Deutsch
EN
Español
Français
Italiano
Português
It’s coming up to that time of year again: start rounding up Christmas newsletter ideas to finish off the year strong! Rather than sending out the same old Christmas email to your subscribers, this year why not get your creative juices flowing with the help of these awesome Christmas newsletter examples.
Soon enough winter will be here and once again we’ll be putting up the Christmas decorations and blasting out our favorite festive tunes.
But wait, not so fast!
Before you start hittin’ that eggnog too hard, you might want to get your email newsletter strategy in order so you can take time to enjoy the festivities. Whether you’re sending a seasonal greeting to your subscribers in order to nurture the relationship or trying to tap into that holiday spending splurge, sending a Christmas newsletter can bring a host of benefits.
To get your December emails ready to send out, we’ve put together some content ideas to inspire you. The ideas are divided into two categories:
- Sales-focused Christmas newsletter ideas (ecommerce, SaaS, retail, paid apps)
- Editorial-focused Christmas newsletter ideas (blogs, nonprofits, media, small businesses)
👉 Psst! Looking for an easy way to create professional-looking Christmas newsletters? Opening a free Sendinblue account will give you access to over 25 responsive holiday email templates along with our intuitive drag & drop email builder.
Build your holiday newsletters with Sendinblue! >>
Christmas Newsletter Ideas for Boosting Sales
For most ecommerce companies and other businesses selling online, the holiday season surrounding Christmas is the most important time of year. But, your holiday sale promotions can only go so far…
Here are a few ideas that you can use in your Christmas newsletter that will enhance your wider holiday marketing strategy and help drive sales:
1. Put your offers front and center
Christmas is the ideal time to send out special offers and promotions because shoppers are buying things not just for themselves, but also for their friends and family.
That’s why it’s important to communicate those special offers in all of your seasonal emails. You want to get as many eyes on them as possible.
Create holiday promotions that encourage buying multiple items
When sending out promotional discounts and sale offers, you should also create promotions to increase the average cart size. This will increase ROI exponentially for the increased traffic and conversions you get from your other promotions since each conversion is worth more!
But, how exactly do you do this? There are a few ways you can increase the size of your average cart this holiday season:
- Highlight complementary products together
- Offer discounted bundles
- Give free shipping for orders over a certain value — just be sure to set the minimum order well above your normal average cart value (e.g. if your average cart value is $40, give free shipping for orders over $75).
The Christmas email below uses the clever idea of offering a discounted item for holiday shoppers when they buy a gift for someone else.
You can also stick to the traditional promotions (discount codes, product category sales, etc.) if that’s more your speed. Just make sure you’re not being outdone by your competitors, as customers will be looking for deals over the holidays.
2. Remove the fear of late deliveries
When shopping online for Christmas gifts, one of the biggest customer fears is not receiving their purchase in time for the day itself.
Including details about shipping time estimates and guaranteed delivery dates in your Christmas newsletters can go a long way in making customers feel more comfortable buying from your store. In fact, 83% of shoppers said they expect to see a guaranteed delivery date from retailers.
So, be your customers’ Christmas savior this year! Make their lives easier by reassuring them that their carefully curated gifts will make it under the tree in time for Christmas and they will be sure to reward you for it.
3. Give your customers some gift ideas
During the holiday season, it can be challenging to effectively segment your email list. That’s because subscribers are also looking at making purchases for their friends and family — not just themselves.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that receiving a promotional email for men’s hoodies is not going to help me find my girlfriend the right gift (even though that email is totally relevant for me!).
Instead of trying to fit a square peg through a round hole, you can dedicate space in your Christmas newsletter to educate subscribers on the “perfect gift” based on the person receiving it (friend, child, girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.).
With all of the craziness that comes with the holidays, your gift advice will provide a welcome dose of assistance to your customers.
This Christmas email example by the meal service company Tovala shows us how it’s done, clearly demonstrating how their product could work as a gift for different friends and family members.
4. Reward your subscribers with free resources
Brands are always offering something special during the holiday season. Usually, it’s putting certain items on sale, giving a special coupon code, or even doing a site-wide sale.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, you’re going to have to beat their generosity. Give your customers a real gift that they can enjoy, for example:
- An ebook or other gated content related to your niche
- A downloadable activity/game (coloring book, origami instructions, etc.)
- Company swag
The nice thing about this type of gift is that it’s engaging for subscribers but doesn’t cost you too much. Just be sure that what you’re offering reflects your brand and provides real value to your customers.
5. Turn up the heat during the holidays
To get the most out of the holiday shopping season, you should turn up the marketing pressure of your Christmas emails by increasing your newsletter frequency. This will ensure you get your message to as many shoppers as possible before they start looking for gifts — even if they wait until the last minute.
How to increase marketing pressure
In addition to increasing the frequency of your email campaigns over the holiday period, you also need to create a sense of urgency to encourage shoppers to buy. There are a few different ways you can do this:
- Use copy that gives your readers “fear of missing out”, or FOMO
- Insert a countdown to Christmas in your emails
- Make your promotions time sensitive
To get the most benefit from these, you should use them in conjunction with each other.
The Christmas newsletter example below utilizes the FOMO-inducing holiday subject line Free Gift. Last Chance. Open This. — the subject line reinforces the urgency of the content within the email itself.
Further reading: 5 Holiday Email Marketing Strategies to Boost Engagement
Editorial Christmas Newsletter Ideas Your Subscribers Will Love
For many businesses, an email newsletter is just that: a newsletter. It’s used to communicate updates and keep customers or subscribers connected and engaged with the business. In these cases, it’s best to take an editorial approach when creating your Christmas newsletter.
But even if you’re not trying to boost sales and revenue with your holiday emails, there are still some things you need to keep in mind. Here are some great Christmas newsletter examples to use as inspiration, along with tips to make sure your editorial content is on the right track:
6. Reinforce client relationships with your Christmas newsletter
For most businesses, solid customer relationships are a must! Otherwise, your purchase funnel is like a revolving door and you never have any deeper customer loyalty, brand recognition, or returning customers in general. Avoid this by using your Christmas newsletter to take a step back and reach out with a genuine message of gratitude that will serve to strengthen your existing relationships with customers and subscribers.
Here are some ideas for your December newsletter that will help get more fans for your brand:
- Send your customers well wishes for a happy new year
- Restate your business’s mission and update customers on anything new
- Thank your customers for their loyalty
Taking the time to connect with your customers on a more personal and genuine level instead of focusing on sales can do wonders for your customer relationships for the coming year.
This Christmas newsletter example gets it spot on:
Want more tips on using email to strengthening customer relationships? Check out our blog post on relationship marketing with emails.
7. Use playful humor in your email copy
A great way to grab your subscribers’ attention is to make them laugh. The holiday newsletter is an opportunity to show your brand’s fun and playful side.
Here are some tips for bringing holiday fun into your email subject lines and copy:
- Use puns, jokes, and wordplay
- Use the subject line to tell a joke then put the punchline in the body of the email
- Catch readers’ attention with references to contemporary Christmas classics like “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “Home Alone,” “Love Actually”, or “Die Hard”. Fans are bound to perk up at the reference
- Wrap up with a fun and clever CTA that perfectly encapsulates the email’s concept — don’t spend time writing hilarious copy only to finish on a boring “Buy now”
Check out this Christmas email by brand BarkBox, with the subject line Dog people give the best gifts, that effectively uses festive humor to charm subscribers.
But how to know what kind of humor your subscribers will appreciate?
Dig into your buyer personas and do some research! On top of this, you can try A/B testing your email subject lines to see what kind of content works best for your audience.
8. Reflect on the previous year and discuss the future
Because it comes at the end of the year, Christmas (and New Year’s) is an excellent time for businesses to look back and reflect on the previous year and communicate the successes to your loyal customer base. And what better place to do it than the Christmas newsletter since it’s often the final communication that businesses send customers before starting the new year.
This approach is especially effective for nonprofits that have a strong mission and use their newsletter to share progress toward their goals. Read our guide to email marketing for nonprofits for more tips.
However Christmas newsletters can also be a nice way to showcase any successes you’ve achieved as a business over the past year.
Reflecting on the past year is also a natural segue into discussing what your plans are for the coming year. This is an excellent strategy because it gives your customers the feeling that they are part of your organization and creates a sense of exclusivity (like they’re being kept “in the loop”). 😉
As long as your message is interesting, customers will want to pay attention to your future emails in order to see when plans are put into action — so make sure you don’t get too far ahead of yourself if you take this strategy.
Time to get festive with your Christmas newsletter
Now that you have a better idea of what to do for your Christmas newsletter, you can look forward to the excitement of the holiday season without worrying about your email marketing strategy!
Do you have other ideas for content to include in holiday newsletters? Let us know in the comments below or on social media.
And if you want more content like this, download our 2022 holiday marketing calendar to keep up with important dates and get helpful tips for every month of the year! ⏬
