Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, which means that your themed marketing campaign should be in full swing. Don’t think it’s worth it? Research reveals that Americans spent over $21 billion on Valentine’s Day last year. If your ears just perked up, it’s not too late to take advantage of the holiday. Take a look at six techniques you can use to successfully market your app on Valentine’s Day.
Use Valentine’s Day-Themed Push Notifications
Depending on your experience with push notifications, you might find them extremely useful or be afraid of scaring your audience off with them. But when well managed, push notifications are a great way to efficiently inform your users of new updates and offers. According to SendPulse, push notification marketing can lead to better engagement, stronger security, wider reach, and useful insights.
Knowing that you can achieve all this with push notifications, why not incorporate them into your Valentine’s Day marketing strategy? Design a notification that combines traditional V-Day colors with some engaging copy in order to establish your app as a must-open as the holiday approaches. Or, use a push notification to inform people about a deal you’re giving them to celebrate!
Capitalize on In-App Events Created for Valentine’s Day
If you’re a seasoned app developer, then chances are you have experience in creating in-app events. Whether you’ve created challenges for a gaming app, had a special speed dating event for a dating app, or introduced a major update for an eCommerce app, in-app events have been part of the mobile app landscape for some time.
With last year’s Apple Summit announcement about iOS 15 and in-app events, there is more reason than ever to take advantage of this feature if your app is on iOS. This year you can promote your Valentine’s Day challenge or special event with event cards that function like an app store description along with imagery or video specifically for your in-app event. Take your reach to the next level and watch the additional installs, subscriptions, and/or in-app purchases begin to roll in!
Try Your Hand at Valentine’s Day Giveaways/Promos
Another great way to engage in Valentine’s Day marketing is to get people excited about the possibility of making purchases. Giveaways are a great way to do this as you can tie them in with a promotion in order to get people buying or even use them as a way to get people to opt-in to your mailing list.
Sandals Resorts is a major example of a company following the V-Day giveaway trend. They are currently running a sweepstakes that people can enter in order to win a 4-day vacation at one of their resorts. Among the required questions for entry is a box people can check in order to receive latest news about the resorts as well as being the first to hear about special offers and promos. While their giveaway doesn’t include a consolation prize, many companies that run giveaways will offer non-winners a discount to encourage them to make a purchase. This is easy to do in an app – using a discount wheel popup when users open it entices them to spin for the chance to receive a gift or percentage off.
Up the Ante with Valentine’s Day Gift Guides
If your app falls in the eCommerce category, then a gift guide for users is a great way to market. Gift guides help draw attention to products you want to push and they make consumers feel positive about your brand because you’re doing something to make their experience in the app easier. Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand, is capitalizing on Valentine’s Day with a comprehensive gift guide that has its own tab on the website and app. It breaks down into several subcategories to help users find what they want quickly and hit ‘add to cart’.
Depending on your niche, you can tailor your guide to what your consumers might be looking for. A home decor or lifestyle app might put together a cute Valentine’s Day gifts list made up of small but thoughtful gifts for everyday use. Meanwhile, an app based on travel might put together a list of Valentine’s Day date ideas that involve getaways users can book in the app. Your customers will thank you for it and you’ll likely see a large increase in sales.
Team Up for Influencer Partnerships
By now, everyone is well aware of the power of a strong influencer marketing campaign. Partnering with the right influencer for your mobile app can be the key to significantly boosting your KPI results and building a dedicated and engaged community of users. Partnerships for specific campaigns, such as Valentine’s Day, are no less useful!
If you have a list of Instagram influencers you’ve worked with before, you can reach out and see who might be interested in a V-Day campaign. Or maybe you want to go the TikTok route and have an influencer raise awareness on that app. As of last fall, 49% of consumers reported relying on influencer recommendations for product purchases. Working with an influencer can give app users the visual they need to see your app as an essential part of their holiday.
Expand Your Target Market
We may have saved the best for last with this piece of advice. While Valentine’s Day is a holiday with strong romantic connotations, that’s not all the day is about! Love applies to all sorts of situations, from best friends, to family members, to cherished pets. Don’t count yourself – or a segment of your audience – out when it comes to putting together a marketing campaign centered around the holiday. You can encourage users to show their love even if they don’t have a partner they need to plan a date night with!
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to engage with your app user community and influence their gifting for the year. When you consider their different perspectives and think of the ways that you can innovate their experience, you’ll realize that you can easily set yourself up for some V-Day success!