25 responsive email templates for your holiday campaigns

Free holiday email templates for those special dates

We always try to come up with new ideas to help make your life easier during the holiday season. This year, we have 25 responsive email templates that you can customize to create beautiful email campaigns in a matter of minutes.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Sinch Mailjet’s easy-to-use Email Editor helps you design your own emails without the hassle of coding. But for those of us who are busy or not that creative, coming up with a concept or layout can be time-consuming and maybe even frustrating.

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s where our holiday templates come into play. Coded using our own open-source markup language, MJML, these email designs are ready for you to use and adapt to match your own brand.

To help you create the most stunning campaigns, check out our Ultimate guide to holiday emailing and start applying all the design tips we have prepared for you.

Halloween email template

The first big date to start the holidays is also the scariest – Halloween, on October 31.

If you’re as big of a fan of Halloween as we are, you’re going to love our first ever Halloween template for this holiday season. With US Halloween spending expected to reach $11.6 billion in 2024, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a campaign ready. So, why not combine this email template with our Halloween email marketing tips and best practices to find winning strategies to start the holiday season off right.

Nothing quite says Halloween like a haunted house out of The Amityville Horror. Not into ghosts? Don’t worry, you can change the header image to better fit your brand or Halloween theme – think pumpkins, Frankenstein, or other gothic horror image that might grab the reader’s attention.

Further down the template is a two-column layout with alternating image and text elements that creates a unique tiled effect. This template entices the reader to play visual hopscotch down the tiles, all the way to a prominent CTA at the bottom. This is perfect if you are selling product, services, or even a ticketed event that might benefit from some powerful storytelling.

But hey, who said Halloween had to be all doom and spooks? It’s all a great excuse to order your pumpkin spiced lattes, plum cakes, and other seasonal fall flavors. So, for those in the culinary business, we’ve got the template just for you!

Black Friday email templates

Next on our holiday calendar is Black Friday, which takes place on the last Friday of November – November 29, 2024. Bain estimates that from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, US retail sales could reach a record-breaking $75 billion in 2024. That’s why we’ve created the best email templates for your Black Friday campaigns. We all know that the focus on Black Friday and Cyber Monday is promoting special offers, so you don’t want to distract the customer with useless information. It’s best to get straight to the point, which is why the offer and calls-to-action (CTA) should stand out in the design.

With a sleek and enticing design, this Black Friday template uses a pop of color to draw the eye to the most important part of the email – your CTAs. In this template, there are many different CTAs for you to offer different products or promo codes.

Don’t underestimate the power of discounts – over 55% of respondents in our 2024 Email Engagement report said they subscribe to an email list to get regular or one-off discounts.

And let’s be honest – Black Friday is the perfect time to introduce promo codes into your holiday email marketing. In this brand-new design, we decided to include a prominent “cut-out” voucher element where you can feature exclusive codes for your most valued customers.

Our third template for this year’s shopping season is perfect for showing off smaller items. Using a PNG product image with a transparent background makes each item glow on the page. This way, you can hand-select some of your most popular items in your inventory and tastefully reveal the marked down price. This sleek, black-themed template is perfect for stylish brands, like fashion or retail. Once again, we included the promo code element to pave the way for higher conversions.

Another one of our popular Black Friday email templates is the Record Store. With all the competition for consumer attention, it doesn’t hurt to stand out from the crowd. This template achieves just that with its contrasting color scheme and focus on promotional product offerings (with a-plum(omb).

A terrible pun…but hey, at least the template makes up for it.

Anyone who’s been to Ikea recently will know Scandinavian design is simple, sleek, yet undeniably charming. Before you impulse buy another GRÖNKULLA, consider the aptly named Oslo for your next Black Friday sale.

Rocking a black and grey aesthetic, this professional-looking gift guide template is perfect for marketing to suave shoppers. With its three-column layout, you can increase your product selection in multiples of three to any length you strategically desire. This is a chance to try Mailjet’s Email Personalization capabilities, which will allow you to display different product selections based on your contact properties.

Cyber Monday email templates

Just a few days later is a relatively new shopping holiday, Cyber Monday, which takes place on the Monday following Black Friday – December 2, 2024. This year, BFCM sales are expected to increase 5% vs. 2023, reaching an unprecedented $75 billion. So, we’ve set out to build stunning templates to help drive your Cyber Monday click-through rates and conversions.

Our brand new Cyber Monday Sale holiday email template was designed very much with online stores in mind. With an elegant design and a favoring of images over text, it serves as an ideal product catalog to tempt buyers into making a holiday season purchase.

This email template keeps it nice and simple, and uses a combination of red and black to pack a punch. It uses straight lines and just one CTA to keep the reader’s attention focused. Perfect for Cyber Monday or product launches.

Another important thing is to be consistent with your brand so that when your subscribers open the email, they recognize you straightaway.

Tech geeks, assemble! We have a new Cyber Monday template to attract gadget lovers from all around. Inspired by PlayStation’s circle, triangle, square, and cross iconography, you can feature products in front of these groovy neon shapes. Contrast is what draws the eye closer, and this template’s calls to action are practically jumping off the screen.

Of course, Cyber Monday is not exclusive to just technology. That’s why our all-new template uses lighter elements to welcome in a wider range of themes. We regularly talk about the power of FOMO in email campaigns to boost conversions. Well, this template features a large intro section with confetti to celebrate and highlight a limited time sale. But be warned – our template is only available for a few more days…just kidding!

Small Business Saturday email templates

Hey, don’t forget the little guy!

After a weekend trampling each other for a cheaper flatscreen at superstores, we often forget about the local shop around the corner – those family-owned businesses that have been there long before the Targets and Walmarts of this world muscled in. And, because of our flatscreen fever, they have suffered.

This is why back in 2010, American Express started the Small Business Saturday initiative. Initially, it was created as a response to the Great Recession, to raise awareness of the importance of small businesses in local communities and to stimulate economic activity during the holiday shopping season.

Now, Small Business Saturday is officially cosponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and takes place on the Saturday following Thanksgiving (November 30).

So, if you’re a small business owner, we’ve got some beautifully designed templates for you to use.

A simple, easy-to-read holiday email template that gets straight to the point. Our WWZ & CO email template features a Sale ends tonight! Heading at the top of the template that is great to create a sense urgency.  This is an effective tactic that leans into that fear of missing out (the famous FOMO) and motivates recipients to take immediate action, resulting in increased conversions and sales during this short holiday period.

Our Casie and Kate email template is perfect for ecommerce stores looking to celebrate Small Business Saturday. The top section draws readers’ attention to a key product (in this case, Dress of the Month) before moving down into two subsections (Latest Design and More Sales). Of course, all sections can be easily edited and customized to fit your top offers.

It doesn’t overload recipients with too much information when opening the email, but still offers enough choice to hopefully get people to take action.

Christmas and Happy Holidays email templates

The biggest shopping event of the year is of course Christmas, which falls on December 25, but there are other cultural holidays around this date, such as Hanukkah (December 18-26) and Kwanzaa (December 26-January 1). Everybody is looking to buy presents for their loved ones, so marketers cannot afford to miss this one.

During Christmas and these other cultural holidays, the focus is still on buying, but it is different from hunting for a bargain on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our templates are designed to address the emotional aspects of a holiday centered around togetherness.

Your Christmas campaigns need to give your subscribers a broad stroke selection of what you offer. You want to catch the reader’s attention with something that will make the reader think, “Oh, that would be perfect for [insert loved one here].”

When thinking of Christmas (especially those of you in the UK), it’s likely a Terry’s Chocolate Orange or box of Cadbury’s Heroes comes to mind. Well, that certainly seems to be the case for our design team, who have whipped together this delicious looking cocoa-themed template for you.

Remember, while chocolate may be the winner here, all our templates are completely customizable.

If you are looking to hit the peaks this Winter and are after something a little more sporty, you’ll like the new Let It Snow template we’ve just added to the Mailjet app. For lovers of skiing and winter sports,  this one certainly won't leave any of your subscribers out in the cold.

Simple and easy to navigate; this beautiful Christmas email template lets you share the holiday spirit (with cute Christmas trees, Santas, and snowflakes…) while helping your customers with their Christmas gifts. You have ample room to share your products with customers, or just send them a nice e-Christmas card for the holiday season.

Christmas is one of those rare occasions where you can drop the hard sell in favor of some business-to-customer appreciation. As workplaces begin to wind down, sending a seasonal greeting card is a powerful form of brand marketing – unless your effort is the equivalent of buying a gas station gift last minute!

That’s why we designed this totally new e-card template, so you can say thank you to everyone who supported you this year. The soft illustrated Christmas ornaments set the stage for a short message below, signed by the team or CEO. Simple is effective here – all we really want is to get the message across. The call-to-action at the bottom provides the perfect opportunity to drive people to some heartwarming content, like a Christmas greetings video from your team or a culture piece in your blog.

Sincerely, the Sinch Mailjet team.

Holiday Sale email template

As email marketing experts, it can be difficult to find responsive email templates that also incorporate vertical images. When we go to test an email with irregular images, it can feel like throwing a dart at a dartboard blindfolded. And with 59% of emails opened on mobile devices, we can’t afford to get this wrong.

But so many email templates out there don’t accommodate vertical images to feature products like clothing, watches, or lamps. Oh, wait a second – we made one!

Yes, our brand-new Holiday Sale template puts imagery at the forefront of your campaign. But this isn’t just for fashion gurus – it’s for all ecommerce retailers who want to visually wow their customers. A picture is worth a thousand words, so choose this template if you want less chit-chat and more color.

“Year in review” email template

There’s no better time than December to reflect on your progress and recognize your accomplishments. Your company has no doubt racked up a few memorable stories too, and a newsletter is the best way to share them.

And while we honor the past, let’s also get excited about our future developments. Like Frank Sinatra, your subscribers should know “the best is yet to come”. If only we had a responsive email template where we could separate and feature both past and future stories…

Well, you’re in luck – Mailjet’s “Year in review” newsletter template features text blocks that are broken up and formatted with a category, header, and CTA to help the reader scan over the content and find the stories that interest them. A “More Highlights” section is at the footer, perfect for getting your audience pumped for developments in the new year. The template uses white space generously to create an easy reading experience and demonstrates the use of beautiful fonts to convey your brand’s style.

Happy New Year email template

As we close off the year, there’s a lot of optimism and New Year resolutions being made. Before all these expectations fall apart, there’s a golden window of opportunity for a brand to bask in this warm glow of goodwill and positive thinking.

You want to build brand loyalty by letting your customers know that you think about them, that you cherish them, and you wish them all the best for the coming year.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the only emails that bring value to your business are promotional ones. Happy New Year emails, such as our 2024 template above, show them you really care. Wishing your customers a peaceful and productive new year has never been so easy!

You can also take the time to hint at what might be coming. Are there any big updates you want to let your readers know about or New Year’s events you want to invite people to? You can use this email example to hint at them, or maybe even announce them!

Speaking of events, you can also take advantage of our new New year’s Eve template to help promote any upcoming festive events you may have. And why not make them even more fun by including some animated content? Always remember that customers want to feel close to the brands.

More email templates to use this holiday season

So, you’ve seen 22 of our holiday email templates – but wait, there’s more! We have a whole library of responsive email templates for your marketing campaigns available right now within the Mailjet app.

To make things easy, we have hand-selected three more templates that are perfect for promoting your seasonal products, sharing gift ideas, or providing winter fashion tips. Let’s take a look:

Gift guide email template

If you’re planning to send out a campaign promoting gift ideas in your ecommerce store, check out our template – Step. Its sleek design is perfect for highlighting your seasonal offers and gift ideas. Enhance the Christmas feeling by including a festive picture at the top, and keep the email clean and simple, ensuring your products shine.

It’s also important to use high quality pictures, but make sure these are not too large, as they might not display correctly on all devices. Choose a clear headline that describes the content and entices the reader to open your email, like “Our special Christmas products“.

And don’t forget: even if your holiday campaign relates to Christmas, it still needs to reflect your company’s brand identity.

Seasonal products email template

Mulled wine for lunch, anyone? Elegant, diverse, and utterly alluring – our Dutch Wine template is a perfect way to inspire your customers.

The format is 1 : 2 : 3, which means it starts with an eye-catching hero image, moves onto two medium images, and finishes with three smaller images. These three column sections at the bottom are responsive and could be duplicated to show six, nine, or twelve products – something for everyone.

Right, let’s get that wine on the stove!

Winter fashion email template

“You look cute in that outfit” is the kind of compliment we want going into the new year. Showcase your winter clothing selection with the window-shopping template – Fireside.

This template will hopefully elicit a “love at first sight” feeling before they even reach your website. For bonus points, use segmentation and dynamic content to ensure your winter fashion campaign speaks to each and every one of your contacts.

Start designing your campaigns

As we’ve already said, our aim is to make life easier for all of us marketers. Our templates do exactly that.

The best thing about using these templates is that it only takes minutes to adapt and edit them in Mailjet’s Email Editor to match your needs. Try them out or experiment with some of our other options by visiting our template gallery. The only thing you need is to have access to your Sinch Mailjet account or create a free account.

Here’s how you can start using these templates now:

1. Go to mailjet.com. 

2. At the top right, click “Login” or “Get Started” to create a free account.

3. On the top menu, click “Templates” and then choose “My Marketing Templates”

4. Hit the green button on the right – “Create a new template”.

5. Select “Using a template from gallery”. This will open our template gallery.

Voilà – all of the holiday templates featured on the post are ready to be customized in just a few minutes. All in a day’s work.

Edit any of the templates featured here in Mailjet’s Email Editor.

We hope that you love our templates as much as we do and that they will help your email campaigns make a splash in the holiday inbox. Just don’t forget the importance of the subject lines you use, because they will make a huge impact on your open rates.

If you need any more inspiration and marketing tips to build your Holiday campaigns, you can find everything you need in our Ultimate guide to holiday email.