The best time to send your Black Friday SMS marketing campaigns

Every business across the globe is gearing up for Black Friday, it is without doubt the biggest and best retail period of the year. Last year the UK were thought to have spent a whopping £8 Billion over the 4 day weekend, and this year an incredible we are predicting it will hit £9.2 Billion.

One reason Black Friday continues to grow year on year, is the mighty mobile phone of course. The mobile phone once again topped desktop last year with 66% of website traffic over the Black Friday 2017 weekend coming through a mobile device (Source: Salmon).

With SMS having an open rate of 98% and 90% of those messages being read within 3 minutes, there is no better way to tell your customers your Black Friday sale has started than sending them a text message. SMS boasts a superior click through rate, consumers are more likely to click your link and browse your products when sent a text message as well.

Here at Text Marketer we want your Black Friday sales to be the absolute best they can be, and one way we can help you is by telling you when to send your Black Friday SMS campaigns. We have looked into the data and found the most popular times and even days that businesses send their marketing messages on.

Between 12pm – 1pm UK sales reached a peak of 976 transactions per second (Source: Expandly)

Before we give you the most popular times and days to send your SMS campaigns, we would always suggest that you send a bulk SMS message to your customers as soon as your Black Friday sale starts. Argos said that just 4 hours after they launched their Black Friday campaign last year, they had more than 2 million visitors to their website.

“These early record-breaking figures show that savvy shoppers are keen to bag themselves a bargain in the run-up to Christmas” – John Rogers, Argos Chief Executive

Consumers are waiting for your Black Friday sale to start, eager to save money and buy as much as they can, so why not tell them about it and get your sales rolling from the first minute.

Text Marketer stats

In the lead up to Black Friday we see a huge increase of messages go through our system, with the day itself seeing a 137% increase in messages being sent compared to the average Friday. Cyber Monday also sees an increase of 33% when compared to an average Monday.

It is not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday that there is an influx of messages going through our system. The day before Black Friday we see an increase of 65% compared to the average Thursday, with message volumes increasing as it gets closer to Black Friday, the week of Black Friday sees an increase of 49% compared to the week prior, and that week is 11% bigger than the week before that.

As Black Friday approaches daily message volume snowballs as retailers are starting their Black Friday offers.

Best time to send leading up to Black Friday

As we have said, Black Friday is no longer a one-day event and can last weeks and even the whole of November. Sending your Black Friday SMS campaign will mainly rely on when your Black Friday sale starts, if like Amazon, you start your sale the week before Black Friday, then as soon as your sale is live, you should inform all your customers with a simple SMS message.

This being said we have looked at the data and picked the more popular days in the lead up to Black Friday.

Tuesday of Black Friday week – Surprisingly there is an 81% increase in messages being sent on the Tuesday before Black Friday compared to a standard Tuesday. The week of Black Friday is a popular time to start a sale, it gives retailers time to promote the sale and consumers enough time decide and purchase something they like.

Day before Black Friday – The day before Black Friday is a huge day for retailers and a huge day for text messaging. Very much like the Boxing day sales, over the past few years consumers look for online sales on Christmas day instead of waiting for Boxing day, it is the same with Black Friday, consumers are looking at items they can buy the day before.

The best time to send your SMS campaign the day before Black Friday is either the morning or evening, with retailers wanting to get their message in early, or soon after consumers have left work.

Best time to send on Black Friday

The morning is the best time to send your SMS campaigns with 82% of messages being sent between 7:00am – 12:00pm, this is because retailers want to get their Black Friday offer in front of consumers before their competitors.

In fact, the 5 most popular hours during the whole of Black Friday are all in the morning, with only 6% of messages being sent in the evening (6:00pm – 12:00pm).

Best time to send on Cyber Monday

Before 10am is the best time send a text message to customers about your Cyber Monday sale, with 55% of messages being sent before 10am on Cyber Monday. Very few messages go out during the afternoon, with only 9% of messages going out during 12:00pm – 5:00pm and hardly any go out after 8:00pm.

Sending your message at the right time can be the difference between a successful Black Friday sale and one that never really takes off. Make sure you think about when your customers would like to receive your messages, too early in the morning and people aren’t ready to buy, too late and they have already made their purchases.

We would also advice that you send a reminder message to customers letting them know about your sale on Black Friday itself, with 58% of retailers send a message before Black Friday then again on the day itself.

Don’t be scared of sending out a few messages about your deals and offers, during this Black Friday period, customers are actively looking for the best deals and offers and will want to hear about them.

If you would like to speak to someone from our expert team who can advice you on best practice, then please call us on 0117 205 0202 or if you haven’t got an SMS account, then sign up for one now and get your Black Friday campaign off to a bang with SMS.