Did you know that for many the Back to School season each August is the second highest seasonal demand period for the payday industry?  Only the Christmas and New Year Holiday time frame beats Back to School in terms of seasonal demand. For Texas Credit Access Businesses offering cash advances, payday loans, or title loans, now is the time to invest in marketing to new and existing customers.  It is imperative that all of your marketing, promotions, social media, and referral programs are firing and connected.  Campaigns started as early as July 28th and are pushing hard until at least the first day of school. In Texas most have that date set at August 15th.   

Revenue and payment wise, many Members of our group still recall August of 2018 where we had (5) Fridays in the month and also with the way the calendar fell the 1st & 3rd pay dates fell in August, for August in September!  So those things alone meant a record number of payments due and a record revenue month for many.  While we do not have the same thing happening this month with the pay dates, we still have the increase in demand to focus on, so make that marketing happen now! Don’t forget to keep your teams happy, motivated, and focused this month as the workload can increase with higher demand and payment volume.

One great idea to for blog readers that is happening in Central Texas is doing back pack give-away promotion where new customers are entered for a chance to win back packs filled with a variety of much needed school supplies.  This has been warmly received by customers.  Social media has been showing the love with lots of shares and likes of the images we posted of the backpacks so that is very good.

How do we know Back to School demand is here?  There are a number of criteria that paint a very clear picture, for starters lead conversions were up, we saw 12% on one source versus mostly having been in the 5-10% range in prior weeks.

Another sign – loan volume is way up August 1st to 8th versus July 1st to 8th:

• Funding volume is doubled.
• New Customers doubled.
• Online applications up 38%.
• Reloans doubled.
• Increases tripled.
• Denials down 10%.

This blog post was written by Michael Brown, President of CAB Consulting and the Texas Organization of Financial Service Centers.  He can be reached at 214-293-8676, or Michael@CreditAccessBusiness.com.