Valentine’s Day presents a special opportunity for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands to boost sales and foster customer loyalty. By offering them exactly what they need to show love and appreciation to their significant others, businesses can express their care for clients and strengthen the connection.
So, how to use this special occasion to benefit your marketing effort? We’ve compiled the top Valentine’s Day email marketing tactics for 2024 that will help you turn your emails into profitable sales.
Valentine’s Day Email Campaign and Segmentation Strategies
According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent about $25.9 billion on celebrating Valentine’s Day in 2023, which is 8.4% more than in 2022.
The statistics prove that the Valentine’s Day season is the ideal time for businesses to develop compelling email marketing campaigns inspired by the holiday. Most businesses understand the significance of thematic campaigns and use this strategy in emails to capture customers’ attention and increase sales.
However, since this strategy is popular, it’s rather difficult to overcome the competition while creating a Valentine’s Day email campaign. Naturally, you’ll raise the question “How can I differentiate my emails from the plethora of amazing designs?”. Flowuim’s experts believe that the key is a genuine message represented by the design and proper audience segmentation.
Our team of email marketing specialists is glad to share with you some ideas about thematic messages and segmentation tips that you can use as inspiration to create perfect Valentine’s Day emails in 2024.
A different “Happy Valentine’s Day” email
Despite a typical title, “Happy Valentine’s Day” emails can convey various messages and take different places in your campaign. Send them to show gratitude to your customers, announce limited-time offers, offer holiday discounts, and whatnot. The power is in the hands of your imagination and creativity. Our experience proves that you can easily turn a usual greeting into an effective instrument of your email campaign.
Segmentation strategy:
- Segment your audience based on demographics such as age group, location, or language preferences.
- Specifically target individuals who browsed Valentine’s Day-related products on your website.
- Reconnect with clients by reminding them of the items they showed interest in.
Valentine’s Day email for couples: “Recipes for love”
Suggest interesting ideas for people in relationships to make their 14th of February more romantic while also promoting your brand. In your Valentine’s Day email, you can picture a perfect date or provide a recipe for a candlelight dinner, and, what’s most important, include your products that can be useful for bringing these ideas to life.
Segmentation strategy:
- Target those in a relationship or marriage.
- Make your message focus on romantic gestures such as romantic dinners or handmade sweets, and provide date ideas.
- Offer related products to make this day special for loved ones.
Limited edition / Collection promotion: “Valentine’s Day Special”
Notify your subscribers about Valentine’s Day-themed collections via email. Many companies use this holiday as a boost for sales by preparing special lines of products. Leveraging email marketing is a great way to promote these limited-edition goods. A limitation of the offer, exclusiveness, and precise targeting of this strategy can bring substantial benefits to your revenue.
Segmentation strategy:
- Identify customers who have a history of purchasing Valentine’s Day-related products.
- Offer them exclusive deals or early access to Valentine’s Day collections.
Valentine’s Day gift guides: “For Him and Her”
The search “Best Valentine’s Day gifts for boyfriend/girlfriend” is among the most popular queries on Google before February 14. Take the initiative and suggest your best products for your clients in a gift guide. Based on the thorough analysis of your audience, their activities on your site, and previous purchases, create engaging emails that offer to explore various options from your product assortment.
A gift guide is a great way to remind subscribers what you offer. When putting together your gift guide, try to include two or three different price point options. You don’t want to price people out of buying gifts from your store!
– Andrea Pohlmann, Flowium Lead Strategist
Segmentation strategy:
- Create gender-based segmentation “For Him” and “For Her”.
- The “For Him” segment highlights gifts from your catalog that are typically appealing to your male clients.
- The “For Her” segment presents gifts that women from your client base usually appreciate.
- If your business doesn’t have an obvious division of client base by gender, you can create a gender-neutral gift guide “Most popular gifts” or “Gifts for your significant other”.
Brands collaborations: “It’s a match”
Announce your collaboration with other companies while keeping the spirit of Valentine’s Day. With the right email marketing strategy, you can set a great start for a long-term partnership using the momentum of festive excitement or benefit from a one-time special collaboration in 2024.
Segmentation strategy:
- Target customers who have shown interest in brands similar to your partner’s.
- Consider promoting products that are usually bought together.
Gifts for friends: “The power of friendship”
Romantic love isn’t the only type of love there is. Many people want to show support and appreciation to their friends during the Valentine’s Day season. Why not help them with a gift selection? Besides emails for couples, include gift guides for friends in your email campaign. This way you’ll be able not only expand your target audience but also show subscribers that you care about their bonds of friendship.
Segmentation strategy:
- Target customers who participated in referral programs and brought their friends as your new customers.
Appreciation for singles: “Love Yourself First”
Don’t forget about your subscribers who aren’t in relationships. Omitting them in an email targeting strategy is a big mistake because singles sometimes comprise a bigger part of the client base. Therefore, the overall efficiency of your campaign will be lower. The successful approach is to remind each of your dear clients that self-love is no less important than loving another person. Suggest them to focus on treating themselves on Valentine’s Day all the same as they would treat their loved ones – with appreciation and care. Then you can offer what you have to ensure the upcoming February 14 will be as fun and special for singles as it is for couples.
Segmentation strategy:
- Segment your audience based on relationship status.
- Offer your single customers self-care products and activities.
Lovely Discounts
Everybody loves discounts, especially during the holiday season when expenses tend to be high. You can use this love to your advantage by offering discounts in your Valentine’s Day emails. Special offers will help you to both attract new clientele and encourage existing clients to make purchases. You can also apply your loyalty programs here and make exclusive deals with your most loyal customers.
Segmentation strategy:
- Segment your audience based on their purchase patterns.
- Offer exclusive Valentine’s Day discounts to loyal customers.
Valentine’s Day email campaign style
- Colors
Combining romantic and vivid colors is often the ideal choice for Valentine’s Day email campaigns. Color schemes that capture the spirit of Valentine’s Day usually are red, pink, white, violet, golden, and chocolate brown. When selecting colors for your email campaign, keep in mind your brand’s overall look and style. Make sure the colors you choose will complement your brand identity and convey the romantic vibe of Valentine’s Day.
- Design elements
Evoking romance, warmth, and a festive mood are key components of visually appealing Valentine’s Day email marketing. Use heart shapes to represent love and affection in a variety of sizes and designs. Add pictures of couples, blossoms, lit candles, or other Valentine’s Day-related imagery to create a romantic ambiance. Don’t forget to make your CTA stand out.
- Fonts
Try out some cute and romantically looking font styles to bring some originality. At the same time make sure to not go overboard with lines and curls. The content has to remain readable and correspond with your brand’s design.
- Content
In addition to your brand’s content, add heartfelt and inspirational words or statements about love that fit the holiday theme. This gives your Valentine’s Day emails a more intimate and sentimental touch.
Valentine’s Day Animated Emails with GIFs
To draw in viewers and capture the sentimental spirit of Valentine’s Day, use calm animations or short videos in your emails. Unique GIFs will help you to put more of your brand’s personality in messages and attract attention. You can use animations for an email’s hero image, animated titles, moving CTAs, etc. Find more information about the most popular methods of adding GIFs to messages in our previous article about animated emails.
More Valentine’s Day email design examples
Let’s look at more design examples for the Valentine’s Day 2024 email campaign that were created by Flowium, a professional DTC email marketing agency.
Cheese & Wine Traders
Winter festivities are still in full swing and with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s a perfect time to set a countdown to the holiday of love. Helping people create a special atmosphere with high-quality food and drinks is a specialty of our esteemed client, Cheese & Wine Traders, while our specialty is to convey their offers via emails most effectively. For this Valentine’s Day-themed email example, our designers used the brand’s traditional color scheme but also added unique visual elements in the form of cheese hearts to back the theme. This design shows that not all emails V-day emails have to be pink and red to create a festive atmosphere.
Ben Bridge
For the Ben Bridge Jeweler store, Flowium’s designers created a special gift guide with personalized offers. In this Valentine’s Day email design example, you can see romantic imagery with gifts and flowers in the hero image aimed to create a magic vibe and a stand-out CTA. Here you can also see the implementation of the “For Him and Her” strategy that we mentioned. Overall, the design effectively transfers the intended message and showcases gift options encouraging clients to purchase their loved ones.
Last Crumb
Dynamic red in this example of a Valentine’s Day email design represents love and passion – from Last Crumb to their work, from clients to Last Crumb’s cookies and those for whom they buy these cookies. Flowium’s team also used special fonts and visuals to underline the uniqueness and creativity of the V-Day offer. Overall, this email perfectly conveys the message, supports our client’s brand identity, and evokes intended emotions thanks to colors and visual elements.
Valentine’s email subject line ideas
Heartfelt Valentine’s Day Subject Lines:
- “Unwrap Love: Our Valentine’s Day Specials Inside”
- “Celebrate Love with [Brand Name] – Exclusive Valentine’s Picks!”
- “Love Is in the Air: Explore Our Valentine’s Day Collection”
- “Valentine’s Delight: Find Your Heart’s Desires at [Brand] “
- “Cheers to Love! Exclusive Valentine’s Day Surprises Await”
Expressive Subject Lines with Emojis:
- “Love Struck! 💘 Dive into Our Valentine’s Day Treats Now!”
- “🌹 Spark Romance: Unmissable Valentine’s Picks Inside! 🎁”
- “Heart Eyes Only! 😍 Valentine’s Day Collection – Shop Now!”
- “Love-Filled Shopping Awaits! 💖 Explore Valentine’s Day Editions”
- “Unbox Love 🎁: Exclusive Valentine’s Day Offers Inside!”
Creative Valentine’s Day subject lines
- “Valentine’s Vibe: Not Just About Saints and Cupids”
- “Breaking Tradition: This Valentine’s, It’s All About You!”
- “Irresistible desire? Tempt no more. [Brand]’s Valentine’s picks are here!”
- “L-O-V-E in Every order: Happy Valentine’s Day!”
- “You deserve it… 10% off Valentine’s Day gifts”
Popups for List Growth and Engagement
- Interactive Quiz popup: Discover the gift that matches you the best
- Spread the love pop-up: Send a gift card to loved ones
- Lovely discounts: V-day discounts or promotional codes for new subscribers
- Free Valentine’s Day DYI and date ideas
- Valentine’s Day giveaways
Conclusion
Creating effective Valentine’s Day email campaigns is essential if you want to engage your audience and benefit from the holiday season. The professional use of attention-grabbing subject lines, visually appealing designs, and personalized content will help you boost open rates and conversions.
If you need qualified assistance, we’re here to help. Flowuim has extensive experience in building impactful campaigns by employing strategies like smart segmentation, engaging template designs, compelling subject lines, and popups. Schedule a call to start advancing your email marketing.
