8 B2B Holiday Promotion Emails to Inspire Your December Marketing Campaign

It’s that time of year again. There’s only one month left in 2015 and it’s the holiday season, making it that much more difficult to get in contact with prospects and reach your sales & marketing goals for Q4 and the entire year.

Instead of cowering away from the challenge, embrace it! Use the holiday spirit to drive engagement with your lists, and even generate some new business.

Here are eight examples of email marketing promotions that were used during the holiday season to their brand’s advantage in the past few years.

SnapApp

While the webinar itself isn’t holiday-themed, SnapApp’s invite email is an excellent example of how to promote your regular content with a holiday twist. Their subject line makes you think of winter and references the idea of warming up cold sales leads. The invite copy also uses the holiday season to show how their service can help your marketing team during this time of year.

Demand Gen Report

Who doesn’t love a pun-y subject line? Demand Gen Report does a fantastic job of combining their promotion with a play on words to tie in the holiday season. They also use the spirit of giving to present a discount offer for their conference, Content2Conversion, in the new year, as well as convey the urgency of getting all your Christmas shopping done in time by putting an expiration on the offer.

Vidyard

Another exceptional holiday-themed subject line, Vidyard doesn’t hold back in its email promoting their latest blog content. From a Rudolph reference to a play on “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” they really want you to get into the holiday spirit and read their post about holiday videos. It’s fun, smart, and makes you eager to see what they have to say.

Marketo

Marketo took a different approach with their holiday promotion emails. Instead of looking to the actual holidays, they decided to use the cold, dark winter season as their main focus. Who doesn’t love sitting by the fire in a warm sweater with a good book? I just love how Marketo turned that good feeling into an opportunity to share and promote some of their eBooks.

GraphicStock

The holidays are a time for giving, and who doesn’t love free stuff? GraphicStock is providing free stock photo downloads for seven days, including its library of holiday and seasonal images, which makes this promotion both creative and relevant for potential new customers.

Vimeo

Vimeo’s email is another outstanding example of taking your regular content and putting a holiday twist on it. For their newsletter, they announced a ton of new features with email copy inspired by the holiday season. From “merry mobile viewing” and “winter cleaning,” to “holiday haircut” and “pine-fresh features,” Vimeo conveys a fun tone to help their customer really get into the holiday spirit.   

Pardot

Also using their newsletter to run a holiday promotion, Pardot is offering its customers a discount to increase their database size. Many companies are looking at budgets and renewals at the end of the year, too, so Pardot does a great job of combining this process with the holidays.

Trello

Subject lines are a crucial part of any successful email campaign and Trello does its best at creating an eye-catching subject line using a holiday theme and emojis. They also extend the fantastic design and giving spirit into their promotion, offering a free upgrade to you and the opportunity to give the same gift to someone of your choice. This unique campaign not only provides good will towards Trello users and their networks, but generates new business at the same time!

More?

What holiday promotion emails have you seen success with? Share your experiences and suggestions in the comments below.