Nearly four in five small businesses say a successful holiday season is important to their overall profit for the year. If you’re a part of this majority, you want to turn up the dial on your marketing for a strong performance this season.
Email marketing is a great strategy to do it. The industry average for email marketing ROI remains between $36 and $42 for every $1 spent. And consumers are even more likely to take action on emails they receive over the holidays. The conversion rate rises more than a percentage point in emails sent in November as compared to those sent in October.
The first step to maximizing the return from your seasonal emails is crafting an irresistible subject line. And we’re here to help! We’ll share general best practices and specific holiday email subject line examples and suggestions to inspire your email marketing efforts.
Contents
- General holiday email subject lines
- Thanksgiving email subject lines
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday email subject lines
- Small Business Saturday email subject lines
- Hanukkah email subject lines
- Christmas email subject lines
- New Year’s email subject lines
- Best practices for holiday email subject lines
🎁 Make marketing magic this holiday season! Download The Happy Holiday Marketing Guide: 27 Promotions, Campaigns, & Social Posts to Unwrap
General holiday email subject lines
The holiday season is jam-packed with different celebratory moments, some secular, some religious—all opportunities to send out an email!
Whether you’re reaching out to promote a sale or encourage last-minute purchases before your company hits an internal milestone, these general email subject lines speak to the joyful spirit of the season and can support your message.
- Season’s greetings from our team
- Something to bring joy this holiday season
- Celebrate the season together with [Business name]
- Some holiday cheer for your inbox
- ‘Tis the season…to save
- Cozy up—we’ve got something for you
- Snow much to celebrate
- Warm up with something special
- The weather? Frightful. The deals? Delightful.
- Winter wonders inside
- Bright ideas for chilly days
- Unwrap something special
- Your winter favorites are waiting
- Don’t miss our holiday event
- Sparkle season starts now
- Holiday magic, delivered
- Making the season merry and bright
- What’s new this winter
- A season of possibilities
- These deals are *snow* joke
- Shopping in a winter wonderland
Thanksgiving subject lines
Thanksgiving is often regarded as the official start of the holiday season, and with its theme of gratitude, it’s an excellent time to show appreciation for your email subscribers. Send them a special discount as a gesture of thanks, or simply send a heartfelt message communicating your appreciation for their support.
If you’re looking for an email subject line to capture the spirit of Thanksgiving, try these on for size (then check out these Thanksgiving email templates for more inspiration!):
- Giving thanks for our community
- Our season of gratitude starts with you
- Thankful today, and always
- Thanks for being part of our journey
- Here’s to good food, good company, and gratitude
- Gather, give thanks, and celebrate
- Celebrate Thanksgiving with savings
- Give thanks and save
- Deals to be thankful for
- Thanksgiving deals worth sharing
- Pass the gravy—and the savings
- This Thanksgiving, we’ll handle the cooking
- Gather around the table
- Gobble up these deals
- Turkey time is here
- Let’s talk turkey
- Open before Thanksgiving dinner
- Thanksgiving surprise inside…
- There’s more to be thankful for
✍️ Don’t let overused copy dull your seasonal messaging. Get The Giant Guide to Cliché-Free Holiday Copywriting
Black Friday/Cyber Monday email subject lines
Immediately after Thanksgiving, the holiday sales begin. While Black Friday used to be the biggest single shopping day of the year, the events have expanded on either side of Thanksgiving to include early bird deals beforehand and Cyber Monday afterward.
Combined, shoppers spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the week between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Sending emails before and during this window is a great way to capture some of that demand. Consumers are going to shop somewhere—why not remind them to do it with you? These subject lines can help advertise your brand’s sales:
- Black Friday deals inside
- The wait is over
- Your Black Friday starts here
- Big savings, limited time
- More savings, less waiting
- Black Friday just got better
- Ends soon: Black Friday savings
- Before it’s gone
- Going fast: [specifics of deal/promotion]
- Last chance on these deals
- Sale ends at midnight
- This only happens once a year
- Early access deals start now
- Skip the crowd, shop our online sale
- Click, save, repeat
- More deals from the comfort of your couch
- Stay cozy, shop online
- Stay home, eat leftovers, shop our sale
- Unmissable one-day deals
- Start your holiday season with savings
- Check everyone off your holiday list
- One weekend, endless savings
- Black Friday continues inside…
Small Business Saturday email subject lines
While Small Business Saturday is technically part of the extended sale period following Thanksgiving, this one is special. It’s a time to celebrate supporting independent and local brands, so small businesses can get even more mileage out of leaning into messaging around this sale.
With 78% of consumers saying they’re willing to pay more to support small businesses, creating your Small Business Saturday marketing plan and a supporting email campaign can help them choose yours as the local brand to shop with. Here are some subject lines to try:
- Shop Small Business Saturday with us
- Shop small today
- Celebrate local. Shop small.
- It’s a great day to shop small
- Every purchase makes a difference
- A special discount for our friends who shop small
- A big thank you from our small business
- Local finds you’ll love
- Shop small, save big.
- Your Small Business Saturday offer awaits
- Thoughtful gifts from your local store
- Shop small, find something special
- Unique gifts for your loved ones
- Tiny team, huge appreciation
- Skip the big box
- One big reason to shop small today
Hanukkah email subject lines
Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the Maccabees’ reclamation of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Their supply of oil looked like it would last only a single night and instead burned for eight—hence the holiday’s eight days of celebration. If you want to send marketing emails celebrating Hanukkah, try leaning into the themes of light and joy in your email subject lines. Here are some to spark inspiration:
- Chag Sameach! From our family to yours
- Enjoy eight days of deals
- May your Hanukkah shine bright
- Light up your Hanukkah with these gifts
- Bright ideas for Hanukkah giving
- Eight nights, endless reasons to celebrate
- Make every night count
- May your home be filled with light
- Menorah to celebrate
- Gifts worth every piece of gelt
- Celebrate the little miracles
- More wonder awaits
- First night of deals inside
- Eight nights of surprises
- Have a latke fun with [our offer]
Christmas email subject lines
Christmas is technically a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. But in modern-day America, it’s also an excuse to put up a Christmas tree, bake some cookies, and wait for Santa to come down the chimney with gifts. Which is to say, even those who aren’t particularly religious celebrate this major winter holiday.
Chances are, a large portion of your subscriber list will be exchanging gifts, eating a holiday roast, and sitting around the fireplace on December 25 with their loved ones. To tap into the Christmas spirit with your holiday email subject lines, start here:
- Gifts for a merry and bright Christmas
- Have yourself a merry little Christmas
- Open for Christmas cheer
- Straight from Santa’s workshop
- Are you on the Nice List?
- See what our elves have been working on…
- No coal here! Just deals inside
- The Nice List has its perks
- Leave something special under the tree
- Ho-ho-holiday deal of the day
- The 12 days of deals
- Sleigh your holiday shopping
- Yule want to see this
- Deck the halls (and your cart)
- The North Pole called…
- Sweet Christmas deals inside
- Finish your Christmas list today
- Make spirits (and savings) bright
- This email is more exciting than fruitcake
- Sorry, Rudolph, this steals the show
- Joy to your inbox
- Merry & bright starts here
- It’s the most wonderful email of the year…
New Year’s email subject lines
After a season jam-packed with holiday parties, music, and merriment, we close out the year with one last celebration: New Year’s Eve. The champagne toasts that accompany the countdown and ball drop give way to the start of a new year—a time of possibility, resolutions, and fresh starts.
These subject lines can help you tap into the merriment of NYE or the hope and promise of the fresh calendar page on January 1.
- The countdown is on
- Ring in the new year with us
- Almost midnight…
- Don’t let the year end without this
- Before we flip the calendar page…
- Finish the year strong
- Cheers to an incredible year
- Here’s what we accomplished together
- Our year in review
- Here’s to a fresh start
- New year, new goals
- Ready to crush your goals?
- This year’s looking bright
- Dream bigger this year
- Your best year starts today
- A resolution you’ll actually want to keep
- Page one of 365 starts now
- Catch this before the ball drops
- Raise a glass to new beginnings
- Bubbling over with great deals
- This email could change your year
- The best is yet to come
- New year, same great [product]
Best practices for holiday email subject lines
What makes a holiday email subject line successful? While you’ll need to experiment to find the best tactics for your business, general guidelines can help ensure your email is delivered and entice readers to click.
- Keep it brief: The ideal email length is 30-50 characters. Longer subject lines tend to get cut off, especially on mobile devices. Short subject lines also encourage you to get to the point and make it easier for readers to understand what your email is all about.
- Make it personal: Statistics show adding personalization into an email subject line can boost open rates by 20%. Consider adding a custom field so each message goes out with the recipient’s name in the subject.
- Spark FOMO: People don’t want to miss out on a sale or update! Use language that sparks a fear of missing out (FOMO) in your subject line to encourage people to open your message.
- Avoid spammy phrasing: Email providers flag your message and send it to the spam folder if you ignore email deliverability best practices. But even if your email is technically fine and makes it through filters, the recipient might toss it anyway; 80% of people say they’ll mark an email as spam if it “looks like spam,” so choose your words wisely.
Make your holiday season brighter with email subject lines that inspire opens
If delivering a successful holiday season matters to your business’s overall health, consider adding email campaigns to your broader marketing plan. This strategy continues to deliver strong results and compelling ROI, and it can help nudge consumers already eager to spend during the season to do so with you.
Want more holiday email magic? Check out these guides:
- 15 Copy & Paste Holiday Email Templates (+Examples & Tips)
- 14 Christmas Email Templates That Spread Joy (& Success)
- 11 Ready-to-Serve Thanksgiving Email Templates (+Subject Lines)
- 120+ December Email Subject Lines for Last-Minute ROI
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