E-commerce Marketing for Valentine's Day

#1 Push Your Gift Products Forward

Some other special occasions and holidays may promote something else. If you look at days like Christmas or Black Friday, these usually encourage people to buy gifts for themselves, or for the home. When people look at Valentine’s Day, things are a little different.

The highest yielding time for giving gifts is a day like Valentine’s Day because they are looking for personalized gifts for loved ones. This should be a good sign that you should be putting your products that could be seen as gifts to the very front of the page. Encourage people to look at specific items and gifts, have them on front pages and use them as marketing tactics through emails and social media. These will be the hot sellers and will make it far easier for those buying to complete a purchase and send the gift off.

#2 Move Beyond the World of Romance

While Valentine’s Day is of course the most romantic day of the year, being able to make it about romance. If you haven’t quite heard of it, “Galentine’s Day” is also another popular trend that is starting to pick up steam. This is for those gals who want to get their best gal pal something special too. While we won’t encourage you to completely focus on it and put Valentine’s Day aside, it’s a nice way to appeal to the single market too.

Family members and friends need love too and nothing says love like a Valentine’s Day gift for someone who is equally as special, just not romantically special. You could even go so far as to start promotion things for pets that keep Valentine’s spirit alive and kicking! Can you say “Palentine’s Day”?

#3 Try to Focus on User-Generated Content Where Possible

Once you’ve sent out emails and promotions and plastered your sales all over social media where applicable, make sure that you’re giving your customers a chance to engage through various platforms, and interact where they can. User-generated content will promote sharing, but it will also give your business a bit of an edge since you’re putting a consumer-based focus on things.

You could run photo contests on Instagram, make a special Valentine’s Day hashtag, or even get people to share best (or worst) date stories! You’ll generate far more interest in what you’re doing if people are getting involved in it too.

#4 Make Deals that are Timed – Daily/Hourly

If you’ve managed to create your new theme, pushed a couple of social media ideas forward, and have excelled in your email marketing, let’s look into creating time-sensitive deals and offers. If you’re running something exciting that’s quite some time before the day, make sure that you’re still helping users complete their journey by offering timed specials. Having customers get an extra bit of discount over a few hours can force people to complete the purchase sooner than they wanted to.

Take a look at Amazon as an example. Their lightning deals are usually sold out really quickly and they do this by having deals inside deals. Yes, we know it’s a special holiday for cheap products, but it’s also a timed exclusive for an even better price! #inception

#5 Wrapping Up and Delivering

One of the biggest aspects of having gifts done for a special occasion is to make sure that people are provided with easy delivery. Some people love wrapping gifts and other people don’t’. To alleviate this problem entirely, you can stock wrapping paper that is filled with love, and then sell it too! If you don’t want to sell it, then offer the option to wrap gifts!

The delivery is also another important factor. Try to get the delivery done as soon as you can because a lot of people are buyers who leave things until the last minute. These are the people that will want gifts wrapped, and possibly delivered within 24 hours, or even on the same day!

#6 Bundle Deals Together

Once you’ve managed to bring a bunch of items into stock for people to buy, and you’ve put specials onto them, and got everything up and running, it may be time to start bundling deals together. Having someone buy bath bombs or something similar as a gift can be great, but imagine being able to get bath bombs and skin creams for the same price?

Learn to group items together into neat little bundles and once you’ve done that, try to get these products at price, down to a relatively cheap amount. Consumers are likely to spend more when there’s perceived value in a product, so having three items in a bundle that costs the same as two will be big value for anyone shopping.

#7 Change SEO Strategies

Don’t change completely but remember that people are going to be searching differently. Gear up your site and your sale and get ready to be browsed for lovers. Add in phrasing like “perfect gifts for your partner”, add in a “husband”, a “wife”, and everything in between. The main goal here isn’t to try and catch anyone out, you want to be able to tell your customers that you have stock of products they are going to want to buy for that special someone. Make sure that your SEO strategy is clever and contains information to do that.

#8 Celebrate Self-Love

Focusing on a partner, family, friend, or pet can be really good, but let people know that self-love is a valuable thing too! Many brands across the world will recognize that Valentine’s Day is a time for pampering themselves as well, so having offerings for the person buying the presents can work too.

Perhaps people may feel a little down that they aren’t with someone or could perhaps be going through a rough patch. Remind these people that they are special, and they aren’t some kind of forgotten demographic as far as love is concerned. This is where you’ll be able to get people to buy themselves gifts to show that they are loved too.

#9 Switch Up Your Logo and Images

It does go without saying, but we always feel that the best way to celebrate a holiday or special occasion is to have your site prepared in such a way that everyone can recognize it. If you think back to what you did for Christmas, you should at the very least be putting the same amount of effort into your logo and images for Valentine’s Day.

Christmas is a day, just like Valentine’s Day, that happens once every year. But Christmas isn’t even celebrated by everyone year-round. Have you ever heard of someone that doesn’t like pampering themselves or their partners? We haven’t. Make sure your temporary new site design reflects that.

#10 The People Who Shop on Valentine’s Day

Another important aspect of being able to speak to your customers is to understand their shopping habits and exactly how and why they look for certain products. As is the case with anyone else, there are a number of categories that most people fit into. You’ll likely see it yourself in close-knit circles for birthdays or special events. But since those events differ for most people, it’s hard to quantify what is most important to those people.

With a day like Valentine’s Day, exploring these options within your customer base is an easy way to discover the type of shopper they are. You’ll need to monitor your conversion metrics and take a look at the increased sales leading up to, and throughout the week, and the different behaviors that star-crossed lovers exhibit.

#11 Last-Minute Buyers

These are the kinds of people who will benefit from big deals on the 11th, 12th, 13th, or even the 14th of February. Note that some people will be shopping around on the day, so having same-day delivery for some options, especially if your product is rather generic, can be an absolute win.

They’ll likely spend more than the average person because of their last-minute adventures and will often look for really fast delivery. It’s also important that your site doesn’t mess around or take too long to load. These customers will want results quickly and will likely just be on your store page for a few minutes.

#12 Those Who Plan

The ones who love to plan will start searching for gifts a few days or weeks before the big event. Most people will make sure that they have something ordered and set for delivery by at least the 11th of February, but these people are the ones who start shopping sometime in January.

Make sure your site is prepared for these people too. There’s nothing worse than heading into the run-up of Valentine’s Day only to see that there are no specials, no discounts, no gift-wrapping service, or even promotions to go for. They’ll look for an experience that is smooth and easy but will be shopping around a while, so their time-on-site metric will be through the roof.

#13 Hurried Shoppers

Finally, the hurried shoppers are the ones who will be out and about, likely on their mobile, in and out of meetings. They’ll look as and when they can, so it makes having a really functional process quite important. If they’ve been browsing a particular product before, suggest they look at the same or similar ones. These people should also be given basket reminders since they’ll likely add something to the cart and then forget about it for a bit until they’re ready to return.

These people will also be the ones who spend the bulk of their time on mobile so ensuring that your site is truly mobile responsive is a great way to retain those customers for this particular transaction, and many more to follow. Nothing trumps a good experience!

Future Planning

With the hopes that you’ve managed to find our tips really useful, we’re sure that you’re going to have a great Valentine’s Day, as well as a few healthy weeks for your e-commerce business. Don’t be shocked to find that in most places, as soon as Valentine’s Day is done and dusted Easter decorations start popping up. And this is a prime opportunity to sell unsold stock and offer discounts to the customers who buy after the promotions are over.

E-commerce Marketing for Valentine’s Day