The Best 5th Saturday Promotions

A 5th Saturday only comes around 4-5 times a year which makes it the perfect opportunity for you to promote your store!

As always, there’s a science behind everything we do here at RETAILMavens which is why I don’t want you to just do a promotion because everyone else is doing it. I want you to be strategic with every event you plan.

That’s why I recommend two different approaches to a 5th Saturday promotion.

Depending on the time of year, your store likely falls into one of these two categories:

1. You’re a store with lots of new inventory coming in

2. You’re a store with lots of old inventory already on sale

5th Saturday Strategy for Store #1 – New Inventory Coming I

This promotion is strategically targeting your thumbs, your very best customers who love the personalized service you offer, your quality products and being a trendsetter.

For you, this opportunity is all about leveraging their desire to feel special, along with the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Follow these steps:

1. Hold back any new merchandise that arrives in the two weeks or so before the 5th Saturday
2. Look up your top 50 customers in your POS
3. Write down their name, email, phone number, and address in a Word or Google doc – Adding just one customer per page
4. Next, look up what each customer bought in the last year, and add it to their page
5. Now distribute the pages between your team
6. You and your team will pick up the phone and personally invite each one to your 5th Saturday Preview Party – tell them it is only for your best VIP customers! Make sure you mention something they bought previously and that they will find more wonderful items like it! If you can’t get a hold of them on the phone, send a text or an email – but make sure it’s personalized to them
7. On the Friday before the 5th Saturday, merchandise the new inventory so that it looks like you got so much you only had time to price it – you couldn’t even display it all the way you usually do. Leave clothing on manufacturer’s hangers on rolling racks and in boxes. Stack items on tables and with boxes around it
8. On the 5th Saturday host your Preview Party for your top customers – (anyone else that comes in that day is fine)
9. I recommend serving food and drink to make it extra festive!

This event works because of the science behind it: You’re creating focus and urgency on all these new items. As customers come in – they will create their own buying frenzy! It works like a charm.

5th Saturday Strategy for Store #2 – Moving Old Inventory

For you, this opportunity is all about getting the old inventory moving and the cash register kachinging, and for that you need your Pinkies, your sale loving customers who love the hunt for a bargain!

That’s why you’re going to do a special 5th Saturday Sale which only comes around as often as the 5th Saturday:

Buy 1 SALE item – Get 1 SALE item at 70% off

That day only.

These words are like magic to your Pinkies, and the average markdown is usually only about 29% (which is nerd-speak for “getting the inventory OUT of your store and some cash IN your pocket”!)

Follow this marketing schedule: 

1. Send the first email out Wednesday. Include 6-8 pictures showing examples of the great deals available. Post these pictures and/or videos on social media and publish an event
2. Repeat your first email on Friday just adding at the top “Are you ready?! It starts tomorrow!” Share a “behind the scenes” photo or video on social media teasing the preparations of the sale
3. Finally, send the email out again on Saturday at 6am with the note: “Sale starts in 3…2…1!” If you can, go live on social media right before opening talking about the great deals, the limited time and tease a line outside the door waiting to get in!

As a special bonus during this sale – let your customers group similarly priced items together, instead of only giving the discount on the lowest-priced item.

If they come up to the register with marked-down items that are now priced $10 and $5, tell them that if they get another $10 item it will only be $3 because they’ll get the discount on that item instead of the $5 item! They almost always buy 2 more items and you look like a rockstar to them! It is a great opportunity to move more SKUs out of your store.
Join me in the RETAILMavens Revolutionaries free group and let me know which strategy you are using for the next 5th Saturday: #1 or #2?