11 Father’s Day Marketing Campaign Ideas 

Father’s Day is a holiday that everyone, especially dads, looks forward to. Brands also look forward to this holiday since there’s usually an increase in sales during gift shopping.

While Father’s Day doesn’t top the holiday shopping list, Americans are expected to spend a whopping $20 billion in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).

With approximately 76% of U.S. adults expected to celebrate Father’s Day, have you started sending your dad-approved deals, offers, and promotions? 

With that in mind, we’ll cover what you need to know about Father’s Day marketing and share some campaign ideas you can implement on your social media, blog posts, and advertisements.

Father’s Day Marketing Ideas

Father’s Day offers brands a chance to reach out to prospects and customers with unique marketing campaign ideas that celebrate fatherhood. You can use Father’s Day marketing campaigns to spread information about your product, service, or brand with respect to Father’s Day as a holiday. 

The goal of Father’s Day marketing campaigns is to motivate potential customers to influence buying decisions by leveraging unique holiday marketing ideas and driving sales. 

Here are some Father’s Day campaign ideas and marketing strategies for winning shoppers this Father’s Day:

1. Create a Digital Campaign Just for Father’s Day

We expect ecommerce to be a significant retail channel for shoppers buying presents for their dads. In fact, 40% of customers plan to shop for Father’s Day gifts online in 2022.

What does this mean for your business? If you’ve not set up your online strategy, it’s about time to do so.

For example, you can add a section or banner on your website specifically for Father’s Day. Also, create an email marketing campaign encouraging people to visit your online store for superb gifts or gift ideas.

When you use an email marketing tool like Sender, it couldn’t be easier. Its in-built email design tool makes it a breeze to build emails quickly and efficiently using drag-and-drop editing. Responsive and high-converting pre-designed email newsletter templates will make it super simple for you to send emails.

2. Set Up a Special Father’s Day Display

Setting up a special Father’s Day display to highlight your dad-centric merchandise in your retail store would be an excellent idea.

Most shoppers aren’t looking for the cheapest or most convenient Father’s Day gift, on the contrary, they’re looking for unique and memorable presents such as:

• Tools and appliances;
• Personal care gifts;
• Home and gardening tools.

In 2021, greeting cards accounted for 59% of Father’s Day gifts bought in the United States. So if you don’t have a lot of merchandise for men, consider selling greeting cards or gift cards.

3. Create Special Father’s Day Themes

Curate bundles or collections specifically for Father’s Day to help those having trouble shopping for their dads. That’ll also help you showcase your range of stock.

It may even help you sell your slow-moving stock. For example, you can clear your shelves and avoid having too much capital tied up in inventory by bundling slow movers with better-performing merchandise.

4. Send a Father’s Day Newsletter

Emails with photos of company employees and their children have been a staple of Mother’s Day emails, and we’re delighted to see them also making an appearance in Father’s Day emails too. Here’s an example of a superb Father’s Day email ad:

This email is effective because consumers looking for a Father’s Day gift are more likely to picture their dads wearing a Fitbit watch.

Also read: What is Email Advertising: Definition, Example & How to Start

5. Create Father’s Day Social Media Posts

When trying to appeal to your target audience, you can ensure success by following popular social media trends. For example, using trending Father’s Day emojis or hashtags on Facebook or Instagram can help your posts stand out in crowded feeds. 

Consider using user-generated content for better engagement. Also, ensure to determine the best platform that fits your business, and find the best timing and content for your posts. You can easily create a good social media strategy by following trends, being creative and strategic.

6. Put Together and Publish Father’s Day Content

Father’s Day is one of the biggest holidays for marketers. But it’s also a tough one to nail. So, how do you reach your target audience with the right message?

The answer is in using content. Content marketing is your best bet to reach your audience organically. This is because the content is free to produce and distribute, and your target audience can easily consume it. Here are some tips on using content to help you reach your audience:

• Get more involved in your community. This includes being active on social media, contributing to blogs, and other avenues. Your brand voice will be authentic if you build a following with your community. This will show potential customers that you care about what they’re saying.
• Start a weekly podcast. A podcast is a weekly talk show that features different experts sharing their knowledge and experiences on a variety of topics. Podcasts are popular among millennials, who listen to them on their commute, grocery shopping, or on the go. With a consistent presence on a platform like Spotify, podcast listeners can keep up with your brand and keep track of what you say. This creates a stronger connection with your brand and a positive image in the minds of your audience.
• Create a contest. Everyone loves a good giveaway, especially when it’s related to a holiday or event. This is an effective way to get people to participate in your campaign. For example, the Target brand sponsored a contest to win $1,000 worth of home goods, which was announced in their social media feeds on Father’s Day.
• Put together contextual blog posts. Write a few Father’s Day-themed blog posts and share them on your social media channels. They don’t have to be long. Just a quick, engaging, and relevant piece of content.

Here’s a list of content ideas for Father’s Day: 

• Create a social media post featuring a baby dressed as a dad; 
• Write a post highlighting the different types of fathers; 
• Create a short humorous video highlighting how dads advise their kids; 
• Write a guest post on a website that caters to dads; 
• Create a round-up post highlighting the best content related to dads;
• Start a YouTube channel featuring dad jokes. 

7. Create a Father’s Day Gift Guide and Share it via Email 

You can create a Father’s Day gift guide and share it via email. It doesn’t have to be complicated or long. You don’t need to go through your catalog and select everything. Rather pick the most relevant products that you think people would like to gift to your father, package it as a gift guide eBook, and schedule automated emails going up to Father’s Day to a subscriber. 

You can also publish the gift guide as a blog on your website. Here’s a snippet of a gift guide published by Esquire on the website: 

The gift guide by Esquire consists of different products and services that one can gift their father on Father’s Day. You can also create a Father’s Day email campaign and schedule it as a series of emails that gets triggered every day with a few gift ideas in each edition throughout the month. 

8. Reassure Your Audience with Social Proof

Social proof is a powerful tool to engage your audience and win their trust. Social proof leverages the tendency for people to follow the crowd and prevent fear of missing out (FOMO). In other words, most people prefer to do popular things or what others are doing (and enjoying).

Here are a few ways to incorporate social proof into your marketing messages to increase your sales on Father’s Day:

• Record testimonials. Customers are more likely to trust you when they know others have had similar positive experiences with you; 
• Ask for referrals. Ask your audience to recommend you to their friends and family; 
• Include social proof in your emails. Use social proof (testimonials, referral links, etc.) within your emails to influence buying decisions. 

You can ask people who bought gifts on Father’s Day last year from your store to post videos on social media and tag you in return for an additional discount. Such user-generated content is a powerful Father’s Day campaign that will catapult your sales. 

9. Personalize Your Marketing Communications 

Fathers deserve to be celebrated. Personalizing your Father’s Day marketing campaigns will help prospects see that you care for their bond with their father. The personal touch shows sincerity and will compel them to look out for a gift from your store. 

Personalize campaigns around the special interests that their fathers have. For example, you can create an app-specific campaign to celebrate their love of DIY tools. Or, you can create a campaign to celebrate the dad that loves sports.

Here are a few tips on creating more personalized campaigns for Father’s Day:

• Use segmented lists to target the right audiences; 
• Add a custom tag, field, or filter to segment your audience; 
• Use dynamic content to encourage a response; 
• Create unique content that appears like a personalized card, including suggestions from your store. 

Personalizing your Father’s Day emails and campaigns will help you become memorable and create a sense of belonging in the minds of your prospects. Here’s an example by Baboon to the Moon: 

The email has a large header image of a bag by Baboon sent to people who might be browsing the gift on their web store. The header image and copy — Be the Favorite Child works wonders for anyone thinking of gifting the bag to their father on Father’s Day. They could’ve added the prospect’s first name to the email headline to make it more impactful. 

10. Announce a Special Father’s Day Promo Code 

Announcing a special promo code for Father’s Day is an effective way to get new subscribers to sign up for your email list and even drive sales. 

The easiest way to do this is to create a special landing page or a sitewide popup that announces your special discount code, such as 50% off Father’s Day orders. You can also announce the offer on social media and ask shoppers to visit your website or send a special email like Beauty Encounter: 

The special discount code is highlighted prominently with a red ‘shop now’ button, which will compel recipients to check out the special offers by the brand. 

Another good way to increase your chances of getting sales is to create a Father’s Day contest or giveaway to promote your special Father’s Day promotion. Everyone who shares the info on social media and tags their friends will be eligible for the sweepstakes. 

11. Add a Father’s Day-Themed Popup to Your Website 

Adding a themed popup around Father’s Day is a great idea to drive sales from every visitor who has been searching for Father’s Day gifts. In fact, popups are known to shoot conversion rates on a website. 

You can add a special Father’s Day popup to your website and register incremental revenue from the same traffic during this time. Here are some ideas for Father’s Day popups for your website:

• Share info about a special Father’s Day discount code; 
• Add a countdown timer on a popup about a limited-period offer; 
• Create a special collection for Father’s Day and announce it on a popup; 
• Ask users to sign up for an email list in return for a Father’s Day gifting guide. 

Make sure you have a clear call-to-action that drives users to make a purchase and add the popups to the home page or pages that register maximum traffic on your eCommerce store. 

Here’s a good example of a Father’s Day popup by gifts.com: 

The layout, along with the countdown timer and a special coupon code, can work amazingly well for shooting up conversion rates. Many brands like Dollar Shave Club use such popups on websites, and you can also test different popup formats to see how your visitors react to the offers. 

Did you know you can create a website popup using Sender? Sender has many ready-to-use popup templates which can be integrated into your website in minutes. What’s more, you can send email campaigns to up to 2500 subscribers for free and even use the automation builder to create automated Father’s Day campaigns. 

So why wait? Start your commitment-free trial now

Father’s Day Marketing Campaigns by Famous Brands

Almost all online and offline brands launch their marketing campaigns for Father’s Day. Some appeal to fatherly emotions, while others design campaigns around the father-son bond. If you’re falling short of ideas on how to create your own Father’s Day campaign, here are three Father’s Day campaign ideas by popular brands: 

1. McDonald’s Father’s Day Advert

Fathers have endured sleepless nights when their babies cry at night. They’ve also experienced fear when their toddlers fall and hurt themselves and feel gloomy when their grown-up child leaves home. 

McDonald’s celebrates Father’s Day by recognizing the dads who cared for their kids with a creative ad of a young girl holding her father’s hand. Here, have a look: 

The simple illustration is enough to make a mark in consumers’ minds. Also, using a yellow-colored arch-shaped ‘leg’ shows how McDonald’s cares for children (or consumers), like fathers. This is a great example of minimalistic branding at work. 

Key Takeaways

• Keep your creative, advertisement, or email as simple as possible; 
• Always highlight the bonding/connection between father & child; 
• Don’t forget to use some branded elements in your design. 

2. Wonderbly Father’s Day Advertisement 

Wonderbly partnered with Instagram influencers @beingsummershores and @natashanafrini (mom influencers in the United States) to showcase their personalized gifts for dads during Father’s Day. The influencers shared their experience of choosing Wonderbly’s personalized book as a Father’s Day gift and recommended it to their followers in an Instagram post:

The beautiful image of a father enjoying the brand’s picture book with their kids, along with a personal caption by the influencer, made the campaign compelling. The appreciation of the brand in the post would have surely brought many followers (and incremental sales) for Wonderbly. 

Key Takeaways

• Keep your influencer campaigns as close to reality as possible; 
• Find relevant influencers in your niche or general parenting for Father’s Day; 
• Never try to appear overly promotional when briefing influencers for such campaigns. 

3. Pizza Hut Father’s Day Ad

Pizza Hut has a very simple take on Father’s Day campaign. They send a beautiful Father’s Day greeting to existing customers and subscribers: 

The simple yet attractive creative seems to be shouting out the Father’s Day wishes loudly. The illustrative design with a bold logo placement will surely make customers remember Pizza Hut in case they’re looking to order on Father’s Day. 

Key Takeaways

• Wish your subscribers or followers in plain and simple language; 
• Use illustration-based creatives in holiday campaigns such as Father’s Day campaign.

Key Takeaways

Also read: Happy Father’s Day Messages & Wishes from Business

Autho Bio

Anmol Ratan Sachdeva is a content marketer and small business consultant who has a strong grip on topics like marketing automation, email marketing, and content marketing. He loves to write about building, improving, and growing a business.