Knowing the best ways to appeal to your target market is a fantastic way to maximise success in retail this Easter.
In this article, Takepayments share some key spending insights from Easter 2022 to help businesses take advantage of the holiday this year.
When are the busiest periods this Easter?
Data collected from card machines, POS systems and online payments from April 10-17th 2022 shows:
- Small businesses using takepayments systems tracked nearly 200,000 transactions throughout the week leading up to and including Easter Sunday
- Based on Finder’s statistic that people spent, on average, £26.85 over the Easter weekend in 2022, takepayments estimate that nearly £1.6m was spent through their POS systems over Easter 2022
- The day leading up to Easter with the most sales is the Thursday prior to Easter Sunday. This year it will fall on the 6th April
After analysing the findings, Jodie Wilkinson, Head of Strategic Partnerships at takepayments, has provided the following tips for small businesses looking to capitalise on Easter sales:
“Based on our partners’ transaction data, the Thursday before Easter had the highest sales across all industries and areas in the UK. Sales on Easter Sunday fell by 57% in comparison.
“Also known as Maundy Thursday, it marks the end of Lent and people might be looking to splurge on the things they’ve given up over the previous 40 days. In addition to the end of Lent.
“Whether people are making up for all the things they gave up, or they’re trying to get their last-minute shopping done before bank holiday opening hours come into play, it’s evident that this particular Thursday marks a surge in sales.
“Businesses should put preparations in place ahead of Thursday, when they will probably receive peak footfall or online traffic.”
Top tips to maximise retail success this Easter
Here are some other tips businesses should be using, according to Jodie:
- Run a competition or a poll on social media to incentivise people to engage with you, whilst boosting the chance that they will share your posts
- Remember to include a condition into competitions to increase your engagement – for example, users must follow your page to enter and include a prize that shows off your product or service, like a free haircut or cup of coffee
- Don’t give out prizes on the same day. Customers will be more likely to come back to your business (and potentially spend more money) to collect their prize at a later date
- Use your social feeds to share pictures of any Easter displays you have created alongside your products and use the occasion as a springboard to upsell your stock
- Easter competition ideas could include: an Easter egg hunt, egg decorating, guess the name of the chick and how many eggs in the jar?
