12 effective Veterans Day marketing ideas for celebrating those who served

Veterans Day celebrates the contributions and sacrifices of people who served in the armed forces.

With over 16 million veterans in the US as of 2022, many brands take this day as an opportunity to express gratitude to all US veterans, show commitment and support, and engage with their audience in a meaningful way.

It’s crucial to note that Veterans Day marketing isn’t the same as marketing you’d use for holidays like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Black Friday/Cyber Monday. This day isn’t about explicitly promoting your brand and offering crazy discounts—it’s about appreciating brave individuals and important values, and your campaigns should reflect that.

Here, we give you 12 Veterans Day marketing ideas to help you honor veterans and build a strong, meaningful connection with your audience—without being too pushy or salesy.

1. Thank veterans for their service

Show that your brand cares about veterans by thanking them for their service without a sales pitch or asking your subscribers to take action.

This is an excellent way to establish your brand image and integrity—it shows you care about veterans, and that you’re not celebrating the holiday just to make a sale.

Take a look at how JUDY, a brand that sells emergency kits and supplies, uses email marketing to express their gratitude to veterans. A captivating banner and a heartfelt note, with no CTA buttons or brand promotion, are enough to show JUDY cares.

2. Get both veteran and non-veteran employees involved

If you have employees who served in the military, Veterans Day is the perfect time to honor them by asking them to share their experiences and stories of how they changed their profession when they started working with you.

You might, for example, create a newsletter and introduce one veteran’s story every week or twice a week, depending on how many veteran employees you have. This not only shows appreciation for veterans and inspires others, but also demonstrates that you value and respect your employees.

Of course, not everyone is comfortable sharing their stories publicly, so don’t push your employees into the spotlight if they aren’t okay with it. Instead of sharing your veteran employees’ stories with your audience, you might:

• Celebrate the holiday in the office with your team.
• Volunteer with your employees at a local charity dedicated to veterans.

If your team is comfortable taking pictures during events like the above, you can share them on your website and social media platforms or send them to people on your email list with a celebratory message.

Another option is to conduct interviews with your employees, veterans or not, and ask them about what Veterans Day means to them, then share their answers with your audience. Here, supplement brand Vital Proteins does this in a blog post on their website.

Veterans Day marketing tip: As every veteran has a unique experience, do your best to highlight that not all are combat soldiers. Some veterans are doctors, lawyers, cooks, or IT personnel. Infusing your content with these versatile perspectives will help you avoid stereotypes and introduce different points of view to your campaign.

3. Share genuine veteran stories from your community

Beyond your employees, you likely have veterans among your subscriber and customer base—which means Veterans Day marketing initiatives can also involve spotlighting your audience’s experiences in the armed forces, too.

User-generated content is particularly effective at building trust in your brand and turning prospects and customers into brand advocates—especially if you support an important cause and create campaigns that serve the broader community.

In the weeks leading up to Veterans Day, here are a few reliable ways to collect UGC and stories from your veteran subscribers and customers:

• Ask for responses via an email campaign.
• Allow people to share stories directly on your website or comments on your blog.
• Use a branded hashtag to invite your audience to share their own pictures, stories, and videos on social media.

Once you’ve collected UGC from veterans (and permission to use it!), you can share it on your organic social media accounts, in your paid marketing efforts, on your website, and via email and SMS marketing.

An excellent example of this approach is sporting goods brand Scheels, whose Hometown Heroes campaign involved posting stories of 10 veterans with different backgrounds and creating short videos about each. Customers were able to nominate a hero themselves to celebrate the positive impact they’d had on their communities.

Veterans Day marketing tip: If you’re running a top-of-funnel Veterans Day campaign that you’re advertising on search and social, and you’ve built out a special landing page at a vanity URL where you’re sending your audience from other channels, try launching a specific sign-up form for that page only.

In a marketing platform like Klaviyo, you can even launch a unique welcome series depending on where a new subscriber signs up for your list. If you were running a campaign like Scheels’s Hometown Heroes, for example, you might have a welcome series that includes a 20-second clip of one of your hero highlight videos.

4. Ask your audience to write thank-you notes for veterans

Inviting your audience to write thank-you notes to veterans is another meaningful way to acknowledge their service and show support.

This approach allows community members to connect and gather around expressing direct appreciation for veterans and active military personnel. It’s also a unique way to learn more about veterans’ experiences, and may be especially interesting to a subscriber or customer who has a veteran family member or close friend.

You can collect and share UGC in the form of thank-you letters, photos, and videos in the same way you would collect and share veteran stories (see idea #3 above).

Veterans Day marketing tip: Turn this initiative into a yearly tradition to make a more significant impact and boost reach over time.

5. Donate a portion of your sales to a relevant charity

Actions speak louder than words, and there’s hardly a better way to honor the veteran community than to donate a portion of your sales to a relevant charity.

Giving money to a noble cause can earn your brand the trust of the military community and show that you’re honest and determined to help. Advertise your intentions via emails, text messages, or your website to encourage people to buy from you and support the cause.

Here, see how Death Wish Coffee announces their plans to raise $20,000 for the Saratoga County Veterans Service Agency and enlists their subscribers for help by encouraging them to purchase a branded coffee mug, $7 of which would go toward the cause.

6. Launch a program dedicated to military

If you’d like to support military personnel and promote your brand and products, you could launch a program that gets your products into the hands of veterans for free. This is what apparel brand RSVLTS did with their RSVLTS Deployment Boxes movement.

The movement provides brave service members with RSVLTS gear with the help of community members, who can purchase items for the boxes at discounted rates. Here’s an example of an email in which the brand promotes the movement, as well as their permanent military discounts:

7. Work with an influencer or a celebrity

Teaming up with influencers and celebrities has its perks because it can raise brand awareness, trust, and credibility. Your brand can also benefit from diversifying your audience and boosting engagement thanks to the influencer’s reach.

In terms of Veterans Days initiatives, working with influencers and celebrities can also shed light on different issues and raise money to help veterans nationwide.

PERFORMIX, a brand that sells sports nutrition and wellness products, has done a lot for veterans through their foundation FitOps, which helps veterans become personal trainers. Recently, the brand teamed up with John Cena to raise donations for veterans—for every dollar people donated, John Cena matched the amount.

Veterans Day marketing tip: You don’t have to work with world-famous celebrities. Partnering with a local influencer can help you spread the word about your brand and honor and support veterans through a thoughtful initiative.

8. Promote military-themed products

If you sell military-themed products, such as caps, accessories, pins, t-shirts, mugs, or other items, Veterans Day could be an excellent opportunity to promote them. People may want to get these products for themselves or purchase them as gifts, so your target audience can be wide.

Craft emails and SMS messages to advertise the products in the weeks leading up to the holiday to give people time to browse your offer.

William Ellery, for example, manufactures small batches of expedition equipment, such as hats, socks, bags, and belts, and offers unique hats made from recycled US military laundry bags. Take a look at how they promote it via email:

Notice how William Ellery doesn’t mention Veterans Day in the email—they simply promote the product. You can do that as well, or center your campaigns around Veterans Day and throw in special discounts (more on that later).

Veterans Day marketing tip: Veterans Day isn’t the only holiday celebrating military personnel. If you have military-themed products in stock, advertise them during holidays like Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day.

9. Connect Veterans Day to your offerings

Promoting your products by celebrating Veterans Day can be tricky if your products don’t have a clear connection to the holiday. Depending on what you sell, this might require a little bit of creativity.

Here, supplements brand fatty15 provides a great example of cleverly connecting a non-military-themed product to Veterans Day. Although the company sells an essential fatty acid supplement, they successfully make the connection by sharing a heartfelt testimonial from a veteran customer whose quality of life improved after using their product.

10. Offer discounts for veterans and active military personnel

You can offer discounts to veterans and active military personnel on specific products or your entire catalog. Announce these discounts via emails, SMS messages, and your website in advance to prepare your target audience for the sale.

Check out how Soylent, a brand that sells meal replacement products, promotes discounts for veterans and active military members. These discounts are year-round, not just for Veterans Day, but the email serves as a timely, relevant reminder.

Veterans Day marketing tip: Notice how Soylent also uses this email to promote their charity work. It briefly discusses their #SoylentForGood initiative, focused on donating meals to food banks, shelters, and other relevant organizations—an excellent tactic for gaining exposure and improving brand image.

11. Extend Veterans Day discounts to a broader audience

According to a 2023 study, coupon codes can enhance the performance of online deals. Including coupon and discount codes in your emails can boost sales, build brand loyalty, and give you valuable insights into your clients’ buying habits—so why not extend them to your entire audience on the special day?

You can share promo codes with all your subscribers, or use a marketing automation platform like Klaviyo to segment your audience and send codes to specific groups, like your most engaged subscribers or VIP customers. (Klaviyo can also help you generate coupon codes for your audience and share them via SMS or email.)

Here, see how organic wellness company Brandless includes a Veteran Day-themed code subscribers can either use themselves or share with a veteran they’re close with.

Veterans Day marketing tip: Don’t make your marketing initiatives solely about discounts. Remember to add a message to thank and honor every individual in the armed forces, whether veterans or active duty members.

12. Prepare for Veterans Day with Klaviyo

A quality marketing automation platform like Klaviyo can support your Veterans Day marketing efforts, expand your reach, and engage your audience.

From customizable trigger-based automations and predictive analytics to hundreds of integrations and reporting options, Klaviyo has everything you need to create a personalized approach to every audience group.

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