Grow Your BFCM Sales with Email & SMS Marketing

In this episode, we are thrilled to have Dan Goldstein, SMS Partner Manager at Klaviyo, joining us. With his extensive expertise, Dan will guide us through the ins and outs of leveraging email and SMS marketing to skyrocket your BFCM success. Get ready for a knowledge-packed podcast filled with invaluable tips and tricks. Stay tuned and make sure not to miss out!

Why Use Email & SMS For BFCM?

One of the most important things is just that owned data, that zero party data when it comes to, you know, some other types of pay per click advertising, or maybe we're focusing in on different types of social media sites or anything of that nature.

There are a lot of different factors that come into play that we have to be aware of when we're trying to go with it. Right. So for pay per click advertising, different times a year, it can get way more expensive to use than other times. When it comes to leveraging some sort of social media algorithm, you are at the mercy of that algorithm.

However, when it comes to email and SMS, those are two channels that you as the business, you as the client, you as the agency, you own those, so you are able to leverage that data and that communication in any way you see fit. So you control when your message goes out to a consumer. You control what message they see, when they see it, and just really, you can take all of that data back together and leverage it even further.

And that's one of the biggest reasons why I personally love Klaviyo so much, is that we are so data driven and we want you to use that data that you own - that owned data, that zero party data, that owned revenue is so vital for using, you know, for leveraging e-commerce in this ever-changing world.

Tips & Tricks - What Should I Do With My Flows During BFCM?

The first thing I would always recommend when it comes to your fab four flows - your abandoned cart, browse abandonment, welcome series, whatever it may be - first of all, what we wanna do is just take those trigger times down.

So whether that is saying, Hey, our typical abandoned cart goes out maybe two and a half hours to four hours when someone leaves their cart. Let's bring that two and a half to four hours down to something like 30 to 45 minutes.

Let's just bring those flow triggers down at the start. We wanna make sure in such a competitive time where you know, someone sees one of your carts, they're in your website, they're putting something in their cart, and then they get a message from a different company about their abandoned cart that they had before they even came on your website.

There's a chance you could potentially lose that sale if your trigger is a little too long. So let's just bring those down first of all.

Quick Tip On Duplicating Flows For BFCM Instead Of Turning Them On/Off

A quick tip we could do is instead of like, if you don't want to go back and change everything, what I always recommend is just, hey, duplicate the flows you have. Make sure that they are properly tagged and named so that, you know, you can just turn 'em on, turn 'em right off right when it's done. No need to worry about, oh, what was my flow trigger time last time? Let's just duplicate - even better.

How To Leverage SMS During BFCM?

When we are creating our campaign strategy for BFCM, let's ensure that we have our different promotions. So like, you know, our different types of dollars off, percentages off, whatever it may be. Let's have those all lined up so we know, hey, do the economics on this look right. All of that great stuff. Let's have all of that done in October.

If we can, I'll preface that. I also run a BFCM crash course for agencies and brands that may not get started until late October, or maybe even early November. But if we can avoid it, let's try and have promotions, content calendar, copy, images, assets, creative - let's get that done in mid October so that we have that ready and set.

So when we're sending out different types of campaigns, there are so many things you can do here. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Weekend, whatever it is, does not start on Thanksgiving or does not start on Black Friday, it starts weeks before in terms of making sure our sends are going out to different types or different segments of our audience.

BFCM Crash Course - What's The One Thing Merchants Should Do?

Let's say, you know, January one rolls around, 2023, a company sits down and they say, Hey, we need to leverage SMS, or we need to be ready for BFCM next year. What would I say to do? I would say focus on that list growth. Right? So just list growth.

Of course you could say, right, like having different types of targeting or leveraging our data that we brought in during BFCM or during the holiday season to be more targeted throughout the year. I think yes, that's a great thing to do as well and you should, but when it comes to BFCM, just growing and cleaning that list.

So it's just growing and ensuring that our lists are clean. Suppressing profiles that aren't interacting with our different types of messages, whether that's SMS or email, or ensuring that our list is healthy. We wanna make sure that we have a healthy growth opportunity, a healthy growth strategy to ensure that we're not overspending throughout the year.

Conclusion

Throughout this podcast, we've uncovered a treasure trove of tips and tricks to help you make the most of this high-stakes shopping weekend. From engaging your audience to building anticipation and ultimately driving conversions, email and SMS marketing can be game-changers for your brand. By incorporating these strategies, you can boost your BFCM sales and achieve unprecedented success.

As you gear up for the shopping frenzy, remember to leverage the power of email and SMS marketing alongside your other promotional efforts. Craft compelling messages, personalize your campaigns, and ensure your communication resonates with your target audience. Don't overlook the opportunity to connect with customers directly and drive them towards making purchases.