What are the 3 Biggest Challenges this Holiday Season for Brands?

eTail and WBR Insights recently released their 2019 Holiday Report: Showcasing Your Brand and Products in New and Novel Ways to Drive Holiday Sales.

Inside, they dive into the top trends, tactics and challenges that retailers anticipate for the 2019 holiday season – including the biggest barriers they’ll have to overcome when looking to acquire new customers. Rounding out the top three were:

1. Differentiating from Competitors:

Now, it’s always been the case that during the holiday season media gets crowded different brands competing for eyeballs – but as ecommerce has become more accessible and the number of direct-to-consumer brands has exploded, there are so many competitors across so many retail sectors flooding every major media channel, that it can make standing out harder than spotting a Salvation Army Santa during Santa-Con.

2. Managing the Increasing Costs of Current Channels:

We’ve talked about this before, but it’s pretty basic economics: The more brands you have competing in a single channel, the more expensive it is to reach audience there. That can make reaching your target audience so expensive that you end up more of a Bob Cratchit than an Ebenezer Scrooge by the time the tinsel settles.

3. Reaching Your Target Audience:

There are other factors beyond an overcrowded market that makes this difficult – namely the increasingly unreliable nature of cookie-based targeting. There are more digital touch points spanning more devices than ever before – and when you combine that with the increasing number of browsers that straight up block third-party cookies, you end up with a landscape that looks a lot Whoville after the Grinch got done Grinching it all up.

What Can Retailers do to Overcome These Barriers?

They can make sure they’re diversifying their customer acquisition strategies by adding email advertising into the mix. Email is an entirely unique channel that gives your brand the chance to stand out amongst premium, uncluttered content – and because it’s a 100% logged-in media channel, you can leverage people-based optimization strategies and targeting that ensure you’re reaching the right audience and driving cost-efficient performance.

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If you’d like to learn more about the most effective and widely adopted tactics for showcasing products and content tools that will drive this year’s holiday sales, download our 2019 Holiday Report.