Data-Backed Strategies for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day Campaigns

Mother’s Day is the third-biggest shopping holiday in the US, according to the National Retail Federation, and Father’s Day is the sixth-biggest. (It’s ok. We see you, dads.)

That means Mother’s Day is the first time since the winter holidays when consumers really start reaching into their pockets and spending big. (Yup, Mother’s Day even beat Valentine’s Day, which comes in at number five.)

Let’s look at some more of those numbers: 86% of Americans were expected to celebrate their moms last year and spend an average of $180 per person — totaling to a $23.1 billion market. And 77% were expected to celebrate dads, shelling out $133 per person to total to $15.3 billion.

So when May and June roll around, there’s a huge opportunity for marketers to reach consumers with content related to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

The question is: where do you start? What types of holiday content do people want to see? Which images and videos drive the most engagement?

To answer those questions, we tapped into recent data from Taboola Trends, which analyzes images and keywords across the web on a weekly basis. With an eye towards helping you build better Mother’s Day and Father’s Day campaigns, we focused on tech, beauty, and fashion content — collecting data from over 58 million clicks and 41 billion impressions. (Now those are numbers to write home to mom about.)

Here’s what we found.

Launch tech campaigns on Monday and Tuesday

If you’re promoting tech-related content, don’t wait until the end of the week to start your campaigns. According to our data, Mondays and Tuesdays present the biggest opportunities for generating clicks among this audience.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s best to reach these consumers on mobile and tablet devices, where they’re more likely to engage than on desktop.

Try photo galleries over text and video

This one might give you pause. (We’ll wait.)

While video gets all the hype these days, it turns out people still love photo galleries. In fact, photo galleries show the biggest potential for driving clicks with beauty and fashion content — beating out those beloved video campaigns and text articles.

Reach beauty and fashion buyers in morning and night

The early bird gets the worm, as they say, and that holds true for beauty and fashion marketers who want to reach consumers for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Early mornings (8:00 AM, to be exact) and late nights (11:00 PM) are peak times for seeing those clicks on your campaigns.

Use keywords like “Red,” “Daring,” and “Secrets”

Photos and visuals may grab people’s attention, but you should never underestimate the power of a strong keyword.

It’s important to know which keywords can have the biggest positive impact on your clickthrough rate (CTR), and which can drive that CTR down due to heavy competition.

Don’t worry. We did the legwork for you — across the tech, beauty, and fashion verticals.

Top Phrases

Top Tech Keywords

Top Fashion Keywords

Top Beauty Keywords

Build your images carefully

Ok, you already know to be deliberate when creating or choosing your photos. But we’re here to help answer the nitty gritty questions, like, “Should I include people in my photos?” and “Will black-and-white images be more engaging?”

Here’s what our data had to say for images across these categories:

Technology

• Images taken close up generated a 54% higher CTR than images taken far away.
• Images in color generated a 36% higher CTR than images in black and white.
• Images without people generated a 18% higher CTR than images with people.

Fashion

• Images with animals generated a 165% higher CTR than images without animals.
• Images with food generated a 133% higher CTR than images without food.
• Images without text generated a 52% higher CTR than images with text.

Beauty

• Images without animals generated a 100% higher CTR than images with animals.
• Images in color generated a 88% higher CTR than images in black and white.
• Images outdoors generated a 77% higher CTR than images indoors.

Evidently, this is the perfect time to unveil your fashion campaign of giraffes eating cupcakes. (Just kidding, you get the idea. But that does sound kind of cute.)

Create videos with women — and stretching!

That’s right. But hey, you have to give the people what they want. And when it comes to video ads, they want pretty specific qualities, like:

• Videos with women, which can increase your completion rate by 186%
• Videos with eating, which can increase your completion rate by 34%
• Videos in black and white, which can increase your completion rate by 27%
• Videos with stretching, which can increase your completion rate by 20%

Hopefully these data-backed insights and strategies help take some of the guesswork out of your Mother’s Day and Father’s Day campaigns. Still, keep in mind that audience preferences and behaviors are always in flux. To keep tabs on your target customers — and build more click-worthy campaigns for any holiday — visit Taboola Trends.