For much of the world (apologies to our UK and Eastern Europe friends) Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and this year we’ve put together a toolkit and some ideas you can use to promote your photography on your SmugMug account, increase your sales, and deliver beautiful gifts to your customers and their families.

Coupons, sales, and discounts, oh my!

To start with, you’ll need to decide if you want to offer a sale, discount, or promotion for the holiday. We highly recommend it — many of our sellers who use coupons have seen great sales with them, especially around festive occasions.

If you’re cool with coupons, next you’ll choose what kind of promotion you’d like to run for Mother’s Day. Here’s a quick refresher of the kinds of discounts you can offer:

• Amount Off: This discounts your customer’s order by a certain dollar amount off the pre-shipping total (unless you opt to have the coupon cover shipping costs).
• Percentage Off: This discounts a percentage off the pre-shipping total, unless you opt to have shipping costs covered.
• Free Shipping: This grants free standard shipping to your customer, or free airmail shipping if the order is international. If the customer opts for faster shipping at checkout, then an amount equal to standard shipping will be taken off the shipping total.
• At Cost: This allows the lucky person who wields the code to order images on your site at cost.

You can also apply restrictions to your coupons to fine-tune your promotion:

• Minimum Purchase: Set a minimum total price for the entire purchase before your coupon can be applied to a customer’s order. This can help you ensure the order amount is large enough to cover your coupon’s discount.
• Maximum Discount: The most you want a customer to receive off an order’s total. Especially helpful to ensure a large discount doesn’t eat too much into your gross profits.
• Maximum Uses: How many times a coupon can be used on separate orders.
• Maximum Items: How many items the coupon can be applied to in a single order. The most expensive items will automatically be selected for the coupon application to give the buyer the largest discount.

By combining coupon types and restrictions, you can create engaging sales like limited-time offers, bulk discounts, and buy-one-get-one deals. See our help page for a detailed breakdown.

Next up: prepping your product.

Customize your Mother’s Day sale with galleries and pricelists.

Whether you’ve got a collection of picture-perfect landscapes just waiting for a wall, or your portrait clients would love a snapshot of their special someone, two things will help you prepare for your sale: galleries and pricelists.

With galleries, you can organize the photos you want to promote and sell into easy-to-browse spaces for your customers. This could be one gallery of your best-selling photos, multiple themed galleries for various subjects or styles, or even a hand-picked collection of photos chosen just for Mother’s Day.

Once you have your photos chosen and sorted, you can use pricelists to make sure you’re ready to earn a profit, no matter which promotion you decide to run. Here’s a quickstart guide for pricelists, and here are some of our best selling items you might want to include:

• Wall art: Tell your customers about bringing your photos to life by making them into real-world works of art.
• Paper prints: Your best shots deserve to be printed. Make sure you offer a wide variety of finishes and sizes, from small to super-sized.
• Keepsakes: Offer your customers keepsake boxes, coffee mugs, aprons, playing cards, magnets, and more.

Spread the word through email and social media.

To help promote your Mother’s Day sale, send an email to your subscribers and/or publish a post to your social media followers. Subject lines are an easy way to stand out in a crowded inbox, so don’t be afraid to get adventurous:

• “Gorgeous prints and gifts for Mother’s Day, now XX% off!”
• “Save XX% on picture-perfect gifts for every mom.”
• “Your mom will love this: Prints, gifts, and an exclusive discount inside.”

In your email, be sure to include your discount, showcase some of your best photos, and mention shipping deadlines so your customers can order their gifts in time for Mother’s Day!

As for social media, we recommend spreading the word wherever you can, and including some useful hashtags like #mothersday, #photography, #giftideas, or #photos when you do.

Here’s an email and Twitter-friendly social post we’ve put together as an example. Feel free to copy and paste these and tweak them to your heart’s content.

Sample email copy/template

Subject Line:
Gorgeous prints and gifts for Mother’s Day, now XX% off!

Body copy:
Looking for a great gift for the mom in your life? You’re in luck — my entire photo collection, including these best-sellers, are available as top-quality prints, gifts, homegoods, and more.

[your most popular photos here]

Just follow the link below and start shopping. Apply coupon code [CODE] at checkout and you’ll get XX% off your order, but be sure to order soon so your gifts arrive in time.

[Hyperlink to your SmugMug Site] Find the perfect gift

Thanks as always for being a supporter, and happy Mother’s Day!

-[YOUR NAME]

Sample social post

[Use your own photo]

Looking for the perfect #gift for the mom in your life? Use coupon code [code] for XX% off top-quality photo prints, gifts, and more. Order soon for arrival by #MothersDay!

[Link to your SmugMug Site]

We’re always happy to help our sellers excel, so if you need a hand, don’t hesitate to search our Help Center.

Was this Seller Toolkit for Mother’s Day helpful? Is there anything else you would do to increase your sales? Leave a comment below, or start a conversation on Instagram or Facebook.