SMS Marketing Trends from BFCM 2024

Well, we did it. Another record-breaking BFCM in the books. And this year SMS more than doubled as a revenue channel. Here’s what happened at Postscript based on the period around BFCM (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) for our 18,000+ merchants.

Let’s take a look at the numbers. We’ll be updating this as more data comes in—so check back soon!

When we look at the 4-day attribution window of Black Friday through Cyber Monday, messages sent through Postscript were up 74% YOY. On Cyber Monday alone, messages sent were up 56% compared to 2023 numbers, though Black Friday proved to be the bigger send day.

Brands know that to cut through the noise during Cyber week, SMS needs to be a critical piece of the entire marketing strategy, and it showed. We saw merchants capitalize on some of our best practices like sending SMS over MMS, sending follow-up campaigns on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to increase revenue and to continue to send to subscribers that had yet to purchase throughout Cyber week. 

There’s always some anxiety around keeping popups activated during big sale cycles, with some brands worried it could dilute sale messaging or simply scare away shoppers. 

But that’s categorically untrue. And if you’re among the brands that kept your popups poppin’, you’re reaping the benefits.

We helped merchants add over 500k first-time subscribers–that's 70% more than last Black Friday and 181% more than the daily average! Forgetting to convert BFCM traffic into your SMS list is a missed opportunity. 

Here’s an even better acquisition breakdown:

• Thanksgiving day opt ins were up 80% compared to last year

• Black Friday opt ins were up 61% compared to last year

• From Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, over 1.5 million subscribers opted-in using Onsite Opt-in

Whether you’re newer to SMS or are looking for advanced features that help you convert more visitors to your list, we’ve got the best Popup Editor for ecommerce as well as Onsite Opt-in, which you can learn more about here. 

When we looked at the campaign stats by sent hour on Black Friday, a lot of behavior was the same YOY with a big sending spike at 9am subscriber time and 6pm subscriber time. But a big surprise was for the campaigns that went out in the 3pm window, where sends were small but EPMs peaked as the highest for the day. 

We always suggest sending :15 or :45 past the hour for campaigns on peak days, but this might be a strategy to tuck away for next year with a mid-afternoon send. We’ll be sure to dive into this one more.

This year, Black Friday sales saw a 10.2% jump YOY reported by Adobe Analytics and shoppers proved true to their word, waiting to do the majority of holiday shopping during BFCM.  

We saw a 184% YOY increase in purchases over SMS. This increase shows how much consumers have adopted the channel, feeling confident and comfortable engaging with brands and shopping through the channel.

Out of the top 10 campaigns on Black Friday (of stores that sent 10,000 or more messages), the EPM was between $6-$8!

The savviest subscribers made it a two-text day, sending a follow up campaign to subscribers who didn’t purchase yet on Black Friday, which drove a 60% increase during BFCM 2023 (we’ll see if that number changes for 2024!)

Mobile devices accounted for 80% of US traffic to retailers’ sites and apps on Black Friday, and 73% of orders, up from 71% a year earlier, according to reports from Emarketer. And that’s good news for an SMS-first strategy.

With innovations like Onsite Opt-in, brands using Postscript capture new subscribers even easier, letting them opt-in without having to leave their site and pause their shopping. 

Stay tuned for our 2025 SMS Marketing Benchmarks report, where we’ll share industry benchmarks, BFCM insights and strategies to rank among the best marketers in ecommerce. Sign up for our newsletter to get them in your inbox in January!