Valentine's Day Emails: Design Tips We LOVE

Valentine’s Day email marketing

Holiday marketing is a little different than everyday marketing. Around the holidays, people are more likely to make a purchase — but you also have more competition from other brands. So what are some Valentine’s Day marketing best practices? Discounts and coupon codes are helpful at any time of year, but for this holiday a two-for-one coupon that couples can use is especially fitting. Think about how to incorporate the romance of Valentine’s Day into every aspect of your email, from the subject line to the design and copy. And think a little more broadly about who you can target: many people like to mark the holiday with gifts for teachers, friends, or even pets – not only for significant others. Here are our top tips for successful Valentine’s Day email design:

Start early

If you’re running a special promotion or holiday campaign, let your customers know in plenty of time for them to make a purchase. That’s what Paper Source did here, announcing their Valentine’s Day collection on January 6th. While most people aren’t thinking about Valentine’s Day shopping quite that early, it can be beneficial to send a Valentine’s email a couple of weeks before the holiday — say, around February 1st.

Show your copy some love

Don’t overlook the copy in the body of your email — make it snappy and sweet (and on-brand, of course). Take your cue from Harry’s, which came up with the cutest way to ask customers to redeem their trial:

Plus, we loved this cute GIF!

Utilize Interactive Content

Interactive content is a huge email trend we’re seeing in 2020, so jump on board early and include a fun quiz, video, or countdown timer in your Valentine’s message. By doing so, you can expect to see more engagement and increased brand loyalty. Teen Vogue offered subscribers a fun piece of interactive content — a quiz that recommended a rom-com for the user to watch.

Sweeten up your Valentine's Day subject line

According to Email on Acid, Valentine's Day email volume is second only to the Christmas holiday season. That means it's time to put some extra TLC into a well-crafted subject line. High-performingV-Day subject lines have historically included gift and card ideas,personalized greetings,heart symbols,and the word "sweet." Here are some fun ones fromour inbox:

Don't overdo it

V-day is a holiday wherepeople tend to go to extremes to show their affection. (Does anyone really need a 195-piece box of chocolates?) But when it comes to showing your customers you care, don't go overboard. Keep your Valentineemail designconsistent with your brand identity, like Paper Culture does with their simple background and fonts.

Here's what we loveabout this design:

• The key message is incredibly short and focused, and it follows an inverted pyramid structure, beginning with a big 30% off headline, followed by a free shipping subheader, immediately followed by the CTA. It's clear and concise!
• The key message claims most of the space in the email; follow-up content is smaller, deemphasized, and doesn't keep you scrolling on and on.
• The story is super visual with images that are high quality, beautiful, and not over-the-top pink and red.
• There's no distracting header, and the footer is simple and monochromatic.

However, the email doesn't have a good balance of text and images; it's too image-heavy.Even the small descriptions underneath the photos are images instead of plain text, along with the full-width "50% off stationary" section. It'd be so simple to make these items plain text instead of images. That would decrease the risk of getting caught in a spam filter, reduce message size, and improve the look of the message for recipients with image-viewing turned off.Check out our posts on how to avoid the pitfalls of image-only emails, how to create a responsive photo collage, and how to design bulletproof CTA buttons that convert.

Artfully arrange your message

Chaos isn't attractive. If you want to express your love this Valentine's Day—and you have a lot to say—present your content with care. Always designon a grid (it's easier to make responsive) and establish a consistent format inyour layout. Photojojo does just that. Each section of this sweet Valentine's Day email is organized in the same way: header, two lines of intro text, followed by two images with captions and "Buy now" CTA buttons. The great layout and use of white space makes this email delightfully light and airy, even with a lot of content.

We admire this email's:

• Streamlined, orderly layout that makes scanning easy
• Playful infusion of pink with the HTML background color, CTA buttons, and section headers
• Sweetly simple header and footer
• Beating heart animated GIF! (A simple GIF is less likely to devour readers' mobile data)

But we'd make a few touch-ups by...

• Only using the Photojojo brand font in the headers (to decrease the number of images in the message and make it inbox friendly)
• Swapping out the image CTA buttons for bulletproof ones
• Optimizing for mobile with a responsive design. This one isn't!

Send in-email sweets

Instead of askingsubscribers to make a purchase, why not turn the tables and give them a gift? Notwith a discount or promotion on your products, but with free, useful, Valentine's Day content. It's the perfect way to show the love and build brand loyalty. Take this email from Oh Joy, the design studio and shop:

This email design is sweet because:

• It offers readers interesting, authentic content in email (without asking them to click or buy anything!)
• High-quality images are broken up by short text blocks
• The header takes up very little space, so readers get right into the content
• It's easy to read on mobile! Take a peek:

Lovingly design a header

So many promotional V-Day emails out there are comprised of a single image. But it's a risky design move. A large image can increase yourspan score and be slow to load, or itmay not appear at all depending on a reader’s email settings. Plus, single-image emails are nearly impossible to make responsive. The solution? Break up images and add text.Capitalize onflat design tactics and bold HTML background colors to create visualinterest. We were inspired byTravel Zoo'sillustrated header—the style is super cute, it's unique, and it doesn't consume the entire email:

Here's what we heart about this design:

• Perfect balance of images and email-safe text!
• The header is beautiful, one-of-a-kind, and garners attention
• Bulletproof HTML CTA button

Lead with something other than hearts

Chances are, your customers' inboxes are already overflowing with cutesy images, hearts, and x's and o's. Choose a lead image for your email that's different—that says Valentine's Day with its allure and feeling of romance, rather than with cheesy or overplayed symbols. We love how Rancho Bernardo Inn does it here. It seems like the perfect place to spend Valentine's night. Plus, this is a great approach if you're short on time or resources: say Happy Valentine's Day in the text of your email; it doesn't need to be all about pink photography and art.

What's lovable about this design:

• There's a healthy ratio of images to text
• Brand colors and fonts are retained, so the email looks distinctly Rancho Bernardo
• It's easy to design on a limited timeline (use existing brand photos and communicate your V-Day message in text)

But we'd sweeten it up by...

• Making the CTA buttons bulletproof instead of images
• Simplifying the header and footer
• Cutting down on the secondary content text
• Streamlining the variation in font sizes and styles (bold, italics, all-caps, and varied tracking)

Wrap Up: Top tips (and templates!) for the best Valentine's Day email design

These days, we all celebrate Valentine's Day in some way. Join the celebration and design a Valentine's Day email that's special and sweet!

• Put some TLC into a creative subject line. Inboxes are getting flooded. Stand out!
• Be short and sweet. Communicate your key message in a few lines of text. Try the inverted pyramid method.
• Design on a grid. Build a layout with a repeating pattern to create order with a lot of content and to make scanning easy.
• Offer added value content. Give a gift instead of asking readers to purchase one.
• Kick off your email with a V-Day header. Try an illustrated design or an animated GIF, and follow it up with plain text in order to create a good image-to-text ratio.
• Stay within your visual brand identity. Your email doesn't have to be top-to-bottom pink and red. (Plus, if you're in a time pinch, use existing visual assets and get festive with snappy text content or HTML background colors).

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’ve put out two new Valentine’s templates designed by Andrea Dall’Ara:

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

These templates, Perfumery Valentine and Restaurant Discount, are the perfect way to spread the love and make conversions this February 14th!

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!