Lot of people have been asking about Valentines Day ideas for promotions.

It’s a great time for eCommerce stores. Why not right?

It’s a commercially invented holiday haha! There was a time when no one rushed out and bought anything on Valentines… and trucks didn’t park by gas stations with fresh roses for those Men who dare and come home empty handed.

If you sell flowers, chocolates, lingerie or jewelry… the promos for this holiday write themselves.If you sell more practical things, or supplements, pet items or kitchen things.. it gets a bit more tricky.

Still the angles are:
Who you love to show you care in your life
Your own self care and loving yourself
Blessing others and thinking of those who’ve lost someone recently (This holiday is especially hard for those folks)
… and just about anything that invites a cute heart/pink/love related Instagram pic.

My favorite style of campaign for Valentines Day is the gift unlock approach.

V-Day is all about gifting.

So it makes sense to break V-Day into a 5-7 day promo where each day you ‘unlock’ a new deal.
These can be 24 hour discounts on products or a single-day coupon.

You can go all in and build custom landers for each (highest converting / highest labor) or go basic and don’t touch anything and do a one-day price modification, or a one-time coupon.

Here’s what that looks like executed:

Email 1 – We picked YOU to be our valentine!

Announce what’s going to be hitting their inbox over the next X days.

Explain how much you care, how like any other valentine, you intend to shower them with some gifts and thanks for being a valued subscriber.

Pinch of company mission / love yourself etc.

End with a tease of what deal one is going to be.
In this you can mention what it does, how it works, why people love it but NOT what it is, or how great the deal will be. Just that there WILL be a deal.

Email 2 – For your eyes only… (does x benefit / surprising thing)

V-Day themed header + pic of thing
Headline announcing the deal
Benefits / info about what the thing does/is
Why it helps you love yourself, your kitchen, your pet or your partner etc.
Call to action
Reminder this is a 24 hr deal
P.S. Tease the next item for tomorrow

Email 3 – SWAK (love yourself/pet/partner this way)

Next 3-4 emails are like this.
Last email in the series you might mention this is our last V-Day deal… / We saved the best for last etc.

Segmentation and Conversion

I’d exclude anyone who bought each item in the last 30 days so they don’t feel burned they didn’t wait for a deal.

If you do 6 days (as an even number for example) make 3 amazing deals and 3 average deals.

The amazing ones, go deeper on your opens (120-180 day openers + recently subscribed, bought, active on site)
3 of them – the less crazy deals can go to the 60-90 day openers, clickers, buyers (hot list)

Timing of your sale

This Feb 14 (2020) is a Friday.

So the sale can easily go Thurs-Mon or just Fri/Sat/Sun.

It doesn’t matter that the items won’t arrive by V-Day (unless you really do sell Chocolates, Flowers, Candy, Lingerie – then you need to run this sale at LEAST the week before and consider making packages that ship to the lower 48 states or Canada in time for Valentines Day.