As we head towards the most magical time of the year, email marketers are squeezing their heads thinking what Christmas newsletter idea would stand out.
It is Christmas season, and for every business it an opportunity to catch up and reach your yearly sales goals. To realize that you need catchy email subject lines to increase your open rates, and stunning email content to maximize your conversion and email marketing ROI.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- 3 Stages of Christmas email campaign
- 55+ Catchy Christmas email subject lines
- 13+ Christmas newsletter design and template ideas for your email campaign
- How to automate your Christmas email campaign
- Bonus tips
‘Maily’ Christmas everyone, let’s get started.
3 Stages of a Christmas Email Campaign
Christmas email marketing campaign isn’t one email that you send during Christmas days to your subscribers’ list.
To reach the full potential, you have to create a 3-stage Christmas email campaign:
- Pre-Christmas: A few weeks before the Christmas period.
- Christmas: A couple of days before Christmas.
- Post-Christmas: A week after Christmas.
Stage 1: Pre-Christmas email campaign
During this time of the year, the email inbox is going to be a busy place.
Stay ahead of the competition by sending a pre-Christmas email campaign to stay at the top of your subscribers’ minds.
Get yourself in the holiday spirit by planning ahead and start the design work for your main campaign. You want your Christmas newsletter to stand out, so why not start as soon as you send your season’s greeting?
You can warm them for the Christmas spirit by sending a season’s greetings for example.
Here is a great example coming from Analytix Solutions, with simple wishes enough to warm subscribers.
This is just the right feel and tone for the holiday season.
Another example, is a kind of different way, tells customers that there’s still time to do holiday shopping.
Stage 2: Christmas email campaign
The season has finally arrived and if you already sent a Pre-Christmas email campaign, your subscribers will open your Christmas newsletter and look at what you have to offer.
Yeah; “Look at what you have to offer” because some of your loyal subscribers might be expecting a great offer from you during the holiday season.
You can offer discounts, email-only deals or an exclusive Christmas offer.
At this stage, you can do a lot with email personalization providing your customers with Christmas discounts on products they’ve already shown interest in. It is a great way to encourage them to take action on your email.
Here is an example of an email Christmas offer from Tailor Brands.
Discounts during the holiday season is another great strategy used by most businesses to increase their end of the year sales.
Stage 3: Post-Christmas email campaign
Christmas is over by the 26th of December, but this never means that your email campaign is.
after Christmas, everyone is relaxing and the email inbox is not a crowded place at that time of chill.
Take advantage of the opportunity, send a Post-Christmas email campaign with a ‘killer’ subject line to stand out of the crowd.
The end of the year is a great time to take the last shot at boosting your business results.
Here is a December newsletter idea;
With perfect email design and copy, I have to give credits to Prezi for the excellent job engaging their subscribers with this post-Christmas gift.
This email template can be great started for the new year as well.
After we have covered the three stages of a successful Christmas email campaign, let’s see how different brands are infusing the Christmas spirit into email marketing campaigns.
55 Christmas Email Subject Lines
After you have defined the goal of your Christmas email campaign. It’s time to come up with the subject line that stands out in the email subscriber’s inbox.
If you don’t get your subscribers to open your email, the rest of your email doesn’t matter.
Get inspired for your Xmas email campaign subject line with these 55 examples.
- Apple: Give iPad. And put some fun under the tree.
- Tory Burch: Presenting: Tory’s Gift Guide
- Prezi: Our little gift to you
- Vertical Response: Are your holiday cards in the mail yet? Get 60% off!
- Trello: 12 Presents To Make You More Productive These Holidays”
- World Market: Ho-Ho-WHOA! 50% off Wine Gift Baskets + Holiday Food and Decor.
- Food & Wine: 27 Recipes for a Christmas Cocktail Bash
- UberEATS: Brr – warm up with some free hot chocolate.
- Groupon: Groupon’s Most Wanted This Holiday Season
- Configure IT: We’ve got an early gift for you
- Uncommon Goods: Ho Ho Ho… The Time Has Come
- Just Give: Gifts that do good… and feel good
- 1973: Here’s a gift just for you…
- BarkBox: Dog people give the best gifts”
- Taco Bell: Happy Holidays! We made you a game! Want to play?
- Eero: The Most WonderFi Guide of the Year
- UGmonk: Find the Perfect Gift for Everyone on Your List
- Francis Lofts and Bunks: How many bunk beds can fit in Santa’s sleigh?
- Mystery Tackle Box: Merry Christmas From Karl VonDibble (And Mystery Tackle Box)
- Southwest: Snow Fare Like A Low Fare!
The inspiration is not over. Here’s a list of other top brands’ subject lines for holiday emails. We’ve gone to the deepest corners of the internet to collect these Christmas subject lines (includes e-commerce Christmas subject lines):
- There’s still time…🎅
- Santa’s worked his magic – 15% Off
- You’ve made our nice list!🎉
- If you open one email this Christmas…
- Some last minute gift ideas
- Spread the holiday cheer🎄
- 5 fantastic festive recipes for Christmas🎁
- The 12 Deals of Christmas
- Gift Ideas for Everyone on Your List🎁
- Ho Ho Ho (Spend Less Dough) 🎉
- 5 Easy DIY Christmas Decor tips
- ❄️ Our Winter Warmer Package Makes a Great Gift
- Holiday Toys for Husbands – Ten Fun Ideasv🎈
- Three gift ideas you haven’t thought of yet!
- Your Santa List: Ten Stocking Stuffers to please anyone
- $25 Gifts that will knock their socks off! 🎈
- Holiday shopping stressing you out? We can HELP!
- The Season To Give Great Gifts + 20-40% Off
- Christmas Countdown: 40-50% Off Sweaters🎁
- Stocking Stuffer Sunday…Save on Gifts, Gadgets, and More
- This Weekend Only: Save xx% at (your business)
- Merry Crustmas! 💖 Surprise your family with a pizza dinner!
- Hairy Christmas! It’s 2 for 1 week at Supercuts!🎅
- Share this wonderful news with your loved ones
- Feeling Christmassy? 🎄
- Deals as red-hot as Rudolph’s nose!
- Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey?
- Here’s our gift to you 💖
- Christmas is about sharing
- See our holiday style guide 🎉
- Looking for Christmas gift inspirations?🎄
- Perfect gift for everyone you love
- Out of ideas? Get a gift card!
- Forget Santa🎅 – treat yourself
- Let’s catch up before Santa gets here!
Writing a Christmas-themed subject line is a sort of art for some email marketers. You don’t have to be over promotional here, you can send Christmas wishes in your subject line.
When you run a holiday email campaign, make sure to come up with an impressive subject line to increase email open rate.
Don’t be afraid of using emojis in your email marketing. When used well, emojis are proven to increase your opens.
P.S. You can easily add emojis to your Christmas email subject lines using Automizy.
After you have composed your subject line, test it with our free tool, The Subject Line Tester to see which would perform better. It scores your subject lines based on data from over 1 million campaigns.
The tool also provides subject line templates you can use to increase your email open rates.
Even the most seasoned email marketer doesn’t have that kind of experience.
Your email content wouldn’t even matter if you don’t get your subscribers to open the email in the first place.
We advise you to try Automizy’s email subject line generator which writes you subject lines based on your email copy.
- Step 1: Copy & paste your email content.
- Step 2: Let Mizy read and analyze it.
- Step 3: Copy, like and use the subject lines you prefer.
That’s it, 3 easy steps to further increase your open rates.
13+ Christmas Newsletter Design and Template Ideas for Your Email Campaign
We are thrilled to be sharing with you 11+ newsletter template design examples to give you ideas for your promotional Christmas email campaign.
1. Promote your Christmasy products
Here is one of the best Christmas newsletter template design example from Starbucks. It is beautifully designed, it is all in red and it displays a collection of photos and illustrations, featuring the Starbucks’ famous Christmas cups.
The greater part of the email’s body is occupied by sections presenting Starbucks’ Christmas products, Christmas cookies, Christmas cards, and eGifts.
2. Trigger your subscribers’ curiosity
Another cool Xmas newsletter example comes from LevelUp. Wishing happy holidays for their contacts, and triggering their curiosity with many wrapped gifts.
THE HYPE IS REAL!
Speaking of wrapped gifts.
3. Christmas gifts and wrapping
The personalized gifts and decorations website Not On The High Street prepared this Christmas email template example for its clients.
The following newsletter offers ideas for handcrafted decorations and gifts wrappers in a beautiful and original way.
The top part of the HTML email template is occupied by a links menu, which the reader may use to browse through the various categories of the website.
Let me give you some examples;
4. Thank your subscribers
Sometimes just thanking your subscribers is enough. That’s what AviationCV did for their subscribers in their Christmas email message.
5. Create a crafty, creative Christmas email design
It is stunning how these simple photos come to life with these lovely illustrations.
Get inspired by this Christmas e-commerce promotional email design from J.Crew. That indeed grabs attention. The colors, lovely mouse and the main message fit well to the entire design and Christmas vibes.
In their Christmas promotional campaign, they offered discounts combined with free shipping. Not a bad idea.
6. Get a little classy
Rid of the red-green-gold triptych color palette, the unlikely Christmas email template colors are unexpectedly classy and cozy when it comes to the design.
This darker-tone selection grants the campaign with a touch of prestige and classiness.
As you can tell, only a Christmas tree slightly appearing in the background.
7. Blow life into your Christmas emails with animated GIFs
An interesting pre-Christmas email campaign example from Merci Maman.
Xmas email newsletter design in which they ‘killed’, positively, their pre-Christmas email campaign with an animated GIF.
Another animated HTML email template design sample from Bonobos where they did promote their Christmas deal in a poetic way. Animation indeed grabs attention.
8. Cheer your subscribers with gift ideas for their loved ones
Probably many of your subscribers are still wondering about what gifts to buy for their loved ones, or maybe struggling with gifts’ wrapping.
Michaels succeeded their Christmas email campaign with this creative piece of art:
9. Send heartwarming wishes
From home to home, and heart to heart, from one place to another. The warmth and joy of a Merry Christmas bring us closer to each other. Sweet isn’t?
You can spread this holiday spirit by getting personal with your contacts and make them feel as if they are part of your family.
Here is a heart-warming Christmas newsletter design idea.
10. Gamify your email
Why not send a riddle, online scavenger hunt, or puzzle as a surprising and fun Christmas newsletter idea?
Here is a cool email template design example that Banana Republic used for their Christmas email campaign.
11. Branding with an original email
The best Christmas email campaigns are not only for promoting sales and discounts, instead, you can also take advantage of this season to strengthen your business’s brand. Just like United Colors of Benetton did in the following Christmas email:
Smart isn’t?
12. Offer free shipping on Christmas
Free shipping is an increasingly-popular option for online shopping.
On Christmas, everyone is spending money on gifts for family members and loved ones. Cutting the shipping fees can increase your sales as it takes off any hidden shipping or extra fees.
13. Motivate donations
The holiday season is about sharing. And Christmas can be a great time to send out a letter to motivate donations.
It’s obviously will not be revenue for your business, but definitely a huge positive branding.
Here is an email example from 1973 LTD, a marketing agency, motivating their contacts to donate during Christmas.
BONUS: 3 Extra Christmas email tips
1. Automate your 3-stage Christmas email campaign
As mentioned above at the beginning of the article, Christmas email campaign is not about sending one single email to your contact list and sit back.
To be able to automate your Christmas email campaign, create a drip campaign using an email automation tool.
Here is how to automate a Christmas drip campaign in Automizy.
Start by applying “Christmas202o” tag to the contacts you want to send Christmas emails to.
Your contact tag is going to be your Christmas emails trigger:
To create a more behavioral experience for your contacts, you can apply conditions to your email automation. You can segment your contacts by:
In the following example, a post-Christmas email is sent to contacts who open and interact with your Christmas email.
Unlike contacts who opened your email, if a contact didn’t open your Christmas email, they receive a reminder of the same email.
Apply the bulk contact tag to your contacts before starting your automation, because the contact tag will be the trigger of your automation.
2. Share an act of kindness
Most businesses around the world are engaged in a sort of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) It is a way for companies to take responsibility for a social or an environmental cause. It can be a charity, movement,… It depends on what the company wants to stand for.
Since the holiday and Christmas season is about giving, don’t be afraid to share your company’s volunteer and charitable activities; and invite your customers to contribute.
Sometimes when allocating a percentage of your revenue to donate it to a charity, customers feel like they want to contribute as well. Or you can share with them a donation link.
Christmas is about giving, you can involve that holiday spirit in your Christmas email campaign.
3. Wish your subscribers a Merry Christmas
You can make your email super personal by wishing your subscribers a Merry Christmas through a plain-text email.
Plain text emails are used for email campaigns that contain text without any images or HTML coding. It looks exactly as if one of your friends or colleagues from work sent you an email.
Sending a plain text email for your Christmas campaign will provide your subscribers with a feeling of a bond with you and your business.
Looking for more inspiration for your campaign? Get inspired by these 39+ email campaign examples.
Conclusion
The Christmas season is all about lights, sharing and gifting our loved ones.
For businesses, it is also a profitable season to:
- Get closer to our contacts
- Increase our end of the year sales
- Thank and reward our loyal customers
We’d love to take a look at your Christmas newsletter examples, never hesitate to share it with us. You know Christmas season is all about sharing.
‘Maily’ Christmas 🤩