SMS & Winter Sales
Trends 2023

Every year, SMS marketing traffic intensifies at the beginning of January. The reason? The start of the winter sales.

However, the emergence of new promotional highlights has changed the game somewhat in recent years, raising some questions: are winter sales still as important to consumers? Do marketers approach sales as usual? Which communication media are favored to promote this promotional period?

To answer all these questions, we conducted a survey among our customers. Here's a look back, in pictures and statistics, at the marketing evolution and use of SMS for the winter sales.

Computer graphics

The results of this survey, conducted from November 30 to December 20, are based on 203 responses from customers of the smsmode^©

The results of the smsmode© survey on SMS for the winter sales:

The first (reassuring) conclusion we can draw is that sales stay ahead of other promotional highlights. The two sales periods of the year occupy the top two places on the podium (summer sales in 1^erfollowed closely by winter).

Our survey also confirms another point: the power of SMS to effectively implement a drive-to-store strategy . drive-to-store strategy. In fact, 80% of customers who responded to the survey plan to run a marketing campaign via SMS for a physical store.

There's also a real paradox, which this survey on the use of SMS for winter sales allows us to glimpse:

• 62% of our customers believe that the winter sales have lost importance to other emerging promotional highlights such as Black Friday and its online sequel, Cyber Monday.
• However, 68% of them plan campaigns that are larger or of the same scope as in previous years (52% same as last year, 16% larger).

Although marketers perceive a decline in consumer interest in winter sales, marketing pressure - at least from SMS- is not waning. Why is this? Probably, because SMS is a channel with a high ROI, which works even in this kind of situation.

As for our customers' and prospects' favorite communication media, SMS is obviously the channel that dominates all the others (92% expected use). The medium that ranks 2nd, far ahead of the others, is emailing. SMS therefore seems to be the channel of choice for communicators pursuing a digital, multi-channel marketing strategy.

But this data may also open up another avenue for reflection. The other point in common between emailing and SMS is opt-in. For promotional periods such as sales, focusing on loyal customers and/or those with an appetite for our products and services seems to be a good way of boosting sales without having to deploy colossal resources.