Easter Holidays 2022: Marketing Statistics & Tips

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It’s no secret that Easter is one of the most profitable holidays of the year.

Since 2010, the amount of money Americans spend on Easter shopping per person has increased from $118.60 to $179.70and is expected to be the highest on record at $20.8 billion.

With 79%of Americans looking forward to celebrating Easter and almost 40% planning on doing their Easter shopping online in 2022, it’s a fantastic opportunity to boost sales for any merchant.

And with the holiday right around the corner, it’s high time to begin your preparations.

To help you out, we analyzed over 2.75 billion emails and nearly 3 million SMS sent from Omnisend in March-April 2020 & 2021 and identified important trends that can help you build a more profitable Easter marketing strategy.

Here’s what we found.

What are the main marketing trends to follow this Easter?

Easter 2022 looks set to be the first post-restriction holiday since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

Consumers are ready to leave the lockdown gloom behind and the perfect opportunity to do that is a big get-together for a holiday meal. And even though not everyone is planning to celebrate, savvy shoppers will still hunt for flash sales and big discounts during the Easter period.

This means that any merchant can boost their sales by doing a spring-themed marketing campaign. With that said, most brands will be holding spring sales before Easter, stuffing people’s inboxes with countless promotional messages.

In order to stand out, you’ll have to get creative. This includes finding the right audience, timing, and channel to deliver your message.

Speaking of channels, our findings show that email is still king when it comes to increasing your ecommerce sales, closely followed by the rising star of SMS.

Email marketing

Our analysis of over 2.75 billion emails sent in March-April of 2020 and 2021 shows that even though most Easter shopping takes place on Good Friday, many customers place orders throughout the month as well.

This means you don’t have to wait for Good Friday to start your Easter marketing campaigns. In fact, starting early or spacing them out can get you more sales than heavily relying on the Good Friday bump.

• Most Easter Holiday orders were made on Good Friday
• In 2020, a combined 13% of Easter sales were on Easter day itself and the day before. In 2021, this dropped to 11%
• Orders via email saw year-on-year growth of 70.28%

SMS marketing

SMS marketing has seen massive growth in 2020 and 2021, and it’s safe to say that you won’t want to miss out on going mobile this Easter.

Our review of nearly 3 million SMS sent from Omnisend shows that shoppers continue to place more orders from this channel, and integrating SMS into your email marketing campaigns is a great way to improve your sales.

• SMS orders grew by a whopping 985% from 2020 to 2021
• The average SMS conversion rate during the two weeks leading up to Easter increased from 0.19% to 0.55% (a 189% increase)
• In 2020, 14.56% of orders for the two-week period were made on Good Friday, while a combined 29% of SMS-driven Easter sales were on the day itself and two days before. In 2021, it was 22%.

What are the main marketing tips and ideas for Easter?

As you can see from our analysis, most people do their Easter shopping in advance. This means that last-minute Easter marketing is not only unprofitable–delaying your campaigns until the holiday weekend gives an advantage to your competitors.

With that in mind, here are five marketing tips to help you boost your Easter sales:

1. Know your audience

Start out your marketing strategy by putting yourself into customers’ shoes.

While Easter is often associated with eggs, chocolate, and the Easter Bunny, it’s still a religious holiday. Keep this in mind before you decide to use an Easter theme unless you know your customers well.

If you’re aiming for a worldwide audience, you may decide to forego using an Easter theme at all. To play it safe, you could choose a colorful spring theme with natural elements like trees, flowers, trees, or animals instead. After all, even if some of your customers don’t plan to celebrate Easter, they may still intend to take advantage of spring sales.

In fact, If you base your Easter campaigns around spring, you can continue to use your designs well after the holiday has concluded.

With that said, if Easter works for your product or service, embrace it. Or you can A/B test it out by building different segments within your audience and send different themes, subject lines, or discounts to each audience segment and see what works best.

Here are some potential audience segments you can try out:

• Demographics: segment your audience by factors like location separating your audience by factors like location and age
• New customers: offering a discountfor their first order is a great way to encourage them to buy
• Loyal customers

2. Get your timing right

Easter is a hugely popular holiday, which means that shoppers will be peppered with offers during that period. To capture their attention with your campaigns, make sure to send them in advance. Even though some people will place their orders at the last minute, our stats show found that:

• In 2020, 87% of email orders and 86% of SMS orders were placed by Good Friday
• In 2021, this increased to 89% of email orders and 87% of SMS orders

Even though Easter isn’t a federal holiday in the US, some American states and companies give workers Good Friday off to let them spend more time with their families. Additionally, Americans will be receiving their tax refunds around April, which gives them a little more spending money than usual.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to start your Easter campaigns about two weeks in advance, with another wave of promotions leading up to and on Good Friday.

3. Deliver the right message

If you know your audience, delivering the right message becomes easier.

For example, being aware that some people don’t celebrate Easter but are open to spring-related offers can give you additional angles for how you promote your products. Some ideas you could use include:

• “Spring trends: which one are you?“
• “New spring markdowns you need to see”
• “Up to 60% off spring steals”

That being said, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of good Easter branding, and using an Easter-themed email template can make your offer more appealing.

Here are some examples of Easter popups and messages you can use with Omnisend on your website:

Whatever angle you choose, remember to stay authentic. Embrace playful puns and egg-inspired phrases if you feel like it’s the way to go, but you don’t have to do it if it doesn’t suit your brand.

4. Use the right channel

Email might be the best channel for getting more sales on Easter, but you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket. In fact, your best bet may be to combine multiple marketing channels into an all-in-one experience.

Here at Omnisend, merchants and marketers can easily create campaigns that incorporate email, SMS, social media ads, and other channels to engage customers across multiple platforms.

You can send promotions and newsletters via email, SMS, or web push notifications, while shoppers who visit your online store but leave without placing an order can see discount codes and product recommendations in your retargeting ads on Facebook and Google.

With Omnisend, your integrated campaigns can show different messages to shoppers depending on the platform, making them more relevant to the customer—and more effective at increasing your sales.

5. Optimize for mobile

Everyone has a smartphone, which makes mobile optimization a must for any marketer.

In the past three years, mobile ecommerce sales have increased by 22% from 2.91 to 3.56 billion, and are projected to soar even higher in 2022. More than that, nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases are done via mobile.

With that in mind, make sure that your Easter promotions are 100% mobile-optimized.

If you already use Omnisend, however, you don’t have to worry about mobile optimization.

Everything you send through Omnisend, including all of your emails, forms, landing pages, and promotions, is already mobile-optimized so you don’t have to spend any additional effort to make it mobile-friendly.

Wrap up

With the right timing, messaging, marketing channel, and a handful of great Easter marketing tips, building the right strategy for the spring holiday season should be much easier.

And if you’re still looking for a powerful marketing tool to help you execute your strategy, Omnisend is the perfect fit.

With an all-in-one, easy-to-use platform at your disposal, you can turn a good Easter marketing campaign into a record-breaking one.

START FREE with Omnisend for free and have your promotions up and running before the big weekend.

Special thanks to our friends at Omnisend for their insights on this topic.