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Thanksgiving Emails That Scream Engagement: Ideas and Tips

Rida Ali Khan

What is the most challenging task on Thanksgiving, winning the wishbone?

Na-uh, it’s engaging your subscribers. 

That’s because your subscriber’s inbox is probably filled with many Thanksgiving emails. In 2016 alone, 95 million emails were sent on Thanksgiving. So, if you want your email to be the one that is read and responded to, you will have to go the extra mile to impress your subscribers. 

Since you’re here, you’re already one step closer to creating a high-performing Thanksgiving email as we have a list of all the design and campaign ideas that can instantly grab your reader’s attention and motivate them to interact with you. 

Exciting, right? 

Let’s start by taking some campaign ideas for Thanksgiving. 

7 Promising Campaign Ideas for Thanksgiving Emails

The fun part about running a Thanksgiving email campaign is that there is so much content to incorporate in your emails. We have listed some of these ideas below: 

1. Be Thankful

Show gratitude in your thanksgiving emails

Thanksgiving is all about showing gratitude and acknowledging the good things around us. Incorporate this spirit of thankfulness into your email campaigns through the following ways;

  • Thank Loyal Customers 

Your loyal customers are your brand's backbone; this Thanksgiving show them how much they mean to you.

Send them a well-written email copy to thank them for sticking around, or send them a gift or discount voucher as a token of appreciation. Thank you emails are a delight to customers, and they look even more special on Thanksgiving day. 

  • Be Thankful in General

Gratitude opens the door for several other blessings, so don't shy away from showing it. Show your subscribers what you're thankful for in your emails. Mention achievements, collaborations, and the milestones that you have accomplished to be the amazing brand that you are today.

Designing such an email will create a reliable image of your brand in front of your subscribers and encourage them to engage with you more. 

2. Hint for Black Friday

In the marketing world, Thanksgiving is often overshadowed by Black Friday and its popularity. But if you're a wise marketer, you can incorporate a hint of Black Friday within your Thanksgiving emails to excite your subscribers and take advantage of these two high-profiting holidays. 

For instance, if you're a clothing brand, you can wish your subscribers Thanksgiving and offer them discounts on your clothing line. This way, you can start your Black Friday sale earlier. 

Without a doubt, your recipients will love an opportunity to start their holiday shopping earlier. 

3. Win Hearts With a Humorous Copy

Doctors say laughter is the best medicine; we say it's the best advertiser.

If you want your email to be imprinted in your subscriber's memory, write a humorous Thanksgiving email. Additionally, if you use a catchy and funny subject line, there is an excellent chance that your email will instantly grab your subscriber's attention, and they would like to read the rest of it. 

It also creates an image that your brand sends interesting and funny emails, so they would wait to receive more emails from you.

4. Show Your Generous Side

Make your subscribers adore your brand as an empath by showing the generous side of your brand. 

Since Thanksgiving is filled with gratitude and positive energy, how about giving off a little bit? 

There are different ways to do so; for instance, if you're a food brand, you can collect charity to run food drives for the underprivileged or ask your subscribers to donate to them through your email.

This will increase your subscriber's engagement and create a gracious image of your brand.

5. Tips and Hacks for Thanksgiving

Tips to create the best thanksgiving emails

The first thing that comes to our mind when we think of Thanksgiving is a table full of delicious food and a gathering full of loved ones. 

So, how about pitching in some hosting ideas in your Thanksgiving email? 

Offer them something valuable like amazing food recipes. Adding food recipes may or may not go with your brand identity, but it's a sure-shot strategy to boost engagement and click-through rates. Also, it's an excellent way to nurture relationships with your subscribers. 

Besides this you can assist your recipient to be the best host in town; they will love you even more. Send them hosting ideas, like how to set up tables or how to have the perfect interior for Thanksgiving.

Another great idea is to send them a downloadable checklist for Thanksgiving. This will be helpful for them in organizing Thanksgiving dinners.

6. Track Down Subscriber's Journey and Engage

Personalized emails are subscriber's second most favorite (first being emails with sale offers, obviously).

Track down your subscriber's journey and send them personalized emails to make them feel special. You will have to design and send a special kind of Thanksgiving email for different subscribers according to their buyer’s journey to run such a campaign.

For instance, if your subscriber just signed up, then greet them Thanksgiving by sending them a welcome email, or if a subscriber hasn't engaged with you for quite some time, then send an email saying something like, “Let’s get back together this Thanksgiving." Such campaigns are thoughtful of subscribers, they would love to engage with your email after reading it. 

Related: How to Run Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaigns? A Guide

7. Highlight Your Brand’s Special Thanksgiving Item

One of the best ways to boost conversion rates is by offering your subscribers something special for Thanksgiving from your collection. That could be an exclusive range of clothes, a special offer for Thanksgiving, or customized gifts that your subscribers would like to purchase for their loved ones. Create your Thanksgiving emails with any of these ideas and witness the love and affection that your subscribers will shower you with. 

Now that you have pretty good campaign ideas for Thanksgiving emails, here are some tips for creating the most impressive and attention-grabbing email designs. 

Best Practices for Creating Impressive Thanksgiving Email Designs

Tips to create impressive thanksgiving email designs

Your email design silently speaks for your brand; make sure it is the most tasteful and innovative one in your recipient's inbox. 

Now you must be wondering how you will design a Thanksgiving email that will grab your reader's attention, generate a good return on investment, and warmly send a greeting for Thanksgiving?

Simple, just follow these tips to know the best design practices. 

Add a Thanksgiving Theme

Thanksgiving is all about food but primarily turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and bread stuffing. You can add these elements to your email design in a cute yet relevant way to keep the spirit of Thanksgiving alive. 

Since Thanksgiving is a special holiday when loved ones gather together, you can add images of them eating together. 

If you don't feel like adding elements for Thanksgiving, write catchy Thanksgiving greetings or puns like “activate feast mode,” or “don’t marsh my mellow” to instantly grab the reader's attention and encourage them to respond to your email. 

Represent Your Brand

If you want your readers to remember your brand through your design, you must use some brand representation. 

You can incorporate the theme of your brand in your email design or use your brand’s style in them. For instance, use your product in your Thanksgiving email or add your brand’s logo so that the reader remembers your brand. 

Take a look at this amazing Thanksgiving email from Living Spaces, where they elegantly placed their product and marketed it for Thanksgiving in a clever way. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

Related: 4 Steps to Maintain Brand Consistency in Email Marketing

Choose Colors That Catch the Eye

Colors play a significant role in influencing a person’s mood. This further affects their decision-making process. 

Since Thanksgiving signifies the harvest season and approaches during Autumn, the best colors to add to your email designs will be yellow, brown, orange, and related gradients.

You can obviously use different colors according to your preferences, but it's ideal for adding the holiday theme colors in email designs as the reader identifies that this email is exclusively for a certain event just by looking at it. 

Related: Influence of Colors in Email Marketing: A Complete Guide

Ensure Responsiveness of Designs

Choose a responsive design for Thanksgiving emails

Your email designs must be responsive. This means that they must appear ideally on all devices. According to research, 61.9% of emails are opened on mobile devices. 

So, if your email designs are not responsive, a large number of your recipients will not be able to view your emails. The responsiveness of a design is often ignored by marketers. Still, it is, without doubt, an absolute necessity. 

Related: A Guide to Responsive Emails: Tips, Challenges, & Examples

Countdowns to Create Urgency

A little FOMO hurts no one. 

Trigger the sense of urgency among your subscribers by adding countdown timers in your email design. You can also add texts like “7 hours left,” etc to motivate an impulsive response out of your subscriber.

Play Around With Content

One of the coolest things to do with your Thanksgiving email templates is to play around with them.

For instance, Thanksgiving is followed by Black Friday and comes during the Autumn season. You can create an animated Turkey going for holiday shopping with Autumn's colors in the background. 

Amplify your imagination and see how easily you can design the most amazing Thanksgiving emails.

Go Extra - Add Interactive Elements

Well, it's the 21st century. If you don't go extra, someone else will - and steal your thunder. 

Add some cute and interactive elements to your email as they boost engagement and attract readers' attention. Research says that adding interactive elements in emails increases the click-to-open rate up to 73%. 

You can add videos, and GIFs, etc., to attract your readers and coax them to respond. 

A Guaranteed Hack to Nail Your Email Designs

Designing the finest Thanksgiving email template is no walk in the park, especially when you have so many other marketers to beat as a competition. 

A convenient and wise strategy would be to opt for professionally designed Thanksgiving email templates with the potential to dominate over your recipient's inbox. This will save you time, effort, money and will provide a better return on your investment.

The Best Thanksgiving Email Templates

Attractive Designs. Responsive Format. White-Labeled.
Email Templates

The Most Stunning Thanksgiving Email Examples

Want to know how to rule an inbox with your email designs? Then take a look at the following emails. 

Vegamour

Autumn colors and a playful written copy, it's the perfect Thanksgiving email. Also, look how beautifully they have added a heartfelt message under a cute design. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

Outerknown

This is one of our favorites. This email design has a picture of Outerknown’s team dressed up in their brand’s clothes. It has a well-written email copy of how thankful they are for their team and their work. A simple yet well-designed Thanksgiving email. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

Anthropologie

They may not have followed traditional Thanksgiving colors but they definitely caught our attention with a cute-looking GIF that has a Thanksgiving dinner set on it. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

Uber

Uber sure knows how to market according to the event. Look at their funky-looking email that invites their customers to pre-book a ride for Thanksgiving. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

Framebridge

They did a great job at creating a holiday aesthetic and promoting their product effectively. 

Alongside the beautiful picture of a mother and son playing is a well-written copy that tells you how their product can add value to their recipient’s life this Thanksgiving. 

Example of best Thanksgiving emails

These are some of the finest email designs that we came across. However, if you need more inspiration, learn the most recent email design trends to create eye-catching Thanksgiving emails.  

Design the Best Thanksgiving Emails With Unlayer

Introduce yourself to a new companion this Thanksgiving, something that is specially designed for your convenience and benefit - introduce yourself to Unlayer. 

Unlayer provides a range of professionally designed Thanksgiving email templates that can be easily modified with a user-friendly drag and drop editor. All these templates are responsive and can be viewed ideally on every device. 

Also, like we were stressing about sending personalized emails, you can add merge tags in your email templates from Unlayer. Using ready-made email templates from Unlayer reduces your cost and effort dramatically and assures that every template results in a high-performing email. 

Select the template that fits best with your campaign and customize it according to your choice. And if you need any suggestion from a client or colleague, you can instantly get feedback with our team collaboration feature. Once done, you can export these templates through multiple ESPs like Mailchimp, Gmail, HubSpot, etc. 

Who knew top-notch email templates were just a few clicks away?

So what's stopping you from taking a free trial? Try giving it a shot now!

Thanksgiving email templates from Unlayer

Wrap Up

Well, that’s about it. 

We would love to see you create amazing Thanksgiving emails by utilizing the tips and ideas that we have mentioned above.

All you have to do is analyze which campaign or design idea works best for your brand and target audience. 

Ending on that note, Happy Thanksgiving, go break a leg!

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