Master The Inbox

Unlock Black Friday Profits: Expert Funnel Strategies for Course Creators with Josip Belina

• Monica Badiu • Season 2 • Episode 3

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It might surprise you, but not every Black Friday campaign leads to big profits. A lot of people assume that offering a steep discount is all it takes, but there’s so much more to it. That’s why in this episode, I brought in someone who knows exactly how to make Black Friday work for your business. 

I sat down with Josip Belina, a funnel strategist who’s helped countless businesses turn data into dollars. He’s sharing his best tips on creating profitable Black Friday funnels—and trust me, you don’t want to miss this.


Here’s a glimpse of what you can expect from this episode

In this episode, Monica Badiu and Josip Belina discuss tips for creating profitable Black Friday funnels. They cover topics such as determining the right discount percentage, offering bundles, sending more emails, and analyzing KPIs. They emphasize the importance of starting early and promoting products that have already been successful. They also debunk the misconception that running a Black Friday campaign devalues a brand. The episode concludes with advice to just do Black Friday sales and focus on your best customers.

Takeaways

  • Data is crucial for creating successful Black Friday campaigns.
  • Understanding customer engagement in different stages of the sales funnel is key.
  • Metrics to analyze include web analytics, user interactions, and RFM (recency, frequency, monetization).
  • Logistics and operations impact customer perception and trust.
  • Course creators and consultants can leverage data to improve their Black Friday campaigns.
  • Setting marketing goals, tracking data from multiple sources, and analyzing past campaign data are important steps in preparing for Black Friday.


Meet my guest, Josip Belina
Josip is a Funnel Strategy Lead with a background in biomedical science. He specializes in funnel optimization, marketing automation, and data analysis, helping online businesses scale to multi-million-dollar revenues. With a scientific approach, Josip designs automated systems that maximize profits and streamline sales funnels.
 
Before moving into marketing, he honed his analytical skills in a hospital lab in Croatia. Now, he leverages his expertise to help businesses grow through data-driven strategies, focusing on customer acquisition, retention, and long-term profitability.

Connect with Josip on

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients.


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[00:00:00] This might come as a surprise, but not all Black Friday campaigns are actually profitable, because there's more to it than just throwing a massive discount, which is why you're going to want to listen to this episode carefully.

[00:00:19] Hey, you're listening to Master the Inbox, the podcast where course creators, coaches, and consultants learn how to sell with email in a non spammy way. I'm your host, Monica Badiou, a customer centric copywriter, course creator, and fellow entrepreneur. I invited Josip Belina, Assistant Funnel Strategy Lead, to share his best tips on creating profitable Black Friday funnels.

[00:00:40] Now Josip is one smart dude. He has a proven track record of transforming data into actionable strategies that drive substantial revenue growth. His expertise in funnel optimization, marketing automation, and data analysis has helped numerous online businesses scale to multi million dollar [00:01:00] revenue. Plus he gets some really cool points for his background as a biomedical scientist.

[00:01:05] Dude, you're smart. And we work together at Data Driven Marketing, helping course creators with their sales funnels, including Black Friday campaigns. So hello, Yossi, and welcome to the show. Hey, Monica. Happy to be here. I'm so excited. So you and I have seen our fair share of Black Friday campaigns, some profitable.

[00:01:24] Some not so much. So I want to start this conversation by tackling the biggest question there is. How do I determine the right discount percentage to offer without hurting my profit margins? It's a very interesting question. And if you're a course creator, profit margins should not be that big of a problem because, well, more or less everything you make on a course is a profit if it's your course.

[00:01:47] We'll focus on that and we'll talk a bit about, uh, Ecom as well. But first things first. During Black Friday, you should offer the best offer that you've ever [00:02:00] made, ideally. Which means, uh, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Use something that people have already bought from you before. Uh, just make it a bit better.

[00:02:09] Don't undervalue your course. So don't sell it for cheap because, you know, you want your students, you want your work to be valued, you want your course to be valued. But make sure to offer something that you know, your audience loves and that there is product market fit for. Usually bundles work great, so combining stuff that you've already sold before would make sense.

[00:02:32] And, uh, discounts of 50 percent or more work really well. If you're not really into discounts, discounts of 10, 20, 30 percent should work, but generally what we've seen, 50 percent is what people love seeing. And if you're selling your own info products, profit margins should be good. If you're selling e com Make sure you're profitable and you should already know how to do that.

[00:02:55] So you, you need to account for cost of buying goods for cost of [00:03:00] creating goods, cost of shipping, cost of labor. And with all of that, it needs to be profitable, but yeah, in summary. Don't invent new things. Just sell something that you already have a proven product market fit for. Plus something that you've already promoted before, because your audience has a wish list.

[00:03:18] And if a discount is what's going to move them forward into making the commitment, then why not? Awesome, Youssef. So what's something you wish course creators would know about Black Friday campaigns? Because we have a lot of, misconceptions and false beliefs about, you know, Oh no, if I run Black Friday, I'm going to devalue my brand and I'm going to damage my reputation.

[00:03:43] And there's a really good reason I asked about the profit margins to start the conversation because lots of people are afraid that running a Black Friday campaign is actually going to damage their profit margins because instead of selling it full [00:04:00] price, they're selling it with a discount. Most people, as you said, have that wishlist, especially if you have been running promos before.

[00:04:08] So they, some of them know what you are selling, some of them don't know what you are selling. So with doing Black Friday, that's actually the most important thing. Do them. We've seen a lot of course creators steering away from Black Friday because they think it's salesy, pushy, and it devalues what they do.

[00:04:28] However, then they miss out on probably the best time in a year to promote their stuff because everyone is doing it. And then being successful for Black Friday means that people love you because everyone is doing it, people are spending money. And they are expecting that. The other thing would be to start early.

[00:04:46] Last year we did quite a few Black Friday promos for our clients where we'd start early in November. We didn't wait for Black Friday. So starting early as a kind of a Black Friday pre sale works [00:05:00] really, really well. But then if you start early, don't then not do Black Friday. Start early and then also do Black Friday.

[00:05:07] You then have two windows of opportunity to convert people, ideally with different offers, but still you should be doing them. Bundle offers that you have that go well together. It's important that they make logical sense, of course, but bundle them. Definitely send more emails that you are comfortable with.

[00:05:25] Example, if you want to send two emails in a going, going on campaign or on a close in the last day of a campaign, you close it with two emails going and gone. Send three or four. People expect to be emailed. Uh, this is literally the only time in a year where you can allow yourself to do that, but definitely do that.

[00:05:43] And start preparing early, start preparing in August. We start our Black Friday prep mid to late August, so this is just around the time when we do that. So start preparing and then just do Black Friday. The hidden reason why Josip is here on this [00:06:00] podcast is so that I don't look like a crazy person for talking about Black Friday since August.

[00:06:08] Yeah, I mean, it's super important, uh, because, well, November is gonna be here. soon. And when it comes, you want to be prepared. It's a difference depending on how much money you're making. But you know, if you're averaging twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month, six figures is not out of question. If you are averaging three, four, five, twenty thousand is not out of question.

[00:06:31] So definitely focus on that. It's a good time period and people want it. And I think it's worth mentioning the reason Black Friday can be profitable is if you do have a sales funnel. So if you're just relying on one offer and that's discounted for 75%, then obviously you're going to be limited at one offer for 75%.

[00:06:55] If you have a sales funnel, then the potential for [00:07:00] income will be higher. grows with every offer you have in that funnel. So that's why we're saying like start early and don't just wait like the week of Black Friday. Send three emails, throw a discount and then complain that it's not working. This advice actually changed from what we talked about four years ago or so, and because we are preaching doing one or two email promotions every month.

[00:07:23] Assuming you do two email promotions every month, in a period of a year you're gonna send let's say 24, but maybe 20 might be more. Our idea was if you are sending email promotions Every month, Black Friday is just another reason why you would send that email promotion. We were wrong, because after analyzing quite a few businesses, say more than 30 businesses making more than 40, 000 a month, we figured out that during Black Friday, they actually make about 60 percent more revenue if they really focus on that, even if they do email promotions every month.

[00:07:58] So, uh, your [00:08:00] Q4 generally is the best quarter in a year, especially if you're a course creator. So leveraging Black Friday is important. That's so true. Preaching to the choir. Anyways, um, what are some lessons you learned from Black Friday? Maybe a Black Friday campaign that didn't go as planned, since you already mentioned this kind of switch in what you discovered based on analyzing the data from multiple course businesses.

[00:08:28] Yeah, after doing a 180 and starting to focus on Black Fridays, specifically, again, about four years ago, the biggest mistake we've seen people make is to try and introduce something that they aren't sure that their audience is willing to buy. So we said earlier that during Black Friday, you should promote things that you have already promoted before, not something new.

[00:08:54] Black Friday is not really a time in a year to launch a new course. Because people are [00:09:00] expecting to buy what you already have. Most of them, anyway, that are gonna be acting on it. Now, launching something new might backfire, because it's gonna require a lot of time, a lot of effort to create. And then a whole launch strategy to implement is just time consuming and draining.

[00:09:18] It's easier, a lot easier and a lot safer to just offer something that you know your audience wants. We have tried introducing new courses before during Black Friday, and then they would flop. I mean, sometimes they work well, obviously, if you have a product market fit, but sometimes they don't. And Black Friday is not a time for you to test things.

[00:09:37] It's the time for you to make sure you get the most revenue out and to maximize the revenue output of your email list. Liquidate them, especially if you've been running ads. And then when bundling, you want to bundle things that you know people want. Can you tell me more about some of the offers? Maybe this counts, [00:10:00] that some of the course creators you've been working with at DDM have been using to make the most of Black Friday.

[00:10:09] Bundles were great. So getting three, four, five products, combining them together and giving them a better deal than what those courses individually would go for. And then add a bit extra. Maybe something as a bonus or something similar to that. And then, uh, discounts that are if you can. Uh, 50 percent or more, because people expect the best deal of the year.

[00:10:38] And that's more or less said, there is no hidden strategy behind discounts, or there is no hidden strategy behind pricing. Just offer them the best price that you can afford without undervaluing your course, and use it only for Black Friday. It's not gonna backfire, and people are not gonna wait for another year.

[00:10:56] For you to have a Black Friday discount, plus you are constantly [00:11:00] getting new people onto your list, and people forget. Just, do you remember the offer that you got yesterday, for example, from someone? Most probably you don't. So, you know, don't, don't be afraid of people getting used to you offering discounts for Black Friday.

[00:11:17] People will expect it, because everyone does it. Uh, but that's literally the reason why you should as well. I actually Remember what I purchased for Black Friday last year and two years ago. Because it was something that I was waiting for, for a very long time. And it was kind of pricey, I mean it would normally sell like for 4, 000.

[00:11:44] And I kept trying to justify investing in it for like three months, and then it was August, and I was like, okay, if I waited so far, I can wait a few more months, maybe I could get a better deal [00:12:00] for Black Friday. And I did. And instead of paying 4, 000, I think I paid 1, 500 or 2, 000. But, it's one of the brands that I love most.

[00:12:14] And I did purchase that for Black Friday, but I have invested many more thousands of dollars since then. And I think that Black Friday offer was actually What kind of reduced the friction and resistance I had with that brand like investing in that brand like I love them, but I was It's too much So that actually pushed me over the edge and I got to experience their content get some of the you know Benefits and then it became so much easier for them to continue to invest Have me as a buyer because the next year, the Black Friday offer they had for buyers was, would you like a lifetime deal [00:13:00] for what you have purchased last year?

[00:13:02] Because it was 1500 per year. And I was like, yes, please. I would love that. Yes. And I purchased a lifetime offer from their very first email, which was sent one week before the regular Black Friday period. So I'm proof it works. Black Friday works and I don't have a lower opinion of that brand because they use the Black Friday discount.

[00:13:29] There is, um, if you're into KPIs and more or less every person that sells stuff online should be into KPIs and they should be tracking your AOV and everything else, especially lifetime value. is what you can do is, uh, create a, an analysis of how much a buyer, a first time buyer who buys when it's not black Friday is worth or a period of a year and compare that to a black Friday buyer.

[00:13:54] What we have seen is that they actually spend almost 50 percent more [00:14:00] revenue or money over a course and, uh, more often than not they buy. The repeat customer rate is higher for Black Friday buyers throughout the year, which is a very cool statistics to know. And this kind of answers my last question in the podcast.

[00:14:20] That's awesome. So you mentioned lifetime value and KPIs. Let's talk a little bit about that. Now I know your process and I know your spreadsheet thingy and It's amazing, but can you, like, re simplify it, and like, what's a minimum number of things our audience should know of? if they're planning to run a Black Friday sale and they actually want it to be successful.

[00:14:50] Assuming you have done email promos before, you want to analyze what's your email list size and what's a generally a number of people that buy during an email [00:15:00] promotion and then you average that out. If you have an email list of less than 50, 000 people, it will probably average out anywhere from 0. 1 to 0.

[00:15:08] 7 percent of that list. So to simplify that, if you have, what's a standard, uh, number of people that people have on an email list? Around 20, 000 or a bit more. Less than that, about 20, 000. So if you are sending out an email promo to 20, 000 people, you will probably sell to around a hundred of them during an email promotion, an email promotion being long, about a week long, that's considered a really good result.

[00:15:34] Now during black Friday. That number goes up a bit. It goes up by about 50%. So during Black Friday, you can expect about 150 sales, assuming that your email list is active. So that's what we do. We analyze our past email promotions and we figure out what the average is. Once we know the average, we add about 50 percent to that when it comes to modeling.

[00:15:58] That's the first thing you can do if you [00:16:00] have never done it before. Uh, so expect about 50 percent better result than what your regular promotion. Now, if you're doing an early bird sale for Black Friday, a Black Friday and then a continuation to Cyber Monday actually goes up. But that's your starting point.

[00:16:17] Make sure to track your KPIs. Make sure to know how your email promos perform and go from there. You might not get it just right at the first time you're doing it, but the next time you're doing it, you're going to be a bit better. We now have a system. If we worked with clients for a few years now, we have a system where we can be, I would say five to 10 percent accurate to where we are going to land, which means that if we say that we are going to make a hundred thousand dollars, we are probably going to make anywhere from 90 to 110.

[00:16:47] You know what I love about that process? Is seeing our clients faces when they look into their dashboards and it's like a huge spy going up and then they come back [00:17:00] and they have the talk with you and they're like Yeah, your prediction was pretty close to that. I can't believe this that that's one of the best things about What we do at DDM Yeah, but it's important to track your KPI.

[00:17:18] So just make sure to, to know your data on a monthly basis. Obviously. I mean, Yossip is talking about KPI is a lot more, uh, the art of selling online courses. That's the podcast. We have a data driven marketing. So if you're curious about that, search for it on YouTube and search for Art of Selling Online Courses plus Yossip Boulina to get his episodes.

[00:17:42] They're really good. Awesome, Yosef. Okay, so what's a final word of advice for the creators who are interested in running a profitable Black Friday sale? First thing is just do them. Do Black Friday sales. [00:18:00] Second, if you are doing them and you should, send more emails than you normally would plan. At least one or two more.

[00:18:07] Ideally start early and then focus on your best customers and buyers. We've seen that some people will create an offer and that offer, because you're relaunching it, it will pay off. Be an offer that, let's say, 5 10 percent of your list already has. They are your best customers. Make sure to have something for them.

[00:18:30] They will bring you a lot of revenue. But the most important thing is to just do something. That was awesome. Thank you, Josip. And to the person who is listening this, if you're a course creator, or you have a membership business, And you want to know more about KPIs and how to optimize your business, how to keep track of KPIs, how to build optimized sales funnels, you can actually reach out to Yossip at yossip.

[00:18:56] datadrivenmarketing. co. If bots are listening, don't [00:19:00] email Yossip. Thank you, Josip, for sharing your insights. Hope to have you here soon again. Of course, happy to be here. You've listened to Master the Inbox. In this season of the podcast, we're focusing on strategies to help course creators, coaches, and consultants make the most of Black Friday.

[00:19:20] So if you found this episode useful, then please help me spread the word. Like, share, and subscribe wherever you're listening.