The Best Mother’s Day Email Campaigns

Mother’s Day is coming, and we’re hoping for a bit of a change this year (like being able to see our moms in person). But some things never change, and that includes the  increase in soft pinks and flower GIFs in your inbox. By the way, this year it’s May 9th, so it’s definitely not too late to get your Mother’s Day email marketing campaigns ready. 

We love these times in the year, including Holiday Season, Valentines Day, and Summer Break, because they bring out the most creativity in marketing departments and brands trying to distinguish themselves from the crowd. This is especially true for e-commerce and retail sites who are emailing about upcoming Mother’s Day sales, but just as interestingly, brands of all stripes are celebrating mothers in their own unique way.

Best practices for your Mother’s Day email campaigns

Some people love guidelines. They make them feel confident and prepared. Others hate them and see them as a limit to creativity. But when it comes to email marketing, following the recommended best practices is the best way to ensure your emails reach the inbox and to see the results you want.

Creating amazing Mother’s Day emails, with catchy subject lines and beautiful designs can be daunting at first. To help you out, here are a few things to keep in mind when you set out to plan your marketing campaigns:

• Never underestimate the subject line: It is the first things your contacts will see and what will make them decide whether they want to open your email or not. Make sure it helps your message stand out in the inbox, and that it’s not misleading.
• Make sure your branding is consistent: Don’t get too creative. When it comes to email design, simplicity is key, and brand consistency should always be a must across your different marketing and transactional emails.
• Segment your list and send tailored content: Make sure you’re only sending emails to engaged contacts, and adapt the message to the recipient using tools like segmentation and email personalization.
• Choose powerful images and respect the image-text ration: Images and GIFs can make your emails more appealing and increase conversion, but remember to follow best practices and always add alt text.
• Be strategic about your calls-to-action: Place your main CTA above the fold to ensure it stands out, and don’t add too many calls-to-action in your emails.
• Test your campaigns before sending: Ensure all links work and that everything looks fine across different devices and email clients.

Want to learn more? Check out our blog posts on Email Marketing Best Practices.

Great Mother’s Day email examples

In honor of our mothers, we wanted to showcase some of the more effective and beautifully designed emails and newsletters and give you a little look into what we love about them. Each of these campaigns utilizes many of our recommended best practices, including using images and GIFs to increase engagement, clear calls-to-action, simple design, alignment to your overall brand, and more.

BUT, we also would love your input! This year, keep an eye out for any great Mother’s Day campaigns you receive, and be sure to share your favorites with us on Twitter. We’ll might add some of your suggestions to this post in the future.

Anthropologie: The power of simplicity in your email campaigns

First up is Anthropologie’s To Mom With Love email. What we love about this campaign is its simplicity, focusing the email on one clear purpose: shop Mother’s Day Gifts.

The image is simple yet beautiful and brand-aligned, making it clear right off the top what this email is about. Their call-to-action, “Shop Mother’s Day Gift”, is more descriptive than many in this list, which simply state “Shop Now”. They also use colors really effectively, creating a clear emotional reaction of energy, love, and motherhood.

Jack Spade: Email design to increase clicks

We warned you about soft pinks. This email continues the trend started by Anthropologie with its simple yet impactful design. They also take advantage of the fact that many of their customers are used to shopping on their website, and so they maintain this brand consistency with the website heading at the top. That creates familiarity and allows readers to navigate to any page on the site they want.

But make no mistake, the page THEY want you to go to is the Mother’s Day “Shop Now” link. The witty (and all too relatable) headline “You Never Call Anymore” literally forms the top of a funnel that pulls your eyes downwards to the one CTA, “Shop Now”. Brilliant.

SeatGeek: Brand alignment

Next up is Seat Geek’s campaign, which is powerful for two reasons.

First, they know their audience, and as a result they are branding this email not with the soft-pink Mother’s Day colors and flowers, but instead with their on-brand blue and yellow. Their audience, as a sports ticketing mobile app, is predominantly younger users who interact with their product on a mobile device.

Second, SeatGeek is the only example in this list that utilized a GIF in its email, and it does so in a creative way that (1) reveals more information the more you watch, and (2) draws your attention to the core message of the email: No matter the occasion, your mother just wants to spend time with you. Will you give her that perfect Mother’s Day gift?

Dr. Martens: Email personalization

Our last contestant is Dr. (Doc) Martens. We’ll push past the obligatory beautiful flower arrangement, bold headlines, and website-navigation an,d instead, focus on their email personalization. While this email is clearly a Mother’s Day email, trying to remind their audience that they have some gifts to buy, it’s also using past click behaviour and engagement data to curate a list of products that they think will be interesting to the user.

Plus, the way the flowers grow out of the text? Love it (Pro tip: just as with your mother, it’s always good to show respect to a designer).

Create your Mother’s Day email campaigns with Mailjet

Mailjet’s collaborative email editor, Passport, is the best way to create stunning Mother’s Day email campaigns that will look great on any device and inbox. Just choose a template to adapt from our extensive template gallery, or create yours from scratch by dragging and dropping sections, images and content blocks.

For even more customized content, you can also insert HTML code blocks from the interface. Work with your team in real time to design the perfect Mother’s Day email!

Try the Mailjet’s email editor demo

Haven’t got a Mailjet account and want to try Passport? Play around with our demo to see how easy it is to create the perfect Mother’s Day email with Mailjet’s email editor!

Key takeaways: Email inspiration for Mother’s Day

Altogether, these campaigns touch on some of the really important best practices you need to consider when putting together your emails campaigns, and especially your Mother’s Day campaigns.

• Keep it simple: Your campaign shouldn’t be asking your audience to do too much. One clear call-to-action and one core message are ideal to generate the most engagement.
• Keep it brand-aligned: While the soft-pinks may feel like a necessity at Mother’s Day, don’t forget that you have a brand you need to maintain.
• The power of GIFs: A cat GIF is one thing, a custom GIF that can showcase your value, stay on brand, and also communicate your core message? That’s the tops.
• Personalization: With your email platform, there is so much you can do to personalize content and segment audiences to increase engagement on your emails. Your Mom’s favorite Mother’s Day gift is a one-of-kind homemade card, so why would your audience be any different?

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, and those who love them!

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This is an updated version of the post “Best Mother’s Day Email Campaigns” published on the Mailjet blog on April 11th, 2019 by Miles DePaul.