PORTLAND, Ore., June 25, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yesmail Interactive, an Infogroup company which powers intelligent customer interactions, released the first round of data from its latest research report, "Using Digital Market Intelligence to Drive Multi-Channel Success." The study reveals valuable findings that marketers can use to improve digital campaign performance.
Retailers analyzed in Yesmail's study include: 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.
"While marketers have plenty of tools at their disposal to put these multi-channel strategies in place, they have been slow to effectively harness the power of customer data available to them," said Michael Fisher, President of Yesmail. "When properly collected and analyzed, this type of digital intelligence provides in-depth, actionable insights that can definitively improve a brand's marketing strategy."
What's the Best Day of the Week to Run Your Campaign?
In a comparison of the days when brands deploy digital campaigns and when consumers most interact with those campaigns via social channels, Yesmail's findings revealed marketers are missing key opportunities to engage their target audience.
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," said Fisher. "The data revealed an upward trend in consumers' interaction with video on Facebook, yet this format was only used in 6.5 percent 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."
What is the Best Time of Day to Run Your Campaign?
Yesmail's report also showed a discrepancy between the timeslot 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. EST, yet this timeslot was the least utilized by marketers. Instead, the most popular time to deploy campaigns was 11a.m.-1p.m. EST.
- More than 84 percent of Twitter campaigns occurred within regular work hours of 9 a.m.-7 p.m. EST, even though 5 a.m.-8 a.m. EST is the timeframe with the highest level of customer engagement.
- Marketers tend to focus their YouTube campaigns during half of the day, missing possible engagement opportunities.
- A mere 3 percent of emails are sent after 6 p.m. EST, yet it is a fairly consistently utilized timeslot for social campaigns.
How Does Email Impact Your Social Media Campaigns?
Yesmail's research showed that if email campaigns were 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 percent when one email campaign was deployed on the same day and by 100 percent when two email campaigns were deployed.
- Twitter campaign engagement levels reached a 35 percent increase with one email campaign and a 50 percent 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," added 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."
To view the full report "Using Digital Market Intelligence to Drive Multichannel Success," please visit www.yesmail.com/MIRetailReport.
ABOUT YESMAIL INTERACTIVE
We power intelligent customer interactions. We give you the insights to recognize and understand your customer to deliver contextually relevant digital communications- while respecting their preferences and privacy. We help marketers evolve their customer relationships through intelligent interactions via technology, insights and services in a near real time multi-channel environment. We help you compete in the age of the customer. For more information, visit www.yesmail.com.
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ABOUT YESMAIL MARKET INTELLIGENCE
Yesmail Market Intelligence provides real-time, in-depth competitive data across multiple digital channels and industries. The tool feeds real-time data from four digital channel feeds directly into one user-friendly dashboard, providing a sneak peek into competitor activity and enabling marketers to evaluate industry market trends and best practices. By helping marketers refine, adjust or completely redefine their multichannel strategy, Yesmail Market Intelligence is one of the most sophisticated tools for improving marketing efficiency and ROI.
ABOUT INFOGROUP
Infogroup helps companies increase sales and customer loyalty through its high-value data and innovative multi-channel digital and offline marketing solutions. Infogroup enables its clients – from local businesses to Fortune 100 companies – to target, connect with and engage their most valuable audiences. With cutting edge technology and analytics bolstered by our proprietary, real-time Data Axle™ of contextually relevant information on more than 230 million individuals and 24 million businesses, Infogroup delivers the complete spectrum of value added data, direct and digital marketing solutions. For more information, please visit www.infogroup.com.