With Valentine’s Day (February 14) upon us, it will be a time to remember and appreciate the true loves of our lives, and show them some well-deserved affection.

B2B marketers should take the same opportunity to show their prospects they care, by investing the time to personalize their email campaigns. (I provided some tips on how to do this previously.) After all, recipients who receive personalized emails will be more interested and engaged – Experian says personalized emails have 29% higher open rates, 41% higher unique click rates and six times higher transaction rates compared to non-personalized emails.

Yet marketers seem to still be missing the mark here -- Litmus reports that only 21% of consumers reported they’ve received a memorable personalized email in the past two months, while the Direct Marketing Association’s email tracking report says that 63% of respondents say that they receive too few valuable personalized emails.

Looking for some ideas to put your email personalization efforts in motion? Here are eight ways to show prospects and customers some love this Valentine’s Day:

1. The anniversary: Sending an email to your prospect a year after he or she signed up or created an account with you has several benefits. First, it certainly shows personalization. Second, it affords the opportunity for fun and creativity, and demonstrates that your company is adept at managing its data. Finally, the email may serve as a friendly reminder of your services (did they make a purchase?) and ask them whether they would like to “continue the relationship.” (A click or a “yes” reply is obviously a positive sign!)

2. The frequent customer reward: This is the email equivalent of the “buy 10, get 1 free” sandwich card. But in addition to purchases, you can also reward visits to your website, downloads, or social media posts and likes, or any other milestone that applies to your business.

3. Friends, colleagues or family offer: For those who have purchased from you previously, create a special offer for their contacts, and a reward or prize to them for referring new business to you.

4. The cross and upsell: Want fries with that? Follow-up recent purchasers with products that might enhance their user experience. You can also mine previous purchases to come up with relevant, targeted offers like Amazon or eBay does. (“Based on your buying/browsing history, we thought these products might be of interest to you.”)

5. The custom recommendation: Create a personalized email based on a prospect’s previous activity. For example, “if you liked our recent webinar on XYZ topic, you might like this new blog that explores a different angle than previously explored.”

6. Personal subject line: Get clever in the subject line based on their interest. For example, if you offer wedding cakes and know the prospect’s upcoming wedding date, perhaps your subject line can be, “Only 2 more months of freedom.”

7. Location, location: Segment your audience by their mailing address, and guide them to the store or outlet nearest them (embedded with a clickable map) with a special, limited offer.

8. The sincere thank you: Perhaps a sincere “thank you for your business” email – with no further call to action – would be well received and engender long-term loyalty. For added impact, make the message come from your president or owner with a picture and signature.

Valentine’s Day offers B2B marketers the opportunity to stand out in crowded inboxes with personalized messages that will be welcomed by their audiences, generate more responses, and, deliver more business. And what’s not to love about that?

Outward Media’s accurate, targeted email data can help you achieve better email marketing ROI, and convert more prospects into customers. Ask us how. Also, take a look at our complimentary new e-book on building a successful B2B email marketing database.