ONCEWAS has Black Friday on lock with a 4.64x MER and their biggest month yet! High-end, designer fashion label, OnceWas, blew their monthly revenue out of the park with their first BFCM sale. Pushing the boundaries with the usual approach, this unexpected strategy including an exclusive locked site offer kept customers engaged and spending all week long.
25% growth of email database
64% more revenue than their best month
$227,473.35 Total Revenue at 4.64x MER
Fashion
Paid Social
The Background
OnceWas is a Melbourne based womenswear brand established in 2006. Designer, Belinda Glynn, founded the company with a vision to create unique investment pieces for women with transitional wearability and versatility. The brand drops 4-5 collections per year with 4-5 mini capsule collections within each, selling DTC online and through multiple retail stockists across Australia.
Two of the Spring capsules and all of the Resort collection launched in Q4. Both collections were incredibly popular, which created initial hesitation from the brand to discount them for Black Friday, in case it would be detrimental to their wholesalers.
Hearing the concerns, the team came up with a multi-phase strategy including a locked sitewide sale that created a compelling offer for customers and VIP exclusivity to help reduce wholesaler friction. This expertly-executed plan resulted in a 64% increase in revenue beyond their previous best month and grew their customer email database by 25%. Here’s how it went…
Planning
The final offer and strategy were agreed upon in late September to allow for adequate time to plan exact messaging and multi-team execution. As the brand had never locked their site before, and the week-long strategy involved 5 different offers, planning out the process was critical for success.
We generated a comprehensive checklist assisting the OnceWas team every single step of the way, including the steps required from the client (i.e. website, organic, email, SMS, and influencer components) so nothing would be missed.
We also included an entirely separate backup plan as a surefire contingency. Even though we didn’t have to utilize the backup plan, it helped both parties have peace of mind knowing we could have pivoted any moment during the sale if needed.
“You're also a safety net for us, making sure that we're on track and accountable for what we need to do to ensure that campaigns go off without a hitch. It's very holistic in that regard. You don't just do your job. You make sure that we're doing the best at our job.”
LIST BUILDING
The first phase of the strategy focused on building a VIP Early Access list. We created a signup page, teaser social posts and updated the site notification bar to build the list organically.
Multi-Offer Launch Week
This is where the true magic happened. By using five different offers during the BFCM sale week, we were able to add to the excitement of the event and keep sales momentum climbing.
At the core of the strategy was the sitewide 20% off offer (the best discount they’ve ever done!).
The list-building phase encouraged organic followers of the brand to sign up to the VIP list to get early access and an extra 5% off. This generated an initial micro-commitment to shop the sale, which was then backed up by a scarcity offer of a free leather belt for the first 200 orders once the VIP access went live.
The broad launch kicked off the following day with the core 20% sitewide discount. Followed by a further 15% off Flash Sale on leather items for Black Friday. The leather items are one of their best-selling categories so this allowed us to compete with other Black Friday offers launched that day and encouraged additional purchases. The leather styles had their own landing page with a countdown timer for urgency and pricing already marked down to highlight savings.
Then, to finish with a bang, Cyber Monday hosted a double-whammy of deals with an extra multi-buy, tiered discount on top of the sitewide sale AND an entire new capsule drop!
The Timeline:
- VIP Launch
- 25% off sitewide, free leather belt
- November 22nd 12pm – November 23rd 12pm
- Broad Launch
- 20% off sitewide
- November 23rd 1pm
- Leather Styles Flash Sale
- November 26th, 7am to November 27th 7am
- Cyber Monday New Capsule Launch and Multi-buys
- November 29th 7am to December 1st 6:59am
"We did more in a month than we used to do in a year!"
What Worked Well
The Black Friday campaign ran from November 22nd to November 29th and resulted in $227,473.35 total revenue at 4.64x MER, significantly exceeding the revenue target of $180k!
This result was their best monthly revenue yet, with a 64% increase on their previous best month ($138,772.90).
In addition, the organic list build and locked site strategy generated a 25% increase in their email customer database during the sale period, creating additional retention opportunities.
“Within the first six months, [revenue] was increased by 2.5 times and we're now over 3.5 times. So, we're seeing revenue results for online sales that we used to dream about and thought was a dream that we'd never reach. But now it's actually a reality.”
ANNA MAK
Anna Mak has skyrocketed a brand from $3k to $112k in 24 hours, is a cross-channel + cross-geo marketing guru and Right Hook’s dedicated Pinterest Queen. Anna has more success stories than we can count, but it’s the quality of her long-term client relationships that takes the cake. Previously a Media Buyer for 30+ brands, and now a Senior Strategist, Anna has an incredible talent for relationship building, gaining immediate trust from her clients with her out-of-the-box strategies and killer campaign performance. One of her greatest achievements was doubling the revenue of a high-profile fashion brand in 6 months, but she knows this is only the start.
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