Black Friday was born in America, however it has quickly caught the attention of the UK and gone onto become an incredible record breaking day for UK and US retailers, and a day for the consumer to grab a discounted bargain.
Consumers have gone wild for these Black Friday deals in recent years, hour long queues, products selling out in minutes, websites crashing under sheer volumes of visitors and many wrestling matches over the last sale items in-store.
So are we in for more of the same this year?
It seems so. Experian-IMRG are predicting a record breaking Black Friday for the UK, they are predicting that online retail sales will exceed the £1 billion mark for the first time ever in UK history on a single day. They predict £1.07 billion in online retail sales which is a year-on-year rise of 32%.
Here are just some of the incredible stats from Black Friday 2014
- £810 million estimated spend online in the UK
- £720 million estimated spend on Cyber Monday
- 181 million online UK retail site visits
- Smartphone traffic was up by 57% from Black Friday 2013
“The size and scale of Black Friday 2014 took everyone by surprise, overwhelming some carrier and retailer operations, as order volumes came in at a full 30 per cent higher than expectation. All the indicators point to a much larger Black Friday this year – both in terms of greater numbers of retailers taking part and growing shopper interest – so the opportunity is vast” Justin Opie, managing director at IMRG.
One of this year’s predictions is for the Black Friday sale madness to spread over more than just one day, and they are calling this the ‘Black Friday period’. We already have Cyber Monday which broke retail records in the US last year, and now with so many retailers eager for Black Friday business, there seems to be some suggestions that some retailers might advertise and rollout their deals and offers before the Friday in an effort to get heard and beat the competition.
Getting your message heard and beating the competition to those Black Friday sales is the biggest question/problem that faces the retailers around the Black Friday period. Emails get missed or placed in spam folders and social media is jam packed full of millions of sales, discounts and cat videos.
98% of all texts get read. 29% of tweets, 22% of emails and 22% of Facebook posts get read
(Frost & Sullivan)
So with all this in mind, what is the best way to get your message heard this Black Friday?
Sending them a text message. Sending your customers Black Friday offers and details is a sure way to make sure that your customers visit you online or in-store as a text message is very hard to ignore, and in all this Black Friday discount madness, the ability to almost guarantee your message will be heard could mean the difference between success and failure.
Infographic from Text Marketer