5 Halloween Email Campaign Examples to Spark Your Inspiration

Email marketers care about their results all year round, but during the fourth quarter, it’s all hands on deck. Halloween email campaigns have tremendous potential. Alex Souchoroukof of Moosend gives you some actionable insights and shares 5 Halloween email campaign examples to inspire you.

The Halloween season is around the corner. So it’s time to gather all the inspiration we can to craft the best email campaigns. Halloween is not only the ideal occasion for sending entertaining emails that your email list will love, but it may also result in a massive increase in sales.

Why send a Halloween email campaign

The following chart highlights this increase in expenditure in the United States from 2005 to 2022, which is significantly higher each year.

Now, it’s not just about carving pumpkins or “trick or treating” but also about a massive uptick in sales for brick-and-mortar stores and online businesses. 

Email campaign fundamentals to hallo-win your subscribers

One of the best tactics to grab a customer’s attention is to send out a clever Halloween email campaign. 

But before we find inspiration from the biggest brands out there, we want to review the fundamentals again to ensure your email campaigns are optimized for conversions.

Give your products a spooky spin

Halloween-related marketing initiatives don’t always involve selling pumpkins, party goods, or costumes. Say you operate a restaurant. To increase sales, a unique Halloween email campaign can highlight the “spooky dishes for your Halloween table.”

Additionally, the subject line should have a Halloween-related theme, such as “Create the ideal environment for your frightening events.” Halloween emails don’t have to be a challenge. Adding some Halloween-themed photos and a supporting copy is all you need to succeed during this spooky event. 

Be creative with your email subject lines

Subject lines are crucial if you want to create high-converting email campaigns. It’s the first impression, and making them as spooky as possible is the ideal approach for Halloween.

Play around with the subject lines of your emails. Instead of using the standard text, it’s a fantastic chance to include a few Halloween emojis. Dare to add some pumpkins and spider webs, consider what draws attention, and begin developing your plan.

If you need more inspiration for your Halloween-themed subject lines, you can always check what big brands do and recreate some of them using your brand’s voice. 

Make your Halloween email campaign a personalized experience

The greatest method to create a more personalized email is through segmentation. Halloween has specific targeting criteria because it is observed differently depending on the age group. That means that different age groups will have varied needs for purchases.

Halloween was intended for children in the past, although this has changed significantly in recent years. eCommerce sellers now cater to both younger generations and adults.

It can be as simple as personalizing the greeting with a first name or recommending specific products based on past behavior on your website. Personalization is vital for increasing conversions, and using this tactic during Halloween can drastically improve your ROI.

To initiate this process, you can always choose a personalized lead magnet to encourage your potential customers to enter your email sales funnel.

Related: How to Create A Winning Valentine’s Day Campaign

Embed upselling & cross-selling strategies

Make the most of Halloween by encouraging your customers to think about related products. To raise your average cart value at this time, try providing more complimentary products to your clients and offering holiday package specials. 

Upselling and cross-selling are always the greatest sales methods to consider if you’re looking for instant ROI. Nowadays, most email marketing services can help you craft custom automation by leveraging upsell and cross-sell on autopilot.

5 Halloween email campaign examples

With all the knowledge from the previous section, it’s time to understand what the most prominent brands do and how to get some inspiration to curate our next email campaigns. 

So, without further ado, let’s start.

#1. Moosend

Moosend is an email marketing service that leveraged Halloween to create a more educational email campaign. However, the additional elements like hats, spider webs and pumpkins add a playful approach and make it easier to digest.

The clear and concise email design, in combination with the Halloween-themed color palette, creates a seamless experience between the newsletter and Moosend’s blog. Moosend leverages a Halloween template to guide subscribers into Halloween-themed content that solves their marketing pain points.

Because Moosend is an email marketing service, the topics focus on email marketing and how to succeed in this field. Every reader that engages with the email is a potential customer. 

Takeaway tips

• Create a consistent design between your email campaigns and your landing pages or blogs to have a seamless experience for the user.
• Utilize your content to guide them down the right path of becoming potential customers. Create an email sales funnel with educational content leading into promotional content.
• Less is more, so focus on sharing only the most important information for your readers to take the next step. In this scenario, Moosend has many articles but chooses to highlight five of them.

#2. Harry’s

Harry’s offers both premium razors and shave subscription services. Not exactly the kind of thing that people often consider buying for Halloween.

Because of this, Harry’s chose a different strategy for its email campaign. They also exercised creativity by framing their product as something you require at this time of year. 

Harry’s explains the value that it offers in this email. It connects that value to the holiday with artwork and language that use Halloween figures as consumer identities.

Without having a dedicated Halloween-themed product, it’s a method to capitalize on this event. Brands of all sizes and shapes are welcome to experiment with it. The goal is to find a unique approach to incorporate your product within the Halloween theme. 

This email campaign aims to encourage people to convert and become paying customers. The CTA at the end of the email makes that quite apparent, and Harry’s made a great email design to guide readers into that one action.

Takeaway tips:

• If you don’t sell Halloween-related items, create a notion around how to use your products or why they might be valuable at this time of year.
• Use playful imagery and make sure the design fits the holiday theme, whether it is through photographs or illustrations.
• Focus on a single goal and take advantage of the holiday to re-engage your database and persuade them to sign up for a trial or make a purchase.

#3. Lending Tree

Lending Tree is an online lending marketplace. Creating email campaigns, especially Halloween-themed ones, is challenging. There isn’t a connection unless you create a narrative that complements your brand and highlights some of your products or services.

Lending Tree successfully produces a captivating email by showcasing some reasons they like personal loans. As a result, we have a Halloween-themed email with educational content on their products.

It’s a superb illustration of content curation focusing on the latest design trends. The email offers something new with a few subtle Halloween-related references.

Takeaway tips:

• Curate material. If you don’t have anything to sell, take advantage of Halloween to share carefully chosen content with your audiences, such as a podcast, video, or article.
• It can be tempting to go all out for Halloween. But if you want to make a bigger statement and get ahead of the competition, tone it down and choose a subtle approach to get your message across.
• Don’t just follow the herd and use the conventional Halloween color scheme of orange and black. Instead, mix it up and use different hues like rich purples, greens and reds.

#4. Betty’s Bakery

Bettys is a UK-based bakery with stunning email marketing campaigns. They’ve used Halloween as a chance to re-engage lost clients and increase their brand awareness during this seasonal event.

It’s a visually arresting email with one background image, a small color scheme of black, red and white, and  professional food photography that fits with the Halloween theme.

Stock photos can only take you so far. For maximum impact, create your own visual materials. Additionally, the pictures in this email were specifically chosen for the campaign so that the colors blend and create a cohesive result.

Provide your connections with delicious Halloween recipes so your readers want to stay up all night preparing. 

Do you want to improve it further? Run a contest and request that your subscribers send you pictures of their creations. The best photos will be user-generated content in your next email campaign or social media.

Takeaway tips:

• Send a campaign and take advantage of the holiday to re-engage consumers.
• Play around with words – Use your copywriting talents to incorporate phrases with a Halloween theme into your email to make it more humorous.
• Invest in quality images, giving your email campaign creative the time and resources it needs to feel organically integrated into your brand’s messaging.

#5. Airbnb

Last but not least, we have Airbnb with their Halloween email example. The core concept behind Airbnb has nothing to do with pumpkins, spiders, and other Halloween concepts. However, they leverage their newsletter to showcase their service in an exciting way.

They share the places and homes that evoke a sense of fear, which is ideal for Halloween. It’s an excellent strategy to drive blog traffic and potential customers for the brand.

Takeaway tips:

• Think differently and add another perspective to your product or service to match the Halloween theme.
• Create a concise email design and add social proof to help subscribers take action.

Send your next Halloween email campaign

This article has everything you need to know about Halloween email campaigns. From how to create a high-converting email campaign to how popular brands use their emails to increase brand awareness and sales this season.

Now it’s time for you to start building your next Halloween email campaign and get ahead of the competition. Until the next one, keep sending those Halloween emails.

Author: Alex works at Moosend as a content writer. He took a chance and moved from his professional architectural career to the field of digital marketing and hasn’t looked back. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling to new areas throughout the world.