6 Christmas email marketing ideas with examples to boost your holiday campaigns

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The holiday season brings more than just a festive atmosphere. It’s a golden opportunity for ecommerce brands to connect with shoppers and customers in meaningful ways.

But competition is fierce this time of year—which means you have to stand out if you want to win.

Your holiday email marketing is a good place to start.

To help you generate buzz about your products, enhance customer engagement, and drive end-of-year sales, here are a few of our favourite Christmas email marketing ideas.

1. Start your Christmas email marketing efforts with BFCM

Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) is when your Christmas email marketing should begin.

When you plan your Christmas emails around major shopping events like BFCM, you cover a large share of the holiday shopping market and help your brand stay top of mind throughout the season.

During the holidays, people love early-bird sales, product drops, and special offers like giveaways because it means they can get their shopping done earlier and more affordably. It’s a holiday marketing strategy that:

• Generates buzz and builds suspense early on
• Avoids shipping delays during peak holiday shopping season
• Builds customer loyalty by offering special deals only to your subscribers

Holiday marketing example: POPFLEX gathers early holiday data through wishlists

Activewear brand POPFLEX wanted to take their BFCM sale to new heights by creating an intimate VIP experience for every customer. To do that, they had to start early.

First, POPFLEX ran a shopping spree giveaway in October, requiring entrants to create holiday wishlists on their site. Nearly 100,000 customers entered. Then, throughout the rest of Q4, the brand used the information they gathered from those wishlists to target their holiday messaging to each subscriber’s unique interests and position within the customer lifecycle.

All of the above contributed to a record-setting holiday season for POPFLEX. “The first day of our Black Friday sale was our best day in the history of the company,” says Jen-Ai Notman, vice president of marketing at POPFLEX. “And the first hour that we opened was the best hour we ever had.”

Christmas email marketing tip: Offer a signed-in account experience through a self-service customer hub where customers can discover products related to their interests, track orders, and, most importantly during the holiday season, save wishlist items for later.

2. Use segmentation to personalise your Christmas emails

Segmenting your audience can help you create a more meaningful connection with your subscribers by sending them messaging they’re more likely to find relevant.

If you’re not sure where to start, your Christmas email marketing segmentation might mirror your BFCM email marketing segmentation. Consider sending different types of Christmas email marketing to the following segments:

• Engaged segment: If you’re emailing a few times per week, your engaged segment includes people who have opened or clicked on an email within the last 30–60 days. If you’re only emailing a few times a month, you may want to expand this timeframe to 90–120 days.
• VIP segment: You may define your VIPs based on dollar value, number of purchases, or subscription length, depending on your business model. Every brand defines their VIP list differently, but these are basically your most loyal customers.
• Previous Q4 purchasers segment: These are people who converted on holiday emails or texts in previous years. Use AI to send this segment personalised product recommendations based on what they bought last year and browsed this year.

Christmas email marketing tip: If you want to get even more sophisticated with your segments, you can use a text prompt to describe subscriber attributes and let AI generate the segments for you. This is especially helpful for brands that have been collecting customer data for some time and have enough variety to get even more granular with their segments.

For example, you may discover through prompting that you have a decent amount of VIP customers who spend above a certain amount and browse a specific product category. It may be worth developing a custom holiday offer for that segment.

Christmas email marketing example: Happy Human boosts referrals among eco-conscious customers

Sustainable wellness brand Happy Human may or may not have sent this Christmas referral contest announcement to VIP customers—but we would understand why if they had.

Eco-conscious readers of the Happy Human blog who are also VIP customers are most likely to refer the brand to their friends. And with a substantial prize of free refills for all of next year, it’s a great way to end Q4 with a lot of potential new customers.

Source: Really Good Emails

3. Put together a Christmas gift guide

Attract gift-givers this Christmas season by making their lives a little easier during a stressful time of year. One way to do this: put together a Christmas-themed gift guide to help your customers choose the right present for their family members and friends.

Gift guides are a smart Christmas marketing idea for a few reasons. They can:

• Give your subscribers new shopping ideas.
• Advertise specific products and control your inventory.
• Enhance conversions from people who might not otherwise realise they can purchase some of your products as gifts.
• Guide customers to the kind of products they might want to save and buy later.

Christmas email marketing tip: To put together your Christmas gift guide, create a list of your bestselling items or promote overstock products to clear out inventory. You can also divide products by price range, occasion, or customer persona.

Christmas email marketing example: Ugmonk curates niche gift guides to grab attention

Lifestyle brand Ugmonk understands the value of curation. With gift guides such as “everything ampersand” and “mountains” taking up the same real estate as guides for “office essentials” and “kids,” there’s something for everyone in this holiday email.

This Christmas email is also a potential goldmine for customer lifestyle data. Here, engagement data can serve as a proxy for psychographic information. For example, people who click on “kids” may be parents or at least someone with little ones in their lives. People who are interested in the “everything ampersand” guide may engage with future launch emails for more esoteric products.

This is data you can use to segment your customers and send them more relevant offers after Christmas is over (and their wallets have recovered).

Source: Really Good Emails

4. Offer a bundle to last-minute shoppers

According to Klaviyo’s 2025 BFCM forecast, over half of shoppers (51%) don’t make their last holiday purchase until December. While shoppers who are in a rush may not have time to peruse a gift guide, they may jump at the chance to purchase a well-crafted bundle.

To make the most out of this offer, create a segment of last-minute shoppers:

• Customers who buy during flash sales
• Customers who buy from final reminders
• Customers who have asked your AI customer agent about holiday shipping cut-offs

These are customers who are most likely to take action on a last-minute bundle during the holidays.

Christmas email marketing tip: For your VIPs who fit the criteria, consider throwing in a free gift or loyalty points in exchange for a purchase.

Christmas email marketing example: Fleur & Bee offers free priority shipping on a holiday bundle

Skincare brand Fleur & Bee doesn’t just enable last-minute shopping. They reward it. With free priority shipping on a substantial skincare essentials bundle, this holiday email is a gift too enticing to resist.

Bundle offers work best when brands are explicit about their value. Here, Fleur & Bee uses beautiful product photography to show recipients what they can expect from their holiday bundle. The call to action “just put a bow on it,” meanwhile, encourages last-minute shoppers to click through, order, and check off one more task on their long holiday to-do list.

Source: Really Good Emails

5. Grow other channels with an attention-grabbing subject line

Your Christmas email marketing strategy may be table stakes, but an omnichannel approach that includes text messaging, social media, WhatsApp, and mobile push is just as important for driving growth. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 online shopping report, 77% of omnichannel consumers shop across 3–4 channels, with more than 20% using 5 or more.

So, it may be a smart move to shift some of your email audience over to other channels. One way to do that is with an attention-grabbing subject line for an email whose purpose is to drive sign-ups for text messaging, WhatsApp, or mobile push.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

1. Offer an incentive. Give recipients a straightforward reason to open your email and subscribe to another channel.
2. Evoke emotion. The holidays are a time of hope. Tug at the optimism of the holiday spirit to grab attention beyond incentives.
3. Spark urgency. Highlight limited-time Christmas offers or exclusive deals without sounding pushy.
4. Keep it short. Aim for 6–10 words to ensure your subject line is fully visible, even on mobile devices.

Christmas email marketing tip: Out of inspiration? Subject line AI can help you craft the perfect Christmas subject line that reflects your brand and offer in no time.

Christmas email marketing example: Snif builds their Instagram list with a subject line

Fragrance brand Snif understands the value of an Instagram audience. With the subject line “Free Presents Inside,” Snif captures attention for a giveaway that’s actually building their omnichannel strategy.

These days, Instagram isn’t only a marketing channel. It’s also a customer service channel that can drive growth. As more shoppers grow accustomed to chatting with human and AI customer agents on social media, it makes sense to grow the channel as a direct line to customers.

That’s why Snif’s giveaway is valuable beyond followers. If the brand can expand enough of their email audience over to Instagram, they’re well set up to serve customers where they’re already active.

Source: Really Good Emails

6. Launch a Christmas product

Christmas is a holiday people feel. While the memories may not always be positive, many people feel nostalgic for the holidays they had as children—and their adult Christmases can often involve attempts to re-create that feeling.

If it makes sense for your brand, consider creating a product that can capture some of that ineffable holiday nostalgia. Whether you choose to launch new packaging or a whole new product, consider creating something special for the holiday as a test to see if it’s worth repeating next year.

Christmas email marketing tip: In your holiday emails, consider adding a countdown timer to create excitement and urgency. These work particularly well for flash sales, special promotions or product launches, and other holiday messaging.

Christmas email marketing example: Methodical Coffee launches Christmas Vacation

Methodical Coffee packages Christmas by launching a “coffee blended for gathering.” The product is called “Christmas Vacation,” and it evokes that time between Christmas Eve and New Year’s when work expectations go down and you can finally unwind.

The brand pays close attention to email design here, too: their Christmas email remains minimalist, while still evoking the Christmas spirit through an image of a snowy night that calls for a warm family gathering.

Image source: Really Good Emails

More holiday marketing ideas and inspiration

• Boxing Day 2025 marketing ideas
• 27+ January marketing ideas for 2026
• 11 Valentine’s Day marketing ideas for 2026
• 6 April Fools’ Day marketing ideas

Grow revenue this Christmas with Klaviyo B2C CRM

No matter the holiday, your revenue growth depends on your ability to segment audiences with customer data, personalise messages, and reach people where they engage most.

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