Gone are the days of blanketing every audience with the same message. Sure, it may be easier to send one message to every list, but is that static message really going to get your audience’s attention and motivate them to take action? Millennials are one such niche market that probably won’t respond as well to a blanket message. Millennials account for nearly 80 million people in the U.S. with an estimated $600 billion purchasing power representing 21% of total consumers1. In order to capture their attention and have them truly engage with your brand, you must hit them quickly, personally, and, most of all, digitally. Try these digital channels to grab (and keep!) their focus on your brand.
1. Are We Still In a Relationship? Circle YES or NO.
Millennials are best targeted with personalized, experiential messaging. They want you to get to know them, then show them how your business best serves them. You can target them most effectively with engagement emails. The offers must encourage them to take an action, bring about a need and/or desire within them, and capture attention through imagery. Don’t forget to make it mobile-optimized! Nothing loses attention more than email that you have to pinch and slide all over a mobile device’s screen in order to read it, or worse, too small to read at all!
2. Cheers! Here’s to Being Social!
If you meet a Millennial who is not on any form of a social network…they probably aren’t a Millennial. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are the most popular networks with this demographic, with Facebook weighing in at a whopping 75.6% penetration on the demographic’s mobile phones2 while a huge majority (88%!) get their news from Facebook3.
So why not hit them where they spend most of their time? Whether with friends at the bar, dinner with the family, or even while watching reality TV at night, Millennials are bound to have phone in hand. Target them with social advertising such as those nifty ads you see in your Facebook feed. The right message with the right image can capture their attention and inspire a click.
3. Instant Gratification through Online Shopping
Online purchasing is a billion dollar business. Just ask Amazon and Wal-Mart. But who, exactly, is doing all of this online shopping? Millennials. That’s who! According to Google’s 2013 Holiday Shopper Intentions report, “95% of Millennials plan to use the Internet as a holiday shopping resource, versus 87% of adults ages 35 and above.” And, 88% of those Millennials will likely use their smartphones to purchase gifts. In 2013, Cyber Monday mobile site sales accounted for 13% of total sales that day – twice as many as the year before.
In order to meet this demand, you must have mobile-optimized emails that lead to mobile-optimized sites or, better yet, an app that goes beyond product searches and into shopping cart technology and loyalty programs. Companies that haven’t met this requirement risk disengagement from the Millennial market.
4. Following Your Dreams through Display Ads
Remember that shower curtain you lusted after upon seeing it on sale at whatever-retailer-you-like.com? Then, remember how you saw it again…and again…and again…whenever you revisited the site or even on other websites for several days after placing it in your shopping cart but not purchasing it? Yeah, that’s called “retargeting” – and it’s one of the best ways to capture a Millennial’s attention. Simply put, you’re using their online behavior to display personalized offers to a specific audience that not only grabs their attention but eventually converts to a sale.
Display ads can be mobile, too, so you’re able to reach Millennials anytime, anywhere through their smartphones.
Whether it’s by channel choice, dynamic messaging, or relevant offers, the bottom line is you must know your Millennial customers in order to capture their attention. Knowing them is half the battle! Finding them is the next step. AccuData Integrated Marketing not only helps you decipher what your best customer looks like, but also uses that information to help you find them, then grab their attention through digital campaigns. Ask us how we do it!
1 “Who are the Millennial shoppers?”, Accenture, 2014
2 “Snapchat is now the 3rd most popular social network among Millennials”, Martin-Wilbourn Partners, 2015
3 “How Millennials Get News”, American Press Institute, 2015