12 Valentine's Day Marketing Ideas You Need to Try (With Examples)

Valentine’s day marketing is something many brands overlook. But it represents a huge opportunity for your business.

Seriously, with spending expected to reach over $22 billion, you can’t afford to miss out on capturing your share of the romance-driven revenue.

But not all valentine’s day marketing ideas are created equally. And often, February 14th sneaks up on you. Leaving little time to think about how to capitalize on the increased demand.

So, in this post, you’ll discover 12 Valentine’s day marketing ideas to inspire your own strategy. We break down what other brands have done, and show you how to implement the same.

Sounds good? Let’s jump in!

12 Valentine's Day Marketing Ideas to Learn From

The best Valentine’s marketing strategy news to be tailored to your brand, products and audience. 

But that doesn't mean we can’t get inspiration by peeking at what other brands are up to. 

Here’s 12 of the best marketing ideas to inspire your valentine’s marketing campaign.

1. Upsell Valentine’s Add-ons

Just like Mother's Day, Valentine's day purchases mean one thing: gifting. That’s why one of the best Valentine’s day marketing ideas is to upsell add-ons using one-click upsells.

One-click upsells appear immediately after a customer completes payment. And the timing of these offers, combined with their frictionless nature means they add serious muscle to your AOV and bottom line.

For example, you could upsell premium services like expedited shipping for last-minute shoppers or a fancy gift box like Pandora does in this example:

You could also cross-sell complimentary products such as greeting cards or a small box of chocolates. 

The great thing about upselling add-ons is that they actually deliver a better experience for your customers too.

Instead of having to source the extras they need, customers can get a complete gift in one fell swoop. 

Upselling add-ons means more revenue for you, and a seamless shopping experience for your customers - talk about a win-win.

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2. Create a Valentine’s Day Collection

When it comes to Valentine’s day marketing, a dedicated product collection is non-negotiable. 

Your product collection is where you’ll send traffic from ads, emails and search engines. Plus, you can promote it on your website's homepage to assist with shopper navigation.

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Your Valentine’s collection should be easily filterable. Creating filters (or even stand-alone collections) under the heading ‘gifts for him’ or ‘gifts for her helps people find what they’re looking for

It’s also wise to filter your gifts by price point. So for example ‘Gifts under $50’ or ‘Gifts under $100’ allows budget-conscious shoppers to find the perfect item. Remember, the whole point here is to  reduce the friction involved in researching (and buying) a gift.

From an SEO perspective, many brands create a new Valentine’s collection page each year, but this means the page loses all its SEO power from year to year.

So instead, keep your Valentine’s collection page up all year round, but remove it from your site’s navigation when the holiday is over. This will keep it crawled in Google’s index, so next year you’ll have a better chance of appearing at the top of the results.

Create the page using the URL ‘www.yourwebsie.com/your brand-valentines-gifts’ and include the same keywords in your Meta-description. Keeping the page active, but hidden allows you to retain all the backlinks and keywords that you’re ranking for year after year.

3. Design a Valentine's Offer

Most shoppers expect a discount around Valentine’s day. And with every other brand running a sale, it’s important to give shoppers an incentive to buy.

While offering a discount is a good way to boost sales, what’s more important is how and when you promote your offer. A well-promoted 10% discount typically outperforms a poorly promoted 20% discount (and it allows you to retain a lot more profit to boot).

So, start early. Plan your offer. Decide the best channels to use. In our experience, a multiple email campaign is where we’ve gotten best results. It could look something like this:

• 26th January: A teaser email offering early access & free shipping for orders before Feb 1st
• 1st February: General promotion of your Sale 
• 10th February: Last chance to order in-time for Valentine’s day
• 13th February: Promote your digital gift cards as a last minute option

It’s also important to align your email marketing efforts with your social media strategy (assuming that’s a useful traffic source for your business.) The more touch points you can create, the more likely customers are to convert.

Also, be aware that any holiday sale is a great opportunity to push social media followers to your email list by offering them an additional benefit for doing so (e.g. early access, an extra 10% off etc.).

On the topic of pushing followers to owned channels, let’s talk about mobile apps.

4. Push Customers to Your Mobile App

More and more brands are investing in mobile apps. And with good reason, according to TapCart, branded mobile store apps convert at 2.3x better than mobile browsers. 

What’s more, having a mobile app allows you to send unlimited push notifications for free too. Given how much time we spend on our phones these days, that’s a big advantage.

Valentine’s is a great opportunity to push your customers to download your app. Cosmetics brand Lush uses a pop-up on their site to offer exclusive early access to their sale via the app.

Using Valentine's day to incentivize new downloads pays dividends long after the holiday is over. By owning your app, you can re-market to customers via push for as long as they keep the app on their phone. This is a major plus when you consider that email continues to become oversaturated with copeditor vying for your customer’s attention.

Plus, we know that mobile apps are one of the best ways to boost customer repeat rate and boost retention. Apparel brand Elevated Faith achieved a whopping 75% in-app repeat customer rate via their app that took them 30-minutes to build.

But isn’t developing a mobile app expensive and complex? Thankfully not. If you’re on Shopify there’s several mobile app builders like Shopney and Tapcart. You don’t need to know coding, you don’t need thousands of dollars, and you can launch in a couple of hours.

5. Create Urgency

Nothing motivates people like a deadline. Infusing your Valentine’s marketing with a touch of subtle scarcity & urgency is a great way to drive more sales.

Now, it’s important not to go too far. Don’t make your customers panic or feel guilty for leaving things to the last minute. Piling on excessive urgency may damage your reputation.

Below you can see how Apple uses clever copy to remind customers that they’re almost out of time for buying Valentine’s gifts.

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One clever way to create urgency is to highlight delivery cut-off times across your marketing channels. Put it in your emails, add a banner to your website, use pop-ups to remind shoppers, and promote it across social media.

This gives customers a fixed deadline, which in turn motivates purchases, rather than procrastination.

🔥Pro Tip: Use ReConvert to offer shipping insurance for $2.99 at Checkout. This strategy converts surprisingly well and adds a nice little extra margin to accepted orders.

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6. Run a Valentine’s Social Media Contest

Social media contests and Valentine’s day are a match made in heaven. With love in the air, you can run a giveaway that’ll get people tagging their nearest and dearest like crazy.

Case in point, Rep Fitness Equipment's social giveaway last year. Rep ran a $1,000 giveaway. Entrants had to use Rep's new AR-feature that allows you to preview equipment at home.

The idea was to share it with a friend and trick them into thinking you’d bought them a new piece of fitness equipment.

Entrants then sent the reaction to Rep which gave the brand lots of great UGC to use on their socials, promoted their new feature and got them tons of free social proof.

Now you many not sell fitness equipment, but you can apply the same principles to your social media giveaway:

• Establish your giveaway goals (to promote Rep’s AR-feature)
• Giveaway something your followers actually want ($1,000)
• Give your followers a good reason to share their entry (It’s fun to prank your friends)
• Team up with influencers or dedicate an ad budget for more reach
• Promote your giveaway to your email list, as well as on social media

Whatever you’re selling, running a giveaway is a fun way to engage your followers, build brand loyalty and get exposure to new customers via your existing follower base.

7. Get into Bed With Another Brand

Partnership marketing is often overlooked in eCommerce. But according to Partnertize, 54% of companies say partnerships drive more than 20% of total company revenue.

Think about it - right now there’s a brand that is targeting the same audiences as you. So, why not partner up and promote your products to their audience, and promote their product to your audience?

Last year, health food company Better Brand partnered up with Coffee pod company Cometeer for a co-branded Valentine’s marketing campaign.

To tap into the Valentine’s spirit, Better Brand framed this partnership as ‘Love at first taste.’ The brands offered each other’s audience an incentive of $20 off their first order. Partnership marketing is great because it’s typically free, and you can leverage the trust between your partner and their audience base to boost conversions.

So, research other brands who may appeal to your audience. Reach out to them saying you think co-marketing would be a great idea. When you have a similar sized audience, it’s mutually beneficial for both of you!

8. Create Valentine’s Themed Products

Not a great suggestion for last-minute Valentine’s marketing ideas, but if you’ve got time on your side, it can be worthwhile creating custom Valentines gifting products.

Particularly if your product line is prone to gifting. For example, last year,  cosmetics brand Lush created an entire category of products designed specifically for gifting to someone special on Valentine’s day.

As these are holiday-specific gifting products, you can typically charge a premium for them.  It’s not something for every brand. And many brands have products that can already be framed in a romantic light. But it is something to consider if it would appeal to your customer base.

9. Get Your Customers to Share the Love

Over 90% of consumers are likely to buy from a friend or family member they trust. You can capitalize on the circulating feelings of love, by promoting your referral program as part of your valentines marketing strategy.

For example, check out this email campaign run by non-alcoholic apéritif brand Ghia last year:

Ghia keep their referral email simple; a powerful image, with smart copy and a ‘give $10, get $10’ offer. If growing your referrals is one of your primary objectives, then a Valentine’s themed email like this can work wonders.

Personally, we would have made the CTA button a little more contrasted, and beefed up the offer to try to convert more recipients.But we’re sure this is working for Ghia.

Another ‘share the love’ campaign comes from food delivery platform ritual.co. We love the copy here, how it presents itself as a ‘pick up line’ and encourages readers to share it with their Valentines crush.

10. Set the Mood With a Valentine’s Playlist

While creating a valentine’s playlist probably won’t immediately supercharge your revenue, it’s a low effort strategy that can build serious customer loyalty.

Since music is a very personal thing, brands who create playlists their audience love, can carve out a special place in their customer’s hearts.

And why stop at Valentine’s marketing? You can create a spotify account for your brand, with playlists for every occasion. Dinner playlists, party playlists, work playlists, gym playlists and more. 

If you’ve got the same taste as your audience, you’re bound to end up with a bunch of loyal customers following your latest grooves. 

Using music as an extension of your brand is something fashion brands have understood for a long time. It’s also something Ghia, the drinks brand above understands (check their Spotify here!)

But to share another example, consider cookbook retailer & subscription service MOB kitchen. They’ve amassed over 3,500 followers on their Spotify account. Everytime a follower puts a playlist on they’re reminded of how great MOB is.

11. Try some Digital PR

Around Valentine’s day, hundreds of thousands of consumers search online for gifting inspiration. 

Searchers use terms like ‘best valentine’s day gift’ or ‘valentines gifts for him’. A quick look at the search results reveals several gift guides from the likes of the NYT, Vogue and Country Living, all packed with great gift ideas.

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So, how to get your products featured in these gift guides? Via digital PR.

HARO (help a reporter out) is a service that connects writers with sources (i.e. your brand). HARO is free to sign up to, and each day you’ll get three emails with a roundup of requests from writers. For example, here’s a gift-guide request I got today:

If I was selling heart-friendly products, this represents a great opportunity to submit a short quote and product description for inclusion in the article.

Even if you don’t intend to include digital PR as part of your Valentine’s marketing strategy, it’s worth signing up for HARO as part of your overall SEO efforts.

Because, along with free brand exposure, HARO is an easy way to pick up backlinks that’ll boost your domain authority and help you grow your organic traffic.

12. Don’t Forget About Galentines

Galentine’s is celebrated on February 13th, the day before Valentine's day. According to the dictionary, Galentine's Day is a "day for women to celebrate their friendships with their lady friends."

Galentines is another sales opportunity you should capitalize on. Especially if your audience is primarily composed of females. 

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Hair-care brand Gussi had a nice Galentine’s campaign last year. The brand offered $20 off two at-home keratin kits, so customers could enjoy a frizz-free experience together.

Creating an offer for friends to share is a great strategy to promote on Galentine’s day. Maybe you can create product bundles for a girls night in. Or build a gift set that’s perfect for sending to your bestie. Maybe if you have a mixed audience you can make your own ‘Pal-entines’ and promote gifts for both genders to share with their buddies.

However you approach it, the key is to morph it into your brand and products so you’re able to capitalize on the increased purchasing appetite. 

Use these Valentine’s Marketing Ideas to Make More Sales!

No matter if you’re on the hunt for last-minute Valentine’s Day marketing ideas or looking for an in-depth Valentine’s marketing strategy, give these ideas a chance.

Hopefully your brain is brimming with ideas you can apply to your own business and make this Valentine’s day the most profitable one yet.

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Valentine’s Day Marketing FAQ

Let’s quickly cover some of the most commonly asked questions related to Valentine’s day marketing.

When is the best time to start your valentine's day marketing?

For Valentine's Day marketing, it's ideal to start your campaign at least 4-6 weeks before the actual day. Launch promotions, unveil themed products, and engage in early outreach to capture the attention of customers planning in advance. This allows for effective planning, builds anticipation, and ensures your brand is top-of-mind when consumers begin shopping for Valentine's Day gifts.

How to handle Valentine’s Day marketing as a large company?

Capitalize on Valentine's Day by creating themed products, using festive packaging, and offering discounts. Engage on social media with contests, collaborate with influencers, and send targeted email campaigns. Develop gift guides, support local events, and provide convenient services like gift wrapping. Extend celebrations beyond the day and measure success through analytics. Stay creative, genuine, and considerate, tailoring your approach to resonate with your audience.