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Audience Development Strategy

How 3 Publishers Are Using Valentines Day to Increase Website Traffic

How Better Homes & Gardens, Photojojo.com and Canadian Living have created Valentines Day themed email campaigns for targeted website traffic

Valentines Day has a love/hate relationship with people. Some people love Valentines Day—a day of gifts, cards and smooching. What isn’t there to like, right? Well you have the opposite side of the crowd (and I’ve

How Better Homes & Gardens, Photojojo.com and Canadian Living have created Valentines Day themed email campaigns to increase website traffic

Valentines Day has a love/hate relationship with people. Some people love Valentines Day—a day of gifts, cards and smooching. What isn’t there to like, right? Well you have the opposite side of the crowd (and I’ve been there) who hate it. Loathe it, even. “Commercialism at it’s finest,” they’ll scream!

However you feel about Valentines day, there’s one thing that’s true. It’s a great excuse to come up with an email blast that’s targeted and relevant. In most cases, it won’t be sent on Valentines day. Rather, it’s sent beforehand.

Let’s take a look at what some publishers and marketers have put together lately in hopes they might inspire you before the day arrives.

From: Better Homes & Gardens
Subject Line:
Make Adorable Crafts for Valentine’s Day

This email newsletter focuses on the theme of Valentines Day by coming up with a series of articles that might attract several different types of crafters. By putting the leading image on the left and the links to different articles on the right, they’ve put everything above the fold. How could you not click at least one of these links?

[text_ad]

From: Photojojo.com
Subject Line: 5 Fun & Easy DIY Valentine Photo Projects

Again, these guys know that photos work. The interesting image to the right makes you think, “How’d they do that?” which in turn makes you want to read further. But Photojojo doesn’t give away the prize in this email newsletter. A brief blog review leads to a link at the bottom which brings the reader to the full article.

And how can you not be persuaded to open this email when it includes the word “fun” and “easy” in it? The target audience for this blog is photographers, so “DIY” (aka Do-It-Yourself) and “Photo Project” make this an easy open.

From: Canadian Living
Subject Line: Best Valentine’s dinner party with friends

This email newsletter is written in letter form, signed by Annabelle Waugh, Food Director at Canadian Living. The letter talks about the types of things Waugh enjoys doing on valentines day while linking to different articles on their website.

This advertorial-style email newsletter is an excellent example of focused email copywriting that drives website traffic. She mentions things like how she loves “making handmade chocolates for my sweetheart” or that she loves making “arugula salad with blue cheese and candied pecans“. The “letter” is littered with links back the website. Since they’re “personal recommendations”, why wouldn’t you click?

Whether you love or hate Valentines Day, I hope this blog helped you come up with more ideas for formatting your email newsletters to drive more website traffic this “holiday” season.

By Amanda MacArthur

Research Director & Managing Editor

Amanda is responsible for all the articles you read on the Mequoda Daily portal and every email newsletter delivered to your inbox from us. She is also our in-house social media expert and would love to chat with you over on @Mequoda. She has worked with Mequoda for almost a decade, helping to evolve the Mequoda Method through research, testing and developing new best practices in digital publishing, editorial strategy, email marketing and audience development. Amanda is a co-author of our four digital publishing handbooks.

Co-authored handbooks:

Contact Amanda:

Contact Amanda via email at amanda (at) mequoda (dot) com, @amaaanda, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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