#28. Ideas For Email Campaigns To Make Your Customers Fall In Love With You | Podcast

Vira  0:00 

In this episode, we’ll actually be talking about all of the awesome campaign ideas to make your customers fall in love with you and your brand in February.

Alissa  0:32 

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here, we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are so passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients, our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50% that’s five 0% we deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment, and that’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And today is all about love.

Vira  1:20 

It’s a very promising beginning. Alissa, yes, actually, we will be talking today about some of the content ideas for February is the months of love. And everyone knows that February is the months of love because of the because of the Valentine’s, or Valentine’s, as someone say it, but believe us, there is so much more you can do in the in this last month of winter, and in this episode, we’ll actually be talking about all of the awesome campaign ideas to make your customers fall in love with you and your brand. In February, we’ve got something for everyone, no matter if you’ve just started planning your calendar, or you just need to add a little bit of zinc to your campaigns. We have something for you. So stay tuned.

Vira  2:09 

For better or worse, a good marketing campaign is always in season, and here in Flowium, we say it constantly. We do believe in delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment, and aligning your promotional and content calendars with the things that your customers are actually thinking about, or the things that your customers care about, and that’s why we’ve created this library of all of the content ideas throughout the year for all kinds of customers. So if you want to get access to our exclusive content calendars throughout the year. Go to flowium.com/calendar and we will give you the access to this huge hub of different content ideas for different days.

Vira  2:52 

Yeah, just, just stay tuned. We’ll have a lot to talk about, the sales and fun ideas for Valentine’s and ideas for World Nutella day. Yes, that’s the thing. But before we go there, we have a really cool Pro Tip of the Week. So Alissa, what’s the Pro Tip of the Week?

Alissa  3:10 

So our Pro Tip of the Week is actually one of the resources that we offer here at Flowium on a monthly basis, is a campaign calendar with all the holidays events and wacky national days that you as an email marketer, or even as an E commerce brand owner should be aware of when it comes to your email campaigns. You can find actually previous videos on our YouTube channel, which is just called Flowium. But if you want to subscribe, you can go ahead and visit flowium.com/calendar, when you do sign up, you will receive a monthly email from our team linking you to the upcoming campaign calendar along with a video explanation for the month that’s coming. So the videos that already exist on YouTube are for previous months. We will always create a new campaign calendar based on the months that are coming. Obviously, because events take place, things change. Most of the calendars that we set up for last year they had no events because, obviously, of covid 19 and everything like that. So it’s really a great resource. Yes, this is a shameless plug to a resource that we offer internally as our Pro Tip of the Week. Don’t hate us for it. It’s a really good one, and we’ve actually seen a lot of our partners and listeners benefit from this monthly resource. So definitely something worth checking out just again if you want to subscribe to this monthly email that comes with the campaign calendar and then also a video explaining about the campaign calendar, you can visit us at flowium.com/calendar, it will be linked on our website, so that way you can access it on the podcast episodes and then also in the description of the podcast as well. But flowium.com/calendar it’s a sign up form. You go in there, plug in your name, plug in your email, and then you will start receiving the monthly campaign calendars, which are really handy, and that was actually a huge resource for us. For this podcast episode. So clearly, we use it. We have other listeners that use it. So definitely something that, if you haven’t tapped into, it’s worth your while, for sure.

Vira  5:11 

Oh, I use it every month. I need this little, my little portion of inspiration, and I learned a lot about, like, different weird holidays as well. When is the national Cheese Day on your husband’s birthday? Right?

Alissa  5:25 

Yeah, national cheese lovers day is January 20. It’s like, one of those weird things that.

Vira  5:29 

I’m like celebrating. I’m celebrating that’s for sure. Yeah. Not like, that’s something that I can to live without this holiday. But it’s good, good thing to have something little to look forward to.

Alissa  5:42 

Exactly.

Vira  5:43 

Yeah, cool. So the months of February one of the coldest and yet one of the most heartwarming months of the year. So first things first, yes, there will be sent Valentine’s Day. Obviously, this is like the biggest one of the months, but there’s so much more that is happening. And one of the big things that is happening is actually a Heart Disease Awareness Month. I know it’s not a fun one to talk about, but that’s a really good one, especially if you’re maybe, I don’t know, maybe you’re selling the supplements, or you are in the health and fitness industry. February is American Heart months, and you can raise awareness about heart health and your campaigns and urge those around you to prevent heart disease. There is actually a hashtag for this, not a holiday, but for this awareness month. Hashtag is #ourhearts. And you can use this hashtag to promote, basically the heart heart health, and even if you are not in, like, supplements or health and fitness industry or something like that, you can still create some campaigns about maybe exercising or about the how to stay healthier in the months of February. You can also maybe do like a 24 hours flash sale, and say that the portion of the donation of the sales will go to Heart Stroke Foundation, for example. It’s just like a rough idea for you. Obviously, you don’t have to implement each and every idea that we will be talking about, but if you are in this industry, that’s something to definitely to think about it. So months of February, the Heart Disease Awareness Month.

Alissa  7:21 

That is a good one. It’s a good one if you’re Cheerios as well, because they talk about like heart health all the time on their box of Cheerios. That’s so random. I’m very random, and all I eat is Cheerios constantly. I’m always craving Cheerios. So all I think about are Cheerios. So you said heart health? And I was like, Well, yeah, they have.

Vira  7:44 

That’s a very random situation.

Alissa  7:46 

Yeah, very random fun fact. So for February 2, so obviously the Heart Disease Awareness Month, that’s kind of like an ongoing theme throughout the course of February, as Vira mentioned. So now we’ll start to get into, like, individual days you can create a campaign for specifically. So the very first day that we’ll go through is February 2, which is Groundhog Day.

Vira  8:08 

Love it.

Alissa  8:08 

A lot of you know that Groundhog Day is so important because Mr. Groundhog has the ability, on this very specific day, to tell you whether you’ve got six more bitter weeks of winter or spring is coming early. Now, I used to live in New Hampshire, way up north, so Groundhog Day was a really big deal for me and my family and our friends. And it’s kind of one of those fun, goofy holidays that you’re like, Oh no, what’s the groundhog gonna say? But now I live in Florida, so I don’t care what Mr. Groundhog says, because it doesn’t apply to me. It’s hot all the time, miserably. I’m saying that in a disgruntled way, not to brag. But again, everyone living in the lore in the north, they rely pretty heavily on Mr. Groundhog’s shadow. So again, this holiday is more of a fun tradition, but you can use it as an opportunity to engage with your subscribers in a very light hearted way. So for example, if you have some kind of product launch, or a new line that’s launching that aligns really well with spring, then what you can do is you can use Groundhog Day to your advantage. You can tease your subscribers. And the way that you can kind of go about this is, if the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, which means that spring is coming early. You can launch your new product or new line as a result of the groundhog determining that spring is coming early. However, if the groundhog does see his shadow, which means six more awful weeks of winter, then what you can do is, I mean, I would personally still launch anyways, because obviously a product launch or a line launch is a launches do very well.

Vira  9:43 

Do not rely on this little animal, you guys. Too much pressure.

Alissa  9:49 

Let’s say that again.

Vira  9:51 

Too much pressure for this little guy. You know, it’s like.

Alissa  9:54 

They’re cute too. Groundhogs are cute. But if you wanted to delay, I mean. Originally, I was thinking a week, but I would say, like, delay by like 24 hours, again, just to tease and kind of egg on your subscribers. But if you delay by 24 hours, you could build some anticipation of the new launch with your subscribers. The other thing that you could do is you could kind of segment it where you still launch on the original date, whether the groundhog sees a shadow or not, to your VIP segment, and then a couple days later, launch to your regular engage segment and your master list as well. So just a fun kind of goofy way to introduce a launch along with Groundhog Day. But the other take on it too is you can just make it totally light hearted and send out a campaign that has to do with Groundhog Day, or if you’re still selling your winter gear, then what you can do, if the groundhog sees his shadow, then what you can do is you can promote your products that are very winter ask. So if you sell parkas or fluffy jackets or Sherpa jackets or whatever it is, then you can send out a campaign later on in the day that says something like, the groundhog saw his shadow. What are we going to do for the next six weeks? Make sure that you bundle up with our best selling Sherpa jacket, or whatever it is. So get creative, because Groundhog Day.

Vira  11:12 

Or you can just quote the characters from the groundhog movie. I love this one, when the guy told like, I’ll give you a winter prediction. Is going to be cold, it’s going to be great, and it’s going to be great and it’s going to last for the rest of your life. Not the most like cheerful quote to use in your email marketing campaign, but you can definitely use that movie as a reference, because it’s such a pop culture movie, everyone knows it, yeah, it’s a really cool little holiday. Definitely, definitely use it in your you know, my clean calendar, cool February 4, again, last cheerful holidays. For some reason I have all of the not fun holidays. But so February 4, the World Cancer Day and many companies either sell some specific products to generate awareness, or maybe they donate the portion of their proceeds to cancer charities during this holiday or even during the entire month of February. I found this really cool statistic that actually 33% of consumers choose to buy from some brands because they believe that brand is doing something socially or environmentally good, so that like social component or that is very important for the customers. So on February 4, you can create the campaign around World Cancer Day. And if it fits your company, you can even maybe tie in product launches with the cost, I don’t know. Maybe you have a line of pink socks coming up, right, and you can tie it with a breast cancer awareness day or something like that. Or maybe you can, if you have an app like this for the online shopping, maybe you can do a slight app redesign, just like adding the ribbon or something, and by integrating this, like little things with a bigger cause, you’re spreading awareness a and in a way, you’re building the building your own image, and you’re building those like relationships with the customers, and you’re showing that, hey, even though we’re a business, we’re here to do something good for the world at the same time. So definitely talk about the World Cancer Day. And I know that for a lot of my customers, what we’ve done, we did some featured customer stories in our emails. So for example, I have this client that I work with. They do the peptides, creams that help with was like, skin problems and stuff like that, and just cars. And we had this really beautiful story from one of our customers, and she shared how this queen helped her with her scars after the cancer surgery. And it was, believe it or not, it was one of our like, best performing emails in terms of open rates and click through rates and even conversions, which we didn’t expect because we didn’t have any, like, call to actions linked to the product purchase. It’s just because people resonate so well with that email. This email was actually one of our best, like, best performing emails ever for this client. And I think Alissa, you’ve done something similar with your clients as well, right?

Alissa  14:18 

Yes, yeah, so, and this is something that I’ve talked about before. With regards to one of my clients, where we do, like a customer spotlight story pretty much every, every month. And one of the customer Spotlight Stories that we did around Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is in October, was for this brand, and a woman came forward and shared her story about her, I think she overcame breast cancer like three or four times or something. I mean, this woman is a total champion, you know. So it was really cool to see your story, and it touched the hearts of a lot of customers. And the metrics were really good. The revenue wasn’t necessarily great, because our call to action wasn’t really to push people to purchase however we got. So many emails in response from customers like thanking the brand, thanking the owner for for being willing to share a story like that. And it’s just cool to see the feedback that you get from some of your customers, because there’s now, like almost a new level of respect that they have for you as a business owner, for you as an email marketer, and then also your brand as well, because you’re willing to share these stories and put your customers on the spot who are wanting to be in the spotlight. So yeah, it’s part of that user generated content that we’ve talked about so much in the past, where when you provide a platform for your customers, they will use that platform to share their story or to talk. And that is so much more impactful than just us creating copy about things that we don’t necessarily have personal experience with. So yeah, this is a this is definitely a good one if it fits with your brand.

Vira  15:49 

Oh, yeah. So what is the next one? I’m kind of excited about the February 5 one, Alissa.

Alissa  15:55 

So the next one is February 5, which is World Nutella day. So this actually is also my baby’s due date. So I’m like.

Vira  16:06 

Nutella baby.

Alissa  16:07 

A Nutella baby.

Vira  16:08 

Have you decided? Have you decided on the name yet? Because I have one for you. I have a one good idea for you, where?

Alissa  16:14 

Yeah, right. Nutella.

Vira  16:15 

If it’s a girl, if it’s a girl, Nutella, if it’s a boy, Nutello, it sounds very Italian. You know.

Alissa  16:21 

That is great. I love that. I love that my husband loves Nutella as well. So I don’t know if he would be opposed.

Vira  16:28 

You know, right?

Alissa  16:30 

Maybe that’s why his plan was all along. That is so funny. And I know for sure that this is our CEO’s favorite day of the entire year as well, because I’m pretty sure Andriy is a Nutella fanatic too.

Vira  16:43 

Every Sunday, religiously, he has like, pancakes, pancakes with Nutella.

Alissa  16:52 

Honestly, like, I’ve yet to meet a person that likes Nutella that I didn’t like, and you don’t like Nutella, and you are listening to this podcast, I don’t.

Vira  17:01 

Unsubscribe.

Alissa  17:02 

Yeah, I don’t know if I can trust you, and I don’t know, listening to this podcast. Totally kidding, totally kidding. So for our foodie e commerce brands that are listening out there, this is a perfect day to connect with your subscribers, because, again, who does not love Nutella? And actually, one of the clients that we work with internally here at Flowium, they sell croissant toast. Yes, that’s amazing croissant toast. It’s a real thing, and it is literal heaven. So.

Vira  17:33 

Like two best things in the world, I know, you marry you marry them together, and boom, you have the croissant toast.

Alissa  17:40 

I’m like, Oh my gosh, how does that even it’s not that’s a sin. It has to be a sin to eat that. But it’s amazing. So we will definitely be using this Holiday World Nutella day to our email marketing advantage when working with this client as well as I’m sure all of us will be partaking in the holiday ourselves as well. So I’m sure Andriy will be eating his Nutella pancakes on this day. I will be, if not having a baby, then for sure, eating a jar of Nutella. Probably crying because I’m ready to have his baby already. And I’m sure that most of the others that work here at Flowium as well will also be partaking in some Nutella. So Nutella on croissant toast. That’s all I have to say.

Vira  18:24 

Oh, gosh, that sounds amazing.

Alissa  18:25 

My mouth is watering. I’m like oooh.

Vira  18:28 

Yeah, and we can get here the discount for that croissant toast bread thing. So I know the guy.

Alissa 22:49 

I know a guy who will hook us up for Nutella days. So.

Vira  18:40 

I know, right, cool. Well, February the seventh, the final holiday, the big one, probably one of the biggest marketing events of the year, Super Bowl Sunday, although I’m not sure I heard the rumors that they might push it to the end of February, but for now, yeah, I heard that they were thinking about like, February 28 or something. But I think it’s rumors for now. I just, I went to the NFL website and it says February the seventh, so we’re good for now. Yeah, this is, like, definitely the biggest marketing moment of the year, the NFL Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is like the Oscars of the sports but actually it’s even bigger, because this is like the biggest broadcast in the US. The over 102 million people are watching Super Bowl. And that’s interesting, because the population of the states is what, like around 300 million people, or something. So like every every third person in the US is watching the Super Bowl Sunday. In 2019 I don’t have the numbers for 2020 but in 2019 over $336 million was spent on the commercial, advertising alone. And I mean, I love those ads. I live for those ads, even though I’m like, I’m in Canada. Yeah, and I’m not a big like sports fan or anything, but I’m just living for the for the show and for the advertisement. So they are so good, they’re so good. And the average cost of a 30 seconds ad during the last year super super bowl was $5.6 million for like, 30, 30, seconds. So there’s more than we usually spend on email marketing, right? But, yeah, but it’s, it’s definitely a fun holiday. And what do we know about the Super Bowl Sunday? What can we use as email marketers? How can we make a touchdown with email marketing? I really like this joke. I did not come up with a high Google to be honest. Yeah. So what do we know the first thing that people are buying food and merge specifically for the game, I found this statistic, that 79% of those who will be watching the game side said that they will spend a lot of money specifically on food, drinks and merch like this season for the Super Bowl. So 79% so most of people will have some sort of special shopping plans for the weekend. So if you are selling drinks, snacks, healthy snacks, unhealthy snacks, Candy merge clothes in colors of the teams, make sure to do some sort of like campaigns prior to Super Bowl. So people can, like, get this things in times for Super Bowl Sunday, in 2020 the spending reached $17.2 billion with consumer spending an average of 88 point $65 each on Super Bowl Sunday. So people are buying, I don’t know, like food, they are hosting the parties and stuff like that. We know that one in three people over the age of 35 that’s the another big thing that you should mind. We know that one in three people over the age of 35 will be checking their email during the game, and that’s actually something that I was surprised about. But obviously people are not just watching the TV. They are scrolling through their emails and Insta and Facebook all the time, and over 80% of people will be on their phone multiple times throughout the games. So we can, I think, like, safely assume that this same trends will apply to 2021 especially given the fact that probably the amount of parties and social gatherings will be decreased. So don’t be scared to send some campaigns on the day of Super Bowl and take the advantage of the discussion happening online about the game as well. Maybe you can do put together a super quick campaign, super relevant that is about something that is happening online, or you can send the campaigns that reference to some big moments of that game, or something like that. So definitely, Super Bowl Sunday is a big marketing holiday. People do expect to receive something from you. So don’t be scared to do something, something fun, something different. Create sales and do fun tweets and stuff like that. And, yeah, definitely prepare for this one, because that’s a big one.

Alissa  23:07 

Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m thinking about Super Bowl Sunday last year, and I didn’t care at all about the game, but we went out and bought a bunch of random snacks because my dad wanted to watch the game, and so we went out and bought all the stuff at the local grocery store, and we made zucchini fries for the first time, homemade. And like, yeah.

Vira  23:27 

That is thing?

Alissa  23:29 

Zucchini fries? Yes, oh my gosh. It is totally a thing. And it’s amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah, right, no, it’s great. It’s great. So we made zucchini fries. We just made a bunch of food, but we bought a bunch of beer and stuff. So yeah, it was definitely a lot of money spent that day, and we don’t even care about football. So yeah, it’s, that’s definitely a huge one as well. That’s interesting, though. I didn’t realize that so many people check their email during the game. I guess people have their phones, but that’s, that’s very interesting. So yeah, I guess it is a really good time.

Vira  24:01 

I mean, I’m checking my phone even when I’m watching Netflix. And that’s weird, because, I mean, you are watching freaking TV show. Why would you need another screen, right? But that’s something that I do, and I’m sure a lot of people are doing that as well.

Alissa  24:22 

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. The screen world never ends. So the next holiday is February 11, which is Don’t cry over spilled milk day, I died laughing when I saw we do like we do like an internal brainstorming session with all our account managers just before the next quarter starts. So then that way, we can create campaign calendars for our clients. And someone brought this up, and I was just, I had to mute my microphone, because we do everything. We do everything remotely. I had to mute my mic on Zoom because I was laughing so hard. I was like, Who on Earth invents these holidays like these are. But in either case, if you’re not familiar with the term, don’t cry over spilled milk. This holiday actually encourages us to leave the past in the past and move forward without regrets. If you’ve seen the movie where the Millers you know that tattoo that that kid has on his shoulder, on his chest, no regrets, with the RA.

Vira 25:19 

No regrets.

Alissa  25:17 

It cracks me up so much so this is kind of a funny opportunity to either like, reflect back on something that took place within your brand over the last year, even to maybe admit some kind of mistake that maybe your brand has made over the past year via via email. So for example, if you’ve had to send out an apology email because you double sent to a list of your subscribers, you could send them a fun little campaign on this holiday that’s either re apologizing for the minor mistake along with some kind of comical copy that’s tagged in there, but I say this very, very lightly, or make that suggestion very, very lightly, because you really don’t want to be bringing up any source subjects that some of your customers may still be mulling over. So for example, in the holiday season, which was not long ago at all, lots of customers, for lots of our clients, were very, very angry and very upset about the delay of shipping. I would not bring that up on Don’t cry over spilled milk day still definitely a sore subject, and I’m sure a lot of your customers are still trying to get over that. Trying to get over that. So if you do something, do something like that, just be careful, because this idea sauce suggestion does have the potential to go sour. Get it. So just tread very lightly. And if that’s something that is not applicable to you or your brand just doesn’t have, like, the comedic factor that it needs in order to get something across like this, then I would just keep the holiday internal to your actual team, and you guys can crying over spilled milk together internally and don’t involve customers, because it could go badly. It could very well go badly. But again, this is just like one of these other funny holidays where it’s like, Hey, did you know that this is the day in February, don’t cry over spilled milk?

Vira  26:59 

So, or if you are selling an actual milk, you can send the campaign saying something like, Hey, you spilled your Did you spill your milk? Don’t cry over it. Purchase a new one.

Alissa  27:18 

So I was gonna suggest that, but now I’m like, who sells milk online? Does anyone sell milk online?

Vira  27:23 

Oh, gosh, I know the company who sells toilet paper online, like they sell everything online. So I bet there are some companies who are selling milk.

Alissa  27:32 

I’m literally looking this up right now because I’m like.

Vira  27:34 

There must be something at least those companies who are selling fancy milks, like almond milk or oat milk or rice milk or whatever. So there must be something. Well, anyways, it’s a good one. I will definitely do something internally, that’s for sure. I’m not sure how I will be able to use it for my clients, but internally, oh yeah, we’ll definitely do something. So February the 12th, it’s the first day of Lunar New Year this year, and people also call it Chinese New Year. And this holiday is very near indirect to my heart, because I live in Vancouver, and probably, like half of population, or even more are from Asia, and lot of them are from China, specifically. So people do celebrate a Lunar New Year here. It’s a big, big holiday here, and I know that in San Francisco, like generally on West Coast, people do celebrate a Lunar New Year, and this year it will be on February 12. And it is great opportunity to run some sort of like promotions, just like to build relationships with a large consumer base. And I really like the last year uniclaw did a pretty cool uniclaw, the apparel brand. They did a really cool promotion. So in Asian, in Asian culture, in East Asia, specifically, the eight number is the number of luck. It’s number of new year. So it’s like a lucky number. So they did the entire promotion around the number eight. So Uniqlo had like, a bunch of sales, and their T shirt T shirts costed only, like $8 and you could get $8 off your entire order and stuff like that. So they had, like, this entire campaign planned around the first day of Lunar New Year. And that’s actually funny, because in this culture, the number four is also unlucky number because I think in Cantonese, I might be wrong, but I think in Cantonese, number four sounds the same as the death. So that’s why, very often in Vancouver’s, and that’s in Vancouver, it’s very funny. I didn’t realize it’s like that big of a deal. We, for example, in my building, we don’t have the floor four. We don’t have floor 1424, yeah, yeah. It’s just It goes like floor three, then floor five. I had no idea it’s really big, and I’ve seen it like when I travel to Asia. I’ve seen it like everywhere. But I didn’t realize that here in Northern. America, they are doing it as well, but Yeah, apparently the four is unlucky number, but eight is the lucky number. So keep it in mind if you’re creating some sort of campaigns for the Chinese New Year this year, yeah. And if you have any like specific product launches, like you are launching something red or something gold, maybe wait until the Lunar New Year, because that’s a good, good time to launch. I think Kate’s page last year did this entire promotion. They launched the line of, like, red red bags or something. And they had like, a rooster collection a few years ago as well. So if you have any exciting product launches, maybe wait till February the 12th.

Alissa  27:34 

Very cool.

Vira  27:34 

Yeah.

Alissa  27:34 

Wow. The four is like, I’m shocked, not in a bad way. I’m just like, wow. That is nuts.

Vira  27:34 

That’s interesting, right?

Alissa  27:34 

That is very interesting.

Vira  27:39 

I wonder if they celebrate the fourth birthday. I mean, if the kid is like, three, then what they are turning five right away. Like, they just like, don’t celebrate?

Alissa  31:02 

Or they just put the kid in a closet for the whole year.

Vira  31:04 

Yeah, for a year.

Alissa  31:09 

That is great. Wow, that’s wild. I had no idea, interesting. Okay, so now we’ve finally reached the big one, which is February 14, I guess unlucky as well, Valentine’s day or Valentime’s Day. We’re still pending our final results on that poll, Valentine versus Valentime, so we’ll get back to you on that.

Vira  31:31 

I vote for Valentime’s just because it sounds cool.

Alissa  31:34 

It just reminds it reminds me so much of elementary school. Cracks me up. It really does. So for Valentine’s Day, this is a huge, huge, huge one, and we would strongly recommend not waiting until the actual day to create a promotion or encourage your subscribers to make a Valentine’s Day related purchase. Big holidays like this should be nurtured over time, so make sure that you start promoting whatever your brand will do for Valentine’s Day at the end of January, I would say, kind of at the latest, before we move on to the next idea for February, though, it is important that you have the statistics that we love to share with you all that will really drive home why this holiday is so big. So the National Research Federation has reported that Valentine’s Day spending is actually on the up with the total spend in the USA expected to rise to $27.4 billion in 2020 which is up 32% from last year’s record $20.7 billion yeah, so we’ll see what the numbers look like this year. But 2020 was a big one, and 2019 was a little less. So I’m assuming that this year again, it’ll just continue to go up. Additionally, on average, over half of the US adults, 51% plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day, which presents an excellent opportunity for businesses to earn an additional revenue during this time of year. So because everyone is celebrating, it would be very foolish to ignore a holiday that most people are celebrating or commemorating. So even if you don’t have, like, a specific promotion or anything that you can necessarily offer to your customers that is chocolates and love and butterflies and teddy bears and blah, blah, blah. Take the opportunity to just offer a little value to your customers and provide them some ideas around how they can make the day special for their loved one when it comes so give them ideas for a stay at home date night or something that they can do that’s fun and free. Just give them different kind of ideas. And if you can incorporate the use of your product in any of those ideas, even better. Seriously, you have a huge opportunity to get creative. And like I said before, we mean business when we say this is the big one, so don’t let Valentine’s Day pass your brand by without a plan.

Vira  33:52 

Yeah. And just like you, Alissa mentioned, the the sooner you start this promotions, the better, because keep in mind that people are often shopping for gifts, so running the promotion on 14th might not be the smartest ideas idea, because people will not be able to get something they purchase from you in times, in time for Valentine’s, right? So for some of my clients, I’m not joking. We’re starting as early as, like, one month before the Valentine’s. And those are for those, like jewelry brands that I work with, obviously, for them, this is probably, like the biggest holiday of the year, because they are in like, jewelry business, right? It’s probably chocolate jewelry and flowers. This is their like, biggest, biggest months of the year. But you can just like you Alissa mentioned you, it doesn’t have to be something like salesy. It doesn’t have to be like a promotion. You can maybe create the, I don’t know, like the list of gift ideas for him or and for her, or maybe you can do something around the self care or loving your surroundings, or loving. Earth, nature, community, you can do, like, the entire month of love, or something like that. It doesn’t have to be catered specifically to those who are in, like, romantic relationships. You know, the amounts of self care, the months of love. That’s a good idea as well. For one of my clients, I’m selling this, like gut supplements. This does not sound like the most romantic gift at all, but last year, we created a few campaigns like give someone you care about the gift of health or something like that, or like, show yourself some love so you can, you can tweak it, and it doesn’t have to be necessarily like romantic stuff, the months of love. It’s an excellent idea. Self love, self care, loving people around you, loving earth, for God’s sakes. You have a lot of a lot of things to play with.

Alissa  35:53 

So many options, so many options. Love is everywhere. Yeah, love is everywhere if you look for it. I told you this was an episode of love, so we’re gonna talk about it. And speaking of love, I love this next little holiday. It’s called Random Acts of Kindness Day, and it takes place on February 17. So I love this one. Love, love, love, because it’s so sweet and encourages people to just be nice, which I feel like has been very rare in the last year, is seeing people be nice to each other. So what you can do as a business is you can start a trend or a kindness chain through your brand. And there are a couple different options to this. So this initial option take, kind of takes away from the randomness and kind of the like secrecy behind you doing something nice for another person, but you can let your subscribers know that you’ll be holding some kind of competition for the best random act of kindness that they would anonymously submit to you. So they’ll send it to you. And obviously you’re not going to you as a brand. Aren’t going to publicize who did what random act of kindness. That would take away from the randomness of it. Or what you could do is you could let your brand be the catalyst for this and offer all of your subscribers a free gift or a seriously kind deal. And this is a great day to also promote your referral program if you have one. So it’s that whole concept of, you know, you get what you give, right? Give kindness. Get kindness. Hey, today is Random Acts of Kindness Day. Give your best friend $15 off their purchase with us, and we will give you $15 off your next purchase with us, something like that. So then that way, you’re kind of coinciding a program or an initiative that you already have going in your brand or with your company that’s important to you, obviously, you want to promote it as much as possible. You want to get some more referrals. However, you’re also putting it in line with a really nice little holiday, like I said that I love, which is the Random Acts of Kindness Day. So have a think around it, because people are all about when brands like to start these kinds of trends. So, like, you know when you start a trend by smiling at someone, and then your smile gets passed on to the next person and the next person and the next person. So start it with a random act of kindness on February 17 this year.

Vira  38:12 

And even if you have some sort of like charity that you are donating to from your brand, maybe that’s something that you can feature as well on the Random Acts of Kindness Day. Maybe, again, you can donate some proceeds to some certain organization or something like that. Just like be, be creative with it. That’s that’s a really good and sweet little holiday. Love it. Love it. Another thing that you can do is the contest. Actually, are the contest something as simple as sending an email to your subscribers and encouraging them to post the images of themselves on their social media using the hashtag, and then you will randomly pick the winner, or something like that, or you can introduce like, some sort of like, specific hashtag just to increase the visibility of those images on social media, just be creative with it. People like this gamification of marketing, right? And January 2018 Uber actually did a great, awesome, awesome campaign. Now when I’m thinking about it, it might as well be the random active Act of Kindness Day, but they urge their users to give a compliment to their drivers for, like, a really, really good service using the hashtag beyond five stars. So people were using this hashtags thanking their drivers, and then Uber, just like, randomly picked some people, the winners, basically, and rewarded them with some like Uber credits or something like that. So, yeah, it’s a really sweet little thing. It generates, it helps you to generate some user generated content, which is great because you will be able to reuse it in your future marketing efforts, right? And with this example, with Uber the brand also featured some of the most complimented drivers in a series of video ads. So this campaign was definitely a success, and it helped them a lot with expanding social media presence and, like, overall reach, and just like with creating this sweet, nice brand image. So contest, think about it really easy to it’s really easy to run them, but the return can be huge.

Alissa  40:24 

Yeah, contests are always a good one, too, and that’s something that a lot of the clients that I’m working with are starting to do a lot more of. They want to do these giveaways and these contests over time on a monthly basis, because it just drives up the subscriber rate and the new people that you get to interact with, but then it also continues to engage your regular audience. So it’s a hit. It definitely is a hit, okay? And the last one, the last way to make your customers fall in love with you this February check in on their New Year’s resolutions. Yeah, right. By this point, it’s highly likely that most of your subscribers have actually fallen off the new year, new me bandwagon, and that I fall off.

Vira  41:10 

It was my Spanish. I promised myself that I will be learning Spanish this year. Oh, well, I missed already, like four lessons out of five so.

Alissa  41:21 

Yeah, we’re recording this. Today is January 8, and I already gave up on my news resolutions. However, I am pregnant, so I have an excuse, so I hope who are listening have not given up. Because if you have what is your excuse? But just because your subscribers have kind of fallen off the bandwagon. There’s no need to shame them for it. What you can do is you can take this opportunity to action actually remind them of the momentum that they had when the year started, and that this year is going to be even better if they make it better for themselves. Encourage them to get back on the horse. A campaign like this can be a really friendly nudge or a gentle push, or even turn into a seriously inspirational source of motivation for your subscribers. You want to treat them like your friends. You know, obviously they’re your customers, and there’s a level of respect the customer is always right, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you want to treat them like your friends, and you want to talk to them and get on the same level as them, so why not push them to be the best version of themselves in your emails? And if they can do that or achieve that, even more so with your products, you can throw that pitch into the mix. So like with the gut health pill that Vira was talking about for one of her clients, this is a really good she could use that in the sense of, hey, what are your New Year’s resolutions? Obviously, your health is super important this year. How are you doing? Like we’re doing a pulse check. If you feel like you’ve fallen off the bandwagon, that’s totally okay. We’re here to motivate you and remind you that it’s really important to get serious about your health this year. By the way, we have a product that will help you do that even more successfully. This is the product. Make sure that you check it out and just shoot us a message if you have any questions. So you’re not necessarily saying, buy my product so you can accomplish but you’re also just kind of promoting it, keeping it top of mind. And who knows, maybe they will buy from that campaign. So yeah, definitely check in on your subscribers, because they like to know that you care about them and that you care about their progress in life.

Vira  43:21 

That’s that’s a good one. Yeah.

Alissa  43:22 

With that being said, we have given you 12 ways to make your customers fall in love with you. That’s 12 different love potions. If any of these 12 don’t work for you, I don’t know what way. Totally kidding, but these are just some ideas to to kind of ramp up what you’re doing for the month of February and get your customers engaged and involved, and just make sure that you kind of stay on top of it and get creative and be fun about it too. But in either case, thank you guys so much for listening today. Make sure that you don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, and if you’re waiting for a very special day to do it, make sure that you do it on February 17 Random Acts of Kindness Day, because Kindness Day, because that would be very kind of you to share this podcast with your friends, and if you are interested in getting some more advice on how to establish a solid email marketing strategy for your e commerce Store, obviously you’ve tapped into our resources already that we have as as a company Flowium, but make sure that you Visit us at flowium.com/contact and you can sign up for a free consultation. You’ll essentially just have a conversation with someone on our team. They’ll kind of review what you’re doing currently, email marketing wise, and just be able to kind of guide you in the right direction of what to do next. So definitely make sure you check it out.

Vira  44:35 

Yeah, and next week, come back, because we will be talking about the segmentation, probably the topic that we get the most questions about. So next week, we will be talking about how to segment your list to increase open rates in 2021 come back. This is a very important topic. We want you to succeed. You might be creating the best campaigns ever, but if no one is seeing them because you’re. Of our ability rates are low. Why even bother? So come back and we’ll teach you some basics of the list segmentation, and thank you again for coming today. I hope it was helpful for you 12 awesome ideas. It does not mean that you have to implement each and every one of them, but I’m sure you got something out of this podcast today. So thanks so much for listening.

Alissa  45:23 

Thank you guys. See you next week.

Vira  45:24  

See you next week.