How to text your way to record sales this Afterpay Day

Let’s talk. It’s been a little while since the last big sale, you know, all the way back in 2023. By now, the novelty of presents received last year (or bought for oneself – hey, no judgement!) is probably starting to wear off. So, with the first big retail event of 2024 inching closer, your customers are out there looking to shop up a storm. Question is: how do you get them to think of you first?

Afterpay Day keeps getting bigger every year

Every year in March and August, shoppers throng to stores – both online and brick and mortar – looking for great deals. In fact, more than 7 in 10 of the 1,000 customers surveyed by Afterpay said they had spent up to $500 in recent Afterpay Day sales. And 8 in 10 of these said they planned to spend money on future Afterpay Day events. 1 in 3 of these even said they would spend more on future Afterpay Day sales than they have in previous years.

These are some staggering stats, which is why it’s not surprising that at 67%, Afterpay Day has the highest conversion rate of any sale event – including Black Friday.

While BFCM sees brands go all in when it comes to SMS marketing campaigns, the numbers above make the compelling case that Afterpay Day should be just as high up on the priority list for marketers.

SMS marketing is exploding in its own right

While Email is a marketing mainstay, SMS is quickly cementing its position as the HOTTEST revenue generation tool for eCommerce brands. Not only does the channel boast open rates as high as 98% but, on average, 90% of these messages are read within the first 3 minutes. Let that sink in.

As an opt-in only channel that brands own fully, SMS offers endless possibilities when used strategically. In other words, you should be beating down the door to add SMS marketing to your retention strategy.

Afterpay Day 2024 + Yotpo SMS = 🤑

You now know your shoppers are out there looking to snap up great deals and you definitely know you’ll get the eyeballs with SMS marketing. All you’ve got to do is put the two together. But not because we said so. According to Afterpay data, some brands saw sales soar by as much as 42% during Afterpay Day, with their marketing teams attributing these results to using their owned channels well, specifically Email and SMS.

eCommerce and D2C brands in Australia have seen some great results with SMS marketing. LSKD is a case in point. Leveraging segmentation and a variety of top-performing flows allowed the cult activewear brand to accelerate business growth by engaging more meaningfully with their customers. Working closely with our CSMs, LSKD saw an impressive 147x ROI on an SMS campaign where loyalty members were offered exclusive early access to a newly launched product. Plus, with Yotpo’s subscriber collection tools, LSKD managed to attract more SMS subscribers than they ever thought possible, allowing them to reach customers on a device checked some 85 times a day.

So, this Afterpay Day (14-17 March), there’s every reason for you to double down on your SMS marketing strategy. Here are just a few examples to inspire you to craft your own irresistibly clickable Afterpay Day campaigns.

Here are 5 more reasons to choose Yotpo SMS

Say more with MMS: 1600 characters, emoji, GIFs, images? If increasing conversions is what you’re after, you’ll want to show customers what hot deals are going, not tell. Hundreds of brands are successfully using SMS and MMS to drive CTR and, ultimately, higher revenue.
Work smart, not hard: Yotpo SMS gives you access to an evergreen library of pre-written messages for key retail dates and a full calendar of events for campaign planning all year round. All you do? Just plug and play… and convert on big sale days like these.
Personalisation at its best: Yotpo SMS has unmatched segmentation capabilities to create high impact audiences with ease and hit them with personalised messaging. Use data points from loyalty and subscriptions to see your customers for all that they are and put together campaigns tailored to their unique journey.
The strategy behind the strategy: Aka our amazing CSMs. When crafting winning SMS campaigns, should you say ‘babe’ or leave it out? Should you go with a discount code or offer points to redeem with next purchase? Let our CSMs help you make data-driven decisions.
Win with Yotpo Synergies: What if you could turn the data your customers are already sharing with you to stitch together a more seamless and personalised experience? In a way that they don’t ever feel like they’re being marketed to, but more like you really just understand them? Yotpo’s deep cross-product synergies – between SMS, Email, Loyalty, Reviews and more – are your answer.