Mother’s Day Survival Guide 2026

Step 1: Decide on Product Offerings

  • This SAFNews Now article offers timely strategies to help florists navigate rising costs and more cautious consumer spending while still driving strong Mother’s Day sales. From promoting early to creating strategic price points and adding personalized touches, the piece focuses on simple, effective ways to increase average order value and build customer loyalty. It also highlights creative opportunities—like subscriptions, keepsake containers, and workshops—that extend sales beyond the holiday and strengthen long-term relationships. 
  • This SAF NOW article draws from a recent study on consumer’s plant preferences and taps several florists who share their best practices for using plants to create loyal customers.
  • This magazine story will spark creativity in how you move and package products. It features a shop who built on the idea of a traditional gift basket to move more inventory and offer customized gifts.

Step 2: Forecast Sales and Plan Staffing

  • In this SAF NOW article, Paul Goodman, PFCI, founder of Floral Finance Business Services and author of The Profit-Minded Florist, explains how to forecast sales and shows how that knowledge can help you determine staffing needs.
  • Goodman also talked about staffing in a recent webinar where he provides step-by-step guidance to determine how many extra workers you need to manage the holiday crunch. The webinar, “Staffing Profitably for Valentine’s Day,” has advice that applies to any busy holiday.

Step 3: Fine-Tune Delivery

  • This on-demand Idea Exchange explores how to turn delivery into a strategic advantage rather than just an operational necessity. Through peer insights and practical examples, it highlights how thoughtful pricing, branding, and marketing can help manage demand, increase profitability, and capture last-minute sales—while building a delivery model that supports both everyday orders and peak holiday volume. 
  • This SAFNews Now article highlights how delivery efficiency and pricing directly impact holiday profitability. With expert insights and peer-shared tips, it offers practical ways to control costs, improve operations, and protect margins during high-volume periods.  
  • The course, “Delivery Support” by Jenny Behlings, AAF, PFCI, SDCF, supplements training for new delivery employees, whether they are joining you for a holiday or for the year. It provides new hires with information on how a retail shop operates, proper packaging, loading, and delivery procedures, as well as customer service.
  • Read about florists’ delivery dos in the Floral Management article “How to Succeed in Holiday Business (Without Really Crying).” Sandy Nielsen, president of Nielsen’s Florist in Darien, Connecticut, and a two-time winner of SAF’s Marketer of the Year Award, shared that she recruits heavily from the post office every Mother’s Day, as the holiday always falls on mail carriers’ day off. “They know the streets better than anyone, so you know they’ll be efficient,” she said.

Step 4: Communicate with and Train Staff

  • This SAFNews Now article Now article breaks down practical, proven upselling techniques that help increase average order value without compromising the customer experience. From giving staff effective talking points and confidence to start high, to structuring online offerings and incentivizing add-on sales, the piece focuses on making upselling feel natural and customer-focused. It also highlights how subscriptions and thoughtful product positioning can turn a single holiday purchase into ongoing revenue. 
  • This Floral Management / Floral Education Hub collaboration offers a behind-the-scenes look at real customer interactions through mystery shop calls conducted by sales expert Tim Huckabee of The Profitable Florist. Each installment includes a recorded call and expert breakdown, highlighting what worked, what didn’t, and how the sale could have been improved. It’s a practical way to sharpen sales skills, reinforce training, and help teams recognize opportunities to elevate the customer experience in everyday conversations. 
  • Hold staff meetings to review schedules, product offerings, production procedures and delivery details. “Say This, Not That,” a webinar presented by Flower Clique, has tips on best communication practices. 

Step 5: Digital Marketing and Your Online Presence

  • Is your digital strategy sharp enough to capture online shoppers looking for Mother’s Day arrangements? In just 30 minutes, this course walks through how to set up and run pay per click (PPC) programs on Google and Bing, create Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, boost your visibility with SEO, and — most importantly — track your return on investment.  
  • According to Adobe Analytics, 53% of U.S. consumers planned to use AI to shop in 2025. Will those customers find your business? This Floral Management article explains how to optimize your content to be found by AI.  
  • SAF has high-quality social media images and verbiage to get you started with social media marketing for Mother’s Day, as well as simple promotions you can personalize for your own business. Find them here.
  • This SAF NOW article offers simple ways to tweak your Google Business Profile so your business is at the top of search results.
  • Web orders have become a major driver of sales for retail florists and yours might need a little spring cleaning to make sure it is ready for Mother’s Day sales. This SAF NOW article has five tips to prep your site for robust sales.

Step 6: Develop Strategies 

  • This SAFNews Now article analyzes post–Mother’s Day survey results to uncover what drove sales, shaped purchasing decisions, and influenced product performance. Drawing from multiple industry surveys, it provides a data-backed look at consumer behavior, product mix, and key growth drivers—helping florists evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and how to apply those insights to future holiday planning. 
  • This SAFNews Now article highlights practical, real-world strategies florists are using to capture more Mother’s Day sales while building long-term customer loyalty. From proactive outreach and seamless online experiences to add-ons, subscriptions, and staff training, the piece emphasizes how small, intentional actions can increase order value and turn one-time buyers into repeat customers. It also reinforces the importance of clear communication and strong customer service in a competitive, high-volume holiday environment. 
  • This SAFNews Now article shares real-world strategies for improving profitability during Mother’s Day by controlling costs while driving sales. Drawing from cross-industry insights, it highlights practical approaches to production planning, delivery optimization, streamlined selling, and localized marketing. The piece reinforces how thoughtful operational decisions and customer-focused sales techniques can boost margins, improve efficiency, and help florists compete more effectively during peak holiday periods. 

Step 7: Get Ready for the Press

  • Publicity in your local media has invaluable payoffs: it gets your name out in the community, boosts credibility, and (usually) costs nothing other than your time. SAF offers pointers for getting journalists’ attention and generating positive media buzz, preparing for an interview, and capitalizing on coverage after the fact. Find all this and more (including two Mother’s Day themed press releases you can customize) here. 
  • This SAF resource offers quick, practical tips to help florists confidently handle media opportunities leading up to Mother’s Day. It focuses on positioning your business as the expert, sharing positive, trend-driven messaging, and proactively engaging local media to drive visibility and sales during the holiday rush.

Step 8: Keep Calm

  • Don’t forget to take care of yourself and your team in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day. This three-part series of on-demand webinars with author and floral industry veteran Barry Gottlieb focus on wellbeing and offer practical ways to ensure you are at your best.

Step 9: Rest and Reflect

  • This on-demand webinar, “Post-Holiday Questions,” walks you through how to assess your business’s performance after Mother’s Day to set you up for even more success next year.
  • Be sure to check and respond to your online reviews after Mother’s Day. This SAF NOW article offers helpful advice for how to respond to negative reviews.

Step 10: When in Doubt...

  • Ask Aster - your on-demand AI assistant built exclusively on SAF content.  Whether you need quick answers, fresh ideas, or help solving a last-minute challenge, Aster acts like a business consultant at your fingertips, delivering practical, industry-specific guidance exactly when you need it. Try asking Aster:
    • What's the best way to create holiday features to balance speed and profitability? 
    • How should I price delivery for Mother's Day to protect margins without losing orders? 
    • What are effective upsell strategies my team can use during peak holiday sales?