Every holiday and celebration is a great opportunity to boost sales. Valentine’s Day is no exception.
With the right Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns, you can reach all kinds of audiences: couples, single people, pet owners, and even those who hate this day.
Because we know how daunting it can be to come up with ideas, we have gathered the most successful Valentine’s ads to inspire and help you create the perfect marketing campaign for your online store. Enjoy!
1. Motivate interactions
The best marketing campaign for Valentine’s day is to get existing customers and potential buyers talking about your brand. With all the buzz around this day, our top tip is to develop a way to encourage interactions with your customers.
Although physical experiences have regained popularity and are still valuable to customers, the existence of promotional events goes further than the traditional medium, and can also be taken to the digital sphere.
For instance, you can create an event where you allow customers to physically experience your product and take a freebie home — who knows, maybe adding some products to the cart, too. Or, you can opt for an online event in which products are used, explained, and seen live.
An example of these physical events comes from the beauty brand Lush. Known for their in-store events, Lush encourages customers to try out and feel the products. Since they often come up with limited edition items, events like these have an enormous impact on peak-season sales.
Source: La Blog Beaute
Other brands like The Body Shop opt for a worldwide online contest, encouraging customers to share a selfie, send a kiss, and tag their friends. This particular campaign promoted their new line of lip products and increased brand awareness on a global scale at a minimal cost. A case of success through user-generated content (UGC), if you ask me.
Once your online orders start coming in, implement a smart and efficient order management system like Outvio to accelerate the delivery time and reduce errors to 0!
2. Use the power of videos
Videos are still the most effective medium for conveying a story through a screen. The process of creating good video content can be time-consuming and expensive. However, if you opt for an animated video as Stella Artois did, you can still increase brand awareness and achieve the results you want for a fraction of the cost.
In this 15-second commercial from 2020, the brand portrays the development of a couple through the years and how their beer had an impact on their life and love.
But not every brand out there needs to create the most original Valentine’s Day marketing campaign. Brands selling jewellery, chocolate, or flowers have their share of the market guaranteed. Regardless, it’s important to still make an effort to stand out against the competition.
Pandora releases a new commercial every year, together with other promotional materials. 2022’s take highlights their top-selling product of the season: charm bracelets that can be customised for every person and love story.
Regardless of gender or race, modern love is represented by a lock on many bridges around the world. With their slogan, “unlock your love”, Pandora encourages customers to show their love and use the lock as a symbol, which can also be used in their charm bracelets and necklaces.
3. Tackle the lazy customer with an SMS campaign
Although many people take Valentine’s Day seriously and plan ahead, the majority of people don’t start thinking about their present until the last minute.
By creating an automated SMS campaign, you’ll be able to reach those lazy customers who still haven’t found anything for their partners.
The main advantage of this type of campaign is that the contacts you already have in your list have shown some kind of interest in your brand, which led them to be on this list in the first place. They may have purchased from you in the past, or visited your website and provided their phone number.
In any case, they are clearly interested in your products already, which is an advantage in and of itself.
Some example templates for the SMS can be:
- Revive your love and memories with a personalized photo album: {SiteUrl}
- {FirstName}, tell your girl you love her all year round with fresh flowers every month. {SiteUrl}
- Still without a gift? Our Valentine's Day chocolate collection will spark your loved one's feelings. Buy it now with a discount of {DiscountValue}: {DiscountCodeURL}
Once these customers start purchasing through the link you provided in the SMS, follow-up on their order through the same medium for increased consistency. With Outvio, you can update your customers on the status and location of their orders A U T O M A T I C A L L Y
4. Collab with a like-minded brand
Creating a limited-edition product with another brand is a great way to gain extra exposure and boost sales. Not only will you acquire new customers, but you will also promote sales among existing customers. This technique can be used by smaller and larger retailers, but the examples we bring will make you dream big.
In 2021, Adidas and Swarovski decided to form a duo for the Valentine’s Sambarose collection, featuring different pairs of sneakers with Swarovski crystals and charms. A few years back in 2019, Nike also launched Valentine’s limited-edition sneakers together with Emotionally Unavailable.
The pink, red, and white colour palette of the Emotionally Unavailable x Nike Air Force 1 High completely matches the Valentine’s Day vibes, and the Sambarose collection with the collaboration of Swarovski definitively elevated the idea of wearing sneakers to a first date.
Both of these sneakers collabs were a success and will give you some inspiration. Now, the challenge is to find the perfect brand to partner with for your own product and campaign.
5. Show appreciation through a loyalty program
Whether you have already implemented a loyalty program or not, repeat customers love to receive discounts and advantages over one-time customers. If you don’t have a loyalty program yet, Valentine’s Day can be the perfect opportunity to launch and test this idea.
You can offer a free gift with the purchase, a discount on their next purchase, a gift card, or free shipping without limitations.
Exclusivity can be a powerful driving force to increase sales and show your love and appreciation to your most loyal customers. Isn’t that the purpose of Valentine’s Day?
6. Create a bundle or add a small touch to an existing product
An easy yet effective way to revamp your online store for Valentine’s Day is to create a product set of popular items. Ideally, they should be related somehow to the occasion. Food, drinks, beauty products, and anything else that involves taking care of yourself or your loved ones will do.
Here’s Saucey’s take on it (an alcohol delivery service):
However, with enough preparation, you can also develop a new feature or packaging for an item you already offer. It can be a different colour, a Valentine’s-related detail, or different packaging if you sell food products. Sometimes all you need is a small adjustment to a product that already works.
Now that you are thinking of the best products to combine, speed up the picking and packing process with smart shipping rules and an advanced fulfillment system, which helps you minimize errors while preparing orders up to 5x faster!
7. Offer irresistible discounts
As a last-minute Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, the easiest and fastest solution is to offer an irresistible discount. This can be part of a combined email marketing, SMS, and social media campaign to increase the reach of the message and boost online sales.
Your customers will greatly appreciate the discount, especially after Christmas celebrations when they may feel more cautious with money. The discount can be applied to all products or only those more closely related to Valentine’s Day.
Conclusion
Some of the ideas shared here may be too ambitious to execute if your business is still growing or you didn’t plan ahead.
On the other hand, there’s a charm in simplicity. Sometimes you don’t need to do much to create the perfect Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, but the idea and timing must be perfect.
Even if you don’t plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day, doing something small can have a great impact on your brand and numbers. Use one or many of these strategies to make your online store shine on Valentine’s Day.
