I thought to myself “hmmm maybe I should do something special for my birthday with my business”.
I had the idea to do a special offer to celebrate/mark all the new course content that I had recently added to Top Squarespace SEO, and when I realized that my birthday was right around the corner, it was a double whammy reason to plan something!
I bounced the idea of a birthday flash sale around with one of my online biz friends and she encouraged me to try it out - that was the final push that I needed to actually start planning and make it happen.
But the only thing was that I had never done anything like this before so I had no idea how to run a birthday flash sale!
LOL slight problem, but nothing I couldn’t figure out.
Honestly, mad props to Google and Youtube because I found several wonderful guides, plans & templates that I used as my foundation, and then came up with my own final plan from there. I simply Googled stuff like “how to run a flash sale” and “marketing plan for a flash sale” and was super impressed by some of the free resources that came up!
I ended up taking bits and pieces from several of those online resources and hacked together a plan that would help me get organized and make sure that I was marketing the birthday flash sale correctly.
Birthday flash sale dates
Start date: November 4th @ 9am EST (my actual birthday)
End date: November 6th @ 6pm EST
My birthday was on Monday November 4th so I knew that would be the obvious/perfect time to “open the doors” and kick off the flash sale.
I decided to run the flash sale for 3 days to keep it short but sweet, and give people a real sense of urgency!
But in order to build up hype and excitement for the birthday flash sale, all of the guides I found suggested that you begin warming up your audience ahead of time, starting a few days before the sale kicks off.
So I planned to start sending out a couple of emails and talking about it on social media prior to the birthday flash sale starting.
More info on the actual email marketing campaign timeline and social media stories below.
How do you actually run a flash sale?
In my case, the birthday flash sale meant that I was opening enrollment for my online course, Top Squarespace SEO, for a short time at a special price.
This basically means that my audience would be able to access the full sales page and actually purchase the online course (because normally people can’t since the course isn’t evergreen - instead, I do open/close launches at several times during the year).
During the flash sale, I “opened” enrolment by giving people access to the button/link where they could purchase the online course through my website & Teachable (the platform that hosts my online course).
But in order to give people access to that purchase link, you have to market the flash sale. I ended up doing this through the full sales page on my website and email marketing. And don’t worry, I go into that in much more detail below haha!
Birthday Flash Sale - coming up with a marketing plan
Alright, this next section is where I dive in DEEP into the nitty, gritty details of my marketing plan for the birthday flash sale. It’s pretty detailed but hopefully still easy to follow!
There were lots of moving parts and things that needed to happen at different times throughout the birthday flash sale campaign, but it wasn’t too hard to do.
Email marketing
Email marketing was hands down the biggest part of my birthday flash sale marketing strategy. As I mentioned above, I found a few flash sale guides & templates online that I customized to suit my own needs, and I’m going to outline my process here.
I came up with a launch plan of 6 marketing emails. 2 emails were sent out BEFORE the flash sale kicked off on my birthday, to warm my email list and build excitement. The remaining 4 emails were sent out during the 3-day flash sale period.
A sneak peek at my Google Drive folder for the birthday flash sale marketing emails
I create a new Google Drive folder (pictured above) and wrote out each email as a new document. I drafted these marketing emails as thoroughly as possible, so that the Google Doc contained everything from text/copy, images (new course content mockups), “buttons” and “countdown timers” that I would add in once I prepped the final emails in MailerLite.
I prepared & wrote these emails in advance so that I had time to review the content before I actually went ahead and scheduled them to go out to my email list.
Marketing emails scheduled in MailerLite
Another important thing to mention is that I excluded all past Top Squarespace SEO customers/students from these flash birthday sale marketing emails. Obviously I didn’t want to clutter their inboxes with sales emails for a product that they had already purchased haha!
Email schedule & timeline:
Email 1 (pre-flash sale announcement): Thursday @ 9am
Email 2 (my story): Sunday @ 9am
Email 3 (flash sale starts today): Monday @ 9am *DOORS OPEN - NOVEMBER 4 (Charlotte’s birthday)
Email 4 (case study): Tuesday @ 9am
Email 5 (last day reminder): Wednesday @ 9am
Email 6 (final chance): Wednesday @ 2pm *DOORS CLOSE IN 4 HOURS
Flash sale “starts” at 9am on Monday morning
Flash sale “ends” at 6pm on Wednesday evening
So in total, I sent out 6 marketing emails over a 7-day period. I wasn’t sure if that was too many marketing emails to send out over a relatively short time, or if I’d see a lot of unsubscribes during this birthday flash sale, but luckily it was well received and turned out fine. I made sure to offer value in these emails, not just straight up a request to purchase LOL!
New course content mockup (graphic)
All the marketing templates I found online instructed me to include mockups of the digital product and all the new course content that I had added to Top Squarespace SEO. They also recommended that the graphic/image shows off different device displays (i.e., desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone) as well as any printable/text content to give people a visual idea of how the online course can be consumed.
I had previously been using a SUPER basic/not cute “mockup” graphic for Top Squarespace SEO (pictured below, “Before”), but in all honesty, I knew that I needed to upgrade that image for the birthday flash sale.
I Googled “online course content mockup” and used a few examples as my guide - I didn’t reinvent the wheel here hahah simply found a few examples that looked good and made something similar for myself! I whipped up this new online course content mockup in Canva. I also ended up creating a second course content mockup graphic that was for Top Squarespace SEO general, pre-existing course content.
Here’s a look at the course content mockup graphic’s Before (left) and the After (right) - talk about an upgrade!
Before
After
I used this new Top Squarespace SEO course content mockup in the emails AND on my website & sales page.
Website updates
Here’s a quick overview of the changes I made to my website:
Cover page/welcome mat: temporarily added this page to highlight the birthday flash sale
Announcement bar : changed this to promote the birthday flash sale
Popup: changed this to promote the birthday flash sale
Home page: added a new section right at the top of the page (below the header image) promoting the birthday flash sale
Blog, Product and Squarespace SEO pages: added new sections at the top to promote the birthday flash sale
I updated these sections on my website twice: first during the pre-flash sale period when it was announcing that it kicked off on November 4th. Then again, once the sale began, to remind people that doors would close at 6pm on November 6th.
The new website cover page that I set up for the birthday flash sale
Top Squarespace SEO sales page
During the pre-birthday flash sale teaser period, people were sent to the Top Squarespace SEO placeholder “doors opening again soon” page - NOT the full online course sales page. This page had info about the upcoming flash sale dates, special pricing offer and brand new course content. It also included an email newsletter opt-in to join the Top Squarespace SEO waitlist.
Once the birthday flash sale began, I switched over to the full sales page for Top Squarespace SEO (i.e., no longer the placeholder page mentioned above).
Prior to the birthday flash sale, I updated the sales page so that it included all the newly added course content (obviously haha) but also I did a few other tweaks to spruce it up a little!
I changed the dates on the sales page to be super clear about the flash sale duration & start/end dates.
This part wasn’t too time consuming since the sales page was already really solid but of course, there’s always room for improvement. I really drilled down on testimonials from past students and social proof because those are some of the most powerful marketing elements you can have.
Social media - Instagram stories
If you follow me on Instagram (@lottieohara), you might have noticed that I’m starting to get into Insta stories and have begun using it to share business stuff since I know that a lot of my audience creeps my profile haha! Obvi I am still not all that active on insta but I”m getting better!
I shared several “behind the scenes” insta stories on how I was preparing for the birthday flash sale - my process, what I was working on, the things I learned, etc. I also posted about it on my actual birthday and announced that the birthday flash sale was now on. It was a combo of me talking to the camera, and then also showing my computer screen so that viewers could see what I was talking about.
I had a lot of fun sharing this content on insta stories and I was honestly blown away by everyone’s interest and how many replies I got! Definitely something I want to do more of in the future.
For the next flash sale I want to try….
Overall I’m really happy with how this birthday flash sale came together, but of course there’s always room for improvement and things that might make it even better next time around!
Countdown timer on my website - Deadline Funnel
I straight up forgot to set up a countdown timer (using Deadline Funnel) on my website which is a big bummer because I know that they are SO helpful for creating a deadline and sense of urgency that prompts people to buy!
All of the emails I set up & scheduled in MailerLite had a countdown timer inside the email (it’s a built in feature) so that was good, but I think I could have added that to the website too and it would have been a value add.
Live video trainings
I didn’t do any live video to promote the birthday flash sale (besides the Insta stories, but that was more of a ‘sneak peek’ and not a training or real value) but I think it’s something that could be really fun to try out next time. I might do some free trainings on my Youtube channel or even an Instagram Live video, something super easy for anyone to watch.
Ask my online biz friends to spread the word
Next time, I will probably ask my online business friends to share the flash sale with their audiences so that I can get even more people involved and excited! I’ve done special favours for them in the past (because I’m always happy to help my girls out!) and during this birthday flash sale, I didn’t even think to ask anyone else to promote/mention it or talk about the flash sale on their channels. But I do think it would be a great way to reach a wider audience and I have no doubt that I could get my online biz friends on board! I’m always happy to support my friends and their businesses and I bet they would return the favour in the future.
Q&A on the last day of the flash sale
This wouldn’t be a free video training, more so a chance for people to hop on and ask me questions about the flash sale or the course content live. If I recall correctly, Ashlyn Carter did something like this Q&A live video during a past launch and I remember thinking that it was a super smart idea and a neat way to interact with your audience and speak to potential customers.
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I don’t blame you LOL!
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Overall/final thoughts on the birthday flash sale
All in all, I’m SUPER happy with how the birthday flash sale went down!
First of all, it was awesome to make extra course sales before I do a bigger launch for Top Squarespace SEO later this month (November 2019) - I love welcoming new students in the course!
Additionally, it was straight up FUN to try out something different in my business and learn about a new marketing strategy. There’s always a feeling of “oh geeze, will this be a success or a flop” when you try something new but luckily it all came together super well!
I hope you enjoyed this super detailed & honest “behind the scenes” blog post and that it’s helpful to anyone out there who is looking to do something similar.
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Finally, shameless plug : hit me up with any specific questions you have about Squarespace SEO and your website because I’m your girl. You can reach out to me directly if you’re interested in working together on your website and we can talk about whether or not you would be a good fit for my consulting and ongoing services. I can’t take on every request to do SEO consulting but I do pick a few websites and businesses to work with every month and I’d love for you to be one of them.
You may also be interested in:
Top Squarespace SEO - online course details and enrollment
Squarespace SEO for Affiliate Marketing - masterclass
