New York—Mother’s Day can be a difficult holiday for many people, particularly those dealing with loss and grief.
Some retailers and designers are handling promotions around the day with greater care by giving customers the option to opt out of emails about the holiday.
Dana Gordon, owner of Dana Rebecca Designs, is one of those. Her company began sending opt-out emails for Mother’s Day about five years ago.
“I think it’s a holiday that’s really emotional for a lot of people. There’s loss associated [with it]. There’s estrangement from family members. And then there’s a greater conversation today about pregnancy and infertility,” Gordon said.
“We wanted to make sure that, because there is such an emphasis on jewelry purchases and the celebration of moms, that our customers can just be like, ‘Let me tap out for a little bit from your marketing and not be overwhelmed by this conversation, but I can come back.’”
Customers are unsubscribed from only Mother’s Day-specific communications, not all marketing emails.
It’s been a great way to show empathy to customers, she said, and hopefully avoids that customer unsubscribing entirely to avoid only the Mother’s Day emails.
Her customers have thanked her, she said, as many have complicated relationships with the holiday.
They may want to be celebrated as a mother, but not want to celebrate another mother in their life, for instance.
“I think a lot more brands are doing this as a way to retain their customers for a longer period of time,” she said.
“We’re just connecting as a community, understanding what they’re going through in life and also having greater conversations about what it’s like to be a mom today. It’s just been a message that has resonated with so many people that we’ve just continued to do it year over year.”
Dana Rebecca Designs sent this email to subscribers earlier this month, giving them the option to opt–out of receiving Mother’s Day emails.
Gordon also has heard from customers who said they didn’t realize they wanted the option to opt out until it was presented to them.
“We continue to see people in different stages of life say, ‘I didn’t realize how much that message was going to hit me as being important,’” she said.
“We just see more emotions being shared and people are much more vulnerable today. It just lends itself to understanding as a community and that we can be supportive of one another.”
While jewelry is often used to commemorate happy moments, it can still play a role in the grieving process, with many women asking for jewelry that will make them feel connected to their late mothers.
“I don’t know if there’s anything on the calendar as monumental as Mother’s Day that just feels so emotionally charged and vulnerable,” said Gordon.
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Dana Rebecca Designs joins other companies like Tiffany & Co., Etsy, and Greenwich St. Jewelers, just to name a few, that have begun giving customers the option to opt out of emails about Mother’s Day sales.
The shift in tone around this emotionally charged holiday has not gone unnoticed by marketers.
David Turgeon, executive vice president of client services at jewelry marketing firm Fruchtman Marketing, has witnessed first-hand how Mother’s Day celebrations have evolved in recent years in the jewelry industry.
“Across all of our retailers, Mother’s Day is still an important day,” he said.
While he hasn’t noticed a lot of jewelers offering opt-opt messages specifically, he said that the messaging around Mother’s Day “has shifted over the past, let’s say, five to 10 years, where initially it was celebrating that one woman who gave you life and appreciating her.
“It’s now kind of shifting to messaging that’s more about honoring that special woman in your life or that special nurturing figure.”
Day’s Jewelers’ recent marketing campaign highlighted eight employees, including mothers, grandmothers, women who want to be mothers, and dog moms.
“I don’t know if there’s anything on the calendar as monumental as Mother’s Day that just feels so emotionally charged and vulnerable.”- Dana Gordon, Dana Rebecca Designs
The concept of celebrating people besides your own mother isn’t entirely new.
As a child in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Turgeon recalled buying four cards every Mother’s Day, one for his mom, his grandma, and his two aunts.
When Turgeon’s mother passed two years ago, the holiday brought mixed feelings.
“I think what ended up happening is that I eventually landed on, ‘This is an opportunity for me to celebrate the time and the moments that I had with her.’ Yes, it was tinged with grief and loss. And that’s life,” he said.
“It is an opportunity to celebrate whomever that person is who is important to you in your life as a nurturing figure.”
Just like there is no universal way to grieve, there is no blanket solution for jewelers and designers when it comes to how to approach Mother’s Day. Companies need to know their market and be able to “read the room,” he said.
“Every retailer knows their customers best, so making a blanket statement [about what they should do] is difficult. A retailer in a particular market may feel that their customers may have a greater sensitivity. Others not so much.”
For example, retailers in a more liberal market may find this messaging works for them, he said, while those who operate in more traditional markets tend to lean on more conventional messaging.
“When making decisions like this, in terms of how you’re communicating to your clients, it’s no different than when you’re having a conversation with a friend or you’ve been invited to a cocktail event,” he said.
“You have to read the room. And you have to read the room because of the respect that you have to have for the clients, and where they’re coming from.”
The best type of Mother’s Day marketing campaign is the one that combines the emotions behind the holiday while also highlighting the jewelry options, Turgeon said.
“At the end of the day, it’s an event that is imbued with emotion and it’s also a commercial event. The best combination would be having people come in, have a wonderful experience, ramping up their feelings, and then walking away with a piece of jewelry that’s emblematic of those sentiments,” he said.
“I think that’s the perfect thing. Because to me, that feels the most authentic.”