#118. SMS Tips and Best Practices for Black Friday Cyber Monday | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Flowium podcast. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, and today I’m joined by Dan Goldstein from Klaviyo. Dan is SMS partner Manager at Klaviyo. Dan is someone who’s passionate about building lasting relationships between agencies, brands and customers through sms. Probably Dan is as passionate about SMS as we are about emails here at flowium. Say hi, Dan.

Dan: 1:10

Hi there. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me on. I am so pumped to be here talking all things sms. Just really excited to dive into, dive into everything SMS and then of course, dive into everything Black Friday, Cyber Monday related, massive time of year, so can’t wait to get talking about it.

Vira: 1:28

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Dan. Before we go to all of the juicy and serious questions, let’s play a little game. Let’s do a blitz Q and A just to get you. Just to get to know you better. Okay?

Dan: 1:40

Great. Let’s do it.

Vira: 1:41

Let’s do this. Okay, Dan, Texting or calling?

Dan: 1:44

Texting.

Vira: 1:44

Why I’m not surprised? But okay. Batman or Superman?

Dan: 1:50

Ooh, I would usually say Batman, but I’m going to go Superman today.

Vira: 1:55

Oh, you just want to be. Just want to be different. Something else today. Okay, cool. SMS or mms?

Dan: 2:02

Oh, that is a loaded question. Let’s go sms.

Vira: 2:06

Cool. Okay, I’m going to. I’m curious to. To learn why, but probably we’ll talk about it in the podcast today. Okay. Sort by price or by rating.

Dan: 2:17

By rating.

Vira: 2:19

Yes. Pineapple on pizza. Yay or nay?

Dan: 2:22

Absolutely. Yay.

Vira: 2:24

Yes. That’s a very unique one too, and very American one to say.

Dan: 2:29

Yes.

Vira: 2:31

If there was a theme song every time you entered the room, what would it be?

Dan: 2:36

Oh, that is a great question. Let’s just go classic Eye of the Tiger. I mean, you know, really feeling good, especially around the bfcm.

Vira: 2:45

You can go wrong with this one, right? You can’t go wrong with this one. Yeah, and you’re not the first person saying that. I always ask people these questions on the podcast. I’m just like, it says so much about them, you know, about their personality. And you’re definitely not the only one who used this song as a theme song. It’s a good one.

Dan: 2:59

Awesome.

Vira: 2:59

It’s a good one. Definitely. Cool. Okay, so SMS business SMS is probably one of the most popular communication channels available today to DTC Brands. Today, 90% of SMS messages are read. And this number, it gets me every time. 98% of SMS messages are read and 90% of those 98% of texts are read within the first seconds of being received. That’s like, just like blows my mind every time. So why SMS then? Why sms? Why e commerce brands should care about sms, should use sms. And especially around Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Dan: 3:38

Absolutely. So SMS is such, such a fascinating channel, right? That stat right there where 90% of messages are open within the first couple seconds of the first couple minutes just shows the power of being able to get in front of consum and really meet them where they are. Right. So in a time where email inboxes are just becoming more and more crowded and hectic than ever, it can be really difficult for a brand to differentiate themselves from the competition. Right. People have to go through and, you know, sort through their different inboxes. We have inboxes for, you know, our personal lives, our work lives, our side hustles, anything of that nature. So with sms, when we’re able to just cut through the noise directly, directly and get to somebody’s home screen, that is something that is incredibly powerful. Right. And with sms, it’s such an intimate channel. It’s an area where brands and agencies can really take advantage of connecting with the audience and showing them what they want to see at the right time. And then of course, when we tie all of this together for bfcm, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Weekend, I’m sure I’ll call it all three things. During this conversation, we can really leverage the versatility of sms. Right. So our meeting consumer, where they are for things like flash sales, abandoned carts, browse abandonments, early access. And then of course, especially during bfcm where stress can sometimes be high for consumers and purchasers, we can reduce that stress with messages such as transactional ones. Right. So order confirmation, shipping confirmation, delivery confirmation, we can leverage a number of different areas of SMS to make it so that we are reaching someone before one of our competitors does say, if they’re using email and we’re using sms.

Vira: 5:41

Yeah, I really loved how you said about like meeting the people where they are and people are on mobile. That’s, that’s the thing nowadays, right? According. I found this another number According to Adobe 88 billion billion of online retail sales in 2021 were made on online devices, were made from smartphones. So mobile is like a big part of how consumers shop today. Right. And browsing, research, comparison of the purchase all is happening there on the phone. So that’s such a good idea to meet them where they are and to reach out to them through sms. Especially considering how rapidly people like open and respond to those sms. That’s yeah.

Dan: 6:29

Absolutely. Yeah. And one other thing I’ll add, which might be a little bit more of a personal anecdote, is so as someone who, right. I work in the email, the sms, the data industry, right. We get a lot of emails. Right. I’m sure you know, working at Flowium, you get a lot of emails. I get a lot of emails here at Klaviyo. I personally don’t have email notifications on, on my phone. Right. So I don’t have them pushed to my phone screen. I just go into my inbox and look maybe every hour or so with sms, I don’t have to actually go and open a totally new app or a totally new inbox to find what I’m looking for. It just shows up right on my screen. And whether I interact with the message and actually respond and, or make a sale or whatever it is, or I just delete it, I have to interact with that message to get it off of my phone screen somehow. So it’s almost kind of like a de facto billboard as well in a way.

Vira: 7:27

Right, right. And also, I guess it also comes down to who you are talking to because I know that for brands that I work with, millennials and Gen Z, they love sms. Love, love, love sms. SMS performs even better than email in some cases for them, for boomers or that older generations, email is still like the men. Right. But I mean, what’s your recommendations on like balancing email and SMS marketing efforts so you are not too much for your customers, right?

Dan: 8:04

That’s a great question. And this is probably one of the biggest questions I get when I’m speaking to agencies and clients. Right. Whether you’re just getting started with sms, you know, you just turned it on for the first time or you’ve already been sending messages, you have an established email list wherever you are, regardless of what your brand is, what they do, what the industry is, one thing is for sure, it’s not a one size fit all effort. Right. So always like to remind people, always like to remind agencies and brands that sms, it’s not supposed to replace your email strategy. It should really supplement and enhance it. Right. So we’re not going to be changing our entire strategy to, you know, bring a bunch of emails down and send SMS instead. Instead of doing something like that, we want to make sure that we are using a lot of prior planning and preparation and prior data that we’ve been collecting from our different sends to ensure that we’re balancing our efforts. Right. So what that means, or an example of that could be, is let’s say we want to intertwine email and SMS flows or automations together. We can leverage different types of dynamic segmentation or any types of new types of lists or things of that nature so that we’re sending automated messages to consumers when they take some sort of action. So what that could mean is let’s say we have a segment set up that includes people that maybe they’ve gotten three or four emails in the past from a certain brand and they haven’t taken advantage of anything, they haven’t opened it, they haven’t made a purchase. What we can do, and especially we can do in Klaviyo SMS and email together, is actually play off of that data and instead of maybe sending that person a, a fifth email, we can send them an SMS instead to kind of fill that gap and supplement that email strategy so that we’re reaching consumers where they want to be reached. I’ll say that probably at least three more times on this podcast interview, but we don’t want to make sure that we’re not forcing a specific channel on an entire audience. Let’s really leverage our segmentation, our past data, to see, you know, which audience Personas work for a certain channel and which. So, you know, there’s no real answer of, hey, you know, maybe you should do 70% email, 30% SMS. It really just depends on what your consumers are interacting with and where you’re seeing the highest ROI and or revenue come from.

Vira: 11:09

Exactly, exactly. And like, from my experience, SMS does not necessarily work independently as well as it does combined with email.

Dan: 11:19

Right.

Vira: 11:20

So this like, flow example, it’s perfect just because here you can see the power of segmentation, of delivering the right message to the right person, of basically, yeah, basically delivering the right message. So that’s what it comes to. But how can people build their list during this season? Because I know that sometimes people are scared to start in SMS because it sounds like it’s a lot of work. From my experience, setting up SMS was so much easier than setting up emails. Honestly, the process is seamless. But how do you start? Where do you start? How do you build the list for Black Friday Cyber Monday.

Dan: 12:02

Great question. And this is something that while it’s incredibly relevant to bfcm, Black Friday Cyber Monday, this is also relevant for the remainder of the year. So anything I mentioned here, let’s just assume that the brand has already turned SMS on. They’ve already selected a sending number, you know, they already have it actually on and in their account. The easiest and most straightforward way to really get started collecting SMS subscribers, say if you haven’t started or you’re just trying to lean in to your SMS offering, is to actually lean into your existing email subscribers, right? Let’s lean into that list. Let’s leverage the people we already have in our account and we can just do this by sending a humble, simple email where we’re talking targeting email subscribers in SMS friendly areas. So that would be currently, as of recording, the United States, Canada, uk, Australia, where they can receive text messages. We can create a segment of that audience of people who live in those areas and we can actually just send them an email where we’re saying, hey, we have a new SMS list. We would love for you to take advantage of our list and we can lead with some sort of incentive or offer and deliver that immediate value. But in the same email we also want to make sure we can highlight future value, right? So sms, early access, flash sales, exclusive offers. Let’s create some sort of FOMO or incentive in this email to ensure that anyone who sees it says, oh wow, I really love this brand, I would love to be part of the VIP experience. Let’s go take advantage of that. So what we can do in that email, and this is one of the best, you know, really powerful area of the Klaviyo tool is we can just have a button in our email that someone can press. It’ll bring them to the website and that and they’ll see a signup form that is only targeted to them, right? So they’ll see a signup form that says, hey, take advantage of this new SMS list only targeted to the certain segment that the email was sent to and they can easily go and subscribe. And this is probably one of the quickest ways to get an SMS subscriber or subscriber list up and running very quickly, right? So let’s say even if you’re a couple weeks out from bfcm, there’s still time, I want to echo this as much as I can. There is still time to build your list because you can do things like this. Another thing I want to also mention is when it comes to signup forms. This one isn’t as direct, it’s a little bit more passive. But creating like a multi step signup form, which is when someone comes to your website, they’ll get hit with, you know, an email collection form saying hey Dan, would love for you to trade your email for some sort of offer. They press okay. And then automatically an SMS form can pop right up and we’ll say, oh also do you want an extra 15%, 20%, 25% off here, come sign up for our SMS list as well. So right there we’re collecting email and SMS at the same time, bringing both of those profile properties into a singular profile that we can then in turn leverage going forward. And I also want to mention when it comes to a multi step form, what we can do is we can target this, like I mentioned earlier, more specifically for mobile. So when someone comes to the form, let’s say if they’re on mobile, they’ll put their email in. Fantastic. They get to the SMS form that pops up right after it instead of them having to actually type their number in to like the collection box. As you know a lot of us are used to, we can actually leverage a tap to text form instead.

Vira: 15:39

That’s a good one.

Dan: 15:40

So they can literally just tap a button. It will, I’ll use the iPhone just because of familiarity. When they tap that button on the signup form, it will automatically open up their messaging app and pre populate with text to join subscriber keywords and opt in language. And then all they would need to do is just press the send button and then they’re opted into an SMS list. So those are some pretty quick ways to really grow the list without a massive, massive overhaul. This is something that you can get done in an afternoon and you can start collecting and generating revenue very quickly. And we’ve seen a lot of different brands and agencies do this over the last few years.

Vira: 16:23

Yeah. And I mean a lot of people are also collecting SMS consent at the checkout and that’s another great way to do that because it doesn’t take a lot of effort on your end to set it up. Just like you said, maybe like few hours the entire SMS process will be set. All your customers will have to do is basically like check the SMS consent button and they are good to go. That’s amazing. And what about the personalization? You mentioned that you guys do have some opportunities to personalize that experience for your subscribers, like how to make it more relevant because as you mentioned, SMS is a bit more personal than Email. So this like one size fits all approach does not work well with neither of them, but especially with sms. So how to make it a bit even like more personal? How to make this experience more personalized?

Dan: 17:14

Yes, yes, great question. And of course I’ll preface this with apologies for any dogs in the background. We got some maintenance going around and he is quite loud today. But when it comes to personalization. Segmentation. Segmentation, Segmentation, right. We want to overindulge in segmentation and ensuring that we have nice tight segments before BFCM even starts. Right. So a massive benefit of SMS is really having it be such a personalized, intimate platform. So we want to ensure that we have segments that can address things like that. So let’s leverage different types of profile properties such as, you know, first names, areas of interest, regional areas, product preferences, where we can ensure we’re sending someone a message about a product based on what they’ve already have or have not done interacting with the product on the website. Right. So what we can do is really just further go down and get more granular with our messages based off of what our users and based off of what the consumers are doing on our website. So for example, you know, we can do for, for VIPs, for VIPs, VIPs can get things like early promo access, early looks, flash sales, things of that nature. The VIPs, you know, they purchase from you early, often and at a high volume or whichever definition you would like to use. But you know, we can really just ensure that we’re creating these different areas and these different segments to ensure someone is getting a message that they want to see so that we’re not over sending, we’re not overspending and we’re not making it so that we are just continually trying to, you know, put a square through a round hole. Right? We want to make it so that it, it fits the area where the consumer wants to be seen. And then of course you also can, you know, add some different types of characteristics for certain lists and segments so we can create those custom hyper focused additional pieces of content that can be easily targeted to, you know, products, buyer Personas, regions like I mentioned, other identifiers to help sweeten the deal. So whether that’s saying, hey, Dan has looked at a bunch of boots on our website within the last 90 days, within the last few months, wants, let’s send him a boot buying guide or a boot gift guide for the holiday season. We have the segmentation, we have the opportunity to target, target him and other users like him I’m assuming Dan would like this content because he’s already been looking at it. So we can just get ahead of the consumer in a way so that they don’t even have to look. We’re showing them what they want to see before they even really know that they want to see it, which is just so incredibly powerful. And then when we leverage, you know, just the quickness and the ability to get in front of someone very fast with SMS compared to email, that’s when we really, really can see some really powerful results. And of course, one other thing I want to mention here. When it comes to personalization, when it comes to, you know, having such a great SMS experience, let’s make SMS more conversational. Let’s have a bit of a different tone with our SMS messages that we may have with our email, other, other types of brand copy, whatever it may be, let’s make it so that that SMS feels as if the consumer is texting with a friend or a family member compared to, say, a large brand. And just those small little changes can really, really make a massive difference when someone feels like the, the channel is more personalized for them.

Vira: 21:00

Yeah, because we talked about it with Ali last week too. SMS is a bit more, is about building this like, genuine relationship with your probably like most engaged customers. Right, Absolutely. That’s why some brands, they treat sms people as VAPs. Like, no matter how many orders they’ve placed, no matter how many, what’s their average order value, what’s their historical order value, they treat them as VAPs because these are the people who want to receive personal SMS messages from you. They are like, they want to be your friends. So definitely talk to them differently to them. That’s a really good recommendation, Dan.

Dan: 21:40

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Vira: 21:41

What’s your take on SMS vs. MMS? Because there is like a lot of heated conversations about it in the industry.

Dan: 21:48

Yeah. So this is something that I think if you asked a number of different people in the SMS industry, like, like you mentioned. Right. It’s just, it’s a question that brings out different types of responses. And you know, of course there is data that can back up certain responses. Right. Like how an SMS just has a better throughput than that of an mms, or an SMS is typically cheaper to send than that of an, of an mms. Right. Like when you’re sending just text and numbers compared to, you know, a gif, a video, a picture, emojis, anything of that nature, it’s just, you know, quicker to send and cheaper to send. But personally, you know, don’t get me wrong, I love a good mms. Right. I love a good MMS where I get, I get to see the product image directly, directly into, on my phone, what I was looking at or, you know, I’m a, I’m a sucker for a good creative. Right. I love different types of assets, all that stuff. Fantastic. But when it comes to ascending strategy, of course I’ll never say, hey, only use SMS or hey, only use mms. I just personally think that SMS allows us to have a little bit more flexibility in our sense. So whether that’s from an economic point of view, whether that is from, you know, an actual time point of view in terms of actually getting the asset created versus just getting copy created, it just allows us to be a little bit more flexible, a little bit more economic and it almost feels a little bit more. What’s the right word? Organic. I guess, in a way.

Vira: 23:27

Yeah, it does feel less promotional. I see what you’re saying.

Dan: 23:30

Yeah, a little. It really kind of ties, ties into that. Hey, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s see if we can try using it as texting a friend or texting a family member. It just feels a little bit more, I don’t know, I guess, I guess organic really was the best possible word for that. So that’s my personal stance on this. You know, I know that we could speak to other SMS people and they’ll say a lot of different things, but I think the humble sms, where we can really lean into, you know, our copywriting, where we can really lean into our data, can really pay dividends. And then maybe after we’ve really established a great SMS strategy, that’s when we can start bringing in different types of MMS messages that can supplement our SMS strategy.

Vira: 24:16

Right, right. And it also comes down to what you’re selling because I’ve noticed with some of my brands, especially with like fashion brands, MMs do perform better for some reason.

Dan: 24:26

Right.

Vira: 24:26

Maybe it’s because those brands are very like visual, you know, but the sms, it does feel a bit more personal, a bit more organic, just as you said, less salesy, less promotional and yeah, and sometimes it even like converts better. For one of my brands, they are selling this serums for eyelashes. So the product itself, it’s very effective, but there is nothing like to show in the picture. I mean, it’s the model, right?

Dan: 24:55

Yeah, very situation. Very situational.

Vira: 24:58

Exactly, exactly. So for them, believe it or not, the SMS had three times the conversion rates versus mms. I don’t know why it Works this way. It’s like, it’s still an enigma for me. But it depends, I guess, on what you’re selling and who you are talking to. Right?

Dan: 25:14

Totally. Yeah. It’s all about, right, like making sure we’re using the right channel for the right audience and you know, I’ll talk a little bit more about, you know, different types of, of Personas and what to do pre Black Friday a little bit later. But you know, one of the things I always like to also say is just abt. Right. Always be testing. Always be testing. Hey, test your SMS versus your mms. If you think one is working better than the other, test it again and then test it again. Right, Right. Always need to make sure that we are staying as relevant and up to date with our messaging as possible.

Vira: 25:49

Yeah, Dan, since you already touched on Personas and stuff, like, what are some of the pre Black Friday strategies you can recommend or strategies to consider for SMS specifically?

Dan: 26:02

Right. So I’ll dive into the Persona aspect of this. So really, you know, what we recommend here at Klaviyo and what I recommend especially for sms. And if you’re leveraging SMS and email together, this is fantastic as well. But right, creating a collection of buyer Personas prior to bscm based on our previous data that we’ve been able to collect and also just overall industry data. Right. So we want to see, hey, who are the people that are buying from us? What do they purchase, how do, how much do they spend? You know, what’s the best way to get in front of them? So I actually have a couple examples of different Personas here. So one of these Personas that we like to think of during BFCM would be the classic deal hunter. Right. So someone who is not a loyalist to a brand by any means, means may not be concerned with top quality, but they’ll likely shop around different types of competitors and different brands to get the best possible deal. So when we take deal hunters or other types of Personas, I can mention a couple more going forward. We want to make sure that we have these Personas set and ready to roll so that we have a correct targeting strategy. So for deal hunters, we would target them by using, you know, short urgent messages with the deal front and center. So this is a great opportunity to leverage SMS where we’re getting to them quickly, we’re making sure they don’t go to a different competitor or a different brand and we are just highlighting that deal, saying, hey, this is our best deal of the year. Take advantage. You know, let’s get Moving right now, of course, another one of these Personas that we’ll see during bfcm. And you know, this is, I might fall into this one a little bit more so than some of the others, which is, is the last minute shoppers, right? So they’re infrequent customers. Maybe they’ve shopped from a previous BFCM deal with you, maybe they haven’t. They’re probably a little bit concerned about delivery times. As we all know, the supply chain issues we have seen globally the past couple years. But last minute shoppers are such an important Persona to ensure we have a strategy around because we want to target them with, you know, express urgency. So we want to have things like countdown timers or last day to ship type language in our messaging and we can highlight shipping estimates and upfront, so highlight shipping estimates up front to combat against, you know, abandoned cards, browse abandonment them getting maybe a little worried that their package and or present may not get in in time. So we want to make sure that when we have these Personas like your deal hunters, your last minute shoppers, your VIPs, your impulse buyers, right. And I can of course dive into more of these going forward if need. But we just want to have a nice strategy beforehand and have our segments and our lists and our messages built out so that when someone you know is a deal hunter and we can tell that they’re a deal hunter, we’re just automatically going to send them some sort of flow, some sort of campaign or some sort of SMS flow that is based off of what they have or have not done in our brand. And just one other thing I want to highlight.

Vira: 29:28

Oh, sorry, sorry. How would you define them? Sorry. Before we like move to the other group, how would you define those like deal hunters, what’s the definition in Klaviyo would be like, how would you set them apart from the rest of the audience? I’m just like curious because that sounds like a really fun little segment to have, right?

Dan: 29:43

So for deal hunters there are a couple different ways that you can probably target them, right? So a deal hunter we can. One of the things I like to use and of course this definition or segment definition can certainly change a lot. So a deal hunter, I like to see someone who is coming to our website maybe one, two or three times within the last, let’s say 14 days or so, maybe they’ve looked at a product, maybe they’ve put a product into their cart, but they haven’t actually taken advantage of any of the sales. So we can potentially infer that maybe they saw something else somewhere else or maybe they’re waiting to see if they can get a better deal somewhere else or through you or through your brand. So we want to just ins. We just want to ensure that we are paying attention to the people that are coming to our website that are looking up on our products, that are looking at specific products, but are just not taking that action. And then we have to use, you know, we have to infer going forward using our different types of segment definitions. But there’s, you know, there are a number of different ways to try and define these different Personas. Right. But the best way, like I always say, is leverage the past data that will lead you down a much better path than only inferring.

Vira: 31:06

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good one. Deal hunters. I also like to. We have this like, segment specifically for holiday deal hunters. So we just like, there’s like some people who specifically come to your website around the holidays and you know that these people are only here for the deal. So you don’t send them gift guides, you don’t send them blogs, you like exclusively send them the deals.

Dan: 31:30

And that’s exactly, exactly. And it’s all about, Right, it’s all about, it’s all about that targeting. It’s all about seeing, okay, this person hasn’t been on our website since, you know, November of last year.

Vira: 31:43

Right.

Dan: 31:43

They’re probably hunting for a deal and you know, that’s where that, that prior data really, really comes into play.

Vira: 31:50

Yeah, that’s probably like the only time of the year when I’m like, not too, too concerned about sending messages aggressively because people kind of train to expect the discounts from you. But like, when it comes to the timing and the amount of the SMS and email sent, what’s your take on that? What is like too many too much?

Dan: 32:14

Right. So, and I’ll of course preface this with the fact that this is something that is of course very dynamic and, and very situational. But when it comes to bfcm, when it comes to just Cyber Weekend in general, we want to make sure that we are remaining as targeted as possible. I’ve said it before, I’ll set it, say it again. But too much really comes when we’re sending maybe multiple messages to the same person through multiple different, different channels on the same day. More likely than not, your subscribers will be looking around and expecting messages from so many different other brands that too much can really be subjective. So the best thing to do is instead of really going out and just going after every single person on your list, sending them as many messages as you can possibly can. We’re definitely going to be sending more than we would in a typical weekend or month. Typically, you know, we would recommend, you know, maybe five, four to seven messages in a week. We maybe don’t want to go too much more than that, but we want to ensure that we are not going too far. So when someone has already made a purchase or if someone has already taken advantage of a deal, we want to make sure that we’re following, finding ways to de facto suppress them so that they don’t continue to receive messages from us about the same deals. Right. And you know, that’s one of the major benefits of Klaviyo, SMS and email together is that we can get all of that rich data together in one centralized area and one centralized platform. So that I’m not sending a message to Scott that you know about an SMS deal for a product he already bought. I already have that information directly in my Klaviyo account. So I can say, hey, I’m gonna sit, I’m gonna skip Scott on this message. Maybe I’ll come back to him for Cyber Monday. Maybe I’ll take a break from sending him messages during the weekend or during, you know, the, the days. But when it comes to actually when to send your texts, there’s a couple of different things to be aware of. So. So of course, right. With so much competition, the earlier the better. I always like sending SMS messages sometime in the morning to afternoon, maybe try and get some people later in the day. But of course we have to take regional sending laws and quiet hours into account. Right. So typically in the United States, for example, you can only send between 8am and 8pm or 8am and 9pm however, for the state of Florida, which has a mini TCPA, you can only send between 8am and 8pm so we want to make sure that we’re not. I know, it’s very interesting. Florida just has their own little TCPA law that started, I want to believe, at the beginning of 2021. But you know, we just want to make sure that we are trying to find times where we think that people will be looking at their phones and ready to purchase. But in terms of sending too much or too little, I think this is really a great opportunity to, you know, to really lean into your segments, really lean into your segmentation. There’s probably a better chance that you’re engaged subscribers, you know, your 30 day engage, 60 day engage post purchasers, VIPs, they’re probably going to Be a little bit more lenient when it comes to sending messages than say you’re 90 day engaged, you’re 180 day engaged. You know your purchases from like last year. So really just make sure you know who you’re sending to so that you’re not giving them the wrong message at the wrong time.

Vira: 36:08

Right. How do you define the Engage segment for sms? Because there are like different ways to approach it. Like what’s your take on that?

Dan: 36:18

Good question. There are different ways to approach it. So the way that I would look at doing the Engage segment, so when I, when I, when I say engaged, I’ll, let’s use the definition of 30 day engaged. So we’ll use 30 days here. You can, you can go up to 60 days. I mean you could even go up to 90 days if you really wanted to maybe for a larger brand. What I like to do is engaged would be 30 day engaged. So maybe they have, or ha, maybe they’ve opened, let’s say, or they’ve clicked through, let’s say three out of five SMS messages they’ve you know, maybe purchased one time within the last 30, 60, 90 days. They’ve actually, you know, brought in some certain, some revenue through their SMS purchases. As your SMS list grows and as you continue to hone in on your segments and as you continue to grow your list, these definitions will certainly change as you have more eyes on your text messages. However, you know, when it comes to Engaged with, with SMS messages being very hard to track in terms of when they’re opened just because, right. You know, 30, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really hard to tell when something is open compared to when something is actually clicked through. It’s best to leverage some sort of click through rate and, or purchase rate alongside a certain time window. But of course it is just so dynamic and it really can change beyond just leveraging, you know, click through rates or days or things of that nature really comes down to the brand, the audience, what you’re selling and really when you’re selling it as well.

Vira: 37:56

Right, right. And I mean we are running out of time, Dan. But I, I, I have to ask you this question. Absolutely have to ask you this question. You already touched on like the time that the recipients should receive and should not receive the sms. But what are the other don’ts of the holiday SMS marketing? What are the things that you absolutely not recommend doing?

Dan: 38:20

Okay, so there are a couple different things here and I’m going to, I might say some things that are for email and SMS together, but they really, you know, they kind of go for both channels. So first of all, don’t overdo it, right? Don’t overdo your subject lines, don’t make them incredibly long. Don’t overdo your, you know, SMS preview text. The simpler the better, where we’re getting right to the point and we’re not confusing our consumers or our recipients with our messaging. Right to the point. Easy to understand, not too much room for error. Again, you know, we just mentioned this earlier, but not sending too many times in one day. We want to make sure that we are really spacing out the Cyber Weekend season every single year, right? Cyber Weekend gets longer and longer and longer and brands start earlier, earlier and earlier and go later and later and later. So remember that even though there’s a lot of competition, it’s much better to ensure we’re being targeted rather than going all out full blast. Don’t blast your subscriber list. I’ve said this a number of times, but again, you know, continuing to mistake, right? Rookie mistake, right. It’s mistake that, you know, some brands do make just because maybe they just got started learning about out what to do for bfcm. Maybe at the beginning of November it happens, you know, and, but the best thing you can do is again remain targeted. Remain with the people that are clicking or opening an email and SMS within 30 to 60 days. You know, browsing product pages, putting items in carts, buying products. And then another thing I also want to mention are false expectations. Don’t set false expectations that you cannot meet. So whether those are different types of discounts, we’re saying you’re like, hey, we have 25% off all our products. Well, when they actually click through and go to your website and go to your go to their cart, they realize, oh, it’s only 25% off of$350 or more. Let’s just be upfront, right? If we want to keep that type of deal or discount, that’s totally cool. But let’s be upfront and not try, maybe trick someone into trying to get a cart. Another thing here that’s really, really, really important with false expectations is if you’re going to have guaranteed delivery windows or guaranteed delivery purchases, please, please, please, please make sure you can honor that commitment, right? We’re seeing, like I mentioned earlier, we’re seeing those supply chain issues the past of couple, couple years. Who knows what’s going to happen this year. But just please be safer than being sorry. It goes a long, long way. And the thing is, if for some reason something happens and you miss an expectation or something falls through. First of all, that’s okay. Mistakes happen. I get it. I’ve been in e commerce for a long time, I’ve seen everything. But just make sure sure that I guess to counteract a don’t do ensure that you have some sort of backup contingency plan for when things potentially go wrong so that you can alleviate those mistakes without much headache.

Vira: 41:40

That’s a good one. That’s a good one. And I mean some brands are not delivering on their promises. Even Amazon few days ago they promised to deliver the Amazon prime item by the end of the day and then they deliver it two days later. Unfortunately it happens. I mean these constraints, they are real. But try not to over promise.

Dan: 42:00

Exactly. And if Amazon, yeah, if that can happen to Amazon, that can definitely happen to a brand. So the earlier the better. Let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Vira: 42:12

And I would just like add one from me too. I think automation is very important during the Black Friday Cyber Monday too. So you guys automate whenever possible. Black Friday Cyber Monday is the busiest shopping period of the year for sure. And if you are not prepared, your online store could quickly become like overwhelmed with the two way messages and everything. If you can just like create those little flows, automate everything and try to scale your conversations by creating them. Those like product recommendations or creating abandonment cart flow so that your marketing team does not have to send each and one of them individually.

Dan: 42:54

Yes.

Vira: 42:55

Yeah. Well, thank you so much Dan. It was so much fun talking to you. I know a lot of people are still like not sure whether or not they should do SMS for their brand because it feels almost too, too personal. But as a marketer I absolutely love this channel channel, honestly. And as a consumer too.

Dan: 43:13

So yes, thank you so much for having me. You know, I, I, one thing that I’ll leave with right is when I speak to brands, when I speak to agencies, some people will say, hey Dan, I don’t like receiving text messages. Will my consumers? And what I’ll say is, hey, while SMS might not be for every consumer, right. Maybe not everyone likes to receive messages on their phone. SMS is absolutely for every single agency or brand out there. Leverage a new revenue stream and see what happens. You can really, really surprise yourself when you lean into this new channel.

Vira: 43:50

Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Dan. You guys. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, with people who still don’t have sms, or with people who already have SMS but want to learn more about it and also check out our holiday email marketing guide, flowium.com/holiday that’s basically the book where we put all of the SMS and email strategies in like one sort of like place. Definitely check it out. flowium.com/holiday and thank you so much for listening you guys. It was really fun to have you down here.

Dan: 44:26

Thank you so much. Good luck everyone. This bfcm. Have a good one.

Vira: 44:30

Take care. Bye bye everyone.