Study of Over 200 Retailers Reveals Multichannel Social Use is on the Rise

CHICAGO, ILL., June 18, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yes Lifecycle Marketing recently analyzed more than 200 retailers across five major categories – beauty, apparel, big box, electronics, and home goods – and found 91% of retailers now have a presence on two or more social channels.

Using Yes Lifecycle Marketing's proprietary Yesmail Market Intelligence tool, leading retailers' social campaigns were tracked and analyzed across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Google+. The data showed that apparel brands were the most socially connected with 86 percent present on four channels or more, and 60 percent present on all five tracked channels. Conversely, only 40 percent of electronics brands had a presence on four channels or more.

Of the five categories analyzed, 98 percent of retailers were present on Facebook, 91 percent utilized Twitter, 79 percent used YouTube to further their social communications, and only 43 percent engaged with their consumers via Instagram – despite its 237 percent average follower growth rate.  An interesting takeaway from the study is that while adoption of Facebook and Twitter was nearly universal among retail brands, follower growth rates for both have slowed down.  Only retailers in the big box and home goods categories saw significant Facebook follower growth rates.

"The focus on Facebook made sense years ago, but Yesmail Market Intelligence illustrated how follower growth for that channel has plateaued for most retail categories," said Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. "The answer isn't necessarily to shift resources, but rather turn a serious eye to audience preferences and return on social investment. Social media has moved past the experimental phase, and retailers must know their audience and know the ROI of their efforts."

Facebook did lead the pack, with an average of 2.8 million fans per page. Instagram, with the second greatest average audience size of the channels studied, followed with an average of 300,000. Surprisingly, Google+ had an average of 270,000 fans per page; Twitter was inline with 262,000, and YouTube came in last, with 28,000 – less than a tenth of Instagram's average followers.

"Without the proper measurement of marketing efforts, maintaining growth becomes a big challenge," said Mike Iaccarino, CEO and Chairman, Infogroup. "With on-going difficulties in determining social media ROI, brands need innovative solutions like Yesmail Market Intelligence and Social Attribution Intelligence to help them measure and improve their digital campaigns and leverage different channels to increase reach and engagement."

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About Yes Lifecycle Marketing
Yes Lifecycle Marketing is a solution provider that brings together multichannel marketing platforms and data, with creative and strategy services honed on the optimization of delivering relevant marketing messages. This gives marketers the ability to source best-of-breed technology and creative and strategy services from a single vendor at a cost-effective price point. To learn more about how Yes Lifecycle Marketing can help you improve your lifecycle marketing capabilities and increase the ROI of your marketing programs, call 1-877-937-6245, email sales@yeslifecyclemarketing.com or visit www.yeslifecyclemarketing.com.

About Yesmail
Yesmail, Yes Lifecycle Marketing's email marketing solutions provider, powers intelligent customer interactions.  We define ourselves by a better caliber of technology, unmatched insights, and skilled services experts that help our clients get to 'YES' sooner with their customers. As a leading email services provider, we seamlessly integrate email, mobile, web, and social channels, enabling the world's best known brands to use data-driven insights to create meaningful connections with their customers in real-time. For more information, visit www.yesmail.com.

About Infogroup
Infogroup is a marketing services and analytics provider that delivers best in class data-driven customer-centric technology solutions. Our data and software-as-a-service (DaaS & SaaS) offerings help clients of all sizes, from small companies to FORTUNE 100TM enterprises, increase their sales and customer loyalty. Infogroup provides both digital and traditional marketing channel expertise that is enhanced by access to our proprietary data on 235 million individuals and 24 million businesses, which is distributed real-time to our clients. For more information on Infogroup's marketing and data solutions, visit www.infogroup.com.