How to build a high-converting Black Friday SMS marketing strategy in 8 steps

For a lot of brands, BFCM is the biggest event of the year. “Competition for people’s attention—and wallets—is fierce,” says Wei Tan, co-founder of The Orchard, an agency that specializes in email marketing and SMS automation for ecommerce brands.

The high rate of SMS readership can help you stand out from the crowd—but only if you start early. “Brands are starting their BFCM campaigns earlier every year. Consumers will be prepared to spend, but if you’re late to the game, the opportunity may be gone,” says Tan.

That means you should think about starting your BCFM prep—for both SMS and email campaigns—anytime from June onwards. It makes sense to prepare these campaigns together so you can create a cohesive, integrated strategy where email and SMS complement each other.

Establish a solid foundation for BFCM SMS marketing by collecting phone numbers and SMS marketing consent through website sign-up forms. You can also collect SMS consent at check-out, or send an email campaign to encourage your existing email subscribers to sign up for exclusive updates and deals in exchange for their digits.

BFCM SMS marketing tip: To accelerate your list growth early, take advantage of new sign-up tools. For example, gamified spin-to-win sign-up forms can make opting in fun by offering a chance at a discount or prize in exchange for a phone number​. These interactive forms engage visitors with a playful experience and reward.

Likewise, Smart Opt-in is a frictionless way to capture SMS consent by letting visitors enter their phone number and instantly confirm via a one-time code, all without leaving your site​. This streamlined double opt-in process (a best practice for collecting SMS consent) can help you grow a high-quality SMS list that’s primed for BFCM messaging.

As an outcome of stiff BFCM competition, the pressure of trying to make your marketing messages stand out to new customers can feel like an impossible battle for attention.

That’s why it’s important to focus on customer acquisition ahead of the holidays. Bringing in new SMS subscribers and warming them up early puts your marketing team in a better position to drive incremental Black Friday sales and higher ROI when the big weekend hits.

“Set SMART goals, and make sure your email and SMS strategies are aligned and collaborative,” says Robin Glanz, SVP of group performance marketing at MERGE. “This means ensuring your segmentation and personalization strategies are aligned with holiday shoppers and adjusting your deliverability and sending cadences before the holidays to ensure inbox placement.”

In practice, that could mean setting targets for list growth (e.g., adding a certain number of SMS subscribers each month leading up to November), engagement (like maintaining a click rate above your industry benchmark), and conversion (such as a percentage of total BFCM sales coming from SMS).

BFCM SMS marketing tip: Dig into last year’s data to identify which SMS campaigns drove the most revenue, which offers resonated best, and what times saw peak engagement. With Klaviyo B2C CRM, you can easily pull these insights from unified customer data and the benchmarks feature, which give relevant insights by comparing your performance against businesses of similar size, scope, and market position.

Klaviyo’s latest SMS marketing benchmarks show that the average SMS click rate is around 6%, but top-performing brands achieve click rates closer to 15%. Use industry benchmarks and your own historical data to set realistic goals (and maybe even aim to join that top 10% of performers). Also, monitor quarter-over-quarter results and A/B test to see what best resonates with your customers.

A generic SMS is easy for consumers to ignore, especially as more brands ramp up their marketing for BFCM.

Personalizing these messages can help you stand out from the crowd, which really pays off. According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, 74% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and according to McKinsey, 76% are frustrated when they don’t.

In other words, customers are far more likely to engage and convert when your messages feel tailored to them.

Since you started early collecting phone numbers back in June, you should be in a great position to send targeted, segmented text messages before, during, and after BFCM. “As you get to know your users, create properties to utilize for segmented BFCM sales,” suggests Josh Rizzo, email marketing specialist at OuterBox (formerly Trinity).

“Speak differently to these users based on their interests and how they shop with you,” Rizzo adds.

Don’t forget to exclude customers who have already made purchases over the BFCM period. The more relevant your targeting, the more impactful your SMS will be.

BFCM SMS marketing tip: “Send to a variety of segments,” advises Jessica Schanzer, senior product marketing manager at Klaviyo. “But during peak hours, target smaller audience sizes for the fastest sending possible. Quality over quantity ensures your messages reach your audience swiftly.”

Here are a few BFCM SMS segmentation ideas to get you started.

Clearly, personalization and segmentation are important for connecting with your customers before and during BFCM. Build on that tailored approach with the help of AI.

AI tools like Klaviyo’s SMS AI can help you generate unique, engaging SMS copy for campaigns and flows, as well as SMS replies. Rather than just giving a general overview, SMS AI’s suggestions are based on your specific prompts and audience—which supports giving your customers that personalized touch and earning their attention.

When apparel brand Proozy started using Klaviyo’s SMS AI to generate text message copy, they started saving about 10 minutes per text—time they reinvested into deeper segmentation, and sending daily deal digests tailored to customers’ preferred sizes and brands.

Check out these sample AI prompts for examples of what you might type in to AI to receive a range of BFCM text message options.

Another emerging strategy is to use automated SMS conversations as interactive quizzes or preference collectors.

For instance, you might launch a product recommendation quiz via SMS: customers text a keyword or answer a series of questions, and their responses (favorite product types, style preferences, etc.) are saved to their profile. At the end of the chat, they get a personalized product recommendation or offer.

This kind of two-way engagement both delights customers and arms you with data to refine your BFCM targeting.

BFCM SMS marketing tip: Klaviyo B2C CRM makes this easy—it enables dynamic two-way interactions where you can answer FAQs, recommend products, and guide purchases in real time​. All of the answers roll up into your customer profiles, so by the time BFCM arrives, you know exactly what each shopper is interested in and can tailor your campaigns accordingly.

When people opt in to receive SMS from your brand, it’s a token of trust. Your job is to show them they’ve made the right decision. That means you need to offer a personalized customer experience, and only send messages when you have something meaningful to offer. In the rush of BFCM, it can be tempting to fire off constant promotions, but restraint and relevance are key to maintaining subscriber trust (and keeping that unsubscribe rate low).

Part of a respectful SMS strategy is scheduling your text messages appropriately. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), brands cannot send non-transactional messages, including flows like abandoned cart and back-in-stock notifications, after 9 p.m. or before 8 a.m. in the recipient’s timezone—a period also known as quiet hours.

(Note that there are exceptions to this rule. We recommend disabling quiet hours for the first message of an SMS welcome series, for example, as well as Shopify post-purchase flows, such as order confirmations.)

The TCPA guidelines are US-specific, but it’s a best practice to follow them in other countries, too. For example, in the UK, brands should avoid sending SMS after 8 p.m. or before 9 a.m., and in France, texting is prohibited between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. (and all day on Sundays and holidays)​. Be sure to check the regulations for any country you operate in.

The good news is that an SMS automation platform can help by automatically sending messages based on each recipient’s time zone​, so you don’t accidentally disturb someone at 2 a.m. their time. The goal is not only to protect consumers’ rights to privacy (and uninterrupted sleep), but also to get your messages out when your audience is most likely to engage.

BFCM SMS marketing tip: “Ensure you’re not just sending SMS messages for the sake of it, but only when you’ve got something meaningful that’s worth communicating to the right audiences,” suggests Jane Magoffin, ecommerce director at Reload Media.

Remember, according to our SMS consumer research with Recharge, 72% of consumers who subscribe to SMS marketing expect to receive a message at least once a week.

Throughout the year, it’s a best practice to send SMS messages up to 7x a month, or once or twice a week. But during BFCM, you can afford to stretch the rules a little.

Use the schedule template below as a starting point, then adjust it to meet the needs of your business and subscribers. Aim for 1 text per day, and if you only want to send certain promotions to specific customers, segment your audience based on engagement.

BFCM SMS marketing tip: “Consider staggering your campaigns throughout the day to avoid peak sending hours when customers are inundated with messages,” Schanzer advises. “Spread your impact and maximize your reach.”

Here’s an example timeline for a 5-day BFCM SMS campaign schedule:

BFCM can feel like a huge deal—which means it can be tempting to only stick to tried-and-true marketing channels like email.

But if your marketing strategy doesn’t include SMS, you’re missing out on an opportunity to connect with your customers.

Brands that embrace SMS as part of an omnichannel strategy are able to create more touchpoints and build more personalized customer relationships, rather than just blasting one-off promotions. And as we’ve seen, the most successful B2C brands focus on cultivating lasting relationships, not just driving single transactions.

Integrating these short messages into your existing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, either. Klaviyo B2C CRM is built to make every message count. With a built-in customer data platform at its core, Klaviyo can give you all the insights you need to personalize texts alongside emails.

And with features like pre-built automated flows and AI-enhanced templates, you can orchestrate campaigns across SMS and email without breaking a sweat. Advanced tools like automated SMS conversations (for two-way engagement) and smart opt-in forms (for rapid list growth) are here to help you elevate your BFCM marketing.