Seasonalize for Valentine’s Day with in-app events
Creative Assets
February 14, 2023
Love is upon us! Valentine’s day is just around the corner, and some are trying their hands at Valentine’s Day seasonality. Is it worth it? How do you take advantage of the day of love? Let’s find out!
About Valentine’s Day seasonality
Valentine’s Day is not as big a seasonal event as Christmas or Halloween for example. However, it’s still an opportunity to seasonalize your asset and take advantage of the flirty and playful mood users might be in.
Moreover, it’s an event that will draw some people to their app folders, mainly for restaurant booking or food-related apps.
Valentine’s Day may not seem like much, but the days leading up to it can sometimes boost traffic to some apps or games (whether it be to buy a gift, find a date or distract yourself with a mobile game).
This event may be an opportunity to be creative with your assets and spread some love. It’s also a great occasion to stand out from the crowd and attract attention with bright seasonal creatives.
As we can see in the graph above, Valentine’s Day will boost the search for specific keywords. The name of the event, obviously but also associated keywords like love for example. This is an opportunity to leverage this increase of attention on these specific keywords.
More so, seasonality is not just about boosting conversion, it also shows users that your app is up to date (and regularly updated), and can charm back old users by underlining new content. Not to forget, app stores often have thematic collections and it can bring your app to the front of the stage.
As for Valentine’s day visual identity is simple and straightforward: a lot of red, pink, and hearts. It’s all about love. All in all, seasonality is always worth it, it brings a conversion boost of up to 20%. Don’t miss the opportunity.
A seasonal event focused on icons
Most apps or games that do seasonalization for Valentine’s day go for only a seasonalized icon. The icon is the easiest creative asset to seasonalize, it’s quite small so you don’t have space for a lot of details, and you just need to add one of the event’s main color (pink or red for Valentine’s Day) and at least one key symbol (hearts is the easiest one here).
For Valentine’s Day this year, most people went for just a seasonalized icon (sometimes paired with an in-app event).
Heads Up! shows us an easy way to seasonalize, the logo is very similar to their regular logo, they just switched the bright blue behind the title for a seasonal burgundy with a heart pattern. It’s straight to the point, easily understandable and very efficient.
Merge Mayor set up one of the game’s characters with a heart-shaped Valentine’s gift, a full pink outfit to recall the event’s color coding, and a few hearts on the side as well. The character is clearly shown as playful, winking at the user with a bright smile because Valentine’s Day is all about love and happiness.
Barbie Dreamhouse took the creative asset made for the Valentines-themed in-app event and cropped it into an icon. The pink color code matches well with Barbie’s core identity, and the added heart details are what make it a Valentine’s special.
There are a lot of ways to seasonalize your icon, whether a more discreet option like Forest Island who added a pink background and a couple of small hearts or go the whole way like Gym Mania who bet on a Cupid-like character holding a heart. Collect Em All! just changed the circle shape of its regular icon into hearts and switched up the colors for a very effective Valentines’ icon!
A great approach is the choice made by Addams Family to have different Valentine’s Day icons for each platform. They’ve clearly relied on their internal data about their users on both platforms to assess which icon would work best in both cases.
The App Store version is much pinker than the Play Store one, the monstrous cupids are a nice addition, that also tailors the creative to the game’s visual identity. Applying the game’s genre and aesthetic to the event in a funny and original way. The Play Store version is darker, there’s no pink except on the seasonal title (Love, chocolates & monsters), and seems more focused on cooking, with the hand character being dressed as a chef and the whip it’s holding dripping in chocolate batter. However, the background is filled with dark hearts as well in a more discrete show of seasonality.
If you want to have a seamless listing page but not necessarily seasonalize all your assets, you only need to seasonalize your first screenshots. If your screenshots are in landscape, it may actually be enough to seasonalize only your first screenshot like Project Makeover did.
If you’re just interested in app icons, SplitMetrics has a selection of trending Valentine’s Day app icons right here.
Seasonality’s best tool: in-app events
One of this year’s big successes in terms of seasonality was definitely in-app events (or Promotional Content as they are called on the Play Store). In-app events are a great way to drive attention, not only do they have dedicated spots on both the App Store and the Play Store, they’re also a great way to entice users.
Both as a tool to fight against churn and to acquire new customers, in-app events show that your app is active, that things are happening, and connecting them to real life (through digital celebration of real events like Valentine’s Day) is a sure way to boost both visibility and conversions.
The key to a successful seasonalized in-app event (IAE) is to adapt it to your game or app’s style. Frost & Flame reworked Cupid to match their game’s aesthetics and its characters. Even the heart balloons are a more realistic design. The fact that they included Valentine’s in the subtitle is great for keyword ranking and ASO, boosting visibility on seasonal searches.
Because IAE’s visual assets will only be used for these events, there are more creative possibilities. Unlike app screenshots or preview videos where the goal is to showcase your app or game and attract a larger audience, in-app events are focused on one specific aspect of your product, usually a one-time event/update. Which means you have more freedom to choose what you want to show.
You can even add a cute dog like Project Makeover because Valentine’s Day is all about romance, love, and adorableness. There’s also more space to showcase couples (with your app or game’s characters) or Valentines’ gifts. Make your users your Valentine this year!
Mobile games are not the only ones having some fun with in-app events this Valentine’s Day. There are many ways to find a connection between the event and your app. Whether it’s with special promo codes, goodies, some assets, or features debut.
The advantage of Valentine’s Day as a seasonal event is that the main topic is love. Most times, it’s easy to find a connection with love, and it’s great to be associated with such a positive emotion.
If you’re not feeling inspired, you could always turn the event on its head and target the single people who will stay behind, and opt for a more funny approach! It’s time to make your users feel the love!
Tips for Valentine’s Day seasonalized assets
- Valentine’s Day colors are red and pink
- The key element is hearts, there are a lot of funny and original ways to incorporate them in your assets
- Some other elements to add: roses, couples, champagne
- Start preparing in advance. You will need to produce new creatives and it takes time.
- If possible, seasonalize the first screenshots as well, it can go a long way to convince people to download and will help your app listing page feel more seamless
- Seasonality is not just about creatives, some keywords and seasonal additions to your app’s description could help boost your app for those seasonal searches
- Don’t stop at your product page, take advantage of other ASO tools like in-app events and LiveOps or make a seasonal UA campaign
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