Black Friday 2024 broke all records. Danes spent 43% more on the day itself compared to 2023, and the week leading up to it was packed with online activity, gift shopping and mobile shopping. This year, Black Friday falls on 28 November 2025 - again on a payday. In other words, you have a golden opportunity to be top-of-mind in a buyer-ready week.
But is your marketing strategy ready?
SMS marketing and RCS marketing is all about sending personalised and valuable messages to customers' mobile messaging app. And mobile is one of the most effective and direct channels to secure your place in customers' minds - and inboxes - before, during and after Black Friday. In this article, you'll get a concrete plan on how to use SMS and RCS to boost your Black Friday campaigns in 2025.
Why use SMS and RCS for Black Friday?
Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year - and mobile is the preferred device for Danes to find and buy deals.
The growing popularity of Black Friday means it has become a much noisier week to be a consumer. We are bombarded with emails, push notifications and adverts. A direct mobile message, on the other hand, cuts through the noise - and with an open rate of up to 98% andaverage click-through rates of+36%, SMS and RCS is your direct access to customer attention.
The Confederation of Danish Industry's (DI) annual analysis, Ecommerce Tracker 2024, showed that in 2024, Danes will spend DKK 133 billion online. This is a new record which, according to DI, is due to Danes in general becoming more digital and the online customer experience in general becoming better and better.
In December 2024, a new record was also set when 87% of Danes made an online purchase. The expectation at DI is clear: 2025 will surpass the record year 2024!
An SMS and RCS marketing strategy is your shortcut to creating a more personalised and direct connection with consumers on one of the busiest days of the year.
Danes shop on their mobiles
The trend has been steadily increasing for a long time, and in 2024 the numbers were clear: Danes prefer to shop on their mobiles.
In 2024, 60.8% of all purchases during Black Week were made via mobile, and mobile had a higher conversion rate than desktop. One reason is that consumers' patience and attention spans are increasingly short and they expect fast and relevant communication - preferably directly on their mobiles. And for that, SMS and RCS are by far the most effective channels.
At the same time, figures from MobilPay show that Danish consumers swiped 1.8 million times on Black Friday in 2024 - equivalent to DKK 1.2 billion paid to online stores via MobilPay.
That's a 39% increase in swipes and 32% higher revenue than Black Friday 2023. For the entire Black Week 2024, revenue via MobilPay was 23% higher than the previous year.
Payment card sales during Black Week 2024 were also 36% higher than the average week in 2024 - and card sales on Black Friday were 43% higher than in 2023(Danmarks Nationalbank).
All indications are that Black Friday and Black Week are still a hit among Danish consumers.
And the clear call from here is: Include SMS and RCS in your Black Friday strategy if you want to cut through the huge amount of offers and reach your consumers directly on the phone.
When is Black Friday 2025?
This year, Black Friday falls on 28 November 2025 - on a Friday that again coincides with payday and the first Sunday of Advent. The same thing happened in 2024, and it was a contributing factor to the historically high turnover we saw in Denmark last year.
But Black Friday is not just one day. It has evolved into an entire month: Black Month. Most webshops start promotions as early as week 47, continuing with Black Friday, Black Weekend and ending with Cyber Monday and Cyber Week. And then the Christmas sales take over.
Your strategy shouldn't just be about that one day, Black Friday. Instead, it's about considering the entire period from Black Month to the Christmas season.
Get an overview of Black Month 2025 below.
Many companies start their offers already in the week leading up to Black Friday (week 47), where the best deals will usually be found on Black Friday itself. In recent years, there has also been a tendency to continue the offers throughout the weekend.
Stores with an online shop should follow up Black Week with online promotions on Cyber Monday. A concept that has taken off since it first saw the light of day in 2005.
The latest addition is now Cyber Week, which (like Black Week) is an extension of Cyber Monday. So Cyber Week is a whole week of offers on the stores' webshop.
Together, all these days are typically called BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday)-or just Black Month.
Whether you plan to have offers all days or only on Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday, your strategy should cover the entire period. You'll find help with creating your plan below.
Permissions are the foundation of a successful Black Friday strategy
You can plan the world's best deals. But if you don't have anyone to send them to, you probably won't sell much.
Therefore, start by making sure you have an active and permission-based phone number list. Consumers who have given permission to hear from you are already warm leads - and your best chance of conversion.
In fact, using the permissions you have has rarely been more important. At a time when many e-commerce businesses are experiencing increased competition, it's crucial to activate the customers who have already shown interest in your business.
This is especially important in the run-up to Black Friday. Figures from DI Handel show that only 9% of Black Friday purchases in 2024 were made at stores the customer had not shopped at before. This is significantly lower than both 2023 and the rest of the year, where the figure is usually 11-13%. The figures emphasise an important point: consumers prefer to spend their Black Friday money with brands they already know and trust.
That's why you should use your mobile list strategically - not just to attract new customers, but more importantly to activate your existing followers. A targeted campaign with exclusive offers for previous Black Friday shoppers, loyal customers or members of your customer club can make a big difference. Especially if combined with early access or personalised discounts that reward their loyalty and make the decision to buy even easier.
In a nutshell: The better you activate your existing permissions - the more value you get out of your Black Friday efforts.
Read more in our article: Why your SMS strategy should focus on customer loyalty - and how to do it.
And no matter how long (or short) your SMS permission list is right now, now is the time to take action. The more permissions you collect in the run-up to Black Friday, the more volume and impact your campaigns will have during the busiest shopping period of the year.
Get inspiration in our article: How to collect SMS permissions.
Black Friday: How to use your mobile lists effectively
Of course, you don't want your SMS/RCS list to grow and then be forgotten until Black Friday.
It's important that you send out a few mobile messages now - or at the latest in the weeks leading up to Black Friday - and start building a relationship with your recipients on this channel.
When you establish a relationship with recipients from the moment you collect their permission, you increase the chances of them remembering you and your product on Black Friday. It's also a great opportunity to create buzz around your Black Friday campaign before the campaign actually kicks off.
You can use automation to ensure that everyone on your list is warmly welcomed by you and your organisation with an automated welcome flow.
In addition to creating a welcome flow, you can work with a lost basket and a cross-sell flow that will not only enhance your everyday marketing efforts, but will also help increase your conversions when the busy Black Friday traffic hits your webshop.
Read WP: 10 message examples for Abandoned Cart SMS
In addition, the more you know about your recipients and their engagement with your webshop and mobile messages, the more personalised and targeted your campaigns can become.
In other words: The better you know the consumers on your SMS and RCS lists before Black Friday, the more you can target your campaigns to that specific customer and the greater the chance of high conversion rates.
How to collect mobile permissions
There are three things you can do right now (yes, right now!) to start collecting permissions.
1. Give customers the option to sign up for SMS and RCS at check-out
If you have a webshop, you can invite your customers to sign up for SMS and RCS when they check out. A customer who has come this far is genuinely interested in you and your product, so the interest in receiving great offers should be high.
⚠️ OBS
If you use Shopify, Prestashop, Magento or WooCommerce, inMobile's integrations ensure that the contacts that authorise SMS are automatically synchronised to inMobile, including all the purchase data relevant to your segmentation.
💡 Bonus tip
At check out, it is possible to collect one consent for both SMS and email marketing. It only requires a single tick from the customer. Afterwards, just remember to give the customer the option to opt-out of the two consents separately.
2. Add a phone number field to your existing sign-up forms
Are you already collecting email permissions for your newsletter or anything else via a form? Then you can add a field where the recipient can enter their phone number.
Remember that a phone number is far more personalised than an email, so there needs to be a motivating factor to do just that. That motivation could be to get access to your Black Friday deals a day before everyone else.
3. Invite your existing email subscribers to your mobile list
If you already have a good following on your email list, you can invite them to join your mobile list too. Of course, this is only relevant to consumers if they can expect special offers or invitations that are only sent to your mobile lists.
Offering a strong incentive is crucial if you want your email contacts to also sign up for SMS and RCS.
One way you can convert email permissions to mobile permissions is by creating a landing page for SMS and RCS sign-up. You can share that landing page in your newsletter with an inspiring text on why recipients should sign up for your mobile list. For example, you could give away a £500 gift voucher for the lucky winner to spend on Black Friday.
You can also have a form directly in your email where your followers can enter their phone number and approve SMS and RCS marketing.
⚠️ Attention
Although some companies mistakenly believe that permission given for email marketing also applies to SMS, this is not the case. To send an SMS to a consumer, the consumer must give specific permission to receive SMS communications from your business.
On our blog you can read important information about SMS legislation.
Create your SMS strategy for Black Friday 2025
You are now collecting permissions, great! It's time to strategise how to turn your permissions into Black Friday customers.
Is this your first time creating an SMS or RCS strategy for Black Friday? Then these are the four most important questions you should ask yourself:
- Who should I send SMS messages to?
- How often should I send messages to them?
- When should I send messages to them?
- How do I strategically use SMS, RCS and email together to increase my conversions on Black Friday?
Want to maximise your success with SMS on Black Friday?
Then you should know the ground rules for an effective SMS campaign. You can start by reading up on them.
Have you done it? Good, so you're ready to create your SMS strategy for Black Week 2025.
1. Which segments should I send SMS messages to?
One of the prerequisites for a successful BFCM campaign is that you segment your lists of SMS and RCS recipients. This ensures that the right people get the right messages at the right time.
In inMobile, you can sort all your contacts into SMS lists so you can easily keep track of who you send which messages to.
But which segments (lists) are actually important to have?
Of course, it varies from company to company, but below are 5 typical segments you can find inspiration in.
#1 VIP customers
Your VIP customers are the people who buy frequently or for large sums and who actively follow your mobile messages. In other words: They read, click and act on a regular basis. This customer group should not be forgotten as they are important to your business.
Special VIP offers or VIP events can help ensure that these customers remain loyal for years to come - if not for life.
#2 Engaged followers
These are the followers who actively follow you. They read and click and occasionally shop at your business, but they are not as loyal as VIP customers. A unique offer for this segment can help push those engaged followers into the pool of VIP customers - or at least prolong their interest in your business.
#3 Those who shopped on Black Friday last year
This segment shopped with you last year and are therefore already aware of the value of shopping with you on Black Friday. Therefore, it makes sense to reconnect with this group of consumers - whether they have shopped with you since last Black Friday or not. They often only need a little push to come back and shop again this year.
#4 Local customers (geographically)
If you have a physical store, it makes sense to have a segment with customers who live close to the store(s) or who have shopped here before.
In this segment, make sure you tie your mobile campaign to the local store. You can do this by inviting people to physical events, offering free in-store pickup, or publicising special offers that are only available in the physical store.
See how this strategy can be used effectively in our case about the Message retail chain.
#5 Those who have browsed but not yet acted
Most companies are familiar with the so-called window peepers. These are the consumers who are watching (for example, via your SMS list) but have not yet purchased from your business.
This is an important segment for your BF strategy. Because they've shown a genuine interest in your business, there's also a high probability that the right offer can turn them into paying customers.
2. How often should you send mobile messages?
As a rule of thumb, you should never send more than 1-2 SMS or RCS messages per week. For some companies, far fewer, otherwise you risk annoying your followers.
However, during Black Friday and Cyber Week, you can bend that rule a bit and send a few more messages. That's what most consumers expect on a holiday like this. As a rule of thumb, we recommend no more than 1-2 messages per day and only if they are relevant to the recipient.
If you need to say more than what one SMS or RCS can describe, consider implementing email in your Black Friday strategy. Email is a great complement to your mobile messaging because there's room to play more with text and images. We'll get into that in section 4.
3. When should you send messages?
It doesn't matter if you send your messages before, during or after Black Friday. Your timing needs to be right and the right message needs to go out at the right time if you want to get the most out of your BFCM strategy.
Over the past few years, the trend has been for Black Friday to become Black Week. A whole week full of great offers. However, figures from Black Friday Denmark show that Black Friday itself remains the day with the highest turnover. As much as 47.2% of the total turnover during Black Week 2024 was on Fridays.
However, it appears that consumers were most ready to buy on Sundays - the conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who ended up buying) was highest on Sundays in 2024.
So even though Friday is the biggest day in terms of revenue, you should not refrain from running promotions on the remaining days of Black Week.
Below you'll learn how to spread your messages across the days before, during and after Black Friday.
#1 Week leading up to Black Friday
Some companies start their offers already in the days leading up to Black Friday. However, the week leading up to the big shopping day is typically spent preparing your customers for Black Friday and getting them excited about the amazing deals they can expect from your business.
Be careful not to send too many messages during these days, as the real action starts on Friday. Feel free to send one or two SMS or RCS messages and make sure they are relevant. For example, you can inform about when the offers start or launch a competition where the winner is chosen on Black Friday.
These are also the days when you can give your VIP customers early access to the offers. For example, you can give this segment a special code or link that gives them access to your Black Friday deals before anyone else.
#2 Black Friday
Black Friday is the day when it really counts. Today is the day everyone should have access to your offers.
Today, all of your relevant SMS lists should be notified that the sale has officially started. At the same time, be sure to let your followers know when the offers end again. Does it apply to the whole weekend, one day or maybe just a few hours? It creates a sense of exclusivity and time pressure when you put a time limit on your offers.
#3 The weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday is over, but Cyber Monday is just around the corner. Spend the weekend analysing your data. Was there a message or offer that worked exceptionally well? Was something not working at all? Use that data to get ready for Cyber Monday.
If you use link tracking in inMobile, you can look at your click-through rates to determine whether a campaign has had the desired result.
Some companies also choose to continue their offers over the weekend. It may make sense for some businesses, but if you choose to do so, you risk diluting the hype around your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers.
On Sunday afternoon you can send your VIP customers a message with early access to your Cyber Monday offers.
#4 Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year. If you only have an online shop, now is the time to act!
Use your SMS and RCS lists to make your followers aware of the great Cyber Monday deals they can find on your webshop. It's also a good idea to point out that today is the last chance to shop the bargains - otherwise they'll have to wait a year until next November before they find this kind of offer again (if that's the case of course).
It can help give those last window shoppers the final push to press the buy button.
4. Email to complement your BFCM strategy
Email, SMS and RCS are not each other's enemies. However, they complement each other perfectly and should all be considered in your Black Friday strategy.
SMS works best for short, concrete messages that your followers can act on immediately. Sometimes a visual element can help clarify your message, and RCS is ideal for that. Other times, you'll want to say a little more, and email can be the answer.
In the week leading up to Black Friday, you can send one or more emails to your followers teasing your upcoming offers and showcasing some of your bestsellers.
Now your followers know what to expect. Therefore, when the offers hit, you can send them a specific SMS or RCS with your desired message - for example, a discount code, a video or other information that your offers have started. Likewise, your target audience will know exactly what your message is and why they are receiving your message.
When you create synergy between the longer messages on email, the visual and personalised messages on RCS and the shorter messages on SMS, you leave the consumer with a positive overall impression and increase the chances of buying from you. This is especially true on days like Black Friday.
More tips for your Black Friday strategy
You are now at the end of the road on this article about Black Friday strategy. I hope you've been inspired and motivated to start creating your own strategy.
In the meantime, here are a few final tips.
#1 Personalise your mobile messages
A successful SMS and RCS strategy consists only of messages that are relevant to the recipient. This means that the right message is delivered at the right time.
You can ensure this by using the data you have about your customers' buying behaviour. Data that tells you, for example, how far a consumer has travelled on your website. Did they leave the basket without paying, have they browsed a certain product more than three times, do they always shop after 8pm etc.
Using such data, you can create automated messages that ensure the right message reaches the right recipient at the right time depending on user behaviour. Of course, you should also take this into account when creating your Black Friday campaign.
Examples of how you can personalise your messages:
- Refer to your recipient by their first name.
- Customise the message according to the recipient's geographical location (e.g. if you hold physical events or have special offers in stores).
- Customise offers and send personalised recommendations based on previous purchases.
- Respect the recipient's time zone and any content preferences (if you have collected this data).
- Take extra care of your loyal customers with special offers and events.
#2 Respect your recipients
When a new consumer says "yes please" to receiving SMS and RCS from your company, it's a sign of trust and genuine interest. You need to honour that trust by only sending messages that are actually relevant and interesting to your recipient.
Keep in mind that direct-to-mobile messages are sent to a much more personalised channel than most others. That's why it works so well - but it also means it's important not to send too many or "meaningless" messages. This can end up frustrating the recipient rather than piquing their interest and eventually result in an unsubscribe from your mobile list.
As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't send messages before 8am or after 9pm (in your recipient's time zone) unless they are very important. For example, Black Friday can be the exception to the rule, but do it wisely.
#3 Consider whether emojis and links enrich your message
It is often discussed and debated whether you should use emojis in your text messages. The answer to the question will vary depending on who you ask.
You can read our take on the issue in the post about emojis in SMS.
Because emojis are not proven to increase conversion and are expensive to send, we generally recommend that you use links in your Black Friday SMS messages instead. A link can direct your recipient to the part of your website you want. For example, a landing page made specifically for your Black Friday offers.
If you want to use more visual elements such as images and emojis, you should instead send RCS messages where this is an option.
#4 Be specific in your messages and remember a CTA
An SMS message is limited in the number of characters that can be written. Sending valuable SMS messages can therefore be an exercise in itself. When creating your Black Friday SMS strategy, you should make your messages as specific as possible. This also applies to RCS messages, although here you are not as limited in the number of characters. Both messages land in the same mobile inbox and should therefore be kept relatively short with an easily readable message.
Remember to have a clear CTA(Call to Action) so your recipients know what to do after reading your message. When your recipients know what products and offers they can get their hands on, where and when, they are more likely to make a purchase.
#5 Ask for feedback after Black Friday
Thank your customers for shopping with you during Black Week and ask them for feedback. Are they happy with their purchase, did they have problems shopping on Black Friday or did everything go smoothly?
Data like this is essential for your business and your future marketing strategy. For example, you can ask for feedback by opening up SMS replies and asking the recipient to rate their experience on a scale from 1-10. You can also send a link to a short questionnaire or start a dialogue on RCS. There are many ways to ask for feedback.
All that remains is to wish you good luck & with your own Black Friday strategy!
FAQ: Black Friday
Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, when stores and webshops typically offer extraordinary discounts and deals.
In 2025, Black Friday will fall on Friday 28 November - the same day many Danes get paid and just before the first Sunday of Advent.
Cyber Monday takes place the Monday after Black Friday and is a day dedicated to great online deals. It's an important anniversary to remember if you work for an online store.
Cyber Monday is Monday 1 December 2025. It's always the Monday after Black Friday.
SMS is a direct and personalised channel with extremely high visibility. With open rates of up to 98% and click-through rates well above email, SMS is one of the most effective channels for driving quick sales during Black Friday - especially when competition for attention is at its peak.
There are many ways you can use SMS to create awareness and sales for Black Friday / Cyber Monday. Some of the most effective strategies include: giving early access to your best offers, sending exclusive discount codes, activating previous customers with targeted messages and combining SMS communication with email for maximum impact. The more relevant and well-timed your SMS campaigns are, the higher the conversion rate.
Mobile dominates Black Friday sales. In 2024, over 60% of all purchases were made via mobile and for the first time, the mobile conversion rate was higher than desktop. That's why it's crucial that your campaigns - especially SMS and landing pages - are optimised for mobile.
There is no one right answer - but a rule of thumb is to send 1-2 relevant SMS messages in the week leading up to Black Friday, 1-2 SMS messages on Black Friday itself and then 1 SMS on Cyber Monday with a last chance offer. Frequency is also highly dependent on your target audience. The most important thing is that the content is relevant, targeted and doesn't feel spammy.
