Saudi National Day 96: How Businesses Can Prepare for the Rush of Offers and Messages Before September 23

Every September, brands across Saudi Arabia compete for customer attention with National Day offers, promotions and seasonal campaigns.

Saudi National Day 2026 falls on September 23, making the weeks before the event an important planning period for retailers, e-commerce businesses, restaurants, applications and other customer-facing organizations.

But the biggest challenge is not writing another promotional message.

Imagine your National Day campaign performs well and thousands of customers visit your website within a short period.

Your marketing team wants to send promotions.

At the same time, customers need OTP messages, order confirmations, payment notifications and delivery updates.

That is when seasonal marketing becomes an operational messaging challenge.

September 23 Is More Than a One-Day Promotion

Many businesses treat Saudi National Day as a discount campaign that starts and ends around September 23.

The customer journey is usually much longer.

A customer may discover an offer two weeks earlier, return a few days later, create an account, request an OTP, place an order and then wait for delivery.

Each stage may require a different message.

Instead of beginning with the question, “What should our promotional SMS say?”, businesses should first map the types of communication that will be running during the campaign.

Separate Marketing, Transactional and OTP Messages

Promotional Messages

These include National Day discounts, coupon codes and limited-time offers.

A promotional SMS should usually have one clear purpose rather than trying to fit the entire campaign into a single message.

For example:

“Celebrate Saudi National Day with us. Explore our limited-time offers today.”

Transactional Messages

Once a customer places an order, the communication priority changes.

They may need confirmation that the order was received, prepared, shipped or ready for collection.

These messages serve a different purpose from the promotional campaign and should be planned accordingly.

OTP Messages

Seasonal campaigns can also increase registrations, logins and other actions requiring verification.

An SMS API allows these messages to be triggered by the business system or application rather than handled manually.

OurSMS supports SMS messaging and API/SMPP integrations for connecting messaging with business applications and internal systems.

SMS or WhatsApp for National Day Campaigns?

The right answer depends on the message.

SMS works particularly well for concise notifications, promotional alerts, OTP codes and time-sensitive information.

WhatsApp Business API can support richer customer interactions and promotional communication where appropriate and in line with applicable WhatsApp policies.

Meta’s current marketing guidance recommends making promotional communication relevant and expected, obtaining clear consent for promotional messages, segmenting customers and avoiding excessive message frequency.

This is particularly important during major seasonal events, when customers may already be receiving promotions from many brands.

A Four-Week National Day Messaging Plan

Three to Four Weeks Before

Start with audience segmentation.

Not every customer should receive the same promotion.

Useful segments may include existing customers, inactive customers, recent purchasers, customers interested in specific product categories, or customers associated with particular branches or regions.

Meta also recommends tailoring marketing messages to customer segments and their likely interests.

Ten to Fourteen Days Before

Introduce the campaign rather than waiting for the final days.

Check promotional links, landing pages, coupon codes, inventory and customer data.

For e-commerce and application teams, this is also the time to test messaging integrations and make sure OTP and operational notifications are working as intended.

Three to Five Days Before

This is when the main promotion can become more prominent.

SMS can deliver a concise campaign message, while WhatsApp may be used where a richer customer experience makes sense.

Avoid repeating essentially the same promotion simply to increase message volume.

On September 23

Prioritize messages that have immediate value.

“Offer ends today.”

“Your order is ready.”

“Your order has shipped.”

“Your verification code is…”

Sending more messages is not automatically a better campaign.

Prepare for Technical Traffic, Not Only Marketing Traffic

A successful promotion can create increased demand across multiple systems.

More visits may mean more logins.

More logins may mean more OTP requests.

More purchases create more confirmation and delivery messages.

Businesses should therefore test APIs, review customer data, monitor delivery reporting and prepare their messaging workflows before the campaign reaches its busiest period.

Common National Day Campaign Mistakes

One common mistake is sending the same offer to the entire customer database.

Another is waiting until September 23 to begin communication.

Businesses should also avoid excessive promotional frequency and mixing transactional updates with unrelated sales messages.

Regulatory considerations matter as well. Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space & Technology Commission maintains regulations aimed at limiting spam communications and provides services for reporting unwanted SMS communications.

Preparing with OurSMS

OurSMS provides business messaging solutions including SMS, SMS API, WhatsApp Business API and OTP, together with messaging integrations, campaign management and reporting capabilities.

According to the OurSMS company profile, the company has more than 15 years of experience in Saudi business messaging, has served over 10,000 customers and has processed more than one billion messages through its platform.

The strongest Saudi National Day campaign is not necessarily the one that sends the most messages.

It is the one that knows who should receive a message, when they should receive it, which channel fits the message, and which communications must remain operationally important when traffic peaks.

Planning a Saudi National Day campaign? Explore OurSMS SMS API, WhatsApp Business API and OTP solutions, or contact the OurSMS team to prepare your messaging setup before September 23.