5 Valentine's Day Email Marketing Campaign Tactics + Examples

Valentine’s day is a huge draw for many retailers and ecommerce businesses every year. The seasonal period often brings a huge influx of sales for all types of businesses and not just card shops and florists. It’s important that any email marketing campaign you create really stands out from the crowd. This blog sets out to help you do that well.

Today I want to share with you, some of the hottest tips and tricks to inspire your email campaigns in the most romantic of seasons, through some leading Valentines examples. Here are 5 Top Valentine's Day Email Marketing Campaign Tactics for Retailers:

1. Keep email design simple

As fun as gift giving can be, actually finding the right Valentines present can be quite stressful. It's meant to be a symbol of showing how much you love someone, right? Keeping your email design layout simple and to the point will help your customers know exactly where to find what they need, reassuring them that they’ve chosen the right company. 

A good example of this is Topshop’s Valentine’s email campaign from 2016, which came with the comforting subject line “Valentine’s Made Easy”. Whether you’re looking for a gift or dressing up for date night, you know exactly where to go and the kind of items you’ll find there without having to read any long paragraphs of text. I don't know about you, but this just feels simple and inviting - a simple persuasion tactic of security and trust. 

2. Be smart about your segments

Your audience is made up or a wide range of different people. We boil these down to personas and segments. Personas being types of customers, prospects and subscribers based on their profile and demographics. And segments, being a combination of personas and behavioural information, such as favourite category or last purchase date.

A generic Valentine's email campaign during the season will only engage a pinch of your subscriber list. It's crucial to cater for different demographics and customer needs to get the most out of seasonal marketing opportunities like Valentine's Day. 

We recommend you segment campaigns and tweak the copy, products, images and CTAs accordingly, or create emails incorporating gift ideas for all the different types of email subscribers. This is how you'll see your engagement rates increase and transform email performance at this time of year.

The example above from Oasis shows how you can cater for different types of Valentine's Day date experiences for different persona needs, with compelling calls to action for all subscribers.

3. Help last minute buyers

Let’s face it, being proactive when it comes to buying a gift is often our intention, but we all leave things to the last minute. Reminding subscribers that the order deadline is creeping closer can be a powerful message, and there are so many ways to do this.

Here, Photobox has made it very clear exactly how long their subscribers have left to order before they’re even presented with a discount message. This is a good CRO persuasion tactic, which creates urgency. 

I think this email could be even stronger, by combining the order deadline with the offer, and a countdown timer to really drive that urgency.

4. Remember it’s not all about the gifts

Even if your brand doesn’t sell standard gifty items, this doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of Valentines. People celebrate Valentine’s Day in all sorts of ways, so there are plenty of ways, from supermarkets to theme parks to airlines to coffee shops, to leverage and get creative with their campaigns to offer subscribers something for Valentine’s. Check out this Valentines email example:

Lootcrate’s business model of monthly box subscriptions might not immediately scream Valentine’s Day, but the marketing team created a fun email campaign that’s both in the spirit of the holiday season and shows off an example of each product they offer. It's so easy to dismiss Valentines, but there's usually a nice way to bring it in to your campaigns with just a little imagination and creativity. How could you do this with your brand?

5. Speak to the single

Valentine’s Day can be a pretty polarising time of the year. Whether you’re single or simply a bit of a cynic, if you don’t enjoy this time of year then the last thing you want to see is an inbox full of hearts and messages about love.

Given the right tone and style, brands can deliver email campaigns which celebrate the single life. Or, if you’re brave, even shunning Valentine's is a strong move.

The blogging world has been taking advantage of this for years. Examples such as this Jezebel article can gather a lot of traffic, so a similar campaign for email could help you really get noticed.

Or why not take inspiration from this brand partnership for Valentine's Day from Starbucks and Match, which helps bring their brands (and customers) together! 

Wrapping up

Hopefully, I’ve given you some email inspiration to get you started, to ensure your Valentine’s Day email campaign really hits the mark. While it can be a bit cheesy, Valentine’s Day is celebrated by millions of people every year and there are lots of ways to engage different segments of your subscriber list. 

Need further reading or inspiration? Check out more great Valentine’s Day marketing campaign inspiration and get 7 top tips, tactics and brand examples.