Eight years of BFCM data reveals campaign best practices that drive maximum impact. Leverage these insights to supercharge performance during the holiday rush.

Get inspiration for your holiday planning by browsing BFCM examples, templates, and more in our Complete BFCM Archive.

At the 30 day mark, you’ve (hopefully) established your SMS and email program’s foundation and crafted a cohesive Black Friday messaging strategy. The final weeks are about execution: Take everything you’ve learned from testing and iterating over the last few months to draft and schedule campaigns that captivate and convert subscribers. By drafting and scheduling campaigns in advance, you can ensure your campaigns are cohesive and will deliver powerful results.

Schedule everything as soon as possible—including campaigns and updates to sign-up units and behavioral flows—to ensure successful and timely delivery.

If you use Attentive, we’ll identify potential delivery issues so you can update your campaigns before the big day. We also proactively prepare phone carriers for increased volume to secure priority sending and the highest capacity in the industry so your messages reach subscribers when it matters most.

In this guide: Learn messaging best practices based on our eight years of BFCM data from successful brands that run their Black Friday SMS and email programs in Attentive.

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Update sign-up forms before and during BFCM to attract subscribers

Keep your sign-up units relevant before and during your holiday sales to boost list growth leading up to BFCM and increase revenue after the holidays.

Ignite excitement before Black Friday

Leading up to Black Friday, change your sign-up unit to tease your Black Friday deals. Knowing that your best deals of the year are coming is a great incentive to draw in new subscribers.

In your updated subscriber forms, give shoppers a reason to opt in by sharing the benefits: early access to Black Friday, first to know, or your standard welcome offer that can be used on top of BFCM deals.

Keep your sign-up forms up during Black Friday

Some brands turn off their welcome popups during BFCM, thinking it will hurt their bounce rate, but Black Friday subscribers are super high-value.

Brands that left their sign-up units live in 2023 grew their list by an average of 5.2%. And these subscribers can support increased Q1 revenue.

Consider these options to give your sign-up unit a refresh for BFCM-relevance:

• Leave your standard welcome offer up, but update it with BFCM-specific copy/imagery.
• Highlight your Black Friday deals without an additional incentive.
• Highlight the special benefits subscribers are getting that aren’t available to non-subscribers (e.g., free shipping or first to know about your daily Cyber Week deals)

Draft high-converting SMS and email campaigns

Incorporate what you’ve learned resonates with your subscribers over the last few months and consider these Black Friday best practices:

• Announce by SMS first. Consumers tend to see their texts sooner than they see emails, so send your initial announcement as a text message.
• Send your first Black Friday message to your entire list. Plenty of subscribers are inactive the rest of the year but re-activate for BFCM.
• Use email for more detailed follow-ups. Send an email with more details about your sale a few minutes after your first text message.
• Lean on SMS for time-sensitive communications. Since consumers usually see texts first, send inventory updates and time running out notices by SMS instead of email. Send these as true SMS since MMS can take longer to send.
• Target based on channel affinity. If certain subscribers are more engaged on a particular channel—or only subscribe to one—segment to account for individual behavior. Develop flows for email-only and SMS-only subscribers to create a cohesive brand experience.
• If you're sending MMS, plan to use it for ~25% of your total sends. These messages can result in up to a 50+% increase in 0-day click revenue. Be sure your MMS makes sense as an SMS. If there are extreme carrier delays, Attentive may remove the image asset to ensure prompt delivery of your message.
• Create a sense of urgency. If urgency is usually off-brand, you can get away with it on days like BFCM because your deals are time-sensitive.
• Use our plug-and-play BFCM SMS and email templates. These templates are based on high-performing Cyber Week campaigns. Just customize with your offers.

‍Pro tip: Attentive AI can significantly improve message performance and delight subscribers by personalizing every message you send. Use AI Essentials to write on-brand copy in half the time, like Emma Sleep did to boost conversion rates (CVR) by 26%. Or use AI Pro to optimize entire BFCM campaigns, like Jaxxon did for Memorial Day, achieving +249% ROI, +232% revenue, and +138% CTR.

‍Get inspired: 36 more BFCM campaigns we love.

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Send campaigns when subscribers are likely to buy

When you've drafted your campaigns, schedule them well in advance so everything is in order for the big event. If you use Attentive, we’ll be able to identify potential SMS and email deliverability issues and prepare mobile carriers for text message volume.

Since Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the prime shopping days, schedule at least one full-list message at the beginning of the day and another more targeted one (e.g., shoppers who clicked but didn't purchase) later in the day.

When determining your SMS and email send times, you'll want to reach subscribers when they're most likely to convert. According to our data, the highest conversion send times don't necessarily correlate to the most common send times.

So if you send just one campaign on a particular day, align it with high-converting send times—based on the data below or your historical BFCM data.

If you send more than one campaign on a day that has a later high-conversion time, sending an additional campaign earlier in the day can help you catch a different crowd and introduce your offers to shoppers who may take the day to decide.

MMS can be slower, so use it outside peak hours (which are 10am - 3pm ET on Black Friday and Cyber Monday) and SMS for prime-time sending. For urgent messages, always send them via SMS.

For email, pay attention to how long it takes subscribers to open their emails to determine how soon you can send a second one. For example, if the majority of your subscribers don't open an email for two hours, pinging them again after one hour would be too soon.

‍Pro tip: You can't really send too many texts and emails during BFCM—as long as you ramped up your email volume accordingly. So don't be shy about getting into subscribers' inboxes.

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Edit journeys for maximum impact during BFCM

Updating your triggered messages for holiday sales relevance lets you reiterate the time-sensitive deals subscribers can take advantage of.

Change trigger timing to suit the rapid pace of Black Friday shopping. During BFCM, sending behavioral messages quicker lets you capitalize on shoppers’ fast purchase decisions. But make sure subscribers won't receive messages too frequently given the likely increase in browse and cart abandonment.

Audit each journey to make sure what you're sending will still be relevant during BFCM. For example, remove discounts from triggered messages if you don't allow shoppers to stack coupons. 

Update each journey with holiday-specific language, particularly in abandonment messages, to remind shoppers that your deals won't last and that now is the time to buy.

In Attentive, you can schedule changes to your journeys so you don’t have to worry about turning them on at the right time or forgetting to change them back after Black Friday.

‍Pro tip: Boost your performance with AI Journeys. Many brands have too many products and too much customer data to personalize behavioral flows effectively, so rely on templated messages. AI Journeys considers everything you know about your individual subscribers to deliver messages tailored at a 1:1 level.

AI Journeys has helped Hot Topic raise conversions by 45% and earn them 39% more revenue.

Word to the wise: Take US election day data with a grain of salt

According to eMarketer, political ad spend will hit $12.32 billion this year—three times what it was in 2016. Paid ad channels in the US will be saturated, leading to higher costs and lower brand visibility. So owned channels like SMS and email are particularly important for brands in 2024.

The work you’ve done to grow your subscriber list, nurture them, and personalize campaigns will pay off in an easier-to-capture audience for BFCM.

You’ll probably be scrutinizing your data all November long, but be cautious of the days surrounding the US election. E-commerce sales typically drop in the days around the election but quickly rebound after the results are in. So if you see a drop in activity, don't draw any final conclusions from that data when it comes to updating sign-up units or campaign strategy. It might have nothing to do with your brand.

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Shoppers aren’t done yet. Keep engaging subscribers to drive more revenue.

While you may see the most revenue on BFCM, holiday shopping isn’t over yet. Last year, 42% of US adult online shoppers didn’t finish their holiday shopping until after December 16, so there’s plenty of room to keep encouraging shoppers to check gifts off their list.

Plus, by keeping up communication with subscribers after your big sale, you build stronger relationships with the subscribers who joined your list primarily for Black Friday and give them a reason to stay subscribed.

After BFCM is over, consider these opportunities to engage subscribers:

• Share helpful content like gift guides or holiday prep tips (e.g., a holiday recipe or New Year’s fashion look).
• Send moderate offers, like gift-with-purchase. Post-Cyber Week deals should be enticing without overshadowing your BFCM sale.
• Use cross-sell campaigns to encourage subscribers’ next purchase.
• Invite shoppers to your loyalty or referral programInvite shoppers to join your loyalty or referral program. This will help you keep customers and refer them by using their new love for your brand.
• Engage subscribers on Boxing Day. This big shopping event in the UK, Canada, and Australia is gaining momentum globally. So brands can take advantage of this opportunity to launch sales and clear out seasonal inventory.
• Incentivize future shopping by offering a coupon to spend in the new year when a customer shops now.

Congrats! We know you’ve been working hard over the last few months. You’ve laid the groundwork for a successful BFCM with a strong SMS and email foundation, cohesive messaging strategy, and standout campaigns.

Remember to schedule your campaigns early so you can triple-check your plan and ensure prompt deliverability. Keep engaging subscribers after Black Friday with thoughtful content and offers to ensure lasting relationships and continued revenue into the new year. And lean on technology like Attentive AI™ to streamline processes and maximize performance.

Want to boost your Black Friday success? Explore our Complete BFCM Archive for click-worthy campaign examples, SMS and email templates, and more information-packed resources.