22 Gift Guide Email Examples to Help You Craft Your Own

Gift guide email examples for different personalities

Finding the perfect gift for partners, friends, family, and acquaintances can feel like a real challenge — after all, there’s no universal gift that fits every personality.

By sending gift guides curated for specific personalities, you can simplify this process for your customers, helping them choose gifts with confidence.

Consider grouping your products by common personalities or pain points, making it even easier to find thoughtful, relevant gifts that truly resonate with each recipient.

Here’s an example from The Sill:

With this email, they’re targeting three different customer personas:

• Folks who want to have some greenery in their space, but don’t have time or skill to take care of the plants
• Pet owners who worry that their furry friends will damage the plants
• Those looking for large plants whose purpose is more than just greenery

Sill’s customers can then group their loved ones into one of these three categories, they have a few ideas of plants they could give them.

On the other side, Hello Adorn grouped its products based on customers’ styles:

Note how thoughtfully the pieces are curated in this gift guide newsletter:

• The sentimental group presents timeless, elegant pieces
• The Gen Z-ers set presents more fun, playful designs
• The newbies group contains simple pieces for folks who don’t wear jewelry often

These two examples showed us how to present products through several different categories. But you can also choose to send out one personality category per gift guide.

Here’s an example of Monos’ gift guide email featuring gift ideas for frequent travelers:

In a similar manner, Girlfriend Collective highlighted gift ideas for the fit friends:

Gift guides for treating yourself

A different, creative approach to gift guides is to remind your subscribers that they can also buy a gift for themselves.

This strategy ties in well with the self-care movement, and if your products align with this category, it could work well for you, too.

Since you know how your subscribers have been engaging with your emails, you can suggest products they’re likely to be interested in.

Take inspiration from Bombas and their gift guide for treating yourself:

Gift guide examples with the price range

The holiday season calls for buying a ton of gifts. And if your customers aren’t careful with their budgets, they could easily overspend.

That’s why a gift guide that groups gifts into price ranges could work very well.

When your subscribers click on a link in your email campaign, they won’t be unpleasantly surprised with gifts that are completely outside of their budget.

There are several ways to execute this campaign and decide on price ranges.

For example, you can segment customers based on their average purchase spend and send out different price ranges to each group.

Candle Delirium sent out gift ideas that cost under $25:

Mejuri, a jewelry brand, used a similar approach and sent out a gift newsletter promoting gifts under $150.

Alternatively – and that’s the most common approach – you can send multiple price ranges in a single email, like Posh Puppy Boutique did in the example below.

Note how Posh Puppy cleverly included “Luxe gifts” first for those customers who don’t worry about their holiday gift budget.

Gift guide emails for buying gifts for kids

Creating products for kids? Consider grouping the gifts by the kids’ age or personalities.

Merriam-Webster grouped their books based on kids’ personalities: game lovers and curious kids.

KiwiCo creatively included both, the age and personality. The brand showcased gifts by age group and then provided three more categories to help subscribers find the right gift.

Gift guide emails for different holidays

Now, let’s have a look at thematic gift guides for specific holidays and occasions. We’ll cover ideas for some of the most popular holidays and occasions. And you can choose a few that work best for your brand and industry.

Father’s Day gift guides

In the U.S., Father’s Day falls on the third Sunday of June. This holiday is all about showing appreciation for the father figures in our lives. But finding the right gifts year after year can be challenging.

By sending out a timely email with ideas, you can help your subscribers avoid the stress of trying to find the right gift at the last minute.

Let’s look at some examples.

The first one is coming from Embella Jewelry:

They’ve opted for a simple email that highlights a few best-selling jewelry pieces for men.

Uniqlo chose a slightly different strategy:

First, they highlighted the eGIFT card and listed a couple of their timeless clothing items below. This is a smart option for clothing brands. Your customers probably know that the person they’re buying a gift for likes your brand, but they may be unsure about what style or size to get.

In our third example, Public Goods chose to focus on the self-care angle, giving a few wellness and cosmetics product gift ideas for dads.

Mother’s Day gift guides

Similarly, Mother’s Day is the perfect occasion to acknowledge mother figures in our lives. But what kind of a gift is good enough to show love and appreciation?

A thoughtful gift guide can help answer that question.

Sending out a Mother’s Day gift guide 3-4 weeks before the holiday will help your customers pick the right gift for their loved ones. Hopefully in your online shop.

Let’s see some great examples of Mother’s Day emails.

Garmentory created an interactive infographic showing some of their products suitable for moms:

Gorjana, a jewelry brand, tied product images with customer quotes about what each gift symbolizes for them and their moms.

Another jewelry brand, James Michelle, grouped products into three different price ranges making it easy for customers to find the item that fits their budgets.

Need more inspiration? Here are 7 engaging Mother’s Day email ideas for jewelry brands.

Valentine’s Day gift guide email examples

Valentine’s Day is all about celebrating love. Most of the associations with this holiday are romantic. But that isn’t the only way you can promote your gift guides.

You can encourage your customers to spread the love — to their significant others, friends, family, and pets – or inspire them to practice self-love.

The first example on our list is from the jewelry brand, Oradina, directed toward those buying their female significant other a gift.

The email includes a special V-day discount code and groups products by price.

Another jewelry brand, Bryan Anthonys, uses Valentine’s Day to send out a gift guide that suggests buying your best friend a V-day gift.

General holiday gift guide email examples

Winter brings the largest sequence of holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.

Sometimes, it makes more sense to craft a single holiday email campaign promoting your gift guide throughout the entire season instead of creating separate gift guides for each holiday.

That’s exactly what Allure did:

Their general holiday email builds off on different strategies we’ve explored earlier in the article — they present their key product categories but connect them to personalities (e.g. “Skincare Enthusiast”). Also, Allure features one price-based category for those shopping on a budget.

This way, they’re covering multiple different buyer personas with one email.

Mejuri did something similar in their gift guide newsletter.

They sent out a gift guide with links to key categories their customers look for during the holiday season.

Alternatively, you can follow the example of Public Goods, highlighting some of their most popular holiday products without featuring too many categories.

Wedding gift guide email example

Buying the right wedding gift every time can be challenging. When you’re attending a close person’s wedding, you’ll be wondering what kind of a gift is significant enough for one of the most important days in their life.

And sometimes you may get invited to a wedding of a couple you don’t know that well – which creates even more confusion about choosing the right gift.

Your audience is also facing these challenges. And you can make it easier for them by sending a wedding gift guide.

Here’s how Garmentory did that:

Tying personalities with wedding gifts makes choosing the present effortless.

Plus, the email copy highlights the key pain point of buying a wedding gift: buying something the couple actually wants and needs.

The best timing for sending this email? That will depend on the country. For example, in the US, the most popular wedding months are typically June and September. Naturally, you want to send the guide at least 3-4 weeks before the beginning of those months.

Subject lines for gift guide emails

When you start crafting your email, steal some of our holiday gift guide subject lines or use an email subject line generator to create variations that match your brand's voice.

What to include in a gift guide newsletter

We’ve shown you 22 examples of gift guide emails. But instead of going through all of them to find common sections, you can easily come back to the end of this article for a checklist of what to include.

Here it goes.

Clear subject line

Make it clear what your email is about and encourage readers to open it.

Engaging hero image

Use a high-quality image that reflects the mood of the holiday. For additional visual impact, consider adding animated elements — for instance, you can generate an image slideshow GIF to showcase multiple products, or create a scrolling text GIF or countdown timer to highlight urgency.

Gift groups or categories

Choose your approach (by personality, price, holiday, etc.) and make it easy for readers to access each category.

Product highlights

Don’t just focus on categories. Make sure to feature some of your key holiday products. Use clickale product cards to make it easy for customers to start shopping from their inboxes.

A clear call-to-action (CTA)

Make it clear what you want customers to do (read the gift guide, pick a featured product), and then make it easy. Avoid adding different CTAs – it’s confusing for the customers and may lead to a lower email click-through rate.

Engagement elements

These can be special discount codes, free shipping for a limited amount of time, countdown timers, gift card options, and more.

Shipping/delivery information

Don’t forget to note special shipping terms you may have during busy holiday seasons, especially if they’re vastly different from your usual terms.

Gift guide email timeline: when to send

Below, we’ve prepared a cheat sheet to help you plan your email campaign calendar. It offers suggestions for when to start the campaigns for each holiday, provides cadence examples and tips.

General Winter Holidays (Christmas, New Year)

Start email campaign — late October or early November

Teaser email — late October

Main gift guide email — mid-November

Shipping-cutoff reminder — 7–10 days before your deadline

Last-chance/digital gift card — 3-5 days before the holiday

Valentine’s Day

Start email campaign – mid-January

Main gift guide email – late January

Shipping-cutoff reminder – 1-week before your deadline

Day-of eGift / “pickup available” – 1 day before the holiday

Mother’s Day (U.S.)

Start email campaign – early–mid April

Teaser email – early April

Main gift guide email – mid-April

Shipping-cutoff reminder – 1-week before your deadline

Last-minute eGift – 1-3 days before the holiday

Father’s Day (U.S.)

Start email campaign – late May–early June

Teaser email – late May

Main gift guide email – early June

Shipping-cutoff reminder – 1-week before your deadline

Last-minute eGift – 1-3 days before the holiday

Wedding Season (U.S.)

Start email campaign – 4–6 weeks before peak months (May–Sept; often strongest in June & Sept)

Seasonal teaser email – April

Main gift guide email – early May

Pro tip: Plan around your shipping cutoffs. Publish the guide 4–6 weeks ahead to capture planners, then run 1–2 reminders (shipping cutoff + last-chance/eGift). If you offer digital gift cards, highlight them in the final send.

Time to start working on your gift guide emails

The busiest shopping months are approaching quickly, so don’t delay planning your gift guide campaigns. By starting now, you’ll ensure great performance of your emails and maximize the revenue potential of your online business.