Green Monday Email Examples and Tips To Help You Drive More Sales

What is Green Monday?

Green Monday is a big sale day that happens on the second Monday of December. In 2024, it falls on December 9. Green Monday is known to be one of the busiest shopping days, with its popularity only increasing. For many companies, it’s also the last time to order a physical product if a buyer wants it to arrive before Christmas without paying for rush delivery.

Despite it being less known, Green Monday is not part of the alternative holidays calendar like National Houseplant Appreciation Day (January 10th) or National Love Your Pet Day (February 20th). Alongside Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM for short), this day is part of big holiday shopping.

Why make a Green Monday email campaign?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a period crowded with promotions, and it’s difficult for a business to stand out. Green Monday is sometimes called Cyber Monday 2, but unlike actual BFCM, there are fewer companies running sales promotions on this day. The competition for customers’ attention is less fierce, so it’s a great chance for you to increase your sales numbers before closing the year. Plus, you can target late shoppers who still haven’t bought their presents but desperately need to.

Green Monday email ideas to help you increase holiday sales

Green Monday allows you to talk to your customers without facing all that stiff competition. The issue is, people just came out of a massive Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping spree. You’ll need some creativity to make them interested in another deal. That’s where our email marketing strategies come in.

Create shipping deadline urgency

Set your shipping deadline — the time when you’ll be shipping out all placed orders. You can use this date and time as a cut-off point to stop all promotions and encourage your customers to hurry up so that they meet this deadline.

A shipping deadline is something that no one can postpone, as long as they want to receive their goods in time via standard delivery. This reason for urgency makes sense to your customers, and it will motivate people to buy quickly. 

From: Portrait Coffee

Subject: Our Holiday Shipping Deadlines! 🎁

Simplify customer decisions

Too many options to choose from can overwhelm and create a so-called choice paralysis or choice overload. As a result, people may not buy anything at all, so consider this when designing your campaign. 

Here are a few ways how you can simplify the choice:

• Limit their options: narrow it down to three or five best-sellers and only offer them in your emails.
• Choose different products that would attract different types of customers. 
• Highlight one variation of the product as [Recommended] or [Optimal choice], and display one or two others even if you sell very few products (i.e., a SaaS with three subscription tiers or a one-product business). 

Ease the gifting process

Two other ways to make choices easier and faster for customers are bundles and gift cards. 

Create bundles of two or more products and discount a bundle instead of individual items.

You can also offer gift cards for people to give to their significant others. The gift cards should be in at least three tiers — for example, budget, middle, and premium. This way, your customers can easily pick one of the three card options and leave all the choices to the gift receiver. You can make physical gift cards with attractive designs and holiday wrapping — like these Amazon ones. Or, you can make them digital.

From: Floyd

Subject: Give the gift of Floyd!

Target last-minute shoppers

The second Monday of December is usually the order deadline if customers want to use standard delivery and receive their purchases before Christmas. There will always be many who haven’t finished their shopping yet. These last-minute shoppers are a great target audience for your email campaign.

In your emails, emphasize the time when you’ll send out orders to make sure they arrive on time. Repeat the message on your website. Finally, help your customers decide by streamlining gift choices. 

The email from Hallertau (below) does just that. It starts the talk by saying “Don’t leave the prezzie shopping till Christmas Eve like you did last year.” Then it provides a choice of gifts for different budgets. 

This strategy works well for two reasons. It reminds people of the problem they don’t want to have — choosing a gift in a rush and paying for speedy delivery. It then immediately gives a solution which is easy and quick to use.

From: Hallertau

Subject: Looking for something 👀🎁

Leverage social proof

Social proof can come in the form of discussions on social media, endorsement from influencers, reviews from experts in your niche, or reviews from your customers. You can use it for any marketing channel, and it will work great for campaigns from your holiday email marketing calendar. Here are a few ways to use it in your Green Monday email campaign:

• Include up to three customer reviews in the promotional email.
• Include mentions of your product in the media (if there were any) in the email. 
• Share a case study showing how your customer solved a problem with the help of your products or services.
• Show off your awards and nominations.
• If well-known influencers talked about your brand, add that to the email, too.

Don’t use all of these tactics in one email, though. Choose one or two that make sense for your business. For example, in the email below, Buoy tells people about 5,000+ reviews they have and adds a positive testimonial to be even more persuasive.

From: Buoy

Subject: Thank you for over 5,000+ reviews

Optimize mobile experience

Follow these best practices to optimize your emails for mobile:

• Keep the email subject line within 30 to 50 characters or 4 to 7 words.
• Write preheaders that complement the email subject lines (30 to 100 characters).
• Use shorter sentences in your email body copy and break the text itself into short paragraphs.
• Make your CTAs touch-friendly by using big buttons.
• Decrease file sizes of the email campaign images: one image should be less than 1 MB, ideally — 200 KB.
• Use responsive design — this way, your email’s font size, images, and buttons will automatically adjust to fit the reader’s screen, and your email content will always be readable. You can start with Selzy’s responsive email templates and customize them to your liking. 

Offer free shipping and an extended return period

Free shipping is a very popular bonus during a sale, and for a reason. And an extended return period (to compensate for off days during holidays) gives the buyer peace of mind and assures them that they can still return the purchase if something goes wrong. Free shipping and extended returns are a powerful combination that can give that last push to a hesitant customer. 

If you sell expensive items, you can offer free shipping for everything. Otherwise, offer free shipping for purchases above a certain sum to keep your profit margins high.

Best time to start the campaign

The sale start for your business depends on your goals and situation. Look at your inventory, shipping time from your warehouse to your buyers, and possible delays in delivery because of the holiday season to decide the start of the sale. 

The promotion campaign itself can start much earlier. You can announce Green Monday deals right after the end of Cyber Monday (December 2 in 2024). 

Tell your customers ahead of the event that you’ll be having Green Monday sales to give them time to prepare. Share what kind of deals you’ll have. Finally, kickstart the sales and send a reminder or two throughout its run. 

All in all, plan out an email campaign with 3 to 5 emails. 

Here is what your email sequence can look like: 

• 1st email, a week to a week and a half before the day. An announcer that you are going to have a Green Monday sale.
• 2nd email, a few days later. A teaser email with three to five of the products that are going to be on sale.
• 3rd email. Another email displaying gift bundles and reminding people when the sales would start and end.
• 4th email. Green Monday email that will kickstart the deals.
• 5th email, halfway down the sale period. A reminder about the ongoing sale and its approaching end with a countdown timer.

This is just an example of how you can structure your Green Monday email campaign. There can be more emails than five — for example, multiple reminders during ongoing sales, and/or multiple emails in the week before showing your products. You can also send less emails, too.

10 Green Monday email examples that you can learn from

December is the time when everyone anticipates Christmas and New Year. The general mood is different from Black Friday, but the main sentiment is still about good shopping.

Here are a few examples of great holiday emails to inspire you. Some of them do not mention Green Monday and do not tie their sale to a specific date like it is customary with Black Friday. Instead, these companies use a “holiday sale” approach to justify whichever date and shipping deadline works for them.

1. Hawaiian Host

From: Hawaiian Host

Subject: 20% OFF Holiday Collection 🎄

Preheader: Green Monday Flash Sale

Although visually there is a lot going on in this Hawaiian Host’s Green Monday email, it delivers all the important facts first. Information about the 20% discount and free shipping on orders above $70 is right at the beginning of the email. The email follows that up with the sale’s duration (three days) and makes it easy to choose by offering only three product options. 

2. Grande Cosmetics

From: Grande Cosmetics

Subject: 24 HOURS LEFT ⏳ 25% OFF SITEWIDE!!

Preheader: FREE GROUND SHIPPING ON ALL ORDERS

Grande Cosmetics went with a simple sitewide discount and free ground shipping on all orders. The brand also added an element of lottery to the Green Monday sale — a free mystery gift for every purchase. This twist can attract people who don’t need cosmetics but would still buy something to see what they win.

3. New York & Company

From: New York & Company

Subject: Last Call ☎️ The Green Monday Sale Ends @ Midnight💚

Preheader: Free Shipping On Orders $25+ & Everything 60% Off Or MORE

The New York & Company’s Green Monday flash sale email starts simple, with a big announcement of a 60% discount on everything. It is a “last call” warning, triggering the fear of missing out on a great deal. The brand seals the deal by showing holiday looks for different occasions, which makes it useful and relatable.

4. Raen Optics

From: Raen Optics

Subject: Final Hours: 40% OFF

Preheader: Last-minute gifts for them and you

Raen Optics simplified the choice to the maximum — the brand gives a simple and generous 40% discount sitewide. This “Final Hours” Green Monday email shows only two products — an easy choice for gift givers and those unmotivated to browse the site.

5. Tata Harper

From: Tata Harper

Subject: Ends Tomorrow | 25% OFF Sitewide 🎁

Preheader: Plus, FREE 2-Day shipping & exclusive gifts

This clean and neat Green Monday email design by Tata Harper showcases three different price tiers of possible gifts with three product options for each. At the bottom of the email, the brand also offers to buy a subscription as a gift. Splitting things by tier or category is a good option if you want to show more products but don’t want to overwhelm people with the number of possibilities. 

6. Mally Beauty

From: Mally Beauty

Subject: 🚨 Final Chance: Up to 50% OFF

Preheader: Big savings this way →

The email campaign from Mally Beauty promotes a big discount and two price tiers of products (three items in each) to choose from. There are two types of discounts: -45% off for buying two things, and -50% off for buying three. Offering different discounts based on purchase sum or number of items is an effective upselling technique. 

7. Orangewood Guitars

From: Orangewood Guitars

Subject: New! The Holiday Sale

The email campaign from Orangewood Guitars made the choice very simple — the company offered only two guitars. They also partnered with a Buy Now, Pay Later service (Affirm) for those who’d rather not pay a big sum at once. Free shipping with extended holiday returns (hits the spot with the upcoming Christmas and New Year) seals the deal.

8. Methodical Coffee

From: Methodical Coffee

Subject: ☕️ Our Team’s Top Picks

The team from Methodical Coffee simplified the choice for their customers by narrowing it down to five blends. They made it interesting by telling a story — these are the blends their team members enjoy most. 

9. Tattly

From: Tattly

Subject: Ship Your Tattly in Time!

Tattly’s email campaign uses two effective strategies to move customers along to conversion. It shows a clear-cut deadline for in-time delivery and offers only six designs to make it easier to choose a tattoo. 

10. Material

From: Material

Subject: Missed our shipping window?

Once the sale ends, you can wrap it up with an email like this one from Material. It reminds people that there is still express delivery if they need it and promotes the company’s physical stores.

Final thoughts

Green Monday is not “crowded” with businesses running promotions. This is a good chance for you to do a sale — you won’t have to compete with many others in your customers’ inboxes. 

Green Monday comes only two weeks after BFCM. Use these email marketing strategies to promote your sale:

• Create shipping deadline urgency.
• Streamline gift solutions.
• Simplify customer choices.
• Target last minute shoppers.
• Leverage social proof.
• Optimize for mobile.
• Offer free shipping.