Winter’s the season for warmed-up sales!

The fourth and final quarter of the year is the busiest and most lucrative time for online retailers or e-tailers. With all the gift exchanges and celebrations, NRF saw an overall 14.6% increase in online and other non-store sales, closing at almost $168 billion during the winter holidays of 2019.

It takes a lot of marketing efforts to yield great revenue, and a marketer who is aware of all the craziness that goes around during the winter will always plan early. Starting from Halloween till Valentine’s day, i.e. end of October till mid-February, online shoppers engage in buying gifts, decoration items, and other festive stuff. People who buy through email offers are likely to spend 138% more than people who don’t receive such emails, and that’s huge!

It is wise to be the early bird in order to get the worms with some captivating winter emails! Today, we are going to talk about how you can design winter newsletters that are snappy and revenue-generating (with examples). Let’s get started…

Make the dates count

First things first, when you, as a brand, want to go out offering your best deals – you need to keep your winter holiday calendar ready. List out the days of the months for which you are planning a campaign well in advance and stick to it. Here’s how you can do it,

October

• Halloween

November

• Thanksgiving
• Black Friday
• Small Business Saturday
• Cyber Monday

December

• Hanukkah
• Winter Solstice
• Christmas
• New Year’s Eve

January

• New Year
• Get To Know Your Customer Day

February

• Groundhog Day
• Super Bowl
• Valentine’s Day

With the exclusion of some of the special days (comparatively less significant), the above-mentioned month-wise bifurcation is a replica of how your winter email marketing calendar should look like. Now let’s shift to the winter newsletter design elements.

It is all about how you theme it

The second most important aspect of designing winter newsletters is the theme. There is no one-design-fits-all policy when it comes to email marketing and one should always keep the creativity quotient high, especially while producing HTML email templates for winter newsletters. You are competing against at least 100 emails per consumer that are targeting the same holiday or special day as you are. If you do not put appealing details, you can get ignored. Some of the common holiday email marketing best practices while designing your winter newsletter includes,

1. Pay maximum attention while writing the Subject Line – the first thing that grabs the attention is an email’s subject line. Following a theme isn’t only associated with the graphic elements. It also includes writing the body copy, subject, and entire email template look and feel. The use of relevant emojis is also on the rise for writing the subject line.
2. Inculcate the latest email design trends – Playing around a theme is not only about choosing the right color palette. It is about how well you design the custom email template with trending elements. The animation, typography, placement of CTAs, and of course the entire template hues should be in sync and in alignment with the theme.
3. Tests – Do not limit your designs to only one newsletter template. Utilize the A/B testing facility to decide the kind of theme that works best for you and take cues from the past email campaigns that had worked.

With that, let’s now directly jump on to some beautiful winter newsletters sent by brands. We have collected email templates comprising all the special days mentioned above (month-wise). Let’s check them out and learn about the out-of-the-box concepts they have adopted. 

Winter Newsletter Examples (month-wise)

Considering the four months and their holidays, winter newsletters focus on the festive vibes. The tone of the emails should be happy and merry. As these emails are sent to trigger purchases, being salesy is allowed. The following are examples of how brands are doing it…

October

Halloween is a significant winter holiday, celebrated by people around the world. With ‘spooktacular’ subject lines and pumpkin-themed templates, you can go all out with dark hues and bright type-faces.

Takeaway

This stellar email template by Email Uplers (erstwhile EmailMonks) is a great example and even greater inspiration for how you should design your winter newsletter around Halloween. The elements you should look for are:

• Hues and typography 
• The use of gamification
• Interactive and engaging email design
• Sleek interface

November

Of all the months in the winter season, November is the most profitable of them all.  Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday receive the highest engagement out of all the emails sent during this time. 

Takeaway

J.Crew’s Thanksgiving email is all bright and merry. The elements you should look for are:

• Consistent CTA placements
• Incentivizing with an offer
• Use of animation

Takeaway

This sleek email design by Casper has:

• Minimalistic design
• Animation that generates curiosity
• Wordplay
• Large font for a clear message

Takeaway

TacoBell promotions for Cyber Monday are different than the usual deals, discounts, and offer emails. Unique things we liked about this email are:

• Passive promotion
• Catchy email design
• Quick link display & CTAs

December

After all the hustle-bustle of BFCM weekend, the next big thing is Christmas gifts and winter days. Check out the kind of email campaigns you can pull around this month.

Takeaway

This winter newsletter by 1973 Ltd is everything about the most celebrated holiday of the year. Apart from the simple yet elegant use of GIF template, you can learn about:

• The use of minimal color palette 
• On-point with the Christmas theme
• Centre alignment with inverted-closing triangle design
• Brand association with the holiday

January

Slowly, the shopping-spree comes to an end. After a whopping response for the holiday campaigns, January may seem like a stagnant phase. But that shouldn’t stop you from sending your subscribers something lucrative.

Takeaway

This email by UncommonGoods portrays the winter vibes in full swing. What we liked about the email is:

• Winter themed template design
• GIF with a single CTA
• Minimal, to-the-point text 

February

The last phase of winter newsletters ends with events like Super Bowl and 

Valentine’s Day. Apparently, people shop during this phase too! People celebrating the VDay were expected to spend an average of $196.31, up 21% from 2019.

Takeaway

Here is yet another stunner by Email Uplers (erstwhile Email Monks). The Valentine’s day email template by them is charming, interactive, and creative. Elements you can get inspired by are:

• The timer and in-mail engagement properties
• A creative way of grabbing the attention
• Promotes referring 
• A clean and concise festive message

Wrap Up

With that, we would like to end our winter newsletter preaching session. The season brings in opportunities to sell and strengthen the connections. The right HTML email design approach will help you drive sales during this rewarding time. So, brace yourself and pass it on to your email developer for some stunning winter newsletter designs.