5 Unique Ideas for Your Thanksgiving Email Campaigns

As the unofficial start of the festive holiday season, Thanksgiving is undoubtably a key date for your email marketing calendar. However, thinking of interesting ideas for your Thanksgiving email campaigns can be a challenge. Especially as the holiday falls so close to "Black Friday", a Thanksgiving sale may not feel like your best option.

With a population of over 325 million celebrating the special day, it's definitely not a marketing opportunity to pass up! Here are 5 ideas you can try out for your Thanksgiving email campaigns without overshadowing your Black Friday promotions...

Thank your subscribers

What better time to say thanks to your subscribers than Thanksgiving? Thank you emails are always a pleasant surprise for your readers, but especially over Thanksgiving, they're a nice touch. Keep your Thanksgiving thank you message short and sweet so it gets straight to the point. Remember to include seasonal colors and festive imagery to make your design perfect for the holiday.

This email design by Anthropologie has a super sweet, personal touch thanks to the use of handwriting fonts. The minimal, wintery pine-cone design is also great at making the email holiday appropriate:

Keep your thank you messages short and sweet and concentrate on including seasonal design elements.

Another example of a thank you email which pulls out all the festive stops is this one by Stich Fix. Again, the message is short and to the point, but the colors and images used in the background are super traditional and help get readers in the holiday spirit:

Share handy Thanksgiving hacks

The run up to Thanksgiving is a very busy time for those celebrating. Organising food and drink, buying gifts and coordinating plans can be hard. Use your business's experience to help your subscribers out and share some useful tips with them.

Your customers are much more likely to appreciate and remember your Thanksgiving email campaigns if they contain useful information. This year, a great idea would be to think about ways your business can help subscribers find ways to still enjoy Thanksgiving safely.

Try sharing recipe tips, entertainment ideas, postage information, or even gift suggestions. Using your email campaign to present your business as the solution to their problem is a great way to strengthen your relationship with customers.

Uber does a great job of this in this Thanksgiving email. The "holiday how-tos" concept shows readers how the taxi service can help them over the holidays:

Think of practical ways your business can help customers with common holiday problems.

As shown here by Brooks Brothers, you can even include tips which aren't necessarily directly related to your business. Including a festive pumpkin pie recipe in their Thanksgiving email is a special way for the company to share useful advice with their customers before the big day:

Including tips that aren't directly related to your business is an extra special way to help out customers this Thanksgiving.

Start a giving back campaign

Show your business's compassionate side this Thanksgiving with a charitable campaign. No matter how big or small, giving something back is a great way to show your appreciation for everything your business has.

Whether you're donating some of your profits, supporting local organisations, or using your platform to raise awareness of a good cause, there's always a way you can give back. Not only will you be helping those less fortunate, you'll also be strengthening your public image and building on your CSR (corporate social responsibility.)

This Thanksgiving/Black Friday crossover campaign by Everlane is an especially powerful way to give back. Their generosity not only gains their brand more respect, it also encourages customers to spend more and increase the amount of profits that will be donated:

Generosity and giving back are what the holidays are all about.

Put together a yearly round up

What is your business thankful for? Your Thanksgiving email campaigns are also a great opportunity for you to reflect on the previous year and everything your business has accomplished. Use Thanksgiving as a chance to look back on everything your business has done and also to share exciting plans for the coming year with your subscribers.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can tie in your yearly round up with a thank you email. After all, where would you be without your customers?

This email by Sakara is a heartwarming example of how you can combine your round up email with a thank you message. In this example, they make sure to thank their suppliers, colleagues and their customers all at once!

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to reflect on the last year and who has helped support your business.

Create fun Thanksgiving content

Last but not least, if all else fails, you can try your hand at creating fun, Thanksgiving-themed content to celebrate with your customers. This is your chance to get creative and share your Thanksgiving message in unique and inventive ways.

GIFs, videos, web fonts, big graphics and vibrant color schemes are all great ways to spice up your Thanksgiving email campaigns.  Here are a couple of examples of bold and brilliant Thanksgiving emails which celebrate the big day in style:

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