Beefree blog

4 Ways to Send a Happy New Year Email to Clients

Beefree team
Beefree team
Nov 23, 2020
4 Ways to Send a Happy New Year Email to Clients
4 Ways to Send a Happy New Year Email to Clients

As 2022 comes to a close, we're preparing to send our last emails of the year. Among them is a Happy New Year email to clients: sending a Happy New Year message to our customers makes perfect sense: they're the ones that keep us all in business, and they deserve a heartfelt "Thank You!!".To get inspired, we're looking back at some of our favorite New Year's email greetings from the past couple of years. Most of these messages fall into one of these four categories:

  1. Personal notes
  2. Promotions
  3. Short and sweet messages
  4. Year In Review emails

Whether you're sending a Happy New Year email to clients, customers, colleagues or friends, there's plenty of inspiration here to make your message beautiful and bright. Scroll on to get inspired and then head over to our template catalog to browse over 30 free new year email templatesand quickly design the perfect message for your New Year campaign.

#1. New Year emails with a personal tone

It’s the perfect time of year to reflect on months past and express your thanks to everyone who supported, followed along and invested in you. To show gratitude, many Happy New Year emails have a personal touch, whether it's a note from a CEO or photos of staff.

Function of Beauty

Subject line: New year, but we’re still doing us

happy new year email

This Happy New Year email from Function of Beauty does a great job of reinforcing brand awareness and putting a face to the brand.

Pursoma

Subject line: A Well New Year ✨

happy new year email to clients

In this personal letter, Pursoma CEO Shannon Vaughn expresses gratitude to her company’s customers and shares what she’s thankful for. This heartfelt message is succinct but impactful, creating genuine engagement that resonates.

Still House

Subject: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

new year's email

Here's an example of a Happy New Year email that keeps it simple with a thought-provoking quote and a brief Happy New Year message. The pale background color and basic font create a look that’s elegant, yet easy to read (and create).

#2. Promotional New Year emails with a nudge to buy

While some New Year emails take a break from offering deals and promotions, others add an incentive to click.Customers have a ton of momentum to purchase during the New Year and an email is a great way to direct this traction to your website or landing page.These promotional emails have a good balance of messaging that says Happy New Year while also giving readers a reason to purchase.

Indie Lee

Subject line: Don’t *stress* - new year, NEW products

promotional new year's email

Who doesn’t want to start off the New Year with a healthy dose of zen? Here, Indie Lee highlights a few products that can help readers start off the year in the zone.

J. Crew

Subject line: New year, new sweaters

happy new year's email to customers

While the copy in this J. Crew Happy New Year email may not have aged well, this is still a great example of a fun New Year’s promotion. We love the “Wear it with” section, helping customers envision how J. Crew’s sweaters can be paired with other products to create a full outfit.

Eileen Fisher 

Subject line: New year, new blueThis New Year email from Eileen Fisher is a play on the “New Year, new you” concept, showcasing several blue sweaters that are on sale.

new year marketing email

#3. Reflective New Year emails featuring a year in review

There's a big window for sending a year-in-review email. We typically see them land in our inbox anywhere from the last week of December all the way through mid-January. Year-in-review emails generally round up or summarize a brand's highlights, achievements or big moments of the year. Here are a couple of examples.

OptiMonk

Subject line: Thank you for being with us in 2019! Here are our favorite moments…

year in review email

This email from OptiMonk is nicely structured and easy to read with 2019’s high points shared in a bulleted list. The images also add a personal touch.

Linjer

Subject line: Thank you for a wonderful 2018

happy new year email

Linjer recapped its year with a few brief lines of copy primarily focusing on new product launches and products that had been removed.

#4. Short and sweet

Not feeling sentimental, reflective or promotional? That's okay — plenty of brands send short and sweet Happy New Year emails that do the trick. These emails still accomplish the goal of getting your brand name in front of readers over the holidays. Plus, they’re a lot of fun to send!

The North Face

Subject line: Happy New Year, explorers

simple happy new year email

This email from The North Face is absolutely perfect for the company’s audience and brand. It’s fresh, fun and imbued with a sense of adventure for readers to carry into the New Year.

Michael Kors

Subject line: Happy New Year!

happy new year email from brand

Like The North Face’s email, this message from Michael Kors is perfectly on-brand — it’s elegant, sparkly and refined. We love the handwritten touch.

Wrap-up: Happy New Year email templates

Need to quickly send your New Year's email greeting? Check out BEE's many free Happy New Year email templates. There are over 30 of them in our template catalog and some great Happy New Year landing pages too. You can immediately customize the text, replace images, move or remove content blocks — you name it. It's simple and fast, and all templates are created by professional designers. Happy New Year, and happy email designing!

Share this post with your friends! Pin it on Pinterest ?

three emails with a black background and fireworks

Updated December 20, 2022.

Related posts

Using Beefree with Marketo Engage 101

Learn how integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage can help you build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns— faster.
Luca Penati
Apr 4, 2025

What Are Email Security Gateways? A Guide to Secure Communications

Are your newsletters being marked as spam? Discover all you need to know about email security gateways and how to create emails that pass all the checks.
Beefree team
Mar 12, 2025

Getting Started with Beefree: A Guide to Streamlined Email and Landing Page Creation

Whether you're designing a newsletter, promoting an event, or driving a marketing campaign, ensuring that your emails and landing pages are visually appealing, engaging, and efficient to produce is no small task. That’s where Beefree comes in.
Beefree team
Feb 26, 2025

Using Beefree with Marketo Engage 101

Learn how integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage can help you build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns— faster.
Luca Penati
Luca Penati
4 Apr
2025

Marketo Engage is a powerful tool for marketing automation, but when it comes to email design flexibility, many users find its built-in editor limiting. Creating visually compelling, mobile-responsive emails often requires custom coding or workarounds, slowing down workflow and making it harder to execute high-quality campaigns efficiently.

That is where Beefree comes in. By integrating Beefree’s no-code, drag-and-drop email design platform with Marketo Engage’s advanced automation capabilities, teams can build professional, responsive emails without coding headaches and push them directly to Marketo in just a few clicks.

This article explores:

  • The challenges of designing emails directly in Marketo
  • How Beefree solves these pain points
  • A step-by-step guide to integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage
  • Common FAQs and troubleshooting tips

The challenges of designing emails directly in Marketo

Marketo’s built-in email editor is useful for basic templates but presents several limitations for marketers and designers.

  • Limited design flexibility – Customizing layouts, fonts, or interactive elements can be difficult without custom HTML or Marketo’s proprietary syntax.
  • Technical barriers – Advanced customizations often require HTML knowledge or an understanding of Marketo’s email template language, which may not be ideal for non-technical teams.
  • Time-consuming manual processes – Without a centralized style kit, teams may struggle to stay on-brand and often have to manually recreate headers, footers, and other reusable content blocks for each email, adding extra steps and slowing down production.

Due to these challenges, many marketing teams turn to external email builders like Beefree, FeedOtter, or Knak to improve design efficiency and automation.

(source)

Why Beefree is the best email builder for Marketo Engage

While other external email builders like Knak and FeedOtter also integrate with Marketo, Beefree offers distinct advantages.

  • No-code drag-and-drop builder – Enables teams to design professional emails without writing any code.
  • Advanced design features – Provides more customization options beyond what Marketo’s built-in editor allows.
  • Mobile-responsive templates – Ensures emails adjust automatically for both desktop and mobile devices.
  • One-click export to Marketo – Simplifies the process of moving email designs directly into Marketo Engage.
  • Ability to update existing templates – Allows quick updates without requiring manual re-imports of HTML files.
  • Team collaboration – Enables teams to work together in real time, with built-in guardrails and approval controls to ensure error-free emails before exporting.

By integrating Beefree with Marketo, marketing teams eliminate design frustrations and manual email imports, allowing them to focus on high-performing email campaigns.

Learn more about Beefree's integration with Marketo Enagage [https://support.beefree.io/hc/en-us/articles/24837761625618-Export-Emails-to-Marketo]

(source)

How to update existing email templates in Marketo

Instead of manually editing HTML, Beefree allows users to edit emails in Beefree and update existing ones in Marketo Engage with one click.

  1. Open the email design in Beefree.
  2. Make changes and click “Export.”
  3. Select “Update Existing” to overwrite the previous version in Marketo Engage.

This feature ensures that emails and templates remain up to date without requiring complex HTML edits or duplicates.

(source)

Frequently asked questions on using Beefree with Marketo Engage

Can I use Beefree with other ESPs besides Marketo Engage?

Yes! You can connect Beefree to any ESP, MAP, or CRM including Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and others. To learn more about how to integrate Beefree to your sending platform watch the video below: 

For a full list of our native integrations visit [https://beefree.io/integrations].

Are there any limitations when exporting Beefree emails to Marketo?

Yes, there are a few important limitations to be aware of:

  • Charset emojis are not supported in Marketo. Including emojis in your email content may result in an error. To prevent this, Beefree automatically replaces unsupported emojis with a placeholder. For more details, refer to the [Marketo documentation on emoji support].

Preheader text is not a native field in Marketo. However, Beefree includes it by embedding the preheader directly in the email's HTML code during export.

Additional resources and links

Why you should use Beefree with Marketo Engage

By integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage, marketing teams gain a faster, more flexible way to build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns—while leveraging Marketo’s powerful automation and analytics to track performance and optimize results.

  • Design responsive, professional emails with ease.
  • Maintain brand consistency across every message.
  • Collaborate efficiently and gain insights to improve campaign performance.

Ready to elevate your Marketo email marketing? Try Beefree today and streamline your entire email creation process.

Start your 15-day free Business trial today!

(source)

What Are Email Security Gateways? A Guide to Secure Communications

Are your newsletters being marked as spam? Discover all you need to know about email security gateways and how to create emails that pass all the checks.
Beefree team
Beefree team
12 Mar
2025

Email is king when it comes to talking directly to your customers. Sure, we might send texts or share voice notes, but we all still check our emails. It’s how we keep in touch with work and the businesses we connect with. 

As an email marketer, this puts you in prime position to get your business’s brand right into the hands of your customers. The problem, however, is that you must first get past the metaphorical guard dog known as the secure email gateway (SEG). 

SEGs use sophisticated methods to identify and block spam and phishing emails from ever entering a person’s inbox. While your email newsletters should go through, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will. That’s why businesses need to know what a secure email gateway is and how it works. Know this key info, and you’ll be able to improve the chances of your emails reaching their destination. 

What are email security gateways? 

Protecting yourself from cyber threats is the basis of all cybersecurity risk assessment services. One of the biggest gaps in any security armor is phishing emails. If they get through and someone clicks a link they shouldn’t have, it’s almost impossible to stop the damage. 

The victim could be anyone. The link could lead to a ransomware virus that holds your data captive or be the start of a data breach. It could even lead to a traditional scam that has you input your credit card details so a thief can steal them. 

For all these reasons and more, email providers consistently invest in security features to help protect their customers. One such feature is an email security gateway. 

A secure email gateway uses AI and machine learning to screen incoming emails, identify spam, and stop it from entering. If there’s any doubt, the system quarantines the email in your spam box for review. 

Why are secure email gateways important?

While we are getting better at filtering out spam emails, an estimated 45.6% of emails sent in 2023 were still spam. This poses a massive security risk for consumers, businesses, and governments alike. 

According to IBM, businesses are hit the hardest, with the global average cost of each successful phishing attack increasing to $4.88M USD. The attacks don’t just hit businesses, either, with attacks targeting individuals and even charities.

Just as phishing and spam emails have become more sophisticated, so have the tools designed to protect against them. All providers, including big names like Gmail, use SEGs to secure communications and other features, such as Gmail’s unsubscribe feature

What do SEGs flag as spam? 

SEGs continually update their parameters. This means that what they check for is constantly in flux. What SEGs look for today, for example, could include: 

  • Strange or suspicious subject lines
  • Highly urgent capitalization or excessive exclamation points
  • Strange URLs
  • Poor grammar and/or spelling
  • Generic greetings that don’t address the recipient 
  • Suspicious email addresses
  • The volume of emails sent at once
  • Attachment types 
  • Image-heavy content 

SEGs are far more advanced than just ticking boxes, but that doesn’t mean your emails can’t get blocked or sent to spam. After all, you might put together a great email campaign, but if your email is too image-heavy, it might get quarantined or sent to spam. 

The good news is that once you know what the SEGs look for, you can work to design better emails. Beefree can help you get started, with a range of templates for responsive email designs.

How to create newsletters with secure email gateways in mind 

The good news is that you can implement and send out most, if not all, of your newsletter ideas without issue. So long as the emails are well-made and are sent at a reasonable frequency, you’ll be golden. 

Start by first improving your security methods

In general, you should always look at ramping up the security measures in your business. You can use one of the top types of risk assessment matrix to understand your business's threats and how to resolve them. Then, since you already have that information, you can use it to create better newsletters and emails. 

Make sure the personalization feature works

One of the biggest red flags for an SEG is a generic greeting. Adding Dear Sir/Madam at the start isn’t going to fly in today’s world. Even if your email gets through, it’s unlikely the recipient will open it. 

That’s why you need personalization. Linking your email marketing tools to your customer relationship management system means you can offer easy personalization, like addressing your customers by name, or even offering personalized recommendations based on their order history. 

Avoid image-only emails 

Image-only emails are tempting for an email marketer. They’re striking, they look good, and you can fine-tune what they look like in Photoshop or another image editor. 

They can also be a red flag for SEGs.

Thankfully, the solution is simple: enrich your emails. The best part about this approach is that it also improves the accessibility. Improving email accessibility will help ensure that all your customers can engage with your emails on their terms. Those emails will also load faster, look great on all devices, and be more engaging. 

Align your emails with the landing pages 

SEGs look out for suspicious links. A link might be suspicious if there’s a misspelling or if the link doesn’t sound like the content in the email. So, how do you ensure that SEGs don’t see any of your links as suspicious? 

You make them predictable. 

An easy way to do this is to create a landing page from an email. On top of aligning the landing page with the content of the newsletter, you’ll want to: 

  • Make a custom URL for every link that matches the content of the page 
  • Ensure there’s no misspelling
  • Don’t use urgent language around your link

Use 2FA to boost security

Do you need 2FA to get past SEGs? No, but it’s a great way to help protect you and your customers. 

You can protect sensitive data by adding user identity verification. For example, a customer may get an order confirmation email but wants to cancel or change the delivery details. Including a two-factor authentication step ensures only the customer can request changes. 

Building in extra security features puts your customers at ease. It also protects your endpoints and, in turn, your business. So, no, you don’t need 2FA to get past SEGs, but it’s worth looking into for you and your customers’ protection. 

Avoid urgency 

Urgency can be a flag for SEGs. So: 

  • DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS
  • Minimize the use of exclamation points

Think of the copy in your newsletter as a chance to win over your audience, not scare them into clicking the link. Doing this will improve your relationship with your customers since they’ve come to you on their terms. It’s also essential to get emails past the SEG.

Key takeaways 

Secure email gateways are a primary defense against spam and phishing attacks, but they can pose a problem for email marketers. By working to understand the security risks associated with email scams, you can then understand what your email needs to make it into inboxes. 

From there, you’ll want to make your emails more personable, accessible, and secure. Once you’ve found that sweet spot, your newsletters will be more likely to get past the secure email gateway and into your audience’s inboxes. 

Stay informed on all email trends

From the latest creative design strategies that inspire your next campaign to industry best practices and tech advancements, our newsletter is the go-to for all things creation.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
By clicking Subscribe you're agreeing with our Privacy Policy
Beelo here 👋 Got questions?
1