Advertisers, Are You Ready for Valentine’s Day?

The day of love. Between chocolates, flowers, and a romantic meal, we all know the clichés spread on February 14th. Yet while Valentine’s Day is mainly intended for couples, there is nothing stopping you from declaring your love to your existing and potential customers. Whether your business is directly connected to Cupid or not, good storytelling can transform the day of lovers into a successful commercial operation. To achieve this, you will need a healthy dose of creativity, a smidgen of methodology, and a few pertinent tips. Go on, we love you too!

Create a distinctive visual world for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day, like Christmas or Black Friday, has rules that must be followed. Make sure your images and graphics are flawless, add a touch of pink and red, and work on your titles and catchlines for all your tools: website, Facebook ads, marketing emails, banners, landing pages, mobile apps, etc. In their minds, customers will immediately make the connection with Valentine’s Day.

Don’t forget to align your creations with your positioning and editorial values. If your image is usually very serious, an experimental approach might not be the best idea. You should remain consistent to create a unique experience and a truly special event. Lastly, if your brand is particularly progressive, don’t forget that love is not limited to heterosexual couples. You can use the opportunity to celebrate love in all its forms, without restrictions.

A day… that may last a little longer than 24 hours

Admittedly, Valentine’s Day is on 14 February, but there is nothing stopping you from piling on the pressure a little earlier. Why not make the 7 days leading up to Valentine’s Day the week of love? Or devise a sort of Valentine’s Day advent calendar, with a different special offer every day until 14 February? Creating a commercial operation takes time and resources. Making it last longer means distributing efforts more effectively and increasing potential revenue.

If you decide to focus your energy on the day of 14 February alone, you should still announce the event a little earlier to your prospects. Email marketing and social networks are highly effective levers when used correctly. A subscription system and a countdown calendar are both good practices to capitalize on this event. You can also send discount codes to your loyal customers to complement other potential offers on cashback websites or special offers.

Tailor your offer

Making Valentine’s Day a commercial event requires a little customization. Unlike Black Friday, when everything can be sold at low prices, from television sets to cars to bank interest rates and computer software, 14 February targets a rather specific shopper.

According to a study conducted by Google, men spend the most on Valentine’s Day. This means you have to know how to speak to them. Here are some examples:

• Design a personalized, filterable shopping guide to help with finding gifts ideas.
• Offer special gifts or services to be enjoyed as a couple.
• Create a selection of items or products, such as a top 10 or top 5, that can be reused for marketing content (social networks, blog, email, influencers, etc.).

Lastly, Valentine’s Day is also an opportunity to segment your email marketing messages. In your database, you should create two different campaigns, one for each gender. A campaign for men with a specific design and catchline, different from the one intended for women, will make a greater impression and be more effective.

The segmentation should also be applied to ads on social media and landing pages. By remaining in the same visual environment, you can create a relevant and targeted experience tailored to the theme.

Valentine’s Day is a golden opportunity for e-retailers to launch a promotional campaign. Prepared carefully and in advance, a promotional campaign will help raise awareness in your community and among your customers and prospects by using several channels to create a feeling of effective synergy. While Valentine’s Day cannot be improvised, it can lead to last-minute purchases. As such, you should make it an important occasion in-house to motivate your teams in order to regularly update your content, manage logistics, and ensure that Customer Services are responsive on all channels (phone, social networks, chat, email, etc.).

Do you want to launch a campaign for Valentine’s Day or need designs? Our experts in campaign management and our creative studio can help you. Contact us!