We’re well into November now and Black Friday is fast approaching, but what are you expecting? Thousands of people charging through storefronts, fighting tooth and nail to get the best deals? Fortunately, that form of Black Friday is no longer here, the conventional method of shopping has gone. In this day and age, Black Friday is predominantly a digital affair with people making the majority of their purchases online, either through their Computers, Smartphones or even their Smart Devices such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home.

Mailboxes will be inundated with dozens of emails ready to be ignored. Black Friday offers on TV and radio are reserved for high street shops and bigger e-commerce stores, so how can anyone else muscle in on the action? Easy…SMS! SMS is still the fastest and most cost-effective method of getting your deals in front of consumers.

You can reach your customers or potential customers in an instant. It literally takes minutes to create a campaign and get it sent directly to their palms.

We at Voodoo SMS have had our Black Friday running since the end of October, and there’s a simple reason for this; we want our users to be prepared and using our service to further their own.

We can also help by providing some pointers on the content of messages and some other simple marketing tips to help you in the coming frenzy of spending that is the Black Friday weekend.

THE DO’S AND DON’TS:

– Identify yourself: Seems obvious, but a branded SMS message will be received much more positively.

– Make sure your offer is short and to the point (one SMS unit is only 160 characters) and includes a clear call to action, maybe include a short URL to a black Friday landing page on your site, or directly to the offer described in your SMS.

– Don’t use “TXT SPK” make sure you use good spelling and grammar.

– Monitor your results, you can insert a tracked short URL into your messages and track the clicks from that URL in the portal so you can see how well your offer is reaching your target audience. You will also be able to monitor which numbers are sent to successfully and which ones might fail, helping you clean up your database – a clean database is a more effective database.

– Allow people to opt-out, your deal may be fantastic but they simply may not be receptive to it or any further contact from you, insert an opt-out option so your customers can choose to not hear from you should they wish.