January

January can be a "blah" month from a marketing standpoint. The thrill of achieving an order at 60% off is replaced by the tepid response of a customer getting 70% off liquidations products.

Why not use January as your "experimentation month"? Try many different ideas, see what works and doesn't work.

We need more experimentation in ecommerce. Anything something gets "optimized", as ecommerce unfortunately is, there is an opportunity to experiment, to try new ideas. Use January as a month to experiment and learn.

Speaking of Creativity

Here - here's an "omnichannel brand" as the pundits like to say, doing something risky. Go ahead, click here! More here.

You could send eleven (11) Cyber Monday messages on Cyber Monday and the day after as one popular brand did, offering 80% off sale (think about that one).

Or, you could do something creative.

Do something creative.

Tis The Season

The best businesses I work with balance merchandise, marketing, and creative.

Cyber Monday obviously skews strongly to pricing ... no need for marketing / creative brilliance. That's how Thought Leaders like things ... they either make everything so complicated you couldn't possibly execute properly (#omnichannel) or they pick a corner of the triangle above and tell you that excellence in one area equates to excellence in all areas.

With Christmas a few weeks away, large businesses are applying their version of the "triangle" above to coax customers into orders. Tis the season for the image they believe will convert a customer to an incremental order. Any similarities?

When the largest "brands" all choose one direction, you have an opportunity to choose another direction. Kohl's / Macy's / Target / Walmart all clearly view the world through the eyes of a specific type of female aligned with the color "red".

Ecommerce is begging for somebody to be creative. It's one thing to optimize boring/sterile Facebook Ads paired with 60% off on Cyber Monday. It's another thing for agencies to recommend one type of woman as your "idealized consumer". It's difficult to walk away from that world and chart your own course via creative strategies. But it's necessary as we move into 2026.

Now We're Counting Grocery Purchases For Black Friday - Cyber Monday? Oh, I Guess We Are

He bought canned pineapples, it's part of the record!

"... consumers shopping mainly at supermarkets".

Look around, because we are constantly being reminded what happens when we put non-smart people in charge of things, or worse, give them access to a megaphone.

"... consumers shopping mainly at supermarkets".

" ... according to a survey".

Want To See If Your Customers Are Paying Attention To You?

Buried deep on the Headphones.com website is this (click here for proof). The comments were obviously staged as well, and are delightful.

I share this with you after enduring a day of absolute Cyber Monday pummeling. One "brand" sent me six email messages promoting Cyber Monday, offering 60% off. Three went straight into my junk folder, three persevered and made it to my inbox.

When you don't have a creative bone in your org structure, you send six email messages on Cyber Monday promoting 60% off. It's all you have - you are begging the customer to buy something on a day that generates customers who have low long-term value. You'll spend the rest of the year offering more discounts because rebuy rates are too low. You'll spend eternity doing this, you can't get out of the cycle. You populate your customer file with the worst possible customers, the ones who only purchase "because it is a game".

You do not want those customers.

And yet?

So darn many of you keep attracting those customers.

Give creativity a try. It won't work at first - it can't work when the customer has been trained to accept enormous discounts. It is the path out, however.

It's Here

Yup, Cyber Monday. Are you taking care of your customers today or are you taking care of those who earn money via thought leadership?

Performance Bonuses

As a 26 year old at Lands' End, I enjoyed the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. All of the hectic work needed to get Holiday catalogs out the door happened in August / September. By Thanksgiving, there was nothing left to do but count the money. And get February / March catalogs out the door. The train must run on schedule.

So there I am, sitting at my desk right before Christmas, when my boss stops by and hands me a check.

"What is this?"

"Half of your annual bonus."

"I get a bonus?"

"Yes. If the company meets profit goals, you share in the profit."

"Say what now?"

"We met our profit goals. Our owner pays half before Christmas because he knows it is important for families to have the money at Christmas. He pays the other half when our fiscal year results are announced in March."

Well I've never been so excited to get half of 10% of $28,000 in my life, less taxes and withholding!

From that moment, I became obsessed with profit. It was a way for everybody to get paid more money!

The incentive only goes up from there ... all of a sudden it's a 20% bonus as a Manager, a 40% bonus as a Director ... it was quite a bit more than that when I was a VP at Nordstrom. Do the math on that one.

An Eddie Bauer bonus became the down payment on a first home. That was meaningful.

My staff at Nordstrom became agitated when our division was folded into the Retail division. The Online division at the time had a bonus structure, the Retail division did not (for analysts / project managers). I was able to get half of the annual bonus added to their annual salaries, guaranteeing them something. Didn't matter. They were livid they weren't being rewarded for a year of hard work.

Bonuses accomplish three things.

1. They allow employees to share in the success of a company.
2. They teach employees to focus on what matters to Management / Ownership. In most cases, that was either sales growth and/or profit.
3. The employee isn't performing soulless work while hoping for a 2% cost of living increase when the Owner sails off in a yacht. There's a reason, a purpose, for doing a good job if salary increases are unlikely and promotions are unlikely.

I realize this message won't get anybody to do anything different. But that's not the purpose. The goal here is to appreciate those of you who are blessed, who might get a check in the next month or early next year ... helping you appreciate your lot in life. Bonuses are good things.