Most BFCM planning is about getting new traffic in the door. Some of the best revenue is already in your customer list: people who bought from you before, know the brand, and have gone quiet.
Black Friday is November 27, about five weeks away. That is enough time to text your past customers, but not enough to wait. Here is what a database reactivation involves, and the timeline that works.
Repeat customers make up about 21% of customers but about 44% of revenue, according to Gorgias data cited by Shopify. The people who have already bought are the most valuable people on your list.
They are also the easiest to reach with a reason. A sale season gives you one. A text that picks up from what someone last bought reads very differently from a generic blast, and a customer who replies is already a conversation, not a cold start.
It is a one-time first round of texts to past customers who have stopped buying. It is the starting point for Customer Winback, which then keeps running on ongoing triggers. It takes three steps.
1. You send a customer export. Phone number, last order date, product purchased, and opt-in status, plus your SMS opt-out list. No store connection is needed.
2. The list gets prepared. Duplicates and unreachable numbers are removed, and customers are grouped by what they bought and how long ago. You confirm consent before anything is sent.
3. Conversations start. Each message picks up from the customer's last order. You set the offer, such as a percent off, buy one get one, or free shipping. Replies are reviewed, and anything that needs a person goes to one.
The best fit is customers who last ordered 4 to 24 months ago and opted in within the past 24 months. You need at least 1,000 of them for a first round to be meaningful.
Here is an illustrative example, using the same math as the calculator on our site. Take 10,000 past customers, a $65 average order, and a 7% win-back rate. That is 700 orders and $45,500 in repeat revenue.
At that size, the round uses about 15,600 credits. At $0.20 per credit, that is $3,120. These numbers are an example, not a promise, and revenue is not profit. Your list, your offer, and your customers will move every one of them. You can run your own numbers in the calculator.
Go-live averages 5 to 7 days, mostly because of carrier registration, which is set by the carriers and cannot be rushed. Working back from November 27:
This week. Send your customer export and get a free revenue review. It reports how many customers are reachable and how much repeat revenue winback could realistically add. Nothing is sent to your customers.
Next week. If the numbers make sense, start the free trial. It needs a card on file, a consent attestation, and acceptance of short trial terms. Nothing is billed during the trial. Carrier registration begins here.
5 to 7 days later. You are live. That puts the first conversations in the middle of November, with time to see what customers respond to before the rush.
The trial includes 1,500 credits, a $300 value, for up to 30 days. Because replies use credits too, that typically reaches about 800 to 1,000 customers. You get the report right after the trial ends, with orders measured against a holdout group so only incremental revenue counts. It is then updated from orders in the 30 to 45 days after each customer re-engages.
Pull these together now, and the start is quick:
The export. Phone number, last order date, product purchased, and opt-in status for each customer.
Your opt-out list. Anyone who has asked to stop receiving texts stays off the list.
Consent confirmation. You confirm that the customers on the list agreed to receive texts before anything goes out.
An offer. Decide what you are willing to put in front of a returning customer, and whether it changes for the sale weekend.
Customer Winback is fully managed. We run the infrastructure: the phone numbers, the carrier registration, and the conversations. AI reviews every conversation and escalates to a human when needed. Texts go out within CART's messaging standards, and the brand confirms customer consent before anything is sent.
Black Friday arrives on the same date either way. The customers who already know your brand are the ones most likely to answer a text from you, and the only thing that changes is whether you reached them before the rush.
Send us your customer export and we size the opportunity from your own order history. Nothing is sent to your customers.
Get Your Free Revenue Review →