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Holiday gift shopping can be overwhelming — and that’s exactly why your customers need a little inspiration.
Gift guide emails can become the perfect solution, offering curated ideas that make gift selection a breeze. But simply sending out a product list isn’t enough; it’s all about the right presentation.
In this article, we’ll show you captivating gift guide email examples that are not only helpful but also tailored to customers’ unique needs.
Explore 22 creative examples highlighting gifts by personality, budget, and occasion, and get ready to inspire holiday shopping like never before!
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
When you start crafting your email, steal some of our holiday gift guide subject lines:
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 your brand’s style and the mood of the holiday or the theme of your gift guide.
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.
The holiday season is just around the corner, 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.
Aleksandra Beka is a freelance content consultant for SaaS brands with over 5 years of in-house marketing experience. She specializes in working with MarTech brands and helping them grow their audiences through educational and informative articles.
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