This year's Black Friday Sales will be a little different. Most of us won't shop in person anytime soon, and larger retailers are most likely going to be closed around Thanksgiving.

While this is unprecedented for all of us, it also creates new opportunities for eCommerce stores, especially for preventing online shopping cart abandonment. Alongside new types of promotional messaging to target these trends, a lot of online brands are turning to text marketing to help them create more trusting bonds with their customers and reduce cart abandonment.

Whether you're just starting out, or have been running campaigns on Black Friday before, here are our tips for charging up your Sales this Black Friday with SMS marketing.

Engaging your audience with conversational SMS marketing

When you reach out for your customers for the same time, allow them to text you back and start a conversation. Enabling a two-way messaging stream will make communication seem less sales-related and more customer-centric: you care about solving pain points, not just about short-term bottom line.

Your goal is to bring the in-store experience online and talk to your customers just as you would in a brick and mortar store. This can lead to product recommendation opportunities, higher cart recovery rates and using text message marketing as a customer support tool rather than sending out promotional messages alone.

Focusing on providing real value, will make your subscribers more engaged and likely to respond, and they will qualify their interaction with you as enjoyable, not at all intrussive.

Recovering abandoned carts

It's not surprising that you can expect the rate of your abandoned carts to increase around Black Friday. A lot of people will research products online and add them to cart but then wait for the BFCM deals to roll around in order to complete the purchase.

This is golden for online brands who have the opportunity to tap into their clients' Wishlist long before the Black Friday deals start and prepare their text marketing campaigns in advance.

For example: if you observed your customer looking at a specific product around Black Friday, make sure you remind them of it when the BFCM deals roll out.

These reminder texts are a valuable resource for both brands and their customers, who sometimes forget they were planning a purchase but decided to wait until Black Friday deals appear. Thus, sending gentle reminders can help boost your abandoned carts recovery rates, and also improve your brand awareness efforts.

Abandoned carts are amongst the top 3 challenges that online brands have to tackle on a constant basis, not just around Black Friday or Holiday season. Studies show cart abandonment rates at 88%, which, in terms of annual revenue, adds up to quite a significant amount.

That is lost revenue you are leaving on the table if you are not trying to actively reduce the abandonment rate and recover those abandoned carts.

The most efficient way to bring back those shoppers is to interact with them and find out their reasons for abandoning the purchase. Using text message marketing is effective because you are reaching your customers where they spend most of their time: their mobile phones. But, always keep in mind that successful cart abandonment messages don't feel forced, but rather a helping hand from the online brand to the customer.

Offering a Cyber Monday upsell for Cart Abandonment Recovery

As you've already established a relationship with your customers, providing an upsell opportunity through your text marketing should, in theory, be easier than trying to convince new leads of a first purchase.

Did your customer make a purchase on Black Friday? Try connecting with them through conversational SMS and give them an exclusive, personalized offer on Cyber Monday. You can choose a complementary product to the one they've already acquired, or simply offering them a discount code and letting them choose their purchase.

For example: your customer added a pair of shoes to their cart, along with a bag from the same collection. In the end, they decide to remove the bag - try connecting with them on Cyber Monday. In order to recover their online cart, offering them a preferential price for the bag or a discount code gives you high chances of them finalizing the purchase.

Just keep in mind not to be pushy or aggressive. Even if they were looking at complementary products, nobody likes being sold on. Platforms like Cartloop that use real people to reach out to your audience and recover your abandoned carts are able to establish a trusting relationship with our customers and persuade them to return with the help of a small discount.

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Extending your Black Friday offers for your SMS-enabled customers

Typically, Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales run from November 29nd to December 2nd. However, that isn't to say you can't offer your loyal customers a few more days of discounts. In eCommerce, oftentimes, Black Friday deals always start earlier and run a littler later, oftentimes being very close to the Christmas Sales as well.

This is effective as people wait for Black Friday sales to buy their favorite products, thus starting early will attract customers before they get a chance to purchase elsewhere. Similarly, closing your Black Friday sales later also allows them to make additional purchases, or, for those who returned products from elsewhere, another chance to benefit from your discounts.

For example: You could offer your SMS-enabled customers a week-long sale before Black Friday, so they could get a start on the competition (this is also a good way to increase your SMS list.

Another common practice for boosting Black Friday discounts is running hourly sales.

For example: if you're offering a 70% Black Friday sale, consider increasing it to 75% for an hour on selected days, or informing your SMS-enabled customers of the additional discount they can benefit from.

Key Takeaways

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are highly anticipated throughout the year, and people are motivated to actively look for additional discounts or pause their purchases until the big day arrives.  If adding conversational text marketing to your strategy this year seems a bit overwhelming and you're wondering how to get started, you can learn more about best practices here.

Want to ensure you are making the most of this Black Friday and using all the tools at your disposal? Try our platform free for 14 days and get those abandoned carts recovered!