Promo Retail Email Targeted Last-Minute Shoppers

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The top online retailers sent each of their subscribers 5.7 promotional emails on average during the week ending December 23, 2011, representing fractional week-over-week growth, according to December 2011 analysis from Chad White, research director at Responsys and author of the Retail Email Blog. This means that unlike previous years, when holiday email volume has peaked 2 weeks before Christmas, this year retailers targeted holiday shoppers until the last minute, offering free or discounted express shipping, directing subscribers to their stores, and promoting gift cards and e-gift cards. The weekly volume of emails was up 15% from 4 weeks ago, and 35% year-over-year.
Responsys’ findings come on the heels of a December survey from PriceGrabber, in which 41% of online shopping respondents indicated they planned to shop between December 21 and 24 for holiday gifts. Similarly, an Ipsos survey conducted on behalf of RetailMeNot, found that as of December 12, just 16% of adults claimed to have finished all of their shopping, with a plurality (33%) reporting having done less than one-quarter of their shopping.

Wednesday Biggest Day for Promo Emails

During the week ending December 23, Wednesday, Dec. 21 was the most popular day for promotional retail emails, with 74% of major online retailers sending at least one. Retail Email Blog analysis indicates that Wednesday’s popularity was due to express shipping deadlines.
Sunday, Dec. 18 took second place with a 72% participation rate, followed by Tuesday Dec. 20 (70%) and Friday Dec. 23 (68%). Saturday Dec. 17 (56%) had the lowest promotional retail email participation rate of the week.

Super Bowl Makes Appearance

Retail Email Blog indicates that while Christmas messaging continued unrelentingly, mentioned in roughly 90% of retail emails for the week ending Dec. 23, retailers will now quickly shift gears to promoting other selling seasons. In fact, the first Super Bowl reference made an appearance that week, while New Year’s messaging inched up, although it remained at marginal levels.

B2B Emails Down, But Page Views Up

Meanwhile, contrary to B2C companies, who sent out 28% more emails in November and December than in August and September, B2B marketers deployed fewer emails in November and December, according to December 2011 data pulled from Eloqua. However, surprisingly, the number of page views of those companies’ digital assets actually rose 13% in November and December compared to the rest of the year.

Source: www.marketingcharts.com

Holiday Season Online Spending Up 15% Y-O-Y

Americans have spent $35.3 billion online for the holiday season-to-date (November 1 – December 26), representing a 15% increase from the corresponding days last year, according to December 2011 analysis from comScore. $2.8 billion was spent online in the week ending December 25, marking a 16% year-over-year increase from $2.45 billion in the corresponding week of 2010.
Overall, Cyber Monday ranks as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the second consecutive year, at $1.25 billion, although it was accompanied by 9 other billion-dollar spending days.

Search Spend Up

According to December data from Kenshoo, for the week before Christmas, online retail search advertising spend increased 39% year-over-year, with both clicks and online retail revenue driven by search advertising increasing by 24%. For the holiday season-to-date, online retail search advertising spend has increased 30% year-over-year, while retail revenue driven by search advertising spend has increased 22%.

Christmas Day Sales Jump, Driven By Mobile Growth

Meanwhile, IBM Smarter Commerce reports that online sales grew by 16.4% on Christmas Day compared to 2010, with 18.3% of all online sessions on retailers’ sites initiated from a mobile device, representing a 118% increase from 8.4% the previous year. The iPad led all Christmas Day 2011 device traffic at 7%, followed by the iPhone at 6.4% and Android at 5%.
The share of online sales from mobile devices reached 14.4%, almost triple the 5.3% from last year.

Digital Content Sales Soar

comScore’s data indicates that Christmas Day saw a dramatic increase in purchases of digital content and subscriptions, a retail category that includes digital downloads of music, TV, movies, e-books, and applications. Whereas on an average day during the 2011 holiday season-to-date, digital content and subscriptions accounted for 2.8% of retail e-commerce sales, on Christmas Day the category accounted for more than 20% of sales.
According to December 2011 analysis from Flurry, nearly a quarter of a billion application downloads occurred on Christmas Day 2011, more than double any other day in the history of iOS and Android devices, save for the previous day, which delivered roughly 150 million downloads.

Other Findings:

• IBM said online sales grew 27.8% on December 26, dubbed “Mega Monday,” from the previous year. For the day, 16.4% of all online sessions on retailers’ sites were initiated from a mobile device, up from 7.8% in 2010. Sales from mobile devices showed even more impressive growth, jumping from 4.3% in 2010 to 11.3% in 2011.
• The iPad (6%) led all mobile device traffic on Mega Monday, followed by the iPhone (5.8%) and Android (4.6%).

About the Data: The dataset examined by Kenshoo represents more than 25 billion total search advertising impressions, nearly 300 million clicks and over 7 million online sales transactions.
Source: www.marketingcharts.com

Community Newspapers Seen Valuable for Shopping, Ad Info

69% of residents in areas served by a local newspaper with circulation of under 15,000 say that their local paper provides valuable local shopping and advertising information, while 81% rely on the paper for local news and information, according to a survey released in December 2011 conducted by the National Newspaper Association (NNA) and the research arm of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. 86% of respondents say their local newspaper is informative, and 3 in 4 look forward to reading it.

Ads Better in Print

Data from the “2011 Community Newspaper Readership Survey” indicates that given the choice, 8 in 10 respondents say they would rather look through ads in the newspapers rather than view ads on the internet. In fact, two-thirds of respondents agree that they often use newspaper advertising inserts to help make purchasing decisions. Similarly, two-thirds agree that they often seek out newspaper advertising to find information on the latest offerings and sales available in their area, and almost half say that there are days when they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the content.

3 in 4 Are Frequent Readers

74% of people in communities served by a local newspaper read one each week, while 11% read one every day. On average, readers spend about 39 minutes reading their newspaper, up from 37.5 minutes in 2010, and share it with 2.33 people. Almost all readers (92%) pay for their local newspapers, with the predominant method being through subscription (67%) rather than buying from a news rack or store (33%).
The survey also suggests that older adults, residents who have stayed in their communities longer, and those with higher education read local newspapers significantly more than younger adults, residents who have lived at their current addresses relatively shorter, and those with less education.
These findings align with results of a December Pew survey measuring local business search attitudes, which found that the groups most likely to use print newspaper to research local businesses included those aged over 40 (especially those over age 65) and those who have lived in their community more than 5 years.

Majority Prefer Print to Digital

According to the NNA survey, 48% of community newspaper readers with access to the internet say they never read the local news online, with just 1 in 10 reporting they read local news online very often. Of those going online for local news, the leading source is the local newspaper’s website (52%), ahead of the local TV station website (25%), and sites such as Yahoo, MSN, or Google (20%).
About the Data: The results are based on 500 interviews completed via telephone in August and October 2011 targeted at communities across the United States where the circulation size of the local newspapers was 15,000 or less.

Inefficiencies Cost In-Store Retailers

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One-third of respondents to a Motorola Solutions survey released in December 2011 say that their store visits ended with an average of $125 unspent due to missed opportunities to purchase, driven by factors such as inefficient payment approaches, deal-habituated behavior, out-of-stocks, and limited store associates assistance. Of those lost opportunities, almost three-quarters did not complete their purchases with the original retailer, although 68% said their lost sales could have been prevented if a retail associate was able to order the item and have it delivered to their home.Similarly, almost 55% of shoppers would have made their purchases if an associate could have found another location that had the item in stock and told them how to get there.
According to results from a survey released in December by Oracle, if an item is not in store, 44% of shoppers expect a store associate to find it online or at a store, while one-quarter would leave the store and find it online.

Offline Satisfaction Lags Online

Data from Motorola Solutions’ “Holiday Shopping Survey” indicates that about 2 in 5 in-store shoppers said they were not satisfied with the ability to receive in-stock status, compared to 20% of online shoppers. Additionally, a higher proportion of in-store than online shoppers were not satisfied with the ease of finding correct prices (27% vs. 14%) or the check-out process (42% vs. 15%).
However, online shoppers cited a higher dissatisfaction rate than in-store shoppers with the return/exchange process (41% vs. 25%).

Self-Help Tech Improves In-Store Experience

The vast majority of shoppers report that self-help technologies have improved their shopping experience, with the highest approvals being for price checkers (83%), self-checkout payment lanes (65%), and information kiosks (59%). Nearly 2 in 5 say they would be likely to use a retailer’s wireless internet access to search for product information and post to the web while shopping, while 43% would likely use a store application on their smartphones that creates a map from a shopping list to guide them through the store on the most efficient route to complete their shopping.

Mobile Tech Customer Service Benefits Seen

3 in 4 retail associates and managers feel they provide a better in-store customer experience when equipped with the latest mobile technologies. Shoppers echoed their sentiment: two-thirds report heightened satisfaction with retailers when in-store associates utilized the latest technologies to assist in the experience. Even so, 61% of shoppers believe that they are better connected to consumer information, including coupons, competitive pricing, and product availability than store associates.
According to an RSR report [download page] released in November, 62% of retail “Winners” (defined as retailers with comparable store/sales growth of more than 3%) believe a great deal of opportunity can be realized by empowering their store managers with mobile capabilities.
About the Data: Motorola Solutions fielded two complimentary surveys from November 26 through December 13, one targeted to shoppers and one targeted to in-store associates, staff and in-store managers. 1,231 respondents completed the shopper survey without knowledge of Motorola Solutions sponsorship. 393 respondents completed the Associates survey without knowledge of Motorola Solutions sponsorship.
RSR conducted its survey online from July - October 2011 and received answers from 61 qualified respondents. 12% held senior management titles, and 35% were from retailers with more than $1 billion in 2010 revenue.

Source: Marketing Charts.com 

Consumers Want Short SocNet Updates, Emails from Brand

 Short updates from Facebook and Twitter (32%) and emails (27%) rank as the leading ways in which consumers most prefer to get updates from their favorite brands, according to a survey released in December 2011 by AYTM Market Research. 22% prefer receiving updates from traditional offline ads such as TV commercials and billboards, and 8% from mailed flyers. However, a greater proportion indicate that mailed flyers are their least preferred update method (15%), trailing only audio/podcasts (25%) and traditional offline ads (23%) among the least-favored methods.

Consumers Want Coupons, Not News

Data from “Branding and How it Works in the Social Media Age” indicates that 80% of consumers say that coupons, promotions, and discounts are their most preferred type of content to receive from brands, ahead of brand news (8%), answers to questions (5%), how-to’s (5%), and interviews (2%). Brand news (34%) ranks as the least preferred type of content to receive from brands, with answers to questions (27%) and how-to’s (25%) not far behind. Just 11% cite coupons, promotions, and discounts as their least preferred type of content.

Facebook Likers More Apt to Mention, Refer Brand

According to the AYTM survey, of users who have liked a brand on Facebook, 59% have mentioned a brand in a status update and 57% have shared a link or a video about a brand. This compares to 19% of Facebook users who have not liked a brand, and 42% of Facebook members overall, who have either mentioned a brand in a status update or shared a link or video about a brand.

Facebook users who have liked a brand are also more likely than those who have not to be active on the social network daily (84% vs. 60%) and have more than 100 friends (66% vs. 46%).

Women Nicer on Twitter

Almost twice as many Twitter users say their brand tweets are only positive, versus only negative or mixed. Breaking the figures down by gender, AYTM finds that 2.3 times more female users say their brand tweets are only positive than only negative or mixed, while the ratio for male users is 1.4.

On Facebook, 50% more users say their brand mentions in status updates on the social network are only positive rather than only negative or mixed.

Social Media Drives Trust, Holiday Purchases

According to December study results from Mr Youth, 36% of social media users trust brands that have a social media presence more than brands that do not, and 52% of users are willing to pay more for brands they trust.

In fact, during the 3-week period leading up to and during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping event, 86% of social media users made or received a holiday gift recommendation, while 65% of users’ recommendations led to a purchase. By comparison, only 49% of non-users made or received a holiday gift recommendation, while just one-third of those recommendations led to a purchase.

Overall, 66% of social media users who made a Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchase reported doing so as a direct result of social media interactions with brands and family.

Engagement Leads to Sales

Although Mr Youth’s survey results show that brands only respond to half of brand posts, 80% of users who received a response to their post made a purchase as a result of the interaction. Additionally, 28% of users who reported a brand reaching out to them proactively made a purchase as a result of the interaction.

About the Data: The AYTM data is based on a survey of 2000 internet users from the company’s built-in consumer platform. The Mr Youth data is part of a broader study on social media usage during the 2011 holiday shopping season. The full study is being fielded through a nationwide survey of 500 households, once a week, over the 6-week period leading up to the Christmas holiday (November 17 – December 19). The survey was conducted in conjunction with Survey Sampling International (SSI) and Kanter Analytics.

CTR Top Video Ad Success Metric

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Click-through rate is the top method of measuring video ad success, cited by 39% of video advertisers in the US and Canada, ahead of actual product sales (38%) and visits to the brand website (35%), according to [pdf] a December 2011 study from Break Media. Data from “Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2012″ indicates that other popular metrics include brand awareness or recall (30%) and video completion rate (29%).
Roughly 1 in 5 video advertisers use reached target audience (22%), social engagement (20%), time spent watching video (19%), number of times video was viewed (19%), and intent to purchase (19%) as methods of measuring the success of their video ads.

ROI Measurement Presents Problems

Advertisers appear to be frustrated by metrics, though: 42% say that difficulty measuring ROI is a hindrance to the use of video ads, ahead of other barriers to adoption including a lack of transparency on ad placement (40%), lack of standardized metrics (38%), and not enough ROI (35%).

Spend to Grow, Take from Traditional Media

29% of advertisers say they spent more on video ads than they planned to in the past year, more than double the proportion who spent less (14%). According to the report, in the coming year, two-thirds of advertisers will increase their share of online display advertising devoted to video ads, with the home furnishings, IT/B2B, alcohol, and women’s apparel sectors showing higher growth compared to other sectors. Advertisers may be paying attention to recent figures from FreeWheel, which indicate a growing consumer acceptance of video ads: according to FreeWheel, video ad views have grown at a faster rate than video views (128% vs. 97%) from Q3 2010 to Q3 2011. And even more encouragingly for video advertisers, although ad loads have increased, video ad completion rates have remained stable.
Meanwhile, according to Break Media, advertisers increasing their video ad spend in the next year say the dollars will come not just from non-video display budgets (45%) and overall advertising budget growth (38%), but also from TV (32%) and print/outdoor (25%) budgets.
Overall, video is forecast to account for 35% share of advertisers’ online display budgets in 2012, up from 27% this year.

VANs Gain in Popularity

73% of respondents indicate that they used video ad networks (VANs) in 2011, representing 12% growth from 65% in 2010. Additionally, in 2012, 92% of advertisers plan to use VANs and increase the share of spend placed with those entities from an average of 20% to 41% of total video dollars.

Actual Pricing Models Differ from Desired

Pricing models for video ads offered to advertisers appear to not match their preferences, though. A leading 69% of advertisers said they used cost per thousand views, although just 18% reported CPM to be their preferred pricing model. Similarly, 53% used cost per click, although it is the preferred model to only 16%. Other discrepancies between pricing used and preferred include cost per view (40% and 17%, respectively), cost per day/roadblock (37% and 8%, respectively), and cost per engagement (34% and 19%, respectively). The only pricing model to come close to parity between use and preference was cost per acquisition, with 25% reporting use and 21% citing it as their preferred pricing model.
The report notes that although use of cost per view (CPV) increased two-fold in the past year to 40%, many respondents said they did not use CPV because it was not offered by the publisher or VAN.
About the Data: Break Media’s study findings are derived from an online survey completed by 320 persons working for advertising agencies and the companies that hire them (i.e. marketers) in the United States and Canada. Respondents were solicited from the Advertiser Perceptions Inc. proprietary database of media decision makers and offered a cash incentive for survey completion.

US Ad Spend Up 1.5% Year-to-Date

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Total US advertising expenditures in the first 9 months of 2011 increased 1.5% from a year ago, finishing the period at $104.7 billion, according to December 2011 data from Kantar Media. Spending growth slowed during Q3, up 0.4% compared to last year, after rising 4.1% in Q1 and 2.8% in Q2. Spending among the 10 largest advertisers in the first 9 months of 2011 was $11.8 billion, representing a 1.4% decline compared to a year ago. Procter & Gamble maintained its top-ranked position with spending of $2.1 billion through September, down 5.6% compared to last year, although its Q3 spending was flat compared to the previous year.
Meanwhile, expenditures for the 10 largest categories grew 3.1% in the first 9 months of 2011, to $59.5 billion. For Q3, the aggregate increase was 1.8%, although quarterly growth rates for 7 of the 10 categories trailed their year-to-date average. Automotive was the top category with $9.9 billion of spending during the 9-month period, up 7% from 2010. However, the bulk of the gain came early in the year, and from April through September automotive budgets have grown just 1%.

TV Ad Spending Rises

Most forms of TV displayed spending gains in Q3: expenditures on cable networks rose 6.5% during Q3, while year-to-date outlays grew 9.9%. Network TV registered its first quarterly gain of the year, as Q3 expenditures inched up 0.2%, although year-to-date expenditures remain down 5.7%. Kantar insight suggests higher budgets from movie studios and consumer package goods marketers accounted for the Q3 increase for network TV, while the year-to-date decline can be attributed to the loss of marquee college football and basketball programming to cable networks in Q1.
Meanwhile, ad spending in Spanish Language Television jumped 18% during Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010, while syndication TV was also up 14.8% for the period. The only TV segment to lose ground was spot TV, where spending fell 5.7% year-over-year in Q3, and was also down 2.7% for the year-to-date.
Overall, compared to the corresponding periods in 2010, TV ad spending grew 2.3% for the year-to-date, and 3.2% for Q3.
The top 10 TV advertisers, led by Procter & Gamble, spent $7.3 billion in the medium during the first 9 months of 2011, up 0.1% from a year ago. The group accounted for 15% of total TV expenditures by all advertisers.

Most Other Media Also Post Gains

Outdoor spending slowed during the third quarter, but still registered gains of 3.2% for Q3 and 8.6% for the first 9 months. The pace of spending in radio media was more muted, but remained steady, up a modest 1.1% in Q3 and 1.2% for the year-to-date, driven by over 2% growth in local radio and network radio advertising.
Magazine media spending declined 1.2% for Q3, but rose 1.5% for the year-to-date. The top 10 magazine advertisers invested $2.7 billion in the medium for the year-to-date, a decrease of 2.8%. As a proportion of total magazine ad spending by all advertisers, the top 10 accounted for 17.1%.
Although the internet sector posted a Q3 drop of 2.9% compared to last year, overall expenditures for the year-to-date are up 2.8% compared to a year earlier. Display ad expenditures soared 15.8% in Q3 and 10.1% for the year-to-date, offsetting paid search drops of 14.4% and 2.1%, respectively. The 10 largest internet advertisers, led by General Motors, invested a total of $1.8 billion in paid search and display campaigns, up 11.1% versus a year ago, and accounting for 10.8% share of all internet ad dollars.

Newspapers Fare Poorly

The newspaper sector posted the worst figures of all media, experiencing a 3.7% decline in spending in Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010, and 3.8% decrease for the year-to-date. Local newspapers, despite robust budgets from local auto dealers and an uptick in financial advertising, saw a 4.4% spending decline in Q3, and were down 3.9% year-to-date.

Print Media Get Spending, Lack Consumption

Meanwhile, according to December figures from eMarketer, although newspapers account for 15% of all US ad spending in 2011, they hold just a 4% share of adults’ daily media time. Magazines also hold a much larger share of ad spending than daily media time, at 9.7% and 2.8%, respectively.
By contrast, eMarketer estimates that mobile accounts for 10.1% share of adults’ media time each day, but less than 1% of ad dollars. TV (42.5% vs. 42.2%), internet (25.9% vs. 21.9%), and radio (14.6% vs. 10.9%) all also display a higher share of adults’ daily time than share of US ad spending.
eMarketer notes that time spent with the internet excludes internet access via mobile, but online ad spending includes mobile internet ad spending. As such, the total of the ad spending share for all the media adds up to more than 100%.