The winter thaw is melting away as we reach tentatively towards spring and the season of new life and new love. To carry us across that threshold we look forward to Valentine’s Day, a holiday sat between seasons, inviting us to come out of our cold winter hibernation and connect with each other again.
And as we know holidays always present the perfect backdrop against which we can paint our promotions and help our customers celebrate with us. Holiday promotions present excellent opportunities to connect with your customers which provides an uptick in engagement, and if we direct that engagement to the right places we can see increases in sales, customer satisfaction, increased brand advocacy and of course, customer loyalty.
To explore how you can participate in the Valentine’s festivities we have put together a little guide of Valentine’s Day marketing ideas that demonstrate how a successful promotion can be set to benefit you!
Valentine’s Day as a Marketing Opportunity
Valentine’s Day presents the perfect opportunity to try out creative customer engagement strategies that can drive interaction, engage customers, and boost loyalty all at the same time. I mean, is there a more perfect time to give back to your customers than during a day set aside solely for giving?
Though traditionally set aside for romantic partners, the views and associations of Valentine’s Day reflect a shifting attitude towards love and showing affection with Valentine’s Day now being celebrated in a variety of ways.
We have traditional Valentine’s romance, with people going on dates and buying gifts to show that they love each other. But we also have Valentine’s Day which allows people to show affection to their friends, often popular with people not in relationships is to go out on a date with their friends and show the ones who are close to them in their life that they care. And finally, there’s also a trend in showing self-love and setting Valentine’s Day aside as a day to reconnect with oneself and treat themselves for the day instead.
With all these desires to show love and affection, we find a holiday permeated with the gift of giving at its core, with each gift and card a memento of appreciation dedicated to the recipient. This makes it an excellent time of year to show your appreciation to your customers by providing some form of promotion that engages them and rewards them with gifts and prizes.
By running a Valentine’s promotion you will tap into a wellspring of giving and a season perfectly themed to provide the backdrop for your campaign. With everyone looking to buy a gift or an experience for their chosen loved ones it is the perfect time to place your products and offerings in your customer’s field of view. It makes Valentine’s Day the perfect opportunity to run limited-time promotions, try engagement-driven competitions, host a Valentine’s prize draw, or simply reward your loyal customers with a Valentine’s Day gift.
Creative Campaign Ideas for Valentine’s Day
To help kickstart your Valentine’s Day campaign we wanted to offer you some creative ideas as inspiration or a foundation from which to launch your campaign, and we’ll try to cover each of the areas we at Prizeshark can personally help with. Campaigns and promotions can be run entirely digitally, where all engagement goes through the website or dedicated app, allowing you to place promotions at the fingertips of your customers, making them even more irresistible. Or you can run in-store, physical promotions that require some sort of active participation or purchase to enter. In-person promotions can be more expensive, but leave a larger impact on your customers by providing them with an experience to remember. Whatever your budget, desires and intentions, there is a promotion out there for you and we at Prizeshark are experts in finding the right fit for you and your campaign.
Competitions
Competitions with exclusive Valentine’s prizes are a great way to drive engagement as many people jump at the chance to win something with little effort. For just a moment of their time, one of your loyal customers could be lucky enough to win the ‘grand prize’ or one of several runner-up prizes. Try a ‘Valentine’s Day Date Challenge’ and ask your customers to send in their ‘perfect date’ ideas. Encourage customers to describe their perfect date, who they’d take and why, with the competition’s winner in with a chance at having that date idea come true!
For a smaller Valentine’s competition you could run a Valentine’s game through your website, social media or even your loyalty app; ‘Guess the Number of Roses.’ In which is a beautiful picture with a bouquet full of flowers asks you to count how many Roses there are in the bouquet, with customers winning small prizes or discounts by winning. This way everyone can participate and everyone wins a little something. The trick is to make it challenging without being impossible, and solvable without being boring, otherwise there’s no incentive to engage the customer.
Free Giveaways
It’s Valentine’s Day and everyone is giving to someone! Why not run a giveaway instead of a competition? A giveaway, like a gift, is in harmony with the holiday theme and provides an excellent catchment for engagement. It’s difficult to say no to free gifts and provides an excellent opportunity to part with a small item of branded merchandise such as a heart-shaped key chain or a plastic rose.
By offering out free gifts, and promoting them in the run-up to Valentine’s Day you can encourage a greater level of engagement, whether the prizes are handed out in-store or delivered with every purchase made on the 14th of February.
Loyalty Rewards
At the very least if you have a loyalty scheme, Valentine’s Day is an ideal opportunity to run customer loyalty campaigns that show appreciation and love for your most loyal customers. Running campaigns themed around ‘Show Some Love’ ties in with Valentine’s theme and encourages purchases across Valentine’s Day or in the time around Valentine’s Day. Reward your customers with double points when they spend and you have a mutual benefit between customers being encouraged to purchase, but being offered twice the usual reward for doing so. We use the backdrop of Valentine’s Day to help us focus and achieve our goals, whatever they may be.
Using Prizes to Strengthen Customer Relationships
Prize giveaways, competitions and promotions are a successful way of deepening your relationship with your customers, and no matter what you’re trying to achieve there is a way to achieve it by crafting the right kind of campaign.
But there are also general benefits you can expect to receive by running prize promotions, a few of which we highlight below:
Building Trust and Brand Image
Promotions and prizes are seen as a form of goodwill. A chance or guarantee of receiving a reward in exchange for only a small effort is appreciated by consumers and gives an immediate sense of your brand without even having to purchase anything. It shows you as a fun and engaging company that creates a positive association in the minds of your customers.
Increasing Engagement
The nature of promotions is that they are interactive experiences. Whether you are filling out a prize draw form, participating in a competition, or making purchases to earn rewards, the act of participating in the event is an engagement with your brand. At every turn of engagement, there is an opportunity to redirect your customers elsewhere to explore who you are and to show customers how you want to be perceived.
Strong Emotional Connections
Certainly from the perspective of the prize winner, but also the thrill of entering and waiting to discover whether lady luck has favoured you this time or not, a competition invokes strong emotions. The engagement, anticipation and eventual fulfilment felt by being a prize winner provides a strong emotional basis that your customers will then associate with your business. A strong emotional bond or attachment is the foundation of any form of loyalty.
These are just a few of the benefits to expect when running a prize promotion with Prizeshark, and we’ll make sure your goals are clear and that the plan we develop together will deliver you the results you deserve.
Show Your Customers Some Love with Prizeshark
Love is in the air and your customers feel it too. What a perfect time then to give back to your customers and enjoy all the benefits that that provides for you and your business and with the expertise offered by Prizeshark’s promotions, you can design campaigns that resonate deeply with your audience.
By running suitably themed prize promotions you can encourage greater engagement this Valentine’s Day and provide your customers with small gifts, or big prizes, that paint a smile on their faces and make them feel a little more loved this year. By creating strong emotional experiences in your customers through prizes and promotions you can expect to see greater engagement with your brand, a greater brand image being presented to the world, greater word-of-mouth advocacy, and of course a deepening of loyalty.
Show your customers some love this Valentine’s Day and have Prizeshark craft you the perfect prize promotion which will have your customers falling head over heels for you, and always returning for more.
