5 tips for successful Black Friday marketing based on Moodings’ 460% growth

It might not shock you that Moodings, a Danish brand that sells furniture, light, and home accessories, is rapidly expanding across Europe.

After all, people around the world love Scandinavian home styles.

What may be surprising is the marketing channel Moodings says is at the heart of their upcoming Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) marketing strategy: SMS.

Text message marketing is still in early adoption in Europe, but this won’t be the first time Moodings has dived into new territory. In the last year, they’ve already expanded into 8 new countries and fired up their marketing engine, even translating their emails into 8 different languages.

As a result, they grew their email marketing revenue by 460% in just one month.

With these successes already under their belt, Daniel Selde, chief marketing officer (CMO) for the brand, shared 5 ways they’re preparing for Black Friday and the upcoming holiday shopping season.

1. Introduce SMS marketing as a new channel before the holidays

Data shows people want brands to text them. Even so, texting is an untapped channel for many brands—but the Moodings team doesn’t think it’ll be that way for long.

“I think SMS is how we’ll win Black Friday this year,” Daniel went on to say.

Text message marketing also offers a way to break through the noise of a busy sale season, when consumers are often overwhelmed with marketing messages.

“Seeing an ad for ‘70% off’ on Facebook is so common that it’s easy for customers to ignore it. But getting a text message stands out from our competition because so few brands are texting customers,” Daniel explained.

Given the rising costs of paid advertising channels—especially during Black Friday—Moodings predicts SMS will be a more cost-effective choice during the heavy sale season.

“Because of how expensive Facebook and Google advertising are during Black Friday, I think SMS will actually be less expensive than ads during that week. It’s an extraordinary time to take advantage of SMS, which also has particularly high conversion rates,” Daniel said.

Tip: Start collecting phone numbers and SMS marketing consent to text your customers during Black Friday sales.

2. Build your customer marketing lists

As BFCM approaches, Moodings want to make sure they have a healthy list of customers they can engage with through email and text messages.

To get there, the Moodings team will use paid advertisements on channels like Facebook, Pinterest and Google to find new people. Then, they’re reducing their reliance on third-party channels by driving those potential customers to their website and encouraging them to sign up to their marketing list.

Once someone has signed up on their website, Moodings continues marketing to them for free with a personalized automated email series, rather than spending more money on Facebook or Google to serve up additional ads.

Tip: Start growing your customer marketing list now. That way, when Black Friday comes, you’ll have a healthy list of subscribers to send your great deals to.

3. Go straight to the regional experts to localize your marketing

Moodings knows the key to targeted marketing campaigns is to understand your audience—especially key cultural nuances.

“Our brand presence is powerful in Denmark, so we can send out messages in English or almost any language, versus only Scandinavian. But in new markets for us, like France, if we market to someone in English, they won’t appreciate it—especially because French people prefer to converse in French,” Daniel said.

After Moodings’ expansion into other countries earlier this year, they knew they’d need to account for how different countries view Black Friday and marketing communications.

They could’ve settled for customer research in the region, but they wanted to give their customers the most personalized, relevant experience possible.

“To get ready for Black Friday, we hired seven new marketers from France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Sweden and more. With these regional experts, we’ll be able to translate our emails and text messages, plus know about cultural subtleties we otherwise may have missed,” Daniel explained.

Tip: Even if you’re not dealing with international borders, take Moodings’ approach and make sure your marketing resonates with your target audience by getting their perspective.

4. Collect Customer-First Data™ for more personalized campaigns across marketing channels

Leading up to Black Friday, Moodings wants to make sure they have enough data about their customers to create a smooth customer experience.

“Personalization is especially important in SMS marketing, which is more intimate than email and might require a more formal tone depending on the audience. For example, people in older generations and cultures like Germany will respond better to messages that include ‘Sir/Madam’ and their last name,” Daniel explained.

So what data is most important for Moodings? The information they can collect straight from their customer, also known as Customer-First Data—the combination of zero- and first-party data.

“Right now, we’re most interested in getting the basics from our customers: First and last names, country, email, and phone number,” Daniel shared.

With this information, Moodings can target their marketing messages based on region. Plus, this information will set the stage to connect all the customer data for an even more tailored customer experience—which is Moodings’ ultimate goal with data.

“In the future, we’ll also tap into more advanced data about people’s preferences to build personas to segment with. With Klaviyo’s Custimy integration, we have access to predictive analytics even more powerful than on other customer data platforms (CDPs) like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Oracle, and Adobe,” Daniel explained.

With both a user’s email and information about how they interact with their website, Moodings can then target content based on what products shoppers add to their cart, what products they are most likely to be interested in, and more.

Wondering what data you should collect ahead of BFCM? If you only have customers in one region, it might not make sense to ask people where they live. But perhaps you want to know what products they’re most interested in or when their birthday is so you can offer them a special discount.

Tip: When they sign up to your marketing list, ask your customers for personal information that can help you send them more meaningful messages.

5. Re-envision paid advertising goals

As the cost of advertising on third-party channels rises and attribution becomes less accurate, Moodings are rethinking how they evaluate success on channels like Facebook and Google.

“Because of all the third-party data changes, return on ad spend (ROAS) will be much lower this year since you can’t track the entire funnel for most shoppers,” Daniel said.

With how uncertain ROAS is now, Moodings looks to an entirely different metric to monitor their ad spend: customer acquisition cost (CAC).

What’s more, Moodings’ goal is to keep their CAC spend reasonable versus making a huge profit on each ad-driven purchase—but they’ll use other channels to ultimately turn a profit from these sales.

Tip: Re-evaluate how you spend money on paid advertising channels. Plus, make the most of whatever money you do spend on them by nurturing customers after Black Friday with email, SMS, and your other owned marketing channels.

Now is the time to get ready for BFCM

When it comes to Black Friday, it’s never too early to get ready. As you go through the BFCM checklist and put the finishing touches on your own marketing and promotion plans, keep Moodings’ tips in mind.

Remember: If you’re thinking about trying SMS marketing, Black Friday just might be the perfect time to use this under-used channel to cut through the typical holiday noise.