Crafting a Happy Holidays Email That Welcomes All Customers

It’s true that in an American market, most of the population celebrates Christmas for religious or cultural reasons. But if you lean too heavily into holiday-themed marketing, you’ll soon realize that you aren’t reaching everyone on your email list. What about your subscribers who don’t celebrate faith-based holidays? This can be a sensitive point for your email recipients, especially if your target audience includes markets outside the U.S.

When you fail to be inclusive in your happy holidays email campaigns, you risk leaving out — or worse, offending — an entire section of your audience. Doing this can quickly push potential customers to unsubscribe, mark your emails as spam, or take their business elsewhere.

On the other hand, being inclusive in your email marketing enables you to reach people from all backgrounds, locations, and ideologies. With the holiday season fast approaching, this is the perfect opportunity to revisit your happy holidays email approach and ensure it successfully reaches as many shoppers as possible.

Think Seasonally Instead of Using Holiday-Specific Designs

When designing an email in the holiday season, it can be easy to lean toward Christmas’s traditional red and green color palette. But you must remember that December 25th isn’t a special day for everyone. Instead of falling back on red and green, consider incorporating colors that evoke a more generic seasonal feeling. For example, if your audience is mostly in the northern hemisphere, try using winter-related colors like white, blue, and gray. Or, if you’re reaching out to subscribers in southern areas like Australia or South Africa, you can introduce a little summer fun to your happy holidays email with a bright, tropical-inspired color scheme.

Of course, there are still ways to tap into red and green without being overly Christmasy. For example, Starbucks’ famous (but nondenominational) red cup campaign has proven an ingenious way to engage customers without calling out specific holidays.

Use Neutral Messaging

For years now, there has been a shift from specific well-wishes like “Merry Christmas” to more all-encompassing options like “Happy Holidays.” This rising trend also has its place in your email campaigns, inviting email marketers to use inclusive messaging to market to their subscribers. As such, one way to make your happy holidays email campaigns more welcoming is to try focusing on neutral messaging across the board.

Luckily, there are plenty of common threads to choose from. Most end-of-year holidays share values of family, friends, love, communal meals, and giving back. You are more likely to reach everyone in your target audience by focusing on this messaging than on a standard Christmas or Hanukkah campaign that some can’t relate to.

You can also extend this idea to your holiday gift guide emails. Instead of highlighting holiday-specific gifts, you can include ones that would be perfect for any gift-giving. This approach broadens the collection of gifts you offer and opens your brand to a new audience of customers who would otherwise get left out from shopping with you.

Promotional or discount emails are also a great way to introduce the holiday aspect without sacrificing inclusion. Instead of focusing on a specific holiday, you can highlight the season or a general spirit of generosity. Instead of sharing holiday-specific promo codes, get cute with a coupon like WINTERSAVINGS or SEASONOFGIVING.

Segment Your Lists

If you have the time and resources, an excellent way to craft an inclusive happy holidays email is to segment your list. For example, you can use the data gathered from past campaigns to determine where your subscribers are typically located and which holiday messaging is most likely to resonate with them.

Segmentation can also provide you with some fun and creative opportunities for your campaign. Depending on your demographic, you can use a calendar to count down to a notable holiday in their respective region. Or you might send out a pre-holiday checklist that aligns with the customs and errands that one group of subscribers might need to complete before their celebrations.

Related: Email List Segmentation Best Practices For High Open Rate

Make Your Emails Accessible

Another way to make your happy holidays email inclusive is to make it accessible. Those who have visual and hearing impairments are yet another audience that often gets overlooked in the email design process. But according to the World Health Organization, there are 360 million people worldwide who experience “disabling hearing loss” and 285 million visually impaired. When you consider the numbers, that can equate to a sizable chunk of your audience missing out on your hard-developed content.

A simple way to be more accessibility-friendly is to include subtitles in your embedded videos so that the hearing-impaired can still follow along and understand your message. Other potential tactics include using colorblind-friendly palettes in your designs or adding alt text to the images in your emails so that they can be described by screen readers to the visually impaired.

Related: Why You Should Incorporate Email Accessibility

Create Your Own Holiday

If you find your team is struggling to create a happy holidays email that appeals to all subscribers, you can go off the beaten path and create your own. The concept of creating brand-specific holidays or reasons for celebration isn’t a new idea. Still, it can boost company awareness and showcase your dedication to providing a great customer experience.

It can also inspire a considerable bump in sales. Just a few successful examples of holidays and annual sales invented by specific companies or industries include National Pancake Day, Record Store Day, Free Comic Book Day, and of course, Amazon Prime Day.

As you create a new holiday that celebrates your brand or industry, be sure to consider what you want it to entail. You can host flash deals, offer discounts, limited edition products, and more. Be sure to consider your audience’s values and what kind of messaging or deal tends to inspire the most engagement. Paying attention to these details can help you kickstart a brilliant brand tradition that subscribers will look forward to for years to come.

MailBakery

When you create a happy holidays email campaign, make your message one of inclusion and community. With these tips, you don’t have to sacrifice your brand’s reach or potentially alienate specific demographics within your email list this holiday season.

And the best part is that building a successful holiday marketing email doesn’t have to be complicated. To create a polished and impressive email marketing campaign, simply enlist the help of MailBakery. Our expertise in creating gorgeous brand-specific email templates is unparalleled. With our team of expert designers, your brand can shine with sleek bespoke email campaigns for the holidays and beyond.

Are you ready to create something incredible? If so, contact our team today, and let’s get in the kitchen!