Spring is a time to reset, refresh, and start anew. The colors are brightening and the days are lengthening. There are good vibes in the air! And for many, the official start of spring is Easter. Easter emails have already been popping up in our inboxes, and marketers are seizing the opportunity to bring good cheer, from deals and discounts to playful designs and clever messaging. End the hunt for eggcellent Easter emails—here's a selection of inspiring messages to get you excited about creating your own campaign! (And once you're ready, check out BEE's HTML email templates for Easter here and here!)
Set out to inspire
Of all the Easter emails we've gotten this year, Terrain takes the cake. The home and garden shop is bringing springtime joy to readersthrough abeautiful campaign. And becausespring is when shoppers are on the lookout for flowers, plants, and garden decor, there's no doubt that Easter is a big holiday for the shop. As a result, we first started seeing Terrain Easter emails in February, by the plenty. Here's a look at their short, directsubject lines:
Inside, theemails themselves are enchanting, and the design is top-notch. Theapproach is true-to-form: like its sister company Anthropologie, Terrain has a visual identity that'selaborate, beautiful, and luxurious. Here are four of their Easter-focused messages:
The single-column modular approach draws readers' attention to a series ofbright, beautiful photos. Their first Easter email of the season (the one all the way to the left) begins with this fun-to-watch animated GIF:
Another follows up with an animated GIF linked to a video on their site:
It's obvious Terrain has invested in preparing for this holiday. But they aren't simplepushing flashy deals and discounts on readers, they'reusing great design to inspire. The well-crafted campaign, with its bright photos, playful GIFs, and Easter-focused video, delights subscribers. That's the power of thoughtful marketing.If we had to make some changes, however, we would advise breaking up the image-heavy emails with well-styled, email-friendly plain text that will always show up in inboxes (even if image-viewing is turned off) and can decrease an email's potential spam score. Here's a look at one of Terrain's emails when we don't have image-viewing enabled:
It's nearly non-existent! Some plain text, ALT text, and HTML background colors would go a long way in safeguarding this email's design for all environments.
Present a solution
Effective marketing is solutions-driven. Yankee Candle knows this: their Easter emails offer a solution for the stresses of hosting guests overEaster. It can be overwhelmingto have a home full of houseguests for brunch or dinner, and Yankee is positioning themselves to help you prepare.With—you guessed it—candles! Here's a peek at three of their Easter emails:
Like Terrain, Yankee isn't leading with flashy deals and discounts (though coupons are available in the email, too)—they're positioning their product as a helpful asset this holiday as readers prepare their homes for guests. Each email leads off with this concept, and Yankee sends multipleemails along thistheme to drive home the message.Yankee clearly has Easter-themed products ("Happy Easter" candles), but other ecommerce brands can take the same approach with theiritems by showing readers how they can be helpful this holiday (think: home decor, recipes, cleaning products, a new outfit).While we love the strategy here, we would make some design updates to Yankee's emails. The cluttered header detracts from the main message, and the emails would benefit from bulletproof CTA buttons and a better image-to-text ratio.
Tease content over time
While some brands choose to create a largeEaster email campaign, others take a more subtle approach by including Easter content in emailswithout necessarily building a campaign around it. The attention you give to the holiday will dependon your brand and audience. But even if Easter isn't at the forefront of your marketing strategy, you can still market to Easter-interested readers by includingEaster content in your newsletters this month.Martha Stewart Living and Etsy have done a good job creating and curating Easter-related content for readers, and sharing that content over time in their regularly sent newsletters.Two recent Martha Steward Living emails included Easter-oriented content, which we highlighted in orange:
As the holiday approaches, the brand may choose to go all-out with an Easter-themed email, but for now, they're sprinkling content into their regularly scheduled calendar.Similarly, Etsy is teasing Easter content in their usual "Finds" emails featuring items on the site (again, we marked up the content in orange here):
Creating content connected to Easter and showing teasers of it in regularly sent emails is a nice balance: it doesn't feel over-the-top to subscribers who don't celebrate the holiday, but it's there for those who do. See if it converts, and if the holiday might warrant more of your marketing energy in the future. It's a great way to find out!
Put your eggs in one basket
Instead of creating a whole series of Easter-themed emails or sending bits of Easter content in newsletters over time, we've seen some brands sendouta single Easter-themed email. Sometimes one is all you need! That way, you're calling attention to all the great Easter-related content you've created and curated in one place.Here's how Brit + Co, the DIY ecommerce site, did it:
To use their brand font throughout, the email is a single image. We recommend breaking it up with plain text and makingit mobile-optimized, maybe with a responsive photo collage.The Kitchn created a dedicated Easter email that uses modules of plain text, photos, and bulletproof CTA buttons to deliver great content:
Skip Easter, but stick with spring
If the holiday doesn't resonate with your brand or your audience, skip it and go for a springtime email instead. It's a season all of us can get behind. Or at least that's what our inbox seems to indicate. Here's just a small sample of the springtime emails we've received:
Trybright colors, clever copy, and a fresh look. And have fun! That's what the season's all about.Don't forget that the BEE editor is totally free, online, and requires no registration. Check it out!
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