Christmas spend, email marketing, Brexit and data: 5 killer stats to start your week

1. What UK households plan to spend this Christmas

British households are predicted to spend an average of £831 on Christmas this year, with £493 to be spent on gifts for family and friends and another £238 on food and drink.

The price of Christmas dinner is expected to rise, with the average household to spend about £13 more to feed the family, compared with last year. An average of £32 per household will be spent on decorations and £70 on travelling to see family and friends.

In the UK, online spend during Christmas now accounts for 32% of total festive spending, up from 29% in 2017. Meanwhile, shopping on mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) has also climbed from £11.33bn in 2017 to £13.61bn this year.

Source: Centre for Retail Research

2. Global grocery markets predicted to create $1.8trn opportunity by 2023

The leading 20 global grocery markets are set to generate an additional $1.9trn in sales over the next five years, growing by 28% between 2018 and 2023.

Some 44% of the additional sales will be generated in Asia, which will contribute more than Africa, Europe and Latin America combined. Asia is also expected to contain seven of the world’s largest grocery markets by 2023, which will have a combined market size of $3.8trn.

Europe will be the second most important region in terms of additional sales. It is forecast to generate $322.bn in new sales between 2018 and 2023.

Source: IGD

3. Marketers are worried Brexit will disrupt free flow of data

Some 51% of marketers say they’re concerned Brexit will have a financial impact on their business if the free flow of data between the UK and the EU is eroded.

Another 90% of marketers want Britain to retain access to a ‘digital single market’ after Brexit, while the number of marketers who feel the benefits of GDPR outweigh the costs has doubled to 32% over the past few months.

Following Brexit, most marketers (78%) believe the UK should adhere to the existing GDPR legislation. Those who believe it will negatively affect their business has fallen from 56% (in the previous survey, to 41% since the laws came into force.

Source: DMA

4. Waitrose tops retail table for Christmas email marketing

Waitrose outperformed rivals to claim top spot in the Christmas email campaign stakes ahead of last year’s winner Asda.

As part of the research, nine leading UK supermarkets including M&S, Tesco and Iceland, had their email marketing campaigns scored against a range of direct marketing metrics including design best practices, personalisation, subject line, creativity of the content and use of cross-channel elements.

The key to Waitrose’s success was its cross-channel tactics – where it scored 3.5 out of a possible five points. The supermarket also scored 3.2 in regard to personalisation.

This year, the strongest performance metrics have been seen in the ‘call-to-action’ category, which rose to 3.2 from an average of 1.9 last year. Lidl achieved the highest score in this category (4.9).

Source: Mailjet

5. 15% of marketing teams ‘under-performing’

Just 16% of marketing teams are completely satisfied with their overall marketing performance and the outcome of investments, compared 69% of teams which consider themselves to be ‘moderate performers’. Another 15% confess to being under-performers.

On another note, 52% of marketers share metrics with the sales teams, their average number of data sources has grown by 20% since 2017 and the adoption of artificial intelligence at a rate of 44% year on year.

Additionally, 65% of marketing leaders say all team members within their organisation share common goals and metrics. Another 55% of high performers build budgets with their advertising teams versus 40% of under-performers.

Source: Salesforce