5 Labor Day email & SMS marketing strategies to capture more customer data

Labor Day may not be your Q3 holiday star—Prime Day might take the cake instead—but it’s still an important bridge between more lucrative back-to-school and Q4 holiday shopping events.

You can probably expect a solid return on your back-to-school campaigns this year—according to a PwC survey of 2,000 parents, 3 out of 4 people expect to spend the same or more on back-to-school items in 2025. And Labor Day comes just on the heels of that large spending event.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll want to sleep on Labor Day, considering it’s your last chance to run summer clearance campaigns.

Labor Day marketing campaigns also hold so much more potential than one-and-done promotions. They’re great opportunities to gather more zero- and first-party customer data and reduce your reliance on third-party data.

Given that 74% of consumers expect personalized experiences from brands in 2025, according to Klaviyo’s 2025 future of consumer marketing report, it’s important to think of minor holidays as more than just revenue-generating events. They’re opportunities to learn more about your customers’ behaviors and preferences, so you can send them more relevant offers throughout the entire year.

Here are 5 Labor Day marketing strategies to help you make the most of the holiday—and turn one-time shoppers into customers you can retain.

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1. Pair Labor Day seasonal clearance with freebie offers

Everyone likes free stuff—but some people really like free stuff.

Labor Day is a great time to clear out your summer inventory to make way for fall products. Naturally, that means an opportunity to craft a freebie offer for a low-cost item you want to clear anyway. But what might look like a one-and-done sale can actually give you important customer data you can use to make more revenue later.

People who buy quickly from a freebie offer are a segment of customers who care deeply about discounts. These customers are different from your high spenders or those who respond to messaging about product quality.

If you run a Labor Day clearance sale, create a segment for the people who buy from it. Then, target them with future clearance offers, flash sales, and steep discounts.

Over time, these customers may spend more if they like your products—but in the meantime, honor the way they spend now and target them with steep discounts when you can offer them.

Labor Day marketing example: Clayton & Crume stimulates customer retention with freebies

In this Labor Day marketing email, leather goods brand Clayton & Crume offers to waive shipping and include 3 free products with every order. This special promotion removes potential buying obstacles (ahem, costly shipping fees) and helps buyers learn more about the quality of their materials.

Image source: Clayton & Crume

2. Move toward shoppable experiences within text messages

SMS, MMS, and now Rich Communication Services (RCS) are great ways to reach a smaller yet highly engaged subset of your audience.

People who have opted in to receive text messages from your brand really want to hear from you—according to recent research from Klaviyo and Recharge, 72% of people are willing to receive a text at least once a week, and 45% are willing to receive a text more than once a week.

SMS has been a must-have channel for your Labor Day flash sales for a long time. Note, however, that as iOS 18 begins supporting RCS, brands will be able to do much more with text messaging than they ever could before. Labor Day may be the perfect testing ground for getting to know how you might use RCS to run larger holiday campaigns.

The main advantage of RCS is that it’s interactive. Think product carousels, one-tap suggested replies, and call-to-action (CTA) buttons rather than links. Here are some of the main differences you can expect between SMS, MMS, and RCS:

Labor Day marketing example: FabuLuxe uses MMS to enhance their text message offer

FabuLuxe, a women’s apparel boutique, starts to move toward a more visual text messaging experience with this Labor Day MMS offer. Here are a few things that are working well in this example that could be amplified further by RCS:

• It features a high-quality, slick product shot. With RCS, this could be a carousel of product images.
• The copy below the image is short, informative, and to the point. With RCS, this copy may be altered slightly so it’s the beginning of a conversation with suggested replies.
• The CTA is clear and easy to find. With RCS, imagine a button instead of a link.

Image source: Klaviyo Showcase

3. Create a long-form Labor Day sale email

When you’re running an omnichannel marketing strategy, all channels work together to meet people’s needs along every step of the customer journey.

SMS is perfect for flash sales. WhatsApp is ideal for conversational marketing and customer support. Push notifications are great for abandoned cart reminders and back-in-stock alerts. And email shines as your foundational, long-form, newsletter-style sales bulletin.

A great Labor Day campaign uses all of these channels to create a cohesive experience for the customer. But email is likely where you’ll want to start gathering customer data that can inform other channels, especially if you plan to move a lot of different products at the end of the summer season.

Email shines when you need to send content-rich campaigns, but that potential isn’t limited to product visuals—it’s in the breadth of product-interest data you can collect from the channel.

Create a long-form Labor Day sale email shoppers can scroll through like a catalog. Gather engagement data, then target SMS subscribers with offers for the products they’ve shown interest in.

Labor Day marketing example: Edloe Finch wows their email audience with aspirational imagery

Furniture brand Edloe Finch earned a high click rate with this Labor Day marketing email. We see a few reasons why:

• The discount, length of the sale, and CTA button are all above the fold.
• The email features no less than 10 high-quality product shots, all showcasing bestselling products in thoughtful, appealing ways. The subscriber doesn’t have to click through to the website to see how a sofa or dining table looks in situ.
• Important nuts-and-bolts information is in the footer, including what a shopper needs to know about shipping, returns, financing, and customer service.

Image source: Klaviyo Showcase

4. Create late-summer urgency—and deliver on convenience

If you sell products that can serve late summer needs, Labor Day is a great time to push a limited-time offer for them. Beachwear, sunscreen, barbecue equipment, patio furniture, and other seasonal products are all perfect candidates for a countdown offer.

Similar to discount shoppers, people who buy from urgency campaigns are last-minute shoppers. Target this segment of your audience with last-minute holiday shopping guides Mother’s Day sales, Valentine’s Day campaigns, and more.

Last-minute Labor Day campaigns also work best when you can offer lightning-fast shipping to swoop in and save the day. Amazon same-day shipping changed consumers’ expectations about shipping times—if you can come close to meeting these demands, include it as a promise in your last-minute Labor Day campaign. The convenience may be enough to generate repeat purchases in Q4 for Black Friday Cyber Monday.

Labor Day marketing example: Best Swimwear promises delivery by Labor Day weekend

Best Swimwear swoops in to help with the last gasps of summer by promising people they will get their swimsuits before Labor Day weekend. They sent this email the Tuesday before Labor Day with the subject line “Free 2 Day Shipping on Orders $50+.”

The preview text—what subscribers see just below the subject line if they’re reading on their phones—is even more direct: “Get your bikini by Labor Day Weekend.” A line like this can inspire a sense of urgency.

The email emphasizes free shipping on top of speed. It also includes more details—like what time and what date the subscriber has to order by to get their package on time.

Image source: Klaviyo Showcase

5. Always be gathering social proof

According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, customer reviews and feedback are hands down the most influential factor when making an initial purchase with a brand. High-quality reviews are in fact so important that some brands offer discount codes in exchange for product reviews with photos.

If you haven’t already, consider asking Labor Day customers to leave a review for your late-summer products. Create incentives for reviews that show products in use outside, for example at the beach or a barbecue. Next year, create a user-generated content (UGC) campaign from these photos, and feature them across social media, RCS, WhatsApp, and email.

Labor Day marketing example: Tail creates a Labor Day email based on customer reviews

Tail, an activewear brand, includes review quotes from actual customers in this Labor Day marketing email. Readers can see the direct impact of the product from people who are actually using it: “The material was a wonderful surprise for the summer heat” or “I got lots of compliments.”

Image source: Klaviyo Showcase

Gather customer data you can act on with Klaviyo B2C CRM

Even if Labor Day doesn’t generate the most Q3 revenue for brands, it’s the perfect opportunity to get to know your customers. Your future revenue is in large part determined by how well you can personalize your campaigns year-round—and that means centralizing everything you know about your customers in a single profile.

Klaviyo B2C CRM—the only CRM built for B2C—makes it easy for brands to collect the zero- and first-party data they need to deliver personalized experiences for their customers. As a data platform with email and SMS automation, customer service, and analytics under one roof, Klaviyo B2C CRM is making it possible for brands to scale personalization for thousands or even millions of customers.