Mother’s Day is a day to commemorate the selfless contribution a mother makes in the lives of her children and family. As moms and families continue to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, remote working and learning, and routine household chores, it is important to acknowledge mom for the multi-faceted role she’s playing every day. While one can’t thank her enough, it is rewarding to make her feel a little more special on this occasion with gifts of gratitude.
According to the National Retail Federation, about 83% of consumers plan to celebrate Mother’s day in 2021. NetElixir forecasts that this may be the biggest Mother’s Day yet for online sales, as we project that we will see a 30% YoY increase in e-commerce sales compared to last year.
“The crisis has led to more compassion, a surge in value placed on family relationships, and a greater sense of thankfulness,” says NetElixir’s Founder and CEO, Udayan Bose. In turn, these sentiments will result in strong sales for Mother’s Day as families seek to connect with one another.
The following anticipated trends for Mother’s Day can help brands align their marketing strategy to the online shopping intent and rising optimism of their consumers.
Online Shopping Trends Expected this Mother’s Day
Demographic Segmentation
According to Global Data in the United Kingdom, female buyers contribute more than their male counterparts when it comes to Mother’s Day gifting. When looked at individually, male audiences opt more for confectionaries, as opposed to females, who tend to go with alcohol-related gifts. This year, gifts seem to center around indulgence, to give mom a well-deserved treat.
Online Purchases
A good number of consumers prefer purchasing online as opposed to visiting stores. This has indeed opened up avenues for brands to promote their products across digital channels like online search, social media, search and display paid ads, email newsletters, and social media posts. The number of opportunities available across the digital landscape allows small brands to better compete with larger brands for consumer’s attention — and their wallets.
NetElixir forecasts that mobile devices will drive 56% of all Mother’s Day purchases (up from 48% last year) and 72% of all searches. Additionally, we expect May 5th and 6th to be the biggest online shopping days for Mother’s Day purchases (in line with prior years where shoppers waited until a few days just before the holiday to make an order). We anticipate that buy online and pick up in store options will continue to be an important driver of online sales, as customers grew accustomed to this option throughout the pandemic months.
Comfort and Luxury Goods
As iterated earlier, working mothers have to fulfill a lot of responsibilities in their everyday lives, especially during these challenging times. A number of consumers are also opting for goods that can bring in a sense of comfort and hope into their busy schedules.
While consumers want to be comforted, they also have a greater sense of confidence as vaccination numbers continue to rise. Thus inspired, they are willing to spend more on non-essential luxury items. NetElixir expects this trend to continue during Mother’s Day, as it is the first big holiday where a large percentage of Americans are vaccinated. We anticipate people will buy more expensive items, especially in the apparel and jewelry retail categories; we forecast that the average order value will be 13-15% higher than last year and range between $238 and $240.
How to Target Different Types of Customers This Mother’s Day
Classic Mother’s Day gifts include flowers, chocolates, gift baskets, or a bottle of their favorite alcoholic beverage. According to Statista, 72% of buyers are expected to buy greeting cards, followed by 68% buying flowers, and about 49% are planning special outings to celebrate Mother’s Day 2021.
Within NetElixir’s dataset, we have seen fashion and jewelry sales experiencing a strong rebound as people start going out more and travel gains momentum. In Q1, online sales for fashion apparel were up 50% YoY and online jewelry sales were up by 35% YoY. In Q2, we believe these growth numbers will be even bigger (as Q2, 2020 was extremely slow for both categories). Online flower sales will peak this Mother’s Day – we expect 30-35% YoY growth for the online flowers retail category.
Broadly speaking, we can classify purchase behavior into two types: conscious buying and impulse buying.
Conscious Buying: In the conventional buying process, people take some time to do research, analyze competitors, and check pricing before arriving at their buying decision. Products that could be categorized under this bucket may include high-end gadgets like computers and laptops, phones, tourism packages, electronic gadgets, and more.
In order to target conscious buyers, one should target mediums where people are actively looking for product information like search engines, forums, or Quora Q&A for suggestions.
To tap into this segment, it is essential to streamline your site’s SEO, run paid search campaigns, and also participate in Q&A platforms to promote your brand and share your expertise.
Impulse Buying: Depending on the customer segment, there are goods that do not need much deliberation. Some of the products that fall under this category would include jewelry, apparel, books, toys for kids, beauty products, etc. For these types of products, social media ads, email blasts, and SMS campaigns prove to be effective to quickly capture a consumer’s attention.
Nearly half of consumers in Statista’s survey plan to buy mom a special outing for Mother’s Day. An outing is typically not an impulse buy, so travel agencies should heavily invest in offering holiday packages across paid search platforms. People actively search for and plan an outing, starting on a search engine like Google. Paid Search ads are the simplest and best ways to tap into this segment.
To engage the 35% of consumers in Statista’s survey who plan to purchase jewelry this Mother’s Day, it is important to tap into both paid and organic searches — where people are actively looking for products. Additionally, social and email platforms are great ways to reach out to users with discount deals and to drive a sense of urgency by adding countdowns to Mother’s Day or notify consumers of limited stock options.
On the other hand, those opting for the Mother Day’s staple of greeting cards and flowers are likely to be influenced by social platforms. Hence, the sellers offering these should leverage Facebook and Instagram ads so as to generate the curiosity element in the minds of users.
We believe Mother’s Day will kickstart a hyper-boom … and it will be the first event in which we experience real growth,” Udayan tells MediaPost.
Additional Last-Minute Tips For Brands!
Much of the Mother’s Day shopping continues to happen in the final three to five days prior to Mother’s Day, so sales may begin to pick up in the next few days as last-minute shoppers flock in.
Here are some quick handy marketing tips which you can adopt to boost your Mother’s Day product line:
- Reward your customer with small Mother’s Day goodies.
- Decorate your social media pages with the theme so as to generate a quick connection with your audience.
- Share email/SMS blast with a prominent call-to-action URL pointing to a specific, top-selling product and or Mother’s Day-centric landing page.
Last but not least, just wish your customers well on the day itself. This will make users feel more connected with your brand and would surely go a long way to generate brand recall.
