Email to Anchor Retailers’ Holiday Marketing Plans, Report Finds

Tried-and-true email marketing will be the focal point of many brands’ holiday marketing strategies this year, according to a report last week from Experian Marketing Services. Ninety-one percent of marketers surveyed around the world will use email in their 2014 holiday marketing campaigns, the most of any channel. Website (76 percent) and social media (70 percent) rounded out the top three channels.

Furthermore, 40 percent of all marketers, and 68 percent of those running cross-channel campaigns, plan to integrate email into their cross-channel holiday campaigns, making it the most frequently integrated channel. Brands are turning to email for a couple of reasons: one, it's cheap and, two, it works. Seventy-one percent of online adults say they're influenced by promotional emails to take some sort of action, and 40 percent say they're influenced to make a purchase as a result of an email received from a retailer or other company.

Here are some other trends to emerge from Experian's 2014 Holiday Marketer Report:

• Facebook advertising picking up momentum: Marketers will run more campaigns on Facebook than any other social network this holiday season, according to the report. Forty-six percent of brands in North America are planning paid Facebook ad campaigns this year, compared to just 34 percent of all brands globally. During last year's holiday season, Experian Marketing Services found that there was a 39 percent increase in traffic to retail sites from Facebook.
• Free shipping offers becoming rarer: Twenty-five percent of marketers globally plan to use free shipping — 38 percent in North America, which is a 1 percent decrease from 2013. For omnichannel retailers, transaction rates for emails that include a free shipping offer are 72 percent more effective than those without, and revenue is 53.3 percent greater than those that don't offer free shipping, the report found.
• Targeting challenges persist: One in five brands reported that they're unable to identify their best customers. Furthermore, brands that reported that they target their best customers also said that they have trouble identifying them across channels. Globally, 48 percent of the marketers surveyed said they have a siloed customer view and can only identify best customers within each channel rather than across all channels.

Which marketing channels is your company investing its time and resources into this holiday season? What's worked and hasn't worked for you in the past? Let us know your thoughts by posting a comment below.