For email marketers, Memorial Day is when they get to make sales during a holiday-heavy period and, at the same time, show gratitude for the fallen heroes. Memorial Day is celebrated every year on the last Monday of May as a federal holiday in the USA.
It also kickstarts the summer season, and hence, email marketers need to be mindful of multiple things when planning Memorial Day emails. Around 38.5 million people would be out on the roads to honor the day. I have handpicked a few Memorial Day email inspirations to help you pick your Mailchimp or Salesforce email templates and start your preparations. Let’s get started:
#1 Tuft & Needle
If you are looking for a simple yet effective layout for your Salesforce email templates, Tuft & Needle has a great example for you. This Memorial Day email correlates with the occasion and pushes the sales intent at the same time without sounding pushy. This is an important factor to understand because any mishap in this aspect could ruin the overall appeal and even convey something that wasn’t intended in the first place.
At the same time, you can notice how they used the inverted triangle visual hierarchy principle for placing the CTA button with a contrasting color to increase its screen weight. You can, too, keep the Memorial Day email design minimalist as it won’t be a wise choice to clutter your message on this occasion in most cases. However, you can go for a different choice of email typeface colors depending on your template’s color palette since not every design would look as appealing as the below one with plain black fonts.
#2 The Atlantic
If you don’t intend to focus entirely on the sales part of the message or not at all push marketing offers, the below email from The Atlantic can be a good piece of inspiration. While it is a bit unusual to have long pieces of email copies these days, they put a beautiful, heartwarming poem that would stir the emotions of every subscriber while striking nostalgia for many. It goes without saying that the businesses dealing in the information distribution or content delivery sectors can benefit tremendously from The Atlantic’s way of conveying the message.
However, brands that aren’t dealing directly in the intellectual domain can too leverage this strategy to connect with their subscribers. They can easily replace the email sections below the poetry with products but make sure to emphasize the sales copy. This way, your Memorial Day email will maintain its emotional appeal while driving conversions for your business. Also, don’t forget to use ample whitespace like the below email example as it is at the core of such messages:
#3 Eight Sleep
In case you feel like going straightway towards the sender’s intent and talking about the Memorial Day sale in your email, it isn’t a wrong idea either. In the below example from Eight Sleep, we can see how they went to focus on the sale without losing touch with the Memorial Day occasion. This is a better option for brands who don’t necessarily want to pen down extensive email copies or don’t have the adequate resources to finesse such a topic.
What I also liked about their email was the impressive use of layout and whitespace to create a very clean interface despite the fact that there are plenty of items and two CTA buttons embedded in their email. On top of that, the background colors in their Memorial Day emails are a smart choice as they complement the overall styling of the email template. Thus, it can be considered a fine example of doing everything right and making the most out of an occasion, even if your brand has no direct correlation with it.
#4 simmons
Now that we have gone through three completely different approaches to Memorial Day emails let us have a look at this rather conventional email design from simmons. As you can see, they have used an eye-catching blue color in combination with yellow (and a little pink) to create this design with a complementing hero image. They have neither used extensive email copy nor inserted numerous images and CTA buttons.
It is a simple message that conveys the message around the sale, what the readers can expect after clicking the CTA and why they are receiving the message (Memorial Day.) While I don’t think this would be an artistic way to design your emails but a lot of brands who don’t have enough time or who weren’t originally planning to spend Memorial Day messages can surely benefit from this example:
#5 Tuft & Needle
In this example, Tuft & Needle came up with a rather marketing-focused email layout, and they didn’t emphasize mentioning the occasion in a high visibility area of their message. This is, of course, an extension to the strategy that we discussed in the Eight Sleep example, but it is noteworthy that they offered extra discounts to veterans, healthcare professionals, and first responders.
This is an important aspect to notice as completely omitting Memorial Day in your message and only focusing on sales can be perceived as slightly disrespectful and even immoral to many. Thus, you can too, use the same approach to send a balanced message to your subscribers on this Memorial Day:
Summing Up
Towards the end, I would like to emphasize the fact that all five examples of Memorial Day emails that we just discussed have a proper balance between all aspects. This includes email design, emphasis on Memorial Day through text and visuals, along the positioning of marketing pitches. I hope that this article helps you create stellar email campaigns for this Memorial Day.
Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email Conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on an email marketing blog.