10 Essential Valentine’s Day Marketing Strategies
10 Essential Valentine's Day Marketing Strategies
Boxes of chocolates and red hearts are in the air, but sometimes it takes a little more to win the heart of someone even on Valentine’s Day. Historically originated to honor Saint Valentine, but culturally became a significant day to celebrate love and romance in a commercial way.
And by that, we mean celebrating with shopping, discounts, and gifts. Everyone loves a good February full of love and romance. But brands must work on their messages and marketing campaign strategies to see better results. Let’s review essential marketing strategies to execute this Valentine’s Day for your customers and see some Valentine’s day marketing ideas!
1. Empower Self-Love
The world is changing in every way, and it is only natural that humans are approaching love differently these days with the most important form of love: Self Love.
Being kind and loveful to ourselves is essential, and brands need to work on their self-love campaigns much more this year and in the years ahead of us. Moreover, it sounds amazing to buy valentine’s day gifts for ourselves. Using self-love as a Valentine’s Day marketing strategy is a great idea that embraces self-care and the power of self-acceptance.
Let’s look at Converse’s 2020 Valentine’s Day Campaign with the collection of “Love Fearlessly” – where Converse first highlights the importance of self-love Converse’s 2020 Valentine’s Day Campaign with the collection of “Love Fearlessly” – where Converse highlights the importance of self-love first.
Or, check out this Lovers + Friends advertisement that emphasizes the importance of self-love with a text that says “Dress for yourself this Valentine’s Day” for inspiration.
2. Remember to Celebrate All Loves That Are Non-Romantic
Love is all around us and is not always directed to a significant other. What about family, pets, and friends? Maybe finding the perfect gift isn’t hard as it sounds.
There are many other acts of love that we can cherish, and brands can generate their campaigns around different acts of love as a marketing strategy this February 14.
Take an example from MoPets Valentine’s Campaign for 2021, where they re-created the famous lovers meeting at the beach shooting, with a dog and its owner. MoPet created different videos that focus on tales and scenes that we all know from every romance movie out there – with pets and owners to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Or, look at how Wiggles.in focused on how we cannot give up on the ones we love, no matter the circumstances, with their #LoveIsInTheCare campaign. The campaign focuses on how pets must be cared for like any other family member or friend, and should not be abandoned under any circumstances.
For this Valentine’s Day, you can think about all forms of love that can be empowered and supported. To start the next Valentine’s Day campaign that can be about a different kind of love, ask yourself what you love first, and how you love in the first place.
3. Run a Valentine’s Day Sale
There is no better time to run a sale for your products or services than Valentine’s Day! Offer discounts and special offers on multiple products, run pay two get three campaigns and prepare exclusive packaging for those who want their products to be gifted at the buying process. Create and automate SMS or Email Marketing campaigns for this year’s Valentine’s Day. Offer codes or coupons through different channels to your customers to drive engagement and boost your sales. Make sure your codes or coupons can be used for last-minute buyers during the 14th of February.
See Kate Spade’s Valentine’s Day sales landing page below, and how they managed to reflect the theme of the day with flowers and the color red. Maybe a Valentine’s Day themed layout is something you need.
Even if your brand does not allow you to fully reflect the Valentine’s Day magic, you can still come up with a few ideas to apply to your customers.
Another example of a different approach to Valentine’s Day for some inspiration is Misfit’s simple e-mail announcing their sales event. What we liked about this headliner is that they know how Valentine’s Day can be a good opportunity to increase sales and they don’t afraid to run a sale with every product they have in their shop!
4. Don’t Use Basic Emails
Whether you’re running sales events for Valentine’s Day, sending out coupons and codes to your customers, or simply want to celebrate the day by email – don’t forget to spice up your mailing game with tips and tricks we complied for you.
First of all, try out some designs and themes for your email. A basic email won’t do the same as a themed email. Use red hearts, pink, and sparkling images in your email for the attraction element that we want your customers to have for your brand.
But, having dull mail full of design elements is just dull mail after all. Content is as important as design, and that is our second tip for email marketing. Create the content you want to send out to your customers. Use simple and short sentences, no one has all day to read your email. Last but not least, tailor your email for your customers. Most importantly, don’t forget to renew your mail list before jumping out to any campaigns.
5. Prepare Gift Guides
Whether you are making a gift guide on social media, in a blog post, or through email marketing – it is essential to create gift guides with product recommendations.
You can level up your gift guide by analyzing user behaviors, and offering tailored recommendations to your customers with products they are already interested in via email.
Likewise, you can create a general gift guide choosing the products you know everyone will love and post them on social media and in a blog post if you prepare more content. No matter what you decide to do, it is one of the essential marketing strategies for Valentine’s Day.
6. Create Interactive Content for Your Customers
Whether your brand rules the Instagram game, or you prefer LinkedIn for running campaigns. You can choose many options when creating content your customers will love this Valentine’s Day.
Interactive content is any type of material that conveys its message by encouraging user participation. In this case, we mean polls, surveys, and tests that can be solved by your customers.
For example, if you are a clothing brand, ask your customers which product they are more interested in during your polls and quizzes. If you are a travel company, run a poll to see which Valentine’s Day travel your customers are most likely to be interested in buying. Interact with your customers and hear what they are saying through social media. Create polls and quizzes to run on social media before, during, and even after the Valentine’s Day.
Moreover, you can create in-app stories to drive more engagement.
Through Netmera’s story feature, you can create and edit the story-like content your company wishes for and automate it on your mobile app.
For instance, see how Dunkin’ promoted its new product via social media. There are endless poll and quiz possibilities that you can work with this Valentine’s Day.
7. Use Pop-Ups to Remind Your Valentine’s Day Campaigns
Let’s pretend you have prepared a sale event for your Valentine’s Day campaign. Publishing the dates of the campaign via social media is essential, but you cannot reach all your customers with just an Instagram post.
Pop-ups are a great way to remind your customers that you’ve planned for Valentine’s Day.
You can keep them informed about the upcoming sales event and ensure they have saved the date before the sale’s date. Or, you can remind them to purchase during the sales period with pop-ups.
With Netmera, you can create pop-ups with the drag-and-drop dashboard without the need for coding. You can also choose from pre-built templates to run your pop-up from in the Netmera panel and easily create your desired pop-up.
8. Work On Card Abandonment Rates
One of the most upsetting things about online purchases is seeing cart abandonments from your customers. For this Valentine’s Day, try to work on lowering your cart abandonment rates more. But, what can a brand do when a customer decides not to buy an item or a service after adding it to their cart?
First of all, try sending push notifications to your customers about the forgotten cart. Simply ask them to continue purchasing. You can enrich your notification by adding a time-sensitive message in your text. “Ten people are looking at the product, hurry up!” or “The item you have added to your cart is running out, don’t be late” are a few of the examples you can try to lower your cart abandonment rates.
Secondly, you can offer them discounts to use on their purchases. Offer an extra 5% or 10% discount for your customers to win them back and push them to complete their purchases. Try to drive more engagement for your campaigns and see better results.
9. Don’t Forget Late Buyers
Not all of your customers are planning their gifts two weeks prior to Valentine’s Day. There are many people trying to figure out last-minute gifts for their loved ones every year.
Therefore, include the 14th of February for your sales campaign and offer some late-buyer benefits. Give them an extra discount or offer them free shipping. Some brands also have a same-day shipment for an extra price to help late buyers.
You can use SMS or Email marketing to remind your customers that your sales campaign is still up and running for late hours.
Push notifications that focus on the end date for your campaign. Boost your sales with simple reminders that target late buyers.
10. Share Customer Photos
It is time to remember that your valentines are your customers. And what is a better way to celebrate this Valentine’s Day than showcasing your customer photos online?
Use your desired social media platforms, add customer photos on your website using your products or their creative content with your products, share photos, comment, and like your customers’ photos, and shower them with your love towards them. Build a community with user-generated content and differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Meanwhile, we loved how Adobe uses social media platforms to showcase user-generated content to build a community with its customers.
To conclude, while coming up with ideas to use this Valentine’s Day, remember to be embracive about everyone and everything. Think about the message you want to send, arrange your tone of voice, and just be sincere.
