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How GA4 can optimize your holiday marketing strategy

It’s hard to believe that the holiday season is right around the corner. In fact, there are only 9 weeks until Christmas! As a direct response agency, we’re towards the end of planning for our offline clients. However, there’s still time for digital!

Whether you’re thinking about launching a test or sticking with tried & true channels that you know work for your brand, we’re excited that it’ll be the first holiday season with GA4. In fact, GA4 may be your secret weapon. Here are four benefits of GA4 that may help your holiday season be the most successful one yet.

More insights into the funnel

As we all know, a well-executed and focused marketing funnel helps brands serve relevant, meaningful, and actionable content at the right time – using the right channel. With GA4, brands have even more insights into the funnel.

A new aspect of GA4, Explorations, allow you to build custom funnel visualizations of the steps in your user’s journey on your website. The funnel exploration gives you insight into what paths are leading to abandonments in the conversion process, how to enhance your user experience and improve your conversion rate.

To put it into simpler terms, you can see when a customer viewed a product, added it to the cart and then made a purchase. It’s clearer than ever before! Inside scoop: In many cases, Universal Analytics (UA) relied on sampled data due to restrictions around hit limits. GA4 doesn’t have those same limitations and therefore, it is more reliable in terms of 100% real data.

Easier, stronger integrations

GA4 plays nice with other Google products! In fact, you can set up audiences in GA4 and then leverage them in Google Ads. Guess what? It’s even more simple to use Google Ads. By creating a link between GA4 and Google Ads, you can use your conversions from GA4 in your Google Ads account. Today, Google Ads can help drive qualified traffic to your site, augment engagement and increase in-store visits.

What’s more – GA4 offers free linking to BigQuery, which is raw GA data that’s used to run SQL queries. By having access to Big Query, you can build any logic in there. The truth is: the API from GA4 has its limitations like any complex system, so this is a feature that many GA users have been clamoring for. Additionally, GA4 users can also download historical data (UA), so they can look at YoY comparisons (keep in mind that UA will be shut down in a few months!).

Build audiences for better targeting

With GA4, the conditions and criteria that you can set up for audiences are limitless! Brands and marketers alike can get creative. By building audiences in this manner, your targeting can be much more powerful and effective.

By default, you will automatically have two audiences linked: all users and purchasers.  You can make additional audiences based on actions captured in GA4.  For example, users who have not converted, users with multiple purchases, high-value purchasers, users who abandoned at checkout, etc.  You have the power to set up audiences based on criteria that is important to your business.

Pro tip! Using the new predictive capabilities to build audiences is also an effective tool to refine your targeting strategy. You can create an audience of users with a high probability to convert by using a remarketing campaign. Or, you can focus on users who are likely to churn and target them with re-engagement campaigns that have personalized offers.

Consistency among devices

Now you can combine website and mobile app usage data in one GA4 property, allowing for more robust cross-device and cross-platform tracking. For example, marketers now have visibility into how many users start their experience on your mobile app and then switch to your website to complete their purchase. You can measure how your marketing channels perform across different platforms all on one platform: GA4.

We realize that the shift to GA4 was a big change. But do you remember when Google rolled out Universal Analytics in 2005? We do – it was stressful, and it took time for everyone to adapt. Change is difficult for all of us, whether there’s a lack of trust or time, the transition takes time. However, UA has officially stopped processing data. This is important: if you’re still connected to UA, the data is no longer accurate, and you’re measuring results incorrectly. Additionally, there are so many more insights to glean from GA4! Just ask us. Not only are we happy to share more benefits, but we can help organize your GA4 account, or transition you to the platform if you haven’t done so yet (we won’t tell anyone!).

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The Ultimate Lesson: How Back-to-School Can Prepare Marketers for Holiday 2021

As the global supply chain continues to struggle to keep up with consumers’ needs, the Back-to-School (BTS) market is the latest segment to be negatively impacted. With many children back to learning in-person this fall, the feared shortages for supplies unfortunately have become a reality.

 

Results showed that about 50% of consumers spent less on BTS shopping last year (source: Times Record News). While we are still waiting on this year’s results, given increasing demand for the continued shortage of BTS essentials, the numbers likely will be similar if not lower.

 

Observing the challenges that BTS shoppers have faced, there is much to be learned for the upcoming holiday season. With the recent chip shortage, not only is the BTS market suffering, but so are huge industries like automobiles. This will undoubtedly affect the types of products and offerings available for the holiday season. Video games, cell phones, cars, and home appliances all use chips. We need to be prepared for the most desired products to be more difficult to purchase.

What BTS Can Teach Marketers for Holiday 2021

Launch Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns Earlier

Tailor your marketing strategy to the 2021 calendar. This year, Thanksgiving is earlier and holiday shopping will begin sooner. We predict the buying cycle will therefore change. There will be five weeks of shopping leading up to Christmas. Consumers will be shopping earlier and longer further adding to the disruption in traditional holiday shopping habits.

 

No matter who you are targeting this year, timing is everything. We recommend keeping timing—when you want your customers viewing your products and services—at the forefront. All touchpoints will be affected, and even more reason to keep your marketing strategy fresh.  

 

Continue to Bet on eCommerce & Test New Channels

Retail eCommerce sales are projected to make up almost 19% of total holiday retail sales this year (source: eMarketer). Due to the pandemic, we saw more of an online push last year than ever before, which continued to propel marketers’ digital spend forward. This year, retailers are again putting emphasis on eCommerce, and we are expecting a similarly early start to the holiday season, especially due to rumors that Amazon will promote a second Prime day this fall. Additionally, offering earlier holiday sales would ideally help avoid fulfillment issues later in the season.

 

With increased digital adoption and more time spent online, there has never been a better time to explore other digital avenues such as Connected TV (CTV) and Digital Audio. Check out our most recent post on “Why CTV Right Now?” to learn more about this channel.   

 

Understand that Location Matters: The “Shop Local” Trend Endures.

In January, we shared retail predictions for 2021 with many of them ringing true. Specifically, “Shop Local” prevails, and will be especially important to keep in mind. With consumers’ potentially negative BTS experiences tied with last year’s holiday shopping, many will shop locally to avoid dealing with inventory issues, shipping delays or added fees.

 

Focusing on your targeted acquisition strategy as well as paid search (hint: check out geo targeting capabilities) is especially relevant this year.  

 

Increased Foot Traffic Is a Possibility.

With a pandemic that’s lasted for 1.5+ years, consumers understand what it means to shop in-store. They are now familiar with BOPIS and physically shopping in PPE. Due to the current state of the supply chain, it is possible that traffic in traditional stores may increase slightly this holiday because of consumers’ BTS shopping experiences and anticipation regarding inventory issues and shipping delays.

 

We recommend accounting for this pickup in your CRM systems, holiday promotions and marketing communications. 

 

Rely on Customer Loyalty…Keep Your Bottom-of-Funnel Customers & Prospects Close.

Being familiar with your brand, having experience with your customer service team, knowing the quality of your products and services…are all increasingly important factors. As more consumers experience delays with BTS products and gear up for holiday, they will rely on the brands they know and love. Additionally, they will likely present a higher AOV than top-of-funnel or newer customers because they trust your brand, regardless of supply chain issues or warnings about shipping delays.

 

Not sure who your target customers and prospects are or how to identify them? Uncover powerful insights with data & analytical tools like forecasting, attribution, database management, and digital operations. 

 

Overall, experts say that some of the shortages and frustrations surrounding BTS materials and equipment could have been solved by shopping earlier. In fact, they warn “start shopping online now” (source: News10). That said, the pointed execution of your marketing campaigns featuring strategy and revenue generation are our goal. Taking into account the many macro challenges this year presents, we look forwarding to ‘acing’ this test together!

Sources: Times Record News, eMarketer, ©2021 Insider Intelligence Inc., Ask Wonder, Tech Walla

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Data Compliance: How to be a Smart Marketer in 2021

While the U.S. does not have one federal law that regulates the protection of personally identifiable information (PII), PII is protected by several sector-specific laws. The major players are the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are just some examples of laws that apply to customer protection, financial institutions, telemarketing, commercial emails, and European markets.

While there is much to consider, businesses in the U.S. can be data compliant by fulfilling the requirements of the GDPR, understanding state-specific regulations, creating a comprehensive and detailed privacy policy, and employing data encryption and security. Please find more detail on how to be a “smart marketer” below (including bonus tips!).

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Five Reasons to Keep Data Privacy at the Forefront of Your Omnichannel Strategy

According to a recent survey, 40% of marketing executives conveyed that a lack of legal clarity is a barrier to implementing stricter privacy practices at their organizations. While we understand the ambiguity of today’s data policies – especially with COVID-19 causing delays and distractions – marketers must be as proactive as possible about data privacy. Here’s why:

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The Pandemic Effect:
Five Search Optimizations to Help Your SEM Efforts This Year

There’s ample evidence that the pandemic had a huge impact on search behavior in 2020. These changed search behaviors coupled with our new current realities can help bring a renewed focus on your search marketing optimization efforts right now. Below we outline five simple optimization tips that can assist your SEM programs and yield immediate results today.

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Looking Ahead – Hot Retail Segments for 2021

2020 taught us that anything can happen. As marketers, we are always looking to take our clients to the next level with a strategic approach to their omnichannel solution. Proven to be most successful, a multi-touch marketing strategy using both digital and print amplifies a brand’s reach.

Most notable for 2020? The accelerated shift to eCommerce due to the pandemic. As the National Retail Federation (NRF) reported: “consumers have embraced online shopping with vigor and retailers have responded with the speedy rollout of new technologies.”

But digital adaptation was always on its way, wasn’t it? We believe there is greater meaning to this changed consumer behavior, which is category expansion. There is a huge opportunity and right now is the time to capitalize on it. Here is our list of hot retail segments for 2021: