Last updated on
April 19, 2023
Christmas is globally known as one of the biggest spending periods every year. While this season of joy and Christmas tree decoration is finally upon us, we all have entered into a festive frenzy, hopping from one eCommerce store to the other, running through malls, and trying to find the perfect present for our employees or our loved ones. Most of us love to shop, but it can become notoriously hectic for others.
Since most brands continue to boast their Christmas sales and offers, you need to stand out to get your customers’ attention during the holiday season. So, make sure your Christmas email newsletters are planned, timely, well thought out, and full of merriment to boost sales and increase loyalty.
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In short, this is the perfect time for you to shine!
But before we go any further, let’s see how merry Christmas email campaigns can benefit your business.
It does not come as a surprise how well Christmas email campaigns contribute towards the total revenue generation. That’s because of three main reasons:
Since your audience is already in a celebratory mood, wanting to shop, it is more like a low-hanging fruit that you can just collect and bank through an effective email marketing strategy campaign.
According to Statista, in 2020, the retail e-commerce holiday season sale in the US amounted to USD 186 billion and grew by approximately 14% in 2021, amounting to almost USD 207 billion.
As compared to other marketing channels, email marketing is direct and can be personalized, making sure it reaches the user and gets opened.
Now that we have understood the importance of email marketing in the holiday season, let’s talk about the three steps or stages of your Christmas email design.
To make the most of this holiday season, plan the Christmas holiday email marketing campaign in three stages as described below:
Stay ahead of your competition by sending a pre-Christmas email campaign. At this point in time, the users are probably going to be thinking about the holiday season, Christmas cards, and decorations to do.
So, it serves as the best time to get in the head of your subscribers or otherwise probably remind them to start thinking about the holiday season.
Start working and designing your email campaign. If you want to do something creative, why not add a few gifs, nice artworks, or animations in your HTML email and send it as the first season’s greeting?
Check out this example:
So, once the season has finally arrived, and if you have sent a pre-Christmas email already, your subscribers would be waiting for you to see what you have to offer.
You can offer email-only discounts, special offers, Christmas deals, or packages designed exclusively for the holiday season.
Here’s an example:
At this stage, you can personalize as well. You can add recommended products in which the user showed interest, at a discounted price. It is one of the great ways to encourage people to take action.
Everyone is done with Christmas by 26th December but that shouldn’t make you believe that your campaign is. After the holiday is over, everyone is relaxed and the inboxes are usually not crowded.
By sending out the post-Christmas email campaign with a catchy email subject line, you can grab this opportunity to stay connected with your audience.
It acts as a last shot at boosting your revenue.
Here’s an example:
Holidays are the perfect yet the trickiest time to send your emails. That’s because of two reasons.
Firstly, your email needs to stand out from the rest since the holiday season calls for all businesses to start sending emails.
Secondly, the user behavior is different during holidays so you carefully have to monitor the times and frequency of sending your emails.
However, the first and second weeks of November are considered to be the perfect times for a pre-Christmas email blast. During Christmas, the open rates tend to decline sharply, and the trend usually continues till New Year.
The CTR (click-through rate) reaches its all-time high as Christmas Eve and Christmas day get closer. But, you can still always make the most of the after-holiday email to skyrocket your last month’s revenue.
The best practice is to send the holiday email marketing campaigns during evening hours to avoid competition.
Don’t just send one Christmas email and be done with your whole marketing campaign. Instead, automate your campaign using an automation tool to create drip campaigns. Schedule your emails for each stage of your campaign and set up autoresponders that respond to all the actions taken by your recipients.
Mailmunch’s marketing automation feature allows you to supercharge your Christmas email marketing campaigns. Create and schedule stunning emails with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop-builder and create customized automation from scratch with an intuitive automation builder.
You can add your list and add tags to further segment your list. Also, you can create multiple conditions and set time and action-based triggers according to your Christmas campaign plans.
It’s December already, and you must be wondering that if November should be the pre-Christmas campaign month, then what had I been doing all that time?
A Klarna study in 2020 found that 79% of holiday shoppers left their shopping till the last two weeks before Christmas and 35% saved their shopping till the last week of Christmas.
Adding to the merriment, 55% of last-minute shoppers are likely to buy gifts online, regardless of the delivery times.
So, do not worry, you’ve still got the time to milk the holiday season sales with easy, quick Christmas email hacks!
A week just before Christmas is quite competitive. You need to be pretty creative in your email copy to get noticed. So, create a sense of urgency especially in your email subject line.
Usually, last-minute shoppers are running out of time so they need a reason to shop from you. So, be a solution to their problem.
People don’t like unnecessary information. Stick to the point so that they get a clear solution to the Christmas gift hunt.
Keep that call-to-action easy to see and click. It should clearly ask the user to do what is required.
Make sure to personalize your email. It can serve as a quick way to boost your revenue. Especially last-minute cart abandoned emails and product recommendations (based on the previous search) are a brilliant way to get the most juice out of your Christmas email campaign.
People are looking for the best deals during this season and shipping charges are one of the main reasons why they abandon their carts. So, offering free shipping and flash delivery can add to the revenue.
Won’t it be awesome if your most sought-after gift is in stock and up for flash delivery even just a day before Christmas?
But that only happens in dreams, right? Well, your Christmas email can act as the Santa Claus to deliver e-gift cards with a subject line that can be something like, “Searching for a last-minute gift that doesn’t look last minute?”
Since we have pretty much discussed Christmas email campaign timing and stages, now you must be wondering what kind of emails to send for promising results.
Well, we understand how draining it can be after designing and introducing sales and offers to come up with creative concepts for a happy Christmas message for your audiences. So, we have compiled a list of 10 ideas that we loved.
After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it is the perfect time to start sending out Christmas emails. You can start with a countdown as a simple teaser for your Christmas sale with limited information. It can be pretty intriguing and will keep your audience on their toes.
But just keep in mind that the frequency should be optimal so that it does not get monotonous and your audience does not get tired of receiving too many emails.
Since people are already thinking about great ways to gift things to their loved ones, creating a gift guide and wishlists is a great way to increase readership.
You can personalize recommendations and also educate the users about your products. It is the perfect seasonal content to increase leads since the guide can be used as a lead magnet on your landing page and in pop-up forms as well to encourage subscriptions.
The most important part of your entire Christmas campaign is going to be the email where you actually make the sale offer announcement. If you have already sent a teaser, your subscribers would already have things they need to buy from you.
So, your discount should be enough to convert window shoppers to paid customers.
If you have not sent a teaser, do not worry, but make sure to send the sale email at least one week prior to Christmas.
Make your loyal customer feel special and privileged. Make them feel appreciated and loved by saving your most special offers or biggest early bird discounts to them.
Personalize using already viewed recommendations or those things which had been added to their cart but were not purchased. Use terms like “just for you” , “special offer for people we love!” to add a personal touch.
Make people believe that they are not too late and can still make a great holiday purchase for their loved ones. Add delivery dates, special shipping prices, and your star products to convert your users into customers.
One of the best ways to add a festive element to your Christmas email campaign is to hold a contest. It does not only increase engagement but is likely to create a lot of user-generated content for you to use and showcase.
It’s Christmas but why always make it about yourself? Celebrate the Christmas spirit with celebratory recipes, tips, things to do, etc., and give your audience ideas about how to entertain guests and party like a pro!
Show love to your customers by just letting them know that they are the reason you have had a great year and how you want their support next year as well to bring something bigger and better in the future because you love them!
Send a happy Christmas greeting to your audience. Make it interactive. Add a video message, gif, or something that is relatable.
Not all of your Christmas emails need to be about sales. Instead, you can send a warm Christmas message thanking the subscribers for a great year, highlighting all that you achieved in the year in the email, and showing what you resolve to achieve in the upcoming year.
This email from Marseille is a perfect example of how to thank your subscribers on Christmas day.
With buying many Christmas gifts, customers will already be spending a lot of money. Therefore, it would be an extremely nice gesture to offer them free shipping to cut some of the cost.
Design By Humans, a clothing brand, offers customers free shipping throughout the holidays in this email.
Here are a few tips for you to keep in mind when crafting an email subject line specifically for your Christmas email campaign:
Make your audience smile so that they click through! Humor is one of the most powerful tools to use at any time of the year especially when it involves holidays. A few examples include:
Use song lyrics, movie references, and words from a famous novel or poetry to evoke celebratory emotions and relatability. For example, “A Christmas Carol” reference from Dickens.
But just make sure that whatever you quote is relevant to your brand and audience.
Simplicity is one of the most powerful marketing tools. Lure the users using specific terms and words that are irresistible to them. For example:
These subject lines are action-oriented and compelling enough to convert users to paying customers.
Tease the user with curiosity. Speak to the audience directly and ask questions. For example:
This email from Level Up is extremely innovative in its design, and all the colorful gift boxes perfectly capture the spirit of Christmas.
This innovative Christmas email from Banana Republic is our favorite. Not only they are offering a deal to their customers, but they are also offering them choices.
Christmas is a time when almost everyone wants to buy gifts for their loved ones. As there will be a lot of bulk buying, charging shipping costs can hamper sales. So, take inspiration from Frank Body, as they are offering free shipping in this email.
Informing customers of the last shipping dates can be a great motivator for action. It helps create a sense of urgency among them and ensures they complete their Christmas shopping well before the time.
On, a shoe brand does exactly what is described above in this email. With a high-quality image, they inform customers of their last worldwide standard shipping dates
One of the ways you can make your Christmas email marketing highly effective is by making your email copy relatable to the audience you are targeting. It’s an understood fact that customers tend to buy from brands that sound like them.
Therefore, its prudent to make your email copy sound and feel like you are acquainted with your audience.
Take a look at what Fleur & Bee does with its emails. The copy is written in a simplistic manner, but it’s wording isn’t jargon heavy and anyone can understand with ease.
Anyone can announce the commencement of a sale, discounts, or a gift card. But to do so in a witty and humorous way requires creativity and skill. Both of these qualities are on display here in this email from Jeni’s.
Having an interactive layout in your emails can benefit your engagement rates. It allows the recipient to traverse through your emails with ease, which makes taking the desired action easy.
Have a look at how Brit & Co. make its emails fun and interactive.
Adding helpful content in your Christmas emails can help recipients make up their minds about purchasing from you. Look at how Not on The High Street uses helpful content to promote its products in this email.
Not all of your emails have to be about sales. Instead, an email with Christmas greetings and wishes can help your brand improve its visibility and foster better relationships with customers.
United Colors of Benetton’s email is all about wishing a happy Christmas and not about a sales offer.
This email from Harvard Sweet Boutique exudes all the Christmasy and aesthetically pleasing vibes. The email successfully delivers its message of announcing a Christmas sale in such a colorful copy.
Christmas spirits don’t need to die at the end of Christmas day. You can still offer discounts and sales offers after it.
This email from Starbucks is a great example of a post-Christmas email. In it, Starbucks announces its after-Christmas rewards to recipients.
If you want high-resolution and aesthetically pleasing Christmas email templates for your Christmas email marketing campaigns, Mailmunch offers a vast library of templates you can use for free! Here are a few of them:
This beautiful Christmas email template can be used for announcing giveaways, discount offers, and sales. You can customize this template to your heart’s content and make it your own.
Who doesn’t like Christmas discounts? And this template is perfect for customizing for Christmas sales and discount offers. It will only take a few minutes to craft and customize this template, and soon, it will be ready to be used in your emails.
You don’t need Christmas email templates just for announcing offers and discounts, you can use them to wish Christmas to your subscribers. You can use the template below to craft stunning Christmas wish emails.
Aqsa Mughees works as a Content Lead at Mailmunch with 5+ years of experience in creative content strategy. With a grip in digital content creation for the tech industry and an undying love for writing, she is crazy about helping businesses grow through content marketing.
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