5 St. Valentine’s Email Campaign Ideas (Plus, 22 Examples)

5 St. Valentine’s Email Campaign Ideas (Plus, 22 Examples)
Ivan Kreimer Ivan Kreimer Jan 27, 2023 —  9 min read

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and that means one thing: an opportunity for your store to increase its sales and revenue.

In the United States, St. Valentine’s Day is the fifth-largest consumer spending event after the Christmas holidays and Mother’s Day.

In 2022, the National Retail Federation estimated 53% of adults planned to celebrate this date, spending $23.9 billion in total — an average of $175.41 per person.

Something similar was observed in the United Kingdom, where 76% of Brits were expected to celebrate the day, and sales were projected at £1.37 billion, the second-highest ever recorded.

With so much money to make, you may ask yourself, “how can I take advantage of this date?”

The answer is by targeting your email list.

In this article, you will find 5 effective St. Valentine’s Day email campaign ideas and 22 examples to inspire you and help you profit from this important date.


1. Remember that it’s all about gifts

Like most holiday dates, St. Valentine’s Day allows consumers to show appreciation to their loved ones.

How? By buying them gifts.

Since St. Valentine’s gifts aren’t meant for the buyers but for other people, you must target your email marketing campaigns towards selling your products as such.

AllTrails’ email campaign for Valentine’s Day suggests buying a pro subscription for the loved ones

To start, consider offering gift cards. That will fit the intent behind Valentine’s Day purchases. Most importantly, it will make buying something for their loved ones easier when the date is too close, and the product won’t be delivered on time.

Aerie promotes gift cards via their Valentine’s email campaign

If you don’t currently sell any products as gifts, change the frame. Your products shouldn’t be geared towards your subscribers (your customers) but their romantic partners.

Your subscribers and their special ones will share the benefits of your products, whoever that may be (we’ll talk about this point later in the article). So make this shared benefit the main angle of your emails.

Cracker Barrel Valentine’s Day email campaign

You can also incentivize the sale of your products by giving a time-sensitive discount for this date.

If you plan your campaign properly (which we’ll explain at the end), you should send the discounts early, so your list is primed to buy as the date looms closer.

LOLA SHOETIQUE mentions shipping time in their Valentine’s Day email campaign

When creating your campaigns, it wouldn’t be wise to target your entire list because some people will simply not be interested in shopping for Valentine’s Day.

To solve this issue, you have two options: an easy but less effective solution and a slightly challenging but more effective one.

The first one is to send emails to your entire list while including a section for more general shopping needs, like in the example below.

Notorious Nooch combines V-day offers with general shopping needs in their Valentine’s Day email campaign

However, if you want to stick to the best practices of Valentine’s email campaigns, it’s better to make your emails all about one thing — in this case, buying a gift — than to dilute it with competing offers.

A better solution is to send one to three emails at least two weeks before February 14th (Valentine’s Day, if you didn’t know 😅) to gauge your list’s interest.

You can do so by tagging everyone who opens or clicks any link related to your Valentine’s Day campaign. All your following emails will be sent to this sub-group from your list.

For example, this is what the first email in your Valentine’s Day campaign may look like:

Neiman Marcus sends a series of Valentine’s Day emails to gauge their subscribers’ interest in this holiday offers

(Targeting those who open your emails will give you a larger number but less effective results. However, this might be your best bet if your list is small. To counteract this problem, make your subject line and preview text clearly about Valentine’s Day so your clicks are more relevant.)

Last but not least, it’s important to note that your Valentine Day’s gifting strategy should extend beyond your email campaigns and also encompass your website offers.

For example, you can tailor the design of your email opt-in forms to the Valentine’s Day theme and offer a discount or a gift for new subscribers:

And if you pair it with a limited-time offer, you can both grow your email list and generate more sales from new subscribers. For example, you can mention that the discount coupon expires on the 14th of February, and they should hurry up if they want to take advantage of it.

💡 Explore our holiday banner collection to find more website popups designed to help you promote a Valentine’s Day sale.

2. Highlight the romance in your offer

Most non-religious holidays are based on love. For example, Mother’s Day is about expressing our love to our mothers.

St. Valentine’s Day is similar in this regard, but not quite. More than love, February 14th is a date of romance.

We’re not going to discuss the difference between love and romance. What matters is that the intent of Valentine’s Day differs from a non-romantic holiday like Mother’s Day or Halloween or a religious one like Christmas.

Simply put, romance has a more intimate, private, and even sexual connotation than love.

Many couples have long-standing, happy relationships, but many lose the romance along the way. A Valentine’s Day gift is intended to stir those feelings back.

Sending an email with discounts alone won’t cut it.

Make your St. Valentine’s Day email marketing campaigns about the shared love between your customers and their plus-ones (and the benefits they will experience after the purchase).

How can you do that? To start, highlight anything about your products that could be considered romantic. This will be easier for brands that sell intrinsically romantic products like candles.

Example of a Valentine’s Day email campaign from Candle Delirium

You should also make your copy and imagery showcase the way both partners will enjoy the product together.

Everist uses their Valentine’s Day campaign to show that couples can enjoy their products together

You can also explain how giving a gift and the love behind it will impact the recipients of such gifts. This is especially important for brands that sell “non-romantic” products.

LIEBHERR uses a Valentine’s Day campaign to promote completely non-romantic products

3. Give options, not just discounts

St. Valentine’s Day is universally popular because anyone can enjoy it. For your business, it means that it doesn’t matter if you target 20-year-old women or 50-year-old men; if they have a romantic partner, you can sell to them.

But how you sell to them is what makes the difference. Because, as we said, neither discounts nor generic promotions will cut it.

To make the most out of your Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, you want to give options.

Don’t just offer gifts, but a variety of them that different customers could use.

One way is by packaging your products around specific use cases. Highlight what makes each option unique and how that benefits the recipient of the gifts.

Urban Stems offers a variety of romantic bouquets in their Valentine’s Day promo email

You can also promote your products based on their categories. A fashion brand can sell knitwear, shoes, t-shirts, and so on — but always focused on the romance of the occasion, as explained before.

Finally, you can target specific demographics, like age groups, genders, and so on.

Mango promotes matching products for men and women in their Valentine’s day email campaign

If you sell to multiple demographics and have the data to back it up, segment your campaigns around them so you send emails to them alone. This will make your emails more effective and profitable.

Example of Mango’s separate Valentine’s Day campaign targeting women

Alternatively, you can apply the tactic mentioned in the previous best practice and tag your initial emails based on your subscribers’ clicks and send personalized campaigns accordingly.

4. Make your campaign beyond romance alone

Unfortunately, not everybody has a romantic partner to celebrate Valentine’s with. But fortunately for you, this fact won’t stop you from selling to these people.

It may sound contradictory, but you can make your St. Valentine’s Day email campaigns beyond romance alone.

Some people may simply want to shop to express their love to a friend or relative. Even if this doesn’t fall within our previous definition of romance, it doesn’t mean you can’t sell to them.

Even if you think most of your audience won’t be interested in Valentine’s Day — let’s say because you sell kids' clothes — you can position your campaign around the love towards their loved ones, much like Mother’s Day.

This is how Little Planet, a kid’s clothing brand, does it in their email campaign:

Little Planet promotes Valentine’s Day-themed clothes for kids

What’s more, consider targeting people who’re not in a relationship. This falls within our previous point of giving options — in this case, to single or non-romantic people.

UNIQLO targets non-romantic and single people in their Valentine’s Day email campaign

It’d be perfect if you could segment your audiences between those you think could be interested in romantic gifts and those who won’t.

For example, suppose you sell a category of “romantic” products and one that’s not. In that case, you can promote the former towards Valentine’s Day and leave the latter aside (or send it to your segmented, non-romantic group).

However, to simplify things, consider promoting your products to different audiences — one for couples, one for friends, and so on.

Paperless Post uses their Valentine’s Day campaign to promote offers for different audience categories, including those who are not in relationship

5. Build momentum in advance

Like most holiday email marketing campaigns, you want to start planning some time in advance. Two to four weeks would be ideal, but if you’re caught in a rush, you can simplify your campaigns, as you’re about to see.

Ideally, you want to send one email daily or every two days a week before Valentine’s Day.

You can even prime your audience by letting them know you’ll be messaging them with promotions during this period, like in the example below.

An example of a brand preparing customers for upcoming promo emails

If you plan on running a special discount campaign on February 14th, email them announcing it. You want them to be prepared for your emails on the day of the event.

Withings announces upcoming Valentine’s promo offer in advance to give customers enough time to make a purchase

If you expect to offer site-wide discounts for this date, tell them when they can expect to see the discounts and how large they will be.

OURA’s Valentine’s Day email campaign

Also, it’s crucial you stress the urgency behind their order. Since shipping and fulfillment can take anywhere from one to seven days or more, your audience should order before it’s too late.

Tell them when they can expect to receive the package, at least if you offer free shipping, and whether they will receive it before the date.

Better yet, use that fact to your advantage by emailing the last day before it’s too late to receive it without paying for express shipping.

Example of a Valentine’s Day promo email stressing the urgency of purchasing gifts on time to get free shipping

Use a countdown timer in every email to magnify the urgency even more.

Clean My Mac adds a countdown times to add the urgency to their Valentine’s Day email campaign

But no matter what you do, many people may not be able to purchase in time. For those people, it’s better to offer digital gift cards, like a money discount the gift’s recipient can use when they please.

Winc offers gift card to those who haven’t bought a Valentine’s Day gift on time

Finally, if you have a loyalty program, send a special email to your VIPs. Whether you allow them to take advantage of your temporary discounts or buy unique products just for Valentine’s Day, you want to reward your best customers accordingly.

Loeffler Randal sends a special Valentine’s Day email campaign to the VIP customers and loyalty program members

How to use these 5 St. Valentine email campaign ideas

Without a doubt, St. Valentine’s Day is an incredible date for ecommerce stores to increase sales and boost revenue.

If you plan your campaign with enough time and consideration, we’re sure you’ll be able to reap the benefits.

To quickly implement everything you learned today, here’s a summary of what we covered:

  • Position your email marketing campaign around gifts. Your buyers will purchase for their partners, so position your products accordingly.
  • Start building your campaign two to four weeks in advance. If you’re short in time, send at least three emails a few days before and during the day itself.
  • Highlight the romance that your products will create with your customers and their partners with your copy and imagery. Make it about the shared moment they will experience after they buy.
  • If you sell “unromantic” products or if your audience doesn’t use your products in any romantic way (think kids' clothes), frame the purchase as a way for the buyer to express their love to their loved one.
  • Incentivize sales by using time-sensitive discounts for this date. Although it’s unnecessary, notify your list before you send the discounts, so they feel motivated to buy.
  • Segment your list based on past behavior or data you’ve acquired. If you lack this data, send one to three emails and tag those who open and/or click your emails. Message this segment exclusively.
  • Package your products around specific use cases, categories, or demographics
  • If you plan to send unsegmented emails, offer options so romantic and non-romantic buyers can shop.
  • Use countdown timers to make the urgency clearer.
  • If you have a loyalty program, remember to message your VIPs first and send them unique discounts or products.

Ivan Kreimer is a freelance content writer for hire who creates educational content for SaaS businesses like Leadfeeder and Campaign Monitor. In his pastime, he likes to help people become freelance writers. Besides writing for smart people who read sites like Getsitecontrol, Ivan has also written in sites like Entrepreneur, MarketingProfs, TheNextWeb, and many other influential websites.

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