Holiday Newsletter Inspiration: How to Make Your Festive Campaign the Highlight of the Season

Need some inspiration and tips for your holiday newsletters? We've got lots of ideas and examples to help you out.

The time before Christmas is a busy and emotional time for a lot of people. It’s a great chance for companies to reach customers and show off their products and services in a festive way.

It’s become a bit of a tradition that retail sales grow year on year during the holiday period. It’s a great opportunity for anyone looking to boost their online presence in time for the festive season.

Not only can online retailers benefit from a holiday newsletter, but the “season of love” can also be a great way to build customer loyalty. With festive content and personalized messages, you can gain the trust of your customers and strengthen their loyalty to your brand.

Planning Your Holiday Newsletter Campaign

The trees are still full of colorful leaves, and we’re already thinking about Christmas. Is this too early? Absolutely not! If you get your Christmas newsletters out early, you can relax in the run-up to the festive season and let your recipients enjoy some great content while you focus on sales.

• Evaluate Previous Year:
  Take a look at the most popular content and products from the past year. What were the most successful elements? What got the best open, click, and conversion rates? Use these findings to make your current campaign even better.
• Set Goals and Segments:
  Figure out what you want to achieve with your communication (e.g., customer loyalty, leads, sales) and then create content that’s going to help you reach those goals. It’s important to make sure your content has an exciting mix. While discounts are always a good idea, a monotonous message can quickly become boring or even annoying. Split your list of recipients into different interest groups to make sure you reach the right people.
• Create a Schedule:
  It’s a good idea to get a head start on Christmas shopping because a lot of people start planning and looking for their gifts as early as October. Decide when and how often you want to send out Christmas newsletters and include important dates like St. Nicholas Day or order deadlines so you can give people the info they need in a timely manner.
• Plan Number of Newsletters:
  How many Christmas newsletters you send depends on what you’re trying to achieve, what your industry is and who you’re targeting. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your newsletters have relevant information. B2B companies might only need one newsletter with Christmas greetings, while B2C online stores can send more often, even daily, in the form of an email Advent Calendar.
• Use Email Automation:
  The holidays are already stressful enough. Plan your campaign in advance with automated emails to make things easier. This lets you put together a few newsletters with discounts, gift ideas, and Christmas greetings and send them out at the right time without any extra work. It’s a bit like filling an Advent Calendar. You decide in advance which content is going to be played on which day.

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Holiday Newsletter Ideas and Wonderful Examples

There are lots of ways to make your holiday newsletters creative. With so much competition for attention in mailboxes during the holidays, you’ll want to stand out with something truly valuable.

We’ve put together seven holiday newsletter examples for you:

Email Advent Calendar

Everyone loves the Advent calendar, no matter their age. What works well as a small package on the banister also works well in digital form. With a newsletter Advent Calendar, you can surprise your recipients with a new little something every day. This could be a discounted product, an interesting story, or an inspiring DIY guide. The key is that the content is diverse and provides your recipients with additional value.

Wonderbly uses an email advent calendar to hide small gifts and surprises behind the doors.

Still looking for ideas for your newsletter Advent Calendar? We’ve got you covered with a whole article dedicated to the topic.

Festive Offers and Sales

Christmas newsletters are of course particularly important for online stores and retailers who benefit greatly from the holiday business. A lot of customers are already on the lookout for discounted offers in the Black Friday newsletter. But even after Black Friday, special offers on selected products are always welcome and often give customers that extra nudge to buy the product.

Add a festive touch to your Christmas newsletters with your products and content. For instance, you could put together some articles into affordable “Christmas packages,” or you could offer some small extra services for Advent.

Time-limited discount promotions in the newsletter create a sense of urgency, which is great for increasing conversion. Special promotions for newsletter subscribers or club members only can also help to strengthen customer loyalty by conveying exclusivity.

Fossil is offering its newsletter recipients early access to the Christmas sale.

Gift Tips and Wish Lists

I’m sure you’re familiar with the situation: right before Christmas, you’re asked what you want and then you can’t think of anything off the top of your head, even though you actually have a lot of wishes. So give your customers a heads-up and remind them of their wish lists in your store well in advance.

Gift tips in the newsletter are popular. Offer different products for different target groups. In addition to “gifts for women” and “gifts for men,” you can also offer different price categories.

DEDICATED shows how it’s done with a creative variation and advertises its gift guide for “Bike Bros” and “Cat Lover.” The product images for both categories feature matching fashion items with a bike or cat print.

The P&Co brand is more classic. Their digital gift guide makes Christmas shopping easier. They’ve selected great products for every taste.

DIYs and Recipes

Christmas newsletters should include DIY projects like handmade gifts, Christmas decorations, and festive recipes. This type of content is a welcome change from product and sale newsletters and provides real added value for readers. You can still link to suitable products, but the focus should be on the DIYs.

The online store ASHLEY & Co. shares Christmas gift ideas in its newsletter. The store’s products are at the bottom of the newsletter.

Christmas Tips

The Christmas newsletter is also a great place to share some helpful or inspiring tips about Christmas. Think festive decor, activities for the kids, how to get to the family, and so on. There’s plenty you can share that ties in with your company.

The email marketing agency Email Uplers has a linked quiz in its newsletter to test recipients’ knowledge of typical Christmas traditions.

Season’s Greetings, Review and Outlook for the New Year

Thank customers or partners at the end of the year. You can also highlight special projects. The newsletter can also feature the most-read articles or most popular services.

It doesn’t have to be fancy. Coterie sent out a Christmas newsletter thanking customers for their loyalty and wishing them a Merry Christmas.

Last Minute Gifts aka Vouchers

It’s not too late to boost your sales with a last-minute Christmas newsletter. Even if a lot of people plan to buy their Christmas presents early, a classic voucher often helps them avoid any awkward situations. Sending a quick note about your vouchers one or two days before Christmas or even on Christmas Eve could be the perfect last-minute solution.

Bellroy is offering its newsletter recipients a last-minute gift idea: digital gift cards.

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Designing Your Holiday Emails: Unusual vs. Branded?

The design of your Christmas newsletter is really important for getting that festive feel across and grabbing your subscribers’ attention. There are two main ways you can do this:

Creative Holiday Email

You make sure your Christmas emails look different from your regular newsletters and choose a special Christmas design. This is great for sending classic Christmas greetings by email, which you only do once a year. You can play around with the usual festive colours and motifs, but make sure the sender of the email is still recognisable – don’t go overboard with the design.

Rifle Paper has put together an email with a special christmas design. The design of the newsletter is different from the usual emails, which makes it really stand out.

Holiday Newsletter in Your Corporate Design

The second option is to make your Christmas newsletters match the look of your other company communications. This means using colors, layout, and graphics that fit with your brand. This not only gets people to recognize you, but it also strengthens the bond with your recipients. Christmas newsletters don’t have to be all green, red, and gold. You can also use your company colors to give your newsletter a Christmasy feel.

It’s easy to get a festive feel in your newsletters with the right images and motifs. Add some Christmas graphics, icons, or product photos. If you’re feeling bold, you can even give your logo a Christmas makeover in the newsletter. Of course, the Christmas version should be pretty similar to the actual logo.

The Stance team stuck with the same design for the Christmas newsletter, using festive images und products to create the right atmosphere.

Free Holiday Newsletter Templates

It doesn’t matter if you want to send a Christmas email that’s a little different or you want to keep your brand design the same: CleverReach has a great selection of free, responsive Christmas newsletter templates to make your design a breeze. The templates are simple to edit, so you can change the colors, images, and text to suit your preferences.

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Festive Email Copy

As Christmas gets closer, it gets really competitive for readers’ attention. What you put in your newsletter is really important if you want to stand out from the crowd and get people excited about what you’ve got to say. A well-written text can not only get that festive spirit across, but also create a desire for people to interact and engage.

The goal is to strike the right balance between a festive atmosphere and clear, informative content. Readers want content that’s engaging and relevant, and that both entertains and informs.

The Right Subject for Your Holiday Newsletter

The subject line of your Christmas newsletter is really important for getting people interested and making them open your message. Your subject line should be festive and pique people’s curiosity. Using Christmas emojis in the subject line makes the message stand out and shows right away what the email is about.

Silent night or holy night? Use A/B tests to test out your subject lines to see which holiday message really gets through.

Holiday Email Copy with AI Support: 3 Prompt Ideas

If you’re having trouble putting together your Christmas newsletters, AI tools like ChatGPT or our CleverReach Content Generator can be a big help. You can get your own texts rewritten for Christmas, and you can also get ideas and suggestions for complete newsletter texts.

We’ve put together three sample Christmas email ideas for you:

1. Announcing Your Advent Calendar

2. Sharing Your Gift Tips

3. Sending Out Your Season’s Greetings

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Get Your Christmas Emails Ready and Enjoy a Relaxed Holiday Season

With an early planned campaign, pre-prepared holiday emails, and smart email automation, you can stay on top of the holiday rush. Prepare your email marketing to make the most of the holiday season.

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