It’s quite common to overlook the importance of Thanksgiving emails as digital marketers scramble to get their Black Friday and holiday campaigns in order. Thanksgiving could also be an amazing time to let your creative team exercise their muscles and design the best thanksgiving email.
One could even wonder why even bother with Thanksgiving email marketing campaigns. If your organization doesn’t revolve around food, what good Thanksgiving email campaigns can do? Shouldn’t you just put your efforts and money into the next holiday season?
Huge mistake!
Your bottom line can benefit from Thanksgiving email campaigns in many ways. Additionally, you have several options for building trust and piquing interest among your subscribers as the emotional holiday season kicks into overdrive.
Thankfully, you do not have to spend lots of time searching for a theme and reinvent the wheel. Use traditions and culture to your benefit and develop a strategy that will melt the hearts of your subscribers. There are lots of creative and effective ideas that could help you to engage with your subscribers and improve open rates and click-through rates for your email campaigns.
The online spending in 2018 on Thanksgiving hit as high as $3.7 billion, which means a huge 27.9% growth year-over-year. It is much higher than the 18.3% growth rate of 2017 from online spending on thanksgiving. And the average order values in 2018 were up 8% over Thanksgiving day in 2017.
Thanksgiving, we think of family feasting, festivity, football, and charity, when we think about this amazing holiday. In a nutshell, Thanksgiving is an occasion to show gratitude to everyone who’s been with you throughout the year and beyond. This is the ideal Thanksgiving tradition, however, over the year, and thanks to the advent of Cyber Monday and Black Friday, Thanksgiving has also turned into one of the most lucrative occasions for businesses and marketers as well.
As an email marketer, this is a lucrative opportunity to show your gratitude to your subscribers and customers as well, while pleasing and amusing them with Thanksgiving gifts in the form of amazing discounts and exciting offers delivered through engaging Thanksgiving emails. So you need to make your Thanksgiving emails unique and exciting to clearly stand out in the inbox of your subscribers and customers.
Strategies to Outshine Your Company This Thanksgiving:
Plan your strategies well.
First of all, analyze all your goals for this Thanksgiving season. As a brand, Be crystal clear about what you want to achieve this holiday season. Once you are done with these, start working on it as soon as you can. The following are the three key areas you need to focus;
- Understand and then decide what you are planning to offer to your subscribers and customers?
- How your Offer is going to be different from the rest of the companies?
Now that you have a clear picture of everything you can work on developing a great Thanksgiving email campaign.
Things to consider while planning your Thanksgiving email campaigns:
Have you ever tried to make your emails into the gateway to your other platforms? Create an amazing Thanksgiving email campaign harnessing the best practices of email marketing with just the right combination of the specific elements of this holiday like pumpkin & autumn, turkey, falling leaves, etc. Additionally, create an engaging Thanksgiving email template and then curate it so that it can sell and compel your subscribers and customers to go to your company website and do business with you. Finally, test, test, and then test it once more.
You’ll want to consider the overall nature of the holiday, as with any themed email campaign, if you truly want your Thanksgiving email campaigns to resonate with your subscribers and customers.
The following are some of the great tips to keep in mind;
Get personal:
Other than food and shopping, the holiday seasons are the best time to put a strong emphasis on our family and friends. So, consider reaching out to your subscribers and customers on a personal level by sharing a messaging with them from your company “family” or from your own family. Leverage this as a lucrative opportunity to build a stronger and meaningful connection with your audience.
Focus on gratitude:
Are you thankful for your customers and subscribers? Well, then show it to them with your Thanksgiving email campaigns. Thanksgiving is the best time for offering hefty coupons, boosting loyalty programs, and other customer-centric offers. This will help you greatly to show that you value the space in their inbox and their business.
Highlight generosity:
Are you giving something back this Thanksgiving? If yes, then how? Let your subscribers and customers know about it. If you’re contributing to any charitable causes, let them know how they can also be a part of it with lucrative offers from your company.
Hook your customers to your company:
Running an email campaign with a holiday-themed contest is a great way to boost your engagement rates, and also indirectly help increase sales. Advertise your contest on other channels like social media, and encourage people to subscribe to your email list. This won’t just help you grow your email list but will also engage customers with your company, helping you to grow as a business.
Don’t forget the food either:
It’s not just about you, but it’s about your subscribers and customers. So, even if your organization doesn’t revolve around food, Thanksgiving is a perfect time to include some high-quality images of everyone’s favorite dishes. And ensure that all of your Thanksgiving email campaigns are carefully designed to be easily accessible on mobile phones.
Enticing subject line:
A great Thanksgiving email subject line will help you pike interest and get you some extra attention. Hence, for your thanksgiving email campaigns to be successful; start off with innovative, catchy thanksgiving email subject lines. Your Thanksgiving email subject line should be able to easily hook recipients with your email and should also compel them to open your emails.
9 Incredible Thanksgiving email campaigns:
To make your Thanksgiving email campaign planning easy and to inspire you to create great emails, we have compiled nine amazing Thanksgiving email inspiration from all around the world that dazzled subscribers last year.
1. Ibotta:
When it comes to comprehensive email campaigns for Thanksgiving, Ibotta Thanksgiving emails really knocks it out of the playground. However, it has too many CTAs and is also a little long-winded- usually, when dealing with too many choices, your recipients may choose nothing at all instead of risking making a wrong choice- but instead of confusing your recipients, Ibotta Thanksgiving email offers something for everyone at different stages of their planning for Thanksgiving.
To post-party cleanup from holiday food preparation, and after dinner drinks like coffee, tea, etc., why would the recipient need to look anywhere else for their holiday essentials?
On top of everything else, Ibotta Thanksgiving emails end with a CTA referencing Friends giving and enticing the recipients to earn $50 cashback by getting their friends and family to sign-up.
2. Casper:
Just because your company doesn’t sell food items doesn’t mean that you can’t tap into the benefits of the food images by including mouth-watering images of food items in your Thanksgiving emails.
Casper’s Thanksgiving email is effective yet very simple. Both the colors orange and grey fit very well with the relaxing vibe they are trying to show while also staying on the theme for the fall holiday.
The pumpkin pie high-quality graphic with a cute moon shape is great for reminding recipients how amazing it would feel to crawl into a brand-new Casper mattress after their Thanksgiving feast.
Additionally, the CTA is very interesting and quite simple, hence enticing recipients to click-through and then convert.
3. Bookkeeping:
With your recipient’s email inboxes teeming with a lot of emails this Thanksgiving, how about going an extra mile for them to save their time? The discounted price by Bookkeeping has been included right in the email to woo their subscribers and customers during the holiday season.
4. Uber:
Uber does a great job identifying their subscribers’ pain points and putting themselves in their shoes. Uber knows that people spend a lot of their time traveling and flying during the holiday seasons.
Uber Thanksgiving email encourages their subscribers to book ride to the airport early to ensure that they arrive on-time for their flight. The CTA simply encourages subscribers to learn more about how it works and isn’t overbearing.
Additionally, Uber Thanksgiving email has a festive background with thematic, calm colors. Quite similar to Uber you can also find interesting and unique ways to make your subscribers’ and customers’ lives a bit easier during the Thanksgiving weekend.
5. Blurb:
Blurb Thanksgiving email puts its Thanksgiving wishes with a cute hero image and a complementing subject line. One of the best parts of this Thanksgiving email is the way Blurb has used an animated GIF to highlight the preview of their sale. Informing your subscribers and customers about the forthcoming offers and emails will help them to plan accordingly and look forward to your emails. Blurb Thanksgiving email has clearly mentioned the order deadline and the delivery timelines to make it easy for their subscribers and customers to plan their shopping.
This is an amazing strategy to keep subscribers engaged with your company emails, especially during times like this holiday
6. The Humane Society:
For encouraging reader engagement, the Humane Society understands the importance of interactive emails.
The Humane Society Thanksgiving email reminds subscribers that they are part of the greater good whenever they donate. In the meantime, the interactive graphic encourages subscribers to click around to see what their donations have helped accomplish so far.
The Humane Society Thanksgiving email is full of heartwarming graphics and minimal colors, although it doesn’t use much whitespace, to keep the aesthetic warm and fuzzy.
7. eWatches:
The most prominent trend for email marketing this holiday season is interactivity. Using sliders, counters, gamification, etc., in your Thanksgiving emails will make your Thanksgiving emails template more appealing and engaging.
eWatches Thanksgiving email template uses countdown timer at the top of the email to entice a sense of urgency. The CTA and offer are distinguished. And also, the subject line clearly says all about the offer within the email, hence, increasing the chances of subscribers clicking on it. Moreover, to make the section stand out, they have mentioned about holiday returns using different colors.
8. J. Crew:
Crew did an excellent job in their Thanksgiving email template of using the allure of food to grab the attention of their subscribers, despite the fact that they sell clothes and not food and groceries.
The deal for a 50% discount doesn’t hurt either. It’s quite hard to turn down such an offer when J. Crew understands that their subscribers have a lot of shopping to do for the holiday season, and all the parties they’ll be a part of, either by hosting or attending.
Crew Thanksgiving email template reminds their subscribers that they can avail special offers either by presenting their email coupon in-store or by shopping online. Instead of pushing your subscribers to choose one or the other, giving them the option to choose which way of shopping they prefer and you will both win.
Conclusion:
Thanksgiving email campaigns are among the most lucrative opportunity to connect with your subscribers and customers on a personal level. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to let them know you care not just about them, but also about the greater good.
Just remember to use high-quality graphics and a serene layout with lots of whitespaces to really resonate with your audience. The key to great email marketing is to understand and know more about your subscribers.
