Yesmail Interactive, an Infogroup company, has released the
first round of data from its latest research report, "Using Digital Market
Intelligence to Drive Multi-Channel Success." Marketers can use the study to
improve their digital ad campaign performance.
And the report might come in pretty handy, especially since
it indicates that many social media and email campaigns among the retailers
studied do not match up with consumers' patterns for when and how they engage
with brands.
"While marketers have plenty of tools at their disposal to
put these multichannel strategies in place, they have been slow to effectively
harness the power of customer data available to them," says Michael Fisher, president
of Yesmail.
Yesmail tapped a number of retailers for analysis in its
study, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, American Apparel,
American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Diesel, Eddie Bauer, Express, Forever
21, The Gap, Guess, H&M, J.Crew, Kenneth Cole, The Limited, Old Navy, Ralph
Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters.
Using its proprietary Yesmail Market Intelligence tool,
Yesmail tracked and analyzed each retailer's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
email campaigns over a three-month period to assess how effective they are in
driving consumer engagement. The results indicated that many social media and
email campaigns do not match up with consumers' patterns for when and how they
engage with brands.
"When properly collected and analyzed, this type of digital
intelligence provides in-depth, actionable insights that can definitively
improve a brand's marketing strategy," says Fisher.
Here are some of the findings:
Q: What's the best day
of the week to run your digital campaign?
A breakdown by social channels showed the following:
- Facebook campaigns achieve the highest level of engagement
on Tuesdays, yet that day ranks fourth in terms of when actual campaigns
are deployed.
- The majority of Twitter campaigns take place on Friday, which is the least
engaging day for those campaigns.
- The most interaction on YouTube occurs on Monday, but it is the least utilized
weekday for campaign deployment.
"We also found that there are opportunities for marketers to
utilize different types of content to engage consumers," says Fisher. "The data
revealed an upward trend in consumers' interaction with video on Facebook, yet
this format was only used in 6.5% of deployed campaigns. This is just another
example of how crucial it is for brands to not only measure the success of
their campaigns, but to dig deeper into the insights to find ways to improve
future campaigns based on trends in the way consumers engage with the brand."
Q: What is the best
time of day to run your digital campaign?
Yesmail's report also showed a discrepancy between the time slot
when campaigns achieved the most engagement, and when retail brands deploy their
campaigns:
- Facebook campaigns reached the highest level of interaction
between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m. ET, yet this time slot was the least utilized by marketers.
Instead, the most popular time to deploy campaigns was 11a.m.-1p.m. ET.
- More than 84% of Twitter campaigns occurred within regular work hours of 9
a.m.-7 p.m. ET, even though 5 a.m.-8 a.m. ET is considered the time
period with the highest level of customer engagement.
Q: How does email impact
your social media campaign?
Yesmail's research showed that if email campaigns are sent
out before social campaigns, those emails drive social engagement via share buttons
and calls to action that promote interaction with the brand. When retailers'
email campaign data was overlaid with social engagement data, Yesmail found a
significant increase in engagement on social channels.
- On Facebook, engagement grew by roughly 50% when one email
campaign was deployed on the same day and by 100% when two email campaigns were
deployed.
- Twitter campaign engagement levels reached a 35% increase with one email
campaign and a 50% increase with two.
"In today's digital age, marketers must communicate through
multiple channels to ensure they provide an opportunity for their audience to interact
with the brand," says Fisher. "The correlation we found between email and
social media is just another example of how marketers can boost the
effectiveness of campaigns when they strategically weave each communication
channel together."
