The study leverages a custom analysis of data from the Simmons National Hispanic Consumer Study, which measures over 48,000 respondents across 60,000 variables, including language, demographics, brand preferences, attitudes, lifestyles and even political outlook. Not surprisingly, the data showed that non-Hispanics who live in high-density Hispanic neighborhoods behave, buy and believe more similarly to Hispanics than non-Hispanics living in low-density Hispanic neighborhoods, even after controlling variables such as geography, education, income, age and other factors.

Some of our findings reinforced what we expected to see. For example, the data shows that non-Latinos living among Latinos:

• Consume and enjoy more Hispanic products, including food, music and sports. They are 5.5 times more likely to eat jalapeños and are 6 times as likely to listen to and enjoy salsa and merengue.
• Enjoy standing out in the crowd and being fashionable. They are twice as likely to say they like to stand out from the crowd and 70% more likely to experiment with new clothing styles.

However, we were surprised to see that the Latino influence on the mainstream extends far beyond just food, sports and fashion. Non-Latinos living among Latinos also:

• Lead the way in technology. They are twice as likely to use their cell phones and the Internet for information and entertainment.
• Eat less processed food. They are twice as likely to look for organic and natural when shopping for food.
• Are environmentally conscious. They are twice as likely to buy recycled products.

The growing Hispanic population together with the influence they are exerting on non-Hispanics that live around them means that our whole notion of “general market” is changing, and will continue to evolve. We think that’s pretty cool.

To find out more about the Latino Influence Project and learn more about what we found (and what we think it all means), please join the Webinar being hosted by Wing and Experian Marketing Services on Thursday November 29^th, 2012 at 2:00 EST. You can also download the Latino Influence Project report.

Holly McGavock is Wing’s Director of Planning, where she helps brands like Olay, Downy, Red Lobster and Radio Shack, among many others, connect with Latino consumers.

Seventy eight percent (78%) of last year’s tracked holiday campaigns had some form of offer or discount. Overall, campaigns with offers had witnessed a decline in opens and clicks but powered through with a 68% higher transaction rates and 60% increase in revenue per email over campaigns with no offer. When looking at the kinds of offers or discounts, we see the big winners were % off, $ off and multi-offers, while there were fewer free gifts and countdowns.

Since we can’t know for sure what the future holds, it is important to look at what happened last year to inform us directionally as to what we should expect for the upcoming holiday season. This data makes the case that you should definitely make an offer or present a discount within your email in order to increase transaction rates and revenue per email.

For more tips watch our holiday webcast featuring insight you can use right away and keep your eye on this blog.

In addition to email, the study showed that paid search and online display advertising were the next most successful marketing tactics of the 2011 holiday season, with 48.9 percent naming search and 34.8 naming online display advertising as extremely or very successful campaign tactics. Our internal experts are currently looking at real-time data around these and other marketing channels and will present what they’ve learned during a live webinar on Thursday, October 25^th at 1:00 p.m. EST. This information should prove very helpful to marketers who want to improve their campaigns based on current trends and results. Register for the holiday webinar and you’ll receive all of the survey data in the form of a 2012 holiday marketing white paper. Here’s to a joyous and profitable holiday season!

Checking in on value qualifiers such as “discount,” “coupon” and “deal” we see that the number of search variations has remained constant during the same time period.

The king of value qualifiers, “cheap,” shows moderate increases during 2012, specifically during summer.  This is most likely due to the popularity of “cheap” functioning as a value term in online travel searches.

I decided to check in on the top ten search variations containing “cheap” over the last four weeks (ending 10/13/2012). In fact 50% of the terms are travel related.

The popularity of “cheap” as a value qualifier in travel might be explained by the commoditization of the industry. Loyalty programs excluded, do we really care which airline gets us from point A to point B?

What is surprising regarding our “cheap” searches is that we rarely see this qualifier applied to apparel. Do we really want cheap clothing? Yet appearing in the #9 position is one of the most important apparel searches – “wedding dresses.”

Top 10 searches containing “cheap”

1. Cheap Flights
2. Cheap Tickets
3. Cheap Halloween Costumes
4. Cheap Hotels
5. Cheap Car Rentals
6. Cheap Gas
7. Cheap Airfare
8. Cheap Cruises
9. Cheap Wedding Dresses
10. Cheap Car Insurance

Join us Thursday, October 25^th for our holiday digital marketer webinar where we will discuss search behaviors and other actionable insights for the upcoming holiday season.

Here are 5 quick and easy ways to weave live email into your campaigns as you sprint down the Q4 homestretch.

1. Time: countdown to the last second. Instead of saying there is “one-day only” to redeem your offers, show actual time remaining to take advantage of Cyber Monday and day after Christmas sales. Also show time remaining to place orders in time for delivery by Christmas Eve.
2. Location: showcase nearby brick and mortar stores. Your customers are going to shop in stores this holiday season, and not always stores in their home zip code. Use IP-based location tracking to drive foot traffic to the offline locations closest to them at the moment when they open your email.
3. Device: ensure campaigns are optimized for multiple platforms.
   Use real-time device targeting to display optimal content for desktop, tablet and smartphone interactions. When emails are opened on smartphones, promote app downloads or launch already-installed native apps to maximize mobile shopping opportunities.
   
4. Social context: stream fan chatter within emails. Don’t just put “share on social networks” buttons onto your templates and wait and pray for people to click on them – stream what your fans and followers are saying about your products and shopping experience directly into emails to make getting in on the action more enticing.
   
5. Bonus: test and optimize in real time. Every day between now and the end of the year is precious – don’t waste time by testing and optimizing in delayed-time when you can easily do so in real-time.

Make the end of 2012 your best quarter yet. Give your email program the gift of live email technology, and get more of your customers’ mindshare and loyalty this holiday season!

For more holiday marketing tips, view Experian CheetahMail’s webcast: Countdown to the holidays.

Q&A with Liz Gould, Experian CheetahMail’s Director, Strategic Accounts

As a follow-up to its holiday planning webinar held earlier this year, on October 4^th, Experian CheetahMail will host an additional holiday marketing webinar to help email, mobile and social marketers integrate last minute tips and strategies into their holiday campaigns, as well as identify early trends for the 2012 holiday shopping season.

The webinar will be hosted by Experain CheetahMail’s Liz Gould, Director, Strategic Accounts and Andy Werner, Senior Strategic Account Specialist.

Q: What differences do you anticipate seeing this holiday season in terms of marketing strategies than last?

A: We foresee two major trends affecting holiday campaigning this year more than any others.

The first is mobile. We’ve seen clients with up to 65% of their users reading emails on mobile devices. This is driving marketers to become savvier in terms of how they design their emails and how they are driving those customers to a good mobile experience.  More clients are now even serving up reminders or follow ups for on-the-go consumers who are not able to purchase at the time they view an email on their phone. If you are a marketer who hasn’t begun testing for mobile optimization, I highly suggest doing it now – and then use those results to help drive your holiday campaigns. Remember that there’s a high chance your customers are out and about during the holidays and its best to optimize knowing those patterns.

The second involves deliverability. With significant changes to the deliverability landscape, such as ISPs using engagement ratings to determine spam and ISPs cracking down on bad data, we expect changes to how aggressive marketers are over the holidays. For example, in the past we spoke about reactivating old users over the holidays, as now is the time that someone who hasn’t opened, clicked or even purchased recently may re-engage. As marketers, we now have to be much more mindful about mailing inactive addresses or aggressively mailing customers you may not have mailed as frequently in the past. Additionally, since ISPs are bulking based on engagement, it’s more important than ever to get your engagement up and clean your lists of “dead weight.”

Q:  Are there online strategies that Experian CheetahMail is seeing that are experiencing early success leading up to holiday?

A: With the massive clutter in consumer’s inboxes, we see campaigns that use creativity making big impact. It could be as simple as using symbols in subject lines or more progressive by turning emails on their side to create horizontal scrolling email or creating real-time dynamic emails to optimize creative target for specific devices and display real-time store locations.

With real-time creative optimization, where you can switch in creative that performs best during live campaigns, we’ve seen up to 110% lift in clicks for our clients. That’s huge! Horizontal scrolls have seen up to a 10% lift in clicks and the newer, more intriguing symbols (like airplanes, umbrellas, and shoes) have shown lift up to 15% in opens. While some of these are quick win tactics, they’re helping our clients up their customer engagement before the holidays, which is helping deliverability and in turn increasing sales.

To learn more holiday marketing tips and trends, register for Experian CheetahMail’s special webinar, Countdown to the holidays, on Thursday, October 4, 2012 12:00 PM EDT.

Last week Facebook formally launched “Custom Audience” ads. The company also announced that Experian’s Alchemy Social was named as a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, the highest distinction of excellence Facebook has ever offered to marketing developers.

These two announcements particularly hit home with Experian Marketing Services’ Rachel Bergman, CEO of Alchemy Social, who is hosting Experian CheetahMail’s webinar this week, titled Email + Facebook = Like.  Immediately following the Facebook announcements, we were able to grab Rachel for a quick Q&A to chat about how Experian CheetahMail clients, and email marketers in general, can leverage Facebook’s Custom Audiences.

Q1: Rachel, why are you so passionate about this topic?

A1: I’m in a pretty unique position, having overseen the Experian CheetahMail business for several years, having been in email marketing for 12 years and now running Experian’s Alchemy Social. When I started in this new role about 6 months ago, Facebook changed the game pretty significantly by introducing Sponsored Stories that allow marketers to turn their Facebook ads into relationship-driven marketing. Although this was really exciting for advertisers, I knew it wasn’t going to change the way email marketers ran their programs. The connection just wasn’t there. With Facebook’s new announcement on Custom Audiences, they’ve taken a huge leap forward. This has happened very quickly. Now, email marketing and Facebook ad targeting have a clear link and I can’t wait for clients to start exploring all the opportunities this brings.

Q2: Can you tell us, exactly what is Facebook Custom Audiences?

A2: Custom Audiences allows you to target Facebook ads to specific individuals, allowing you to reach the exact audience you want to target. Specifically, you can take any file of email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user ID’s, and Experian CheetahMail will make that file available in Alchemy Social to target Facebook ads to the individuals that match that file. Your file is hashed at CheetahMail and sent to Facebook, so that no personal data about the individual is shared with a third party.

Q3: How do you think marketers will use Custom Audiences to enhance their email programs?

A3: The possibilities are endless for how you can use this new functionality, but here are some ideas that we think will be the most popular:

- Amplify the reach of each of your email campaigns by targeting your subscribers with Facebook ads. We all know that it oftentimes takes more than one impression to get a customer to engage – why not get that impression soon after your email is sent and drive traffic back to your current promotion?!

- Reach specific email addresses, via Facebook advertising, that you know have not received your message via email (e.g. non-openers/inactives or previous bounces).

- Retarget email addresses that have or have not completed specific actions in an email (e.g. a click on a specific link, a purchase of a category or specific product) with highly dynamic and relevant Facebook advertising.

- Retarget to website visitors that have or have not completed specific actions on your website with highly dynamic and relevant Facebook advertising. Note that this is a cookie-based match and you may be able to reach more visitors this way than with traditional email remarketing messages.

- Target Facebook ads specifically to individuals in your customer database that you have a phone number for, but not email address. Try to get them to engage and drive them to a landing page where they can opt-in for email communications.

- Launch a compelling campaign to all of your email subscribers to get them to become fans of your brand. You are able to exclude current fans from your Custom Audience after your file is loaded. How great is this? You can now run a targeted campaign on Facebook to convert all of your loyal customers to be fans on Facebook without wasting any impressions on current fans or other Facebook users who do not already have such a strong affinity with your brand.

Q4: You weren’t kidding, there are a lot of options! Can you tell us about targeting inactives? Why do you think this is so important?

A4: I’m glad you asked since I’m really excited about this. It’s no secret that email marketers have a huge challenge with reengagement and reactivation. Email is such a profitable channel, and the minute an email address is lost, it can be lost for good. Many companies have been forced to segment out a percentage of their email lists that they can no longer mail to due to “inactivity.” This is a huge loss! Now, with Custom Audiences, email marketers have a new channel to reach these inactives online. We see this as a huge opportunity – with every email marketer testing this, and ultimately making it part of their overall program.

Q5: What do you think is unique about Experian Marketing Services’ Custom Audiences offering?

A5: We are the only company that brings together the largest email marketing services provider in the world and one of the largest social advertising platforms in a completely seamless way – that’s really powerful! We can manage the process end-to-end for our clients so that they can make reaching their email audience on Facebook part of their everyday program, with no additional heavy lifting. It also doesn’t hurt that we are obsessed with our clients and always do everything we can to make sure their marketing programs are successful.

Q6: Some clients may have heard of The Facebook Exchange. Can you explain how this is different from Custom Audiences?

A6: The Facebook Exchange, or FBX, is equally as exciting and allows clients to target Facebook ads to visitors of their website who or have not completed specific actions (e.g. a visitor who placed an item in a shopping cart, but did not convert). The results of these highly targeted and timely campaigns have been yielding excellent results over the past couple of months while the program has been in Beta. This is technically how we will help clients re-build remarketing programs they have in email on Facebook, but our clients will work with us in a similar way to how we work with them on Audiences – so the difference between the products is not as important. The major difference is that The Facebook Exchange relies on a cookie match from the client website to Facebook, not an email match. Thus, we will not be sending files back-and-forth with this product. The match will be made by Facebook when the user goes to Facebook after coming to the client’s site. I see this as a great opportunity to potentially reach a larger audience with remarketing messages.

Q7: How can email marketers get started, especially with the holidays coming on so fast?

A7: First, attend our webinar,  Email + Facebook = Like  If you are an Experian CheetahMail client, you can then contact your Account Manager or a member of your account team and we can talk you through, step-by-step, how to start leveraging this new functionality. We have this functionality ready today and it’s that easy. There is a huge opportunity with Custom Audiences and this year’s holiday campaigns to increase overall campaign ROI.

Rachel Bergman leads the Alchemy Social business globally for Experian. For the last decade, Rachel has overseen Experian CheetahMail’s explosive growth and built one of the most highly regarded client services organizations in the world. Driven by “customer obsession,” Rachel has been in digital marketing since the beginning of her career. Rachel lives in New York with her husband and two children and has a BA with Honors in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University.

You can reach Rachel directly at rachel.bergman@experian.com or follow her on twitter at @rachelbergman

The growth of e-commerce over the past several years has included the emergence of Black Friday as one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Experian Hitwise has tracked site visits over the last eight years. Each year, two days have consistently captured the title of busiest shopping days of the year: Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday). Last year this all changed and Cyber Monday claimed the prize as the busiest shopping day of the year, growing from 138 million visits to 177 million visits to the Retail 500 index of sites, a 29% growth comparing 2010 to 2011.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Within the key retail categories for these holiday shopping milestones, sites within the Apparel & Accessories, House & Garden and Toys & Hobbies saw the most growth on Cyber Monday year over year. These key categories all saw growth on Thanksgiving & Black Friday as well except for Toys & Hobbies which has a slight decrease year over year.

Source: Experian Hitwise

What do these and other trends mean for your holiday season? Join our webinar on September 26^th, as our experts share more on traffic drivers, search trends and critical insights that will improve your ability to target and engage high value consumer segments. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about what, how and when consumers search and buy online during the holiday season.

• For the first time, last year’s Cyber Monday beat Thanksgiving Day as the busiest online shopping day of the year
• Facebook and Pinterest were the top traffic sources to the Experian Marketing Services Retail 500
• Pinterest visitors most often went to etsy.com and amazon.com from the pinterest.com site
• Dynamic content in emails can drive up to a 70% lift in open rates
• Tying web, email and in-store promotions together enhances the shopping experience and improves sales

The bottom line is that marketers need to understand where there customers are, when they are there, and what they are doing. Armed with that knowledge, you can deliver personalized and targeted holiday messages that are sure to make this shopping season merry and bright (and profitable!). View the webinar to learn more.

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