Easter is an extremely important trading period for some retailers. If we exclude the pandemic years, since 2017, Home & Garden has seen an 8.3% uplift in sales in the Easter week vs other weeks; Grocery sales have increased 5.4% and Food & Drink 5.0%.
In the previous chart, the sales uplift for Entertainment is negligible (-0.1%), but when we look closer, we can see outdoor activities and days out are up whilst indoor pursuits are down during the Easter school break.
When Easter falls plays a huge part in deciding upon how much and when to invest in marketing activities for those sectors.
Easter falling in close proximity to payday, as in 2018, showed that customers tend to spend more during the Easter week than in other weeks of the year.
This year Easter lands just a week after payday, therefore retailers in some sectors could see a large uplift in sales. Investing in marketing activity, such as Personalised Card Linked Offers (PCLO) to secure those sales for themselves is going to be key for those retailers.
Additional bank holidays within the same months, as we saw in 2019, may mean that consumers look to spread their spending over a longer time period. This is the case this year with another bank holiday at the end of April / beginning of May and also an additional bank holiday for the coronation just a week after.
Although this may also mean a large sales uplift, retailers may need to take into account that people could be conscious about trying to spread that spend across the three long weekends rather than splurging all on Easter. In this instance it may pay off to keep investing in PCLO all the way through spring and summer.
For campaigns based on gardening or outdoor entertaining, retailers should start thinking about running their campaign from the end of March and up until the end of May, with flexible budget that you can scale up ahead of sunny weekends.
When to run your campaign is also important, depending on your sector.
For campaigns based on gardening or outdoor entertaining, retailers should start thinking about running their campaign from the end of March and up until the end of May, with flexible budget that you can scale up ahead of sunny weekends.
For grocery or food & drink, building awareness several weeks out and increasing activation budgets in the week prior to Easter could be key to maximising on the opportunities Easter presents. We can see a spike in sales just as we enter the Easter weekend with the lead up to the Easter weekend showing a 24% increase in sales versus the week prior as people host gatherings and stock up more on food.
For Travel, looking at weekly overseas spend in the lead up to Easter and the springtime, there is a peak in sales in the two weeks leading up to Easter, probably aligning with school holidays. If you operate in a category reliant on tourism spend this is the time to focus your efforts.
With many retailers potentially cutting advertising budgets, a carefully planned Easter period could be a golden opportunity to capture additional market share and then grow the lifetime value of these customers.
Keeping methods in mind to attract repeat spend and avoid consumers falling into the ‘lapsed’ bucket will be beneficial with increasing sales volumes. Focusing on driving loyalty and rewarding customers for repeat purchases, for example, through the use of Personalised Card Linked Offers (PCLO) is something that should be top of mind for retail brands to ensure those customers who spend over the Easter period continue to do so afterwards.
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