Holiday email campaigns are a perfect opportunity to capture the festive spirit, engage your customers and boost sales. Whether you’re sending Merry Christmas emails or promoting a Christmas sale, an effective email marketing strategy will keep your brand top-of-mind during the busiest shopping season of the year. In this guide, we’ll explore how to create holiday emails that resonate with your audience and drive results.
Why are Christmas/holiday season emails important?
The Christmas/holiday season is a prime opportunity for businesses to connect with and nurture your customers. A thoughtfully-designed email wishing them a happy and safe Christmas and New Year can ensure that your message stands out in often crowded inboxes.
Using free email templates or custom-designed ones, you can capture the holiday cheer and entice your audience to take action—whether it’s purchasing gifts, signing up for promotions or simply getting into the Christmas spirit.
Key benefits of using Christmas/holiday-themed emails:
- Boost engagement: Festive designs and warm wishes increase the likelihood of your audience opening the email. Utilising Christmas themes can make your emails visually appealing and personalised, helping to engage clients effectively during the holiday season.
- Strengthen brand identity: A consistent brand guideline ensures that your Christmas/holiday campaign reflects your values while embracing the festive season.
- Increase conversions: Thoughtfully crafted email marketing campaigns with engaging subject lines and relevant content can improve your open and click-through rates.
Components of a great Christmas/holiday email.
Creating the perfect Christmas email requires attention to both design and content. Here’s what you should include to get the most out of your holiday email marketing strategy.
- Festive subject lines: Your subject line is the first thing your audience sees. Use phrases like ‘The Perfect Gift Awaits!’ or ‘Celebrate the Season with [Your Brand]’ to capture attention. Add Christmas or holiday-themed emojis to your subject lines.
- Personal touch: Address your recipients by name as personalisation adds value and helps build relationships.
- Engaging design: A good email design should use elements such as holiday-themed colours and festive or summer-related images. Make sure your emails are optimised for mobile devices to ensure everyone can view them properly, no matter what email client they use.
- Gift guides and promotions: Offering value through gift guides and holiday sales can drive conversions. Highlight gifts for last-minute shoppers and include a countdown timer for urgency. This can help increase engagement and conversions during your pre-Christmas campaigns.
- Clear call-to-action (CTA): Whether you’re promoting a Christmas sale, a mystery gift or asking your audience to read a blog post, make your CTA clear and enticing. Use CTAs like ‘Shop Now for Holiday Savings’ or ‘Unwrap Your Exclusive Offer Today’ to inspire action.
Writing compelling Christmas/holiday email content.
Writing compelling email content is essential to engaging your audience and driving conversions. Here are some helpful tips for what to include:
- Use a festive tone: Match the holiday season with a cheerful, friendly and welcoming tone.
- Keep it concise: Get straight to the point. Avoid lengthy paragraphs and technical jargon. Your audience is likely to be busy during the holiday season, so make your message quick and easy to digest.
- Use story-telling techniques: Engage your readers by telling a story. Whether it’s about how your product can make their holiday special or a heart-warming customer testimonial, story-telling can make your content more relatable and memorable.
- Highlight your offers: Clearly showcase your Christmas offers and promotions. Use bold text or festive graphics to draw attention to special deals, discounts or limited-time offers.
By crafting engaging and concise content, you can capture your audience’s attention, encourage them to take action and nurture them during the holiday season.
Best practices for Christmas/holiday email marketing campaigns.
To maximise the impact of your Christmas email marketing campaigns, consider these tried-and-true tips:
- Segment your audience: Tailor your emails to specific groups, such as last-minute shoppers, loyal customers or new subscribers. Personalised emails are more likely to resonate and perform well.
- Test different designs: Experiment with various templates to see what works best for your audience. Don’t forget to A/B test different subject lines and designs for the highest engagement.
- Use countdown timers: Creating urgency with a countdown timer can prompt action. For example, ‘Only 3 days left in our Christmas sale’ can drive immediate purchases.
- Incorporate holiday cheer: Don’t shy away from sprinkling some holiday spirit throughout your email, even if it’s as simple as wishing your customers a happy and safe Christmas and New Year
Free resources for designing Christmas/holiday emails.
Designing the perfect holiday email doesn’t have to be daunting. There are plenty of online resources to help you create festive and professional-looking designs. Below are some of the best resources for Christmas and holiday-themed graphics, fonts and templates:
- Canva Christmas Fonts: A collection of festive fonts to add holiday flair to your email designs.
- Flaticon Christmas Icons: Find free Christmas icons to complement your Christmas email templates.
- HubSpot’s Free Stock Photos: A vast collection of stock photos perfect for adding a holiday touch to your emails.
- Greetings Island: Choose from a range of customisable holiday cards and incorporate them into your email designs.
- Adobe Spark Holiday Card Templates: A great resource for creating custom Christmas and holiday cards to share with your audience.
- Venngage Happy Holidays Post Templates: These social media templates are perfect for adding a festive touch to your holiday email campaigns.
To get you started on your email marketing plan, here are four websites where you can find free Christmas and holiday-themed email templates:
1. Stripo.Email Christmas templates.
Although Stripo.Email does have paid plans, their basic plan allows you to download two templates a month at no cost. It also grants you access to their extensive library of beautiful templates, including many which are Christmas or holiday-themed.
Stripo’s templates integrate with the majority of the email marketing platforms , or you can simply download the template as an HTML5 file and upload it yourself.
2. Canva’s Christmas newsletter templates.
Canva is one of the best programs for busy marketers who need a quick and simple way to create stunning visual content—including email campaigns. They have hundreds and hundreds of templates for all types of designs, including some really beautiful Christmas newsletter templates.
With a free account, you can browse through their newsletter templates, replacing the fonts, colours and graphics with your own. If you want to purchase additional graphics, Canva offers icons, images and designs for around $1 each.
3. Mailchimp’s holiday email templates.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing services out there and, if you’re using them to send your campaigns, you’re in luck—they’ve already built a number of Christmas email templates to get you started.
Unfortunately, the templates are only for Standard and Premium accounts, so if you’re using the free version of Mailchimp, some of the other options on this list might be a better choice.
4. EmailMonks free downloadable templates.
EmailMonk offers fully customisable Christmas and holiday email templates, and they are completely free to download. Just visit this page and enter your email address to have them sent to your inbox.
These beautiful templates integrate fully with services like MailChimp and they also include enticing features to help you boost sales, such as animated Gifs and high-quality photos.
Wrap-up: Get creative with your holiday email campaigns.
The lead-up to Christmas and the summer holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year and, with the right email marketing strategy, you can make sure your brand stands out. Start planning your holiday email marketing campaigns now and ensure you’re prepared to deliver festive and results-driven emails all season long.
