5 Easter Campaigns To Inspire Email Marketers

The Easter holiday presents an eggstraordinary (yeah, we went there) opportunity for email marketers for a number of reasons:

• The travel peak presents opportunities to take advantage of people having time off and school holidays
• High-street opening hours are reduced due to bank holidays, meaning retailers must look to recuperate offline losses with online sales
• People spend more time at home eating Easter eggs, which is great news for supermarkets and chocolatiers, but also means more people are reading email on multiple devices

So email campaigns must do a number of things to maximise the increased opportunity:

• Mobile optimisation
  It is even more vital than ever that emails are optimised for mobile devices so that people can mutli-screen at home or pick up emails when traveling
• Strong CTAs
  Content and call to actions will work best when focused on offers and sales, so recipients know they are getting something time-bound
• Targeting and personalisation
  Around Easter, use all the info you have on your recipients to make extra emails relevant to their holiday activity

We’ve selected a few examples to show exactly what we mean by an effective Easter email marketing campaign:

Hotel Chocolat: Your Easter Adventure Starts Here
Hotel Chocolat: Don’t forget your free gift

Hotel Chocolat has been hitting chocolate fiends with some mouth-watering campaigns. Just check out the huge chocolate egg filled with luxurious goodies. The first email you see is to promote the launch of a new website, deliberately timed to coincide with the Easter rush. This is followed up with a simple ‘Don’t forget your free gift’ email, offering recipients an exclusive offer.

Expedia: Hello sunshine! Book your Easter break by 4th March

Expedia’s campaign is all about simplicity. The key message is communicated immediately: ‘Hello sunshine! Book your Easter break by 4th March’. Giving recipients a deadline and a tempting offer is what makes this campaign.

Expedia provides a voucher code and an unequivocal CTA – ‘book now’. It couldn’t be any simpler.

Premier Inn: Still going cheep!

Premier Inn has used a couple of old tricks in its campaign to drag in the Easter holiday punters. There are pictures of cute chicks and some tasteful Easter puns; ‘Still going cheep!’ is probably the highlight of the bunch.

The offer of rooms for £29 a night is repeated in two loud CTAs. Unlike Expedia, Premier Inn does not set a deadline but urges recipients to act as soon as possible.

 

Travelodge: Easter early bird special. Get cracking!

Travelodge also went for the ‘cute chicks’ approach. What really makes this email work is the subject line: ‘Early birds get £19 rooms for Easter!’ Without opening the email, we know what it’s telling us.

The Premier Inn takes a similar approach but ‘Avoid egg on your face – book an Easter room before it’s too late’ is a little too wordy. Always remember, it doesn’t matter how good your email is if no one is going to read it.

easyJet – EARLY BIRD

Easyjet’s easyJet’s campaign goes with the same ‘Early Bird’ message, looking to tempt to recipients into buying immediately. However, the Easter holiday theme isn’t truly capitalised on except for a CTA in the main body of the email.

What we do love is the loud and clear ‘Deals’ column showing simple product summaries, prices and CTAs. easyJet has also done a great job of utilising responsive design in this email, with elements disappearing and rejigging nicely when viewed on a smaller screen.

We’d love to hear what your favourite Easter email is out of these. Or, if you’ve received an email that you think we’ve overlooked, tell us about it below!