Photo by Jan Tik
It’s a popular time of the year for themed holidays so it’s a good idea to prepare early for them. Here’s some top tips to get yourself seasonally ready, whatever time of year it is.
1. Plan Your Holiday Email Schedule
Perhaps you’re super organised and you’ve already planned all of your emails for the year. But if you haven’t, ideally you should think about upcoming events a couple of months in advance (Christmas holidays 3 months in advance). This way, you can plan the content and frequency of your email newsletters in the lead up to a big event.
Why do you need to do this? Well, certain things need to be done in a certain order, or take place at definite time during the holiday season. Make sure that you target people at the right time to ensure you get the best open and click rates.
Top Tip:
Create a document and divide it into three sections: Content, Themes and Dates.
Content will be all the information you are planning to share on your website/blog leading up to the event.
Themes will help you to clarify what topics you’re writing about and give your email newsletters a little more consistency in the content.
Dates will then help you plan when you’re going to send out the newsletters.
Gradually work through and assign content to themes and themes to dates.
2. Theme Your Emails with Color
Used wisely, adding a little careful seasonal coloring can really help to get into the mood of holiday email sending. For example, what about a little orange, red and brown for autumn. Or for Spring holidays, pastel yellows and bright greens to remind you of nature “coming to life” again after a winter.
Whittards have used autumn text colours in their email
In you’re looking for inspiration, one of my favourite sites is design seeds where you can browse various color palettes. There’s even an option to search by some specific themes. I think this is a great place for alternative ideas. For instance, you don’t always have to have the very traditional reds and greens for Christmas.
Don’t forget to apply a little color to your fonts if you want – spice up your headers with an injection of seasonal color. Make sure that the words are still easy to read and don’t overdo the colour. Less is more.
Anthropologie using autumn colors for their sale email
3. Find Some Holiday Specific Images
Why not add a little holiday imagery to your email newsletters too? You could update your header and make it a little more holiday friendly, or add a few little accent images to get into the holiday feeling. But where to get them from?
Bon Appetit changes their header for wintery food ideas
Buying royalty free images can be a little expensive and not always worth the investment, especially if you only intend to use them once. You can’t use images you’ve found online either, unless you have permission to use them.
If you’re looking for a good selection of stock images, I recommend the site Free Images which you can use for free. All you have to do is sign up for a free account and be logged in to download them. We also love Flickr’s search – you can filter by the type of Creative Commons license they have. Be sure to check the license matches your needs before using the image.
Howies email inspires cold with bleak photography
4. Save Ideas from This Year, for next Year
I really recommend signing up to other companies’ newsletters to get a little inspiration. You can always take an idea and make it your own or adapt it to suit your own style.
Sometimes you might see ideas in other newsletters that you can use, but it might be too late to use them. So why not create a new folder in your email client to store some ideas for next year? Then when the next holiday comes around, you’ll have lots of ideas to draw on.