Every year at Thanksgiving, there are two types of relentless people cradling a phone in their laps under the dinner table – the people watching football and the people discount shopping. I fit into the latter category so hard, my phone barely left my clammy hands all weekend.
The fact that so many brands message about their sales via text now made it easier to stay on top of the best promos out there. We were watching not just for the best discounts but for the most creative, attention grabbing, or just plain smart use of text during this mega shopping weekend.
These are our 3 picks for the brands that sent the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday texts in 2023.
Bonobos
Pants brand Bonobos has always been a pioneer in cheeky menswear marketing, and the holidays have been its time to shine ever since it launched Panta Claus in 2010.
This year their approach to Cyber Monday was unique and playful, with more emphasis on engagement and less on shopping. They rolled out 3 interactive games, a bird-themed word search, a scavenger hunt and Bonobos trivia question and awarded prizes to the fastest responders.
Would I recommend this approach to other brands? If you have to hit a short term sales goal, no. But if you are looking for ways to brand build, yes. I’d still recommend some tweaks, but this was interesting to see and I expect we will see more brands engaging customers in games by text in 2024.
Fashion Nova
Our team spent the holiday weekend watching a LOT of messages fly through the textosphere. But there was one brand that stood out for its loony and comically deranged tone. These texts had us asking.. is Fashion Nova ok?
They sent texts like, “WAKE THE F*CK UP⏰50-85% OFF EVERYTHING‼️”, “🚨BLACK FRIDAY IS F*CKING HEREEEE!!”, and “If U SHOP RN My Boss Said I Get A PROMOTION.. PLZZZ SHOP NOWW!”. The heavily emojified, all caps unhinged pleas for traffic got our attention and made us laugh. And there were a few other lessons to take away too.
Fashion Nova was one of several brands that leaned in hard on this channel sending multiple messages per day. If you thought it was impolite to send more than 1 marketing text per day, Fashion Nova was hammer texting 4 messages on Friday, 4 messages on Monday and multiple messages per day over the weekend. And this wasn’t that uncommon. We saw lots of other brands sending multiple texts per day, like Urban Outfitters (4 on Cyber Monday), Crocs and even Bergdorf Goodman (2 on Cyber Monday).
FRAME
What was great about Frame’s strategy is not so much about what happened between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but what happened after. The day after Cyber Monday (aka Tuesday), the brand announced a new collab with Ritz Paris, which gave shoppers a strong reason to go back to their site. After a chaotic sale weekend, newness was the only thing that could break through the noise of ever increasing discounts. As it often does, Frame included a gif in the MMS announcement, which is better seen here. Of course there were other brands announcing new collections and curations that day, like FWRD and Joah Brown. And even McDonald’s texted with a new product announcement later that week. But Frame made our list because it was the first to hit our message box with this well-timed and super gift-able collection.
That’s it for this year’s roundup of interesting Black Friday / Cyber Monday text strategies. Check out Tiny Texts to see what messages your favorite brands are sending all year long. We post messages from thousands of brands in real time so you can stay up to date without clogging your own inbox.