But firstly, should marketers even bother with Father’s Day emails? According to the National Retail Federation, 75% of American citizens planned to celebrate the holiday in 2023 and spent almost $21 billion in total on gifts.
As you can see, Americans spent slightly more money in total last year. Despite a previous plateau, there is now an upward trend. It means that marketers can use Father’s Day as an opportunity to increase sales. It will be especially effective for e-commerce — Father’s Day is a holiday, and people buy gifts. According to the NRF, 61% of the U. S. citizens planned to buy greeting cards for Father’s Day in 2023. But the research data also shows that you have a higher chance to increase your holiday revenue if you sell:
Another successful category in the NRF survey was special outings — 52%. It implies that Father’s Day is also a good opportunity for restaurants and the entertainment industry to suggest special holiday offers to their clients. But although increasing sales is an obvious reason to send Father’s Day emails, it’s not the only one.
If you consider offering your clients something holiday-related like e-commerce discounts for certain goods, gift cards, or special events, emails will help you draw attention to your offer and the brand itself. But holiday campaigns are not just about money.
Father’s Day is a warm family holiday — use it to show your brand from a more human side. Holidays may come and go but empathetic communication in email marketing emails is always relevant. Just like in Mother’s Day emails, you can show empathy by sharing heartwarming stories about, let’s say, awesome dads in your marketing department to increase brand loyalty and improve or maintain your company’s image.
We picked 6 email content ideas for your future Father’s Day campaign. You don’t have to strictly follow our list but you can use it as a reference.
Father’s Day is all about family values, precious moments, and the deep and genuine appreciation of fatherly figures. Use this opportunity to make your campaign more emotional. For example, take a look at this email from Google. It’s still a sales email that promotes certain items — but it has a human side and appeals to the emotional value of each product.
The copy mentions “presents with a personality” — and the said “personality” is linked to each item from the gift guide. It’s a simple yet elegant way to add some soul to your Father’s Day sales email.
Don’t want to be pushy with your offers? Send a simple greeting card.
Take inspiration from this email by Omaze. The brand doesn’t sell anything — they simply wrote a holiday poem that may or may not melt some of the subscribers’ souls. The email design is also nice with an illustration of a man and a poem written on his apron.
Email marketing campaigns don’t have to be serious. They can be creative and even fun. Use Father’s Day as an opportunity to fool around — add some dad jokes to make your customers laugh. For example, take a look at this email from Country Club Prep:
Building a Father’s Day email campaign around dad jokes is a great way to humanize your brand. But dad jokes are not the only way to go if you want to create a funny email campaign for this holiday — check out this email by Fitbit:
It’s just a greeting card — this email doesn’t have any sales CTAs. But the concept of dad workout exercises with comic book-like illustrations is both funny and touching — and an email like this, despite not selling anything, can help you improve relationships with your customers.
One of the pain points you can work on during any holiday campaign is choosing gifts. Help your clients make a choice — tell them about bundles or give them a helpful gift guide. This strategy works especially well for e-commerce.
One great tactic for Father’s Day is creating a “typology” of dads with corresponding gift recommendations. No fathers are alike and their personalities are not reduced to the role of a father. Gift guides with a structure like this feel more personalized and nuanced — and they do a better job helping your customers. Here’s an awesome example from Italic.
This email shows that you don’t have to come up with a complex, MBTI-like personality type system. Here, Italic highlighted three activity- and character-based types and gave a selection of items that your dad might need, for example, to work out. It’s a fun idea for a Father’s Day campaign — don’t be afraid to use this one! This idea can work for other holidays, for example, you can make a typology of mothers for Mother’s Day too.
Another option for a gift guide is introducing a new item or a new collection and suggesting it to customers as a gift. Candylab did exactly that.
Finally, the easiest gift guide option is simply making a list of the most popular or best-reviewed items from your catalog. There are many examples — here’s one from Paige.
What if you’re not a retailer and you aren’t in e-commerce? Take a twist on this concept like Yelp did:
Instead of perfect gifts, you can help clients brainstorm any holiday-related ideas — for example, Yelp suggested celebration plans in this informative and engaging email.
Since Father’s Day is an emotional holiday for many people, you can use storytelling to empathize with clients and become more relatable. It doesn’t even have to be a sales email — you can share stories about fathers and fatherhood to strengthen customer relationships. Here’s a great example from LovelySkin that you can use as email inspiration:
The brand shared their employees’ stories about what it feels like to be a dad. Combined with pictures from family archives, LovelySkin created a perfect digital greeting card — customers surely appreciated this non-salesy holiday campaign in their inboxes cluttered with deals and discounts.
This one is not about email content but your selling point. Why are you sending an email for Father’s Day? Why should your clients read it — is there any benefit for them?
Your Father’s Day email marketing campaign should start with an offer. Think of what could ease your clients’ holiday worries. Here are some things that will be useful not only for your brand but also for your customers:
Here’s a great example from Men’s Wearhouse — take a look at their gift ideas:
We especially love the “For the guy who has everything” line — it’s harder for younger people who earn less than their dads to choose something special. And the link to gifts under $25 appeals to this group of customers as well.
Being useful can also mean offering content recommendations. In this email, Revtown gathered a show, book, and podcast suggestions centered around fatherhood.
The goal of content marketing, including promotional emails from e-commerce and other businesses, is to persuade people to buy from your company. This persuasion can be straightforward — but if you want a level up in your email marketing game, get a little more creative with your CTAs.
We liked this sales email from Baboon To The Moon not only because of the “apparent” dad joke. Take a look at the button. Most Father’s Day emails have the basic “Shop Now” button — but this one has “Shop good gifts”, which is still straightforward but a little more interesting.
Another creative example is this email from James Avery:
This email encourages you to shop offline — and suggests finding stores near you. But it also provides you with the link to the catalog so you can choose a gift in advance and make sure it’s available for purchase.
Start your Father’s Day mass mailing like any other email marketing campaign — choose a mailing list, think of your target audience and objectives, design emails using templates or from scratch, write a copy, and perform A/B testing. Here, we highlighted three important nuances you should consider while working on Father’s Day mass emails for your business.
We already mentioned that Father’s Day emails increase sales and improve your brand image. And while you can do both at the same time, you still have to prioritize one of these goals when you decide on the email content.
If you focus on sales, a simple gift suggestion is enough. But if you want to communicate with clients and humanize your brand instead of straightforward sales, get more creative. In this case, use promotional emails for topical content distribution — or just wish a happy Father’s Day.
Catchy subject lines are important for any email campaign including Father’s Day emails. Here are some strategies you can use to stand out in the inbox:
Being emotional. Make your clients feel closer to their dads and husbands — appeal to their family values. Some of the examples:
Being funny. Although it’s appropriate for Father’s Day, you don’t have to come up specifically with a dad joke for your email subject line. Add a little irony:
Straight to the point. If you offer a holiday discount or a gift card, you can put this information in your email subject line. Some of the examples:
Again, segmentation is important for any email marketing campaign. But in the case of Father’s Day campaigns, you have to be especially careful. Here are some criteria you can consider:
These are the basic criteria — but you can include more, it depends on your end goal.
This holiday, like Mother’s Day, can be a sensitive subject for many people — that’s why giving your subscribers an option to exclude themselves from your Father’s Day email list is a good idea. To do this, send an email with the preference management link in advance. This email doesn’t have to be long — simply express concern and suggest clicking the link to opt out of the email list.
This Father’s Day opt-out email from Fly by Jing is a great example — feel free to use it as a source of inspiration:
Email marketers wouldn’t be email marketers without trying some new tricks, even when celebrating fathers this holiday. Here are three specific strategies you can try to make your email campaigns more unique and effective. These will work for almost any business, including e-commerce.
If you want your campaign to resonate with the audience and strengthen your emotional connection, use photographs from the archives of your colleagues instead of generic stock photos.
The email below has a nostalgic, warm feel to it thanks to a collage of presumably film photographs:
User-generated content (UGC) is an email marketer’s cheat code. Don’t have any good email illustrations? Need to promote your brand’s social media accounts? Want to encourage engagement? Create a campaign centered around UGC.
Here is an example from Janie and Jack:
What can be more personal than a heartfelt note from your company’s CEO or founder? Use this strategy to reinforce your brand image and make a positive impression on the readers.
You can also use a signature at the bottom like in this example:
We’ve already looked through email content ideas and strategies for Father’s Day, the importance of promotional holiday emails, and the nuances you need to consider before launching your campaign. Now let’s dig into heartwarming Father’s Day email campaign examples that worked both for sales and brand reputation. We picked 5 examples for your inspiration.
Jack Daniel’s is an old whiskey brand — their hard drinks have been produced at the Jack Daniel Distillery since 1875. But they’re not strangers to digital marketing. This is what their Father’s Day email looks like:
Aside from vintage fonts and earthy colors, this Father’s Day email emphasizes family values and tradition. They portray fathers as people of wisdom who share their knowledge and practices with younger generations. It’s a great decision for Jack Daniel’s because this company is 147 years old. And we like the personalized gift suggestion — a unique bottle of whiskey distilled just for you.
Letterfest is a gift shop that is all about personalization. They sell hand-drawn illustrations, customized books, handmade plant pots, and other souvenirs. This is what Letterfest made for the 2022 Father’s Day campaign:
Letterfest suggested a selection of kids’ books about dads with hand-drawn illustrations and highlighted their gifts’ longevity as their key selling point. They came up with a funny promo code as well and they also used email emojis to draw attention to their offer and make the header more outstanding.
Withings is a health tech company that offers an ecosystem of interconnected devices like fitness trackers and lifestyle apps. Since Nokia sold its digital health business pack to Withings, its logo is seen on top of the email.
We loved this campaign for three reasons. Firstly, the brand both added irony, honored dads, and empathized with their gift blues. Secondly, Withings suggested alternatives — better gifts so fathers could take better care of not only their families but also themselves. Finally, they suggested gift bundles for different dad personality types based on their favorite activities.
What if your brand mostly targets women? Should you run a Father’s Day email campaign in the first place? Ask this American custom jewelry brand.
This email from Jennifer Fisher proves that no matter what your business sells, you can run any holiday campaign — it depends on what exactly you’re offering. Here, we see a gift guide with jewelry pieces that play on the theme of military dog tags. Tags used to be a part of military uniforms and then got their way into fashion and became a gender-neutral accessory. Pieces like those offered in the guide can be worn by anyone — including dads. Also, we can’t help but appreciate the stylish pictures and the minimalist email design that looks luxurious and high-end. Good job, Jennifer Fisher!
Storytelling in holiday emails doesn’t mean you should write an entire War and Peace. Take a look at this email by Pioneer:
The email from this wallet brand looks serious and formal at first — it’s a solid and meticulously designed newsletter with a featured item for the holiday. But it includes a family picture and a post-scriptum that lightens the atmosphere and brings the warm Father’s Day spirit. All that with one picture and a couple of lines of copy! This is another way to introduce storytelling to your holiday email campaigns.
Father’s Day is a warm family holiday and a good opportunity to promote your business. Email campaigns will help you increase sales, draw attention to your holiday offers, and humanize your brand. Here’s what you can do to improve your Father’s Day emails:
Start your Father’s Day email campaign like any other holiday campaign but consider these nuances:
This article was originally published in May 2022 and was updated in May 2024 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.
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