Spring Email Marketing Campaign Ideas
Spring officially begins Wednesday, March 20 and ends on Friday, June 21. Within the 100 days of spring, there are ample opportunities for email marketers to send revenue generating campaigns. Here’s a checklist of Spring email marketing campaign ideas to consider as part of your Spring email marketing strategy:
- Welcome Spring (March 20)
- April Fool's Day (April 1)
- Easter (April 21)
- Earth Day (April 22)
- Mother's Day (May 12)
- Graduation (varies)
- Cinco De Mayo (May 5)
- Memorial Day (May 27)
- Father's Day (June 16)
- Summer Solstice (June 21)
Spring Email Examples
March 20: Spring Cleaning
With the entrance of Spring, folks are ready for the warmer weather and all that it brings. They’re also ready to open up windows and doors and get busy with Spring cleaning efforts. An email campaign welcoming spring and highlighting a Spring cleaning sale will be spot on for this day.
April 1: April Fool’s Day
This is a day to branch out from the norm and really have fun with your email campaigns by sending jokes, pranks and just general craziness. However, it’s very important to make sure that what you are sending is appropriate (you don’t want to be offensive) and stays on brand. When you’ve determined your theme for the day, consider incorporating funny images or animation into your emails to make them more engaging and really on point for the day.
If you can’t do goofy or too out there, consider an approach like Rue 21 where they offer $1 shipping on April 1 along with the tagline “We Wouldn’t Fool Ya.”
April 21: Easter
Everyone thinks of bunnies, eggs, flowers and candy at Easter time. Your Easter campaign should acknowledge the day and incorporate imagery to coincide with that. Use animation in your Easter emails to capture attention in the inbox, or put together a scavenger hunt of sorts to boost interaction with your email and website. You can have folks find the bunny, the hidden easter basket, or like Banana Republic did in the email below, find eggs hidden throughout their website for extra savings.
April 22: Earth Day
Earth day is an annual celebration in which various events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. If you sell products that relate to the environment, nature, or energy efficiency, or if environmental protection is part of your company ethos or brand identity, this is a great day for you to champion. This Michael’s example showcases ways to upcycle items commonly found in homes in order to reduce the amount of waste.
May 12: Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day spending reached $23.1 billion last year and 31% of folks shopped online for gifts according to the National Retail Federation. This is a day of the year that folks tend to shop for in advance, so be sure you’re sending out campaigns leading up to the day and include countdowns to Mother’s Day as a gentle reminder. Prominently feature “Order by X to receive it in time” to help encourage folks to go ahead and purchase rather than procrastinate. P.S. If you’re looking for Mother’s Day best practices, check out this article.
Disclaimer: it’s important to acknowledge that Mother’s Day isn’t an easy holiday for everyone. Before you start a full-court Mother’s Day press, think about sending a pre-Mother’s Day email allowing people to opt-out of Mother’s Day emails while still receiving your standard promotional emails.
Graduation
While the date for graduation varies depending on the school/university, it’s an event that happens yearly in the spring and many folks are looking for graduation gifts, travel options, etc. In the last two weeks of May, if it makes sense for your business, you should start promoting graduation offers. If you are in the travel industry, consider advertising it further out to allow enough advance notice for people to book any travel/hotel offers you have.
May 5: Cinco De Mayo
Traditionally Cinco De Mayo is a holiday that celebrates the date of the Mexican army’s 1962 victory over France at the battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. Today, it’s more popularly celebrated in the United States than Mexico and the date has become associated with the celebration of Mexican-American culture. It’s not uncommon for restaurants and bars to send out campaigns. However, even online retailers can get in on the day by promoting products that help folks celebrate like this Pottery Barn example does, or just running general promotional campaigns using imagery that would be associated with Cinco De Mayo.
May 27: Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a holiday that is very much celebrated by enjoying the many freedoms that those men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military gave their lives for. For Memorial day campaigns, 41% of Americans said they are likely to take advantage of online sales. Patriotic imagery is a common theme for Memorial day as well as cook-outs and summer themed visuals.
June 16: Father’s Day
77% of Americans celebrated Father’s Day in 2018 and spent an average of $133 per person. For companies that focus on experiences, this is a holiday to pay attention to. 47% of consumers last year planned to give a “special outing” gift, such as a concert, sporting event or dinner and 33% of shoppers did their buying online. Be sure not to skip a Father’s Day campaign this year, and make sure to have a little fun with the campaign.
Similar to Mother’s Day, some of your subscribers and customers may be dreading Father’s Day. To that end, consider sending a note pre-Father’s Day giving people the option to opt-out of Father’s Day related emails.
June 21: Summer Solstice
The summer solstice marks the official start of summer and brings the longest day and shortest night of the year. What better way to say goodbye to spring and welcome in summer than by sending an email campaign. No need to go crazy on the offer here. A standard % or $ off tends to work just fine. Punch up the creative by including animation and capture more attention in the inbox.
We’ve touched on 10 campaigns that are perfect for spring, but there are plenty of others to add to the list. Here are some other days in Spring that you can promote via email as long as it makes sense for your brand and the products/services you provide:
- March 23 - National Puppy Day
- March 26 - Make Up Your Own Holiday Day
- March 29 - National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
- April 7 - No Housework Day
- April 10 - National Siblings DayList Item
- April 25 - Administrative Professionals' Day
- May 4 - Star Wars Day
- May 7 - National Teachers’ Day
- May 18- Armed Forces Day
- June 18- National Splurge Day
Conclusion: Let Your Creativity Blossom
Spring brings extensive opportunities to run fun, engaging and profitable email campaigns. There are so many holidays and non-holidays that you can put your own spin on to make them work for your products/services. Hopefully these Spring email marketing campaign ideas have put a spring in your step and your Spring email marketing campaign strategy has started to bloom. Happy Spring and happy marketing!
Have questions about any of these ideas? Our experienced strategy team has helped hundreds of clients implement them, and they’d be happy to help you, too! Just reach out