Christmas is not only one of the three most popular holidays in the US, but it’s also a huge marketing opportunity. People spend money on gifts, on average this number amounts to over $1,000. 2024 marks the first year when the expected holiday spending reached a thousand dollars. And according to the latest survey, 18% of customers expect to spend more than they did previously. Overall holiday spending increases yearly, so a Christmas email can make your business top of mind and bring revenue.
In your Christmas winter email, you can also simply wish your subscribers great holidays without selling anything. In this case, sending an email greeting card is a chance to connect with your audience and make the email readers feel good creating a positive brand image.
45% of people plan to start holiday shopping for gifts before November and 62% expect that they won’t wrap up the buying until December. The earlier you begin sending out your Christmas email campaigns, the higher your chance is to win the customers’ attention.
In the following guide, we’ll observe all the stages of a successful Christmas email marketing campaign to get you inspired.
A successful Christmas campaign doesn’t consist of a single message. We recommend that your promotion includes at least three stages:
Use email automation for this. Let’s explore a successful Christmas campaign from the beginning.
If you send a single message on Christmas day, your email promotion is likely to get lost in a pile of others in an overcrowded inbox. Plus, a sizeable chunk of your audience won’t even be checking their emails anyway because of the celebrations. To prevent that, be proactive: send pre-Christmas messages to stay on the top in subscribers’ inboxes and their hearts and minds.
Start creating a festive spirit at least a week before the holiday — for example, send season’s greetings, or thank your subscribers for their loyalty.
The email promotion below creates a festive experience and grows anticipation. Similar to an advent calendar, this email marketing campaign encourages readers to open their inboxes every day until Christmas to learn about new offers and discounts. Boosting opens this way makes the conversion rate rise as well.
Another example of a pre-Christmas email campaign is this helpful guide from Warby Parker. The brand sent it on December 5th — just in time for the customers to check out the holiday gift guide and find something for their loved ones:
When you approach to the date, it’s time to send a Christmas message. Your subscribers have probably opened the previous promotional emails, and now they expect you to make attractive holiday offers, discounts, and gifts. So, don’t disappoint them 😉
You can prepare festive Christmas discounts, email-only deals, or exclusive offers for the most loyal customers.
Here is a Christmas email promotion example that wouldn’t disappoint the brand’s subscribers. It details three offers: a sitewide sale, additional discounts on limited-run styles, and a gift with purchase. Using deals on different products or product categories makes a promotional email newsletter more compelling. This email also has a sophisticated, elegant design with muted colors complimenting the luxurious gifts.
This Christmas email has a big 50% off personalized candles banner and a winter sale promotion below. This marketing message also has a reminder to order by a certain day to get the product in time for Christmas and it drives urgency by making the promotion 48 hours only.
Instead of a promotion, you can also send a thank-you message or a holiday card to greet your subscribers. Take a look at this cute example from Aritzia. The brand used a beautiful GIF to make the campaign more unique and acknowledged that this email interrupted the customers’ brunch.
Christmas ends on the 26th of December, but it doesn’t mean that your campaign should, too. Post-Christmas is actually the best period for email marketers: the inboxes are not overcrowded with countless festive messages, so you should take a chance and send an email newsletter even after the holiday.
What can you write? Make your email a continuation of a Christmas message: remind about the promotion, but make it even spicier and catchier.
Simple yet elegant email design, a generous offer, and good recommendations — a perfect blend for the success of your marketing campaign after Christmas:
This festive promotional email marketing campaign makes the day after Christmas sweeter with up to 80% discounts and an additional 20% with a promo code:
Take advantage of the opportunity! Write a post-Christmas email with a killer subject line, and you’ll definitely stand out from the pile of endless “Merry Christmas” promotional messages. In the following chapter, we’ll learn the key objectives of catchy Christmas subject lines.
An attention-grabbing subject line is almost half of your future marketing campaign’s success. If you don’t get your prospects to open the email, the rest doesn’t matter.
There are four main strategies to use when planning your Christmas email subject lines.
Good examples:
Good examples:
Good examples:
Good examples:
Here are the best Christmas email techniques and practices to get inspired by and use in your marketing campaigns to promote your products and services. Find yours!
There are lots of traditional Christmas symbols to choose from: a Christmas tree, Santa Claus, snowmen, snowballs, Christmas tree sets, candy canes, snowflakes, wrapped presents…and so on. Take any and integrate them into the design of your campaign. Use holiday colors for your promotion: traditionally, it is green, red, white, and gold. You can create different combinations or just highlight some accents.
ABC Ltd chose a well-known Christmas design: It’s Santa riding a sleigh with the reindeer over a winter forest:
In case you want to add some creativity to the campaign, there are many ways to play with traditional Christmas symbols or the holiday spirit. The email below doesn’t use any Christmas colors opting for cyan and violet instead. The playful image makes the campaign exciting and memorable. The holiday aspect of it is also clear thanks to gift boxes and the banner text.
The Children’s Place sent a creative card with words associated with the holiday forming a Christmas tree. This email campaign is a concentration of the festive spirit!
It always feels so good to know that the company you’re loyal to cares about you. So, Christmas is the perfect time to make your customers personalized gifts to show that each of them matters a lot to you and your business.
For example, you can use personalization to send emails with Christmas discounts on products your prospects have already shown interest in. Or just share some interesting statistics about their experience with your products, as Loom did in this email:
Another great and unusual way to show your customers your appreciation is to send them a plain text message with the best wishes. It looks super personal and doesn’t take much effort to create. Such Christmas emails do not contain any images or coding and look exactly like the ones you send to your friends and colleagues.
Sending such a greeting to your customers makes them feel a warm bond with you and your business:
This message looks like you’ve received a Christmas email from your good friend. It is an especially beneficial tactic for B2B email marketing.
Here’s another example of a simple Christmas message. This email includes a cute illustration and a brief holiday message expressing gratitude to the customer:
You can spread the holiday spirit by sending heartwarming Christmas wishes to your customers. It’s a chance to get more personal with your contacts and treat them as if they were a part of your family.
In this message, Ralph Lauren greets the subscribers with a simple picture of him and his dog. It’s not even done in Christmas colors but how cozy and homey it looks! These feelings are always associated with Christmas.
The next warm wishes email radiates warmth with the yellow colors of the banner text, photos, and buttons. Although the brand simply used its signature color for this campaign, it works well for Christmas.
This red and gold Christmas campaign showcases the brand team’s pets and has a nice message. A campaign like this is easy to create and yet it has great potential to make the brand’s relationship with customers stronger.
Keep in mind your last-minute shoppers. Christmas is the time when they’re on the hunt, so you as a brand can take a chance and turn the tables. Create an additional sense of urgency that forces customers to buy faster and make quicker decisions.
For example, Clinique launched a time-limited campaign with discounts for all categories of products, but each of the codes was valid for just 24 hours. One day — one category. Not only can such promotional email boost conversion but it can also create anticipation for the following offers.
It is also a nice idea to add a countdown timer with animation showing how much time is left till the end of your discount offer:
To make your emails more engaging and boost your click rates, add gamification to your campaign. It triggers the curiosity of readers, cheers them up, and creates a festive mood. Moreover, making customers play games to get gifts is a great way to increase sales.
Look at this example by LevelUp: it is hard to close such a newsletter promotion without clicking on every gift box!
Uplers made a cute interactive email arranging a video call with none other than Santa Claus himself! When you click the CTA, you see Santa greeting you. It is also possible to tweet this sweet message to your friends and loved ones.
What is a recipe for conversion? Offering people exactly what they need or want! For Christmas, it’s not only a great promotion, it’s a gift that has arrived on time!
This campaign has a bold and memorable claim — “Guaranteed under the tree, or ships free!” It makes the deal more compelling and directly addresses the brand’s customers’ pain points.
Finally, Christmas is a nice occasion to thank the subscribers for their loyalty and express your love and gratitude to them. Sometimes warm and simple words are enough to win someone’s heart.
Saying thanks helps to build stronger relationships with your customers. It also enhances the brand identity.
Another example is this email with digital holiday greetings from Ashley Steward, an American plus-size women’s clothing company. Such an email reinforces the bond between the customer and the brand:
A CEO’s or co-founder’s signature can make even the simplest email feel more personal and effortful. Here is an example:
Let’s sum up everything we’ve covered in this article about successful Christmas email marketing campaigns:
We wish a Merry Christmas to you and your families! Ho-ho-ho 🎅
This article was originally published in December 2022 and was updated in November 2024 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.
