Your BFCM SMS Calendar, Day by Day

By the end of this guide you will have a day-by-day SMS calendar for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2026, from early access in mid-November through the week after Cyber Monday. Each day has what to send, when to send it, the rules every send must follow, and who answers the replies. Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, so the plan below uses those dates.

What do you need before you start?

Settle these before you schedule any texts.

• A consented list. Text only people who agreed to receive marketing texts from you, and know where each opt-in came from. Holiday pressure is not a reason to text a list you bought or an email list that never opted in to SMS.
• Quiet hours by time zone. Federal rules bar telephone solicitations to residential subscribers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., local time at the called party's location². Some states set narrower windows or limit how many messages you can send in a day. Your business must follow these rules, so get your own legal advice and schedule by each subscriber's time zone, not yours.
• Working opt-outs. Every stop request must be honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days². Check that a stop reply in any flow removes the number from every other flow.
• One page of answers. Shipping cutoffs, code and stacking rules, price-match policy, return windows for gifts, and stock levels on your best sellers. The person replying should find each answer in seconds.
• A reply rota. Names, or a team, for every day and every shift from early access to the week after, including Thanksgiving and the weekend.

How do you build the calendar, step by step?

Shopper traffic is not even across the weekend. The National Retail Federation counted 85.7 million people shopping online on Black Friday 2025, 80.3 million in stores that day, and 75.9 million online on Cyber Monday¹. Plan your heaviest send and your heaviest reply staffing for those two days, and keep the days between them for follow-up.

1. Week of November 9: write the answers and the rules. Finish the one-page answer sheet, confirm consent sources, set quiet hours in every tool that sends texts, and publish the reply rota. Send nothing new to the list this week beyond your normal program. Who answers replies: your usual support team, with the people on the BFCM rota reading along so they learn the common questions.
2. Week of November 16: early access for subscribers. Send one text to your SMS subscribers with early access to the sale or a first look at the offer. Keep it short and give a reason to reply, such as "reply GIFT and we will help you pick one." Who answers replies: the BFCM rota starts here, because early access replies are questions about what is included and when the sale starts.
3. November 23 to 25: shipping and stock reminders. Use the days before Thanksgiving for practical texts: what ships in time for the holidays, which items are low, and when the sale price starts. Keep frequency low; your big sends are still ahead. Who answers replies: the rota, staffed through each subscriber's evening, since many people read texts after work.
4. Thanksgiving, November 26: a light touch or nothing. Many brands send one text in the late afternoon or skip the day. If you send, start the sale or a preview and stay well inside quiet hours in every time zone. Who answers replies: a smaller team, named in advance, so a shopper who replies on the holiday still gets an answer.
5. Black Friday, November 27: the main send and full staffing. Send your main offer in the morning, local time. Follow stalled checkouts later in the day with one plain text that names the item and asks one question. Research on cart reminders found that a reminder 30 minutes to one hour after abandoning lowered purchases, while one to three days later helped³, so do not chase every cart within minutes. Who answers replies: your largest shift of the week, from the first send until 9 p.m. in your latest time zone.
6. November 28 and 29: follow up on Friday. Saturday and Sunday are for the shoppers who replied, clicked or stalled on Friday. Answer open threads first. A second blast of the same offer to the whole list adds opt-outs more than orders. Who answers replies: a weekend shift, sized to the reply volume you saw on Friday.
7. Cyber Monday, November 30: the second main send. Send the Cyber Monday offer in the morning and a last-call text in the early evening, both inside quiet hours. Stalled checkouts from the weekend get one follow-up if they have not had one. Who answers replies: full staffing again, through the evening, since last-call texts bring a late wave of questions.
8. December 1 to 4: the week after. Stop sale texts once the sale ends, or say plainly that it has ended. Send order and shipping updates where they help, answer "where is my order" and gift return questions, and ask first-time buyers what made them choose you. Who answers replies: the rota winds down to your usual support team by Friday, with the answer sheet updated for returns and delivery.

How do you check that it works?

Check the calendar twice: once before the first send, and once each evening during the week.

• Before the first send. Send a test from every flow to phones set to different time zones. Confirm none arrives before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time. Reply STOP to one and confirm it stops every flow.
• Every evening. Count replies that waited more than an hour for an answer. If the number grows, add people to tomorrow's shift before you add sends.
• Against a holdout. Keep a random slice of stalled checkouts out of every message and compare order rates over the same window. Only the difference counts as revenue the texts added.
• By question. Tag each reply by topic: shipping date, code, price, size or stock. The tags show what the answer sheet and product pages are missing for next year.

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Planning sends without planning replies. Shoppers reply to texts. A reply that sits unread over the weekend can cost the order and the subscriber.
• Scheduling in your own time zone. A 7 p.m. Eastern send reaches Pacific shoppers in the afternoon, and an 8 a.m. Pacific send reaches the East Coast at 11. Schedule by the subscriber's local time.
• Sending the same blast every day. Subscribers expect more texts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Daily blasts on the days between them raise opt-outs.
• Chasing carts within minutes. Give stalled shoppers time to finish deciding, and answer quickly when they reply.
• Leaving a sale text running after the sale. Turn off sale flows when the sale ends, so nobody gets a code that no longer works.
• Missing an opt-out. Honor each stop request in every flow, including flows set up just for the sale.

The calendar works only if a person is reading replies on the days that matter. VYG Conversations puts real, professionally trained agents inside a brand's SMS flows, trained on its products, policies and voice, so replies get answered through Black Friday, the weekend and Cyber Monday. For the wider plan, read the BFCM conversation playbook, the guide to Black Friday abandoned carts and the Shopify BFCM checklist. To watch a person answer a sale-week reply, see Conversations in action.