This year Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 9th, 2010. Mother’s Day takes on a whole new meaning when you are a mom. This will be my first year celebrating being a mom and I’m pretty excited. I’m really looking forward to future Mother’s Days as my daughter gets older and celebrates it with me. I’m even more appreciative with how important this day is for my own Mother!

Mother’s Day isn’t just a sentimental holiday. Last year,  Americans spent $14.1 billion dollars on their moms. Americans purchase a combination of traditional gifts like household or gardening goods as well as spa treatments and electronics and gifts cards.

If you own an ecommerce website or website that offers services that can treated as gifts – here’s a few tips that can apply future holidays like Father’s Day.

Offer Holiday-Related Coupons Codes Gift cards bring in 1.5 billion dollars of spending during the year. When consumers are in a hurry, gift cards can’t be beat. Offering themed coupon codes such as promotional discounts on golf clubs for Dads and higher ticketed items that may not sell as well.

Keep you Customers in the Loop Using email newsletters, you can keep your customers “in the know” about special products, services, sales, and more. Don’t be afraid to talior your emails for certain audiences. For example, one email geared towards couples for wedding seasons. Plan ahead (6 months or more) and use strategy to gain the right customers.

Free or Discounted Shipping Everyone loves a deal and it’s hard to argue with free shipping. These days many people live far away from family, so if you can save them a trip to the post office, you are making their lives much easier!

Host a Contest Everyone loves contests! Introducing the contest can be done through social media (twitter or facebook). Some ideas could be naming a new product, submitting a funny photo, or answering a hard question. Offer a gift card or shopping spree to the winner.

These are just a few ideas, have fun with it. Promoting your ecommerce site during holidays should be a fun experience and help you get your customers excited about what your business is doing.

Describe your business:

We design and import socks, made in South Korea. We receive the samples from the Korean manfactures, approve the samples, and give an “ok” to the final design.  We receiving containers of socks several times during the year. We focus on a combination of wholesale and retail: fresh, new designs. Engaging the customers within our community with local/national design contests.

Which Marketing Tools do you use?

Twitter and Facebook – don’t have an agency or large budget, still very bootstrapping it. We throw designer contests and do a full page ad for the contest in local papers.

Blogging, sending out samples to different people, networking, and face to face contact. We have been trying out Google Adwords recently too.

What Marketing Tools are the most successful?

Facebook - We get more fans that way than just Twitter followers and have the ability to have pictures, have customers name socks, etc.

What’s worked the best?

Submitting something totally unrelated to socks! Once we posted a question about Johnny Depp’s new movie this year on Facebook and our blog, and we couldn’t believe how many responses we got!

Tips & Tricks

For at least 2 years, I set up a booth at Saturday Market and sold socks. I got a chance to talk to customers face-to-face and establish an open dialogue. Really liked getting honest feedback.

Overall, Facebook, Twitter, Bloggin and Contests have been great marketing tools and very afforable. Don’t forget to listen, listening to your customer’s voice their opinions is critical.