Brands can benefit from analysis of customer social media behavior heading into the holidays — and beyond

New analysis finds consumers using the hashtag #BlackFriday are most likely to be women, married and between 26 and 50 years old

New York, N.Y., Nov. 17, 2016 — As more and more consumers engage in social media, brands need to invest more time in understanding how their current customers and prospects interact on this growing channel. To help address this need, Experian Marketing Services has teamed with SpotRight to provide brands with actionable insight into the social media behavior of their customers. Social Media Analysis is a new visualization tool that enables marketers to better understand the social influence, brand behavior, following activity, competitor overlap and rich demographic information of their target audiences.

Social Media Analysis leverages Experian’s consumer demographic and lifestyle data, as well as SpotRight’s social media relationships, to help marketers paint a rich and full picture of their target audiences. Additionally, marketers can gain insight into any audience, including a custom digital audience (a brand’s or competitor’s social following, hashtags, etc.), first-party CRM data or an audience defined through Experian® third-party data.

“When it comes to social media data, marketers need to go beyond likes, shares and reposts. They need to listen and quantify what consumers are saying and doing,” said Brienna Pinnow, director of product marketing for Targeting, Experian Marketing Services. “So many consumers make their opinions and preferences known on social media, and the marketers that succeed are those that leverage opportunities to better communicate messages that resonate with their customers.”

With the holidays rapidly approaching, Experian leveraged Social Media Analysis to gain more insight into the consumers currently mentioning #BlackFriday on social media. The analysis* found that nearly 53 percent of those discussing the much-anticipated day after Thanksgiving are women. Additionally, approximately 60 percent of consumers including the hashtag in their posts fall between the ages of 26 and 50, while more than 73 percent are married. From a geographic perspective, consumers mentioning #BlackFriday are 1.75 times more likely to live in Washington, D.C.

As marketers prepare for Black Friday, this level of insight can help them improve their holiday campaign performance and deliver personalized messages to their customers. For example, if 73 percent of consumers mentioning Black Friday on social channels are married, then marketers may want to include messaging, such as “Great gifts for your spouse.”

Additionally, Social Media Analysis leverages Experian’s industry-leading data management, linkage, and privacy capabilities and expertise to help marketers accurately match billions of daily digital interactions and turn them into actionable insights.

“Gaining insight into social media behavior goes beyond practical use cases for just social media channels,” continued Pinnow. “Marketers can utilize the information to optimize content and marketing messages across other digital platforms and television, as well as better inform brand partnerships and measure campaign results.”

The analysis is delivered through a web-based dashboard that enables marketers to easily digest and take action on social media analytics. Using the analysis, marketers can view 20-plus types of sub-analyses and approximately 65 ways to view the data, including:

•Social behavior:
– Influence, followers, popular topics, time of day, activity.
• Category activity:
– Following behaviors for key categories (such as TV shows, restaurants and automotive).
– Select any brand and understand its audience overlap with another brand/handle.
• Brands overview:
– A breakdown of following patterns for the top 500 brands followed by the audience
– All followed brands also are categorized with insights into the top five handles followed in a category.
• Interests overview:
– A breakdown of following patterns for the top 500 interests/handles followed by the audience.
– All followed interests also are categorized with insights into the top five handles in a category.
• Demographics:
– Includes Experian data for gender, age, income, presence of children, occupation, education, residence and more.
• Geography:
– A snapshot of your audience’s state of residence and top metro areas, including indexes.
• Segmentation:
Mosaic® USA lifestyle segmentation for 71 types and 19 overarching groups.

“For the most part, brands realize the need for social media analytics, but lack the resources and time to fully immerse themselves in the data,” said Todd Greer, CEO for SpotRight. “By collaborating with Experian, we make it easier for marketers to understand the ‘who’ behind the handle and determine how to properly interact with their customers on social media platforms, as well as other channels.”

For additional insights from Experian’s #BlackFriday analysis, visit http://bit.ly/2gmweqA.

Contact:
Jordan Takeyama
Experian Marketing Services
1 714 830 7561
jordan.takeyama@experian.com

About SpotRight
SpotRight combines rich social media behavior with qualified and reliable consumer data, making it faster and easier for brands and agencies to find and target audiences and understand what makes the people in them unique and special. SpotRight’s patented platform is built by industry experts and uses some of the most trusted data available today. Relied on by global brands and agencies, SpotRight provides creative intelligence that informs ideas, innovations, and campaigns rapidly and easily. Learn more at: http://spotright.com/

About Experian Marketing Services
Experian Marketing Services is a leader in data-driven marketing and cloud-based marketing technology. Experian is the only company in the world to offer a comprehensive Marketing Suite that unites customer insights, analytics, data quality and cross-channel marketing technology into a single platform. Backed by the industry’s highest-rated client services team and the world’s largest consumer database, we provide more than 10,000 brands in more than 30 countries with unique competitive advantages through marketing services and technology. Our extended legacy in data security, management and consumer privacy has earned the trust of organizations and consumers from around the world for more than three decades. For more information, please visit http://www.experian.com/marketing-services.

About Experian
We are the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to our clients around the world. We help businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision-making. We also help people to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft. In 2016, for the third year running, we were named one of the “World’s Most Innovative Companies” by Forbes magazine.

We employ approximately 17,000 people in 37 countries and our corporate headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; California, US; and São Paulo, Brazil.

Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended March 31, 2016, was US$4.6 billion.

To find out more about our company, please visit http://www.experianplc.com or watch our documentary, “Inside Experian.”

Experian and the Experian marks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Experian Information Solutions, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

 

*This analysis is based on SpotRight's active Twitter user profiles, and is derived from consumers tweeting about "#blackfriday" between August and November 2016. Active is defined as consumers who have tweeted in the past 12 months.

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