HALLOWEEN HOT SHEETO C T O B E R 3 1, 2 0 1 4

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Online search highlights

Trick-or-treat, costumes, parties and candy all combine as we celebrate Halloween. Our look at marketing for this holiday included online searches and email campaigns from 2013. For email, we had 151 brands sending Halloween mailings from July through October.

Halloween, unlike Labor Day, Father’s Day and other holidays we’ve discussed in this Hot Sheet series, is one holiday where consumer interest steadily builds over the weeks and months leading up to the event. Even in late August, we see searches start picking up steam. Key areas of focus include, of course, costumes, parties, decorations, recipes, candy and sales. Costume-related searches online during 2013 so vastly dominated the holiday—costume search share was regularly between 15 and 20 times higher than other categories—that we have broken out search trends into two separate charts. One of the charts includes the costume search trend and the other does not.

Overall, costume searches tend to get started the earliest as parents and revelers begin to examine their costume options. Party and decoration searches also pick up steam relatively early while recipes and candy get a much later start and are heavily concentrated in the few weeks before the holiday itself. Top recipe-related searches last year were very dessert focused with “cookies,” “cupcakes,” “cake” and “deserts” claiming four of the five top spots. Beverage searches were also popular with “punch,” “drinks” and “cocktail” also making the top 10.

Sales searches are almost exclusively conducted during the days immediately before and after the holiday. Peak sales searches in 2013 occurred on Halloween day. Most Halloween sales-related searches focus on clearance candy, costumes and decorations. “Walmart” and “Target” were two of a small list of specific retailers singled out in sale-related searches.

Source: Experian Marketing Services Source: Experian Marketing Services

http://www.experian.com/marketing-services

Christmas is still months away, but the Holiday costume theme heading into 2014 should be “naughty or nice.” For example, searches for nice costumes including “family Halloween costumes,” “cute Halloween costumes” and “best Halloween costumes” all claim more than double the total share of related searches so far this year as compared to the same time in 2013. Likewise, searches for “sexy Halloween costumes” (naughty) are up a relative 83 percent putting it in the number three spot for top Halloween costume-related searches.

The homemade costume is also showing signs of a comeback this year. While searches for homemade costumes were down in 2013 compared with 2012, this year searches for “homemade Halloween costumes” are more than double what we reported a year ago at this same time of the year.

One might think that searches for sexy Halloween costumes would be more oriented towards last minute ideas while homemade or DIY would be focused earlier, but interestingly that is not the case. We examined the trends of common costume-related searches such as sexy, homemade, easy and unique and identified the week the search reached the greatest share of search traffic. We then calculated the number of weeks before peak search activity was achieved that the search reached at least 50 percent of the peak share. For instance, both “sexy” and “homemade/DIY” Halloween costume searches reached their peak search share the week of Halloween in 2013. Four weeks before that, “sexy” searches were already accounting for 57 percent of the season’s peak share. Meantime, “homemade” or “DIY” Halloween costume searches didn’t break the 50 percent mark until two weeks before the holiday. This tells us that “sexy” searches extend over a longer period of time and are more sustained rather than having traffic highly concentrated around the peak as is the case with “homemade” or “DIY” costume searches.

Source: Experian Marketing Services

http://www.experian.com/marketing-services

Costume focus

Likewise, “best” Halloween costume searches got started earlier and had a longer shelf life with searches reaching 50 percent of their peak four weeks before the holiday. “Cheap” or “easy” costumes—as expected—are more concentrated around a peak. When it comes to the costumed person themselves, searches are predominantly focused on women and kids, but most heavily on girls. In fact, searches for Halloween costumes that included the word “girl” or “girls” claimed a greater share of searches than any other demographic up until mid-October when searches for women’s costumes took over as the lead demographic. Searches for costumes for boys were among the lowest and barely outpaced those for men. At times, “boys” and “mens” costumes even struggled to beat out searches for those for the family dog. This signifies that either boys are less open to suggestions from parents (the ones likely doing the searching) or that their costume searches are more gender neutral and fall largely under the “kids” category.

Searches for costumes for almost all demographic groups peaked in 2013 the last full week prior to Halloween. The only exception was that searches for men’s costumes continued to gain share up until the final days before the holiday indicating that men waited until the last minute to prepare—as we saw for Mother's Day as well.

Source: Experian Marketing Services

http://www.experian.com/marketing-services

Source: Experian Marketing Services

Source: Experian Marketing Services

Halloween is not just a retail holiday, as brands from many industries join in the Halloween fun.

Although Halloween emails were seen as early as July, 84 percent of emails for this holiday were sent during October. The highest volume and revenue day was Halloween itself, with 20 percent of the volume and 44 percent of the revenue occuring on that day.

Email performance for Halloween

http://www.experian.com/marketing-services

Free shipping offers generated the highest email transaction rates (0.11 percent) and highest revenue per email ($0.10) for Halloween mailings. Personalized subject lines boosted total open rates by 25 percent (27.3 percent with personalization compared to 21.9 percent without) and unique open rates by 11 percent (17.4 percent with personalization compared to 15.7 percent without).

(All performance highlights are based on comparisons to Halloween mailings without the highlighted feature)

http://www.experian.com/marketing-services

Free shipping in subject lines:Transaction rates: 15% increaseRevenue per email: 33% higher

1Percent offers in subject linesTransaction rates: 24% increaseRevenue per email: 15% higher

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Urgency in subject lines (such as “TRICK or TREAT? Today Only - 31% Off!”)Transaction rates: 14% increaseRevenue per email: 12% higher

3Personalized subject lines (such as “%%FNAME%%, Be Frightfully Fashionable!”)Unique open rate: 11% increase

Revenue per email: 22% higher

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