Hopefully, by now, you’re all geared up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). You’ve planned your deals and your marketing activity, and all that’s left to do is send out your campaigns.
But before you do, make sure you’ve addressed the six points on our BFCM marketing checklist to make sure your Tobi Black Friday marketing campaigns run smoothly!
1. Ensure your store is TCPA compliant
The TCPA is a federal law (in the U.S. and Canada). It limits the way that marketers can legally contact people through the use of Automatic Telephone Dialling Systems (ATDS).
As you’ll be using Tobi to send out your Black Friday SMS campaigns, you must also comply with the TCPA. Specifically, this means making sure your Shopify Checkout Settings are compliant with TCPA legislation.
2. Update the timings for abandoned cart campaigns
After undertaking extensive research, we know that it’s best to send out three abandoned cart alerts for your BFCM SMS campaigns. Ideally, your first message should be triggered to send either 30 minutes or 50 minutes after someone leaves items in their cart. As you’ll see from the screenshot below, this is when you can achieve maximum ROI.
Your next abandoned cart reminder should be sent out 8 hours after cart abandonment:
Finally, your third abandoned cart reminder should be sent out 23 hours after the would-be shopper abandons their cart:
If you’re not sure what to include in your abandoned cart messages during the Black Friday weekend, our Black Friday 2019 e-commerce marketing guide will provide you with plenty of inspiration.
3. Incorporate countdown bars and discount codes
For best results, try to create a sense of scarcity around the products you’re offering in your BFCM sale. To do this, include a discount code and countdown bar in all your Black Friday SMS campaigns. Being able to see a countdown timer ticking away will help indecisive subscribers take the plunge and make a purchase!
4. Issue BFCM sale reminders
We recommend setting up at least two campaigns to remind your subscribers about your Black Friday deals. Our Black Friday marketing guide (linked above) explains what type of messaging you should use and exactly when you should be sending out those reminder campaigns.
5. Schedule your SMS campaigns
Don’t send your SMS campaigns instantly - instead schedule them in advance. We recommend this because getting your campaigns ready to go ahead of time means you can focus purely on fulfilling the orders coming in from customers during Black Friday.
Additionally, scheduling your campaigns like this gives you time to amend or even cancel them if you decide to change your BFCM deals at the last minute or if you make a mistake.
6. Avoid sending SMS campaigns after 7 pm
TCPA legislation states that marketers must not send telemarketing messages during “do not disturb” hours - before 8 am or after 9 pm. We go one step further and recommend that you avoid scheduling your SMS campaigns to go out after 7 pm. Because should there be a delay for some reason, your messages might not end up being sent until the following day instead.
Next steps
It’s not long now until Black Friday. So use our marketing checklist soon to make sure you don’t miss anything. In the meantime, check out this blog post on how to write your Black Friday SMS and Messenger flows!
