Brands are ready with content, ideas and newer ways to help audiences  express their love on Valentine’s. As high as 90 percent consumers planned to buy gifts for significant other with nearly 60 percent planning on gifts for family members and 20 percent planning to buy gifts for friends, according to a Forbes and Statista Infographic for 2015 Valentine’s Day.

Starbucks Sparks The Flame

Starbucks is ready with Valentine’s Day product line up for engaging coffee lovers and love seekers alike for Valentine’s. The coffee and treat pairings, Caffe Verona paired with Double Chocolate Chunk Brownie,  Tall Flat white and Chocolate Croissant and Grand White Chocolate Mocha with a Heart cookie made for an appetizing combination for Valentine’s Day, last year.

For 2016, Starbucks has announced a Line Up of offers that are available, offering consumers a warm way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with their loved ones.

According to an update from Starbucks, the offers feature new Valentine’s cup designs and heart-shaped Starbucks Card with five messages to choose from. The new addition Valentine’s Cold Cup is adorned with Golden pattern finished with a pink lid and a green straw.

According to a review on Business Insider, The molten chocolate latte is made with melted chocolate chips, espresso, steamed milk, and bittersweet mocha syrup. It tastes like a regular cafe mocha, but with extra dark chocolate. The flavor is available in three varieties: a latte, a frappuccino, and a hot chocolate. The frappuccino iteration consists of coffee with mocha syrup and chocolate chips blended with milk and ice. It’s very sweet, and the crushed chocolate chips add a rich texture to the drink. And the molten hot chocolate has bittersweet mocha syrup and chocolate chips that are melted into steamed milk. This has a slightly bitter taste for hot chocolate, and has a richer flavor than the other two drinks. It tastes the most like deep, dark chocolate — a big plus for serious chocolate lovers.

Starbucks has launched a special edition Valentine’s Starbucks card which is heart-shaped and can be linked to a Keychain.

Heart-shaped Starbucks Card-A fun and unique Valentine’s Day gift with five messages from which to choose. This card is designed to link onto a keychain for convenience

Pink heart design cup with XOXO, that is reusable

A 16-ounce cold cup is adorned with a golden xoxo pattern finished with a pink lid and green straw- Valentine’s Cold cup

Classic white mug with a xoxo design within a golden heart – Valentine’s HandleMug

Valentine’s Day Card: A sweet gift for that special someone in your life.

Starbucks partnered with Match last year to launch The Biggest Date with Coffee and conversation appearing as an interest for 3 Million Match users and going for a coffee date being a favorite activity for every one in three members. The “Meet At Starbucks” feature was coupled with Starbucks Menu that featured a selection of coffee and treat pairings available for USD 5.

Reese’s Gets The Conversation Going

Reese’s Valentine Peanut Butter  Conversation Cups with messaging can get the conversation going for those who wish to express themselves. Each piece comes wrapped with a label that makes it easy to gift among friends. For those who wish to enjoy the candy themselves can do so with XOXO and U R sweet labels.

Hershey’s Kisses Get You Drooling

Hershey’s Kisses new Chocolate Truffle, with rich Truffle centers comes wrapped in  pink striped foils and classic plumes and is perfect for Valentine’s Day baking. Hershey’s Kisses content that is packed with Gift Ideas, Craft  and recipe ideas make for a perfect assortment that can help you decide on your favorite way to express your feelings for the loved ones. With easy to do tips, recipe ideas and Content, Hershey’s Kisses has it planned for you right from an e-card to Treat bags.

 
Little Debbie and Hostess For Those Who Wish To Proclaim

Little Debbie’s seasonal offerings include several heart-shaped, and super-cute, items, like: Be My Valentine snack cakes (in varying flavors), iced brownies, marshmallow treats, and cherry cordials.

According to E!Online, Hostess has introduced two new cupcake flavors to share with that special someone: Dark Chocolate-Raspberry and Chocolate-Covered Strawberry that are partially pink.

Hostess’s limited-edition “I ♥ U” Cakes, are right to proclaim your feelings for someone.

Tactics For Promoting Your Valentine’s Day Campaign

Twitter Conversational Ad Units

Twitter recently introduced Conversational ad units, that allow Brands to post brand messages to the followers of Twitter users who engage with your promoted Tweet. Brands that are looking at engaging friends and followers of a Twitter user for amplifying their message will find Conversational Ad Units effective in earning the audience engagement.

Use Remarketing to Target Your Site Visitors

Brand Advertisers who have a large email marketing base can use Twitter to target  audiences who have engaged with the brand in prior promotions and effectively use Tailored Audience to promote their newer offers. This can be done by importing email contacts into Twitter Lists and Promote to the audience that have earlier engaged with the brand. Remarketing on Twitter can be done with Tailored Audience to convert your website visitors and users who have engaged with your Tweets.If your objective with Twitter Ads is to reach high-intent visitors to your website and convert them into new customers, the website tag for remarketing may be a great fit.  By following Topics on Twitter you may be able to identify audiences that are already engaging with brands on the topic and promote your offer with a Promoted Tweet or a Twitter card.

Remarketing is now available on Bing for Search Marketing and Shopping Campaigns. Instagram’s personalized targeting helps you retarget lapsed app users. With Pairing of custom audiences with lookalike audiences Instagram takes out the guesswork allowing brands to scale up user acquisition and retention, with targeted offers.

Google’s One Click buying allows marketers and advertiser to target last-minute shoppers.

An Emoji Campaign For Buzz and Recall

An Emoji Campaign is an ideal way to personalize your campaign for Valentine’s Day for the time strapped mobile user who is looking at communicating or sending out a signal in a snap moment. Building in the phenomenon of quick interaction can create a significant buzz and engagement. In case your brand is seen as central to all gift occasions, including an emoji that signifies gifting in your activation or loyalty campaign on social media can increase the engagement. Domino’s Pizza with easy order campaign generated over 460 K Social Media actions. An example of the easy order Tweet from Domino’s Pizza.

Publisher Posts For Content Amplification

According to an IPG Media Lab Report, Choose Publishers that match their audience with the content they love the most. For auto & travel, consumers are significantly more open to personalization like demo/geo targeting, device targeting, and past search behavior. For lower commodity categories, previous ad exposure and time of day are most acceptable.

Co-branded posts targeted at Publisher audience can increase engagement by up-to 8 times in comparison with posts promoted to  Brand’s audience.

Identify co-branding partners and publishers based on the interests of your audience demographic.

Include Mobile Video For Awareness and Engagement

Engaging Younger audiences with Mobile Video increases interaction rate with video ad formats preferred by the young audiences.  Other than Facebook and Google Search, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube make for a large share of Millennial Total App time.

According to TrackMaven, Instagram makes for a large percentage of Audience interactions in comparison with other channels. The average interaction rate for most verticals is higher on Instagram.

Messaging Apps are popular with Younger Audiences. Include Messaging Apps in your Advertising mix.