I built weekly to-do list for SaaS BlackFriday Cyber Monday planning!

Hello y'all!
Several weeks ago I started doing research for a Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign for a client, but I couldn't find a comprehensive checklist-timeline-style guide that I loved so I wrote one myself!

I won’t share too many specific details on execution, but this is the planning and execution framework. Plus some background so you know where we're starting from. :)

And if you've done a BFCM campaign or are planning on trying it this year, I'd love to hear your thoughts, experiences, and questions!

Some background and hurdles

We have to build an online audience from scratch for the client. The company hasn’t been active on social and gets most (well over 90%) of traffic from SEO. So we have to amplify the offers without a pre-built audience.

What we already knew about the product + campaign

core target audience
key value prop
messaging for the target audience
specific goals for the campaign → this is our first major campaign for them, so we want to be 100% clear on goals

What the goal of the push is

get more SMB customers on annual plans 🚀
testing a new target audience
honing the messaging for the existing target audience

Okay! Now for the nitty-gritty when to do what.

quick note: I use a timeblock schedule with deadlines on Wednesdays and Fridays, so all of these tasks were split between first half and second half of the week so they weren’t as overwhelming. I also have a marketing manager teammate who helped with the research and is helping with the posting.

6-4 weeks before Black Friday (you can do all of this in a week BTW, esp if you’re a solo founder. We started Oct 21st)

landing page updates (did a bunch of scheduled updates to the client site and ⬇️ bounce rate by 25%, ⬆️ traffic by 10%+ so we knew we were on the right track even if we made no further edits)
updated the onboarding (any massive friction points)
add updated messaging for the target audiences (is it clear and convincing?)
list out all the places we could post the launch (FB groups, Slack channels, discords, people who would retweet it)
list out 50-150 people in the target audience who we could messaging to test the new messaging and onboarding (Aka building an audience from scratch and starting the PLG flywheel since it wasn’t originally build that way)
write the outreach message with personalization to send with GMass and track opens with Mailtracker
researched to find 5-10 examples of ways similar companies posted about Black Friday deals so we could structure the message well
created a list of 40+ SaaS deal lists so we could reach out about inclusion on them
listed out anything technical we needed updated or changed on the product so I could let the client know in advance
triple checking our conversion tracking so we would know where the leads were coming from
draft emails to existing customers

3 weeks before Black Friday (That’s this week!)

structure the offer for each plan
simplify the messaging for it
draft the base copy for posts and inclusion in the lists
schedule send the email campaigns to existing clients with a special code just for them
setup the discount codes in Stripe
publish the final edits to the website
include a countdown banner on the website to the BFCM deal
reach out to people for feedback on the landing page + new onboarding (audience building)

2 weeks before Black Friday

organize feedback on the product/LP/onboarding
finalize posts to the deals communities
finalize SaaS deals list inclusion
make changes based on feedback

Week of Black Friday

make final changes to the landing page based on feedback
schedule all of the posts that can be scheduled
make sure all of the codes are good to go on launch day
send the final reminder emails to existing customers
send reminders to the people who gave feedback to please re-share the BFCM deal

Days of BF-CM

post in all of the FB/Slack/Discord groups that couldn’t be scheduled
monitor and reply to messages and comments across platforms
change the availability of discount codes according to a sliding discount (if you're taking that approach)
post updates on the deals in all of the channels with a focus on value > features to keep the momentum going
fix any bugs 🐛 😅

Our deal is running for 2 weeks - and then we’re doing a PH launch. So this is building oomf for both at the same time. 😉

For pricing suggestions and timelines I loved this Paddle article. It was very good at laying out the approach.

Let me know if you have any questions about this, happy to provide more details when I can and a breakdown once the campaign is over!

Also posted a (shorter!) version of this on Twitter if that’s more your thing.

https://twitter.com/HeyItsSophiaO/status/1590378213829746688?s=20&t=MV2JKRqu1Fd8Q4lcRA3_3A