The holidays can be a great time to market your business. Even if you don’t sell goods and services related to the specific holiday, it’s still a chance to expand your reach to new customers and retain current clients. But not all holidays are celebrated by all your clients, and not all of your audience will be comfortable telling you this information. Mother’s Day has been making headlines this year (and previous years) as an example of how targeted holiday marketing can work and what to watch out for.

Mother’s Day as an Example of Targeted Holiday Marketing

As mentioned above, Mother’s Day has been making headlines (and generating social media discourse) for the last several years as certain companies have been reaching out to their customers offering opt-outs on Mother’s Day advertising and marketing. While for many businesses, Mother’s Day is a non-event, for some such as restaurants and florists, it’s their Black Friday. But its appeal is also its biggest issue: most people have mothers and want to get them something, but those who don’t have mothers/good relations with them really don’t want the reminder.

Email Marketing: Opt-Outs and Audience Segmentation

The example most common with the above Mother’s Day marketing is email marketing—usually in the form of an opt-out email along the lines of: “Would you like to opt-out of Mother’s Day offers and emails?” Let’s take a moment to look at how these emails work. While the most basic email marketing might have just one list for all a brand’s subscribers (their “audience”), more advanced marketing campaigns will include what is known as audience segmentation—tags that can be activated or deactivated for specific email campaigns. They can be used to:

• Create Opt-Out Programs: Following the CCPA and EU privacy laws, giving control to users over what they see from you is important. Giving more control is a plus on the consumer side.
• Help Customers See Preferred Marketing: If you’re running multiple campaigns (such as a daily digest, monthly newsletter, holidays, and events), giving customers options to opt out or into certain categories can keep them from unsubscribing completely.
• Create Better Drip Marketing: Segmenting your audience can help you separate prospects from new buyers from legacy clients, and detail emails specifically to keep each group happy.

Let’s Talk About Customers and Their Data

One of the concerns (and the reasons behind the growing number of consumer protection acts like the CCPA) about opt-out or opt-in email marketing is the information companies will get on consumers. It’s a question we as businesses and consumers still struggle with: is it better to be able to target (or un-target) with marketing and advertising or not? It’s this author’s opinion that access to certain demographics is useful and to others is harmful (and therefore should be regulated), but overall, getting customized ads is better than getting useless ones. Of course, everyone (and many of the businesses we work with) has different views on the matter.

But in the example of Mother’s Day, it can be a good example of humanizing a company or brand. After all, you’re going out of your way to help a minority of your customers have a better experience—whether it’s offers them comfort or just convenience. If you’re looking for more tips, from last-minute holiday marketing to how to build your first email subscriber list, take a look at our blog. If you’re interested in consultations, strategy, or marketing solutions, reach out to us at Vision Advertising.