Lean into these 2022 holiday shopping trends

‘Tis the season for never-ending commercials, ads, and emails. According to a recent article published by Forbes, holiday shopping is expected to look a little different this year—and some of the predictions may seem a little confusing. While overall spending is expected to be down for the 2022 season, experts are noticing that the shopping season is starting earlier and therefore lasting longer. And while online sales are expected to experience significant growth, consumers are still demanding a personalized experience.

So, what does this mean for your credit union? These insights are extremely valuable as you carry out your data-driven marketing strategy this holiday season. Ensuring your debit or credit card is top of your member’s wallet is a common strategy for most financial institutions, so read on for ideas on how to lean in to these trends and meet this important strategic initiative!

Trend: Decline in Sales

• Identify the categories or stores that have the highest spend across your total membership. Then, identify members who are not using their debit or credit card in these categories or at these stores. It is possible—and even likely—that these members are shopping in these categories; they just aren’t using their credit union account to do so. An offer to meet a certain number or dollar amount of transactions may influence members to spend more with their credit union accounts.
• Monitor spend in certain high-spend stores and watch for declines in payments to those stores. This could indicate a shift from your payment method to a store-based credit card or even a Buy Now, Pay Later payment platform. Consider a marketing campaign with incentives for shopping at these stores to bring this spend back to your financial institution.

Trend: Longer Shopping Season

• With a longer shopping season, you’ll want to communicate often. This makes it extra important that your messaging is timely and relevant. By segmenting members based on their behavior, you can deploy a highly targeted marketing strategy. And leveraging machine learning to create the segmentation model allows you to eliminate any biases and create meaningful segments based on your actual member data—leading to improved results.

Trend: Increase in Online Sales

• Consider offering cash back or bonus points for using your debit or credit card for high-volume online platforms such as Amazon. You know many of your members are shopping in these outlets, so provide them an incentive to use your card at checkout.
• Analyze your members to determine their engagement patterns. You will likely find that some members prefer the traditional ways of engaging with your organization, while many have shifted towards the digital channels. This gives you a great target audience for any marketing campaigns that are promoting online shopping.

Trend: Personalized Experience

• Use your data warehouse to create highly personalized marketing lists and push relevant data into your communications. For example, you could send an email to members with a significant amount of available credit on their credit card. Include their available credit right in the body of the email to get them thinking about switching their holiday spend to your card!

While the 2022 holiday shopping season is already well underway for many shoppers, it’s not too late to start securing your credit union’s piece of the holiday spend! With the right data and the right partners, these ideas can be implemented in no time.