Winter Holidays

By Greg Van den Heuvel, Pitney Bowes Software

Black Friday traditionally marks the first day of the holiday shopping season. During the most recent holiday season, millions of Americans have participated in the shopping frenzy, which according to CMO.com, accounts for nearly 40% of all annual sales. Black Friday weekend alone accounted for 133 million American shoppers, diving deep into discounts, hoping to land the best deal and get a head start on their holiday shopping.

New York -- Closing out the 2014 holiday shopping season, Internet retail traffic soared to new heights during the first weekend in January, according to Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ Retail Index.

The Index measures average daily traffic and peak volumes, with both variables used an index with a baseline value of 100. The Index was 130 on Friday (Jan. 2), 134 on Saturday (Jan. 3) and 137 points on Sunday (Jan 4).

San Francisco, Calif. - Apple accounted for 51% of the new device activations worldwide during the week leading up to and including Christmas Day (Dec. 19 - 25). According to data from mobile analytics provider Flurry, Christmas Day typically sees the highest number of new device activations and app installs each year, with 2014 following the trend.

Retailers set more online sales records this holiday season and that means UPS will be busy in early January.

UPS is projecting its highest volume for return activity will be Jan. 6 when the carrier expects consumers will ship more than 800,000 packages back to retailers and merchants. By the end of the first full week of January, return volume is expected to total roughly four million packages.

Lebanon, Tenn. – Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is taking a decidedly new-fangled approach to promotion. The casual dining chain has enlisted Nashville-based advertising agency Redpepper to create a holiday-themed social marketing campaign.   The promotion targets a younger, more social demographic with Facebook posts. Some posts in the campaign have received more than 10,000 interactions.

Rite Aid wants to ring in the New Year with more sales and is counting on a generous new seasonal savings and rewards initiative.

The company has announced it is offering its wellness+ loyalty program members the opportunity to receive lifestyle and entertainment rewards for every $50 spent in stores on participating products now through Jan. 24.

Reston, Va. -  Although full results aren’t in yet, holiday e-commerce sales in 2014 look like a healthy improvement from 2013. According to data from comScore, for the holiday season Nov. 1 through Dec. 21, $48.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 15% increase from the corresponding days the previous year.   

It remains to be seen how Big Lots performed this holiday season, but the closeout retailer’s catchy and original television advertising drew accolades from industry experts.

In a recent piece in Ad Age, Big Lot’s holiday campaign “Nailed It” was singled out by writer Ken Wheaton as the top campaign of the season.