With Mother’s Day in just a few weeks, you may already be knee deep in your marketing plans. Even if you are—and especially if you haven’t started—we’ve researched the top 2021 Mother’s Day ecommerce trends and best marketing practices to incorporate into your strategy.

Mother’s Day 2020

Mother’s Day was a difficult holiday last year—as the first pandemic holiday, shoppers were adjusting to being at home and separated from loved ones, and the virtual methods of celebrating were still limited. Despite these challenges, or because of them, Mother’s Day 2020 presented the biggest change in numbers from 2019 and a huge level of inflation: gross merchandise value increased almost 300% and number of orders increased 264% (data from LoopCommerce). Many shoppers gifted more to make up for in-person celebrations. Interestingly, holiday shopping inflation decreased throughout 2020 as shoppers become accustomed to sheltering in place.

Consumers had to get creative last year since many celebrating were socially distancing or stuck at home away from family. Categories like home goods and electronics were popular in 2020, no doubt because consumers were spending all their time at home.

Mother’s Day Ecommerce Trends 2021

Now, as more people get vaccinated and states lift various Covid-19 restrictions, families are more likely to be able to gather in person than last year. This year, Mother’s Day spending is expected to reach 28 billion, about 1.4 billion higher than last year. It’s likely that those who weren’t able to spend last year due to financial problems might have more means this year because of stimulus checks and general U.S. economic growth.

Gifting categories

This year, consumers are expecting to spend the majority of their budgets on:

• Greeting cards
• Flowers
• Special outings
• Jewelry
• Electronics

Best Practices

For brands who offer products in these categories, make sure your website highlights these categories—creating gift guides is an easy way to both personalize the gift-buying process and improve the search experience. Even if your products don’t fall into the categories listed, gift guides are still essential because they provide a central location for customers to begin their search.

Two brands that have strong gift guides are Williams Sonoma and 1-800-FLOWERS.

Williams Sonoma’s Mother’s Day page has multiple categories based on the type of home goods she wants:

1-800-FLOWERS shows their options with a sidebar of categories such as Top 10 Trending Mother’s Day Flowers 2021, a number of Mother’s Day Collections and options to shop by person or price:

Ecommerce Trends: Personalization & Segmentation

Throughout the last several CommerceNext Webinars, speakers have hit on the point that personalization is key: if you offer SMS messaging, personalize your Mother’s Day messages to your audience based on ages most likely to shop. Based on data from the National Retail Federation, shoppers ages 25-34 have the highest expected spending per shopper at $367, and the next highest group is ages 35-44. Targeting your messaging to these groups as well as changing the messaging for each is the number one recommendation to improve conversion rates.

While a large number of consumers expect to celebrate the holiday this year, there are some for whom Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day) bring more stress and anxiety than joy. Between Covid-related deaths and tense parental relationships, it’s important to be sensitive to consumers’ circumstances. That’s why brands like Etsy, Parachute and Aesop are offering opt-outs for Mother’s Day marketing content. They aim to “relieve some pressure that these messages [bring]” to better support their customers. This is an extra step that can build your customer-brand relationship, showing that you truly care about the wellbeing of your customer and are aware these holidays can be emotionally charged. These brands also intend to extend opt-out options for Father’s Day since the response has been positive, thus far.

To win at Mother’s Day 2021, make sure your gifting experience is optimized, personalized and segmented. Subscribe to our blog for more holiday trend blogs, other relevant industry insights and important ecommerce trends.