11 Exclusive Singles Day Email Examples and Ideas

Why Singles Day emails are important for your business

Traditional holidays normally apply to married people with kids. Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving all suggest you have someone to celebrate them with — a family or a romantic partner. These people are often the reason you go shopping before the holiday at all. But what about the singles? How do they feel around these days? Perhaps a bit lost and forgotten.

Singles Day is a great opportunity to honor those who are not in a relationship and let them know it’s fine. It gives singles a good reason to celebrate their status and treat themselves with some holiday shopping.

This holiday was originally started in China by a group of college bachelors as a response to traditional family holidays. In 2009, Alibaba first launched a 24-hour sale on Singles Day which became a start of spreading the new e-commerce event around the globe. The holiday became extremely popular in China. The demographic state policy is one of the reasons being single is encouraged in this market due to overpopulation.

Never heard of Singles Day? According to recent surveys, only about a quarter of consumers around the world are aware of it. Most of them live in Asia, but it looks like the holiday will be even more popular as time goes by.

Massive shopping potential

Surveys say the share of singles in industrialized countries has been growing over the past decade. In 2022, there were approximately 37.89 million single-person-led households in the United States. It might be a good idea to start considering singles as a segment of your target audience and adjust the marketing messages — that is, if your products and services are relevant to singles. 

In 2022, Singles Day sales in China hit nearly 85 billion U.S. dollars – more than twice sales generated during Cyber Week in the USA. 

Increasing consumer engagement

Singles Day is a great opportunity to engage your business with people without partners. It is quite new to the Western audience and is becoming mainstream.

Family holidays can be painful for the singles as they might feel too different from the rest. A celebration of being single as a form of norm can be very welcomed by these people. That may make them stick to the brand that launched a Singles Day sale.

Expanding customer reach

Planning Singles Day can become a great occasion to enter the Asian markets or reach the customers familiar with it. Now is the perfect time to put the new celebration into your marketing calendar: Singles Day is still celebrated mostly in Asia, but is becoming more and more trendy in the Western markets each year.

With all these benefits, it’s clear that a marketer should not ignore Singles Day. Let’s check the best Singles Day email examples to see what else is possible.

11 best Singles Day email examples

There are several marketing techniques you can use in your Singles Day email marketing campaigns to boost your sales during the holiday. You can find some of them below — choose the most relevant ones for your product or combine several techniques you like to make your email marketing campaigns even more effective.

Countdown timers

When you offer a sound discount for a limited time, it might be a good idea to let your audience know when the deadline is. If you have a sale on Singles Day, add a countdown timer to your promo email to show how much time is left. 

Dynamic countdown timer explores FOMO — fear-of-missing-out effect. It boosts the sense of urgency, makes the deadline as obvious as possible, and encourages impulse purchases. 

In the example below, Karl Lagerfeld uses its brand minimalist design in the Singles Day promotions email. It contains the promo code, some CTAs and a countdown timer to let the customers know how much time they have left to get their 22% discount.

Free delivery

Free shipping can also increase conversion in online shopping. And free delivery that is limited in time motivates customers to purchase immediately. “Free worldwide delivery” sounds awesome and makes your brand stand out among the competitors.

Check the email from Bee Inspired Clothing with this delicious offer. It also shows that the offer is limited in time — which could be even better with the countdown timer. There is a CTA “Start shopping here” in focus and a gorgeous background visual with the picture of a proud single young man. 

Connection with the occasion

The idea of treating oneself with clothes or cosmetics is quite common for the Singles Day marketing campaigns. But what if your brand is about something different?

Check the email from Whisky Exchange below to see how you can be creative and find new messages for the marketing campaigns. 

Gifts

Gifts are always nice, so why not grant your customers some on Singles Day? You can announce it beforehand or keep it secret till they make a purchase.

…and GIFs

“Moving pictures” are often a great tool to enhance an email’s engagement, convey emotions, showcase the product or simply make content more visually appealing. 

In the email example below by Feelunique, you can see two use cases of GIFs: one draws you attention with a sliding discount promo, and the other shows how to apply a product.

And here’s another example by Ideal Of Sweden where a GIF image plays a seemingly small but sweet and important part in drawing your attention to the hefty 50% discount.

Selfcare offer

It kind of makes sense that Singles Day encourages people to buy presents for themselves. That is a nice and easy way to think of a content idea for a Singles Day email campaign.

Festive design

Trendy visuals are always welcome in email marketing campaigns. Avoid big blocks of text and use spectacular visuals and big fonts to make your newsletter design bright and festive.

Large-scale pictures of high quality are always a good choice for cosmetic products. Check the way Bumble and bumble used them together with a huge trendy handwriting font to make the Singles Day promo email shine.

Yoox, in its turn, doesn’t just use large-scale pictures but a fancy gradient:

Product recommendation

When offering a discount on Singles Day, you can also show your best products to suggest to your customers how to use them. In the newsletter below Greetabl shows the best sellers to choose from while shopping on Singles Day. It also urges the sense of social proof — the feeling that the products are really popular and a lot of people value them. This effect combines perfectly with the sense of urgency as the sale is limited in time.

The best sellers items promo is in the footer of the newsletter. You may use this space for other marketing tasks: check these email footer examples to learn more

Exclusive offers

Exclusive products are more desirable as the customers feel they are in limited stock. The scarcity makes the item more desirable. It might be a good idea to include exclusive offers to your Singles Day promo email like the Innisfree did. They also used bright juicy designs to make the offer even more delicious.

Final thoughts

Singles Day is quite new for the audience which makes it a good occasion to use a fresh marketing approach and try to reach new audiences. Don’t hesitate to mark it in your holiday email marketing calendar and be creative to find new ways of engaging your audience with the product.

When crafting Singles Day promotions emails, use these tips to boost your sales during the holiday:

• Include a dynamic countdown timer to grow the sense of urgency.
• Connect your product with the occasion to offer your customers an interesting scenario for the holiday.
• Recommend the most popular products to show social proof.
• Include an exclusive offer to your Singles Day sale to make it even more desirable.
• Focus on your email design: use less text and more trendy visuals to make it compelling.

Adding Singles Day to your marketing calendar may open a new era of your product promotions. While the audience is used to the traditional holidays, Single Day can bring some fresh air to your advertising. Use this occasion to reactivate your customers and make a profit.