Valentine’s Day gives us the opportunity to more openly express how deeply we care about our customers. As a short-lived holiday season, your Valentine’s day marketing email strategies don’t have a lot of time for waste or room for error. With smart planning, it’s not difficult to optimize on the love and happiness around us – even if it only lasts a weekend. We’ve got 5 sweet email tips you can choose from.

1. Write Irresistible Subject Lines

Forrest Gump’s “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get’ can be applied to email subject lines. Keep them short, to the point and add a call to action. In other words, take a small bite of that chocolate and show them what they’re “gonna get.”

You can also take the approach of showing some understanding to your reader. Writer Sean Platt has experienced a 90-100% open rate with the subject line “You are not alone.” Why does this work? Readers want to feel that someone is on their side. When it seems like the rest of the world is out to a romantic dinner, an email that reflects how you’re feeling on the big day could be just as good.

Another approach is to give the reader what they want: Lists. Time is precious, so by telling your readers how many things they need to read ahead of time, and what the subject is they’ll be more inclined to open.  You could say something like:

• 3 Reasons Why Marketer’s Hate Valentine’s Day.
• 6 Phrases We Wish Were On Those Candy Hearts.
•  It’s not me, it’s you!

Don’t assume one subject line will fit all. Valentine’s day is marketed to folks in a relationship, but there are some folks out there who wish the day never existed. Using A/B testing to determine which subject line gets the most love and then sending the winner to the majority of your list is the surest way to increase open and click-through rates.

2.Timing Is Everything

Retailers know that the shopping spike is limited to a one-week window before Valentine’s Day. Online purchases follow suit, but due to opportunity (or desperation) the purchase time is often at the 11th hour. What can you provide to your customers during this limited opportunity?

To begin with, you can plant seeds for gift suggestions well before February 14. Actually, now would be a great time to start. Develop a weekly series of messages, or a drip, that influence your customers into thinking about a few unique gift ideas.

Start with a friendly reminder and if you can, offer a sale or promotion on your product. And of course send that last drip on the 11th hour targeted to relieve the desperation. And why not send one last email with helpful advice after the big day for those buffoons who forget. Help them out!

3.  Forget me not: Use ReMail To Boost Conversions

If you started your initial email campaign early enough you can send a re-mail to those who did not open the first time. If you are an e-commerce vendor you can send a shopping cart abandonment campaign. At least 60% percent of online buyers pile items in their cart and then abandon for a variety of reasons. A remail campaign with a gentle reminder “Forget Me Not, You Left Items in Your Shopping Cart” could be a great way to reel those customers back in. This type of email can increase conversions by 10-12 %.

4. Mobile Friendly Design Is The Key To Their Heart

If your marketing campaign is to sell or to just share some news with you customer, if you take away anything from this list please optimize for the mobile user. 70% of mobile users will delete an email if it’s hard to read on their mobile phone. In fact, your best bet is to consider a design that is optimized for mobile first. For more tips on how to create a responsive design read: How Mobile Are Your Emails?

 

5. Get personal

When it comes to the holidays, we sometimes tend to disregard what we know about successful email campaigns and get caught up in the event itself. While the idea is to be fun and timely your ultimate goal is to see a return on your investment.  Add value into your message with personalization both in the subject line and body copy.  If you have data on your prospects such as gender. You can personalize the email design using dynamic content to create male and female oriented campaigns. Suggestions on what he can give her and vice versa.

If you need help with concepts or deployment this holiday season, give us a holler and lets spread the love!