Indeed, there are many forms of love and numerous ways to express it – all brands have a chance to get a fair share of consumer spending this V-Day.
Last year, people spent over $23.9 billion on Valentine’s Day, up from $21.8 billion spent in 2021. With an ROI of 3600%, you can use email marketing to play the Cupid for your business, when you play your cards right.
Having said that, not every brand fits in the typical purview of V-day, and thus, our experts decided to curate emails with various sender intents to make sure all our readers can shower love in their subscribers’ inboxes.
Now that the 2023 Valentine’s Day is around the corner, we have compiled the top ten HTML email template inspirations to spruce up your email design.
Let’s get started:
#1 Giveaway Contests – Postable
Giving your subscribers a reason to tag their ‘special ones’ on social media in exchange for giveaways can be a win-win strategy.
The giveaway approach can help you boost your online presence through social media mentions and allow you to penetrate their inner circle. Their inner circle can also be your potential target audience owing to the similarities in demographics, psychographics, and economic reach like in the case of Postable:
#2 V-day special discounts – Oura
#3 Gift cards – Nike
The convenience of gift cards is another effective email marketing strategy to woo your subscribers! This gift card strategy itself makes a wonderful Valentine’s day present and the recipient feels valued by your brand. Also, they can choose the budget for their purchase based on the value of the gift card. Here is an example that can inspire you to create love-themed gift cards similar to Nike which is known as a highly consumer-focused brand:
#4 Highlights – ActionRocket
If you are a SaaS brand and unsure of how to show some love to your clients? ActionRocket gave us the perfect example of what to do in such scenarios. They have shared a review of their most loved resources and this is something every company can replicate.
Most SaaS companies, blogs, and media outlets can wrap their yearly review content (with revised timeframes) and that’s it!
#5 Wrapping products in the Valentines theme that aren’t directly related to it – MacPaw
MacPaw knew that the brand might not be able to market its product to the Valentines’s Day theme or target people who are looking to make the V-day special. Hence, they have clubbed Apple’s brand loyalty with Valentine’s week and came up with this beautiful emailer.
If your product enjoys good popularity, then this is a solid strategy to entice your buyers to make the purchase decision by leveraging the discounts approach.
#6 Blending in with the love – Dairy Queen
Limited-period product offerings can be one of the most powerful forms of marketing approaches when it comes to festivities and special occasions. Like limited editions, they help attract the right amount of attention while giving people a strong reason to make the purchase.
In the below example, Dairy Queen leveraged the Red Velvet cake for the occasion and with a compelling email copy, it does the job wonderfully:
#7 Not so impromptu – Resy
Many brands use straightforward email copy so that their messages contain clear steps to follow to perform an action. However, often such email copies end up appearing too direct, sales-heavy, or bland. In such cases, creative emails with visually appealing elements can help brands gain the attention of their targeted audience they were at the risk of losing with text-centric email copies.
In this following example from Resy, we can see how creatively they have used the ‘not so impromptu’ messaging while also covering the recipients that weren’t based outside their targeted demographics; i.e., Chicago:
#8 Product placement: Market around love – Fitbit
You can implement a planned product placement strategy and market it around love like Fitbit to create a more direct but not forceful sales pitch via email marketing. In this email, Fitbit has used a pink theme, an email copy that resonates with emotions like self-care and willingness to stay healthy.
Although Fitbit didn’t address romanticism directly, the email turns out to be in line with the overall concept of love and nurture that are associated with the occasion of Valentine’s Day:
#9 Being a friend in need – Yelp
Offering help is one smart way to stand out in an inbox full of discount offers that might appear too spammy! Yelp has aced it in this example. Right from the hero text to the three-point content outline, Yelp has made it simple for its readers to figure out what it had to offer clearly.
As this email itself has served great use to the recipient, it has ruled out the need for any discount offer. If your business has a similar value proposition, you can apply this email approach this Valentine’s Day:
#10 Show some love to the singles – Calm
Though not everybody may find a Valentine to cherish the day, many deliberately want to spend it in their own company peacefully! Hence, leaving out this major segment of people from your Valentine’s Day marketing can be a big mistake!
Calm has understood the significance of including this demography in its email marketing campaign and has come up with this beautiful email that celebrated self-love. The email has offered multiple ways to nurture the relationship with oneself by containing a list of its offerings. Though this one is an example of a content-heavy email, it certainly does not look cluttered:
Wrap Up
As an email marketer, you need to be mindful of approaching human emotions and articulate your empathy for your targeted audience to be able to use their entire screen and interest in your brand. After all, they have trusted your brand or product to share their email address with you! We also recommend not stretching the email copy or going overboard with the images.
While creating enticing emails that can make your subscribers feel valuable and loved this Valentine’s Day is your perfect goal, choose email templates that will match your product or offers. Also, keep it straightforward instead of beating around the bush.
We hope that these V-day email inspirations will help you ace your email marketing game and spread love in your mailing list. Let us know what you think in the comments and you can read awesome blogs like this over here.