How to Plan & Write Seasonal Sales Emails for Ecommerce that Bring in Bank (with examples)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Black Friday, Christmas, Fourth of July, Honda Days, Arbor Day, and even…

There’s no shortage of holidays and seasons to spark ideas for sales and boost your revenue.

But, the question is: Are you going about it the right way? Or are you just plastering in a HOLIDAY + SALE + 10% OFF sticker on emails and calling it a day?

I spent the first half of this year writing the campaign emails for a large e-commerce company that sells cosmeceuticals (cosmetics + pharmaceuticals, for the non- skincare lovers), helping them reach one of their (if not the) largest sales ever using email.

In this post, I’ll be revealing how we accomplished this:

Graph of Open Rate % (above) and Campaign revenue (below) over 5 months of sales emails

The revenue valleys can be explained as post-holiday fatigue and a downplay of sales pushes in May to give the audience a breather before the summer sale (hello sunscreen season!). Luckily, we can still see a steady increase in the users’ engagement (open rate) and, with the exception of February (I’m clutching my wallet during this month too!). an increase in revenue.

So what’s that’s beautiful peak around March/April? You guessed it: the Spring Sale. Let’s dive right into how you can create your own e-commerce emails for Springtime and what made this case so successful.

Plan ahead of schedule

You shouldn’t wait until Groundhog Day reminds you that you should be gearing up for Spring.

Because, as they say: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

A wicked awesome sale takes time and you’ll want to bless your creative team (ahem! your copywriter!) with time to brainstorm concepts that marry well with the offer (more on this later).

This way, you can also tease your audience with what’s to come; or at the very least, butter them up! I teased with lots of “Spring is on the way” messaging in the emails that proceeded the sale.

In addition to, well, an entire season, here are some topics you can discuss around that time of year:

• March 8: International Women’s Day

• March 17: St. Patrick’s Day

• March 20: First Day of Spring

• March 31: First Day of Passover

• April 1: Fool’s Day & Easter

• April 22: Earth Day

Have an enticing offer and make it pop

Much like buyers expect deep discounts on Black Friday and beautifully wrapped gift boxes come Christmastime, your audience may expect a certain type of offer for Spring such as a sitewide sale or winter clearance. 

Looking at benchmarks against competitors, we saw the majority of skincare brands used the term “Spring Sale” around this time of year. In this case, we decided: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

But you best believe I took creative license with the rest of the campaign copy. And I’ll let you in on a secret:

Much of a copywriter’s job is Googling "things like “Spring concepts,” “things that happen in Spring,” “Spring idioms.”

I nixed the idea of Spring cleaning since it evoked the feeling of getting rid of things; when we wanted people to buy more items.

So I played on the idea of “Spring Fever” and how one might want to totally revamp their life and, in the case of skincare, refresh their skincare routine.

This messaging also matched the amazing offer, allowing users to go wild and buy an entirely new routine (lifting the AOV) while every item is discounted.

Be consistent across all channelS

Now that there’s a concept in play that matches the offer and design, it’s time to gear up to get it across all channels such as email (duh!), the web, social media, or wherever else you are.

For example, it’s typical for e-commerce sales to be placed in at least two additional places on the web.

Here’s what I wrote:

Announcement bar:

Excited for Spring? Go crazy with our HUGE Spring Sale - up to 20% off sitewide. Discover →

Home page banner copy:

Spring Sale: Time to build the fresh, revitalized skincare routine of your dreams. Use code: SPRINGFEVER and save big*.

the 4 Spring emails that won big

Alright, let’s take a look at the four Spring sale e-commerce emails that helped make 60k+ in sales.

Email #1: Open Sale

SB: SPRING SALE ✨ Get up to 20% off sitewide

Email #2: Content

SB: Take a dive into dewy spring skin 🤩

Email #3: Content

SB: Up to 20% off your favorite skin saviors

Email #4: Last Call

SB: Our Spring Sale is ending soon! ✨