In the early 1900s, the final Sunday of each February was thought-about International Women’s Day. Women of Manhattan gathered on this present day to talk about prevalent issues. Shortly after, Germany—adopted by the remainder of Europe—declared International Women’s Day a nationwide vacation. Then, after continued rallying, within the Nineteen Seventies the United States additionally acknowledged International Women’s Day as a nationwide vacation.
In the Nineteen Eighties, a process power in California created a Women’s History Week to get extra colleges to adjust to Title IX laws, which had lately been handed. As a end result, President Jimmy Carter declared March eighth the start of Women’s History Week. By the late Nineteen Eighties Congress had declared all the month of March to be Women’s History Month. And, right here we’re right now—recognizing March as Women’s History month and March eighth as International Women’s Day.
But, there’s nonetheless a number of work to be carried out. As an instance, in accordance to an article in Fortune, solely 8% of CEOs are feminine. What’s extra, the gender hole will take some time to shut—particularly after Covid-19. As the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report mentions, as a result of the pandemic, “it will take an average of 135.6 years for women and men to reach parity on a range of factors worldwide, instead of the 99.5 years outlined in the 2020 report.”
So what can we, as manufacturers, do with this data? How can manufacturers acknowledge Women’s History Month with out seeming disingenuous and cashing in on an excellent trigger? After touching upon genuine advertising and marketing throughout Black History Month final month, we needed to look by the identical lens at advertising and marketing throughout Women’s History Month.
Creating Meaningful Email Campaigns
Last yr, in our article throughout Women’s History Month, we featured three key points of making significant email campaigns: honoring ladies prospects, spotlighting ladies staff, and highlighting firm efforts to help ladies’s initiatives. To mirror on final yr’s recommendation, we pulled some examples from this yr’s campaigns, to see how they stack up.
Honor Women Customers
To honor ladies prospects, Fabletics, a subscription athletic attire model, is providing a free tee shirt that claims “She Can Do Anything” with any order (for VIP prospects). The aim of the tee shirt, as described under the picture, is to empower any girl that wears it and any girl that sees it.
While purple will not be Fabletics’ model coloration, it’s the coloration for Women’s History Month, which reveals extra dedication to and help of the trigger.
But, that’s not all. In addition to freely giving a free present to encourage prospects, Fabletics pledged to donate $25k to Girl Up, a basis devoted to advancing ladies’ expertise, rights, and alternatives to lead. Providing a free present to loyal prospects and donating a portion of their earnings to a women-centric group reveals authenticity and understanding of their viewers.
Spotlight Women Employees
While not essentially staff, Michael’s, the artwork provide retailer, despatched out an email highlighting a number of the women-owned manufacturers they carry in-store and linked immediately to their product pages. This email options 4 separate female-owned manufacturers with a brief bio about every of the homeowners and a hyperlink to store their merchandise.
While prolonged, the vast majority of this email focuses on the ladies Michael’s needed to spotlight. They’re entrance and heart.
In addition to highlighting a number of the women-owned manufacturers they carry, Michael’s supplied up some on-brand DIY initiatives to empower their ladies prospects. This features a DIY T-shirt, drawing, and tote bag—all meant to encourage their viewers.
Highlight Company Efforts to Support Women’s Initiatives
Drizly, an alcohol supply service, has at all times put out clever campaigns whatever the month, however their push notification for Women’s History Month caught our consideration. To rejoice their efforts in supporting ladies’s initiatives, Drizly known as out women-owned beer, wine, and spirit manufacturers. When clicked, the push notification opens a deep hyperlink to a web page that includes solely women-owned manufacturers. This is barely totally different from Michael’s since Drizly doesn’t maintain the stock, however as an alternative, works with native liquor shops to join with prospects.
The banner copy “raise a glass to shattered glass ceilings” can be a intelligent nod to each feminine prospects and female-owned manufacturers.
We recognize this method to advertising and marketing for Women’s History Month as a result of on the finish of the day, the aim is to profit these women-owned companies. Drizly makes cash no matter whether or not you store from women-owned companies or not, however exhibiting that they 1) acknowledge the manufacturers which can be women-owned and a pair of) need to assist help these manufacturers demonstrates that Drizly went out of their means to attempt to help ladies’s initiatives.
Empowerment and Impact at Iterable
Lindsay Kaplan, co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of Chief, a personal membership community targeted on connecting and supporting ladies government leaders, writes, “There are 5 million executive women in the United States right now—women who are ready to take the helm of companies, to serve on boards, to run for office. If we want to do it, we can change the world today. Promote them. Open the doors. Give them a seat at the table.”
This #WomensHistoryMonth, we’ll be honoring and sharing the tales of a number of the unbelievable ladies throughout Iterable on our social media who’re #DefyingGravity, defending their value, rising their ambition, and successful within the office. They’re the leaders of Iterable’s advertising and marketing crew of right now and the advertising and marketing executives of tomorrow.
We are additionally proud to be within the midst of our inaugural Women’s Empowerment Conference, (March 7-10), which is designed to join, educate, and empower ladies and allied Iterators, companions, and prospects. The convention started with a keynote deal with from New York Times bestselling writer and NPR podcast persona, Stacey Vanek Smith, on key takeaways from her guide, Machiavelli for Women. Throughout the convention, attendees have the chance to be a part of periods and occasions like Speed Networking and Development Discussions, meant to equip ladies with the instruments they want for development and success.
Like we talked about, The World Economic Forum shared that it’s going to take over 135 years to attain world gender parity. That’s far too lengthy! Working collectively, let’s goal to change that.