In this article…
It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost time again for marketers to begin their holiday campaign preparations. Leading up to these preparations, it’s important to reflect on consumer trends from Black Friday 2023 and derive insights for the coming year to shape successful marketing strategies.
Spending trends we saw in 2023
In 2023, consumer holiday spending was forecasted to rise at the slowest pace in five years due to inflation and cost of living concerns. Forrester reported that consumers weren’t spending less, but they were spending slower and paying less for what they bought to stretch their dollar further.
Despite slower spending, data showed a 7.5% increase in e-commerce sales from 2022 to 2023, with a record $9.8 billion spent online and the most substantial growth of in-store traffic in recent years, up 4.6% from the previous year. Shopify even reported record 2023 Black Friday sales numbers offline and offline, reaching $4.1 billion, with significant spending across personal care, clothing, jewelry, shoes, and decor. Around 75% of these sales occurred on mobile and 25% on desktop.
When people shopped in 2023
We also saw notable shifts in how, when, and where people shopped on Black Friday. One significant trend noted in our 2023 Holiday spending report was the increasing preference for early holiday shopping, particularly online. Consumers quickly responded to early discounts and promotions, which caused a surge in spending during October. Cyber Week, encompassing Black Friday through Cyber Monday, also played a significant role, accounting for 8% of total consumer holiday spending.
2023 trends we expect to see in 2024
As you gear up for the holiday season, understanding Black Friday trends from 2023 will be vital, as Black Friday 2024 is expected to see a continuation of several key trends alongside emerging ones:
- Mobile shopping will continue its growth trajectory.
- Consumers will keep seeking early deals.
- Marketers will prepare promotions sooner than ever.
- Flexible payment arrangements like “buy now/pay later” (BNPL) will drive conversions amid continued inflation.
- Channel switching will become more common.
- Paid search will drive the most sales.
Let’s talk about what past trends and future predictions mean for your marketing strategy and how you can use them to inform your 2024 holiday campaigns.
Emerging consumer behaviors
Consumer behaviors and preferences have been changing and reshaping the Black Friday shopping landscape over the last few years. Looking ahead to Black Friday 2024, several trends from last year are likely to continue shaping the shopping experience.
Early shopping
The early holiday shopping trend will continue to become more pronounced. Many consumers now begin their end-of-year shopping well before Halloween, seeking to take advantage of early deals and discounts, enjoy more time to compare prices and products, avoid crowds, secure popular items early, and spread out their budget. In 2023, Gallup found that one in four holiday shoppers even starts as early as September. This means your business must begin planning sales and promotions earlier in the season and roll them out sooner.
The value of experiences
We’re seeing an interesting shift toward gifting experiences over physical items among consumers with more disposable income. In a 2023 survey, one in five respondents said they’d prefer to get an experience as a gift over an item. Those in higher income brackets are allocating more of their holiday budgets to experiences that create lasting memories, such as theme park passes, art classes, concert tickets, and so forth. This trend will require retailers to get creative, potentially:
- Hosting giftable in-store events
- Enhancing the in-store experience
- Using experiential marketing to make deeper consumer connections
- Partnering with other companies to provide bundled gift/experience packages
Preference for digital channels
Media consumption habits and preferred engagement channels are also undergoing significant changes. Consumers increasingly turn to digital channels like streaming TV and connected TV (CTV) for entertainment and information. CTV ad spending, in particular, is expected to grow by 20% in 2024 and by low double digits into 2027. This shift will influence how retailers reach and engage with consumers, and it underscores the importance of digital marketing strategies and personalized online experiences.
Mobile vs. desktop online spending
The preference for mobile over desktop for online transactions is growing; in 2023, mobile devices comprised 54% of online sales, with online purchases up 10.4% from 2022 on Black Friday. More and more, consumers are using mobile devices to research, browse, and buy online. Marketers need to optimize their mobile and website experience to make the shopping experience seamless across all devices.
Key products and categories
Research has shown that the most popular in-store purchases of Black Friday weekend in 2023 included clothing/accessories and electronics.
- 82% of shoppers bought clothing in-store to inspect colors, material, and fit
- 73% said they would buy electronics in store to compare quality
These categories were followed by:
- Health and beauty (49%)
- Household appliances (44%)
- Sports/leisure (32%)
Interestingly, the same categories were also the top sellers online during Cyber Week 2023, with 79% of buyers seeking clothing/accessories and 66% intending to purchase electronics. Amazon was one of the most popular shopping destinations for Cyber Week 2023, with over a billion items sold. Some of the top-selling items included the Amazon Fire TV Stick and Ring Video Doorbell. This indicates a consistent consumer preference across different shopping channels and suggests shoppers are comfortable buying a wide range of products online, even during traditional in-store shopping events.
Looking ahead, retailers can reasonably anticipate continued demand for clothing/accessories and electronics, both in-store and online.
Marketing strategies that worked
Last year was a year of growth, albeit slow growth, despite economic uncertainty. Here are some of the marketing strategies deployed that contributed to this growth.
Influencer collaborations
Data from a 2023 Black Friday report showed that seven of every 10 shoppers acknowledged an influencer’s role in their purchase decision. Partnering with influencers to promote Black Friday deals and hosting live streaming sessions with influencers showcasing products helped reach new audiences and build credibility. Influencers’ recommendations resonated strongly with their followers, which drove traffic and increased sales.
Cross-channel marketing campaigns
Black Friday gives marketers a unique opportunity to engage audiences across touchpoints. Using a mix of channels, such as social media, email, websites, SMS, in-store promotions, and print media, tends to create more impactful campaigns.
Last year proved to be diverse in terms of marketing channel mix. Marketers embraced a cross-channel approach to connect with their users during holiday sales, which was evident in the increased usage of channels like email, SMS/MMS, web push notifications, and emerging channels like Roku messages. Using multiple channels to promote Black Friday deals increased visibility and reached a wider audience. This comprehensive approach ensured marketing messages reached customers wherever they were.
To maximize sales during the Cyber Five holiday season, activate Experian audiences as part of your omnichannel campaign. Our offerings include meticulously curated behavioral segments based on discount indicators such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Coupons/Sales. These segments help you target shoppers who are ready to take advantage of your promotions and are primed for early conversion. Our marketing data was ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, which means you can power smarter marketing initiatives, like insights, targeting, and measurement, using the highest-rated data.
App-only deals
In 2023, mobile app sales increased by 2% from 2022, generating a 12% increase in app purchases and $2 billion more in revenue than the year before. Businesses offering exclusive deals through their mobile apps incentivized customers to download and use the app for their purchases, which helped boost sales through a dedicated channel.
Limited-time offers
Time-limited offers are the essence of Black Friday and Cyber Week, giving shoppers a timeframe for getting the lowest prices of the year on certain products. Creating urgency is a highly effective way to get people to make a faster purchase decision.
Bath & Body Works is exemplary at using limited-time offers; once a year around Black Friday, they run a “Buy 3, Get 3” sale on the whole store for a single day, which encourages customers to stock up while getting their holiday shopping done.
Flash sales and hourly deals are shorter limited-time promotions that generate excitement, traffic, and sales. By highlighting specific products with steep discounts, retailers encourage customers to make instantaneous purchases. Amazon is known for these, which they refer to as Lightning Deals or product discounts available for only a few hours.
Early-bird discounts and exclusive previews
Retailers wanting to avoid overcrowded stores or website crashes can reward those who shop early with exclusive discounts or sneak peeks into Black Friday deals. This creates a feeling of urgency and privilege that leads to a purchase. Best Buy offers its Best Buy Plus and Best Buy Total members exclusive savings during a sale period just for them. They get early access to discounts toward the end of October, after which they open up their early bird deals to the public.
Predictions for Black Friday 2024
Based on what we’ve seen in 2023, we expect the following trends to shape consumer behavior on Black Friday and beyond in 2024.
Consumers will use their phones to shop more often than they already do
Mobile shopping is easy and discreet, allowing customers to shop from anywhere while staying on top of sales. Black Friday mobile orders increased from 2022 to 2023, with over 50% of all Black Friday sales occurring on smartphones. This indicates a growing trust in smartphone transactions among shoppers, which is why 2024 will likely reflect this trend.
As a marketer, this means you should ensure your website is optimized for smartphones and tablets. Ensure load speed is quick, navigation is simple, designs are intuitive, and mobile payment options are available. You also have an opportunity to invite your customers to sign up for SMS or push notifications so they can shop deals immediately after they’re rolled out.
While mobile should be a priority, we still recommend investing in multiple channels to capture online shoppers everywhere they’re buying. Our Graph can help you unify data, capture user activity, and view your target audience holistically to optimize ad spend, allocate resources effectively, and improve ROI.
Marketers will start preparing their Black Friday campaigns earlier than ever
With increasing market competition and pressure to accommodate early bird deal seekers, marketers will likely start preparing their discounts, inventories, and promotional materials earlier in the summer.
Data enrichment can help you prepare early Black Friday promos by providing deeper insights into your customers and what they want. Enriching your existing data with behavioral, financial, and demographic information can help you create precise audience segments and personalized content, anticipate customer preferences, optimize channel placement, and tailor your promotions effectively. On average, Experian has 250 behavioral and demographic 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. You can also consider implementing sell-side targeting to help your promotions reach the right people.
If you plan to run early promotions, try not to create deal fatigue among your consumers. Focus on building a few high-quality promotions that will attract your target customers.
BNPL arrangements will become more common for conversion
Given lingering inflation in the U.S., consumers will still be looking for ways to stretch their money this year, and many shoppers may seek out BNPL arrangements. According to Deloitte, 37% of shoppers have used these services historically, and these arrangements have proven to increase conversions by up to 30%.
With so many shoppers wanting the financial convenience of making large purchases without the immediate financial burden, marketers can use data enrichment to identify their target segments most likely to use BNPL and create personalized offers and promotions for them. Your strategy should include high-value offers and messaging that appeal to budget-conscious shoppers and a checkout optimized for BNPL options.
Channel switching will surge
Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are starting to become channel-agnostic, with consumers browsing online, on mobile apps, in physical stores, and on social media. As such, they expect a unified experience wherever they browse. Any inconsistency can disrupt the purchase journey and deter potential buyers.
As the shopping experience becomes more connected, consumers are moving between channels more frequently, which means integrating data from various touchpoints will be crucial to understanding and predicting customer behavior. Marketers must develop cohesive omnichannel strategies with consistent messaging and promotions across channels. Your campaigns should span multiple channels so customers can engage with your brand in various ways.
We work 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.
Paid search will drive the most sales
Research from Adobe shows paid search as the top sales driver of Cyber Week 2023, comprising nearly 30% of all online sales. Due to the high-intent customers captured by paid search and the surge in shopping on mobile devices, we expect to see paid search drive much of the Black Friday sales in 2024 — especially as advances in data analytics and AI allow marketers to optimize paid search campaigns more effectively. They can analyze vast amounts of data to refine keywords, ad copy, and bidding strategies for higher ROI and better targeting.
In 2024, it’s essential to prioritize paid search strategies and focus on using relevant, high-performing keywords for your campaigns. You can continuously refine your strategies using AI and data analytics to target high-intent customers. Additionally, integrating insights from customer behavior data will help you create more personalized, impactful ad copy and heighten the effectiveness of your paid search efforts.
Experian can help you win Black Friday 2024
Want your marketing campaigns to stand out and reach your audiences on Black Friday this year? Partner with Experian to create data-driven, targeted, impactful 2024 holiday campaigns.
Our data empowers you to gain valuable insights and optimize your holiday marketing strategies. We can connect online and physical transactions to our Experian household ID for a holistic view of customer behavior, connect ad exposure with foot traffic, or employ control group lift analysis to measure campaign effectiveness. By activating our purchase-based holiday audiences, like last-minute and one-stop holiday shoppers, you can reach the segments most likely to spend with you. Integrating with over 150 channels, we’ll help your campaigns reach your audience wherever they are. You can even utilize our connections to various digital platforms and partners to expand your reach.
With Experian’s measurement offerings, you can make data-driven decisions about your activation strategies. Engage the right audiences and drive exceptional results this holiday season with Experian.
Latest posts
As the pandemic took hold of the country and stay-at-home orders were put in place, one of the consumer categories that was most adversely affected was the restaurant industry. But while sit-down restaurants were forced to pivot to curbside delivery and other inventive means to make ends meet, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) that already had a solid delivery program or drive-through in place saw a surge in new guests. “Dinner and a movie” took on a different meaning as people either picked up or ordered in to make date night happen, and QSRs rose to the occasion like never before. With some states beginning phased re-openings of non-essential businesses, some restaurants are now allowed to open so long as they follow social distancing rules or allow for outdoor dining areas. But that doesn’t mean consumers will be ready to race out and participate in this new dining experience. Many may remain apprehensive about safety and continue to “dine at a distance” until they’re confident that they can remain healthy, or until a successful vaccine goes into use. Even as states begin their phased re-opening plans, many continue to work from home—which has greatly affected both dine-in and QSR venues. Those who saw a robust lunchtime crowd probably saw a drop-off while business-based locals shifted their office plans. However, new opportunities have emerged for restaurants to reach out to their regular lunch crowd to offer delivery or attract a whole new lunch crowd who may not have thought to order from them before. Between the challenges of a post-pandemic world, a shifting of diner priority, and an uncertain future facing the restaurant world, it’s now more important than ever before to leverage an intelligent, data-driven marketing strategy to ensure your campaigns reach the right consumers, and also attract new customers to expand your customer base over time. All of this can be done using the power of data, but having the right data is key to making the most of your marketing efforts. As you’re crafting your current marketing plans, it’s important to look at all the variables you need to address to create more targeted messaging, thus helping you zero in on your most desired consumer base. The first thing to consider is, how well do you know your guests, and what do you know about them? If you have no insight into their dining habits or preferences, it will be challenging to come up with messaging that will speak to them. But with the right data, you can discover if they frequent your competitor’s locations (and if so, how often), which apps they’re using to order food, which days of the week, and even which meals they are most likely to order. You can also use this information to better understand how often you factor into your customer’s dining plans by understanding if they are beginning to commute again, or continuing to work from home, and if the latter, do they live near one of your locations. Data can also help you discover more about who they are, so you can even further tailor your messaging to their needs. Let’s say your target customer is married with children. Addressing their busy life as a professional and a parent, and sharing how you can ease the burden of dinnertime to make life easier for them, may be exactly the kind of message of support they need to encourage them to reach out to you. Using data based on demographics, lifestyle, behavior, attitudinal and mobile location data can help you cook up a marketing strategy with precision and success, resulting in more diners knocking on your door (or at least, calling for take-out). Another key component to consider is the use of mobile location data, which Zeta Global cites1 as being the most important data chain restaurants can use for their marketing plans. Not only can this data be used to better understand share of wallet and potential up-sell opportunities, but it can also be leveraged to reach out directly to potential new customers that have historically frequented your top competitors. You can also use mobile location data to connect with consumers who may be more drawn to your restaurant because of your delivery or curbside pick-up options, and craft outreach based on that information that will encourage them to order with you. As Hospitality Tech pointed out2, building trust in a post-pandemic world is key for QSRs who want to continue to encourage loyalty with current guests, and entice new ones to place orders. The key to making that happen is data. By deploying marketing messages that resonate, activating them on the channels your guests use most, then measuring the impact of your campaigns, QSRs can create more opportunities for success and customer connection that can translate into real, long-term results. Plus, the right data can help you increase store traffic with high value guests, reactivate guests who haven’t visited in a while and find new individuals who live nearby that closely resemble your current high value guests. Experian has decades of experience in helping organizations better communicate with their customers across all marketing channels. How can we help you? Find out more about our restaurant marketing solutions. 1https://zetaglobal.com/blog/chain-restaurants-need-customer-data/ 2https://hospitalitytech.com/new-marketing-communications-playbook-during-covid-19
2020 has been a year of change and challenges for businesses and consumers alike. With the global pandemic, we have seen stay at home orders put in place, a shift to work from home for many, major events canceled, schools shifted to online format, graduations and other end-of-year activities canceled, and more. As we move through the phases of reopening, everyone is figuring out how to navigate the ‘new normal’ in the wake of new safety requirements, businesses are working to determine what their day-to-day operations will look like as they reopen. The changing times have implications on how consumers act, what and how they purchase, and how they manage their daily lives. With these changing times, consumers are quickly adapting their lifestyles which impacts the choices they make on how they shop, bank and provide for their families. Businesses across the United States are trying to understand how consumers are feeling during this time and how that might correlate with their visitation patterns. Using Experian’s Mobile Location data, coupled with Consumer Sentiment data, we looked at foot traffic and sentiment trends in the retail space throughout the pandemic. As you can see from the chart, there has been a steady increase in household visits to retail locations since March that correlates with the rise in sentiment. Note the differences in visitation patterns across the regions. You can see some foot traffic spikes, which correlate to reopening phases in several states during the week of May 4th and Memorial Day weekend. However, you see a lower average of foot traffic in the Northeast U.S. where reopening phases are rolling out at a slower pace. It is going to be essential for businesses to craft marketing strategies on a regional level as guidelines for reopening are the state-level. This means that a business’s consumers look different based on where they are located and might require more targeted and sensitive messaging. For example, using Experian’s Mosaic segmentation, we further delved into what consumers look like today by analyzing those Mosaics who have the most positive change in regard to the pandemic, versus those that had the most negative. You can see in the charts that there is a significant difference between the Mosaics trending positively versus those trending negatively. Consumer segments have drastically different sentiment, and foot traffic patterns and understanding how your consumers are feeling and where they are shopping will help improve your ROI. Having a comprehensive and targeted marketing plan will be essential for companies as they navigate the intricacies of reopening. Experian’s Reopening Package allows brands to take a phased approach to better understand and reach both new and existing customers through targeting, analytics and key insights. Companies can analyze their consumers’ sentiments and visitation patterns during the pandemic, segmented by Experian Mosaic® lifestyle segmentation group. Businesses can then take those insights and apply them to other models, or create their own models, to build out and run effective marketing campaigns that target current and prospective customers. A successful long-term marketing strategy needs to be data-driven, leveraging data and analytics to help craft targeted messaging. We can see that consumers want to shop again – foot traffic patterns appear to have increased since June, and sentiment is up – now it is necessary to understand where your customers fit into the spectrum. Missed our recent webinar, How COVID-19 Has Shaped Consumer Behavior for Retailers? Access the on demand version here.
Overview Chartable leverages The Tapad Graph to improve cross-device attribution rates and remove non-addressable IPs for clients. Challenge Chartable needs to differentiate between consumer and potential business IP addresses to provide accurate household modeling and reduce excess data for their customers. Podcasting generally only has access to IP addresses as a form of digital ID which limits its ability to connect activity to individuals and extend it across all devices. The Tapad + Experian solution Using Tapad, now a part of Experian, Chartable is able to cut through the noise of IP data and discard any addresses deemed a shared IP or business. Then, Tapad + Experian connects individual users to their other digital IDs and users in their household; creating a richer attribution model for Chartable customers. Increase in podcast attribution rates Get started with The Tapad Graph For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today!