Go Back to the Basics: Review Your Email & SMS Marketing Before BFCM

Now is the perfect time to review your email and SMS marketing before the holiday season.

Every year around this time, it feels like we speed through Back-to-School and head straight into the holiday season. Businesses that start planning early for Black Friday and Cyber Monday are already thinking about promotions, offers, and campaign calendars.

Planning ahead is important, but before you jump into creating holiday campaigns, take a step back and review the basics of your email and SMS marketing.

One thing I see every year is that businesses spend weeks planning Black Friday promotions without first making sure the rest of their program is ready. A successful holiday season doesn't start with sending more emails and SMS messages. It starts with a customer experience that's been thoughtfully built over time.

Before you dive into planning, here are five areas worth reviewing now so you're ready for the 2026 holiday season.

1. Define Success Before the Holidays Begin

Before you build a single campaign, ask yourself what success looks like for your business.

Is it increased revenue? More repeat customers? More appointments booked? Higher average order value?

Take a fresh look at your customer journey from beginning to end. Does it still tell the right story and, more importantly, does it still support your business today?

One of the first questions I ask clients is, "What does success look like?" If the answer is simply "more opens" or "more clicks," we're missing the bigger picture.

Opens and clicks are helpful metrics, but they aren't the goal. Email and SMS marketing should support your business goals, and one of the biggest indicators of success is whether your customers come back.

If you define success before the holiday season begins, you'll have a much clearer picture of how your campaigns performed when it's over.

2. Start with the Customer Experience

Customers don't experience individual campaigns. They experience your brand.

Take a fresh look at your customer journey from beginning to end. Does it still tell the right story and, most importantly, does it still support the needs of your business today? I’m actually in the process of doing this right now for my own welcome series. 

Review the experiences your customers have after they join your list or make a purchase, including:

• Welcome emails or welcome series

• Post-purchase communications

• Review requests

• Re-engagement campaigns

I often tell clients that staying connected matters. If I visit a business once and never hear from them again, there's a good chance I'll forget about them. Not because I wasn't happy with the experience, but because life gets busy. That's why a thoughtful customer journey is so important.

3. Focus on Relevance, Not Volume

Sending more emails isn't the goal. Sending more relevant emails is.

This is where segmentation becomes so important.

Depending on your business, do you really need to send every holiday campaign to your entire list? Probably not.

One mistake I see is businesses treating every subscriber the same. A first-time customer doesn't need the same message as a loyal customer, and someone who just purchased probably doesn't need another sales email the next day.

The more relevant your messaging is, the more valuable it becomes to your customers.

4. Make Email and SMS Work Together

Email and SMS work best when they complement one another rather than compete.

Instead of sending the same message through both channels, think about which one makes the most sense for the communication.

Email is great for sharing details, showcasing products, and telling your story. SMS works well for timely reminders, flash sales, appointment reminders, and messages that require immediate attention.

One conversation I often have is about timing. Just because you can send a text message doesn't always mean you should. Think about when that message is arriving on someone's phone and whether SMS is the best channel for that communication.

The goal is to send the right message through the right channel at the right time.

5. Review Your Data

I know reviewing data isn't nearly as exciting as building holiday campaigns, but it's one of the most important things you can do before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Take some time to review the health of your email list. Clean data is essential for building segments, personalizing your messaging, and creating better customer journeys. It also helps protect your sender reputation, so your holiday emails have the best chance of reaching the inbox.

I've said it before, and it's worth repeating: Your email strategy is only as good as your data. If your data isn't accurate, even the best-designed holiday campaign won't perform the way you expect.

One of the tools I recommend for maintaining a healthy email list is ZeroBounce. If you've been putting off list maintenance, now is the perfect time to do it before your holiday campaigns begin.

👉 You can learn more about ZeroBounce here.

Going back to the basics doesn't mean starting over.

It means making sure the basics of your email and SMS marketing are ready to support your busiest season of the year.

Related Blog Posts

• Four Things to Revisit in Your Email Program Before BFCM – A practical checklist for reviewing your email program before the holiday season.

• Your Email Strategy Is Only As Good As Your Data – Why clean, accurate data is the foundation of every successful email program.

• Last-Minute Black Friday & Cyber Monday Tips – A final checklist for the days leading up to your holiday campaigns.