Spring is almost here and it’s another great opportunity to re-engage and connect with your customers. This new season is not relevant only for shoe and clothing brands, as many people think. Every niche can use effective spring email campaigns to increase sales.

In this article, I’ll help you find inspiring ideas for this season’s email campaigns and explain how to implement them. Just follow popular spring themes and use your creativity.

So let’s start with the springtime newsletter ideas!

#1 Idea: Winter Clearance

Throw a sale for remaining winter items if you haven’t done that already. You can get some extra money and room for new arrivals. Don’t forget to emphasize the winter or spring sale emails in your email subject line and preheader while writing your copy.

If you’re an eCommerce business, there’s a chance you have plenty of winter items at your store. Don’t sell every one of them, choose the most popular ones. Take a closer look at high quality but pricey goods: it seems their time has just come.

How do you find those? You may get this information from your sales department as they know preferences of your target audience, pros and cons of your products, and refusal reasons. Also, you can estimate your website users’ behavior in Google Analytics and understand which items are most like to get sold.

#2 Idea: International Women’s Day

This day is especially important for those who support women’s rights and gender equality. It’s a nice occasion to send a supportive or caring email showing you share their views.

For a clothing store, this might mean a specially selected collection, including dresses, trousers, t-shirts, and suits that emphasize the freedom of choice. A bookstore may use the opportunity to share some helpful business tutorials or famous women biographies.

#3 Idea: Pi Day

Pi Day is really popular among those who love Maths. It is celebrated on the 14th of March at 1:59:26 to honor the constant.

Seems like as a nice reason for an email campaign, right? Be creative and offer a double (or triple) Pi to your subscribers. It won’t cost you that much, and can definitely help you make more.

#4 Idea: World Sleep Day

Everybody likes to sleep in their comfortable warm beds. Remind your subscribers of those fabulous moments. Make up a super cozy email to congratulate your contacts on the 16th of March.

If you want to go the extra mile, make sure your campaign is related to the holiday. Offer them a pajama/pillow/blankets/bed linen package with a discount, or encourage them to buy some relaxing aromatic candles, blindfold, or even sleeping pills (if you’re a pharmacy, of course :)).

#5 Idea: St. Patrick’s Day

Many parts of the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (17th of March) along with Ireland – which is one of the reasons it becomes more and more commercial each year. Last year, 52.3% of Americans celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and spent $5.3B on it.

It feels crazy: people throw and attend parties and wear green all day. Stores sell emerald color goods: clothes, decoration, toys. They even serve green beer in pubs!

Don’t miss the chance to sell more even if you sell software! Send fresh green emails with congratulations and the holiday’s special offer to your non-customer list.

#6 Idea: International Client’s Day

For entrepreneurs, the primary goal of this holiday is to attract new clients and encourage regular ones.

Send a thanks-for-being-with-us message to your subscribers and give them some tiny presents on the 19th of March. It can be a discount, a gift card or a partner bundle.

Don’t forget to promote your top-selling product or service. To find one, take a look at your sales that occurred early in March or your last year’s spring sales biggest hits.

To save time and get the data on your products or features that caught the most interest from your website visitors, you can use an SEO tool like Serpstat.

Enter your domain in Serpstat search box and go to Website Analysis > Domain Analysis > SEO Research > Top pages.

There you’ll see a report listing the most popular pages of your website and, therefore, the points of the biggest interest for your audience. Use them to generate more sales from both new and existing customers.

#7 Idea: The Very Day of Spring

Though the calendar says spring officially begins March 1st, there’s another highly important day – the Spring Equinox.

On this day you can congratulate your users on the beginning of the “real” spring and send them the list of the most spring-like offers.

There’s also a strange but funny tradition on this day which you can use as another idea for your email campaign – an Egg Stand. It is said that due to the sun’s equidistant position you can actually make an egg balance on its… head?

Find out if it’s true together with your potential and existing customers on social media. Launch a contest on Twitter or Instagram and encourage them to share their videos of Egg Stand with a branded hashtag. You can use their profile data to reach out later and engage them in messenger nurturing.

It may not bring you lots of new sales, but will definitely improve your brand visibility and create an image of a business that can have fun with you.

#8 Idea: April Fools’ Day and Easter

In 2018 these 2 holidays occur on the same day, April 1st. You can either segment your audience according to their “holiday priority” and congratulate them differently or just pick one of them and go with it.

Speaking of April Fools’ Day, feel free to send jokes and pranks to your readers but make sure they’re appropriate. Take time to work on your spring email template design; it should complement the whole idea of the email so it’s the perfect time for funny images, gifs and memes adapted to your brand message and sent along.

As for Easter, it’s a different kind of joy for those who celebrate it. Make sure it doesn’t resemble Fools’ Day in any way, but feel free to play with some of the most related symbols like bunnies, eggs, gift baskets etc. Unless you’re a gift shop, a toy store or a decoration artist, keep in mind that playing on someone’s emotions to sell on this day might not be the best option.

Still, related businesses such as kids or grocery stores can bring additional value to their customers creating special Easter baskets with different product sets for every taste.

That could make a nice present or a big help for busy families. Make sure you send your special offer emails in advance so they have enough time to make the purchase. Free shipping would also be a great bonus.

#9 Idea: Top Seasonal Trends

Many people want to be edgy and appreciate some trendy ready-made sets. Let them have it, and you’ll get something in return.

Create specific sets or bundles related to seasonal trends. This way you’ll bring value to your subscribers and promote your products or share the power of knowledge they will benefit from. Put together some most valuable pieces of content, hold a webinar, start a course that would help them gain new skills and keep up with their industry trends.

There’s a lot of ways to find out what’s the hottest change your customers are willing to embrace. The easiest (but also the longest) way is to perform a regular Google search, read loads of articles and choose what’s right for you. You can also explore Google Trends.

But if you want to save time, I’d suggest using SEO tools to find the most popular articles on this topic. Type the name of your product or industry plus ‘spring trends’ in the Serpstat search box and go to Keyword Research > SEO Research > Top Pages.

Go over the results and see what your audience is likely to go crazy about this spring and then find the best way to use it for mutual benefit.

#10 Idea: Earth Day

This day (April, 22nd) is important to everyone who cares about the environment, planet and life itself. It’s a good reason to support those who share these values and encourage others to join in.

Start a social media challenge and ask your audience to share what they’ve done for the planet today with a specific branded hashtag. Don’t sell anything, just be with them and take part yourself if you want.

#11 Idea: Mother’s Day

This holiday means a lot for most of us and it’s a perfect moment to help your customers express the gratitude, fondness and love to their moms.

Make sure your 13th of May email is about motherly love, tenderness, care. Feel free to promote a special offer if appropriate, but don’t push it. Simply remind your subscribers of how important this day is. And don’t forget to call your mom.

General Tips for Emails You’ll Be Sending

Whether you’re sending an outbound campaign or a newsletter, don’t forget about the basic rules:

  • Write in simple and polite manner;
  • Use personalization;
  • Include a call to action;
  • Mention your product or service, but don’t be annoying;
  • Bring value to your subscribers;
  • Pay attention to email design and formatting;
  • Make sure all your campaigns are aligned with your brand image;
  • Automate routine tasks to save time and focus on prospects.

Summary

While spring is apparently full of causes for celebration, not every one of them should become a trigger to sales prospecting. Be creative, know when to sell and when to share, choose the right time for each campaign and always make sure it’s relevant. Follow the basic rules of outbound and inbound emails and see how it pays off.

 

Inna Yatsyna
Content Marketing Specialist at Serpstat