A good Mother's Day or father's day campaign by text is three or four short messages to opted-in customers: a gift guide about two weeks out, a shipping-deadline warning, a last-chance push, and an in-store or gift-card offer for the stragglers. Before any of that, send one text that lets people skip the holiday, because for a slice of your list these days are hard.
This guide gives you the calendar, 12 templates that each fit in one SMS segment, and the cost math for running both holidays. The worked examples use Ready campaigns. The timing and wording advice works on any compliant SMS tool.
The holiday calendar: when each text goes out
Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May. Father's Day is the third Sunday in June. The same four-beat plan works for both, shifted about five weeks.
| When (before the holiday) | Message | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| ~3 weeks | Opt-out-of-the-holiday offer | Remove people who don't want these texts |
| ~2 weeks | Gift guide | Browse and early orders |
| ~1 week, timed to your carrier cutoff | Shipping deadline | Urgency for standard shipping |
| 2-3 days | Last chance: express, e-gift card, or pickup | Save late buyers |
| Day before / morning of | In-store offer or gift card | Walk-ins and last-minute buyers |
Four texts per holiday is a sensible ceiling for most lists. Past that, the STOP replies start costing you more than the extra orders bring in. For send-time windows by industry, see best time to send SMS marketing texts.
Quiet hours change your "tonight" texts
Ready holds sends outside permitted local hours, based on the recipient's area. A held text goes out later and is charged only when it sends. That protects you, but it has a practical side effect. If you schedule a "last chance, order tonight" text for late evening, part of your list may get it the next morning, after the deadline. Write deadlines as a weekday and a date, not "tonight", and schedule mid-morning or early afternoon so every time zone receives it inside the window. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise the app tells you it's outside their texting window and nothing goes out, so send it again once the window opens.
Start with the opt-out-of-the-holiday text
Plenty of brands now send this, and customers notice it. Some people have lost a parent, are estranged, or are going through infertility. A cheerful "Treat Mom!" text in that week can feel cruel.
Template 1: Mother's Day skip offer
Maple & Co: Mother's Day can be a hard day. If you'd rather not get our Mother's Day texts this year, reply SKIP. Other texts continue as usual.
Template 2: Father's Day skip offer
Maple & Co: We know Father's Day isn't easy for everyone. Reply SKIP and we'll leave you out of our Father's Day texts. Nothing else changes.
(Maple & Co is a made-up example brand.)
How to handle the replies
SKIP is not STOP, and you shouldn't treat it like one. STOP is a full opt-out. Ready honors it automatically, and that contact can't be texted again across any campaign. SKIP is a request you handle yourself. Replies land in the Inbox. Work through them and put those contacts on a list you leave out of the holiday campaign's audience. Then bring them back for the next normal promo.
Two honest tradeoffs:
- The skip offer is itself a text to your whole list, so it costs one segment per contact.
- Some people will reply STOP instead of SKIP and leave your list entirely. We think that's worth it. A customer who would have been upset by the gift-guide text was likely to opt out anyway.
A skip reply is also not a consent record. Your store's signup flow keeps the actual opt-in.
Mother's Day campaign ideas and templates
These cover the "mother's day campaign ideas" most stores need. Each one stays under 160 plain characters, so it bills as one segment.
Template 3: Gift guide
Maple & Co: Our Mother's Day gift guide is live. 15 picks under $50, free shipping over $40: maple.example/mom Reply STOP to opt out
Template 4: Gift guide by budget
Maple & Co: Mother's Day gifts at $25, $50 and $100. Pick a budget, we did the rest: maple.example/mom Reply STOP to opt out
Template 5: Shipping deadline
Maple & Co: Order by [day and date] with standard shipping to get it there before Mother's Day: maple.example/mom Reply STOP to opt out
Template 6: Last chance
Maple & Co: Missed standard shipping? Express ships till [day and date], or send an e-gift card that arrives instantly: maple.example/gift Reply STOP to opt out
Template 7: In-store offer
Maple & Co: Mother's Day is Sunday. Show this text in store Sat or Sun for 15% off any gift, plus free wrapping. Reply STOP to opt out
Template 8: Pickup
Maple & Co: Order online by 2 PM Saturday, pick it up wrapped at our Main St store the same day: maple.example/mom Reply STOP to opt out
Include the brand name at the start of every text, and keep the opt-out language. Both are things carriers look for.
Your Father's Day campaign: what to change from May
The structure stays the same. The calendar shifts, and a few details change.
- The list is smaller for many stores. If your Mother's Day gift guide drew more clicks than your Father's Day one did last year, cut Father's Day to three texts instead of four.
- Gift cards do more of the work. Last-minute buyers are common, so the e-gift card text earns its place.
- Run the skip offer again. Someone who skipped Mother's Day did not necessarily skip Father's Day, and the reverse is true too. Ask again.
Template 9: Gift guide
Maple & Co: Father's Day gift guide: grill gear, tools and 10 picks under $40. Free shipping over $40: maple.example/dad Reply STOP to opt out
Template 10: Shipping deadline
Maple & Co: Order by [day and date] with standard shipping to arrive before Father's Day: maple.example/dad Reply STOP to opt out
Template 11: Last chance with e-gift card
Maple & Co: Too late to ship? A Maple & Co e-gift card lands in Dad's inbox in minutes: maple.example/gift Reply STOP to opt out
Template 12: In-store offer
Maple & Co: Father's Day is Sunday. Show this text at checkout this weekend for $10 off $50. Reply STOP to opt out
What two holidays cost to send
We'll show the math, because this is where emojis quietly cost you money.
Assumptions for this example: 4,000 opted-in contacts, four texts per holiday, two holidays, every text at or under 160 plain characters (1 segment).
- Segments: 4,000 × 4 × 2 = 32,000
- Ready Standard rate: 32,000 × $0.0075 = $240, plus 32,000 × $0.0045 carrier fee itemized separately
- Replies are billed like a sent text, so budget a little more for customer replies
Now add one emoji to each text. A single emoji drops the segment limit from 160 characters to 70 (67 per part once a text splits). A 140-character text with one 🌷 becomes 3 segments.
- Segments: 32,000 × 3 = 96,000
- Standard rate: 96,000 × $0.0075 = $720, plus 96,000 × $0.0045 carrier fee
That one tulip triples the bill. If you want the emoji, cut the text below 70 characters. Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so pasted copy from a doc won't push you into unicode. Emojis still will.
These figures exclude the compliance surcharge. Scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment when you switch them on for an account, and both are off by default. Current rates are on the pricing page.
Deliverability: the parts that bite during holiday weeks
Registration has to be done first
Promotional texts need a registered 10DLC brand and a campaign whose use case matches what you send. A gift guide is marketing, so register it as marketing. A store registered only for order notifications will run into trouble. See matching use case to what you actually send.
On Ready, registration happens in the app. There is no setup fee. You pay $25 at submit, which is the first month: $25/mo for registration. After that it's $2 per number each month on top. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, so register by mid-April, not the week before Mother's Day.
Daily caps and send speed
A fresh standard campaign often sends at about 1 to 4 segments per second.
Example: at an assumed 2 segments per second, a 4,000-segment send takes about 33 minutes.
The bigger risk is T-Mobile's daily brand cap. At the lowest trust score it is roughly 2,000 messages a day. If your list is large and your brand sits in that tier, part of a send can spill into the next day for T-Mobile subscribers. That's fine for a gift guide and bad for a last-chance text. Send the gift guide over two days, and check whether brand vetting is worth it for your volume.
Content filtering
Holiday copy tends toward ALL CAPS, "FREE!!!", and public link shorteners. Carriers filter all three, even on approved campaigns. Use your own domain for links. Ask AI to run a Spam check on each template. Read why approved campaigns still get filtered before you write the urgent ones.
Consent and compliance, briefly
Only text people who opted in to marketing texts from you. A holiday is not a reason to text an old customer list that never agreed to texts. TCPA exposure runs about $500 to $1,500 per text.
Things that reduce the risk:
- Quiet hours: Ready enforces them automatically.
- STOP handling: opt-outs are honored automatically.
- Litigator and DNC scrubbing: the standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub costs $0.005 per contact and flags matches before you send.
- Send records: every bulk send records your consent attestation, meaning who sent, to how many, and when.
None of this makes you immune. Compliance stays the sender's responsibility.
If you run a platform that sends holiday campaigns for merchants, the bulk endpoint takes up to 100 recipients per call, so split larger lists into batches (bulk messages docs).
The practical takeaway
For each holiday:
- Send the skip offer about three weeks out.
- Send three or four texts after it: gift guide, shipping deadline, last chance, in-store offer.
- Keep every text to one plain segment.
- Write deadlines as dates and schedule inside daytime hours.
- Get registration done by mid-April.
The same rhythm works for Black Friday.
If you want to try Ready, sign up. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it. Your first 20 texts are free one-to-one sends, so use them to test templates on your own phone before you register. Campaigns are paid from the first text.
FAQ
How many texts should a Mother's Day campaign include? Three or four, plus the optional skip offer. More than that usually drives STOP replies faster than it drives orders.
When should I send the Father's Day gift guide? About two weeks before the third Sunday in June. Send the shipping deadline text so it arrives a day or two before your carrier's standard cutoff.
Do emojis hurt my holiday SMS? They change the cost more than the delivery. One emoji drops a segment to 70 characters, so a 140-character text bills as 3 segments instead of 1.
Is a "reply SKIP" text required? No law requires it. Many stores send it because these holidays are painful for some customers. SKIP is handled by you. STOP is handled automatically and opts the person out of everything.
Can I send holiday campaigns before my 10DLC registration is approved? An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers. That's too few for most holiday lists, and promotional traffic should be registered anyway. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, so register in April.