Valentine's Day campaigns: start in January, write to each kind of buyer, and win the last three days.

The red and pink arrive in the shops as soon as the Christmas decorations come down, and your customers start thinking about gifts at the same time. Send the first Valentine's message in the first half of January. Some will find it early. Most will appreciate the time to plan.

Keep the first email about awareness, not conversion. Phrases like "just around the corner", "countdown to Valentine's Day" and "the shop is open" plant the idea without pressure. A good preview sets the tone for the season and gives you the first signal of who is interested: everyone who opens or clicks it is the start of your gift-buyer segment.

Follow it with a sneak peek: a curated selection of gifts, split "for her" and "for him", or by price. It shows the range of what you sell and makes the choice easier, which helps the basket grow.

Send the broad announcement to the main list, then split the follow-ups by what people did with it and what they bought before. The products inside each email should change per person: a travel store would show weekend breaks that match each subscriber's past trips and budget, not one destination to everyone. Keep the personalization useful rather than intimate. Pick the products from what the shopper did; do not quote it back to them.

Couples and gift-givers

The core audience. Show gift guides by recipient and price, and make the bundle or the gift box an obvious add-on.

Self-gifters

Not everyone has a partner, and many people buy something for themselves in February anyway. Write to them in their own words: "you deserve something special" instead of "gifts for your loved one", "fall in love with your best self" instead of "romance is in the air", "the perfect gift is self-care" instead of "perfect gifts for them". Including singles widens the audience and earns goodwill.

Pet owners

Many owners include their pets in every celebration. Find them by past purchases, give them a playful subject line ("As if we needed a day to obsess over our dog..."), a gift guide by pet type, and two calls to action: one for the pet, one for the owner.

Your best customers

Use the season to thank them. Find them by recency, frequency and spend (RFM segmentation), mark purchase milestones, and send an exclusive offer or early access with a personal thank-you. It costs little and is remembered.

Customers open an order confirmation because they want the details, so it is a message buyers look for rather than one they skim past. Put the order first, clearly, so the email still does its job. Then add a short "you'll also love" block below it.

The suggestions must match the order. Someone who bought a necklace sees the matching earrings or a gift box, not your bestsellers. Add a reason to come back after the 14th: a personal coupon for the next order or early access to the spring range. A Valentine's buyer who returns in March is worth more than the Valentine's order.

Track which suggestions sell, by product pair. That tells you what to bundle next year.

Free shipping is the usual incentive and it works, but the season has room for more. Tiered gifts with purchase grow with the basket. Bundles of popular Valentine's items make the choice for the buyer. Early-bird flash deals reward the planners. A giveaway, named in the subject line, earns opens from people who were not shopping yet.

Match the offer to the phase. Early in the season, gifts and bundles add value without training customers to wait for a discount. Save the countdown discount for the end, and measure which incentive converts, so next year starts from evidence rather than habit.

Every store has them: shoppers who viewed the same gift several times and did not buy. In the last days before the 14th they become the most valuable audience you have, because they have decided to buy something and are running out of time.

Remind them with the products they looked at (browse abandonment) and anything left in the cart (abandoned cart). State the delivery deadline plainly: order by this date to have it on the 14th. As the deadline nears, offer the alternatives that still arrive in time: express shipping, click and collect, or a digital gift card. A short series works better than one email, each message a little more urgent and a little more helpful than the last.

The best last-chance emails keep the choice small. "Limited time left" plus one promo code for a last-minute gift gives a hesitant shopper less to decide.

Add SMS for the final push

When a message is time-sensitive, a text on the phone tends to be seen sooner than an email in a crowded inbox. Send the last-minute reminder by email first, and follow up by SMS to those who did not open it, among the customers who agreed to receive texts. Keep it to one or two messages: it is a reminder, not a second campaign.

In a busy season, test one thing and test it well: the subject line. Send several versions to small groups, let the opens and clicks decide, and send the winner to the rest of the list.

Useful pairs to test are a love-themed pun against a plain offer, a personal subject line against a general announcement, urgency against value, and short against descriptive. Write down what wins. Each test builds a playbook for the next season, so next February starts from what your own customers answered to.