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Mother’s Day is just around the corner! As we prepare to celebrate moms, consumers’ spending habits reflect just how much we value making her feel special. According to the National Retail Foundation, American consumers spent an average of $172.63 on mom last year, more than ever before. What’s the best way to create Mother’s Day email that will help your brand get in on this spending?
As you send out your Mother’s Day email campaign this week, keep in mind these top three design tips, with examples to inspire.
Tip #1: Focus on value over numbers
You can’t put a price on love—especially when it comes to mom. As email marketers present gift ideas, the emphasis falls on value of the gift instead of its price. Often, prices aren’t listed at all, and discounts aren’t offered. Instead, it’s all about finding the right way to celebrate mom. She’s worth it.
This Mother’s Day email from Godiva, for instance, is an intricately-designed roundup of “Inspired Gifts for the Women Who Inspire You.” Each gift is accompanied by a one-line summary of what makes it perfect for mom. It’s all about choosing what she’ll like best, not about saving cash.
Also, instead of focusing on discounts and deals, brands are curating lists of hand-picked items for the occasion and encouraging readers to think about how to show mom they care. Terrain takes this approach, offering a collection (which we trimmed, because it’s long!) of gift ideas, seen below. With a beautiful design, a headline stating “Our Very Best Gifts for Mom,” and product descriptions that illuminate what’s unique about each item, the email is designed to help readers focus on choosing what would be most special and best suited for mom.
Don’t forget that even single-product emails can emphasize the quality of the gift over its cost, like in this email from mpix. The key message, “Melt Her Heart,” like the ones from Godiva and Terrain, is about doing something special for mom (not about getting a great discount while doing it). Even though mpix is offering 40% off photo books, the primary emphasis of the email itself is on the product and the joy it will bring.
Takeaway: In designing your Mother’s Day email, give readers reasons other than price to love your product. Strengthen your design and messaging instead of steeply discounting your offerings, and see how consumers respond.
Tip #2: Use personal language in Mother’s Day email
For most brands, Mother’s Day is a time to put the jokes aside and apply a more sentimental angle in email marketing. But sentimental doesn’t have to mean sappy or cliché. Effective messaging gets to the heart of the matter in a way that’s authentic, simple, and on-brand. Take the powerful introduction of this email from Jimmy Choo. The image and header say it all, bringing in nostalgia and elegance to make the pitch. Using the pronoun “you” underscores the inclusive and personal nature of the message.
Like Jimmy Choo, Purewow also uses nostalgia to create messaging that pulls at the heartstrings. At first consideration, the mother-daughter trope might seem like one that’s overdone, but the brand proves that, with the right approach to design and messaging, you can create something authentic and effective.
Likewise, Refinery29 + Neimann Marcus use a similar connection in their messaging, cleverly referring to moms as “our first style icons”:
Takeaway: As you develop content for your Mother’s Day email, consider how you might weave in universal themes of nostalgia, mother-child connection, and the power of a mother’s care through a child’s eyes. Use pronouns like “you” and “our” to add a personal element to the language, and be authentic! Your messaging should always be in sync with your brand.
Tip #3: Create urgency
Once you’ve emphasized the unique value of your offerings and created compelling content, you’ll still need readers to do one more important thing: click! Take a step back and begin with the subject line. Present your value proposition in five words or less, and be sure to optimize pre-header text. Here are some of the subjects we’ve seen this Mother’s Day:
What stands out as most clickable to you? Take note, create your own variation, and test how subscribers respond.
Once your email is open, optimize your call-to-action by making it obvious what you want readers to do, and making it easy for them to do it. AHAlife (formerly Bezar) put together this clever email campaign featuring words from their own employees talking about their moms. Here are the first few modules, which give the email a powerful, simple concept. Best of all, each module includes a bulletproof call-to-action button that’s easy to spot and easy to tap on desktop and mobile.
Another way to create urgency is to include a countdown timer, like Yellow Leaf Hammocks does in this Mother’s Day message:
Countdown timers are dynamic, attention-grabbing, and fun to use. Here’s the Yellow Leaf one in action:
They’re pretty easy to implement, too (check out our tutorial on how to do it).
Takeaway: Before pressing send on your Mother’s Day email, check that your subject line, content, and in-email CTAs are optimized to create urgency and get clicks!
Wrap Up: Tips for Mother’s Day Emails
- Don’t focus on a sale or promotion. Instead, focus on the intrinsic value of your offering and how it will make mom happy.
- Create messages with meaning. Without getting sappy, find a creative angle to access readers’ nostalgia and tap into the core of what’s important about the holiday.
- Be clickable. Optimize your subject line and call-to-action—and try a countdown timer to encourage action and create urgency.
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