As a marketer, it is crucial to understand your audience, especially when strategizing campaigns. And this is true for all demographics, including Generation Z (Gen Z), who were born approximately between 1995 and 2015
Gen Z’ers could represent a large (and growing) portion of your audience, so it is important to align your digital marketing tactics with Gen Z behaviors. For instance, you should understand how this demographic uses technology, marketing channels, and the internet.
In order to plan marketing strategies that successfully target your Gen Z audience, you’ll need data. Research can inform your decisions and make your campaigns successful. Don’t have the data you need? We can help.
Generation Z: How they behave online
We recently surveyed 300 Gen Z’ers on topics such as brand loyalty, online habits, and social media preferences. Below are key pieces of information from that survey, as well as tips for your future marketing efforts.
(Note: Our respondents consisted of people ages 14 to 26 years old. Of that group, 96.39% were 18 to 24 years old.)
- Generation Z is a powerful demographic that spends a lot of money.
So, just how important are Gen Z’ers to your marketing efforts? By the end of 2020, the Gen Z demographic will account for 40% of all consumers and will bring with them $44 billion in buying power. If you include parent spending, then it becomes $600 billion.
Additionally, certain digital marketing channels can heavily influence a Gen Z purchase. When asked how many times during the last month they purchased based on an email, our respondents gave the following answers:
- 1 time (27.9%)
- 2 to 5 times (28.5%)
- 6-10 times (5.9%)
- 11 times or more (1%)
Takeaway:
If you’ve been neglecting your Gen Z audience, it may be time to re-examine your marketing efforts. Otherwise, you could miss out on significant revenue.
Since email marketing can directly impact Gen Z purchases, it would be wise to make improvements to your email marketing strategy. A few factors to keep in mind when developing your email strategy:
- Easily create beautiful, responsive, and mobile-friendly email templates with just a few clicks.
- Automate various types of emails such as welcome messages, newsletters, and targeted offers.
- Track and analyze the performance of your emails across a wide variety of metrics.
- Gen Z’ers are constantly online.
Young people today spend the majority of their time online. 45% of teens say they’re online almost constantly, and 44% say they’re online several times a day. That means 99% are online for most of any given day.
It’s also no secret that Generation Z has embraced social media and uses each platform differently. Members of Gen Z use Twitter for news, Facebook for information, and Instagram to share their aspirational lives.
Gen Z’ers also have their own favorite social media platforms. 32% said it was YouTube, 35% said it was Snapchat, and 15% said it was Instagram.
Takeaway:
In marketing, it pays to be visible to your audience (literally), so target your Gen Z customers across the various social media platforms.
Since Gen Z users are constantly online, you have a perfect opportunity to integrate your digital marketing strategies. For example, you can combine your email marketing, content marketing, and social media. Promote blog content by advertising new blog articles in your emails. You can also encourage shares this way, simply by including accessible social media sharing buttons.
- Gen Z’ers check their email often.
Our survey revealed that a majority of Gen Z’ers like using email. We asked our respondents three questions centered around email marketing, and here’s how they answered.
When asked how often they check their email:
- Multiple times a day (58%)
- At least once a day (23%)
- A couple of times a week (12.1%)
- Once a week (5.2%)
- Never (.98%)
When asked how often they wanted to receive emails from brands:
- Twice a week (31.8%)
- Once a day (27.5%)
- Once a week (19%)
- Once a month (18.4%)
When asked what kind of content they wanted to receive?
- Promos and special discounts (82.3%)
- Product recommendations (44.3%)
- Company updates (26.6%)
- Links to blogs and other resources (20.3%)
Takeaway:
Based on our survey, it’s clear that most Gen Z’ers are not only fans of email, but also enjoy communicating with brands this way.
You can conduct a similar survey on your subscribers and ask them two questions: 1) How often do they want to receive emails from you, and 2) what kind of content would they like to receive?
However, it isn’t just about email frequency. It’s also about relevance. Using the responses from your survey, you can segment your list according to the type of content they’d like to receive. Doing so will likely increase your open rates because you can send customers content they enjoy.
Conclusion
Keep this information in mind whenever you and your team are planning your master strategy. This way, you can connect with your Gen Z customers more effectively, and in the process, build a loyal following with one of the fastest growing segments of the population in the United States.
