Best Earth Day Email Examples To Inspire Impactful Campaigns

What is Earth Day and when did it start?

Earth Day is a yearly event marking the anniversary of the environmental protection movement and celebrating its achievements. To celebrate Earth Day, people engage in activities beneficial to the environment, such as planting trees, cleaning up plastic waste, embracing eco-friendly practices, and teaching kids about sustainability. Businesses can also join in the celebration by raising awareness about environmental issues — and meet their marketing goals at the same time. 

The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, and attracted a lot of attention. In the following decades, Earth Day has gradually turned into one of the most notable annual events worldwide. Several factors contributed to this, including environmental issues such as climate change and plastic pollution becoming urgent and people becoming more aware.

For years now, Earthday.org, the nonprofit that coordinates the initiative, has been establishing a new environmentally related theme for the event each year. In 2024, Earth Day’s theme is Planet vs. Plastics. As plastic pollution is one of our most pressing environmental issues, Earth Day will be focused on raising awareness about the subject, explaining the fallout of plastic use, and calling for efforts to reduce plastic consumption.

Why Earth Day email campaigns matter for brands

Consumers are choosing eco-friendly products and demanding that businesses embrace sustainability these days. Brands that fail to meet people’s expectations in this regard can fall behind more sustainable competitors in terms of profit and image. According to a joint study by McKinsey and Nielsen IQ, companies that claim to be socially and ecologically responsible have shown an average of 28% cumulative growth over five years, as compared to 20% for products without such claims. As such , running an Earth Day campaign, combined with actual efforts to help tackle environmental issues and be more eco-friendly, is vital for brands to stay competitive. 

While there are plenty of marketing channels out there, email remains one of the most affordable, efficient, and cost-effective. What’s more, it allows for precise targeting and personalization, so you can reach the most interested audiences with the most relevant messages. That makes Earth Day email campaigns beneficial to businesses of all sizes, but especially to smaller brands that need to focus on affordability and efficiency. 

Here are the main benefits of running Earth Day email campaigns for brands: 

• Improved brand image and recognition 
• Increased customer loyalty — particularly, among eco-conscious customers 
• More conversions and, potentially, higher sales 

And that is not to mention the contribution email marketing campaigns from brands are making to raising awareness about Earth Day and its cause among its customers and the general public.

Best Earth Day email campaign examples and strategies

From showcasing your environmental efforts to launching campaigns early, here are the tried and true Earth Day email campaign strategies, illustrated with prime examples. For even more ideas and inspiration, check out our recent collection of the best email marketing examples to learn about other actionable strategies you can use for your Earth Day campaigns and beyond.  

Start early

We often advise launching holiday campaigns well in advance — and Earth Day email campaigns are no exception. While most brands send holiday emails during the week before the event, which makes sense in most cases, sending out several emails in the course of at least a couple weeks is a preferable strategy if you are campaigning for a cause or raising funds. Firstly, it makes your emails more noticeable because there is less competition, and secondly, it ensures you have enough time to reach your campaign goals.  

That’s the strategy WWF employs in its Earth Day 2024 campaign promoting the “Give an Hour to Earth” initiative. The email shown below was the first in a series, and it had arrived as early as March 11.

Highlight your environmental impact

Is yours a sustainable company that has already made progress toward reaching your environmental goals? Then Earth Day is the perfect opportunity to showcase your impact. Put together an Earth Day email highlighting your best achievements and provide evidence to support your prior environmental claims. Remember to mention some numbers and thank your customers for their support for greater effect. 

With this kind of content, eye-catching design is not necessary, so you can choose from the simplest templates you can find. Words and numbers will speak for themselves as they do in this email from Hitch that is focused on measurable impact and new initiatives.

Offer eco-friendly tips

Educational content is one of the pillars of content marketing, email marketing included. If you regularly offer readers actionable tips on using your products, you can  adapt this content to fit the occasion by focusing on eco-friendly advice. Haven’t tried educational content yet? Then this is your chance to try. Whatever your product is, there are always some ways to use it more sustainably, and your readers might even know — unless you tell them. 

In this neatly designed email, vitamins and supplements brand Care/of offers a detailed step-by-step guide on composting waste, including its own product packaging.

Showcase your green initiatives

Besides showcasing the impact you’ve already made, you can also announce your next Earth Day resolution aimed at protecting and preserving the environment. This tactic is one of the most effective ones because, according to the McKinsey study mentioned above, consumers today tend to choose businesses that claim to be environmentally responsible. However, remember that one day you’ll have to deliver on your promises and showcase the results, so don’t treat them lightly. 

In this example, Ando sets a clear and likely attainable goal of planting 100K+ trees and asks its customers to help achieve it. Also, the email contains step-by-step guidelines to participating in the initiative, and an actionable CTA.

Apply visual storytelling

Visual storytelling is one of the most effective content marketing techniques because the human brain is believed to process images faster than text. In your Earth Day emails, you can tell visual stories of how you’re helping the planet — for example, by showing pictures of your employees collecting and sorting garbage or planting trees — to instantly grab your readers’ attention and enhance the effect of your copy. 

In this email from clothes brand UNRUCKit, visual storytelling is combined with showcasing the company’s environmental impact — a typical best practice that boosts the effect of both techniques. Also, the email features the company’s product made with recycled materials, making the story even more appealing.

Add eco-friendly images and design elements

“Eco-friendly images” are those that evoke positive emotions and bring up associations with nature and a healthy, clean planet. Some examples include serene pictures of wildlife, green forests, emerging plants, and planet Earth itself. Eco-friendly products and images of people engaged in environmentally friendly activities are among other options. And of course, green is the go-to color for this holiday when it comes to images and design.  

In this example, Citizen instantly sets the mood with a high-resolution image of a beautiful plant emerging from the soil — a symbol of growth, regeneration, and hope. Also, the email features a beautiful landscape at the bottom as a backdrop for its sustainability commitment announcement.

Highlight recyclable and reusable items

If your company produces or sells recyclable and/or reusable products, Earth Day is a great opportunity to put them front and center in your emails. Additionally, you can give your readers some tips on how exactly they can use and reuse these products, and explain how to properly dispose of them once they’re no longer functional. 

In the email below, Klean Kanteen highlights its reusable products made from recycled materials, and also promotes an article with tips on reducing waste.

Balance brand identity with the identity of the holiday

Earth Day is a special holiday with its own recognizable identity, including imagery, color palettes, and messaging. In Earth Day designs, you can expect to see blue, green, and brown shades, as well as images of pristine nature. In messaging, educational and inspirational motives focused on raising awareness and taking action to support sustainability typically prevail. Also, each year’s theme contributes to the choice of imagery and messaging. So, your Earth Day emails should take that into account to be relevant. 

However, it is also important to combine holiday-specific elements with elements of your brand identity so your emails stay recognizable and work in favor of brand awareness. Here’s a great example from Tiffany & Co. The company aces balancing recognizable brand identity elements like the iconic light teal color and minimalistic design with Earth Day-themed imagery.

15 effective Earth Day subject lines examples from real brands

Thus far, we’ve only shown you the emails. But every great email starts with — guess what? — a great subject line. Email subject lines make a significant part of an email marketing campaign’s success — Earth Day campaigns included. That is because the subject line, the sender’s name, and the preview text are the only elements of the email subscribers see before they click to open. So, you need to come up with a really compelling line to grab your reader’s attention and beat the competition.  

The main general best practices for great subject lines include making them: 

• clear and relevant, 
• concise (preferably, under 40 characters), and 
• to-the-point. 

It is also important to avoid misleading lines that don’t go along with your email content. You don’t want to send a sale promotion email with a subject line like “Let’s help the Earth together” because this tactic, even if it works, will likely leave your readers feeling manipulated. If you want to promote an Earth Day sale, it is okay to do so with a typical promotional subject line. 

But a few great examples can be worth a thousand words. So we’ve picked these 15 attention-grabbing Earth Day subject lines to get your creative juices flowing: 

• Happy Earth Day, Earthlings. (PANGAIA) 
• Happy Earth Day! 🌎🧡 (The Children’s Place) 
• 🌍🌿💦Together, You Made This Year Matter (Hitch)
• 🌿 Let’s refresh the Earth together 🌎 (DAVIDs TEA)
• Celebrate Earth Day with protecting the Trails (Athletic Brewing) 
• Ready to give an hour for Earth? (WWF)
• Help Us Plant 200,000 Trees (Ando)
• For us, Every Day = Earth Day (Glow Recipe) 
• Every Day Should Be Earth Day (Olay) 
• Good for you, good for the earth (Care|of)
• Save energy (and money) this Earth Day (Nest) 
• Your Earth Day watchlist (Disney+)
• Playlists for plants and people (Aesop) 
• Our Earth Day Sale is HERE! 🌎 (Package Free)
• Last Hours to Shop the Earth Day Special (L*Space)

Proven tips for improving Earth Day email campaigns’ performance

Composing a great Earth Day email and complementing it with a compelling subject line is essential. However, this alone doesn’t guarantee you great performance unless you take some extra steps to maximize the performance of your campaign. Here are some of the tried and true tips and best practices for achieving the best possible result. 

Leverage customer data to personalize your campaigns

Using data from your customers when creating Earth Day email campaigns helps personalize messages and make them more engaging. Some common personalization techniques include adding dynamic content that varies according to predefined rules, tailoring email content to your subscribers’ location, preferences, or behavioral patterns, and more. 

To get relevant data about your customers, collect information from your lead forms, surveys, and analytics data provided by your website and email analytics tools. But remember to adhere to your privacy policy when doing so to avoid negative feedback from subscribers. 

Segment your email list

To take personalization to the next level, use email segmentation. In email marketing, segmentation is dividing your email list into groups based on characteristics such as demographics, behaviors, preferences, and more. Doing so allows for advanced personalization practices like offering product recommendations based on purchase history, optimizing send times depending on location, and a lot more.

Such practices have many benefits. Among other things, they include increasing customer engagement, boosting conversions, and growing customer loyalty. However, segmentation is not always necessary: for example, smaller lists (under 1,000 subscribers) are not likely to benefit much from this technique.  

Include actionable CTAs

Last but not least, clear, actionable CTAs (calls to action) really matter for Earth Day email campaigns — as well as for all others. Some general recommendations for email CTAs include making them a) clearly visible, b) non-ambiguous, and c) direct. When it comes to Earth Day campaigns, the same principles apply, so traditional CTAs like “Learn more” or “Shop now” still work here.  

But you can also make your Earth Day CTAs more appealing by adding a twist to fit the occasion. Wording such as “Learn more about our values” or “Shop all recycled” are only slightly different from traditional formulas — but that makes all the difference.

Final thoughts

Earth Day is an event that by all means deserves the attention it’s been getting lately — and even more. Luckily, you, as a brand, can contribute to the positive impact of this initiative while also working toward your marketing and sales goals. Using examples, strategies and tips from this article as email templates, inspiration, and guidance, you can devise impactful and effective Earth Day email campaigns that will be beneficial to your customers, your business, and our planet — all at the same time. Happy Earth Day!