The greatest New Year Email Ideas and Examples (+Email Subject Lines)

New Year’s Eve is approaching fast. There is no shortage of things to celebrate during this holiday season for people of all ages. Especially this year, everyone is counting the seconds to wrap up 2020! And for businesses, it is one final chance to hit their sales targets.

Emails make the best marketing tool for the holiday season. Not only it provides businesses an excellent opportunity to reach out to their existing customers, but it also allows them to target those prospects who are interested in the products and services they offer.

Around 80% of businesses believe that email marketing is an ideal medium to boost customer retention.

So, if you haven’t thought about how to create happy new year email messages to your clients yet, don’t worry, we bring some fantastic New Year’s email ideas for you that will surely help you boost your business this festive season.

Thank your loyal customers

Everyone in the world is looking forward to the end of the year, and what better to end this particularly challenging year than with a heartfelt thank you email to your most loyal customers.

Thank You messages are the perfect addition to your New Year’s emails. Sending sentiments to your loyal buyers or customers is the best way to start the New Year.
A simple thank you email, with merry Christmas and happy new year wishes can go a long way. They cost almost zero dollars but have a huge impact on how your customers will perceive you. The more personal your email message is, the closer your subscribers will feel to your brand.

Let’s wrap up 2020 already – thank you for being part of this whirlwind of a journey.

A thank you email send by Daks features this mesmerizing GIF that adds elegance to the email and catches attention.

Below, we have featured a New Year note from J. Crew. This thank you email is a simple gesture you can take inspiration from.

This plain-text email is looking professional and elegant. At the end of the note, they have used a personal signature.

WE Welcomes You to 2017

Smiles Davis, Happy New Year from Mutual of Omaha Retirement Services

Happy New Year from Grovemade

Combine Christmas and New Year campaigns

Christmas and New Year emails go hand in hand. And most NY email campaigns usually have a Christmassy theme anyway. So why not send one winter holiday email.

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year from Frances Hunt

Offer a Discount or a Promotional Code

We all love a good discount. Around 75% of people admit that they source their inboxes to look for discounts. And 93% of online shoppers use discounts or coupon codes throughout the year.

According to the National Retail Federation, in 2017, 53% of buyers – almost 126 million people planned to do their holiday shopping on the last Saturday before Christmas.

So, try to identify those prospects who are continually looking at your products and services near the end of the holiday season, and offer them what they are looking for – a good discount wrapped in a thank you and happy new year email.

However, it is essential to plan before you offer discounts. You must understand how discounting may affect profit margins and sales targets. It is crucial to:

• Be aware of your current profit margin and breakeven point
• Calculate the best discount price so that you can still make a profit
• Create a strong marketing plan to encourage new customers and bring inactive customers back
• Find out what your competitors are offering

Also, choose an effective email subject line. You may choose a subject line something like “Special New Year offer only for you – Happy New Year!” To grab the attention of readers, use plain text over your background image. Choose a pleasant background image, plain text, and some call-to-action buttons.

Here are a few examples of some fun email campaigns sent by real brands, for New Year discounts and offers.

Sexy Yummie to rock the new year!

The Final Sale of The Year ENDS NOW

Get $5 off Fandango movie tickets with Apple Pay.

This email was sent by Apple offering to their email list a $5 reduction on movie tickets using Apple Pay on the Fandango app. Apple continues to suggest to its audience throughout this email, ways they can prep for their New Year Party. In this email, Apple didn’t really have to lose any margins by offering a discount. They instead opted for a partnership with the App Fandango. This is a great idea for businesses who can’t afford to offer any price reduction on their products and services.
Try to establish a partnership with other businesses, and collaborate to bring value to your customers. Win-Win.

Can’t go wrong with this New Years resolution

We like this promotional new year’s email by Leesa. All the visual elements in this email template work together to grab the attention of the reader and guide their eyes to the call to action. The email designers started with a huge email headline, containing the price ($175), a relatively low price for a mattress. The text under the headline is smaller but gives more details about the New Year offer. And finally, they finish it off with a poping Call To Action button in bright red, contrasting perfectly with the email background image.

Offer Free Shipping

If you’re running an eCommerce business, you can expect a lot of orders during the Christmas and New Year holidays. However, a concern of the majority of online buyers is that their gifts will arrive too late, specifically if they are making last-minute purchases. You can soothe their fears with your emails that promise shipping guarantees.

If your budget allows, you can offer to ship for free. It would be a great incentive for your loyal customers this new year. However, you should clearly mention that all your prices include shipping.

A study concluded that free shipping, along with a return policy, increased sales by 20%. So if you want to boost your sales between Christmas & New Year, your new year sales email must mention shipping guarantees.

Don’t wait! Final chance for holiday shipping

Last sale in 2020🙀

Free what? FREE SHIPPING

This new year’s email sample comes from Moo’s email campaign. They included a fun GIF that immediately captures the attention of the subscriber. Instead of a discount on their products, MOO decided to offer free shipping code at checkout for purchases over $75. Notice that the offer ends on January 9th, and not at new year’s. This is a great point to pay attention to. MOO sends emails at their B2B clients, who are generally on holidays when the email was sent, and are not able to make any purchasing decisions on behalf of their companies.
So when you are crafting your offer for the new year, keep in mind who your clients are, when they will be available to check out your offer, and adapt your email and offer details accordingly.

There are some good tools available online that let you make your email campaign more lively with pre-designed video templates, images, and logos. Many email marketing platforms provide drag & drop editors that you can easily use to create an interesting campaign quickly and easily.

Recap your Client’s Year Journey with Your Brand: 2020 In Review

One great way to engage and connect with your audience is to give them a year-end recap of your interactions with them all year round. You can offer your readers a visual timeline that strengthens your relationship while letting them know that you appreciate their loyalty and support.

Facebook, Youtube, and this year, even Spotify did something like this. This type of email is highly personalized and requires a lot of effort to pull together successfully. Besides needing a whole lot of data about each of your customers, you need to think about what kind of fallback text and images you need to include if things go wrong.

They created videos combining all the memories/posts/music used during the year and encapsulated those into a personalized video email. You too can make creative videos like these for your email.

Make sure to test your email multiple times before sending it to your email list.

Even though this type of email is on the advanced side, it will definitely be worth it. Personalized emails are the most engaging types of emails.

In fact, 74% of email marketers say that personalized emails have increased their engagement metrics, and delivered 6 times higher transaction rates.

You may do a similar kind of thing for your happy new year email.

Here are a few examples of brands who nailed this year in review personalized emails:

As you can see in the above picture, Todist not only recapped the recipient’s productivity for the year, but they also offered valuable tips to make the next year more productive

Where will you explore next?

Wix Year in Review 2017

In this email, Wix hacked the system, and instead of creating a highly personalized recap email, and increasing their risk of broken email, they opted for a simple CTA button with the text: Let’s Recap. The link redirects the user to their account where they can see their personal data. Wix hit two birds with one stone with this little hack.

Recap Your Company’s Year

If you haven’t gathered any data about your clients, but still want to send a year recap email, you can do so with data about your own company.

This is a great idea especially for nonprofit and charity organizations, who can take advantage of the end of the year to highlight their impact on their communities.

But even if you are not a non for profit, you can still use this email format to wrap up your year.

Save on Faves: Top Picks at Best Prices!

The Best of 2017 (and hint at what’s coming)

Send a donation campaign

This year, our priorities shifted. Health, family, and solidarity have regained their places in our hearts. And we are now more focused on our deepest human values than futile things. As a brand, you can celebrate this shift and take your part in making the world a better place.

Make a difference in 2021

Promote your products

This is a very straightforward and simple way to send a new year email without needing to offer a discount. We all know what new year is about:
New year resolutions
Partying
Why not take advantage of these two new year clichés and remind your customers what your product or service can do for them during this festive period.

Here are a few examples that show creativity and relevance.

Start the year off stylishly! Book a trim, touch-up, or chop at Chicago’s top salons.

New year, same you (and proud)

New Apps for the New Year 🎁

Your Guide to a Delicious New Year’s Eve in Chicago 🎉

Add Countdown Timer in Your Email

Adding a countdown timer to your sales email is a great way to boost conversions with urgency & scarcity. It is noticed that most online shoppers delay completing orders, resulting in high cart abandonment.

Countdown timers in emails help you improve conversions as it creates a strong sense of urgency and scarcity. It is a proven tactic that plays our instinctive FOMO. Buyers take action because they don’t want to miss out on any excellent opportunities.

Last Chance! 50% off Premium – ends in just 3hrs – don’t miss out!

In this fun email sent out by Sitepoint, we get a beautiful Christmassy visual accompanied by a countdown timer that adds urgency and encourages subscribers to take advantage of the offer before the clock hits zero.

The company then gives more details about the sale in a detailed email body, using emojis to add a little fun element and a bright pink call to action button that can’t be missed.

It’s the Final Countdown

A case study revealed that when you place a countdown timer correctly on your mail, it can increase conversion rates by 400%. If you haven’t tried it yet, this is a good time.

We know that embedding a countdown timer in your emails can be a bit scary, especially for those of you who have never tried it before. That’s why our email designer prepared a ready to use new year’s email template, embedded with a countdown timer until New Year. All you need to do is click on the email template, and start editing the text and images of the email.

We also have created a step by step guide on how you can add a countdown timer in your emails.

Lunar New Year

In the Lunar Calendar 2020, the new year is celebrated on Saturday 25 January. The Chinese New Year, the Tet Nguyen Dan (Vietnamese New Year), and other Lunar New Years are an excellent opportunity to continue the festivities and roll out the sales and discounts.

Here are some of our favorite Lunar New Year emails.

Example 1.

Example 2.

Example 3.

Example 4.

Example 5.

Make sure to Choose Catchy New Year Email Subject Lines

Don’t forget that email subject lines are one of the most important elements of your email campaigns. They are the first things your recipients will see in their inboxes. Therefore, you must spend adequate time reviewing your subject lines.

Nowadays, shoppers are smart enough to know businesses are clearing out their stock to make room for new products. So choose the subject line smartly.

For Inspiration, we are sharing a few New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day email subject lines

• New Year’s Eve Flash Sale! – XYZ
• The Countdown Starts…… Save 40% Til Midnight
• It’s New Year’s Eve! Celebrate with an extra 30% off the sale price
• Got no plans for New Year? We’ve got you covered!
• Happy New Year’s Even from “ABC”
• Countdown Play Up

Some New Year’s Day Subject Lines

Cheers to Splendid New Year
Make Great Plans for 2020
New Year. New Gear
Make a Fresh Start with Our Great Deal
New Year’s Day Deal – 50% Off

Tips to craft the best new year email subject line

Below are a few tips for writing happy new year wishes email subject lines.

• Keep it short – A general inbox reveals about 60 characters of an email’s subject line, whereas a mobile phone shows just 25 to 30 characters
• Try to keep your most important words at the beginning so that compelling details don’t get cut off
• Strictly avoid filler words in the subject lines such as “thanks’, “hello”, “nice to meet you”, etc. You can easily include them in the email’s body.
• Be clear & specific about the topic of the email. Your subject line must communicate that your email is about New Year Greetings
• Use logical keywords for search & filtering
• Keep your new year business email’s subject line simple & focused

Fun and Actionable CTA Button Ideas

You’re doing everything possible to make your happy new year sales email stunning. You’re writing catchy subject lines, structuring your emails precisely, and creating copy that sells. Still, for some reason, people are not clicking through to your website to take you up on your offer. It might be a poor call-to-action button you’re using in your email campaign, letting you down.

To write a perfect call-to-action to your email, you need to consider what your customers want from you. According to Ellie Mirman, Vice President of Marketing at Toast, emails with a single CTA boosted click 371% and sales 1617%.

How to create a compelling CTA that works

• Keep your CTA above the fold as a study concludes, a general persona reads an email for 15 to 10 seconds only. However, keep it off to the side of the content.
• Create a compelling copy instead of a descriptive copy. For example, you may try using high-converting words such as Upgrade, Start, Stop,
• Save, More, Join, Free, Explore, Get, etc.
• Make a perfect alignment between your email message and the CTA button.
• The size of your CTA button should be much larger than your piece of text
• CTA buttons must have a different color to the text and background. This contrast makes your button more noticeable.
• Take a look at design elements such as shadows, gradients, etc.

Have a look at an example by MOO. They have used a friendly design and straightforward CTA button text that entices readers to shop.

Some Tips to Optimize Your New Year’s Email Campaign

• Take advice from experts on the key factors of email marketing campaigns
• Don’t make your email campaign promotional, instead focus on showcasing your products or services
• Take advantage of your audience’s desire for a fresh start

Wrapping Up

New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest and most profitable times of the year for many businesses. Since shopping for special occasions like Christmas and New Year’s gets started long before, you should start planning for your holiday email marketing in advance.
Not only emails give you the opportunity to reach out to current subscribers but also their friends and family. So make a good plan for it. We hope the tips mentioned above will help you generate more leads and sales this Christmas and New Year’s eve.
Happy emailing!