
With the back-to-school season approaching, marketers are preparing to engage both eager students and parents. Our Q&A video with Experian experts shares our predictions and tips for the 2024 back-to-school season so you can craft effective back-to-school marketing campaigns.
From early campaign launches to the rise of online shopping and budget-conscious consumer behaviors, let’s explore what lies ahead and how brands and agencies can prepare.
Watch the highlights from our video below.
Three trends for the 2024 back-to-school marketing season
Campaigns will start earlier
We expect back-to-school marketing efforts to kick off earlier than usual. Brands will launch campaigns with special promotions to secure mind and market share ahead of competitors. Additionally, the traditional back-to-school season is extending, urging marketers to prolong their campaigns to capture the attention of consumers who are taking more time to make purchasing decisions.
Online shopping will continue to rise
The surge in online shopping during the pandemic has become a lasting trend – and is especially appreciated by busy parents seeking convenience. Brands should focus on enhancing online and mobile shopping experiences, including options for in-store pickup and delivery. Marketers should prioritize their online presence and optimize e-commerce platforms, including experimenting with shoppable ads on connected TV (CTV), to meet the needs of families shopping for back-to-school supplies.
Budget consciousness is top of mind
With inflation on the rise and tighter budgets at home, households are becoming more selective in their back-to-school spending. Marketers should align their efforts with value-driven products and prioritize advertising that resonates with these financial priorities.
Strategies for brands and agencies
Next, let’s explore strategies brands and agencies can use to prepare for the upcoming back-to-school season.
Brands
First, we’ll highlight three recommended strategies for brands.
Maintain an evergreen presence
Launch your back-to-school campaigns early and maintain a steady presence throughout the season. Experian’s TrueTouchTM audience insights can guide your channel selection for maximum impact, helping you decide on key channels such as email, digital video, or specific social media platforms.
Build loyalty programs that deepen customer relationships
Use your customer data to create loyalty programs that foster stronger connections with your audience. By using insights from Experian, you can gain a holistic understanding of customer profiles and identify potential back-to-school prospects within your existing customer base. On average, Experian has 250 behavioral anddemographic marketing attributes per individual, which means we can decorate households and people with marketing data to get a full customer profile and fill in any gaps you have on your audience.
Prioritize value and convenience
Offer flexible shopping options like in-store, online, and buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) to cater to busy families. Partner with services like Shipt or Instacart to streamline shopping experiences.
Agencies
Now, we’ll share two ways agencies can effectively prepare for the back-to-school season.
Engage early and extend your campaigns
Initiate conversations with brands earlier to ensure timely planning and execution. Extend campaign durations to capture late-decision makers.
Adapt your channel strategies
Shift focus to digital channels like CTV and social media, aligning with evolving consumer habits and preferences. Experian works with major platforms, marketers, and agencies, which means we have existing partnerships across the ecosystem for you to connect with and bring your consumer data to life to meet your needs.
Watch the full Q&A
The 2024 back-to-school season promises new challenges and opportunities for marketers. By starting campaigns earlier, optimizing online experiences, and aligning with budget-conscious consumers, brands and agencies can position themselves for success.
Watch our full Q&A video where our experts cover:
- Tactics we predict marketers will employ to navigate signal loss
- Which channels will be the most successful
- Recommended audiences for targeting
- And more!
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Cuebiq’s mission, as an offline intelligence and measurement company, is to deliver the most accurate and reliable insights on how digital marketing efforts impact offline consumer behavior. This case study shows how Cuebiq, despite signal loss, partnered with Experian to continue delivering in-store lift analyses. To achieve this, Cuebiq used Experian’s Activity Feed to resolve digital ad exposures to in-store purchases, so that marketers could know the effectiveness of their clients’ media campaigns. Activity Feed helped Cuebiq increase its match rates by using all the identifiers supported in Experian’s signal-agnostic Digital Graph, reducing its reliance on third-party cookies. By partnering with Experian, Cuebiq could help their clients, marketers, more accurately measure their campaigns and optimize their media. What is Activity Feed? Experian’s Activity Feed pulls together fragmented digital event data from all digital channels, including browsers like Safari and Firefox that restrict traditional tracking methods. Activity Feed ingests and ties this digital ad exposure data to household or individual profiles hourly, helping clients associate that data to offline purchase activity made by that household or individual. Activity Feed plays a crucial role in overcoming fragmented data and helping marketers accurately measure their cross-channel marketing efforts. Challenge: Increasing match rates across digital platforms Cuebiq wanted to enhance how well they connect digital ad exposures, across web, mobile and connected TV (CTV) to specific mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), of those who visited clients’ stores. They needed a single technology partner who could collect data across these environments and improve these connections, especially as iOS updates, like iOS 14.5, posed potential challenges. With the ability to resolve exposures to households, individuals, and MAIDs to then facilitate attribution of digital exposures to offline store visitation, Cuebiq could continue to provide accurate reports on how online ads impact offline consumer behavior. This clarity in data enables their clients to fine-tune their marketing strategies. Cuebiq’s key objectives included: Resolving digital exposures to MAIDs Increasing overlap of offline and online data Improving the effectiveness of offline measurement offerings Activity Feed: The solution to increase match rates Cuebiq used Activity Feed to resolve data from cookieless environments like Safari to a single household or individual and saw significantly higher match rates. Cuebiq was able to track cross-channel media exposures, resolve them to MAIDs, and then use the Activity Feed output to correlate in-store visitation and sales to their clients’ media campaigns. Cuebiq also implemented the Experian pixel, which they placed to track all their marketers’ impressions (mobile, CTV, web traffic, etc.). The Experian pixel collects information in real-time, such as: Timestamp Cookies Device ID (MAID/CTV) when available IP address User-Agent Impression ID “Before we started working with Experian, we couldn’t fully maximize ad views across the complex digital landscape. In just a few weeks, they were able to maximize the match rate across the fragmented digital inventory, solving a huge problem when it comes to cross-channel attribution.” Luca Bocchiardi, Director of Product, Cuebiq Results Activity Feed combines separate data streams and matches them back to a household. This enables Cuebiq to expand household IDs and accurately identify MAIDs that are seen in-store for cross-channel measurement. Over a 21-day period, Cuebiq passed ~1 billion events to Experian. Activity Feed resolved 85% of total events to a household, 91% of which were tied to MAIDs. By implementing Activity Feed, Cuebiq was successfully able to: Gain clearer insights into the success of their client‘s campaigns Match consumer engagements in a privacy-compliant manner Tell the story of the key performance indicators (KPIs) related to their marketing efforts Prepare for a cookieless future with higher match rates Activity Feed is prepared for a cookieless future and uses alternative IDs, like ID5 IDs, hashed emails, and IPs for identity resolution, ensuring no reliance on third-party cookies. Experian remains fully committed to exploring a suite of next-generation solutions and prioritizing continued testing of different industry solutions, including the Google Privacy Sandbox, to help customers prepare for a future without cookies. We’ve identified six viable alternatives to third-party cookies, how these alternatives fall short, and how Experian can help you navigate these alternatives. “Experian’s customer service is extremely efficient and collaborative. We trust them to keep putting our business first long-term.”Luca Bocchiardi, Director of Product, Cuebiq Download the full case study to discover how Cuebiq used Activity Feed to overcome their challenges. Your path to maximizing match rates and resolving data from cookieless environments starts here. Download the full case study About Cuebiq Cuebiq is transforming the way businesses interact with mobility data to providing a high-quality and transparent currency to map and measure offline behavior. They are at the forefront of all industry privacy standards, establishing an industry-leading data collection framework, and making it safe and easy for businesses to use location data for innovation and growth. To learn more, visit their website at www.cuebiq.com Latest posts

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Prior to joining Experian, Budi worked at various stakeholders of the ad-tech ecosystem, such as Tapad, Sizmek and StrikeAd. During his career, he held leadership roles in both Product Management and Solution Engineering. Budi has been living in New York for almost 11 years and enjoys being outdoors as well as sailing around NYC whenever possible. Latest posts

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