It turns out that bitter relative of yours has been right all along: The holiday season does, indeed, begin too early each year.
A recent report from marketing software company SteelHouse shows that 48% of shoppers say they complete the majority of their shopping on or before Cyber Monday—a 40% increase from 2013. Also, 25% of shoppers say they began their holiday shopping even before Halloween arrived.
The report, which represents millions of online transactions from about 500 U.S. retailers over desktop, smartphones, and tablets during the last 12 months, states that people spend 82% of their mobile time in-app versus 18% in mobile Web. In-app campaigns, the reports says, convert at five to 10 times the mobile Web rate.
It would behoove marketers to use some sense of style when running a campaign, as the report says dynamic creative increases conversion rates by 69%. Also, ads with video backgrounds and countdown timers achieve up to 10 times better performance.
“At SteelHouse, we have the opportunity to analyze millions of data points between our advertisers and their customers. It’s fascinating to see how consumer behavior changes during the holiday period,” said Patrizio Spagnoletto, CMO at Steelhouse, in a press release. “For example, this holiday season, we’re likely to see consumers using Pinterest more than ever to aid in buying decisions. This is just one of the many insights explained in our guide, and we are happy to share what we learned over the past year.”
Other findings include:
- Three out of four shoppers will continue to use their mobile device while in-store.
- Pinterest referrals spend twice the amount of Facebook referrals.
- Twenty-six percent of e-commerce sales came from mobile devices from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday—up 20% from the same period during the previous year.
- Eighty-seven percent of marketers are investing in mobile, but only 11% are using segments in those campaigns.
- Forty-one percent of mobile shoppers plan to use their mobile devices to research products and compare prices—many comparing prices while still in-store.
- Sixty-seven percent of consumers move between devices when they’re shopping online, 98% of people switch between devices in a single day. The ability to track your audience across browsers, platforms, and devices is imperative to notching holiday conversions.
