Social media is bringing to light something that retail jewelers have known since they started selling jewelry: Christmas is when "everyone" gets engaged. According to the Chillisauce Marriage Proposal Survey, the most popular day to pop the question is Christmas Eve. Here's the bar graph with their findings:
The ability to change your Facebook relationship status is making the public more aware of these popular days now too.
Over this past weekend, I witnessed the status change of a few of my own friends, and even saw this commentary on those changes:
As you can see, my friend Andrew is a little upset that he's still single and several of our friend got engaged. The comments on his Facebook update range from romantic to jaded.
A few years ago, Facebook published this news piece about recently engaged people and the most popular days during the year when people update their relationship status. Specifically these days in this order:
- Christmas Eve
- Christmas Day
- New Year's Day
- Valentine's Day
Here's some more data from their post:
As a jeweler, you probably already knew that November and December were the most popular months to get engaged, but did you know that the median age of engagement is 24? That number seems lower than other industry reports and suggested trends that I've seen. Around the same time in 2013 that Facebook published their data, the National Marriage Project reported the average age for women getting engaged was 27, and 29 for men. In 2015 BrideBox conducted their own survey, and found the average age for women getting engaged was 27.
Knowing the 24-29 target age range of your engagement customer will help you craft the right social media marketing. Notice that I'm saying social media marketing because that's where they spend most of their time. If understanding how to target this audience eludes you, then you might need to hire an ad agency to help you, or hire a new employee within that age range to introduce some new ideas within your store.
As the last few days of the year 2015 unfold, I'm seeing a lot of social media posts and news reports detailing what's happened this year. Scientific advancements, medical discoveries, and political issues seem to be at the forefront of what I see on social media this morning as I write this.
Oddly, I haven't seen any mention of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples yet. Perhaps that's simply because my friends and I are not dwelling on it, instead, several of my friends are simply acting on the new found equality offered. You see, of the 20+ friends that my friend Andrew mentioned in the Facebook post I've shown above, most of them were LGBT couples.
You might have dismissed any chance for increased sales when the Supreme Court ruled on same-sex wedding rights, a quick Google search will show conflicting reports between Huffington Post, National Jeweler, and JCK on whether or not there would be a big financial impact. Regardless what you might have thought previously, the flurry of LGBT engagements during this recent Christmas holiday is just the first step for the LGBT community towards embracing marriage as a real option.
During a rather unscientific polling and conversation with a few of my younger friends, I asked them if they had yet considered one day getting married, how they would propose, or if they would buy a ring. None of them had given it any thought because they had not yet "found the right one." Additionally, and of course to my own dismay, these same friends of mine didn't know if exchanging an engagement ring was the right thing to do.
There's no doubt about it that jewelers who embrace same-sex weddings will have an increase in sales. But you can't simply say you will support same-sex weddings, you must show your support through your website, social media ads, offline ads, and most importantly, with how your employees treat same-sex couples when they come in the store.
Take action in early 2016 and learn more about the emerging same-sex wedding market. You can contact Jewelers Equality Alliance to learn more about tapping into this emerging market.
In closing for today, I'm sharing a photo from a Christmas proposal I witnessed myself. It took place at the public Christmas lighting display in Albany, New York. I was able to get this photo of the lighted traffic sign used in the proposal:
