How to Spruce Up Holiday B2B Emails for Christmas & New Year
Get tips on how to craft the perfect Christmas B2B email
Christmas and New Year’s are the perfect occasions for adding a festive touch and playing with your messaging. But writing a good holiday email for Christmas isn’t easy.
Here are some tips you can use when creating Christmas emails and spreading holiday cheer 🌲
Keep Christmas cliches on the naughty list (and New Year cliches too!)
Just like Halloween and Thanksgiving, the first goal for Christmas and New Year emails is to avoid overusing cliche or generic references. (Key word = overusing)
The good news?
People are more open to holiday mentions and wordplay at this time of year. Everyone’s feeling holiday cheer, so it’s okay to sprinkle some in here and there. If anything, people almost expect you to add a Christmasy line or two.
That said, there are a few phrases that are about as welcome as a lump of coal in your stocking.
| Christmas | New Year |
| ‘Tis the season | New year, new you |
| The most wonderful time of the year | Out with the old, in with the new |
| Santa came early | What a year it’s been… |
| The gift that keeps on giving | A year to remember |
| All I want for Christmas is you/your [item] | Turn over a new leaf |
Luckily, there’s a sleigh-full of new content every year that you should be able to craft original Christmas references. If you’re especially daring, you can even play with fire by making a Hallmark Christmas film reference or two 😀
But before you assemble Christmas holiday emails, you need to ask yourself if it’s something you really want to do. It’s easy to give into temptation and start adding as many references that you can think of.
You should also think about these questions:
- Does your audience appreciate puns, wordplay, and Christmas references? And does your audience even celebrate Christmastime?
- Can you match your brand to certain Christmas visuals and references?
- Where and when will you use references?
Connect Christmas with your business goals
Christmas is a great time to channel the holiday spirit with your audience.
There are (at least) three ways you can approach this.
First, you can try positioning your solution as a way to address common holiday stressors. For example, you might emphasize how your product allows teams to maintain high performance. Teams would be able to overcome distractions, the temptation to take it easy, and stay on track.
Alternatively, you can unleash your inner Santa Claus and share something of value at no cost. This could be:
- Ungating a resource like a Buyer’s Guide or a task checklist
- Providing free (but limited) access to one of your tools or features
- Offering a partnership opportunity or referral bonus
- Sharing new updates just in time for the holidays
Besides, Santa only gives if you’ve been good 😉
Or you can weave Christmas themes into your emails by sharing stories or year-in-review highlights to build on your bond with your customers. Priority goes to stories that reflect the warmth and spirit of generosity of the season.
Capitalize on end-of-year or New Year deals
While it’s easy to launch any end-of-year campaign, the simplest angle is a New Year’s deal.
After all, who doesn’t like to kick the new year off with a bang?
Not only is the New Year a perfect and timely reason to reach out, it’s also a natural occasion when people are looking for fresh starts and solutions that help them reach their goals.
To build excitement and a sense of urgency, you can create a “Countdown to 2025” promotion. Or you might bundle products or services under fun, New Year-inspired names that highlight goals like growth, success, and New Year’s resolutions.
If you do run a New Year’s campaign, you’ll want to reach out early enough to give people time to plan or budget for your solution. For an extra-generous twist, you can extend the offer a few days into January.
This way, you align with their goals, make it easy for them to take action without feeling rushed, and even mitigate the risk of people being out of the office for the holidays.
Add a clear call to action
We don’t mean to sound like Scrooge or the Grinch, but… We’ve said it before. We’ll say it again.
Every email needs a clear purpose that drives company growth and delivers value.
Even Christmas emails. (Although, admittedly, Christmas emails have a lower bar to reach).
Your call to action needs to drive engagement and clearly say what’s the next step, such as:
You can avoid generic CTAs by adding slight personalization in the form of possessive pronouns or holiday mentions.
While limiting your Black Friday deal to the first 50 customers might have been a smart tactic, it’s clashes with the spirit of Christmas. For Christmas and New Year’s deals, your deal needs to be open to everyone. And if an EOY deal jeopardizes your company’s finances, it’s not worth it.
Find a balance between fun and professional
Unlike Halloween and Thanksgiving – where you can get away with skipping the holiday – there’s at least one email you’ll want to send.
The Year in Review.
There are several reasons why you might want to send one:
- Celebrate milestones and highlight key moments from the year (e.g. product launches, partnerships, accomplishments)
- Express gratitude to your customers, partners, and team
- Create anticipation for the future by giving a sneak peek at upcoming features or next year’s roadmap
- Remind people about your end-of-year promotion (if you’re running one)
And last but not least, if you send the Year in Review email before Christmas (and let’s be honest, you probably should), you can work in an innocent sign-off along the lines of “Merry Christmas, and see you next year!” or something similar.
