Marketers know that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year and sparks the beginning of holiday shopping activities. It’s vital to take full advantage of this high sales period by effectively marketing holiday promotions through the correct channels. Advances in mobile communication show that customers are straying from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to do their black friday shopping online, as 40% of the 2016 Black Friday sales were done on mobile devices.
The most effective method of marketing to this growing group of mobile customers is by using the communication channel that 97% of adult customers use weekly - texting. Here are seven tips on how to use text messages during Black Friday 2017 to maximize sales.
1. Collect Black Friday Customer Data Through Mobile Keywords
When preparing for Black Friday 2017, it’s important to get a head start by getting the word out of your Black Friday deals before your competitors. Utilizing specific SMS keywords, such as “CLOTHING” or “ELECTRONICS”, you can effectively segment your customers based on their interests and then send them relevant offers.
2. Display Keywords Across Multiple Channels for Maximum Reach
The challenge during Black Friday SMS marketing isn’t getting people to stay opted-in, as several sources claim text campaigns have an exceptionally low average opt-out rate of about 3.7%. Rather, marketers should focus on sharing attractive keywords across multiple communication channels to get the largest reach and most opt-ins achievable.
An advanced SMS software, like Trumpia, provides omni-channel communication to increase the awareness of your Black Friday ads by sharing keywords across SMS, MMS, Email, Facebook, Twitter, and voice broadcast simultaneously. Most customers have a prefered channel for communicating, so utilizing omni-channel will let you reach 100% of your customers quickly.
3. Customized Mobile Coupons to Drive Black Friday Sales and Traffic
Once opted-in to a mobile keyword, customers are able to receive text offers to the best black friday deals that are relevant to them based on the keyword they opted-in to. If a customer was interested in snow gear, they could text the keyword “GEAR” to get mobile coupons like, “Get 40% off all snow gear this Black Friday. Show this text at checkout!”.
Sending these deals that are relevant to each customer through a simple text will produce the highest redemption rate. It’s important to start blasting these text coupons as soon as possible, because Black Friday for Walmart and Amazon are starting as much as a week ahead of the Black Friday date.
4. Coordinate with Staff by Automating SMS Alerts
During the Black Friday shopping period an influx of workers are required to manage the huge number of shoppers. In fact, between 500,000 and 550,000 seasonal workers will be hired this holiday sales period. Onboarding and scheduling this massive group of temporary employees is an intimidating feat to do manually, but automating these steps through texting can make this process much easier.
Through text keywords, your workforce can join your text messaging list to receive essential onboarding materials and coordinate schedules with them through text. Because these employees are often temporary, they will be more inclined to miss a shift without any giving any notice. To deal with an emergency scheduling conflict last minute, send a blast to your employees asking if they can come in to get some overtime hours. Once the shift is filled, you can alert your staff there are no longer positions needed to be filled.
5. Follow Up For Epic Cyber Monday Sales
With the trends of Black Friday sales switching from brick-and-mortar shops to mobile devices, Cyber Monday is starting to become the new Black Friday. To utilize this trend to its full potential, create a powerful mobile marketing campaign for your Cyber Monday event. Through attractive SMS or picture MMS messages, you can share links to your website to allow customers to claim your Cyber Monday deals and see your deals get claimed lightning-quick.
6. Provide Text Alerts After Black Friday To Entice Future Purchases
Whether you have leftover inventory from your Black Friday sales, or you simply want to build on the excitement of Black Friday, this creates a perfect opportunity to share additional offers to keep customers interested in your brand during the holiday season. Because mobile coupons are redeemed 8%-16% of the time, providing these text coupons will constantly generate new sales.
6. The Attic’s Black Friday Promotion Case Study
The clothing retail store, Attic, decided to think outside of the box for their Black Friday marketing strategy by coupling social media with mobile marketing to expand their reach. Just two days before Black Friday, they advertised their keyword through a blog post on their company website. Once opted-in, customers were added to an exclusive customer list and received a VIP ticket to the Attic’s Black Friday Event.
As a result, Attic was able to collect over 12,000 mobile numbers, transforming prospects into customers through Trumpia’s social media and mobile keyword features. The sales they generated were astonishing, as $20,000 was made in the first 2 hours of opening and produced a month’s revenue in just 3 days!
Implementing texting into your Black Friday 2017 marketing strategy could make all the difference during this busy sales period. Click here for further information on how to use texting in your to improve your Black Friday sales!
