- Marketing
How We Scaled Joyful Co Mother’s Day Ads (and Got a 13.48% CTR)
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Mother’s Day is one of our biggest selling periods of the year at Joyful Co. This year was officially our 2nd Mother’s Day period and I was looking to reach new audiences. But to break through the noise, I knew we needed to dial in our messaging, test ruthlessly, and build a campaign that converted.
So this year I partnered with Andrew DiLullo and the team at Adcrunch.
I’d seen their work turning paid media into profitable growth machines for emerging brands. They don’t just run ads—they test ideas. So I gave them a call and said, “Let’s do this right.”
Here’s a behind the scenes of what it was like to actually work with them
Step 1: Hook Testing
We kicked off in early February by developing a hook sheet with multiple emotional angles. At the time, we were close to Valentine’s Day, so started with some initial hook testing to see which angles worked for our audience.
Then Daniel from their team built on proven Valentine’s Day winners and came up with new ones tailored for Mother’s Day. They tested hooks like:
📌 “My mom: ‘I don’t need anything.’ Me: ‘Sure, but you’re getting this anyway.’”
📌 “I was running out of gift ideas… until I found this one. Now I’m the favorite child 🥹”
📌 “This is NOT what I expected to get my mom… but it ended up being her favorite gift ever.”
These weren’t generic one-liners—they were real insights into buyer behavior.
Download the full hook sheet they developed for Mother’s Day
📩 Here’s a peek at one of Andrew’s emails where we reviewed the winning hooks:
Once we had the top 5, Aaron from Adcrunch added the best-performing lines as text overlays on our video ads and pushed them live.
Step 2: Iterating Creative and Landing Pages
While the ads ran, I coordinated with Adcrunch to refine our landing pages. We shared multiple layouts and received direct, helpful feedback to improve flow and relevance.
💬 Andrew’s feedback was fast and honest, helping us tune in on what mattered most:
We launched a creative and LP test from April 7–18, funneling traffic to different landing pages and tracking engagement and purchases.
Step 3: Analyzing the Results
The results were really eye opening
From March 2 to March 31, 2025, our campaign delivered:
- 👀 22,571 impressions
- 🖱️ 1,674 link clicks
- 💸 $0.20 CPC
- 🚀 Top ad with a 13.48% CTR
(That’s 5x the industry average.) - $841 Sales
Analysis: Spend vs. Sales: What the Numbers Really Showed
Let’s talk real numbers.
We spent $2,770 across seven ad sets during our Mother’s Day campaign. Most of that went toward prospecting cold audiences who had never heard of Joyful Co before.
And what did we get in return? $841 in direct sales. That’s a ROAS of 0.3—not the kind of headline metric that gets people fired up. But here’s the thing: this wasn’t a failure. This was a strategic test.
We weren’t trying to scale to the moon with this campaign. We were trying to learn:
- What hooks actually get people to click
- How our landing pages convert
- What offers resonate with first-time buyers
We now have a solid creative bank, a list of validated hooks with 10%+ CTR, and hard data we can apply to future campaigns—especially going into Q4.
The most important learning? Our landing pages need to do more work to convert customers. Adcrunch did their part in getting customers to our page, but since we designed our own landing pages we didn’t have time to continuously test and learn.
If you’re a founder testing ads, don’t just focus on ROAS. Focus on what the spend is teaching you—and use it to build a better next campaign.
Was It Worth It?
Honestly? It was one of the smoothest and most collaborative agency partnerships I’ve had.
Andrew and his team—Daniel and Victor—moved fast, communicated clearly, and genuinely cared about our success. They treated our budget like it was their own and brought strategy to every step of execution.
Final Thoughts
This campaign wasn’t just about boosting Mother’s Day sales—it gave us a repeatable system for paid ad testing, creative iteration, and conversion optimization.
Here’s what I’d say — the most successful e-commerce brands are continuously testing and learning. If you’re already doing well with e-commerce and want to boost your sales, Andrew can help. If you’re new to e-commerce and don’t have product market fit, Andrew can help give you a strategy and the right messaging to use, but don’t expect a positive return on spend in the first 3 months.
If you’re an emerging brand looking to scale profitably, stop guessing what your customer wants. Test your way to the answer—and work with a partner like Adcrunch who knows how to do it right.
Let me know if you want an intro.
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