Great news! We heard your feedback and made a huge improvement to promotions and announcements: You can now create your messages ahead of time and schedule them to send out at a later date. How? After you create your message in the Fivestars dashboard, select, “Schedule it for later,” and choose a date and time. That’s it! Why is this so great?

• No more missed opportunities to bring in business – Create promotions and announcements at your convenience, then schedule them to automatically send at a later time and date. While you’re busy running your business, your messages will send out exactly when you want and need them to, not when or if you have time. 

• Connect with more customers by reaching them at the right time – By grabbing your customers’ attention with a well-timed promotion or announcement, you can boost your visits by up to 25 percent. When are prime times? Read below. 

• This improvement makes Fivestars the only loyalty program that allows small businesses to schedule messages seamlessly across multiple channels (email, text, or mobile app) – Pretty cool, eh? 

Now that you know scheduling is an option, when exactly should you send promotions and announcements?

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Seven thousand businesses have sent more than 3 million messages via Fivestars and of those, promotions sent at optimal days and times perform 15 to 25% better. Now that you can schedule your messages to send at any time, you’ll want to know what times will maximize your results. The answer isn’t always cut and dry, but here’s a couple things to consider:

• Based on our data, we’ve seen the best response rate for promotions sent out mid-afternoon.
• You’ll want to avoid sending out during lunch or dinner rush.
• Give your customers enough advanced notice to plan their visit. In order to give your customers enough time to swing by, always give at least 4 hours notice.
• Test out different times to figure out what works best for your business. Keep track of how your messages perform when you send them at different times in the day or different days of the week.

According to RetailMeNot, over 80% of customers consider promotions or special offers when deciding where to shop. With Promotions and Announcements scheduling, you can make sure your business stays top of mind while your customers are choosing where they’ll make their purchases.

Whether you send promotions and announcements every week, or you’re dying try it, it’s never been a better time to communicate with your customers. Schedule one from your dashboard today.

Thanks to your feedback, we continue to make tons of improvements that transform the way small businesses connect with their customers.

Not a Fivestars customer? Sign up for a demo and we’ll show you how it works.