If you are looking for some Valentine’s Day eCommerce inspiration, then you have come to the right place! This article will help you answer questions about what Valentine’s Day 2022 may hold for eCommerce? What can we learn from previous years, and what strategies can drive sales this year? Read on for a grasp of inspiring numbers, handy tactics, and how they might affect your eCommerce business this year.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Also named Saint Valentine’s Day through folk traditions, has become a significant social, cultural, and commercial celebration of sharing love and gifts with loved ones. 

True Valentine’s Day shopping frenzy, like most trends, has come from the United States. Nowadays, V-Day is the busiest time at the beginning of the year for selling, which means an intensified influx of orders, especially for some retailers and brands like jewelry, cosmetics, and perfumes, as for quick commerce. When realizing that Valentine’s Day generates more income than St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, and the Super Bowl, it is worth having a tailor-made strategy to convert more customers.

What do the numbers tell us about Valentine’s Day

The first thing to note is that Valentine’s Day sales were influenced the most by COVID-19 and led to a negative impact on revenues in the last years. For instance, in the United States, overall V-Day spending decreased from $27.4 billion in 2020 to $21.8 billion in 2021, with customers spending an average of $164.76 per person in 2021 compared to $196.31 in 2020. 

However, online shopping boosted! In 2021, 38% of all Valentine’s gifts were bought online, compared to previous years, when it was 32%. Moreover, online sales are expected to increase by about 5% from 2021, according to Statista. It means that this year online retailers may expect to rake in $7.77 billion on February 14th alone.

This trend is fueled by convenience and accessibility from smartphones and other devices. In addition, the number of businesses that sell products online has increased by more than 30% since the Covid-19 outbreak. The predictions say that in 2022, there will be over 3 billion monthly active users — almost 60% of the global population! And it is only going to continue growing from here.  

What about Valentine’s Day in Poland?

Currently, it is one of the most profitable trading days of the year, as in the United States. According to the study conducted by Mastercard, Poles’ spending on Valentine’s Day has increased by almost 500% over the last decade (2011-2021), while purchases via the Internet have increased 17 times. Especially in the last 2 years, customers are more and more willing to buy gifts online for their loved ones. In 2021, 51% of Poles planned to buy a gift from an eCommerce offering. This trend continues and turns into a constant.

What is sold the most on Valentine’s Day? The top V-Day gifts

On V-day, 52% of the United States customers spend on gifts for partners, while 48% for friends, family members, children, and co-workers. The interesting fact is that men spend almost 3 times more than women. The top 4 souvenirs bought by men are flowers (58%), candy (50%), an evening out (38%), and jewelry (33%) when women top 4 Valentine’s gifts are candy (55%), an evening out (30%), a gift card (22%) and clothing (21%). 

What do Poles spend the most on when it comes to V-Day?

Before the pandemic, the most popular gift was the romantic dinner in the restaurant. However, COVID-19 and precautions do not discourage celebrating. In the last 2 years, 45% of couples preferred to eat a self-prepared meal at home, but 42% ordered from restaurants. The idea for a romantic dinner looks similar this year. As a result, it is an opportunity for quick commerce services to grow but a logistic challenge due to increases in orders.

Apart from flowers, which is invariably the most popular gift for the loved one with a 1,284% spending increase compared to 2011, Poles are more willing to buy jewelry with a 260% spending increase in the last decade.

Popular jewelry gifts are products of domestic brands such as Apart, Yes, or W.Kruk, with the last one belonging to the Vistula Retail Group. 

What is interesting, revenues from retail sales of W. Kruk in February 2021 reached PLN 42.3 million and were higher by 30.4% than the revenues in February 2020. It is worth mentioning that the consolidated revenues of the VRG Group, including the W.Kruk brand, reached PLN 173.8 million in December 2021, which is an increase of 32.6% year-on-year, when revenues for 2021 increased by 25.4%. Impressive!

How to create the best strategy to succeed on Valentine’s Day

To successfully manage an influx of orders during Valentine’s Day, be prepared to meet the needs of your clients to make them stay with you for longer. The following 6 key tactics will help you create a coherent selling strategy and succeed on Valentine’s Day 2022:

• High-quality products
• Segmentation of your audience
• Pricing strategies
• Shipping options
• Advertising campaigns
• Payment methods

High-quality products

Product quality may rank higher than price when it comes to the purchasing decision. When your eCommerce brand provides quality products every single time, customer loyalty and retention have a greater chance to occur. 

Trying to compete based on price alone tends to create price wars which are mostly better to avoid. Competing on quality is better because it is a factor you can control from the inside of your business. Higher product quality is also a reassuring factor in the buyer’s decision to purchase. If you are selling on a marketplace like Amazon, quality is even more crucial. Why? Once your average product review rating deteriorates below four stars or so, you have got a huge uphill battle ahead to maintain high revenue search ranks for your main keywords. Quality will help you avoid such a situation.

Additionally, have you thought about such a little thing as gift wrapping? Free gift wrapping can endear clients and encourage them to purchase from you. This simple perk can make enjoyed shoppers return to you in the future. Quality of services counts too!

Segmentation of your audience

Segmentation has always been the backbone of an effective marketing campaign. It ensures you are marketing the right products to the right people. Before Valentine’s Day, you can separate your products by gender or group by type of buyer. It is a perfect opportunity to provide call-to-action A/B tests, for instance, to check if preferred gender or persona will drive more clicks and conversions.
Also, use images with CTA to clearly demonstrate your Valentine’s assortment, so your visitors know exactly where they need to click, or make outstanding product recommendations that catch consumers’ attention.

Pricing strategies 

If you plan V-Day marketing, promotion with a discount is a great way to drive customers’ attention. One of the most effective strategies for Valentine’s Day can be bundle pricing. This type of pricing offers shoppers savings and an opportunity to purchase additional items for those they love. Bundle pricing strategy is a compelling incentive that can work with any holiday, especially for items with higher shipping costs. 

Shipping options

Do not forget about the shipping! Various shipping options for eCommerce are like railway tracks for trains — essential if you want to get anywhere. For instance, 62% of U.S. customers point a shipping time is one of the most important factors when defining positive experiences with e-stores, closely followed by an easy delivery process (54%).

For instance, since services like Amazon Prime offer same-day or next-day free shipping, many consumers have come to expect from other e-stores lightning-fast delivery for free. So, take care of the shipping options because customers like to have a choice. Studies show that access to various shipping options significantly influences purchasing decisions.

Advertising campaigns

Should you advertise on Valentine’s Day? Absolutely, yes! A well-planned advertising campaign should take into account not only new visitors but also those who have been browsing the store products sometime before. On the contrary to New Year sales or Christmas shopping rush, Valentine’s Day is a short and targeted opportunity to attract attention to your offer. Therefore, it is even more worth looking at hard data and preparing marketing communication using appropriate retargeting tools. 

The retargeting campaign allows you to optimize effectiveness in sales and set higher rates for those clients who have the greatest purchasing potential. As surveys show, 50% of consumers make purchases only during promotions. Such solutions as Amazon Ads or promotions on Allegro can help achieve desired goals and audiences.

Payment methods

Customers are likely to choose the same online store again not only because of the assortment, promotions, or low delivery costs but because of access to safe, various, and easy payment methods. Therefore, shopping cart conversion and cost optimization related to a group of returning customers are inseparably linked with the availability of payment options. 

Valentine’s Day is a time of giving, but it is also a time of spending. In order to draw customers’ attention to your products, it is good to design a multidimensional strategy based on quality data and numbers from previous years. Thanks to historical data you will not overlook Valentines’ Day tendencies and be better prepared to take advantage of opportunities that arise now and in the future.

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