£5 Million Spent Through Takepayment Card Machines On Valentine’s Day 2022- How Small Businesses Can Cash In This Year

Valentines Day can be a goldmine for businesses, with data collected from takepayments’ card terminals running up to the 14th February 2022, finding that:

• Customers made around 216,000 purchases through takepayment systems in the week before Valentine’s Day

• Almost £5 million was spent through takepayment terminals over the week (an average of £23 per person based on Finder’s estimated average spend per person)

• 22% of these transactions were made in bars or restaurants and hospitality is the clear winner in terms of Valentine’s sales

Jodie Wilkinson (Head of Strategic Partnerships at takepayments)  has supplied the comment below about how businesses can best capitalise on Valentine’s Day: 

“The data regarding restaurants and bars shows the hospitality sector should definitely be cashing in, but it’s important for all businesses to properly plan their Valentine’s strategy. takepayments has collected data from multiple marketing studies to discover the best strategies to implement for your business, including:

• Consider using emojis in your email marketing where relevant, as they’ve been shown to increase open rates by up to 56%. 99% of people with an email account check their emails daily so a Valentine’s themed email campaign is a great way of grabbing attention and increasing brand awareness.

• Utilise polls and hashtags, relevant to your business, across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. A Buzzsumo study found that posts asking specific questions have the best audience engagement rates whilst hashtags can double engagement rates.

• Ahead of Valentines Day, make use of relevant images, such as Valentine’s themed cocktails and meals on your social media. Posts with images receive 2.3 more engagement than those without.

• Try out “giveaways” and competitions. This study found that offering “freebies” can boost sales by 70% and Instagram competitions and “giveaways” can boost the growth of your account by 70%.

• Don’t forget to include the singletons and encourage consumers to treat themselves. You could offer a special “pamper package” for singletons or make use of the “Galentines” trend in your marketing.”

If you’d like to see the full guide, including more in depth information about how businesses can drive Valentine’s sales, please see the link to the guide provided above.