The cards are already in the shop. You know those pink ones with hearts, unicorns, teddies and saccharine hallmark ballads on the inside. Facebook will be urging you to “spread the love”, and other such clichés. I may gripe and groan, but I will soon be doing the same with my Valentine’s Day email marketing. So will many of you other eye-rollers who wax cynical about V day.
Let’s be fair. Our own opinion of Valentine’s day is immaterial. Valentine’s Day has become a massive marketing opportunity. That means it is also competitive.
This creates a massive problem for email marketers and copywriters. A day focussed on such a narrow theme makes it difficult to be original, or at least anything other than sickly sweet. So to help, we have created a handful of ideas to help inspire you this Valentine’s Day.
Giving your heart away
For most of us, if our significant other’s, or this month’s soulmate presented us with a roll of product labels, we might reconsider our life choices. But then, a professional relationship and a romantic relationship require different methods of nurturing. So, if you are showing your appreciation on Valentine’s Day, a freebie will always let your subscriber know you care. Moreover, it doesn’t matter whether your product was mentioned in a Shakespearean sonnet or not.
Your giveaway doesn’t have to be a product, an infographic or downloadable guides are just as useful. You’re running a restaurant? How about sending a downloadable romantic recipe? It doesn’t have to be expensive, but if it is useful, then it will help keep you at the forefront of the customers mind.
Singles Awareness Day 15th February
Your Valentine’s Day email marketing doesn’t have to be aimed at the couples. In fact, there is a perfect opportunity to create a campaign for single people too. As well as the romantics, there are the cynics and the single too. You might incorporate them into an Anti-Valentine’s campaign. Or, a separate campaign for the following day which just so happens to be Singles Awareness Day.
As well as giving the couples do actually do buy into this festivity, why not also have a little bit of fun at their expense?
Non-Valentine’s Day Email Marketing
In some ways, it might be refreshing for your clients not to have flowers and Cupid emblems rammed down their throats. In fact, do you have to spread the love? February the 14th, in fact, plays host to a variety of other national days,
- National Organ Donor Day
- National Ferris Wheel Day
- Cream-Filled Chocolates Day
I don’t know whether a “giving your heart away” campaign is appropriate for celebrating Organ Donor’s day or not. However, it provides another opportunity for awareness and discussion.
Spread the love with full-blown clichés
Valentine’s Day comes with its own recognisable symbolism and iconography. Most marketers and creatives would recommend that you use them sparingly. But what if your email marketing campaign became a farcical pastiche of Valentine’s Day. If you want to be remembered, and if you want to crack a few smiles, then flood your email campaign with deliberately sickly content.
If you do choose to exercise the right to be OTT, then at least make it obvious to your subscribers that it is deliberate. Use puns and humour to signal that your hyperbolic campaign is meant in jest and irony.
Wrapping up
Whether you are a cynic, or a full blown Cupid fanatic, Valentine’s Day email marketing is an important opportunity for your business.
As always, I am interested in sharing ideas, and helping anyone who might be stuck, so if you have any ideas to add please comment below for any other reader. Spread the love a little further.
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