Easter is a great time for brands to connect with subscribers through unique Easter-based campaigns, creative and content. There's scope for egg-squisite Easter-related wordplay, colourful visuals, cracking incentives and savvy ways to engage subscribers. This blog, updated for 2021 with examples from Easters-past, shares 15 of our favourite examples of Easter email marketing campaigns.

Before we get stuck in, mark your email marketing calendar: Easter is on Sunday 31st March in 2024. 

Lifestyle

This example from Philips Hue in April 2021, shows how you might weave Easter into your email campaigns, even if there isn't a relatable product. It's still possible to create a theme. I like how they keep it so simple and even manage to share ideas of how their lights can be used in Easter egg hunts! 

Brand: Philips Hue

Product promo

This was probably my favourite Easter email marketing creative in recent years. It shows in a simple animation, how the Easter gift finder works on their website. The creative approach is as we generally advise - simple, effective, usable. The button CTA text is direct and descriptive. This is as close to best practice as you'll see this Easter. Bravo, Rituals Cosmetics!

Brand: Rituals Cosmetics

Offers & Easter sale

There's no shame in using Easter as a time to drop into sale and DJI have done a great job of that with their latest email campaign for Easter. The way that DJI present copy on the page is so simple, a toddler can understand it. 

This is a really nice example of how technically complex products can be simply presented in campaigns. This information is enough. The website can do the rest. Remember, as an email marketer at Easter (or any other time of the year), your role is to drive relevant and engaged traffic - the product research and interest might start with the email, but you don't need to sell within the email or explain. Let your website handle that side of the buyer's journey.

Brand: DJI

Health, lifestyle & routine

Planet Organic, being a wellness brand, use this email as an opportunity to offer support and advice for those working at home through the pandemic. This is from their 2020 Easter email campaign, and it also shows how they've brought Easter product into the mix too. 

The only thing we'd really recommend with creative like this, is less copy - especially in that primary content block. Sometimes we might feel like there's a lot we want to say, but it's often the case that subscribers want to hear a lot less within the email. Less is almost always, more... Here, Planet Organic could have pulled almost all the text and added a clearer, more prominent call to action button for the Easter product range.

Brand: Planet Organic

COVID Easter changes

No one has it easter than Hotel Chocolat at Easter with email marketing - who doesn't want chocolate at Easter?! This email is from their 2020 campaign where they've had to adjust their business operations for COVID-19, they use this email to announce that they're open for business, show some product collections and a whopping 50% off at Hotel Chocolat for NHS and emergency workers. Nice work, Hotel Chocolat!

Brand: Hotel Chocolat

Visual impact

Brands from the food and beverage industry are in prime position to produce engaging creative for Easter emails. So, if you want to engage subscribers, enticing visuals are key to success during the Easter period.

Here's an example from Ask Italian that prompts curiosity ("Chocolate Pasta"), looks awesome, uses pun-filled copy ("don't gnocchi until you've tried it") and delivers a clear and attractive money-off seasonal incentive: 

Brand: Ask Italian

Subject line: Easter is just around the corner…and we have chocolate pasta!

The following email example from Christophers is more upmarket, but it again delivers strong visual impact, humorous and playful copywriting and Easter-related dining offers:

Brand: Christopher's

Subject line: Easter Egg-stravagance, Hot Cross French Toast & Almond Cigars

Meantime Brewing Company have used the hook of Easter to promote a seasonal discount for subscribers for their Chocolate Porter, proving that beer and chocolate do mix!

Cracking offers

Visual impact is vital, but so too is value. Once you've enticed subscribers visually, you need to make your offers just as tantalising. See Hotel Chocolat's dual offline/online 15% discount across the board for subscribers:

Brand: Hotel Chocolat

Subject line: Get 15% OFF this Easter with our early-bird offer!

And here, Jack Threads delivers some amusing visual email content, combined with a site-wide 25% off incentive to click through to their website:

Persuasion tactics

The following example from graze demonstrates effective use of persuation tactics, which give subscribers added incentives to open marketing emails and click on links.

This email contains copy that evokes urgency ("Last chance" and "Time's ch-icking") and taps into FOMO (fear of missing out), further aided by the visual impact of the countdown clock.

Brand: Graze

Subject line: Tick... tock! ⏰ £5 off

Seasonal events like Easter give brands more scope to be creative with their email marketing campaigns and email design. This is demonstrated well in the following Easter campaign from Topman. The subject line is intriguing, the design is vibrant, fun and eye-catching, whilst the Easter offer requires a little bit of initiative from the recipient – and some browsing of the Topman website! 

Brand: Topman

Subject line: How’d you like your eggs?

Personal touch

Adding the personal touch is crucial for standing out from the inbox and perking the attention of subscribers. It sounds simple, but personalisation mixed with visually engaging content is a powerful combination.

Check out this example from Curries Online – yes, Curries Online!

Leveraging customer emotions

There are plenty of clever ways to find relevant emotional ties with Easter for your brand, whatever products you have to offer. You don't always need pictures of bunnies, eggs or chicks, as a savvy bit of storytelling and out-of-the-box thinking can do the trick. 

The example below from eve leverages emotions by steering the copy towards the idea of having friends or family coming to stay over the holiday period and kitting people out with the appropriate gear/bedding for guestrooms – or makeshift ones:

What next?

These examples are just the start. Your next step is to start planning your campaign strategy, themes, creative and tactics such as send times, frequency and subject lines. Need some help with that? Speak to our team today.