14 Mother's Day Campaign Ideas (and How to Approach this Holiday Thoughtfully)

2. Create a Mother’s Day gift guide

A well-crafted Mother’s Day gift guide makes shopping easier for customers — and boosts your sales in the process.

Your customers will appreciate a list of thoughtful gifts, especially when it’s presented as a friction-free shopping experience rather than just another product catalog.

You can share your Mother’s Day gift guide with your email list:

But you can also:

• Promote it with social media ads targeting last-minute shoppers
• Use your gift guide as a lead magnet to grow your email list
• Promote your gift guide via SMS marketing

You can also feature the guide on the home page of your website with a promo popup:

To make the most of a Mother’s Day gift guide, curate it, grouping items by price range, style, or recipient to make shopping effortless.

3. Send meaningful Mother’s Day email campaigns

Mother’s Day email campaigns don’t have to be all about promotions. While limited-time sales work well, your emails can also be a chance to connect with your audience on a personal level or even help them be better gift-givers on this holiday.

Below are three ways to make your emails more engaging:

Offer helpful content. Share Mother’s Day tips, DIY ideas, or self-care advice. For example, Etsy shares some breakfast-in-bed ideas with its subscribers:

Segment your audience. If you can, send a dedicated email for women on your list. I love how this email from Ingrid + Isabel encourages moms to pamper themselves instead of waiting for someone else to do it for them:

Remind customers about the upcoming holiday. Finding a perfect gift takes time, and getting it shipped – too. One of the most thoughtful emails you can include in your Mother’s day marketing campaign is a well-timed reminder about the upcoming holiday.

For example, last year, JazzUpCo sent this email with subject line “Order on time for Mother’s Day!”

Offer gift cards. Finally, you can remind people if you have gift cards available for purchase. It’s perfect for last-minute shoppers and those who aren’t sure what to buy.

4. Remind customers about shipping deadlines

A part of the gift-shopping challenge is to get gifts delivered on time. That’s why it’s a thoughtful practice to remind customers when shipping deadlines are approaching.

You can place a notification banner on your website to tell visitors when the last day is to order a gift to get it before Mother’s Day:

You can also add a countdown timer to your emails to instill a sense of urgency or even send a dedicated email before the delivery cut-off date.

5. Feature real mothers in your campaign

Show your customers that you care about real mothers by featuring them in your content this month.

By letting mothers tell their stories, you can engage with your audience on a deeper level. It also allows you to show the human side of your brand.

For example, Lalo, a toddler and baby brand, asked moms in their audience what being a mother meant to them, which created a unique email newsletter:

You can use these types of showcases in your emails, but they also make for great social media content. In Lalo’s case, this was an Instagram takeover.

6. Offer a gift with a purchase

How about a gift for the gift-giver?

Mother’s Day is the perfect time to bundle a gift with all purchases above a certain amount. You can choose a specific product, or you can offer a gift card, just like Coco Village does in their email promo below:

Gifts are especially interesting if you sell products designed for mothers. If this is the case, you can offer a gift designed specifically for them.

Offering a Mother’s Day gift with a purchase is also a great email list-building tactic. Here is how Jamie Turner does it via the on-site campaign:

7. Try a ‘BOGO’ offer

There are a handful of reasons to launch a Buy One Get One Free offer for Mother’s Day!

For example, people purchasing gifts for their mothers and mother-in-law will be able to complete their shopping in a single go.

But it’s also ideal for someone who wants to match their mother (or whomever they’re buying a gift for).

EyeBuyDirect, an online glasses store, shows a great example of how to position a BOGO offer for Mother’s Day:

What if you have a target audience made up of moms? In this case, you can create a BOGO offer that targets moms and their children (or other loved ones).

For example, Briar Baby launched this BOGO offer with bucket hats for baby and mama:

Your BOGO offer can be even better if you have matching products, just like Briar Baby. But if you’re not launching a new collection specifically for Mother’s Day, feel free to make curated suggestions for your online shoppers instead.

8. Promote free shipping and BNPL

If you don’t normally offer free shipping with all orders, consider running a free shipping campaign around the same period as Mother’s Day.

How important is free shipping? Researchers from the Baymard Institute have found that 48% of abandoned carts are caused by extra costs, such as taxes and shipping fees. People who are on the fence about ordering from your website due to shipping fees may finally pull the trigger on that purchase once those fees disappear. Additionally, you can offer the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option.

David Yurman highlights both offers in one of the Mother’s Day promo emails, knowing that the price might be among the biggest customer objections.

In addition to the email campaign, remember to add a free shipping bar to your website to display the minimum order requirement.

9. Create a product bundle mothers will love

Go one step above the gift guide and create a product bundle that’s curated specifically for mothers.

A Mother’s Day bundle can help you increase average order value while also taking the work out of finding the perfect gift.

One example of a bundle that’s perfect for Mother’s Day is a gift box, as you can see from Winterfold:

You can also bundle products that complement each other. For example, if you sell women’s razors, you can bundle a razor with hydrating cream.

Feel free to pair product bundles with other promotions. For instance, you can offer free shipping to all bundle buyers. Or you can offer an extra gift with every bundle.

10. Launch a charitable campaign

Want to show your customers you care about mothers and their children — and that Mother’s Day isn’t just another opportunity to make a quick sale for your brand? Consider launching a charitable campaign that supports a nonprofit organization specifically dedicated to a relevant cause.

Some examples of nonprofit organizations you could support include (but aren’t limited to):

• Family shelters and women’s shelters
• Organizations that help new moms care for their newborns
• Midwife organizations
• Organizations that help moms go back to school
• Nonprofits dedicated to pregnancy and/or infant loss
• Orphanages and organizations that support orphans

Choose a nonprofit organization that makes sense for your brand. For example, if you and your customers value local businesses, make sure to choose an organization that’s local to you and most of your customer base.

To launch a charitable campaign, you can contribute a portion of all proceeds to the organization of your choice. Alternatively, you can include your customers by creating a poll for their favorite organization.

11. Try a Mother’s Day quiz

There’s no better way to help an overwhelmed customer than to guide them through their Mother’s Day purchase with a quiz.

Ecommerce quizzes are fun, engaging, and helpful for your website visitors. For Mother’s Day, you can create a quiz that helps your customers narrow down the perfect gift for their moms.

For instance, you can create a personality-driven quiz. Or you can use your quiz to pinpoint a problem one of your products could solve for your customers’ mothers.

When you create a Mother’s Day quiz, make sure to make the most of it.

Quizzes are highly shareable, so the more you promote the quiz to your audience, the more they’ll be likely to share it with other people, too.

Send it to your email list, add a promo popup to your website, mention it on social media… or, if you have a paid ads budget, launch a new campaign specifically for the quiz.

12. Launch a new collection

Have an upcoming collection launch? Why not save it for Mother’s Day — or design a new collection specifically for this holiday?

This strategy works especially well if your products are catered to mothers (or their loved ones). For example, Bryan Anthonys, a minimalist jewelry brand, launched limited-edition pieces named to resonate with every mother: “You are my sunshine” and “Love that runs deep”.

Clothing brands can also leverage this idea. For example, Queen’s Park Sleepwear launched a new Mother’s Day collection, including mini versions to help moms match with their kids:

Remember that you can combine this idea with other Mother’s Day promo ideas from this list — for instance, you can:

• Announce your new collection to your email list
• Ask real mothers to be featured using your new product collection
• Match your new collection with a gift

13. Host a live sale event

There’s no better way to engage with your customers than to host a live sale event. But instead of creating a generic live sale, you can theme your event around Mother’s Day.

Live sales are promotional events during which you (or someone from your brand’s team) host a video live stream to show your products.

If you’ve launched a new Mother’s Day collection, consider showing it in real time via a live sale! Make sure to have enough stock on hand to demonstrate them to your audience.

14. Promote a Mother’s Day giveaway

Finally, consider throwing a Mother’s Day giveaway as a way to give back to your loyal customers.

Giveaways aren’t just fun for your audience and customers — they’re also an effective way to expand your audience and gain new social media followers (or email subscribers). You get to choose how people enter your giveaway — so you can prioritize what you’d prefer.

You can start announcing your giveaway before it begins to build up some hype, just like Baked PZ does below:

Once the giveaway is live, you can use both your social media and your website visitors to participate via a direct link to the giveaway page.

Remember to look up the laws and regulations for giveaways in your country or region. These vary depending on the location, so there’s no one-size-fits-all process everyone can follow.

Launch a Mother’s Day campaign your customers will love

Whether you decide to go with something simple or plan a huge campaign, remember to keep a customer-first approach when planning your Mother’s Day campaign for your store. When you can provide a positive experience for every customer, you’ll be more likely to cultivate a loyal customer base that keeps coming back.