In the final part of our series exploring Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this month is all about the key benefits behind the promotional event and some top tips on how to maximise the sale-hungry shoppers.
Following on from last month’s insight on what some furnishings retailers are doing to promote Black Friday, hopefully this has given you some firepower to market your own Black Friday offers. We also touched on a key marketing tool to drive such campaigns – text marketing. And it’s here where we resume.
With many retailers using the method of gathering signups to stay in the loop of promotional activities – go one further and capture the phone numbers of visiting prospects. You may already be doing this, which is great, but for those you only request the email, you’re missing a big marketing opportunity via the text channel.
Whether you are promoting a specific product promotion or one-off discount during the event, utilising text marketing can be a real game-changer. Here’s a quick reminder of the key stats behind the strategy. Around 72% of UK consumers made online purchases via a smartphone in Q3 2024, with 40% of consumers finding it convenient for mobile purchases, while according to the World Economic Forum, SMS has a 98% open rate and a 45% response rate – compared to email which is around 20% or 6%.
Around 90% of users open a text within three minutes of receiving it and 94% of consumers prefer SMS above any other communications channel including email, letter and phone call. The data also outlines that 79% of consumers would consider purchasing a product from a marketing message received via SMS (or WhatsApp), and 90% say personalised messages encourage them to act.
It’s the final point that really hits home. As part of RetailSystem’s text marketing service, FurnitureTexts, they recently announced a major upgrade by rolling out customisable SMS and text headers for its customers. This means RetailSystem will register each retailer’s chosen name with the local networks, enabling a personalised message to your customers.
That means every promotional or service text is clearly branded, trusted, and fully whitelisted. The impact? Retailers can expect a 25–30% boost in read rates on an already successful feature – putting their chosen brand name front and centre in every customer interaction.
It’s a no brainer to get involved and maximise the reach when promoting Black Friday offers (or even Christmas – or even the January 2026 sale! The options and possibilities of text marketing are endless.
With FurnitureTexts in mind, let’s take a look at the key benefits and top tips for Black Friday for any last-minute campaign fine-tuning.
The Flash Sale
Flash sales for customers are effective because the urgency of the sale encourages quick action, while the exclusivity demonstrates appreciation for your customer base. You guessed it, using text marketing is a great prompt to encourage shoppers to engage and not miss out.
Social Media
Black Friday promotions will be scattered everywhere across social media channels. The advantage is, it can connect with your audience. Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are the front runners to get in the faces of consumers, so plan content accordingly for each platform and have fun with it. You never know, your Black Friday post could be the one that goes ‘viral’!
Business Partnerships
Black Friday presents a great opportunity to partner with other local small businesses. This enables you to expand your reach, encourage cross-referral relationships and offer a shared promotion. It could even form a text marketing campaign whereby the promotion offers a collaborative incentive – if they buy a product from you, they get a discounted meal at the local café? You get the idea.
Gift Card
Incentivising gift card purchases can be an effective Black Friday promotion too. Perhaps shoppers are not ready to commit to a big-ticket purchase and don’t like the immediate pressure the sale event forces. To counter this mindset, why not offer a discount gift card option – this can either be used for future purchases for that customer or even for them to gift elsewhere. What it means is, that they will be back at some point. This can also be easily integrated into text marketing too.
Re-Target
Finally, let’s look at the dataset from last year. Do you have data on which of your customers bought during Black Friday? If you do, it could be a goldmine. Again, target these consumers – via text of course – and push the narrative of the success from last year and then emphasise similar deals they could jump at. Don’t just thing about customers to re-target too, what about popular products? Dig back to see which products sold the best during Black Friday and find the sweet spot with what to promote this year.
Data to Digest
Previously, we shared IMRG’s report where home and garden retailers saw an increase of 4.1% compared to Black Friday last year, while Cyber Monday sales were down 2.5%. In terms of market segment, budget items through the period were up 3.3%, mid-market products rose 4.6%, while premium sales were down 15.2%. Garden furniture saw the biggest rise, up 8.8%, while furniture sales rose 5.1% overall – and also up 5.8% on Black Friday itself. Home improvement sales rose 2.9%, while homeware sales were up 7.6%.
More broadly speaking, according to a Forbes survey, 69% of UK consumers prefer to buy from small businesses unless a large company is necessary – indicating the importance of offering a good in-store and online experience, while research from Nosto shows just how much weight user-generated content (UGC) carries, with 81% of millennials, 86% of Gen Z, and 73% of Gen X saying they are more likely to buy products supported by customer photos or videos.
The Nosto survey also suggests that 83% of people say they want more authentic shopping experiences, 88% say authenticity is important when choosing a brand and 70% expect a level of personalisation.
Meanwhile, in partnership with IMRG and via the British Retail Consortium (BRC), an Ecommpay report found that retail traffic in November 2024 was down by 4.3% YoY, yet revenue rose by 0.9% – the third consecutive month of online growth. This signals a more intentional consumer: fewer browsers, more buyers. Conversion rate improvements helped drive this outcome. On average, conversion hit 4.6% during Black Friday week (up from 4.2% in 2023), with standout days like Cyber Monday reaching 5.3%. Retailers who optimised the customer journey, especially at the product and checkout stages, were more likely to convert high-intent visitors.
Turning attention to Cyber Monday, in 2024, it had the best overall performance across both traffic and conversion, despite the lowest engagement times. This may reflect savvier, more purposeful shopping behaviour – many shoppers were primed and ready, checking out with minimal friction. The average order value (AOV) on Cyber Monday reached £131.95, the highest seen in four years. With customers willing to buy more expensive items.
Furthermore, paid social and email saw slight declines in traffic generation. This shift suggests that traditional digital channels may be getting saturated or deprioritised by shoppers seeking higher-quality engagements – again, another nod towards text marketing.
On discounts and conversions, the report highlighted that retailers offering 10% off saw around a 60% conversion rate at checkout, while those offering 80% off reached nearly 78%.
So, there you have it. Over the past three months, we’ve explored everything Black Friday. It’s certainly worth getting involved in and there’s plenty of scope to suggest that shoppers will be looking for those big-ticket items in the furnishings industry.
And what’s one of the best ways to engage this Black Friday? By sending a text of course. FurnitureTexts, powered by RetailSystem, delivers rapid setup, with campaigns live within minutes — including scheduling by time zone and targeted customer filters.
What’s more, campaign creation is free. You’re only charged when a message is sent — keeping your marketing spend lean and targeted. With SMS campaigns consistently outperforming other channels, you can expect potential open rates above 90% and significantly higher response rates than email or social media promotions.
Whatever your company is planning for Black Friday, give it that extra push by sending a Black Friday text. Now, it’s over to you.
For more information, visit https://www.retailsystem.com/uk/features/text-marketing/