What is one of the greatest occasions to interact with your prospect? Exactly, a holiday!
By sending a happy holiday email to clients, you can upsell a product and nurture or deepen your relationships with them. Yet, pursuing any of these holiday communications requires a specific approach.
Read on to learn more about holiday email marketing and get effective holiday sales email examples to both thank and sell to customers and prospects.
How to send holiday emails to clients?
- Step 1. Define the goal and the type of your holiday campaign
- Step 2. Act upon a segmented audience
- Step 3. Research information that you lack
- Step 4. Develop worthy subject lines, structure, and body text beforehand
- Step 5. Set email automation before sending happy holiday emails
Step1. Define the goal and type of your holiday campaign
The strategy and objectives of the business significantly impact how you will develop the happy holidays message to clients.
Some marketers consider selling on a holiday to be inappropriate and will choose to deepen their connection with clients. Others will disagree, saying that you are missing a chance to improve sales by refusing to push deals with happy holiday emails.
Yet, the experienced marketer is likely to apply both strategies to various groups of prospects, depending on the stages of their customer journey.
If you send happy holidays communication to clients to make sales:
- Act upon the customer journey stage (nurture with a free case study, close a deal, upsell and downsell).
- Provide unique value (a gift, promo, personalized offer). Say why now is the right time (create a good occasion to write and provide your offer).
- Create an urgency (a holiday can last long, but an offer should not). Have a clear CTA (when selling, make your promo or gift visible).
If you send a holiday message to prospects/clients to express gratitude and wishes:
- Say why you care (focus on the values and community you build).
- State what audience brought you (show that you develop together with the clients).
- Underline that you are to help or provide support (ask questions and state the issues that you helped to solve).
- Focus on relationships and future partnerships (thank for the trust, and end with your goals for the future).
Step 2. Act upon the segmented audience
Sending effective holiday communication to clients requires your messages to be precise, intentional, and accurate. That’s why you should segment the audience based on purchases and a customer journey stage before sending holiday emails.
For instance, those clients who bought the products recently are targets for a simple thank you email. Yet, if you know your prospect is about to purchase your product, a happy holidays sales email with a good promo code can make them close a deal.
Step 3. Research information that you lack
The holiday email messages should appeal to the reader, meaning they need to reflect needs and be customized for each group. Accordingly, you need to create a buyer persona but a holiday-specific one, which is only possible with research.
Also, the proper research will allow you to study the current trends and pain points, add personalization, and reflect customer behavior. Based on it, you will be able to create or improve special offers, guides, gift ideas, seasonal case studies, etc.
Note. Make sure you have enough information on your customers to develop personalized emails. Personalizing emails, especially if you recently got new leads from outreach, can boost your response rates. Apply the prospecting tool to get new data and appeal to the recipients.
Step 4. Develop worthy subject lines, structure, and body text beforehand
Holiday email campaigns are destined to fail without thorough planning of subject lines, text body, wording, and structure.
First of all, make sure you state your product’s value in the happy holiday email subject line. What for? To underline how your product would help in the upcoming year or during a holiday.
Next, select the type of email that will suit your holiday campaign goal and targeted groups of prospects. Common email types for holiday communication to clients/prospects:
- Holiday gift/discount/promo. A traditional email will use the holiday as an occasion to close and push deals among those who are in the sales funnel's interest or decision phase.
- Holiday guide. This is an excellent way to differ from other brands and lend prospects a hand during the busy holiday.
- Holiday sale. An ideal option for Black Friday or Christmas emails to clients at the beginning of the festive season.
- Holiday upsell/downsell. Apply this type of holiday email to clients if they are ready to upgrade their operation or seek more budget options.
- Greetings/a thank you letter. A simple way to connect to the customers, remain visible, and add to brand recognition.
Happy Holiday Email Structure
Once you select a type of happy holiday message to use, start elaborating your text body structure.
Happy holiday messages to clients usually have the following structure:
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[Catchy phrase with personalization]+[Words of gratitude]+[Restating what you did together]+[Your Wishes]+[Happy holidays end of email]
As a result, many thank you emails look similar, where the only differences are catchy phrases, greetings, and names of the holidays.
In contrast, the sales email structure can vary. For instance, you can start the email with a 'thank you' or get straight to the point.
In particular, you can write your text body based on this structure:
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[Catchy phrase related to busy week]+[thanking/greeting]+[transition phrase]+[offering your promo/solution/gift/guide/demo]+[CTA]+[greeting/thanking]+[Happy holidays end of email].
When you send a happy holidays email to clients for the sake of sales, we recommend to thank and greet first and then provide a unique proposition in a personalized email.
Step 5. Set email automation before forwarding holiday communication to clients
Beware: once you have various groups to send holiday emails to, you will need the automation to send messages in bulk. There, the choice of the right email tools is vital.
What should you think about?
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Deliverability. Think of services to check the domain reputation and validity of emails.
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Personalization. Make sure you have advanced options for customizing emails.
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Scheduling. Ensure you have basic scheduling functions to get emails in time.
When to send holiday emails to prospects?
Send happy holiday emails 3-5 weeks before a holiday, if it is Christmas or New Year. At the same time, sending the message a week before a major holiday can work as well if you want to simply greet a person.
Why is there such a gap? Everything depends on the holiday and type of email, of course. That’s why picking the right time for sending holiday messages can be tricky.
Statista says that 35% of people start their holiday shopping in October, while 45% do it in September.
Does it mean you have to send a happy holidays email to prospects exactly in that period?
No! Instead, you should start preparing your audience for it via social media messages and newsletters. So that people get ready for the promos and wait for emails from you.
Here is what growth marketers and entrepreneurs say on time for sending emails:
Brian Ferritto, Managing Partner/Director of Digital Strategy at 42connect, the marketing agency, underlines that the best time to send the happy holiday sales email is before the season rush.
«I usually send holiday emails 3-4 weeks in advance to customers. This gives them some time to be able to read the email, and it isn’t too soon to be receiving these kinds of messages.»
What about happy holidays and thank you emails? Michael Nemeroff, CEO and founder of Rush Order Trees, says they send emails with best wishes closer to the holiday:
«We send our holiday message in the third week of December. This way, it feels like a proper holiday message.»
Besides, some brands do send promos and greetings after the holiday. Such a method can also work, even though after-holiday emails usually follow up on pre-holiday sales or offers.
If you see an opportunity, it may be worth changing the holiday email's first sentences to shift a focus and still take the occasion to greet, nurture or offer a deal.
As a result, the best timing for sending happy holidays messages to clients varies. Happy holidays and thank you email communication is okay to be sent right before Christmas. The sales one should stand out, meaning you should send them at least three weeks before the start of the holidays.
Happy holiday email templates to send
You already know that a good happy holidays email follows the business’s goals.
With this in mind, we have collected several email templates you can use either to push deals or simply thank and wish your customers good holidays.
Note. Most of them you can apply interchangeably for different holiday dates, while certain are ideal for B2B audiences. Yet, it does not mean you shouldn't use them for inspiration.
Happy holidays sales email templates
Holiday sales email template.#1. The Black Friday sales
Holiday email to client sample #2. Pushing Thanksgiving deal
Happy holidays email example#3. New Year sales email
Happy holidays email example#4. Using Labor Day to engage with B2B prospects
Customer holiday letter template#5. Subscription renewal
Business Christmas email templates
Holiday sales email template#6. Special Christmas deal with promo
Christmas email template to clients#7. A B2B gift guide template you can elaborate
Christmas email template to clients#8. Using the last days before Christmas to organize a talk
Thank you and happy holidays email templates
Happy holidays email template #9. Happy New Year/ Thanksgiving/ Merry Christmas email to clients
Happy holidays email template#10: Christmas leave email template
Thank you and happy holidays email template #11: Expressing gratitude before a holiday
Summary
- Before sending the happy holiday email to the client or prospect, you should first define whether you will solely thank the prospect or push deals, as the different email types will apply in each case.
- To make your holiday communication accurate and precise, you need to segment your audience, research, and pick the appropriate email types (holiday promo, guide, or greeting email).
- The happy holiday sales email and the ‘thank you’ one differ; thus, stick to the structure within your holiday email and focus on your goal.
- Remember that picking the right automation can make a difference.
- Send holiday emails 3-4 weeks before the holiday season starts in case you want to push offers; if you're going to solely greet a person with a thank you and happy holidays email, send it within a week before the date. And yes, forwarding emails with promos or greetings after a holiday is also an option, even though it is time for following-ups
- Most email templates can be used interchangeably; however, consider the email type and niche of your business before picking one.
