Maximising Black Friday Customer Engagement with SMS

Black Friday is a great day for shoppers trying to grab bargains for their Christmas shopping. Shoppers are willing to spend a great deal on ‘bargains’ if they believe they are getting better value for money. As a result, Black Friday is also a great day for retailers, but in order to maximise the potential, retailers MUST prepare in advance.

• During Black Friday week, build the hype through regular communications with the consumer and provide hints on the key products that you want to push sales on Black Friday.
• This helps to drive a steady flow of visitors to your site so that they can navigate around, and ‘window’ shop their purchase.
• Shoppers tend to have a list of items they want to purchase but are waiting until Black Friday before doing so.
• Unless you have “the” product in demand, by driving traffic to your site, you are more likely to make sales on Black Friday when shoppers know what they want, having done the research previously.
• Send an SMS between 7am and 9am on Black Friday to inform shoppers your deals are live. Include a short URL link, or use a Rich SMS to provide a direct landing page to your product or store.
• Send a further SMS between 12pm and 1pm to hit shoppers during their lunch break, ensuring the event stays front of mind during their busy workday.
• Make sure you have enough stock to fulfil demand and be prepared to send out a final SMS text message to push the deals which haven’t been quite as popular between 4pm and 6pm.

More than half of all internet shopping transactions are made on mobile devices so it’s safe to assume that a large number of consumers will make their Black Friday purchases on their mobile. When you are sending marketing campaigns, you want to know that your message will be delivered and read and not lost amongst the myriad of emails from retailers vying for the shopper’s attention.

The most effective way of standing out from the crowd is by sending SMS text messages. Delivered directly to the shoppers’ handset within a matter of minutes and with an average read rate of 98%, SMS is a game changing way to communicate your Black Friday offers.

LINK Mobility have a wealth of experience in delivering successful retail SMS campaigns and over the years have gained significant knowledge on best practice for Black Friday campaigns and how to drive customers’ sales. From the simple and extremely effective traditional SMS, to Rich SMS and Coupons, going beyond the basic SMS providing the ability to deliver media rich content including images, coupons, bar codes, count-down timers, videos and more. With LINK Mobility, you know your message will be read as opposed to sitting in a crowded email inbox or junk mail folder. Contact us now so we can help you ensure your Black Friday campaign is a success.