New research offers five important strategies to embrace.
It’s not too soon to start strategizing for the holiday shopping season. And Experian Marketing Services has identified five strategies that retailers and other brands should consider incorporating into upcoming holiday marketing campaigns, including weighing the quality of subscriber data obtained during acquisition, targeting customers based on social media interested, developing creative content, email personalization and retention strategy.
"While the holidays may seem far away, now is the perfect time for marketers to begin preparing for this all-important season," said Spencer Kollas, vice president of global deliverability for Experian Marketing Services. "By leveraging data from last year's campaigns, as well as current market trends, brands can create more effective holiday marketing campaigns that increase engagement and improve the customer experience."
In the Q2 2016 Email Benchmark Report, Experian notes that marketers need to improve the quality of the data obtained at the point of sale, where subscribers are the most highly engaged with the brand. In fact, between April 2015 and March 2016, welcome mailings to POS subscribers had a 32 percent higher click-to-open rate than for subscribers obtained from other sources.
Another strategy offered by the Experian report is targeting email subscribers based on their social media interests, which can have positive returns. The study found that welcome emails sent to subscribers who engaged via Facebook had an 11 percent higher click-to-open rate than other welcome emails from the same brand (22 percent for Facebook welcomes, compared with 19.9 percent for other welcome emails).
And personalization can also up the ante for customer engagement. Brands that included personalized subject lines saw 27 percent higher click rates, 11 percent higher click-to-open rates and more than double the transaction rate when compared with other promotional mailings.
"Nowadays there is an expectation among consumers that brands create personalized mailings that communicate relevant messages," added Kollas. "While personalizing emails with a first name can be effective, marketers also should consider populating communications with more granular data points, such as purchase or browse behavior. When personalization is done correctly, marketers can create an improved customer journey."
