Christmas 2019: trends & best practices for digital marketers

Christmas is a time when we gather with our family and exchange gifts to show how much we care about each other. So the sellers must be prepared for more orders than they usually receive. Retail Dive reports that 49% of shoppers plan to complete their holiday shopping within the last ten days before Christmas. So make sure your targeting campaign has a respective timeframe and you reach your target audience with the right message at the right time on the basis of data. For more statistics, let’s inspect how was it last year and what are the predictions for this year.  

Christmas 2019 trends

Let’s take a look at Christmas spendings and trends. Back in 2018, customers spent over $1 trillion during the Christmas holiday season in the US. Mostly they bought:

• traditional gift cards (63%), 
• clothing or footwear (55%), 
• food baskets and alcohol (43%), 
• electronic devices (40%). 

Millennials from the age group 25 – 34 years old spent the most. Despite Millennials (89%) are more influenced by promotions than Gen Xers (83%) and Baby Boomers (75%), this year Gen Xers will spend the most ($787), 16% more than Millennials ($679) and 22% more than Baby Boomers ($648). Surprisingly, males intend to spend 9% more than females, ICSC reports.

Now, being armed with an up-to-date data weapon, let’s check what you can do to earn the most from this holiday season.

How to prepare for Christmas?

Despite the cold weather behind the window, it’s a hot time for marketers. The consumers’ demand is rapidly growing, so how to satisfy them all? How to reach your target audience and make sure they buy your product? 

1. Improve customer performance

ICSC says that 87% of holiday shoppers will make online research about the items from their shopping list before going to stores to buy them. The presence of a physical store raises the possibility of conversion for nearly half (47%) of all customers. On the other hand, the users who can wait for shipping, choose the online stores which reduce the amount of time looking for items (45%) and reduces checkout time (42%). 

So, as long as you possess an online business, focus on its quality to offer reliable services. Take the optimization changes, because the traffic of your website will be much bigger – that’s for sure. You can even aid this number raising by using the benefits which give an integrated dataset. OnAudience data helps you to find and reach the users from your target group.

Check our segment builder

2. Get to know your potential customers

Make data integration of 1st, 2nd- and 3rd party data to observe the tendencies of users’ online behavior and increase your customer network. You can use this knowledge to give a prompt to the particular user that you have a product that he might like. This will automatically save the customer’s time and increase the satisfaction rate, increase brand awareness.

You can use Data Management Platform (DMP) to collect data. As an alternative, you can ask your agency how to make profits from the data that you already possess. Check our blog post and find out what is a Data Management Platform.

After you store customers’ data, get more out of it. Create the profiles of the digital twins of your best converting users. This will expand your customer network and raise your ROI automatically. Want to learn more about the look-alike feature? Check our article about look-alike modeling. 

3. Set a time limit for your custom campaign

“A goal without a timeline is just a dream.“ This sounds philosophically, but let’s look at it in a marketing way. The consumers might remember about your super offer, but never use it because of being busy or lack of certainty. 

Some people just need additional motivation. So, reach them with a personalized message and dispel their suspicions. Additionally, and to motivate the busiest, set a timeframe for your offer. Use segmentation rules to create the most tailored content for each of your customers. 

Check our segment builder

 

4. Be visible on social media

23% of Christmas shoppers in the U.S. rely on social media to help them make the right choice, Fortunly reports. This also creates an opportunity to raise brand awareness as well as conversion rate. 

Announce about your product offer on your social media profile. Keep it updated and refreshed with Christmas look to create holiday sales associations among the customers. Part of this update can involve tidying up your photos, ensuring that your visuals are crisp, clear, and evoke the spirit of the holiday season. This will engage your audience and further increase your brand’s visibilityAdd hashtags to your posts to help the users find you faster. 

Christmas Shoppers Segment on OnAudience.com

In OnAudience.com DMP we have a custom segment for Christmas buyers. The segment collects data about browser behavior of those users, who are looking for Christmas gift inspiration or already have a certain gift idea. The segment has reached 19 M profiles so far. 

We generated Audience Report on our DMP panel to see what exactly they are looking for and what interests they have. 

After analysis, we found that most of the users intent to buy gift coupons or vouchers, clothing or jewelry, and cars. Besides automotive enthusiasm, they have various interests: 

• Football
• Education
• Music
• Pets
• Computers
• Sci-fi & Fantasy

The most active gift searchers are women 45-55+ and men 55+.

Find our Christmas heavy shoppers segment on global DSPs and reach users who are looking for the best gift ideas:

Conclusion

Many people worldwide have a problem to come up with the idea of what present is the best for the holidays. So they use different, mostly online, sources for gift inspiration. That’s a perfect occasion to show that you have something to offer that might perfectly suit their needs. Reach your potential buyers in an intelligent way thanks to Audience Data and make them the best offer.