Season Finale: Mother’s Day

A look back on seasonal trends, email activity and standout B2C marketing:

Start to finish: The first reference to Mother’s Day was on April 6 from Gloss. The last was on May 17 from 1-800-Flowers.com.

The distribution curve: Retailers sent the majority of Mother’s Day-themed emails after May 3. The biggest days for Mother’s Day emails were Monday, April 30, followed by Monday, May 7.



Most interesting email: I don’t talk about RadioShack’s emails very often, but they have a good program and this April 29 email (Great Deals For The Best Moms) in particular is worth pointing out. The copy is smart, the item heads and prices standout, there’s nice supporting text and there’s enough variation in the layout of the items so that it doesn’t feel stamped out and repetitive. A couple of months ago RadioShack changed elements of its text treatment, adding the bullet point product descriptions and using more grey text. I think it works very well, creating a clear hierarchy to the text so the reader can quickly see the most important information and then drill down in the details.



Ugliest email: This isn’t meant to be mean-spirited, but this May 4 Bloomingdale’s email (A Mother's Love Is Magical...) is just a really unattractive. First, the headline is difficult to read. On first glance I thought it said “A Mother’s Lone.” The script is just too artistic and not functional enough. But more importantly there’s no integration between the text and images. The text is all bunched up and in full caps (which is also hard to read). The layout is somewhere between a collage and a high school year book. The “top row/bottom row” language and configuration is really unnecessary for pictures with three items in them, not all 70 players on the football team. If nothing else, there’s clearly room for the “bottom row” descriptions to the right of that image. Anyway, this design just really stood out as hard on the eyes.



Surprises: On May 13, Bluefly sent an email asking subscribers to take their Mother’s Day survey. The surprising thing about this is that Bluefly only referred to Mother’s Day in one email leading up to holiday, an email on May 3—and it was only referenced in a small banner beneath the main message. The survey is a little silly, but perhaps it means that Bluefly will be invoking Mother’s Day more often next year.



Cool tool: 1-800-Flowers.com was the only retailer I saw promote its email gift notification service, doing so in a May 12 email with the subject line “LAST CHANCE to Save $5 for Mother's Day!” Promoting the service is a grab for last-second gift-givers.



Standout subject lines:
RedEnvelope, 5/11 — Shop now for Mother's Day or pay until 2008.
Sephora, 4/10 — Gorgeous Gifts for Supermoms + Free Sample
Orvis, 4/12 — Give her our best on Mother's Day.
Coach, 5/8 — Make Mother's Day: Our Favorite Gifts and Free Shipping

Read previous posts about Mother’s Day emails.