Valentine’s Day is almost here, and luckily there are many ways you can prepare and market your products during this sweet season. Here are our top 10 ways to increase your online Valentine’s Day sales.
#1 Review Your Data From Last Year
As an online business, you most likely use a POS (point-of-sale) system. A POS system already helps you sell seamlessly online, but it also can help shed light on some interesting analytics. If your e-shop has already been in business since Valentine’s Day last year, you can use your POS system to view your sales data from the previous year. Even better, you can use the sales data from last year to forecast your inventory for the upcoming holiday.
Of course, things can always change. What happened last year might not always happen again. However, it can help provide a baseline that you can use to ensure you don’t run out of stock.
Improve Your Data with Inventory Management
If you want easy real-time access to your data and a tool for forecasting the amount of inventory you will need, consider an inventory management application.
You can even automate the replenishment process based on your data if you have the right inventory management tool. That way, you can be sure to avoid under and overstocked inventory, always maintaining the ideal amount of stock on hand.
#2 Remember: Valentine’s Day Is More Than Chocolate & Roses
Even if you don’t sell heart-shaped chocolates or ruby-red roses, you can still capitalize on Valentine’s Day. By thinking creatively about your merchandise, you can still find ways to market your products during this heart-full season. Also, by making your product’s messaging playful, you can break through the noise in a sea of roses. A great example of a company that broke through on Valentine’s day with a unique ad is Liar Wine:
#3 Get a Head Start with Your Valentine’s Day Emails
Valentine’s Day is unique because shoppers tend not to buy gifts too far in advance, unlike the holidays that have just passed. If you collect emails from your customers, past purchases, and newsletter subscribers, make sure to start sending out your emails a week or two weeks before Valentine’s Day to capture early shoppers.
Also, add a final email push for the actual day, February 14, to encourage last-minute purchases.
#4 Don’t Forget Galentine’s Day & Single Appreciation Day
Valentine’s Day isn’t the only February holiday to celebrate. If you know about some of the more minor “holidays” around Valentine’s Day, you can use them to your advantage. Add some messaging around these days to appeal to a wider audience than just those interested in Valentine’s Day gifts.Galentine’s Day
Galentine’s Day is a niche holiday created from one episode from the TV seriesParks & Recreation. The episode (season 2 / episode 16) focused on the women on the show celebrating the day before Valentine’s Day as Galentine’s Day.
What is Galentine’s Day?
If you look up Galentine’s Day in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (yes, the dictionary), Galentine’s Day is a “day for women to celebrate their friendships with their lady friends.” In other words, Galentine’s Day is a day for celebrating the friendships in your life.
What day is Galentine’s Day?
Galentine’s Day takes place the day before Valentine’s Day - February 13.
Is it Really That Popular?
A quick search for Galentine’s Day shows that the day has become a separate entity from the tv show it originated on. From NPR to Good Housekeeping, Galentine’s Day has continued to grow in popularity since its episode aired in 2009.
How You Can Use Galentine’s Day to Market Your Products?
If you use Galentine’s Day to help your customers celebrate the friendships in their lives, you can run some Galentine-focused campaigns like social media contests for friends (tag your Galentine crew to get entered to win X.) Or offer curated Galentine’s Day packages that shoppers can purchase and send to their friends.
Singles Appreciation Day (or Single Awareness Day)
As the name suggests, Singles Awareness Day is the holiday when single people can embrace their “singleness.”
Created as a push-back to the lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day, Singles Appreciation Day is a holiday that people can celebrate however they choose from hanging out with their other single friends, or taking advantage of the post-Valentine’s Day sales.
Singles Appreciation Day can be another unique way to market your product.
What day is Singles Appreciation Day?
While Galentine’s Day takes place the day before Valentine’s Day, Singles Appreciation Day is on the following day - February 15.
What is the origin of Singles Appreciation Day?
The inventor of the holiday is unknown, but it is speculated that the inventor was a similarly single person that was sick and tired of the Valentine’s Day fanfare.
The year of the day’s origin is also equally shrouded in mystery. From what people can tell, the holiday came into existence between 1999 and 2005.
How You Can Use Singles Appreciation Day to Market Your Products
If you are thinking about branching out your marketing to include Singles Appreciation Day, some ideas for your campaigns could be offering singles’ day deals or bundling some of your best-selling products and promoting them as a self-care bundle.
Another way you can promote your Singles Appreciation Day is to combine it with another similar promotion …
#5 Treat Yo Self
Treat yourself, or treat yo’ self, is also a term coined by the Parks & Recreation tvseries. (This blog was not intended to turn into a homage to Parks & Rec, but here we are.)
Treat yo’ self is a thought practice that you don’t need to wait for someone to buy the cashmere sweater you’ve had your eye on or the nifty drone you’ve envisioned flying around at your local park. Instead, you can treat yo’self and buy yourself those things (because you deserve it and because studies show it definitely improves your mood, productivity and more!)
Valentine’s Day is when a partner gifts chocolates, red roses … possibly
a snuggy. But, it can also be a time when a person just buys themselves a gift. Also,
if you pair this tactic around the Single Appreciation Day on February 15, you can have a fun campaign that appeals to both those that are in a relationship and those that are celebrating their singleness.
#6 Post About Your Offers On Social Media
If you want to get the most out of your campaign, don’t confine your sales and promotions to only your email lists. Share your offers on social media so that others can “be in the know.”
Also, build hype for your promotion with messaging that lets people know the offer is for a “limited time only.”
#7 Create Valentine Gift Guides
Help people shop by putting together gift guides to help your customers discover the perfect gift. You can segment the gift guides by relationship or hobby/interest and include your best-selling products.
You can also group your Valentine’s Day products onto one section of your e-store. That way, it will be easier for your customers to click “add to cart” on relevant products, and add multiple items to their basket.
#8 Share Expected Delivery Dates
Provide your customers with the expected delivery dates for products so they can be informed about when they can expect to receive their package. By providing this information straight away, your customers won’t feel like they wasted time and got their hopes up for something that won’t be delivered until March (or later).
#9 Offer Free Wrapping
Unwrapping a present is part of the fun of receiving a gift. However, how many people do you know have heart-shaped wrapping paper lying around?
Offering free gift wrapping can make your shoppers more inclined to buy your products because you have saved them time, money, and their loved one from their wrapping skills.
Also, if you offer free wrapping, all your customer has to do is get the gift out of the box, and then they are good to go.
#10 Add a Last-Minute Sale
Show your procrastinators some love by springing a last-minute or flash sale on them on February 14. The order will not arrive in time, of course, but you can help incentivize the sale with a promotion to sweeten the deal.
You can also help procrastinators by providing a nice photo of the product sans the receipt so they can include it in a card.
Alternatively, gift cards are a fantastic way to clinch last minute sales and can be tailored to all the February holidays.
Bonus Tactic:
Streamline Your V-Day Order Fulfillment
Once you implement one or all of these Valentine’s Day tactics and the orders roll in, you might need to accelerate your order fulfillment. If that happens to you, an order fulfillment application could help bring your business to the next level.
Get a personalized demo with a Zenventory product specialist to see how you can use one app to track your inventory, fulfill your orders, and take care of your shipping.
