Mother's Day Marketing: 9 Thoughtful Ideas to Drive More Sales (With Examples)

As a retailer, tapping into the potential of Mother’s Day can significantly bolster your sales. 

The figures speak volumes – with consumers projected to spend a record $35.7 billion in 2023, and this year's anticipated spending per person hitting a high of $274.02. 

But it's not just about the numbers; it's about understanding the nuances of consumer behavior and preferences during this special occasion.

In this post, we delve into Mother’s Day marketing, uncovering insightful statistics, best practices, and innovative ideas to help you craft a winning campaign. 

From understanding your target audience to leveraging creative tactics like post-purchase upsells and personalized gifts, we'll explore actionable strategies that can elevate your Mother’s Day marketing game.

So, let’s jump in and discover how you can seize the opportunity presented by Mother’s Day to not only drive sales but also show appreciation for the remarkable women in our lives.

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Mother’s Day Marketing Statistics

As a retailer, Mother’s Day is a massive opportunity to make more sales. 

Seriously, according to a National Retail Federation survey, consumers planned to spend a record $35.7 Billion for Mother’s Day in 2023.

And this year, consumers plan to spend $274.02 per person, the highest in the survey history and up from the previous record high of $245.76 in 2022. 

In terms of demographics, the top spenders are those ages 35-44, who are expected to spend an average of $382.26 on Mother’s Day.

As with Valentine’s Day marketing, gifting makes up a significant portion of consumer spending. 57% of those who celebrate Mother’s Day plan to buy gifts for a mother or stepmother, followed by a wife (23%) or daughter (12%).

Unsurprisingly, flowers, greeting cards, and special outings are the most popular spending categories by percentage.

However, expected spending is up across all gift categories, and gifts of jewelry, electronics, and apparel are the primary growth drivers this year. 

Respondents said the most important factors in purchasing a Mother’s Day gift include finding unique or different items (47%) or creating a special memory (42%).

The top destinations where customers plan to spend their money are, online shopping (34%), department stores (34%), and specialty stores (30%).

All in all Mother’s Day represents a unique opportunity for eCommerce marketers to add significant revenue to their balance sheets. 

Let’s keep going and see how we can apply these insights to your marketing campaign.

Mother’s Day Marketing Best Practices

Before we get to specific Mother’s Day marketing ideas, follow these principles for a well-oiled campaign, regardless of the specifics.

• Double-check dates: Mother’s Day falls on different dates in different markets. For example, Mother’s Day in the UK is celebrated in March, while Mother’s Day in the US, Canada, and Australia is celebrated in May.

• Define your Mother’s Day selling point: Think about how your products or services benefit mothers. For example, Allswell sells bedding & their selling point is for mothers to spend all day in bed.

• Know your target audience: Since Mother’s Day purchases are primarily gifts, you want to direct your messaging to the purchasers, as opposed to mothers themselves.

• If in doubt, keep it simple: A simple idea that’s well-executed beats a more elaborate, but poorly executed idea any day of the week. If you’re low on time or resources, keep things straightforward for customers.

• Pre-announce your campaign: We all have minds like sieves these days. Announce your campaign in good time across multiple channels for maxi-mum uptake (sorry).

• Offer a range of price points: While average consumer spending is $274.02 per person, there’s a large variance in this number. If possible, offer gifts across all price ranges to maximize conversions (gift cards are also a solid option.)

9 Mother’s Day Marketing Ideas to Try (with Examples)

With the best practices under our belts, let’s jump into some awesome Mother’s Day marketing ideas to inspire your strategy this year.

1. Cross-sell Greeting Cards with a Post-Purchase Upsell

Greeting cards are the most popular gift category, with 74% of consumers saying they’ll buy them this Mother’s Day. 

Greeting cards are typically high margin for you, and low cost for the customer, which makes them a great high-converting cross-sell.

Plus, selling cards also enhances your customer’s experience as it saves them from having to look for one elsewhere.

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One of the best ways to offer greeting cards is via a post-purchase upsell. Post-purchase upsells are offers that display immediately after a customer completes their order. 

The key? Customers can accept the offer with a single click. The frictionless nature means it’s common for retailers to get up to 13% CVR on these offers.

You can use ReConvert to add post-purchase upsells in a couple of minutes. Create a condition to show your offer to customers who purchased a Mother’s Day gift, but didn’t purchase a greeting card.

Alternatively, you can add other upsells such as gift wrapping, shipping insurance, or other related products to drive your revenue higher.

🔥Pro Tip: If you need custom-branded greeting cards, you can use a print-on-demand supplier like Printify or Gelato. You can order in bulk, or have them shipped directly to your customers with no upfront cost. If you ship cards directly from a supplier, just ensure your shipping time and your chosen supplier’s shipping time align to avoid disappointed customers.

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2. Create Mother’s Day Marketing Videos

Good content is the cornerstone of a successful marketing campaign. But the problem is this: creating good content takes a lot of time, planning, and resources. 

That’s where the power of generative AI comes in. 

A tool like Minta allows you to instantly generate hundreds of Mother’s Day creatives in minutes.

For example, here’s a simple video that IKEA used in their Mother’s Day marketing campaign in 2019:

The advancement of generative AI allows tools like  Minta to sync with your store and create themed product videos in line with your branding, just like IKEA’s video above.

You can use these videos in your organic and paid social media marketing campaigns to drive clicks and conversions to your store.

What used to take weeks of planning, teams of designers, and big budgets now takes a few minutes with the help of AI video generators.

3. Create a Mother’s Day Gift Guide

Since your customers are looking for gifts, it makes sense to help them choose the best products with a gift guide.

Seriously, according to McKinsey, 47% of shoppers say they want gift ideas from brands. A well-written gift guide streamlines their research, provides inspiration, and helps them find the perfect gift.

Case in point, cookware brand Made-In’s Mother’s Day gift guide:

Made-in created their gift guide as a blog post which gives them space to provide more information on each product. We love the way they’ve divided the post into ‘For Moms who…’ use cases:

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By providing specific gifts for specific types of moms, Made In makes it even easier for customers to choose a gift. For example, if your mom bakes, the bakeware is perfect. 

Another clever way to categorize your gift guide is by price. Especially if you have lots of products on offer. When it comes to gifting, shoppers typically have a budget in mind, so allowing them to filter by:

• Gifts under $20
• Gifts under $50
• Gifts under $100

This helps customers quickly zero in on the products that fit their budget and make an easier purchasing decision, without having to trawl through your entire site.

🔥Pro Tip: Distribute your gift guide as part of your Mother’s Day email campaign for maximum reach. You can also test running it as a top-of-the-funnel ad on Meta, retargeting visitors using Meta’s dynamic product ads.

4. Craft SEO-Focused Content for Mother’s Day

Blogging for eCommerce is an underutilized marketing strategy. Posting quality blogs in your niche can drive large amounts of traffic for relatively little upfront cost.

Now, organic search marketing typically takes time. Search engines can take a few weeks or even months to rank your pages in their results.

So, writing blog posts around Mother’s Day is a strategy that won’t realistically pay dividends until next year. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

Take this blog post titled ‘125 perfect mother’s day quotes for any mom’ published on the ProFlowers blog:

Using Ahrefs, this post alone attracts over 30,000 visits per month. Bear in mind that this is averaged across the year, so traffic around Mother’s Day is likely to be far higher. 

The key to SEO marketing is to understand the searcher's intent. For example, as with the above post, searchers looking for ‘Mother’s Day quotes’ are likely in the market for Mother’s Day gifts too.

If we assume a conservative 0.2% conversion rate on this traffic, ProFlowers is pulling in 60 sales/mo or 720 sales a year from this single blog post. 

Now, if we estimate their average order value to be $100 this post generates an estimated $72,000 in sales at no additional acquisition cost.

Of course, we’re assuming and estimating a lot here. But hopefully, you can see the power of implementing an organic search strategy for specific holidays.

🔥Pro Tip: Set up retargeting ads for visitors to your Mother’s Day blogs who didn’t convert. Typically these ‘warm’ audiences will convert at a higher rate than cold audiences, giving you a better ROAS.

5. Offer Personalized Mother’s Day Gifts

The National Retail Association’s report tells us that finding unique or different items is the most important factor in purchasing a Mother’s Day gift.

The report also states that Jewelry is the top category by spending, amassing over $7Bn in sales last year. 

The demand for unique products combined with the popularity of jewelry gifts is why retailers like John Lewis offer personalized Mother’s Day Jewelry (and why you should too).

But hold up. Isn’t offering customized products logistically and financially challenging? Well, perhaps to do it in-house. 

But many third-party solutions can help here. For example, after a quick Google search, I found a supplier called OwnPrint that dropship personalized jewelry on your behalf. 

OwnPrint integrates with Shopify, has no minimum order quantities and the products offer juicy margins. Plus, you don’t have to hold any stock, OwnPrint ships orders directly from their facility to your customer’s door.

Our best advice is to research a few print-on-demand companies that serve your market. 

And if Jewelry is off-brand, you can always offer other POD items such as tote bags, pillowcases, t-shirts, or something else your customers want. 

6. Give Customers The Choice to Opt-out

Given the complexity of motherhood, it’s smart to give customers the option to opt out of Mother’s Day marketing campaigns. 

The last thing you want to do is inflict unwanted Mother’s Day content on customers who may have a difficult relationship with their mother, who may have difficulty becoming a mother, or whose mother is deceased.

In recent years, more and more brands have adopted this sensitive approach. Take this example from UK-grocery retailer Waitrose:

Proving an opt-out email isn’t mandatory. However, after perusing this Reddit thread, it seems consumers appreciate the option. Especially, if you plan to send multiple emails.

7. Create a Mother’s Day Email Campaign

A simple email campaign is one of the easiest Mother’s Day marketing ideas to execute.

For example, study this Mother’s Day email from audio brand Bose:

There’s a couple of things to learn here:

• Your Mother’s Day email should help customers choose gifts (basically a mini-gift guide)
• Explain the benefits to the end-user (e.g. ‘gifting her a place of relaxation & focus’)
• Adding a promotional discount helps boost conversions (e.g. Save $50)

Scarcity can also entice last-minute shoppers. You could offer free express shipping on ‘orders over x amount’ a few days before Mother’s Day. 

Alternatively, digital gift cards are a great last-minute option for shoppers who’ve run out of time (e.g. send a ‘Buy her a $100 gift card for $75’ offer the day before Mother’s Day.

8. Team Up & Cross-Promote with Another Brand

Partnership marketing is a great low-cost way to get your band in front of potential customers in the run-up to Mother’s Day.

Think about it - right now there’s a brand that is targeting the same audiences as you. So, why not partner up and promote your products to their audience, and promote their product to your audience?

Here’s an example of a Mother’s Day partnership campaign between wine brand Usual and three of its partners; Ceremonia, Courant, and Hygge & West.

To tap into the Mother’s Day spirit, these four brands ran a giveaway where subscribers could win the ultimate Mother’s Day at home.

You don’t have to run a giveaway, you could offer a mutual discount on each other’s stores, a joint bundle, or whatever offer makes sense. 

Here’s an example of a Mother’s Day collaboration between Golfen Valley Plants and Simply Delicious Cakes:

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Partnership marketing is great because it’s typically free, and you can leverage the trust between your partner and their audience base to boost conversions.

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So, research other brands that may appeal to your audience. Reach out to them saying that co-marketing would be a great idea. When you have a similar-sized audience, it’s mutually beneficial for both of you!

9. Create a Mother’s Day Landing Page

A landing page or category page is essential for any Mother’s Day marketing campaign.

This page should display all of the mother’s day products. It’s the perfect place to send customers from your paid ads and email marketing efforts.

Your landing page also helps Mother’s Day shoppers with navigation. Particularly if you link to it from your store’s homepage or use a sitewide banner to promote it.

Again, if you’ve got a lot of products, make your Mother’s Day category page filterable by things like price, most popular, etc. to create a frictionless shopping experience.

Use These Mother’s Day Marketing Ideas Today!

Mother’s Day is a fantastic opportunity to boost your sales.

Hopefully, the ideas presented in this post inspire you to create a powerful Mother’s Day marketing campaign.

As we wrap up, remember that Mother's Day isn't just another marketing opportunity – it's a chance to honor the incredible women who shape our lives. 

Whether you're a small business or a big brand, tapping into the spirit of this day with genuine appreciation and thoughtful gestures can truly make a difference.

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Mother’s Day Marketing FAQ

Let’s quickly cover some of the most commonly asked questions related to Mother’s Day marketing.

How do you market Mother's Day?

You can market Mother's Day by creating heartfelt campaigns, offering special promotions, and highlighting products/services tailored for moms. Utilize social media, email marketing, and targeted advertising to reach your audience.

What is a catchy slogan for Mother's Day?

"Celebrate Mom: Because She's Worth It!" or "Mother's Day: Show Her the Love She Deserves!"

When should I start marketing for Mother's Day?

Start marketing for Mother's Day at least a month before the holiday to capture early shoppers. Ideally, launch your campaigns by mid-April to maximize visibility and engagement.

How is Mother's Day a selling point for brands?

Mother's Day serves as a powerful selling point for brands by tapping into the emotional connection people have with their mothers. It offers an opportunity to showcase products/services as thoughtful gifts, driving increased sales and brand loyalty.