Why Black Friday Won’t Save Your Business (And What To Do Instead) [Ep 220]

Black Friday doesn’t build trust - it just shines a spotlight on whether your audience already trusts you or not. And if that trust isn’t there yet? No discount, bundle, or flash sale will fix it.

In this episode, I share why Black Friday won’t magically save your business (or your sales) - and how to use this season strategically to grow, nurture, or sell in a way that actually feels aligned.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why discounting isn’t the shortcut you think it is
• The three real reasons your Black Friday sale isn’t converting
• How to know if you have a volume or messaging problem
• The 3 ways to approach Black Friday: Lead, Nurture, or Sell

Mentioned in this episode:

• My 2023 Black Friday Numbers Revealed - & How You Can Plan For Your Own Black Friday Success This Year [Ep 159]
• Black Friday Toolkit - $37

Ready to grow your business without social media or burnout?

NEED CLARITY FAST?
Grab a Business Breakthrough - a personalised diagnostic to uncover your biggest growth opportunity right now.
⚡️ $44 - Book here

p.s - Loving the show?
Hit follow or subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you want to support the podcast, sharing it with a biz friend is the best way to spread the love!

Transcript

Kylie Kelly [00:00:00]:
Black Friday does not build trust. It shines a spotlight on whether your audience already trusts you or not. And if that trust isn't there yet, no discount, no bundle, no flash sale is going to change that. Today I want to talk to you about how Black Friday is not going to save your business and what you can do instead. Let's talk about it.

Kylie Kelly [00:00:24]:
Are you a female business owner frustrated with battling the algorithm and looking for growth strategies that don't involve awkwardly pointing or dancing online or throwing cash at paid ads? Welcome to the Email Growth Show. I'm your host, Kylie Kelly, visibility and email marketing strategist. I grew my email list from zero to almost 10,000 subscribers in less than two years.

Kylie Kelly [00:00:45]:
And the same is possible for you too.

Kylie Kelly [00:00:47]:
Are you ready to build your email list and start making more money in your online business? Let's head into today's episode.

Kylie Kelly [00:00:56]:
Hey, hey, my loves. Welcome back to the Email Growth Show. I'm your host, Kylie Kelly, visibility and email strategist for women. Women building online empires without social media running the show. And today we're diving into a juicy one. Why Black Friday won't save your business and what you can do instead. Now, don't get me wrong, I fucking love a good sale when it is done intentionally. But every year around this time, I see incredible business owners.

Kylie Kelly [00:01:25]:
Smart, talented, purpose driven women slip into panic mode. They see everyone else shouting sale and suddenly feel like they're missing out if they don't do the same. Cue the frantic canva graphics, thrown together offers and last minute emails that no one clicks. If that has ever been you, I want to say it's okay. I have done it too. But this year I want to invite you to do it a little differently. Because if you're going to show up for Black Friday, let's make sure it's from clarity, not from chaos. So let's talk about the Black Friday panic loop.

Kylie Kelly [00:01:59]:
Here's the scene. It's mid November. You're sipping coffee and suddenly your inbox explodes. Everyone's launching, everyone's discounting, and everyone's doing something. And your brain goes, shit, I should be doing something too. So you start brainstorming, rushing, overthinking, trying to pull a strategy out of thin air and the energy behind it. Scarcity, fear, comparison. I have been there.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:25]:
I remember one year literally building sales pages at midnight, hating every fucking second, but convincing myself that I had to do it because this is what real businesses do. Spoiler. I made like two sales and one of them was from a biz bestie who just wanted to support me. It wasn't that my offer was bad, but it was the energy behind it that was wrong. Because Black Friday made me reactive, not strategic. So let's go back to the line I said at the very start of this episode. Black Friday doesn't build trust. It just reveals whether you've already built it.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:56]:
You can have the prettiest graphics, the biggest discount, the cleverest subject line, but if your audience doesn't trust you, none of that shit matters. And this is something that came up just last week in a chat with a client. She was hosting a massive summit and one of her speakers had a massive email list, like thousands of people. But her subscribers weren't clicking, they weren't signing up, they weren't engag. And when she was talking about it to me later, she said, kylie, your list clicks, your people take action. Like, what's the difference? And that really stood out to me because the difference isn't the size of the list. Mine is about half the size of this other person she was referencing. It's actually the relationship.

Kylie Kelly [00:03:39]:
My audience knows me. They know for what I stand for, they know for what I believe in, what to expect when they open an email from me. That sender name is often way more important than the subject line, but we're going to save that for another episode. But they trust that I'll tell the truth, right? And because of that, they engage, they reply, they click, they buy. So if your Black Friday campaigns aren't converting, the first question to ask isn't, what should I discount? It's does my audience trust me enough to care? That's where positioning comes in. Clarity builds confidence, and confidence builds trust. And trust. That is what actually sells.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:18]:
I actually did an entire episode back, episode 187, talking all about this. The number one strategy that's still working in 2025 is trust. And I will put the link to that episode in the show notes. I highly recommend, if you feel like you haven't built trust with your audience, I highly recommend going back and listening to that. It is worth every second of that 12 minutes in that episode. So how do we use Black Friday in a way that feels aligned? So it comes down to one simple framework that I teach inside my MEM membership and with my private clients, where every offer should do one of three things. It should lead, it should nurture, or it should sell. Right, so let's break this down.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:59]:
So the first path that you can choose to do is lead. If your email list is small or a little on the quiet side, your goal shouldn't be selling, it actually could be growth. Black Friday is a visibility gold mine because everyone's paying attention. So instead of running a discount, you could run a collaboration. You could host a small Black Friday bundle with biz besties that serve the same audience. You could run a buy nothing Black Friday where you gift high value resources in exchange for new subscribers. Or perhaps you co create a private podcast series that delivers real value. The goal here is momentum.

Kylie Kelly [00:05:36]:
You are building trust before you then go on to sell in future months. So you can definitely use Black Friday for this or the second path. Maybe it's nurture. If your email list already knows you, but they haven't bought in a while, maybe it's time to love on them, right? Give them something unexpected. Gift them a paycheck paid product for free. Offer them a bonus training. Send them an honest thank you email with zero pitch. Because that moment of generosity when everyone else is shouting buy, buy, buy.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:04]:
It's going to stand out like crazy. You'll surprise them, you'll delight them. And this is how you turn your followers into fans and again, continue building more and more trust. Or of course, the third path you could choose for Black Friday is to sell. So if you are in a selling season, awesome. But keep it simple. Pick one, offer one transformation, one timeline. You don't need to flood your list with 12 different deals that can just confuse people and dilute your message.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:33]:
Simple will always sell. So let's get nerdy for a second because I want you to stop guessing. I actually have a bootcamp where I run through this in detail. It's called my Black Friday Bootcamp. I'll put the link to it in the show notes as well. But inside that bootcamp, I shared a calculator that flips everything for my clients, for the people that watch the bootcamp, and even for me when I first discovered it. It works backwards from your goal. I am a huge fan of reverse engineering all of this kind of shit.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:58]:
So it works backwards. So instead of saying I want to make $5,000, you figure out exactly what it takes to make 5K. So if your product is $97 and let's say your conversion rate is 2.5%, which is pretty standard, you'll need around 400 people hitting your sales page. If your click rate is say 4%, that's roughly 10,000 people seeing your email. Now if you're nowhere near that number, like that's okay, it just means that it's a volume problem. You need More people. So before you send out a campaign and you wonder why you haven't made the money that you set out to make, don't blame the offer, don't blame the price point. It could just be a volume problem.

Kylie Kelly [00:07:39]:
If you are hitting those numbers but no one's buying, then it's a messaging problem. Either way, you're not failing. This is really helpful to diagnose, right? When you have data, you can make smart decisions instead of emotional ones. And this is how sustainable businesses are built. So I would highly recommend grabbing the bootcamp. But even just knowing your numbers in this way is going to be so powerful for you. Black Friday, yes, but also any other sales campaigns that you do. Know your goal, know the price point of your offer, know your conversion rate, and know your click rate.

Kylie Kelly [00:08:14]:
So you can reverse engineer this and figure out, how many eyes do I need on this sales page to reach that goal? And then, you know, just to go for the eyes, right? To go for the traffic, to go for the volume. Now let's talk a little bit about what this looks like in practice. So last year I ran five different offers over five days for Black Friday. It sounded really fun, right? It was a cool idea. I saw other people doing it again and I was like, yeah, let's give it a go. Until it wasn't by day three. Fucking hated it. So I ended up scrapping the whole thing.

Kylie Kelly [00:08:44]:
Mid campaign, I emailed my list and said, you know what? I changed my mind. Here is one page with all the offers and guess what? My list loved that. They respected that I didn't force something that didn't feel good for me. And that honesty of saying, like, hey, I've changed my mind. This is what I'm doing instead. That built more trust than any discount ever could. Now, if you compare that with another offer that completely flopped my pitch Like a Pro Workshop. Great offer.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:11]:
But I hadn't talked about podcast casting in months. My audience was not primed for it. I just threw it out there and thought it would convert on its own, right? And it didn't sell. Not because it was bad, but because the timing was off. A few months later, I relaunched it after consistently talking about guesting, and it sold out. Same offer, same price point, different energy. This is what alignment does. And this is why I really want you to consider what your energy is like going into Black Friday, because that will make all the difference.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:41]:
Energy doesn't lie. And Black Friday is an energy amplifier. If you were clear, grounded, confident that energy will show up in your copy it will show up in your emails. It will show up in your launch. If you are scattered, desperate, burnt out, frantic, that energy shows up too. People can feel the difference. So instead of asking like oh my God, what should I sell? I want you to ask, how do I want to feel during Black Friday? Do you want to feel calm? Do you want to feel excited? Spacious? Playful? Build from that place. Create your strategy from that place.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:16]:
Because when your energy's right, the strategy that follows is going to be fcking brilliant and it's going to work way more than anything else will. So what do you do? Instead of trying to save your business with a discount, you get strategic. You build from data. You pick one goal, lead, nurture or sell and you go all in. If your audience needs growth, focus on visibility. If they need trust, focus on nurture. If they're ready, sell confidently and put your energy behind it. And if you're not sure which bucket you're in, that is exactly where I can help.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:52]:
So if you want clarity before you head into Black Friday, or before you head in for 2026 for that matter, I would love to invite you to book a business Breakthrough audit. At the moment they are still just $44, so it is a no brainer. The price will be going up soon. But in an audit I personally review your visibility, your offers, your email strategy and then I send you a private loom breaking down. Exactly what I'd do next if I was in your shoes. No more post more on social bullshit. A clear, simple three step plan to help you sell smarter and more sustainably. You can grab the link in the show notes as well as there is that Black Friday bootcamp if you're interested there too.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:31]:
All right my loves, that is it for today. Remember, Black Friday doesn't build trust, you do. And when you lead with intention instead of panic, your results are going to last far longer than a 24 hour sale ever could. Thank you so much for being here. Please reach out if you have any questions until next week. I will probably see you in your inbox. All right, love you loads. Bye for now.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:52]:
Thank you so much for tuning into.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:53]:
This episode of the Email Growth Show. I hope you found valuable insights into the next steps you can take to grow your email list and boost your business without relying on social media or paid ads. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show and share it with others.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:09]:
Your feedback helps me reach more female.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:12]:
Entrepreneurs just like you who are ready.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:14]:
To say goodbye to social media and.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:15]:
Leverage email marketing to grow their business and make a bigger impact.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:19]:
Thank you so much for listening, and.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:21]:
I'll see you in the next episode.