Facebook Helps Brands Strategize Mother’s Day Gifting

Earlier this year, Facebook had polled a thousand of its users, asking them what their plans were for Mother’s Day and what gifts were they intending to buy as Mother’s Day gifts. The responses showed that flowers topped the list with jewellery and clothing polling a joint third.

Projections by the Retail Federation reveal that American children will spend nearly $19 billion dollars, buying gifts this Mother’s Day. This will include dining out tabs of $3.4 billion, $2.2 billion on flowers, $1.8 billion on gift cards and $1.6 billion on clothing and accessories.

Surveys have found that social media giant Facebook has played a significant role in helping other brands in planning their Mother’s Day marketing strategies.

Zales, the jewellery store has initiated a “Super Mom” campaign that spans television, print media, catalogs, online displays and most other perceivable avenues, including Twitter and Pinterest, but their brand’s director of e-commerce Matt Kennedy says that Facebook is “the anchor for the overall campaign.”

Facebook had also anchored, with much success, Zale’s Mother’s Day campaign last year. However, they are using Facebook a little differently, this year. The brand is using Facebook as,”a destination as well as a redirection hub.”

When users go to the “Super Mom” Facebook app to propose their mothers name for sweepstakes that could win them a $2500 Zales gift card, they can also click over to a Pinterest board amassing gift ideas or Zales Twitter feed.

As florists, 1-800-flowers.com, realized that their business with Facebook could blossom into something even bigger. What had begun merely as customer-support has turned out to be an eye-opener for them, for the insights posted there, about what customers fancy and what new merchandise they would prefer, has helped the company formulate it’s marketing strategy accordingly.

Moreover, the florist is using Facebook a little differently than Zale. Their president Chris McCann said, that before the “real marketing for Mother’s Day” starts, the brand uses Facebook to start a conversation. “It’s a way for us to start learning and testing with our consumers what they will respond to as we move into the marketing of the holiday. From a product point of view, from a message point of view, it allows us to really tweak and optimize the marketing messages and the products that will be featured throughout the rest of our marketing program as we get into the full swing of the holiday,” he said.

Currently 1-800-Flowers.com is running the “Make Moms Proud” photo contest on Facebook that is generating considerable response. It asks users to vote on photos of users with their mothers.

McCann said, that the company will post those photos on to its Facebook page, “but then we’ll pull them into Sponsored Stories ads that we’ll run.”

Last Mother’s day, one sponsored Story ad had featured a military mom stationed in Afghanistan, it reached “three times the engagement level of any other ad that we ran,” McCall recalled. This was the factor that spurred them to deploy this strategy of pulling the photos into sponsored stories ad, he added.