events – poshmarketeer

Poshmark promotes platform-wide events regularly… with something happening at least weekly. They have Closet Clear Outs, Make a Deal Days, and today’s topic: Love or List Challenges.

So what is a Love or List Challenge? The short answer is that it’s Poshmark’s way of drumming up massive amounts of new listings on its platform in a short period of time. Like the other events they offer, LoLCs are never announced ahead of time. Perhaps they make decisions based on how many active listings they have, or if sales are flagging at certain times, but you can be sure that an LoLC is just around the corner a couple times a month (I wish I paid more attention to the frequency of these things, but alas, dear reader… I am lazy).

Like Make a Deal Days, LoLCs involve a very slim chance to win Poshmark credit, this time by making new listings. When you make new listings during an LoLC, your new listings will immediately get buried underneath all the other new listings pouring in that day. Not to say it won’t help you make more sales… because more listings are generally good… but there really is no advantage to listing them on that day.

Lest you think this is a terribly generous self-serving strategy for making more potential sales, Poshmark still takes it’s usual 20% cut on the prizes it’s offering anyway. Poshmark credit should never be confused with an actual cash prize… it can only be spent on Poshmark, and Posh takes 20% of every sale. Right?

My strategy with LoLCs are to make new listings (or delete/relist old items) immediately AFTER the LoLC. My thinking here is that the majority of Poshers with new items to list will do so during the LoLC, and there will be a slow time right after. So if I list then, my new listings will be at the very top of the pile a little bit longer. The tradeoff is no entry into their !!amazing giveaway!!, but that’s A-OK with me.

If you’re hung up on entering but aren’t a Posher, you can still enter by mail… *insert sarcastic laughter*. This is really the biggest joke of all. The winners of the LoLC are chosen on the same day as the LoLC, but since Posh has to allow anyone to be able to enter in accordance with the law, anyone can mail in an entry. The mailed entry will necessarily arrive well past when the winners are chosen. Soooo… good luck!!!

Happy Poshing!!

Poshmark is doing a Closet Clear Out event yesterday through today, and I wanted to talk a little bit about strategy to best take advantage of a CCO. I had a great day of sales yesterday, and I think CCOs are the one truly value added event that Poshmark promotes to its sellers.

So what is a Closet Clear Out? In their promotional post visible in your news feed while a CCO is ongoing, Posh says:

Grab the attention of every Posher who has ever liked your items. Just lower your prices by at least 10%, and they’ll get an email with the price drop notification AND discounted shipping! So drop your prices NOW! While you’re at it, why not do a little shopping for yourself? But hurry, because this sale won’t last long.

By “discounted shipping”, Posh is saying that they will offer the customer $4.99 shipping, essentially covering the $1.80 that you would normally pay if you are making an offer to likers (OTL). So you drop your price, and Posh sends an OTL with the shipping discount on their tab instead of yours. But there are also limitations to this offer that become very important when dropping prices, especially lower priced items and items for which you may have previously dropped and later raised prices:

Shipping promotion valid through XX/XX/XX 11:59pm PT. Minimum purchase price must be $10. Price must be dropped by at least 10% from lowest historical price to qualify. Discounted shipping lasts for six hours after price drops. Orders placed through Make an Offer do not qualify for this promotion.

So the strategy here is to pay attention to timing. The offer for discounted shipping only lasts for 6 hours, so if you drop prices at the crack of dawn, the offer will expire before your potential buyers have a chance to take advantage. So waiting until at least mid-afternoon EST seems like the time that makes the most sense on weekdays, though earlier is probably fine for weekends.

Also important to note is that you could conceivably lower prices on your items more than once. You could drop by 10% on the first day and then another 10% on the second day if it has not sold. As long as you have the built in wiggle room and would be happy to sell an item at that price, this is something to consider. You can then raise the price back up after the CCO, or relist that item at the original price.

The “lowest historical price” is the lowest it has been listed publicly, though you can have made offers to likers that are lower than the publicly listed price. So if you lower and then raise your price back to original, the next time you want to do a CCO, you’ll have to drop 20% to get the discounted shipping offer. And items have to have a sell price of no less than $10 to qualify, so bear that in mind when deciding what to sell and setting original list prices.

But the fact that Poshmark is kicking in actual money to help you make a sale is the key here. If you make an OTL, YOU pay the discounted shipping after Posh takes their cut, which means you pay the $1.80 shipping for your buyer, and Posh pockets 20% of that as well, so you’re out $2.16. The critical point here is that CCO sales save you exactly $2.16 over the same deal via OTL, no matter the selling price. Which means it worth taking advantage of, especially for lower priced items that meet the $10 criteria. This can also inform you on the cost of making OTLs at other times, to help you price your items to get the best return.

Questions? Other opinions? Leave a comment!

I wish you many happy sales and all the fun during this Closet Clear Out event!!