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Summer may be vacation season for consumers, but it’s go time for marketers. Between holiday weekends, travel season, and changing shopping habits, the pressure is on to deliver campaigns that land and convert.
If you’re feeling behind, you’re not alone. Many marketers face the same challenge every year: How do you actually use the customer data you have to fuel high-impact, seasonal marketing? And how do you ensure your brand shows up in front of the right people in the right place before the competition beats you to it?
That’s where Experian comes in. With Experian’s advanced Audience solutions, you can get ahead of the trends, connect with vacation-ready shoppers, and optimize performance across digital, TV, and retail media using customer data for seasonal marketing.
Capitalize on vacation excitement to drive sales and growth
Summer travel often triggers a surge in pre-trip spending. Surveys show that 82% of consumers plan to travel this summer, and according to Fortune, today’s travelers spend thousands of dollars on things like luggage, apparel, and recreation gear before they even leave their homes!
But while consumer demand is heating up, so are the challenges. Marketers are navigating a turbulent economic environment shaped by shifting demand curves, tighter budgets, the rising cost of goods, and supply chain disruptions caused by newly imposed tariffs. These pressures are forcing teams to rethink everything from product positioning to pricing strategies.
In this climate, it’s more important than ever to maximize performance, reduce waste, and stay laser-focused on reaching high-intent audiences likely to convert. Using customer data for seasonal marketing helps brands predict and capture demand with precise, relevant targeting. Whether your customers are planning a trip to the beach or hiking the Rockies, timely messaging and audience alignment can drive engagement and conversion.
Experian Audiences power effective audience strategies
But even the most compelling campaigns can fall flat if you’re working with incomplete data, outdated segments, or generic targeting. Consumer data providers like Experian can help you fix that.
Our Audience solutions help you go beyond assumptions and truly understand who your shoppers are, what they’re planning, and how they behave, so you’re ready to get in front of their summer plans.
Six steps to creating a successful seasonal marketing campaign
When you’re ready to turn summer intent into strategy, Experian Audience solutions help you translate vacation-driven behaviors into high-performing campaigns. Each product in the Experian Audience suite supports a specific stage in seasonal marketing planning and execution.
1. Define your goals
Before diving into channels and creatives, get clear on your customer database marketing goals. Are you trying to increase online purchases? Drive in-store traffic? Expand brand awareness?
Use Syndicated Audiences to set fast, focused goals. If you’re short on time, Experian’s 2,400+ Syndicated Audiences give you a head start. These pre-built, behavior-based segments — from luxury travelers to seasonal sports enthusiasts — help you quickly identify who to target, where they spend time, and how to message to them.
With segments ready to plug into 30+ activation platforms, you can ensure quick, confident activation.
2. Decide what data you need and which audiences to target
Using customer data for seasonal marketing means mapping behavior to intent. This core tactic in customer database marketing can help you drive deeper engagement. Our data solutions simplify the process, whether you’re starting with limited data or already know your best customers.
- If you’re starting with a list, Enrichment can append lifestyle, income, and travel preference data to help you understand what motivates your existing customers.
- If you don’t have a list, Marketing Attributes gives you full control when building new audiences or lookalikes based on relevant seasonal traits like beach vacationers or frequent CTV watchers.
3. Identify key holidays and events
Summer is full of shopping triggers: Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and countless local and regional events. However, not every customer behaves the same way.
Use Enrichment to understand when your customers are most likely to act. By comparing your first-party data to broader market segments, you can time promotions more strategically. For instance, enrichment might reveal that outdoor gear buyers convert in early June, while luxury travelers plan closer to July.
4. Activate across digital, TV, and retail media
Summer shoppers don’t stick to one screen. They’re streaming TV, reading travel blogs, browsing retail apps, and catching up on email — often from a beach chair or airplane seat. That’s why omnichannel delivery is a must, and it’s where consumer data vendors like Experian can help you reach your audience across channels with targeted messaging for key holidays and events:
- Syndicated Audiences simplifies omnichannel activation with built-in integrations to 30+ leading activation platforms. These pre-mapped segments let you deliver consistent messaging across the places where your audience is most engaged.
- Looking for privacy-forward reach? Contextually-Indexed Audiences are segments built by linking real-world behavioral data to the types of content those audiences typically consume online, allowing you to activate based on content instead of identity while offering a more contextually relevant experience. Using customer data for seasonal marketing, Experian maps real audience segments across web and app environments — like national park guides and travel blogs — for ID-free precision targeting in a cookieless environment.
5. Track and evaluate performance
Don’t wait until the end of the campaign to make changes. Experian’s measurement tools help you track performance in real time, so you can optimize early and often.
Measure how well specific audiences — enriched, syndicated, or contextual — are performing across platforms and use those insights to shift spend toward top performers.
6. Optimize and refine your strategy
After the season ends, it’s time to take what you’ve learned and build smarter for the next push.
Use Outcomes to analyze:
- Who converted
- Which segments underperformed
- How your customer base compares to the broader market
- How your audience evolved
- Which campaigns drove meaningful adoption
These insights can then inform your next round of audience building, so whether it’s back-to-school or a holiday, you’re already ahead.
Example 1: The beach vacation shopper
To illustrate Experian’s Audience solutions at work, let’s say a high-end swimsuit brand wants to reach women over 30 planning beach vacations to Florida, Hawaii, or Mexico. However, their CRM only includes basic transaction and purchase details and offers little insight into who their customers are.
Audience solution: Enrichment
Using Experian’s Enrichment solution, the brand could layer on lifestyle, income, and travel preference data to turn shallow profiles into rich audience segments.
With a deeper understanding of their shoppers, the brand could develop a targeted messaging strategy by destination, build high-performing lookalike audiences, and confidently activate across channels.
Example 2: The European traveler
As another example, suppose a footwear brand wants to reach millennial travelers heading to Europe between May and August. They specialize in stylish, comfortable walking shoes that are ideal for travel but lack the technical in-house resources to build custom segments.
Audience solution: Syndicated Audiences
Using our Syndicated Audiences, the brand could easily tap into pre-built segments tied to leisure travelers, international shoppers, and comfort-focused footwear buyers. With plug-and-play access to over 2,400 verified audience segments, the brand could quickly layer this targeting into their programmatic and paid social campaigns without requiring custom development.
And with fast speed-to-market and improved message relevance, the brand could launch cross-channel campaigns just in time for peak summer travel planning.
Example 3: The outdoorsman
Consider a camping tent company that wants to reach families planning summer trips to national parks, campgrounds, or RV resorts. They don’t have much first-party data to work with, but they know their audience is online, researching their next adventure.
Audience solution: Contextually-Indexed Audiences
With Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences, the brand could target people actively reading content about outdoor travel (like hiking tips, campground reviews, or road trip itineraries) without relying on cookies or IDs. They’d be able to activate contextually relevant audiences mapped to sites that outdoor enthusiasts frequent and drive site traffic with strong click-through rates.
Example 4: Big-box retailer launching summer gear
Imagine a national retailer preparing to promote summer essentials like patio furniture, grills, fitness gear, and travel accessories. Their goal is to build predictive models for their summer product demand and reach new customers most likely to buy before they even search.
Audience solution: Marketing Attributes
With Experian’s Marketing Attributes, the retailer could license over 5,000 lifestyle, demographic, and behavioral variables to enrich internal models and uncover high-indexing consumer groups, such as outdoor entertainers or health-conscious families.
This data-powered insight would help them predict demand and identify audience segments worth testing across media channels. The team could find new, qualified segments ideal for email and CTV activation and get a head start on the season, eventually increasing ROI on their summer campaign spend.
Talk to Experian about your summer campaigns today
Using customer data for marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming, especially when you have access to a trusted consumer data provider and plug-and-play audience tools for every stage of the funnel.
Whether you’re working with a robust CRM or starting fresh, consumer data vendors like Experian can help you reach the right audiences with speed, accuracy, and confidence. Our advanced tools are designed for both advanced marketers and teams just beginning to explore consumer database marketing. No matter your goals, Experian is here to help you build an audience strategy that performs.
Contact us today
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The partnership between Experian and Fusion92 exemplifies how collaboration can deliver real marketing impact. This article explores the ways Fusion92 relies on Experian’s data to sharpen its audience targeting, streamline engagement across channels, and achieve measurable success. A need for unified audiences When Fusion92 set out to advance how their clients connect with precise audiences, they needed a data partner that could deliver comprehensive and actionable insights. Enter Experian. By using Experian’s marketing data and digital identity graph as a core source of data, Fusion92 built a solid foundation for their tools, DIOS (Data Input Output Solution), DAX (Data Advertising Exchange), and NoMi (pronounced “Know Me”). These powerful technologies enable Fusion92’s clients to control audiences more precisely, connect with the right people across optimal channels, avoid wasted impressions, and measure results with confidence. Why Fusion92 chose Experian Quality and reliability Experian’s commitment to data accuracy has earned the #1 ranking from Truthset, ensuring Fusion92’s campaigns are built on precise, actionable, and privacy compliant data that businesses can trust. Breadth and depth By offering demographic, behavioral, and channel preference data, Experian enables Fusion92 to have greater control over precision activation, empowering better results. Expert support Experian works closely with Fusion92 to provide tailored solutions and dependable expertise, adapting to meet the unique needs of their diverse clients. “Experian never really let me down in terms of data quality, data accuracy, and data reliability.”Dave Nugent, EVP of Data Science & Strategy, Fusion92 The power of teaming up Challenge A regional amusement park needed to increase membership renewal sales during peak season while reducing spend on households unlikely to visit. Solution Fusion92 combined the park’s first-party buyer file with Experian consumer data and custom geographic boundaries, built an advanced targeting model, and used Experian’s channel-preference insights to prioritize the media mix. The unified audience was then delivered omnichannel through Fusion92’s in-house proprietary DAX activation technology, with Experian’s identity graph supporting attribution. Result The marketing conversions beat the park’s stretch goal by 70%, confirming that accurate data and coordinated activation drive revenue lift. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or an expert. Experian will help you make the best use out of an incredible set of data assets.”Dave Nugent, EVP of Data Science & Strategy, Fusion92 Using marketing data to power omnichannel marketing Tools built by Fusion92 that meet client needs Fusion92’s suite of tools handles every essential phase of a campaign. DIOS starts by creating audience definitions and setting a foundation for strategy. Once these insights are established, DAX takes over, activating consistent, controlled engagement with tailored messaging. Detailed performance metrics throughout help optimize strategy along the way, ensuring campaigns remain impactful and cost efficient. DIOS in action DIOS eliminates guesswork, combining Experian’s data with advanced analytics to create precise audience models. This capability enables Fusion92 to define customer segments with accuracy, providing businesses with a roadmap to success from the outset. While currently in use as a managed service by Fusion92, a public-facing SaaS version is expected to be released in 2025. Activating every channel through DAX The campaign execution phase is pivotal, and DAX ensures smooth delivery and transparent measurement across channels. By incorporating Experian’s identity graph, DAX provides a clear picture of cross-channel behaviors and preferences, and how they impact business goals. This holistic approach enhances personalization, connecting online and offline interactions to create campaigns that resonate with consumers and drive ROI. Getting to know NoMi NoMi offers next-generation audience intelligence, empowering businesses with audience profiles built from behavioral insights, like transactional activity or in-market signals. This ensures that campaigns connect with people authentically and at scale. With NoMi, Fusion92 clients streamline targeting efforts, improving efficiency while reducing wasted spend. Thinking about your own transformation? Whether you’re tackling siloed activation, enhancing attribution models, or aiming for improved targeting, Experian’s data solutions can help amplify your efforts – just ask Fusion92. Explore how we can help you target smarter, engage better, and measure success confidently. Connect with an Experian representative today About our experts Dave Nugent, EVP of Data Science & Strategy, Fusion92 Dave Nugent, EVP of Data Science & Strategy at Fusion92, has over 27 years of experience in data-driven services, helping organizations better understand and target their audiences through predictive modeling and segmentation. Before joining Fusion92, he spent 11 years at American Spirit Corporation as VP of Data Solutions and co-founded Market Reason, where he secured a patent for an identity technology known as "identity solutions." Dave’s expertise bridges traditional, digital, and social advertising, offering innovative approaches to data utilization. He also shares his knowledge as a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Crystal Jacques, VP of Enterprise Partnerships, Experian Crystal Jacques is the VP of Enterprise Partnerships, leading Experian's go-to-market team across all verticals. With over ten years of experience in the Identity space, Crystal brings a wealth of expertise to her role. She joined Experian in 2020 through the Tapad acquisition, following her successful stint as the head of Global Channel Partnerships for Adbrain, which The Trade Desk later acquired.
Audio platforms that overcome consumer identity challenges are winning new advertisers and driving higher ROAS. In this article, you’ll hear from leading audio platforms that are solving these challenges—and seeing results. Digital audio is evolving fast. What was once a niche channel of host-read sponsorships and direct buys is now a must-have in the modern media mix. Streaming platforms, podcasts, and digital radio are drawing more ad dollars thanks to audio’s ability to capture attention and connect with listeners. But with growth comes new pressure. Advertisers expect accuracy, scale, and to see results. At the same time, listeners want more relevant content and more personalized ad experiences. That’s where identity becomes essential. With Experian’s identity and audience solutions, audio platforms can: Bolster addressable audience targeting and personalization capabilities. Gain a comprehensive view of listeners’ digital identity to reach audiences across channels. Better understand consumer preferences, enabling advertisers to reach audiences with greater accuracy. Enhance the listening experience with more relevant content. Let’s break down the key challenges in audio—and how Experian can help solve them. Challenge 1: Anonymous listening limits addressability Most listening happens in environments where people aren’t logged in—via apps, smart speakers, and mobile devices. Without logged-in data, platforms struggle to know who’s listening and advertisers are unable to reach those anonymous listeners who don’t have an addressable ID. To overcome the identity gap in unauthenticated listening environments, leading audio platforms are turning to partners that connect fragmented signals—like device type, location, and behavioral patterns—to broader household and individual profiles. By using hashed emails and other alternative identifiers, platforms can begin to make anonymous sessions more addressable. This increase in addressability ensures the platform’s entire userbase can be reached, which leads to an increase in revenue. Experian’s solution Experian's identity spine, comprised of our Digital and Offline Graphs, helps you recognize listeners even when they’re outside your ecosystem. Platforms like Audacy are already leading the way. By integrating Experian’s Digital Graph, they’re gaining a more complete view of listeners’ digital identifiers—enhancing the experience across their app and website. With a better audience understanding, Audacy can deliver personalized content while helping advertisers reach specific groups with greater accuracy. Challenge 2: IP-based targeting falls short Audio has traditionally relied on IP addresses, but that’s no longer enough. A single IP could represent an entire household—or a public setting like a coffee shop. It’s not precise. Forward-thinking platforms are moving beyond IP-based targeting by integrating identity resolution technologies that combine household-level data with device-level intelligence. These solutions help distinguish between shared devices and individual listeners, allowing advertisers to serve more relevant messages without over-reliance on a single signal like an IP address. This layered approach improves precision—especially in dynamic listening environments like vehicles or communal spaces. Experian’s solution Our identity spine links home IPs to households, then connects them to specific devices and individuals. This helps platforms move beyond basic IPs and target real people based on accurate signals—even in shared listening environments like smart speakers and cars. We also help platforms and advertisers integrate alternative IDs—like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2)—into their programmatic audio campaigns. That means more reach, without compromising consumer trust. Challenge 3: Audio buying is fragmented From podcasts to streaming to radio, audio lacks consistency in how inventory is packaged and bought. It’s hard for advertisers to run scaled campaigns across channels—and harder still to measure performance. Plus, advertisers don’t think in silos—they think in strategies. If audio can’t connect to their display, connected TV (CTV), and social buys, it loses ground. What they need is a way to define audiences once and activate everywhere. To reduce friction in audio ad buying, platforms are investing in infrastructure that unifies audience insights across formats. By building a centralized view of the listener—regardless of whether they're tuning in via podcast, stream, or radio—publishers can offer advertisers consistent targeting parameters, clearer reporting, and better campaign orchestration. Identity graphs and audiences are playing a growing role in streamlining this complexity and unlocking scale. Experian’s solution Experian helps simplify audio buying. Experian audiences are built on top of our identity graph and are expanded to a deep set of digital identifiers, ensuring accuracy, scale and maximum addressability across channels. Platforms can blend their first-party data with advertiser data and our audiences—then deploy those audiences onsite or activate programmatically across open web and CTV. DAX is doing just that. DAX's partnership with Experian combines Experian’s 2,400+ audiences for targeting and activation with DAX’s innovative audio advertising approach. We’re helping advertisers connect with passionate and engaged listeners nationwide. "Through our partnership with Experian Marketing Services, advertisers can unlock deeper audience insights and execute more impactful digital audio campaigns. By combining our shared market presence, knowledge, and forward-thinking approach, we’re strengthening our digital audio network offering and delivering value to all our advertising partners." Brian Conlan, President of DAX United States In addition to integrating Experian’s Digital Graph, Audacy is also integrating Experian's syndicated audiences to unlock accurate insights like demographics, shopping behavior, and interests – providing listeners with a more personalized advertising experience and advertisers with a higher return on investment. “Historically, audio advertising lacked precise targeting capabilities, making it challenging for advertisers to reach specific audiences. By integrating our digital identity graph and syndicated audiences with Audacy’s platform, we’re transforming how advertisers connect with listeners. This collaboration enables more effective audience targeting and delivers personalized, impactful audio experiences across all channels.”Chris Feo, Chief Business Officer, Experian Privacy is non-negotiable Everything we do is privacy-forward by design. Backed by Experian’s Global Data Principles and decades as a regulated institution, we rigorously vet every data source to ensure compliance with all federal and state laws. Build an audio strategy that performs with Experian Your advertisers want more from their audio investments. With Experian, you can give it to them. We help you: Expand digital addressability to maximize reach for marketers and drive revenue growth for your platform. Create and activate addressable audiences across all channels. Enhance the listening experience with relevant content and personalized ads. Audio has always been a powerful way to connect. Now, it’s ready to perform. Let's connect Latest posts
When we launched our data marketplace earlier this year, we set out to transform how the industry discovers and activates privacy-safe audiences and maintains addressability across display, mobile, and connected TV (CTV). Yieldmo was one of the first adopters and their story speaks volumes about what’s possible when flexible tech meets premium data. Large retail brand boosts in-store traffic with Yieldmo and Experian Yieldmo, an advertising platform known for its inventive, AI-powered creative formats and privacy-first inventory, partnered with Experian to support a leading athletic retailer’s campaign focused on driving in-store traffic. The goal? Attract in-store shoppers likely to purchase from competitors, particularly during key sales windows. Using Experian’s Audience Engine platform, which includes our proprietary and third-party data marketplace, Yieldmo built a high-performing, self-serve targeting strategy that included both conquesting and in-store shopper segments. With the ability to easily combine Experian Audiences and Partner Audiences, like those from Alliant, Circana, Webbula, and Sports Innovation Lab, Yieldmo quickly built precise apparel and footwear audiences. Using Experian’s identity graphs in Audience Engine, Yieldmo increased cross-channel addressability to maximize campaign scale and impact. “Experian’s data marketplace in Audience Engine fills a critical gap, letting us quickly search by brand, build smarter conquest segments, and activate custom audiences fast. The platform is flexible and the support is hands-on and reliable.”Abby Littlejohn, Director of Sales Planning at Yieldmo With self-serve setup that cut down manual work, the ability to build highly tailored audiences, and expected lift in store visits, Experian helped the team achieve standout results. "We selected Experian as our primary third-party data partner based on contract ease, audience quality, and speed. Through Experian, we can find high-performing audiences from multiple providers that meet our client’s targeting objectives. We include Experian audience segments in 80% of formal RFP proposals and are in active discussions on how to optimize for future campaigns—making Experian a go-to partner for third-party targeting.”Nelson Montouchet, AVP, Strategic Partnerships, Yieldmo More data, more reach: Experian’s data marketplace fuels smarter targeting across ad platforms Today, just months after launch, Experian’s data marketplace is gaining traction across the ecosystem. Over 10 platforms, including leading supply-side platforms (SSPs) and TV platforms such as Madhive, OpenAP, and Optimum, are now actively utilizing our data marketplace to enhance their activation capabilities. As privacy rules tighten and many identity signals start to fade, a lot of activation platforms are finding it tougher to reach their audiences. This is where our data marketplace shines, with one of the most comprehensive identity graphs out there, 126 million households, 250 million individuals, and over four billion active digital IDs, we make it easy to activate audiences while keeping addressability high across channels. We preserve accuracy when scaling to digital IDs via our identity graphs since Experian is rooted in offline data, which provides better connections and smarter targeting. “Our long-standing partnership with Experian and breadth of Experian's data marketplace, combined with the interoperable, direct matching methodology of our Open Identity solution, make it possible for OpenAP to enable advertisers and agencies to use best-in-class data partners to build audiences with the highest fidelity and consistently reach audiences at scale wherever they are consuming content across premium video.”Chris LoRusso, Chief Business Officer at OpenAP Experian’s data marketplace has grown to include over 20 premium data providers, such as: “We’re thrilled to bring PlaceIQ’s privacy-first, visit-based audiences to Experian’s marketplace, giving brands quick and easy access to high-intent shoppers. From recent big-box customers to yoga-studio regulars, advertisers can add real-world relevance to campaigns across every channel.”Brian Bradtke, Head of Partner Development, Precisely PlaceIQ These partnerships bring unique value to platforms looking to understand and engage audiences more effectively, whether through physical location intelligence, sports and fandom insights, or behavioral intent signals. What’s next We're focused on expanding our data ecosystem and helping platforms and marketers turn fragmented data strategies into a unified competitive advantage. If Yieldmo’s story is any indication, this is just the beginning. Let’s connect and explore how Experian’s data marketplace can help you drive more revenue, scale your audience reach, and stay ahead of privacy shifts. Connect with us Latest posts