Valentine's Day is a massive date (pun intended) on all marketers calendars. This is no exception for e-commerce, with the opportunity for lucrative email campaigns, unique products and promotional offers.
Indeed, Valentine's Day is a holiday rife with commercial opportunity and promises a welcome boost in revenue following the January slump. However, with many businesses competing for the attention of customers, standing out with an original and effective campaign is paramount.
Below we've listed some of our favourite Valentine's Day campaigns which we hope gives you and your business inspiration for this event.
Ranch Dressing's Customised Bottle
Hidden Valleys played to their strengths and appealed to the cult-following of their ranch dressing sauce. Happy Valley introduced the ability to order customised bottles, where customers could add the name of their significant other, or anyone else for that matter, to the packaging.
While this may seem like an odd gift, there is a strong contingent of ranch dressing mega-fans who would delight in being gifted a bottle of personalised dressing. This is a perfect example of a brand taking a more light-hearted approach to Valentine's day while also making a highly accessible campaign. After all, there's no reason a personalised bottle of Ranch Dressing needs to be given as a romantic gift.
Vape Date
For Valentine's Day 2023, online vape retailer E-liquids.com took a more creative approach. On their site they embedded a web-app where vapers could discover new flavours. On this app, vapers can swipe right or left to either like or reject the flavour respectively.
As many will know, this mechanism has strong similarities to the popular dating app, Tinder. We love how E-liquids.com is having fun with the famous mechanics of a dating site to give its customers some fun content. Of course, this also drives sales; vapers who complete swiping will receive an email with the 'matches' and a 10% discount code to use on site.
Vinod Kumar, Head of Digital Markteting at E-liquids.com explains the theory behind this promotion:
"The B2C vape marketplace is incredibly competitive, so disruptive marketing is often needed to stand out. By giving our customers something more fun and interactive we hope to create a more enticing offer. Furthermore, the information we gather from user's input can help us better understand which products and flavours are proving popular."
Darlings of Chelsea - Sumptuous Sofas to Snuggle Up On
This is a wonderful example of using the emotional draw of a product. Sofas are a major purchase, so to encourage a sale based on a Valentine's Day offer requires something more than a small discount.
Darlings of Chelsea have created a product collection built around their most cosy sofas and framed them as the ideal purchases for couples. Including content regarding specific home use of sofas, such as cosying up with chocolates and a drink, helps sell the lifestyle associated with a high-quality new set of furniture.
Promoting this collection via emails to existing customers is a fantastic way to start the process of a new purchase. Even if sales are not immediately generated around Valentine's Day, it gives customers some good reasons to consider updating their sofas - potentially leading to a future sale.
Hulu - We're Streaming of You
Depending on the product being sold, creating store pages or interactive content is not always possible or appropriate. For fully digital content, it may be easier and even more effective to employ a simple but direct form of email marketing.
A recent email campaign with Hulu encouraged recipients to embrace the 'Valentine's Day at home' approach. The 'Streaming of You' email reminded customers of their favourite programs and even included romantic thumbnails featuring popular couples from the show.
Valentine's Day is useful in that it can mean different things to different people. Of course there are many who embrace the traditional evening out, but many are now choosing to spend it at home. Hulu tapped into this growing aspect of Valentine's Day and used it to promote their service over choices on other platforms.
Ritual Co - Share the Love
Ritual Co is another example of using effective email marketing around Valentine's Day. Instead of directly promoting products or using discounts, Ritual Co used it as an opportunity to celebrate their relationships with customers.
By using data from user accounts, every subscriber received a personalised email with interesting stats about their time using Ritual Co. Stats such as account age, time saved using the app and how many meals have been ordered were included. Each of these stats also relates to common ways people define a romantic relationship, keeping everything thematic.
This email also featured a 'share' option so users can show off their stats. This effectively spreads the brand and acts as further promotion. Plenty of brands could make use of this same concept to focus on brand visibility, rather than chasing conversions.
