Despite reduced spending, the number of shoppers planning to purchase in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales this year has risen by 6% versus last year. With plenty of people preparing for the best deals and gifts, it makes sense to let them know directly via SMS. Here’s your ultimate guide to Black Friday SMS – from best practice tips to free tools.
👍 Best practice tips for Black Friday SMS
👑 Tools to help you work smarter
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Best practice SMS tips for Black Friday
1. Prepare your contact lists
Whether you collected your leads via a sign-up form on your website, a physical form or CRM system, ensure your mobile numbers are ready to go. It’s super simple to upload your contacts to your FireText account. Prepare your CSV file of mobile numbers and custom information of your choice and upload these to FireText, ready to add to a new or existing group.
2. Send before, during & after
In the context of Black Friday, it’s likely shoppers will be bombarded with offers. Help your audience anticipate your awesome promotions by telling them what’s coming their way. They’ll appreciate the heads up – and you can be top of mind when texting them. As a mini drip-feed strategy, you can:
Send before: Tell them when the deal is landing (or offer exclusive first access)
Send during: Text them when the deal goes live, for instant access
Send after: Extend offers beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday
From: GalSpa
Hey Sarah, Amy here from Gal’s Spa. it’s not Black Friday yet, which means I won’t tell you all about the sitewide 50% discount we’re giving to loyal customers like you this Friday when you use the code OOPS21. Ooooops. Did I just give it away? Don’t tell the boss 😫
What’s the best day & time to send an SMS?
You know your audience best, so think about when they’re mostly likely to respond (our research into optimum times may help you out here).
3. Include a clear call to action
Push your recipients to your awesome Black Friday offer, and make it super clear where they need to go. If you’d like to include a URL, you can even use our easy ‘Track URL’ tool to transform this into a trackable link. You can track clicks and even choose to re-target a message to those yet to click.
Hey Suzie, It’s your lucky Black Friday – 63% off ALL cord dungarees for today only. Bag them here before they’re gone: http://fts.ms/ABC123
4. Including emojis? Let us know & we’ll enable them
When used effectively, emojis can be an ✨ aesthetic ✨ addition to your messages. To support your message in standing out even more, we can enable ‘Unicode’ characters. This allows you to use an emoji in your messages, but as with all SMS, it reduces your character to credit limit.
5. Offer an opt-out option
Including an opt-out in your message gives your audience the chance to back out of communications with you if it’s not the right time. It’s a positive thing, as it means going forwards, you’re only engaging with those who want to be engaged with.
The most common opt-out retailers use is an opt-out landing page. We can create a personalised URL for you to include in your messages. For example, at the end of your message, you can say something like:
Opt-Out? www.sto.pm/firetext
Email us to set up an opt out >
6. Send a test message
Always send a test message to your own number before you commit to a campaign. This allows you to see the message as your recipient might, and gives you the chance to look for any human errors or spelling mistakes.
Smart SMS tools to make Black Friday simple
Message scheduling: Send your Black Friday messages at the optimum time by scheduling your SMS campaign.
Campaign throttling: Allows you to send your campaign to batches of your contact group at a time, with your chosen time intervals between each send. Enable this via ‘scheduling’, and easily manage your Black Friday uptake.
Character counter: Not only great for keeping track of characters (and therefore credits), but it reminds you to keep your message snappy.
We help you make your Black Friday SMS pop
We’re well versed in helping thousands of businesses craft awesome Black Friday SMS content. If you have an account with us and you’d like some top tips before sending, please email us at: hello@firetext.co.uk