SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE:
CRM), the global leader in CRM, today released its 2019 Holiday
Shopping Report, revealing the trends, data and insights brands and
retailers need to prepare for the 2020 holiday shopping season.
Overall, Salesforce data shows an 8 percent increase in digital
spend over the 2019 shopping season, with $723 billion in digital revenue
worldwide.
Top Salesforce 2019 Holiday Shopping Insights
For the
report, Salesforce combined insights on the activities of hundreds
of millions of global shoppers across more than 30 countries
powered by Commerce Cloud, billions of consumer engagements powered
by Marketing Cloud, and millions of customer service cases viewed
in Service Cloud between November 1 and
December 31, 2019. This season's top retail highlights and
trends include:
- Brands push consumers to start holiday shopping early:
With a later Thanksgiving and shortened holiday selling season,
retailers made every day count pushing out discounts and promotions
earlier than ever. Early marketing activity was a success in
generating buzz the week leading up to Cyber Week with digital
traffic growing 13 percent over the same period in 2018. Shoppers
filled their online baskets but waited for Cyber Week to place
their orders, with digital orders up 9 percent over the same 2018
period.
- AI eliminates guesswork for shoppers: AI-powered search
and product recommendations drove additional revenue for retailers
this holiday season, as 10 percent of digital orders and 5 percent
of digital revenue came from AI-powered recommendations.
- Cyber Week 2019 broke records: Cyber Week 2019 was one
for the record books, with global digital revenue growing 15
percent to $143 billion. Black Friday
continued to be the number one global digital shopping day and in
the U.S. it continued to pull revenue away from Cyber Monday.
Across the globe, Thanksgiving Day emerged as a major shopping
event with sales growing 24 percent year-over-year to $20 billion—proving once again that shoppers are
going to act when it's best for them.
- Early season buying frenzy leads to late season
softness: Digital revenues fell 27 percent year-over-year
during the week leading up to Christmas. This was likely due to a
smoothing out of demand throughout the year—from shoppers buying
gifts as early as the summer to take advantage of manufactured
holidays or going into physical stores on the cusp of the shipping
cutoff date to avoid hassles with delivery.
- Retailers with click and collect win later in the
season: Despite the softness in late season buying, retailers
offering click and collect saw big gains as shoppers scrambled to
complete their last minute holiday purchases. Retailers offering
this capability on their ecommerce sites saw 56 percent more active
digital shoppers—someone who uses a site search, adds a product to
cart, starts a checkout or completes a transaction—in the last five
days of the season. Additionally, those retailers also collected 18
percent more digital revenue share after the shipping cutoff.
- Mobile reigns victorious: The year 2019 ended with
mobile being the number one device driving digital traffic and
orders. To put that into context, the decade began with mobile
driving very little digital traffic or orders. This holiday season,
peak days like Christmas saw up to 80 percent of digital traffic
and 65 percent of digital orders come through a mobile device.
"Throughout the 2019 holiday shopping season, retailers saw
success with mobile commerce, store pick up and personalization via
artificial intelligence and social engagement, removing friction in
the ways shoppers browsed and purchased," said Rob Garf, VP, Industry Strategy for Retail,
Salesforce. "Mobile certainly catered to people on the go this
holiday season and in 2020 brands should be looking for ways to
integrate this experience into physical stores for a true
omnichannel shopping journey."
Salesforce Brings Shoppers and Retailers Together For the
Holiday Season
Salesforce delivers massive scale in B2C CRM.
Here's how Salesforce helped retailers power personalized commerce,
marketing and customer service throughout the 2019 holiday season
(November 1 - December 31, 2019):
- Commerce Cloud customers saw 28 percent growth in
digital orders placed year-over-year and global brands and
retailers saw 22 percent overall digital revenue growth during the
season. Brands and retailers saw a 28 percent overall traffic
increase.
- Marketing Cloud sent over 162 billion emails, mobile SMS
and push notifications this holiday season. That is a 15 percent
year-over-year increase in email sends and 17 percent
year-over-year increase in messages (emails, SMS and push) sent
during the entire holiday season.
- Service Cloud agents viewed or worked on more than 3.8
billion customer service cases and received more than 900 million
customer service calls this holiday season.
Additional Resources:
- Read the Salesforce All Wrapped Up Holiday Report here
- Visit the Salesforce Holiday Insights website here
- Like Salesforce on Facebook
- Follow @salesforce on Twitter
2019 Salesforce Holiday Insights and Predictions
Methodology
To help retailers and brands benchmark holiday
performance, Salesforce combined data and holiday insights on
the activity of more than half a billion global shoppers across
more than 30 countries powered by Commerce Cloud, billions of
consumer engagements and millions of public social media
conversations through Marketing Cloud, and customer service data
powered by Service Cloud. Several factors are subsequently applied
to extrapolate projections and actuals for the broader retail
industry. These holiday flash reports are a derivative of the
quarterly Shopping Index.
About Salesforce
Salesforce is the global leader in
Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer
to their customers in the digital age. Founded in 1999, Salesforce
enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of
powerful technologies—cloud, mobile, social, internet of things,
artificial intelligence, voice and blockchain—to create a 360° view
of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE:
CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/salesforce-reveals-2019-holiday-digital-sales-grew-8-percent-to-723-billion-globally-300984783.html
SOURCE Salesforce