Ecom Marketers Share Their Best BFCM Advice Ever

Our merchants are always dropping knowledge on us when it comes to how they approach SMS marketing. So if you’re looking to get hyped on what you can do over SMS, don’t listen to us. I mean—do listen to us, but also listen to some of the best marketers in ecom.

Here’s our favorite all-time advice from past webinars that you should listen to.

In one of our Midnight Madness webinars, Kelly from Death Wish Coffee shared her perfect formula for crafting the perfect text. This prescription is one every brand can follow. The hook is the preview text that drives people to open and the focus is giving them the message you absolutely want to convey and get across. The intrigue is what Kelly calls a “CTA but with personality” and has “less desperation” than a basic ‘Shop Now’. 

This is a perfect formula for BFCM. The “hook” should drive urgency and highlight the sale, with a strong focus on the most immediate BFCM offering. Don’t waste a send during cyber week on outlining all the sales, instead, drive to what’s happening the moment that text comes out.

And the CTA? It’s gotta be to shop, of course.

Kali Shulklapper from Graza fame likes to think about SMS and email as entirely different formats and audiences, just like her social channels. Even if she plans on communicating a product drop at the same time on the same day, they are going to be optimized in specific formats for those channels. This approach should be the same way.

Pay close attention to your customer behavior and tailor sends on BFCM accordingly. For example, if you get strongest CTRs in the morning over text but your emails get the most engagement in the evenings, you should make sure to stagger those sends based on what your subscribers want.

Kelly from Death Wish Coffee doesn’t believe in a basic ‘Here’s your 10% off’ code as the first interaction a new subscriber will get. Instead, she believes the real value is showing off your brand voice and personality right out of the gate. Kelly suggests featuring content in the messaging and taking the opportunity to position a brand as a thought leader within their industry. If you can’t get a conversion right away, building that trust and connection will guarantee a conversion down the road.

Tailor your Welcome Series for new subscribers during BFCM. Make a point of outlining all the benefits of staying on your SMS list beyond the obvious sales alerts during Cyber Monday. Educate them on your brand, delight them a little and of course, don’t offer them a 10% off code if you’re running a 40% off sitewide sale.

One of the most powerful SMS marketing strategies is segmenting your VIP customers and treating them differently than one-time purchasers. Just ask SMS expert Jess Cervellon.

"Why would you talk to someone who's purchased 3-5+ times the same way as someone who's learning about your product and doing research? It really doesn't make any sense. And there's a difference between wanting to text everyone on your list, which is important, and texting everyone with the exact same copy." 

Make sure you’re setting up your VIP segments and also consider engagement tiers (which you can read more about here) as you send out offers this year.

Cervellon also recommends focusing on three key elements in your messages:

• What's the deal?

• Where are we going?

• What do you need from me?

“If I'm texting my friend and I'm writing you a big paragraph, you would not want to send that to your customer. So do not send this massive long text. Get to your point... you literally just have somebody's attention span for 30 to 60 seconds,” says Cervellon. 

Test different messages throughout the year to see what resonates best so you’re prepped for conversions come Black Friday.

When deciding which marketing automation projects to tackle first, Retention Marketer Joanne Coffey uses a simple but effective framework: impact versus lift. 

"What we do is when we have a new automation that we want to implement, we always look at it by impact versus lift. So if it has a high impact in low lift, I know that I can put that higher up on my priority list or if it has a lower impact in and higher lift, then I can focus on that maybe in Q2 of next year."

This pragmatic approach helps their scrappy team stay focused on initiatives that will drive the most value while managing resources efficiently. For brands looking to improve their marketing automation, starting with high-impact, low-lift projects can help build momentum and demonstrate ROI quickly.

This is especially crucial during BFCM. Update your highest-performing automations to be BFCM-specific!

If you want to learn quickly from past BFCMs, check in with your customer service team.

"I work very closely with our CX team. So I'm constantly asking them what questions are customers asking you? What are the pain points that they're having,” says Coffey.

Once you collect these insights, incorporate it into product education and marketing messages, an approach that has helped Coffey reduce return rate by approximately 5%.

Use this tactic for BFCM by setting up specific Browse Abandonment automations that target your top selling products, offering educational messaging to answer big buying hurdles and get subscribers to convert.

Don’t take our word for it. Listen to some of the best marketers in ecom. And if you’re not on Postscript yet, make sure you make the switch to get your highest revenue-earning potential on the channel. Just get in touch.