Omnichannel marketing for Valentine's Day: Eleven best ideas for ecommerce

As Valentine's Day approaches, ecommerce is becoming a field of intense battle for customer attention and loyalty. Increasing competition requires companies to develop a creative strategy that will set their business apart from others. Omnichannel marketing is a key tool for achieving this goal.

We have prepared interesting ideas that can be implemented in various direct channels, as well as examples of campaigns from well-known brands. Various Yespo CDP tools we are describing in the article will help you realize your ideas.

Valentine's Day ideas for ecommerce

Valentine's Day promotions are one of the key moments for ecommerce in February. This month is often called "love season" because of the number of thematic campaigns. Here are some ideas on how to fill your marketing communications on the eve of February 14 to engage your audience.

Love for everyone and everything

Valentine's Day is a holiday of love, but not just for lovers. Ecommerce companies have a good reason to attract a wider audience. Consider creating universal gift ideas that are suitable for those who celebrate with parents, friends, children, pets, etc.

People can be attached even to inanimate objects. For example, everyone knows the reverent attitude of motorists to their cars. So why shouldn't a company selling the relevant products play on this for marketing purposes? The same goes for sports, creativity, travel, etc.

Celebration scenarios

Come up with ideas for celebrations that organically incorporate your products. Offer advice on:

• congratulations;
• choosing the perfect present;
• its packaging;
• preparing a romantic dinner;
• date night outfits, etc.

Useful guides and instructions

Offer valuable content with step-by-step instructions – from making origami decor to decorating your home and setting a romantic table. Recommend movies and books that will create the perfect romantic mood, and share interesting facts and stories about Valentine's Day.

International holidays and traditions

Explore and share information with your followers about the different traditions of celebrating February 14 all over the world. Perhaps this will give someone an interesting idea of how to diversify their evening. Offer products that appear in these traditions.

Holiday flash sales

Organize a flash sale specially for the holiday, which will last for several hours or until the products run out. Thanks to this marketing ploy, you can quickly unload the warehouse, for example, from seasonal items, which is important in the middle of the last winter month.

Gifts for valuable customers

Encourage subscribers to buy more by offering a gift for orders over a certain amount. Make sure that your gift is worthwhile to interest a large audience, or offer several gifts to choose from.

Combo offers for the savvy

Create special sets of products for Valentine's Day. Offer a discount if all items are purchased together. This way, the company will increase the average check, and the customer will save money.

Announcement of limited or themed products

Present limited-edition products in your Valentine's Day campaigns that create a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Make a selection of thematic products. Add products with a special design or just items that will help create a festive atmosphere: candles, drinks, treats, etc.

Loyalty program with love

If your company has a loyalty program, introduce special rewards, double bonuses, or exclusive discounts for purchases on Valentine's Day. If your business does not yet offer such an opportunity, you should think about it: 84% of consumers have a positive perception of loyalty program promotions.

Exciting contests

Engage users in contests such as the best photo with your product or the most creative declaration of love for your brand on social media. Be sure to offer an interesting prize to encourage a wide audience to participate.

Charitable initiatives

Valentine's Day is a good occasion for charity. Tell your subscribers that, for example, your company will donate part of its profits to charity on Valentine's Day. Explain what the funds raised will be used for and invite customers to join the initiative. Such steps stimulate sales and have a positive impact on the image of the business.

Examples of omnichannel campaigns for Valentine's Day

Well-known brands use different approaches to campaign content to attract more customers. We analyzed several campaigns before February 14. Perhaps they will inspire you to come up with your own interesting ideas.

A subtle hint from Minimal's email

The email from the Minimal jewelry brand attracts with its laconic design and calm color scheme. But the main highlight of the email is the advice to customers on how to hint at a gift. Under each product in the store, there is a button "Hint to your loved one".

By clicking it, the user will open a form where they need to add the recipient's contacts with a link to the selected product. This button is mentioned in the text of the email, and it is also mentioned in the largest banner.

Omnichannel campaigns from KSD

Publishing House and Bookstore KSD actively uses several channels of communication with customers. Most of the promotional emails subscribers receive via email, but the company duplicates information about holiday sales on Viber. The design of the messages is almost identical but with a few differences due to the specifics of the channel.

In addition to the text, the email contains two CTA buttons, six products with brightly colored price tags, and information about the duration of the promotion and the opening of new offline stores in Kharkiv.

In a Viber message, an excerpt from the email was sent – the most important thing to convey to the customer, because the messenger's capabilities are more modest than in email. At the same time, the marketer used all available elements. For example, information about the end date of the promotion is highlighted with an emoji. The discount amount is indicated at the beginning of the message and on the banner. A CTA button and a link in the text lead the user to the online store. In addition, there is a customer number that can be conveniently copied for authorization on the website.

The art of brevity in SMS from the Alisa brand

You have to be even more clever when working with the SMS channel, where you can't go wild with the length of the message. Every word is literally worth its weight in gold, so you need to formulate clear, understandable, and at the same time attractive texts for customers.

A good example is an SMS from the online store Alisa. The message contains the name of the sale, so the recipient can quickly find out what kind of promotion it is. The text specified the maximum amount of the discount and the categories of products to which it applies.

In addition, they did not forget about the emotional component.
 

Gamification in an email from the MTA

MTA entertains its subscribers with a game email and offers to go through a maze to find out which product is the most popular Valentine's Day present. Those who have completed the maze can click on the answer. In the next email, the recipient will find out if they solved the puzzle correctly and receive a promo code with a discount.

Hot offer in the Liki24 promo campaign

On the occasion of the last Valentine's Day, Liki24 sent a series of #LifeIsLove emails to its subscribers. One of them particularly caught our attention. It's a great example of how to gently remind your audience of adult products. They started with the email subject line and chose the appropriate emojis:

Liki24:  🌶  🔞 Your discount on love products – Order convenient delivery  👉

By the way, if you're looking for some bright email subject lines for inspiration, check out our article.

Liki24's email banner contains a call to action that makes you smile, information about a discount, and a promo code. The email doesn't contain any products but instead describes in detail how to use a promo code to get a discount. A countdown timer pushes the customer to hurry up with the choice.

Large-scale sale at Eva

Ukrainian retailer Eva decided to organize a sale for the holiday of love, which is only slightly inferior to Black Friday in terms of scale. The campaign started in late January: banners with the announcement appeared on the website and in the mobile app, and web push notifications were sent to sign up for notifications about the start of the sale.

Push notifications bring users to the landing page, where they can leave their contacts in a special form. On the landing page, subscribers will learn what promotions will be available on the website until February 14.

How to create an effective omnichannel Valentine's Day campaign in Yespo

Yespo's omnichannel CDP has everything you need to realize any ideas before February 14. Let's take a look at the tools that will help you create an effective holiday campaign.

Working with data

Our platform can automatically collect a large amount of complex customer data, including behavioral one. Data is collected from the website, app, direct channels, and third-party sources. The information is then unified, standardized, and deduplicated. The processed customer data is accumulated in a single user profile and becomes ready for segmentation, generation of personalized product recommendations, analysis, etc.

Segmentation and personalization

Effective business communication with customers is no longer possible without personalization. Non-personalized "bulk" emails don't work, as 51% of consumers are disappointed when they receive irrelevant product offers. At the same time, 78% say they are likely to respond to a personalized offer that reflects their interests.

Improve your audience's customer experience by offering each customer a product relevant to their needs and interests in email campaigns. Segment contacts by:

• activity in the channels;
• consumer behavior;
• product preferences;
• demographic parameters;
• geolocation, etc.

With Yespo's advanced segmentation, you can create segments with any number of complex conditions. This allows to narrow down the group and more accurately select offers for its members.

Product recommendations on the website improve user experience and increase conversion. AI algorithms that generate blocks with recommended products analyze customer data and predict which products might be of interest to a particular person.

Email recommendations work in a similar way. You can send a promo email to a large segment of subscribers, and the algorithms will select individual offers for each recipient. Read more about the results of such promotional campaigns here.

Omnichannel workflows

In Yespo CDP, you can create and launch omnichannel campaigns using the following direct channels:

• email;
• web push;
• mobile push;
• app inbox;
• in-app;
• Viber;
• SMS.

In our intuitive editor, you can build branched workflows with any number of steps. There is no need to involve developers to make changes to them – a marketer can adjust everything they need in a matter of minutes.

Preparing content for omnichannel campaigns

Yespo's CDP users have ample opportunities to create engaging messages across all available channels. For example, there are more than 2.5 thousand email templates that can be easily customized for any purpose. The built-in AI assistant will generate several variants of converting email subject lines and help you write all text blocks:

• change the tone and style;
• translate into 10 languages;
• add relevant emojis;
• shorten or enlarge the text;
• check the grammar.

Let's take a closer look at some of our tools across channels to help you impress your customers.

Gamification for Valentine's Day

Add gamification elements to your website, mobile app, and direct channels.

For example, you can embed in email:

• static games (maze, find 10 differences in pictures, solve a puzzle, etc.);
• interactive (to complete a puzzle, answer a quiz, make a pair of pictures, etc.).

You can implement both options in the Yespo CDP email editor. For interactive games, you need to connect AMP technology, which turns an email into a mini-site that the user can actively interact with.

To connect AMP technology, you need to get permission from Google, which requires some effort. But the result is worth it, because, in addition to gamification, you can use other useful AMP blocks available in Yespo: accordion, carousel, and form.

Use all available direct channels to engage customers through gamification. Create a special landing page with the chosen game mechanics. Games on it can be changed for different occasions and holidays. And lead users to the landing page via push notifications, app inbox, Viber, widgets, email, etc.

Image carousel in mobile push notifications

Mobile push notifications are an effective tool for returning users to the app. They are often used to send triggers, but this channel is equally useful for promotional messages.

A mobile push with a personalized offer makes a person interested in logging into the app to learn more about the product. And with the mobile push editor in CDP Yespo, you can create a push with even multiple product images. Add up to 10 images to show one item from different angles or make a selection of interesting offers for customers.

Widgets to attract website visitors

Online stores often change their design for Valentine's Day, adding romantic elements: decorate the brand name or logo with a heart, visually highlight the section with holiday products in the menu, etc. The logical extension of such transformations is thematic widgets on the website.

With Yespo, a marketer can change the design of a widget in minutes by adding a new image and text in the editor. You can also customize the display options in detail: when and to whom to show specific widgets. In our article, we described in detail how their effectiveness depends on the settings and content.

Widgets can be used to recommend individual products and sections to the visitor, return to the abandoned cart, or lead to the app. This is an ideal channel for communicating with all users, even those who are not logged in. Read more about widgets' capabilities in the article.

App inbox – a space for communication with a customer

App inbox is the mailbox of an authorized user of the website and app, where messages from your brand are received only. You can add a lot of content to app inbox messages:

• text (up to 1,000 characters with spaces);
• image (JPEG, PNG or GIF up to 2 MB);
• emoji;
• logo;
• link;
• promo codes.

To send messages to this channel, the company does not need user consent, as it is part of the UI of the website/application. The customer sees the notification when they intentionally open the corresponding section in the personal account. Such communication is always appropriate and does not cause irritation.

Outcomes

We've reviewed some interesting ideas for Valentine's Day omnichannel email campaigns that help attract a wide audience and provide opportunities to increase sales. For example, the concept of "Love for everyone" is effective for expanding the target audience, and celebration scenarios and useful guides will help improve customer interaction and positive brand perception.

We hope these examples of February 14th emails from well-known brands will inspire you to generate your own ideas. And the best assistant to realize your creative ideas is the Yespo omnichannel CDP. In particular, the platform's capabilities for data management, segmentation, and personalization are a key element of a successful holiday marketing campaign.

Content is the hook for your customers' attention, and with our CDP, you can create memorable campaigns in all available direct channels. Build impressive AMP emails with gamification and surprise your customers with mobile pushers with dozens of images instead of just one banner. Bring your website visitors a romantic mood with interactive widgets and target them to the desired customer segment. Send Valentine's Day greetings and promotional offers to your "personal mailbox" in the app inbox.
Using a variety of tools to implement ideas when preparing content for omnichannel campaigns will help you create a unique customer experience and increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.