How Do Popular Brands Use SMS/WhatsApp Marketing During BFCM

The holiday season has almost started and there’s little time for you to optimize your business strategies to make the most out of THE BIGGEST SALES SEASON of the year.

The challenges of this year’s holiday season couldn’t be greater.

Anything you can do to focus your time and energy on driving conversions during these periods is worth considering. This is where the power of SMS & WhatsApp comes into play, when you use them strategically they can help you generate an upstream in your revenue and boost your profit margins.

Here, we’ll be sharing the best of the strategies that have crushed the BFCM campaigns for some leading D2C brands. 

Before starting, we want to make sure you realize the power of data:

Most D2C founders want to be on every sales channel possible right out of the gate. And that is a bummer, because doing this will not allow you to assess your customers' data to its full extent. You won’t know if your brand strategy is “actually working” or if it’s hitting some random audience.

And that’s where your brand strategy falls flat. When you go with multiple channels at once, then they might give you high discovery, but they suck-out your audience data. 

Do let us know what you think about it.

Note that SMS & WhatsApp marketing is not a stand alone strategy.

But For D2C brands who’ve seen costs rise in social media or paid ads, SMS & WhatsApp will help them add incremental revenue to every click, visitor, shopper, and customer this holiday campaign without incurring huge costs. 

In this blog, we'll share 5 steps to help you understand how big brands structure their marketing strategies to grow via SMS & WhatsApp marketing.

Step 1: Subscriber List growth tactics: Pre-holiday prep

Step 2: Don’t forget about Customer segmentation

Step 3: Personalized and dynamic SMS & WhatsApp content

Step 4: Create an ultimate BFCM calendar: a few inspirations to get from 

(Before, during and after Black Friday Cyber Monday)

Step 5: Crack a deal with every cart abandonment. 

Bonus: A few branding and marketing tips to help along the way.

“When everybody goes right, consider going left.” – Daniel Selde

Step 1: Subscriber List growth:

No need to be in a hurry to build up your subscriber list and set up SMS & WhatsApp marketing strategies. 

But now is the time to get started! Before the largest eCommerce sale period of the year.

On holidays, everybody is on their mobiles and expects messages from family members on SMS & WhatsApp, you can not expect them to be on the desktop to read emails or push notifications.

‍And Without enough subscribers, your efforts in setting up campaigns and flows will go to waste. 

Here are a few tactics to grow your subscriber list:

- Enable SMS Opt-in at check out

Tips: This  is a native feature of Shopify checkout: you will find this under Shopify checkout and accounts. 

- Try converting Email subscribers into SMS/ WhatsApp subscribers:

Use email channels to tease out sales and collect opt-in at the same time, say like " Hey we have a new product launching this black Friday with some heavy offers in the new launch, so stay tuned. You can get early access when you sign up for SMS notifications here.”

- Early access/VIP Access to BFCM:

‍Access to sales offers before anybody else utilizes Thanksgiving day for this. 

Here is one example of a D2C brand

What they did last year in October 2021 is amazing, they shut down their entire website for 60 odd mins. and put a pretty banner on the website (stand out from the rest). 

The message was: “Hey guys we are currently experiencing an exclusive offer, to participate in this offer during the BFCM sale, text this special code to this particular number.”

Naturally, everybody wanted to join that list, as the only focus is that banner. And it helped in turning almost 60% of the website visitors into subscribers. 

Similarly, there might be other ways you may have utilized to increase your opt-in numbers. 

Do share your strategies with us that worked out for you.

Remember, don’s just end the opt-in journey when you get a new subscriber, engage the audience with 2 Way SMS & WhatsApp communication with exclusive promotions, and early access to special events and launches (in a Conversational and humorous tone).

Step 2: Make your customer segmentation right:

‍Segmenting customers will be a great strategy to make your campaign more successful. 

Make sure you are messaging the right people:

• Use customer segmentation to understand your customers. 
• Use customer segmentation to engage your customers

Create segments, based on:

• Customer behavior, campaign engagements, new subscribers.
• Customers who have purchased before but haven’t visited you since long
• Previously clicked on marketing campaigns but did not purchase

You can win-back customers, acquire new sales based on the segmentation. Make sure you create the content based on audience segments, and bundle your products accordingly. This will eventually help you increase the AOV. 

Take the help of The Convertway to start sending the right messages to the right audience: Get a free consultation

Step 3: Personalized and Transparent SMS & WhatsApp content:

Stay super connected with your community through personalized and dynamic SMS & WhatsApp content. 

• Alleviate a little bit of anxiety around Black Friday and Cyber Monday because once November rolls around, everybody is already looking for sales around BFCM. 

• Be transparent about Black Friday and Cyber Monday details like what you are offering, when you are going live and some surprise elements.

Step 4: Create an Ultimate BFCM Calendar Before BFCM:

- By 6th of November Launch your teaser:

• Hint them about the biggest sale of the season. 
• Focus on building anticipation and grow your list with a clear CTA.

‍- On 9th November schedule your 1st Email campaign:

• Turn your email subscribers into SMS subscribers.
• Entice “WhatsApp only offers” to your email subscribers. 

- On 10th November, warm up your SMS & WhatsApp subscribers:

• “Are you ready for our Black Friday Sale?”

- On 14th November, Send Warm Up campaigns via SMS & WhatsApp:

• Be transparent about the offers
• Be Transparent with the early access or VIP access and offers
• Talk about the duration and show some urgency with your content.

- On 23rd November, On the day of Thanksgiving:

• Send early sale access and SMS-only offers
• Send the Exclusive offers to SMS and WhatsApp VIP subscribers, early offer access subscribers. 

- During the Black Friday Cyber Monday:

• These 2 days doesn’t mean you will have to send 2 campaigns. But keep in mind not to spam your subscribers.

- On the 23rd night:

• Get your audience excited with an early access WhatsApp only text campaign

- On 24th, Launch a few time sensitive offers:

Get free access to the high converting pre-approved SMS/WhatsApp templates: Check here

‍- Final Call, Extend offers to Cyber Monday:

• Launch the exclusive offer on Sunday
• Mid day
• Final call

- After the Black Friday Cyber Monday: 

• Take a deep breath!!!! You have done everything right, the madness is over. 
• Now is the time to analyze the performance of your campaign. 

Now you have the chance to focus on retargeting, cross-selling and engaging your buyer. 

- Celebrate Tuesday by showing some generosity to your buyers. 

• Schedule a Thank you campaign on Tuesday via SMS & WhatsApp. (Celebrate your success with your community, who doesn’t love this).

If you have followed all the steps above, you likely have got tons of subscribers, tons of revenue, but the deal breaker is yet to discuss in step 5. 

Step 5: Make a deal with every cart abandonment:

I have been told out of 100 visitors only 40 buy your products but in the BFCM this data may be incorrect. 

But, you can not let any shoppers abandon your website. Create an ultimate abandoned cart automation flow to motivate your buyers to buy. 

Test out the content before the BFCM sale starts:

Extra 15% discount is not working, try with free shipping offers, try offering a free product with the purchase, offer buy one get one free product. 

Figure out what motivates the buyer to take action and you will get to know what exactly you need to offer during the BFCM sale.

Bonus:

A few branding and marketing tips:

• Build anticipation
• Promote your referral program
• Utilize shoppable content
• Make more video-based content
• Plan give away marketing campaigns 

Few points to consider while setting up your campaign and audience segment:

• SMS and WhatsApp template tone: Conversational & humorous 
• Call to Action (CTA) text and redirection links
• Discount values
• Date and time
• Product categories
• Clear images ( Don’t spam with Black Friday and Cyber Monday stock banners)