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As summer fades and the school bells ring, students, parents, and workers alike are gearing up for the back-to-school season. Retailers, it’s time to bring your A-game. While the back-to-school season is a key retail moment in its own right, marketers should also view this high volume period as an opportunity to acquire new customers and refine the customer experience ahead of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush.
In this blog, we’ll cover everything you need to ace back-to-school marketing this year. Discover creative ideas and tactics to enhance your campaigns, ignite customer engagement, and build long-term loyalty.
What Should Marketers Do Now to Prepare?
Marketers should pay attention to changing back-to-school shopping trends as they plan their campaigns. By understanding these trends, you can better tailor your strategies to meet each customer’s unique needs.
Here's what to consider:
- US Trends: Back-to-school sales are growing at the slowest pace in 5 years. K-12 sales are expected to generate $44 billion while college sales, where growth will be below pre-pandemic levels, are projected at $37 billion. This slowdown highlights a need for more targeted and innovative marketing strategies.
- UK Trends: Last year, half of UK parents reported feeling very concerned with the costs of back-to-school expenses. With 80% of 2024 UK shoppers actively seeking discounts and promotions, retailers should consider how to best message price conscious shoppers.
- Strategic Shopping: Despite easing inflation, prices are still increasing and wages aren’t keeping up, so families are looking for ways to save money, like comparing prices and using coupons. To attract these savvy customers, marketers should emphasize affordability and proactively highlight offer savings available.
- Budget Prioritization: Parents will still prioritize school supplies to ensure that their children have what they need to succeed, even if it means cutting back on other expenses or using buy-now-pay-later plans. Providing flexible payment options and focusing on essential school items can appeal to these customers.
- eCommerce Boom: Online shopping is growing significantly for back-to-school items, especially in the UK. Enhancing online shopping experiences and offering convenient online promotions can capture this growing market
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Stay Ahead of the Curve with Creative Personalization Tactics
Now is the time to captivate your customers by providing a seamless and enjoyable experience. We've gathered examples from top brands that excel in delivering valuable, personalized messaging at every touchpoint. These strategies foster meaningful, long-lasting relationships between customers and brands.
Stay top of mind with a strong omni-channel strategy
While browsing aisles for ballpoint pens and folders still has its charm, e-commerce is expected to drive this year's growth, with in-store sales remaining flat. Notably, 49% of 2023 back-to-school shoppers researched products online before purchasing in stores.
This trend underscores the need for a strong omni-channel strategy that integrates online browsing with in-store shopping. Because most online back-to-school shoppers use smartphones, optimizing the mobile shopping journey is vital. Marketers must ensure a seamless, personalized, and connected experience across all channels.
This retailer, for example, repurposed existing creative and integrations from email to engage customers on their phones. They also used customer behavioral data to show the most viewed products in SMS and added social proof when a minimum threshold of views was met.
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