Back to School (BTS) season is the longest shopping event of the year. A 2016 survey from eMarketer found that 66% of shoppers planned on doing their back to school shopping between July 4 and Labor Day and 17% said that they plan on shopping on an “as-needed” basis.
College students start doing BTS searches while they are still at the beach. It’s important for marketing teams to understand the types of messages and call to actions customers would be most receptive to before planning their programmatic advertising campaigns so that they can get the biggest return on their investments. That’s why Digilant dove into the data to find out when and how marketing dollars should be spent.
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BTS shoppers are now using all their devices to do their searches, so a cross-platform media buying strategy is absolutely necessary. Parents are browsing their desktops and iPads with their children, looking for BTS items but also shopping around for the best price. They are also using their mobile devices when they are in store, price-checking items and looking for coupons to download. Most buyers are not relying solely on brick-and-mortar stores anymore. Some buyers will rely solely on using online stores for their BTS shopping like Amazon.com and most others will shop at stores like Walmart, Macy’s and even CVS who offer a combination of online shopping and in-store returns, which has totally changed the Back to School shopping dynamic.
According to a RetailMeNot survey, top predicted days for BTS shopping in 2017 are:
- Saturday, 8/5/17
- Monday, 9/4/17 (Labor Day)
- Friday, 8/4/17
- Saturday, 8/12/17
- Sunday, 8/13/17
Digilant also discovered the following information about BTS shoppers:
- Best Call to Actions:
- 88% of parents use coupons
- Parents are also receptive to: promotional emails, promo codes and brands they already know
- Best time to run a BTS campaign?
- Starting July 11th