Timing makes for a different kind of Valentine’s Day promotion

In an online sea of Valentine’s Day promotions, a Las Vegas-based Internet retailer has come up with a strategy to capitalize on the holiday while setting his site apart from the hearts and flowers pitched elsewhere on gift sites in the weeks leading up to Feb. 14. Scentsandsprays.com, which sells bath and body products as well as scented candles, has timed the bulk of its Valentine`s Day promotion for after the holiday. There’s to be no mention of Valentine`s Day on the site until Feb. 14, when it will launch a weeklong promotion of 25% off scented candles sitewide, positioning the offer as its Valentine’s Day gift to customers.

The promotion lets the site leverage the holiday for sales while taking into account that its primary products, scented candles, aren’t typically purchased as romantic gifts. “Most of our customers are repeat buyers who like scented candles,” says Scentsandsprays.com president Kevin Richards. “So Valentine’s Day itself doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference for us.”

While scented candles as a romantic gift may not move the sales needle at the site, Richards anticipates that the promotional discount among his target audience of frequent buyers of scented candles shopping for themselves will do just that. To prepare for what he anticipates will be a 500% lift over last February, he’s increasing inventory by 110%. He’s already seen a lift of 800% over last year’s sales, December to December. “We have seen a huge shift,” says Richards, who put up the site in 2002 and his first retail store at the end of last year. “In the past, few were selling these kinds of products online. Now customers are going to the Internet to look for them.”

Nearly 50% of Scentsandsprays.com’s qualified leads come in through Yahoo Shopping, whose store software platform Richards has used to build and manage his site. Scentsandsprays.com also is promoting the Valentine’s Day offer to registered customers via an e-mail newsletter, in addition to using natural search and pay-per-click listings.