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6 Labor Day Email Campaign Examples to Spice Up Your Strategy
The 4th of July is over, meaning many American consumers are preparing for the end of summer. While it’s a bummer for many, for marketing teams everywhere, it means Labor Day is coming. Teams are searching for examples to spark holiday email campaign ideas for their future materials.
Labor Day falls on Monday, September 2nd this year, which means you need to begin the planning process for your Labor Day campaign, if you haven’t already.
Why holiday email campaigns are vital
Marketing teams know just how vital holiday email campaigns can be when it comes to generating leads. However, many holidays fall in the late fall and winter months. Taking advantage of these holidays is great, but that means many marketers miss other significant opportunities.
Labor Day campaigns are often overlooked in favor of more significant holidays, including the 4th of July and Memorial Day. However, it’s worth noting that Labor Day is consistently one of the largest U.S. sale weekends, making it a holiday weekend that shouldn’t be neglected. In fact, in 2018, Labor Day was the first holiday to surpass $2B outside of the traditional winter holiday season.
While many marketing teams opt to save their email campaign budgets for more popular holidays, Credit Karma has some interesting data that may have marketers changing their tune. According to a study in 2018, Credit Karma found that the bulk of early holiday shopping began mid-year, with peaks occurring in August and September.
Source: Credit Karma
But this doesn’t necessarily mean your marketing team should start advertising Christmas deals in August or September. Adopting a holiday campaign too early could have a negative impact on your communications, especially since many consumers believe brands have begun advertising holiday sales too far in advance.
So, what should you take away from this info? Marketing teams can leverage Labor Day weekend to get consumers shopping, and they can do this by pushing the end of summer (rather than the beginning of fall).
What are consumers looking for during Labor Day sales?
Finding ways to optimize Labor Day weekend (especially if you’re using it to kick off holiday campaigns) can be a little tricky, but if you know what consumers are looking to buy, you can make some serious magic happen.
According to a study done by Adobe Digital Insights, there are three main categories that people frequent during Labor Day sales:
- Electronics
- Appliances
- Home & Garden
Many brands put these types of products on sale during Labor Day as a “last chance to enjoy summer.” These sales can actually do twice the work for your B2C company, since consumers are looking for deals on big holiday purchases like costly appliances and electronics. You may see early shoppers who don’t want to get stuck waiting in holiday lines or back orders.
What makes an effective holiday email campaign?
Now that you know just how vital Labor Day examples can be for email marketing campaigns, let’s look at what needs to be in the email campaign to make it effective.
Subject line and preheader text
When it comes to sending an email marketing campaign, your subject line and preheader text are absolutely vital. This is the information that your readers see first and foremost, and if it’s not intriguing, then the chances of your message being opened are slim to none.
Email subject lines and preheader text shouldn’t be boring. However, they do have to be short and to the point. Since the vast majority of emails are now being opened on mobile devices, the number of characters users see in an email preview has been cut drastically. For most devices, the character count falls between 27-73 total, and that includes spaces and punctuation.
If your marketing team is looking for new ways to spice up your subject lines without going over your desired character count, why not give emojis a try?
Personalization
With so many businesses vying for readers’ attention, marketers need to cater their content, promotional or not, to subscriber needs.
Unfortunately, many marketers think merely adding a reader’s name to the email subject line is the extent of personalization needed to keep consumers coming back for more. With the technology currently available to marketers, it’s easier than ever to segment your email lists for individual needs. Some common ways to segment your lists for better personalization include:
- Age
- Gender
- Geolocation
- Browser used
- Recent search history
- Recent purchase history
- Birthday/Anniversaries
Relevant and enticing imagery
The proper use of images, videos, and GIFs can play a significant role in how your viewers interact with your email. While plain-text emails have their place in your email marketing strategy, strategically using images that are both enticing and relevant to the topic at hand can help increase overall reader engagement.
This example from Stumptown Coffee is great because their feature image goes hand in hand with their title header “Coffee to Go.” Without even reading the text, subscribers know this email is about travel and coffee.
Standout CTAs
The entire point of any holiday email campaign (including Labor Day examples) is subscriber action. This means a clear, prominent call to action (CTA).
During a Campaign Monitor study, we found that using a standout CTA had several positive effects on our benchmarks, including an overall increase in click-throughs by 127%.
Labor Day email campaigns that sizzle
Need a little help sparking your creativity? Here are some sizzling Labor Day examples to help you with your Labor Day email campaign.
1. Sears
We chose this example from Sears because it caters to some of those significant sales trends that we hit on earlier. They even made browsing through deals easy for those who know what they want to purchase by separating sales into varying categories such as Home, Sports Goods, Jewelry, and more.
Source: Milled
2. PetSmart
Holiday sales aren’t just for your friends. This Labor Day campaign is directed at your furry family members and offers both in-store savings and online exclusives. Even better, we loved the use of patriotic colors throughout this email to celebrate the holiday.
Source: Pinterest
3. Miracle Noodle
This Labor Day example stands out thanks to its simplicity and countdown timer, urging readers to take action. Sometimes simplicity is best for your subscribers. Miracle Noodle offers a clear CTA that creates a sense of urgency thanks to the 15% off code and the Labor Day Sales countdown.
Source: Milled
5. Lotus Leggings
Lotus Leggings takes Labor Day deals to the next level by incorporating their entire audience, not just U.S. subscribers. By offering worldwide shipping, fans of the brand get to take part in the festivities. The brand takes things to the next step by also announcing a giveaway at the same time, enticing readers to click through to their website and social media sites.
Source: Milled
5. Reverb
Reverb’s Labor Day email campaign sticks out because of the excellent animated imagery used. A recent study by Experian found that 72% of email markets who have used animated GIFs in their campaigns recorded higher transaction-to-click rates—a number worth considering if you want to include an animated GIF in your Labor Day email campaign.
We also appreciate this Labor Day example because it creates a sense of urgency by including the text, “Ends at midnight” at the very beginning of the email. It also makes the shopping experience less stressful by splitting up their sales options into relevant categories for shoppers.
Source: Really Good Emails
6. Art Naturals
This Labor Day example takes the cake because of the message, vibe, and engagement created by Art Naturals. Not only do they make excellent use of imagery Rosie the Riveter—a classic symbol of strength and empowerment—but they’re increasing reader engagement by using user-generated content and a Labor Day contest.
Instead of this being a purely promotional piece, Art Naturals decided to use this holiday to send a helpful newsletter that focuses on relaxation and celebrating working women.
Source: Milled
Wrap up
These are only a handful of the Labor Day examples that we came across during our search for sizzling campaigns. This holiday offers marketing teams a chance to boost content and promotional materials, amping up sales, user engagement, and more. So, make sure you’re taking full advantage.
A few key elements you’ll want to include in your Labor Day campaign:
- A Showstopping subject line and preheader text
- Compelling, personalized content
- Relevant, intriguing imagery
- Compelling CTAs
Need some sizzling summer email subject lines to help with your Labor Day email campaign? Why not give our guide a read! With 75 hot summer subject lines to choose from, you’re bound to find something that suits your needs.
