Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Marketing Strategies

Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Marketing Strategies

Valentine’s Day is a popular day for shoppers, with many people shopping for gifts throughout the month of February, and often at the last minute. Using the right marketing strategies for your business ahead of Valentine’s Day, you’ll be able to capitalize on it and boost sales. You don’t even need to sell Valentine’s Day-related products to make the most of this special day.


If you want to optimize your marketing before Valentine’s Day arrives, the following are some last-minute Valentine’s Day mobile marketing tips to keep in mind:

1.Launch a Valentine’s Day Promotion

One way to approach Valentine’s Day marketing is to create a promotion centered around this day. Some of the potential items you can include in your promotions may include free gifts with purchases of a certain product or amount, free shipping, free gift wrapping, and more.
As you start the promotion, you can engage in a number of promotional activities to bring attention to it before Valentine’s Day arrives. For example, you could release announcements on social media, send promotional emails to leads and existing customers, and launch holiday-specific ads.
Another way to attract people to your promotion is to use interactive in-app stories that connect with users. With Storyly, you can highlight Valentine’s Day promotions, push specific products, and do much more to keep users engaged and encourage them to make a purchase.

2.Run a Valentine’s Day Sale

Valentine’s Day is a great time to run a sales campaign to connect with millions of shoppers. Offering a discount is a great way to encourage more people to make a purchase, whether driving eCommerce sales or attempting to get people to spend more money on an app.
If you want to get the most from your sale, use a combination of sales popups that immediately alert people to a sale and promotional emails. With the right timing and promotion across multiple platforms, you’ll draw attention to your sale and bring more people on board.

3.Offer Gift Guides

In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, many people spend time trying to determine the perfect gift to buy for their partners and others. You can gain the trust and business of these people by creating and publishing gift guides.
There are several ways to launch gift guides online, with the ability to release them in the form of emails, landing pages, popups, blog posts, social media posts, and app stories. In the process, you’ll help direct people toward the right gifts, which can include your own products.
Keep in mind that different audiences will want to purchase different gifts. This is why you should create multiple gift guides for different audiences. You can even develop gift guides based on the recipient’s occupation or interests. Don’t be afraid to explore a multitude of ideas and connect them back to your offerings.

4.Create a Sense of Urgency

It’s in your best interest to drive urgency in your marketing before Valentine’s Day. By creating a fear of missing out (FOMO), you can encourage more people to buy from you. One way to go about this is to implement a countdown timer that indicates how long people have before a sale runs out.
However, you shouldn’t make people feel guilty for not taking advantage of a sales period. In your messaging, try to evoke a sense of urgency while still being playful and gentle about it. For example, you could simply remind people in an email that time is running out to buy certain discounted items. You can also display the last date the sale will be available.
With the help of Storyly, you can easily generate FOMO in creative and engaging ways using in-app stories. One way to do so is to include an in-app countdown timer, along with personalized stories that promote specific discounted products based on the user’s interests. This will help convert more people without stressing them out too much.

5.Promote the Most Relevant Products

While you might not sell products that are specifically related to Valentine’s Day or the concept of love surrounding it, you can still tie the day to your offerings. If you’re an eCommerce business, you might find that you offer products that people would love to purchase as gifts for others.
As an example, a business that sells hardware could promote gifts that recipients would love, including everything from building supplies to power tools. Meanwhile, a news app might offer discounts on subscriptions that can make for great gifts for avid readers.
Storyly makes it easy to use in-app stories to promote products of all types, with the ability to personalize each story. Using engaging visuals and messaging, along with clear CTAs and one-click purchase options, you’ll be able to drive sales for relevant products.

6.Use Valentine’s Day-Themed Visuals

If you’re worried about sticking to cliches around Valentine’s Day, don’t be. People still love the traditional visual elements that appear every Valentine’s Day, including those chalky heart-shaped candies and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. You can also go heavy on the pink, red, and white associated with this day. Feel free to implement these visuals and integrate them into everything from your website to your in-app experience.

7.Show Value to Your Customers

While you may want to promote gift ideas for people to send to others, show your customers that you care about them. Simply sending emails with special deals for your existing customers can let them know that you appreciate their business, which can keep them loyal to you. A couple of other Valentine’s Day marketing ideas include providing free items with each purchase and adding certain perks to orders for free. If you can show your customers some love, they’ll be grateful for it and keep coming back to you.
One method of showing appreciation to customers is to send them a Valentine’s Day card, which you can do either via email or in-app stories. These cards can feature Valentine’s Day-relevant visuals and messaging, along with a promotion or special offer that offers a general gift as opposed to specific products or services.

8.Encourage People to Leave Reviews

While it’s important for businesses to show their love for customers, it’s acceptable to ask for some love in return. On your website, social media channels, and in your app, you can kindly ask people to leave reviews. For instance, you might send a message saying something like, “Do you love using our app? Express that love with a review!” You can then include a link for people to click on to leave a review in the app store or another platform. This will help increase the number of positive reviews for your brand. It can also encourage people who’ve enjoyed a positive experience with your brand to return after periods of disengagement.

9.Clearly Show Delivery Dates

With the date fast approaching, people want to know exactly how much time they have to make a purchase before it arrives. As such, the very first item that many people are likely to check before completing a purchase is the delivery date. To give these customers what they want, make sure delivery dates are clearly visible across your website and in your app.
In addition to including the date of delivery, you can also indicate the last day people can order to receive or send the gift on time. You might include text at the bottom of a certain item that says people have until the 9th of February to receive an order on time, for instance. This will let people know precisely how long they have to complete an order, helping create a sense of urgency.


10.Target Last-Minute Shoppers

Throughout the holiday season and into Valentine’s Day, shoppers often procrastinate when buying gifts for their loved ones. You can connect with these people by targeting them specifically with your marketing.
Again, you should avoid making shoppers feel guilty for waiting until the last minute to make a purchase. Instead, you can give comfort to these shoppers with certain offers. You could do so by offering fast delivery for last-minute purchases, for example, which could lead to upsells as more people select next-day shipping and other options.
You also have the ability to help last-minute shoppers with some quick gift lists that help people quickly decide on a gift. You can even offer free same-day shipping or other faster shipping options for free with orders over a certain dollar amount, which would further increase shoppers’ maximum cart value. People are willing to spend more on last-minute gifts if it means satisfying the recipient, especially on Valentine’s Day. At the same time, you should make sure the purchase matches the value, which will help maintain customer loyalty while maintaining profitability.

11.Offer Limited-Time Products

If possible, you may also be able to offer some limited-edition products that people would love to purchase ahead of Valentine’s Day. One example of a successful launch of a limited-edition product around Valentine’s Day was Ferrero’s candies.
In 2021, Ferrero launched a line of Valentine’s Day-themed candies with shoppable links to encourage more sales. The line included a variety of offerings such as the Ferrero Rocher® Rose, which included six hazelnut chocolates contained in a rose gift box. Other items in this lineup included hand-crafted chocolates in the Ferrero Golden Valley Signature® Heart Box, heart-shaped Crunch candies, and an assorted chocolate package with Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, and other candy bars in the mix.
The right limited-time products will further add a sense of urgency to your brand experience and encourage more people to take advantage of this opportunity. You can also find ways to offer limited-edition products for future holidays as you plan ahead for the next holiday season.

12.Don’t Forget About Single People

Although many think of Valentine’s Day as a holiday almost exclusively geared toward couples, the fact is that it can equally cater to singles. While single people may not necessarily purchase gifts for others, they may still want to treat themselves to something. You may even benefit from creating entire marketing campaigns to target single audiences, with messaging and visuals that show them some love leading up to Valentine’s Day. By targeting this audience, you’ll also ensure that you appeal to people who might otherwise feel left out by your couples-oriented Valentine’s Day promotions.

Create Effective Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaigns

With these Valentine’s Day mobile marketing tips in mind, you’ll have the chance to connect with audiences of all types in the days before. There are many ways to approach these campaigns and build some excitement around this special occasion while showing your audience that you value them. In turn, you’ll drive more engagement and sales while acquiring new users and customers who are likely to keep engaging with your brand.
Keep in mind that Valentine’s Day is one of the most profitable days of the year. In fact, Statista found that spending on Valentine’s Day in the U.S. would climb to around $24 billion in 2022, which is about a $2 billion increase from 2021. This is why it’s in your business’s best interests to market ahead of this day.
To get the best possible results from your Valentine’s Day marketing, you need to implement the right tools. Having the most effective marketing tools and solutions available will enable you to establish a strong connection with audiences and boost both engagement and sales. The key is knowing what to look for based on your specific needs.
With Storyly’s in-app stories behind your Valentine’s Day app marketing efforts, you’ll be able to generate more engagement and excitement. Use these stories to promote specific products and discounts in the days ahead of Valentine’s Day. You can highlight promotions for certain products with shoppable videos, for instance, which could feature a popular influencer encouraging people to make a purchase, with a CTA button that takes them directly to the product page. You can also make offers with personalized stories that target users based on their interests, buyer behavior, and order history. Interactive stories can also continually engage with users to take them through gift guides and more.
Ultimately, with the help of Storyly and a solid Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, you’ll get the best possible results and increase your bottom line.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deniz Tasyürek

Content & Brand Marketing Strategist at Storyly. Writes about mobile user behavior, user engagement, and retention. A genuine Potterhead. She also loves succulents, cats, and aerial yoga.

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