Email Study: 'Valentine' Beats 'Valentine's' by 22%
Jacquard's analysis of 61,000 promotional emails reveals 'Valentine' beats 'Valentine's' by 22%. Practical terms like 'shipping' drive 28.3% uplift, while generic romance words backfire.
Marketing platform Jacquard analyzed over 61,000 promotional email subject lines from major retailers and found that using "Valentine" instead of "Valentine's" improved email engagement by 22%, with practical terms like "shipping" delivering even stronger results at 28.3% uplift.
Personal Language Drives Higher Engagement
Subject lines using "Valentine" in a personal context, such as "your Valentine" or "be a Valentine," delivered a 10.8% uplift in email engagement. Meanwhile, holiday-focused language like "Valentine's Day sale" or "Valentine's gifts" showed an 11.1% decline in performance.
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"The difference between 'Valentine's Day Sale' and 'For Your Valentine' is that one feels like a retail obligation, the other feels personal," said Toby Coulthard, Chief Product Officer at Jacquard.
The research examined messages sent between mid-January and mid-February over the past decade. The findings come as Valentine's Day spending in the US reached US$25.8 billion in 2024, with projections pointing to US$27.5 billion in 2025.
Practical information resonated most strongly with consumers. The word "shipping" achieved the highest performance in Jacquard's entire dataset at 28.3% uplift. Other practical terms like "offer" showed 6.9% improvement and "free" delivered 6.7% gains.
Generic Romance Terms Backfire
Common romantic words have become counterproductive due to overuse. "Love" reduced engagement by 6.6%, "heart" drove a 15.6% decline, and "sweet" showed a 14.3% drop in performance.
"Every brand defaults to 'love' and 'heart' around Valentine's Day, which creates a sea of sameness," Coulthard explained. More specific emotional language proved more effective, with "adore" delivering a 16.9% uplift and "romantic" driving an 11.7% increase.
Traditional sales language also underperformed significantly. "Shop" caused a 21.3% decline in engagement, "save" reduced performance by 10.3%, and "limited" drove performance down 18.8%.
Expanding Beyond Romantic Couples
The research highlighted growing opportunities beyond traditional couple-focused messaging. With 25% of consumers planning to celebrate Galentine's Day in 2025, inclusive language targeting friendships showed promise.
The word "friend" produced a 10.9% uplift in engagement, while "partner" was associated with a 4.1% decline. This suggests that brands exclusively targeting romantic couples may miss substantial market opportunities.
Deliverability Challenges in Asian Markets
For Asian retailers, email campaigns face additional complexity during high-volume seasonal periods. Main Valentine's sale emails achieved 99.06% placement in Gmail's promotions tab but only 0.31% inbox placement.
A four-phase campaign structure is recommended for Asia-Pacific markets: teasers from January 25 to February one, full promotions from February two to eight, urgency messaging from February nine to 13, and same-day delivery options on February 14. Timing should be staggered by time zone for optimal local engagement.
Jacquard has also launched a consumer-facing AI tool that analyzes dating app profiles and generates language suggestions to improve engagement, extending the company's linguistic optimization methodology beyond retail email marketing.
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