Developing and nurturing your customers’ loyalty is all about keeping in touch and creating positive client experience. Like any other special holiday or season, Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to remind your customers about your business in an easy-going and creative way. But how not to cross the line between a funny, endearing or simply nice memento and an inappropriately selling or intrusive card that will harm your brand?  

In this article specially prepared by Inkit to help you with your Valentine’s Day direct mail marketing journey, we will focus on the following:

• how your brand could benefit from implementing Valentine’s Day direct marketing
• case studies of using Valentine’s Day direct mail for B2B and B2C businesses
• ideas and tips for your Valentine’s Day direct mail campaign

Valentine’s Day as an Offline Marketing Campaign Opportunity

Just like Christmas, Thanksgiving or your customer’s birthday, Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to reach out to your clients. The everpresent atmosphere of love and happiness is a good canvas for a creative approach to impress your target audience.

In fact, many businesses have made it their rule to boost their company’s image and increase brand awareness by launching a direct mail campaign with Valentine’s Day theme. Here are a couple of case studies illustrating the key five reasons why you should consider Valentine’s Day postcard campaign for your company.

Send Valentine’s Day Postcard to #1: Get more visibility on a local level.

“Our company not only has an e-commerce website but a brick and mortar retail store as well. Every Valentine’s Day we launch a postcard mailer to all our e-commerce customers that are located within a 20-mile radius of our brick and mortar store. We have done this for two years now and it has been very successful, especially from the growth in customers from the previous Christmas season. This postcard has a picture of our store, some of our specials, and a discount to shop in the brick and mortar location. Our goal here is to increase foot traffic from customers that may have thought we were only online.”

Jeff Moriarty, Moriarty’s Gem Art  

Send Valentine’s Day Postcard to #2: Convert with a bit of humor and personal touch.

“The basic premise behind what we’re doing is trying to convert established businesses who are either working with one of our competitors or still handling their own inventory and shipping in-house (it’s not uncommon for eCommerce businesses to wait until they have steady, 5 figure monthly revenues before outsourcing to a 3rd party). We’ve compiled a list of possible customers who could be a good fit for us. The next step is to reach out to them, and this is where you should be interested in what we’re doing. Especially for logistics, which is a relatively dry topic, it’s great to be able to have a little bit of a laugh and do something that feels out of the box. We know we’re not the most exciting company, but Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to make a tongue-in-cheek proposal that doesn’t feel like just another piece of junk mail. ”

Jake Rheude, Red Stag Fulfillment

Send Valentine’s Day Postcard to #3: Help them voice their feelings via multiple channels

“Near Valentine’s day, many people want their feelings to be heard… We thought of conducting an open-mic event in our area. The response was much more than we expected. Our team members hosted that event with the company’s logo imprinted on their shirts. We announced our special Valentine’s day discount to our audience, and the event got covered by many cameras as well. People were interested in making videos, so we got marketed on social media through hundreds of hashtags.”

Aqsa Tabassam, Senior Growth Marketer at Brandnic.com

“Business to Business offline marketing reduces the cost and expense and gives a big chunk of business. Keep your customers in mind when designing a Valentine campaign. Tell them that they are more special for you on this Valentines’. Customized red velvet cakes with your wishes over it would be an excellent option according to the special day.

You can also throw a themed party to gather all of them under one roof to show them how much they equally valuable for you.

For B2C offline marketing, we are planning to target the audience by offering them an offer through spin a wheel game. We will display a set up in big malls and excite them with multiple price range vouchers and instant gifts.”

Jessica Chase, Sales & Marketing Manager, Premier Title Loans

“We did an EDDM mailing targeting areas in Seattle and Virginia (that was also supported by online Facebook and Google AdWords efforts.)  We’ve also done hyper-local direct mail around our own neighborhood here in San Francisco.”

Antonia, Enclosed

A pro tip: A printed QR code or a PURL on the mailer is a great way to combine your online and offline marketing efforts. Read our guide on trigger-based direct mail campaigns for more ideas.

Send Valentine’s Day Postcard to #4: Increase customer interest with a special discount

“Peoples’ mailboxes are already bombarded with a lot of unread Valentine’s marketing campaigns. Still, their direct mailboxes are usually empty. So, chances of getting your message opened in the later one are far higher than the first. We delivered Valentine’s card with a warm message. Additionally, our marketing team shared a discount coupon for availing a 14% discount on all products. This campaign ran for 7 weeks in our local community, and we received an overwhelming response.”

Aqsa, Senior Growth Marketer at Brandnic.com

Send Valentine’s Day Postcard to #5: Remind past customers about your good old days together

“We run direct mail Valentine’s day campaigns. We use it as a way to invoke humor. Every year we mail a funny letter to past customers that has a call to action on them selling a car. For example, we’ve used the idea of the customer selling a car so they can take their date out to a nice dinner. Another year, we used something along the lines of “Does your significant other want that old car removed? Make it right on Valentine’s day”.

The key for us here is to make people laugh. While many people don’t call us around Valentine’s day, hundreds have kept the card and called us at a later date. We’ve found that getting people to laugh is a great way to increase brand awareness and direct mail around Valentine’s day is an excellent angle.”

Sean Pour, co-founder of SellMax

Three Tips for a Creative Valentine’s Day Postcard

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to add Valentine’s Day to your marketing calendar. And if you already did, here are a few useful tips for your creative postcard and successful Valentine’s Day direct mail marketing campaign:

Tip #1 for a Creative Valentine’s Day Postcard:

Try to invoke humor and positive feelings so that your customers associate their pleasant emotions with your brand, as well as attempt to view your business from a different perspective.

Here’s an example from INFUSEmedia, a two-time Inc. 500 honoree B2B demand generation company. For Valentine’s Day, they decided to send postcards to their targeted ABM accounts spoofing a famous Simpsons episode:

Tip #2 for a Creative Valentine’s Day Postcard:

Combine proven best practices with thinking out of the box.

A beautifully designed personalized card is always a great idea worth a try. Play on the Valentine’s Day theme to create a catchy postcard to show how you value your customers — and don’t forget to include an extra: a special discount or an invitation to themed events, workshops or celebrations.

“Our Valentine’s Day campaign involves a postcard mailer with the headline “Make a date with your next client” and it’s designed to show contractors the ease of finding a qualified lead through our site. We’re offering them a subscription discount good through the end of February, with a code printed on the mailer.

These have just been sent out, so we’re looking forward to seeing how they do. We’ve had to do some trial and error, as it’s not enough to just inform contractors about the site. While we had some success doing that (we printed a QR code on the mailer that we could use to track signups), I believe we’ll see many more signups by offering something with an expiration date.”

Courtney Keene, Director of Operations, MyRoofingPal

If you’re struggling with creatives, try using Inkit’s postcard builder to create several types of beautiful Valentine’s Day cards tailored to each target audience.

Tip #3 for a Creative Valentine’s Day Postcard:

Use advanced automated technologies to save your time and manual efforts, as well as make sure your customers get the postcard right on time. All of these can be achieved by connecting your CRM to Inkit and automating your postcard design, personalization, printing, and shipping processes.

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for enhancing your marketing strategy. Never miss the chance to express your love to your customers, and Inkit will help you express your best feelings in the most unique and creative way. Enjoy no batch limitations, flexible pricing, and other benefits for your direct mail campaigns.