10 Thanksgiving Email Marketing Examples to Get Inspired By

Thanksgiving Email Marketing Examples. As Thanksgiving is the day right before Black Friday, it can tend to get ignored by marketers and merchants as they get ready for the upcoming weekend of sales. 

But overlooking Thanksgiving is a mistake. 

The holiday presents multiple opportunities for your broader marketing strategy from thanking loyal customers to getting a head start on your Black Friday sales. 

And don’t feel like you can’t run your own Thanksgiving day sale even if you don’t sell turkeys, cranberry sauce, or pumpkin pie. Over 20% of consumers plan on shopping on Thanksgiving day.

So to help show you how you can make the most of this opportunity here are 10 of the best Thanksgiving email campaigns that will inspire you. 

1) Casper

This email from Casper shows that you don’t have to sell food to get in on the Thanksgiving action. With a bit of creative thinking, you’ll be able to work your brand into the holiday festivities. 

The message again effectively combines the holiday vibe with the Casper brand which is then completed by the call to action (CTA) of ‘Head to Bed’ at the end.

Like the rest of the email, this is a simple yet engaging CTA that’ll get people clicking through and going on to convert.

2) Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitters’ Thanksgiving email provides their customers with a sneak peek of their upcoming Black Friday offers. 

This makes the email more of an ‘email sent on Thanksgiving’ rather than a ‘Thanksgiving email’. That said, the dressed-up Thanksgiving turkey in their brand style keeps the email holiday-themed. 

As you’ve likely been sending plenty of Black Friday emails in the days and weeks leading up to it, making your final Black Friday-eve email Thanksgiving-themed is a nice way of breaking things up a bit.

3) Uber

This Thanksgiving Day email from Uber is a terrific example of a brand putting themselves in their customers’ shoes, identifying their pain points, and providing a solution.

In this case, it’s people needing to get to the airport on time to catch their flights to visit family and friends. Uber’s solution to which is to pre-book one of their rideshare cars. 

Your own Thanksgiving campaigns will be much more effective if you’re able to do the same by thinking about how your products or services address a common pain point people run into over the holiday period. 

As for the rest of Uber’s email, notice how they don’t push people to book an Uber right away. Instead simply inviting them to see “how it works”. This CTA isn’t overbearing and will likely get people clicking through to see how their pre-book feature works even if they aren’t flying this Thanksgiving. 

The simple animated background keeps the email design interesting and engaging as well. 

4) Artifact Uprising

Artifact Uprising’s holiday email follows a popular Thanksgiving campaign strategy which is to simply express gratitude and thanks with their customers. 

Instead of trying to funnel customers to a product landing page or sale, sharing a heartfelt Thanksgiving message will help build up brand loyalty which will last long after the holidays have gone.

After many years of selling high-quality photo books, Artifact Uprising understands that their products have an emotional value beyond simply storing photos. And this understanding of the power of emotion in marketing is evident in this email too. 

With the mayhem of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales literally just a day away, there is value in taking Thanksgiving off to connect with your audience on a deeper level.

5) Betterment

Like the holiday email from Uber above, this campaign from Betterment taps into various frustrations people have over the holidays. Albeit in a more playful way. 

For every awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation topic, Betterment has brought things back to their product. 

This is obviously tongue-in-cheek but makes for a simple and fun Thanksgiving email to their customers. And while it’s not really a “Thanksgiving convo survival guide”, the subject line is bound to get people opening the email anyway. 

6) Ibotta 

This example from Ibotta is a good example of a sales-oriented Thanksgiving email. 

While it contains a simple happy Thanksgiving message, the offer is front and center before sharing the customer’s unique referral code and the CTA button. 

The whole email itself is short and sweet to increase the likelihood of their customers clicking through before they get distracted. 

The email design is also clean and simple with only slices of pie in the background to tie it into the holiday sale. This provides a good template to base your own Thanksgiving sales emails on.

7) eWatches

eWatches’ email is your typical example of a Thanksgiving sale campaign. 

It’s got everything you’d expect: A large “Happy Thanksgiving” title, a large sale offer, a clear CTA to “Save Now” and some examples of products on sale. 

If you’re going to run your own Thanksgiving Day sale, the other element you might want to copy from this example is the countdown timer at the top. 

These HTML countdown timers reinforce the message that the sale is for a limited time only and add a sense of urgency. This in turn gets customers clicking through to your store more as they don’t want to miss out on your offer. 

8) Sakara

This Thanksgiving email from Sakara is another good example of one that simply expresses gratitude and appreciation. 

What’s nice about this particular email is how it gives thanks to all the different people involved with the business including their employees and ending by thanking their customers. 

Again, these kinds of email marketing campaigns that are purely dedicated to spreading the spirit of the holiday season might not drive sales right away, but they’ll have a lasting positive impact on your brand. 

9) Brandless

Brandless is another business that understands the importance of sharing a Thanksgiving message with their customers. 

What separates this email from the similar examples on this list however is how they’ve included user-generated content (UGC). This takes the form of images from customers shared on Instagram with their branded hashtag.

Not only is this a nice way to reinforce the happy Thanksgiving message but is also a great way of providing social proof to potential future customers.  

10) Postmates

To end this list of Thanksgiving email examples, here is a nice, clean email from Postmates. 

There’s nothing particularly special about this email. The point is that you can achieve a great email design with just a simple image and a few colors. You don’t need to go all out with your Thanksgiving email design or worry about what you’ll include. 

And yet, despite its simplicity, this email is still very effective. 

There are clear CTA buttons, the text has a clear hierarchy which makes the message quick and easy to comprehend, and the email itself is short and sweet. 

A lot of the time less is more when it comes to email marketing.

Conclusion

Thanksgiving is a major holiday for hundreds of millions of people. 

That’s why your own holiday campaign can be a powerful tool to build your brand, increase sales, or just get people hyped for your imminent Black Friday sale.  

Now that you’ve seen some of the best examples of Thanksgiving emails to customers, you’ll hopefully have plenty of inspiration for your own campaigns. If you’re looking for even more email design inspiration, check out this Really Good Emails’ Thanksgiving collection here.

However, no email is complete without a compelling subject line. Especially when a third of your customers either open or ignore your emails based solely on its subject line. 

That’s why we’ve also created a collection of 100 Thanksgiving email subject lines to help you further. 

Happy Thanksgiving!