The Valentine’s Day Playbook for Retail Marketers

Love is in the air on February 14th. 

Maybe you’re planning a romantic dinner with your SO (think Lady and the Tramp-style spaghetti) or you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day’s sibling holiday, Galentine’s Day with your best friends.

But for every retail marketer, it’s your chance to grab that bow and quiver and play Cupid — matching each of your shoppers with the perfect product. It’s an opportunity to think outside of the heart-shaped box and offer unique, personalized gifts to help your shoppers make a lasting impression.

To help get you Valentine’s Day-ready, we put together a list of strategies and campaigns designed for retail marketers who are ready to get their shoppers in the holiday mood. Take a look below to see how you can engage each of your shoppers, and create relationships that will last — all while driving revenue.

10 retail marketing plays for Valentine’s Day

The “True Love”

The best place to start when it comes to courting Valentine’s Day shoppers is to target everyone who bought from you in the lead up to Valentine’s Day last year. To do it, you can send these Valentine’s Day shoppers a special “anniversary” email that triggers 365 days after purchase with a reminder to buy again. This anniversary messaging helps customers remember that they bought from you last year and can even refresh their memory of what exactly they bought. For your most high value customers, you might even extend this anniversary messaging to other channels, such as Facebook and search.

The “Text Me”

Let’s face it, the least romantic thing on Valentine’s Day is when your special someone shows up empty handed. So don’t let your shoppers be the ultimate V-Day buzzkill. By relaying shipping cutoffs, you can make sure the products your shoppers want arrive before the 14th. This way, you can capitalize on shopper urgency, and help your last-minute shoppers get their gifts. Include shipping cutoff notifications as banners on your email, or as banners on your ecommerce site. To add a little extra oomph, texting your shoppers with shipping cutoffs with reminders for the items they browsed or carted for Valentine’s Day will help capitalize even more on shopper urgency, so you can seal the deal.

The “Rockstar”

Unlock the secrets of your product catalog to really drive revenue for Valentine’s Day. There are a few different types of products you should keep an eye out for here to boost conversion rates. First, is products that have both the highest conversion rates and the most views — your rockstars. Second, are products that have generated the most revenue — your cash cows. Third, your products that may seem like wallflowers, with low views but actually have high conversion rates — your hidden gems. By surfacing these products, especially to shoppers who are most likely to buy within those categories, you can surface your best sellers and increase conversion.

The “Perfect Match”

Everyone wants to impress on Valentine’s Day, so what better way to do it than with a complementary gift? Once your shopper makes their first purchase, get started on their second, with cross-category buying. Not only does cross-category buying drive revenue, but it also increases lifetime value. For example, if your shopper buys a briefcase, send them a recommendation to extend the gift even further with a sports coat. Or if your shopper buys some perfume, send a follow up to buy some lotion. This also gives the receiver an opportunity to discover more to love from their favorite brands.

The “Spice it Up”

Spice up your shoppers’ carts with more to love — and boost that cart size — with a few different strategies. Create an audience of high spenders, and launch site pop-ups for them with product recommendations to keep their site journey going with recommendations that will surface just for them. If they don’t go for the bait before checkout, then add product recommendations to their checkout flow to fill the digital checkout aisle with fun add-ons. 

The “My Treat”

Some shoppers are working with a little less this year due to inflation. Keep them apprised of any updates to your product catalog, like price drops with a price drop trigger. That way, they know as soon the product hits a price they’ll be willing to purchase at. You should trigger price drop notifications via SMS to make sure they know as soon as there’s a change in price. You should also create audiences of shoppers that are more likely to convert with a discount and surface discounts to those shoppers on site or on email to encourage them to make that purchase. Important to note: make sure you exclude your full-price buyers from Valentine’s Day discounts to save bottom line. 

The “Pick Me”

There are a lot of people out there right now frantically texting their moms and sisters for gift recommendations that will wow their partners. Make it really easy for them to choose with gift guides. A strategically compiled and well-placed gift guide can go a long way toward helping shoppers find the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. As you create these gift guides, consider opportunities to get targeted, for example by creating guides like “gifts for the new beau,” “gifts for your girls” and “gifts you can enjoy together.” Gift guides go great anywhere, so find your shoppers where they’re most likely to engage — text, email, or paid media — to get the word out and increase the chance that they open and explore.

The “Email Me”

Once shoppers start admiring your products, you need to target them with just the right recommendations to seal the deal. By tapping data about which products customers have browsed and which products they have a predicted affinity toward, you can send more segmented — and therefore more relevant — emails that increase engagement and conversions. To take this one step further, you can evaluate product data to identify those “hidden gems,” or products that have a high conversion rate but low traffic, to identify the best products to get in front of customers to drive additional revenue. Finally, you can marry these product recommendations with targeted offers by separating your full price buyers from your discount buyers and sending different offers to each group to preserve your margins

The “My Girls”

Get your ladies in formation for Galentine’s Day. Help shoppers celebrate the best friends in their life with offers and recommendations specific to your Galentine’s Day shoppers — whether it’s games, books, bags, or self-care. Target shoppers who purchase specific categories like self-care, candles, or whatever categories in your catalog your Galentine’s Day shoppers might love and send recommendations within those categories. Who says you need an SO to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Give shoppers an excuse to get themselves a little something special and celebrate themselves along with their girl squad — the options are endless.

The “Love Everlasting”

Don’t let your shoppers ghost you after Valentine’s Day. Play the long game this year, to catch all your shoppers’ identifiers so you can keep them coming back for more throughout the year. Set up an email capture for Valentine’s Day with a special offer when they subscribe for both emails and text. Right after Valentine’s Day, send an email encouraging them to come back to your site to buy something for themselves for a quick second purchase. You can also create audiences of holiday shoppers and send them notifications for holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and all the holidays in between. 

Put a little love in their carts

Don’t be afraid to get in the Valentine’s Day spirit and show your customers some love. Whether your shoppers are celebrating with their significant other, celebrating with their best friends and family, or just celebrating themselves, make sure you surface the best gifts for them.

 After all, love is in the air and in the aisles.