How to Make Your Valentine’s Day Promotions Shine

With February 14th creeping up, lots of mobile marketers are thinking about doing a Valentine’s Day-themed promotion for their app. After all, $17.3 billion gets spent during V-Day, with the average U.S. consumer laying out $134 in connection with the holiday, making it an appealing marketing opportunity for businesses of all kinds.

Some apps are practically made for Valentine’s Day: if yours helps users score deals on custom jewelry or send flowers with a tap of their thumb, it shouldn’t be too hard to put a promotion together. On the other hand, if your app’s focus is on providing real-time weather data, making that Valentine’s connection might be a little harder. The key is to focus on the things that make your app special and how they intersect with the holiday’s focus on romance, relationships, indulgence and celebration, then draw on that connection to create a noteworthy experience. You’re looking for something that will delight your users and drive larger conversations about your brand.

Once you’ve put together a great concept, the challenge becomes how to use it to drive engagement, in-app purchases or other desired conversions. Here are a couple ideas on how to make the most of your V-Day campaign, using the latest mobile marketing tools:

1. Use location-based targeting to customize how your Valentine’s Day campaign appears in different regions or even from one block to another. Retailers with a brick-and-mortar presence can use it to send a push notification about themed sale items at the location nearest to users, making it easy to pick up that last-minute bottle of wine or box of chocolates. Apps offering deals on romantic getaways can depend on location-based targeting to make sure promoted trip packages aren’t halfway across the world. And if you have an international user base, consider segmenting your audience by country; after all, not every country celebrates Valentine’s Day and there’s no point in basing a campaign around a holiday that people don’t care about.

2. Make sure your V-Day messaging reaches its entire intended audience by basing your campaign around multi-channel messaging. Push notifications are a simple, effective way to introduce your promotion, even to users who aren’t currently accessing your app, but not everyone opts in to receive them. Reach that segment using the immediacy of in-app messages or well-designed, content-rich emails, and deep link to special cards promoting your Valentine’s Day outreach in your app’s News Feed. You’ll connect with the largest possible swath of users and build anticipation in the lead up to the holiday.

Looking for more information on how to make these tools work for you on Valentine’s Day (and beyond)? Check out Appboy’s Multi-Channel Messaging playbook and Appboy Academy’s entry on location-targeting to learn more.