'Tis the season for inboxes stuffed with cheer! With the last few weeks of the year before us, we love watching the Christmas and holiday emails roll in – especially those with fantastic design. Today we've rounded up some of our favorite Christmas email ideas and other holiday stunners, with tips for recreating these clever campaigns. It's not too late to build (or improve) your own!
#1. Quip
Subject:Better brushing > Holiday rushing. Save 20%, cross your list off early.
Electric toothbrushes may not top your gift list, but this email from Quip makes it tempting, doesn't it? Having a beautifully designed (and discounted!) product doesn't hurt. And neither does this elegant email, with its large, easy-to-read header, animated image, plain text copy, and custom bulletproof button. The shades-of-green color scheme and decked-out logo are sweet touches, too. And here's the GIF:
#2. Everyday Needs
Subject: Gifts For The Chef
Ah, we're suckers for things arranged neatly. It's soothing for the mind, isn't it? This email is beautiful (and reminds us a lot of another photo collage we recreated in a tutorial). The monochromatic color scheme achieved with the all-green image backgrounds—plus the total absence of descriptive text—gives the design a sleek, chic vibe. We'd make that CTA button pop a little more if it were us (with the perfect contrasting color), but otherwise, this email is a stunner.
#3. Suiteness
Subject: Two-bedroom suites for the holidays
Suiteness does a great job of engaging customers with frequent one-question, in-email surveys like this one—and we think it's great. Posing a question to readers is a fun way to get them thinking, and hopefully clicking. Messages like this are not difficult to design, either. Check out our tutorial on how to build a simple survey email with ease.
#4. Dollar Shave Club
Subject: This gift is a crowd-pleaser.
Nothing like a little intrigue in the subject line, right? We like that move by Dollar Shave Club. And inside, this email has a lot of fun stuff going on, too. There's user-generated content, well-formatted text in a modular layout, and CTA buttons that pop. Plus, check out this festive GIF—
#5. Hipmunk
Subject: Traveling This Holiday Season?
Hipmunk has a way of designing short, right-to-the-point emails that are endearing and effective. (Probably in large thanks to its adorable chipmunk mascot). This email is a perfect example of an inverted pyramid layout—image, text, button—one that's easy to design and a great standard to use for a simple email with a single message. We like emails like this! They're clear. After all, emails are not websites.
#6. Shillington
Subject:???? 22 Holiday Gift Ideas, 39 Shillington AGDA Awards Finalists, Industry Guest Lecture and More
We trimmed this longer email from Shillington to give you a taste of its design and flow. It's a great example of how you might format a message that contains a lot of content. Its primary module follows, again, that standard inverted pyramid layout, directing readers to a CTA button that pops. We also appreciate that all the text is left-aligned, which makes it easy to read, and that the header text is so large. It looks sharp. The subsequent secondary content follows a simple two-column grid pattern. Buttons are skipped here, as they'd add to the length of the email, take up space, and look repetitive. Instead you can tap on the images or linked text to read more.
#7. Kosas
Subject: Give Greater This Holiday
The white space in this email gives it a sleek look and makes the black text and buttons pop that much more. Contrast it to Shillington's email, above, which uses a gray background to create a boxed effect. Each email is well designed, and comparing them side by side gives you an idea of how background colors change the vibe of a message.
#8. Malin + Goetz
Subject: Bring the party.
More things arranged neatly, beautiful photography, and CTA buttons that pop. We like how Malin+Goetz formats plain text in a specific way so it feels very on-brand (bold, blue, lower-case). It's a great design move to make when you want to include live text that doesn't look the same as everyone else's. Brava.
#9. Koio
Subject: WIN THE HOLIDAYS
It's an all-image email, but the GIF is so eye-catching, we had to include it in our list! If you have a big GIF in email, do some testing to make sure it's not getting filtered out of inboxes. You might also break the animation into smaller GIFs that line up. And always use ALT text and background colors, so readers who aren't seeing images still get the message!
#10. Harry's
Subject: Don't miss your chance
We love the HTML background colors used in this mystery sale email from Harry's. It's a beautiful color blocked email (easy to design, too!) The copy gets your attention, and it's live text. Here's the GIF at the top—
#11. Alma
Subject: Happy Hanukkah, pals!
This text-heavy email uses a narrow body width to make it easy to read, along with simple content dividers. The CTA button is fun, too, and here's the awesome GIF at the top of the message—
#12. The New York Times
Subject: Givea gift that brings you closer. Starting at $25.
We don't often see an all pale-pink email from the Times, and that's part of what makes this email eye-catching. Switching up your HTML background color is a great way to signal to readers, This promotion is special and different. It goes beautifully with the blue header text, too. And, of course, there's motion in this email, too. Here's the sweet GIF:
We hope you're feeling inspired! This year's holiday emails have been a beauty to behold, and new ones are coming in each day. Use these tips and inspiring messages to update or create your own Christmas email design. Remember you can try BEE Pro for free, and it's immediately a breeze to use. Good luck, and have fun!
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