Are you ready for the 2024 Black Friday & Cyber Monday messaging surge?

With the holidays and shopping season just around the corner it’s time for brands to prepare for a major messaging surge that we expect will surpass last year’s holiday traffic influx.

This year shoppers are hunting for deals earlier than ever to try and save on holiday expenses. With the increase of cost of living affecting households worldwide, 75% of shoppers are planning on participating in holiday flash sales like Black Friday (BF, meaning brands should be expecting a larger number of messages and interactions during peak holidays. 

Brands need to be ready with a solution that can manage such a high number of messages sent in a single day. All retailers want to avoid their system crashing, messages going undelivered and customers feeling ignored on such an important weekend.

This blog will cover our predictions for the Black Friday (BF) and Cyber Monday (CM) messaging surge of 2024 and a few tips to ensure your messaging is reliable and delivered properly this shopping season.

Key takeaways:

SMS is a staple for business messaging. With its high reach and delivery rate, it’s a must-have channel for brands, especially on busy shopping days like BF and CM.

Our analysts have forecasted that the potential SMS traffic this holiday weekend compared to an average day in November of 2024 will see massive spikes in interactions:

Popular SMS use cases for Black Friday: 

As important as it is for brands to prepare for the BF CM weekend, the lead up to the holidays is proving to be more and more important as well. We predict that brands will gradually be sending more SMS messages in the week leading up to November 29^th. We expect messaging to gradually grow by about 42% between November 11^th and November 27^th before the major spike that is expected on Black Friday. 

MMS messaging is popular in North America thanks to its ability to share multimedia with the same reach as its counterpart, SMS.

Our analysts predict that we can expect major boosts in MMS messaging in the USA this year compared to an average day in November:

Popular MMS use cases for Black Friday:

RCS is a unique channel, considered to be the latest generation of SMS. It offers digital channel features but with native integration on mobile phones, now also including iPhones.

Globally, we estimate that RCS usage on BF and CM 2024 will be significantly greater than last year’s activity, depending on how heavily brands rely on this channel for holiday campaigns.

We have seen RCS usage grow about 7.5 times YoY and are expecting RCS messaging to be anywhere from 10-15 times higher on BF and CM than on the same weekend in 2023.

Popular use cases:

When it comes to digital messaging apps, WhatsApp is a popular channel in the USA with over 100 million monthly active users, and 2 billion monthly active users globally. With its rich messaging features, it can help brand messages stand out on busy days like BF and CM with its ability to offer in-app eCommerce shopping experiences.

Compared to BF and CM last year, we expect WhatsApp usage to increase in the USA and globally:

Popular WhatsApp use cases for Cyber Monday:

Another traditional and reliable channel, particularly for marketing campaigns, email is expected to experience boosts in traffic both in the USA and globally when compared to an average day in November 2024.

Brands will be expected to deliver the same kind of experiences to their customers on this holiday weekend as they would on a regular Monday. There are a few ways brands can take advantage of emerging trends that can help them not only manage these interactions but provide a smooth conversational experience that will satisfy customer expectations.

Conversational rich messaging

Channels like RCS and WhatsApp can transform the way brands interact with their customers this shopping season. The rich messaging capabilities of each channel allows customers to interact and view products right in the chat and enables brands to build an entire conversational journey within a single conversation.

For instance, a retailer can target customers on RCS or WhatsApp with a recommended product or service, customers can scroll through RCS carousels or WhatsApp Flows to shop and browse in the chat. If they have questions, they can ask directly on the channel, get answers instantly, place orders, and in some instances even convert and complete a payment within the same conversation.

Hyper-personalization

Customers want to feel valued and important to brands, it’s the best way to ensure a BF or CM purchase is not a once-a-year occurrence. Personalization is now commonplace for many retailers but, to stay top of mind, they need to hyper-personalize interactions.

Using valuable customer data, brands can send relevant and timely product recommendations, personalized offers and promotions, and anticipate if a customer might be interested in re-purchasing or re-engaging with your brand.

AI and automation

But how can brands manage building such detailed customer journeys that also incorporate hyper-personalized messaging? AI and automation are critical tools that retailers should utilize to streamline their processes and ensure smooth operations during BF and CM.

Martech, B2B eCommerce, and customer engagement platforms need to prepare for a massiveinflux of requests and messagesfrom retailers. To meet these high expectations and keep processes running smoothly, platforms need to look for a partner with a conversational experience platform who can successfully meet their customers’ expectations with:

Infobip solutions will help you deliver better engagement for your customers on the busiest shopping days of the year. We ensure your processes and interactions run smoothly with:

Businesses should level up generic BFCM messages by hyper-personalizing interactions and targeting the right audience with conversational interactions. By adopting Infobip solutions, retailers can offer better engagement during the busy shopping season.

Conversational experience platform

Infobip’s conversational experience platform enables brands to collect data, build marketing campaigns, connect with customers on a cloud contact center, and design and launch various chatbots on a single unified platform.

This gives brands a full view of their customer interactions, allows for easy management of conversations, and enables brands to build and launch end-to-end journey on any messaging channel, or a combination of channels.

Want a more plug-and-play approach? Infobip solutions can be integrated individually into your existing communication tech stack depending on your business needs:

CPaaS

Start by integrating various channels to your communications stack by adopting a CPaaS solution. Offer customers a variety of ways to reach out to your business based on their preferences. Your messages will have a higher rate of delivery through CPaaS thanks to fallback channels.

A customer data platform

Collect all your customer data in one place. Gather valuable information from past interactions and browsing behavior to build detailed customer profiles that help you segment your audience for the right messages and campaigns.

An omnichannel customer engagement solution

Create personalized messaging flows and targeted campaigns for the right customers on BFCM. Choose the perfect channel and time to engage with them and help boost interactions, conversions and overall sales.

Cloud contact center

Allow agents to have a full view of customer conversations on one platform. They can manage multiple conversations on multiple channels to offer customers faster and more efficient support on some of the busiest days of the year.

Chatbot building platform

Craft the ideal chatbot for your business to offer self-service options to customers and lower the demand for agents to work on high-volume low-value inquiries. End-users can get their questions answered instantly and on their preferred channel.

Create ideal workflows and campaigns based on your audience with the help of CX consultancy. Working with a team of experts will help your business find the best combination of solutions and channels to boost ROI and engagement during one of the busiest messaging seasons of the year.

Take advantage of the vast number of messages expected for BFCM 2024. By adapting conversational commerce tactics and automating sales processes, businesses and platforms can create personalized end-to-end customer journeys that includes purchasing. Reduce pain points, offer better engagement and increase conversions by guiding customers through a seamless conversational journey on their favorite channel. A robust conversational platform that delivers high throughput will help businesses manage their communications and bring their marketing strategies to the next level.