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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But even the most compelling campaigns can fall flat if you’re working with incomplete data, outdated segments, or generic targeting.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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At Experian, we understand the importance of audience targeting when it comes to crafting a successful marketing campaign. That's why we've invested in developing 2,400+ syndicated audiences, which span across multiple verticals and categories, including demographic, and lifestyle and interest data. We are excited to share a curated list of audience recommendations to support your campaign planning so you can confidently connect with your audience. What separates Experian’s syndicated audiences Experian’s 2,400+ syndicated audiences are available directly on over 30 leading television, social, programmatic advertising platforms, and directly within Audigent for activation within private marketplaces (PMPs). Reach consumers based on who they are, where they live, and their household makeup. Experian ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset for key demographic attributes. Access to unique audiences through Experian’s Partner Audiences available on Experian’s data marketplace, within Audigent for activation in PMPs and directly on platforms like DirectTV, Dish, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk. New audience segments to consider for Q4 campaign planning These new audiences, recently released on major platforms, offer unique opportunities to align your campaign planning with the latest consumer trends and behaviors. Here are four new Experian audiences to include in your Q4 campaign planning: Holiday Shoppers: Black Friday Holiday Travel – Budget Savvy Airline Geo-Indexed Audiences – Hybrid Vehicle 24-Month Future Car Buyers Seasonal audiences for Q4 Political audiences As the 2024 election approaches, moving beyond broad categorizations like “Democrat,” “Republican,” or “Independent” is crucial. Voters want candidates who align with their beliefs and values and Experian’s political personas offer a nuanced understanding of American voters to craft tailored engagement strategies. Experian has created 10 political personas to help better understand the American voter so you can reach consumers based on their viewpoints on key political issues. Additionally, over 200 politically relevant Experian audiences are available for activation on-the-shelf of the leading TV, demand, and supply platforms. Learn more here Holiday audiences This upcoming holiday season serves as the perfect opportunity to drive sales and build customer relationships. Experian has recently introduced 19 new audiences that can help you reach relevant shoppers across major ad platforms including TV and programmatic. By using Experian’s audiences in your holiday advertising campaigns, you can reach last-minute shoppers, discount-seeking shoppers, gift-givers, and holiday travelers. Just as shoppers seek the perfect gifts, your holiday advertising campaigns can capture the right shoppers this holiday season with the right strategy. Read our holiday audience guide now Our top 10 audience recommendations for Q4 Based on the top Experian audiences activated in Q4 of 2023, our top 10 list is designed to help agencies and media buyers plan data-driven advertising campaigns. Household income level 1) $100,000+: This segment contains consumers who are likely to have an estimated household income of $100,000+. 2) $75,000+: This segment contains consumers who are likely to have an estimated household income of $75,000+. Demographics 3) Ages: 25-54: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be aged 25-54. 4) Ages: 30-39: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be aged 30-39. 5) Ages: 35-39: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be aged 35-39. 6) Ages: 40-49: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be aged 40-49. Homeowners 7) Homeowner: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be homeowners. Military 8) Inactive: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be inactive military. Automotive 9) In-market for a small, mid-size SUV: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be in the market to buy a mid-size SUV in the next 180 days. 10) In-market for a full-size SUV: This segment contains consumers who are likely to be in the market to buy a full-size SUV in the next 180 days. You can find the complete audience segment name in the appendix. Activate the right audiences with Experian When you choose Experian’s syndicated audiences, you gain access to over 2,400 audiences that span across 15 verticals and categories. These audiences are directly available for activation on over 30 platforms and can be sent to over 200 media platforms. Experian is ranked #1 for data accuracy (as validated by Truthset), and Experian Marketing Data is the foundation for successful targeting, enrichment, and activation. For a full list of Experian’s syndicated audiences and activation destinations, download our syndicated audiences guide. Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice. Connect with our audience team Appendix Here are the complete audience segment names (taxonomy paths) for all audience segments discussed in this blog post. New audiences Autos, Cars and Trucks > Near Market > 24-Month Future Car Buyers Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Black Friday Autos, Cars and Trucks > Ownership – Geo-Indexed > Geo-Indexed Audiences –Hybrid Vehicle Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Budget Savvy Airline Travelers Household income level Demographics > Household Income (HHI) > $100,000+ Demographics > Household Income (HHI) > $75,000+ Demographics: Ages Demographics > Ages > 25-54 Demographics > Ages > 30-39 Demographics > Ages > 35-39 Demographics > Ages > 40-49 Homeowners Demographics > Homeowners/Renters > Homeowner Military Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Occupation > Military – Inactive Automotive Autos, Cars and Trucks > In Market-Body Styles > Small Mid-Size SUV Autos, Cars and Trucks > In Market-Body Styles > Full-Size SUVs Latest posts
Experian, the leader in powering data-driven advertising through connectivity, is thrilled to unveil our latest solution, Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes. This joint solution supplies marketers and platforms with the insights and connectivity needed to understand who their customers are and reach them across digital channels. The uncertainty around third-party cookies in Chrome and the overall decline in signal complicates the industry’s ability to reach the right consumer. Omnichannel media consumption results in scattered data, making it harder for marketers and platforms to understand consumer behavior and reach them across channels. These challenges call for a comprehensive solution. Our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes solution addresses these challenges by providing identifiers for seamless cross-channel engagement. By adding Marketing Attributes, like demographic and behavioral data, marketers and platforms also gain a better understanding of their customers. This solution uses Experian’s Living Unit ID (LUID) to combine offline and digital data, giving customers deeper insights into consumer behavior, greater audience reach, and improved cross-channel visibility. Benefits of Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes Both our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes provide value to clients as standalone products. When clients license our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes joint solution, they have more data at their fingertips, unlocking: Consumer connectivity: When clients license Experian’s Digital Graph, they get access to digital identifiers like mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), connected TV (CTV) IDs, hashed emails (HEMs), and universal IDs so they can target the right consumers with the relevant messages across all digital media channels. Consumer insights: Experian’s 5,000 Marketing Attributes provide our clients with detailed consumer information and insights, such as age, gender, purchase behaviors, and content consumption habits. Marketing Attributes help clients create more relevant messaging and informed audience segmentation. Client examples How OpenX offers richer targeting and more connectivity with Experian OpenX is an independent omni-channel supply-side platform (SSP) and a global leader in audience, data, and identity-targeting. With industry-leading technology, exceptional client service, and extensive scalability across all formats, including CTV, app, mobile web, and desktop, OpenX has a legacy of innovating products that enhance buyer outcomes and publisher revenue while addressing complex challenges in programmatic. In recent years, OpenX has licensed Experian’s Digital Graph with identifiers, contributing to the SSP’s largest independent supply-side identity graph, which offers advanced audiences to buyers and improved data resolution to content owners. More recently, OpenX licensed Experian’s Marketing Attributes to enrich its supply-side identity graph, which includes IPs, MAIDs, and client IDs, with a variety of attributes. This strategic move has helped OpenX’s clients benefit from enhanced consumer insights and addressability, in turn delivering greater reach to the demand side and higher revenue for publishers, despite industry signal loss. "We built on our long-term partnership with Experian to enrich our digital IDs with Experian’s Marketing Attributes, which help provide buyers better insights to audiences, thereby helping our publishers monetize their inventory. With partners like Experian, OpenX effectively facilitates the value exchange between demand and supply, ensuring our partners are able to drive results for their business in the era of signal loss"Craig Golaszewski, Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX How StackAdapt licenses our product bundle to address three different use cases StackAdapt is the multi-channel programmatic advertising platform trusted by marketers to deliver exceptional campaigns. They drive superior results through a variety of solutions, like contextual and first-party targeting, brand lift measurement, and optimization through insights. StackAdapt licensed a similar yet unique product combination, our Digital Graph and our Audiences. StackAdapt uses the Digital Graph to allow clients to onboard their first-party data in a seamless, self-serve manner that allows them to further segment their data using Experian Audiences. “StackAdapt has been recognized as the most trusted programmatic platform by marketers, and with the integration of Experian’s Digital Graph and Audiences, we are strengthening our leadership in the space. This partnership improves our ability to deliver precise cross-channel segmentation, reach, and measurement, helping advertisers run more successful campaigns. Our collaboration with Experian allows us to offer a differentiated solution in the market and ensure our clients can deliver the most precise and impactful ads to their audiences.”Denis Loboda, Senior Director of Data, StackAdapt We recently announced a new partnership with StackAdapt. This collaboration brings the power of Experian's identity graph, syndicated and custom audiences directly to the StackAdapt platform. Read the full details in our press release here. Four ways to use Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes When these two products come together, our clients have a 360-degree view of their consumers, which helps them power four critical use cases: Analytics and insights: Learn more about your consumers by connecting our Marketing Attributes with our Digital Graph's identifiers. For example, a retailer can discover that their recent customers over-index as pickleball fans and players, leading the retailer to sponsor a professional pickleball event. Inventory monetization: When supply-side partners know their audience better, they can attract advertisers in search of that audience. For example, a publisher might find out that their audience is full of pickleball fans, leading them to reach out to brands that want to reach this audience. Activation: Companies with access to more digital identifiers from our Digital Graph can reach more people, while controlling frequency across channels. A company might know that they want to reach pickleball fans. Now, they have the digital identifiers needed to reach pickleball fans across all digital channels where they consume content, leading to increased reach. Measurement and attribution: Use the Digital Graph’s support for various digital identifiers to understand all consumer touchpoints, from media impressions to conversions. Then, lean on our Marketing Attributes to determine who your messaging resonated with. For example, a company uses our Digital Graph to know if it was the same individual who was exposed to an ad on CTV and converted via e-commerce. On top of that, the company can use our Marketing Attributes data to find out that the people who purchased were overwhelmingly pickleball fans. Connect with us to learn more about how our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes joint solution can provide the data and insights you need to create, activate, and measure cross-channel media campaigns. 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After a six-month beta period, collaboration in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms using Experian's offline or digital graph is now generally available for all clients. As part of this, Experian is excited to announce that Experian's identity graph will be integrated into Snowflake's Data Clean Rooms. With the growing importance of data privacy and marketing efficiency, this partnership builds off of Experian's previously-announced integration into Snowflake's AI Data Cloud for Media. Adding Experian's identity graph to Snowflake Data Clean Rooms helps advertisers, advertising platforms, and measurement partners work more effectively. Built upon Experian’s rich offline and digital identity foundation, with support for various identifiers across platforms, collaboration in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms helps clients maximize the value of their data and meet the diverse needs of modern business: Collaborate with partners for richer data insights Achieve higher match rates Improve audience building Produce more accurate and complete reports Ensure data privacy Seamless integration of AdTech and MarTech platforms Regardless of the identifier type you are looking to collaborate on, Experian has the identity data in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms to support you and your partner. This leads to higher match rates and more resolved data for you to use to benefit your media initiatives. "Integrating Experian's identity graph into Snowflake Data Clean Rooms marks a transformative leap for digital marketing. This collaboration empowers advertisers, programmatic platforms, and measurement partners with unparalleled accuracy, privacy, and efficiency. Together, we are excited to provide innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of our clients."Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Head of Data Clean Rooms at Snowflake The Experian and Snowflake partnership showcases how collaboration can enhance scalability and cost-efficiency. Data clean rooms provide a secure environment where multiple parties can share, join, and analyze their data assets without leaving the clean room or exposing the underlying data. By integrating Experian's identity graph within Snowflake's secure platform businesses of all sizes can receive advanced data collaboration and identity tools without the high costs usually involved. The integration prioritizes consumer privacy and data security. Backed by Experian’s Global Data Principles, Experian's deep roots in data protection and security provide customers with the most trusted way to share data and protect consumer privacy. With Experian's graph in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms, customers will get a solution that respects customer consent, safeguards sensitive data, and ensures that processing occurs with the utmost respect for user confidentiality and preferences. Further, Snowflake Data Clean Rooms uses advanced methods to preserve privacy, such as differential privacy and secure computations on encrypted data, enabling data security and integrity. Together, these methods prevent unauthorized access by keeping sensitive data within the secure confines of the cleanroom on a strict, collaboration-to-collaboration basis. The collaboration between Experian and Snowflake significantly enhances data matching and identity resolution within the Snowflake Data Cleanroom. Experian’s identity solution uses digital identifiers like hashed emails, MAIDs, and CTV IDs and offline identifiers like name and address. This allows advertisers to reach more consumers and enrich their data. Marketers can easily use their first-party data in the cleanroom, and with Experian's Graph, they get higher match rates for more accurate targeting and campaign measurement. The continued partnership between Snowflake and Experian provide advertisers, platforms, and measurement providers a secure and effective way to collaborate. This sets the stage for continued innovation in programmatic advertising, ensuring that our solutions evolve in step with our clients' needs. If you're not utilizing clean rooms for collaboration but have advanced identity needs, you can license our Graph and seamlessly integrate it into your Snowflake account. Reach out to our team to learn more Latest posts