Millennials make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, and many of them now have children. When we look at U.S. households, roughly half of all Millennial women are moms of school-age children. As marketers, we know Millennials are unlike the Gen Xers before them. Having been the first generation to grow up in the digital age, Millennials have changed the way advertisers think about reaching parents.
Diving deeper into this audience, we took a closer look at Millennial moms through a shopper’s lens. Analyzing Oracle data, pulled from more than 115 million U.S. households and across $5 trillion in annual consumer spending, we get a deeper understanding of who these moms are and what they are buying.
Looking at purchase data, we discovered the following insights about Millennial mom shopping habits:
- Millennial moms are health-conscious and are likely to spend money on lifestyle brands. More than half (58%) of Millennial moms buy organic or shop at natural grocery stores.
- Millennial moms are very Internet savvy and big deal seekers. They often take part in online and in-store flash sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In fact, we found that more than half (57%) of Millennial moms made a purchase on Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday.
- Roughly half (49%) of Millennial moms shop at big box stores and take advantage of club memberships (e.g. Costco and Sam’s Club). These bulk stores offer exclusivity, cost savings and a higher volume of goods. After all, Millennial moms are shopping for more than just themselves.
- Surprisingly, Millennial moms are buying more children’s apparel in-store (19%) than online (13%), which could mean that they prefer to shop with their children. Marketers, take note: both mothers AND their children are part of the shopping experience.
Launching an in-store or digital marketing campaign this year? Here’s what marketers should start doing today to reach Millennial moms:
- Pace your campaigns: Start planning today and extend your campaigns through October. While the back-to-school content engagement begins in July, the spike in interest occurs the week before school starts (around August 30), and we see engagement continuing to trend through October.
- Think outside the box: Try new ways to reach those Millennial moms, like subscription boxes. In recent years the popularity and success of subscription box services have exploded. Our data shows that 23% of subscription box buyers are young families.
- Get creative with audiences: Tailor your brand messages and creative around the unique demographic and lifestyle characteristics of your target audiences. Not all Millennial moms are alike, so balance your broad campaign positioning with creative that focuses on the interests of different ack-to-school shopping moms, yoga moms, health-conscious moms, sports fans moms, dog moms, etc.
- Target trending content: Leverage contextual intelligence to target content to stay on top of relevant shopping trends, like new fashion trends, summer/vacation, back-to-school, Black Friday, holiday, etc.
Millennial moms have great purchasing power — they’re not only spending money on themselves, but often control the buying decisions for the entire household. It’s time to use your marketing budgets to tap into this highly valuable audience.
Megan Margraff is Senior Director of Client Analytics at Oracle Data Cloud. Her teams provide top-notch client consulting in the areas of digital audiences, contextual targeting and outcomes-based measurement to Oracle Data Cloud’s clients across verticals. Margraff has deep expertise in strategic consumer and shopper insights, with prior experience as Chief Analytic Officer at Spire, and Senior Consultant at Kantar Retail.
