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Fireworks, champagne, new calendar dates, and new resolutions.
The start of a new year feels ripe with possibility. It’s also a great time to send out warm New Year emails to your subscribers and build on the success of your end-of-year holiday sales.
The entry of a new year typically fosters a desire to start fresh, so your audience is more receptive to new ideas. As a result, instead of the simple “Happy New Year” email, your New Year email can be a great opportunity to share warm wishes and pitch new offers. This could be in the form of new products, courses, or discounts.
If you’re unsure how to make the best use of your New Year emails, this post will share some useful tips and examples of New Year emails you can send to clients this season.
What is a New Year email?
New Year emails are greetings sent via email to clients or newsletter subscribers to celebrate the start of a new calendar year. Usually, creators and brands use New Year emails to touch base with their audience, promote a new product, offer seasonal discounts, or thank them for their year-long patronage.
7 ideas on what to feature in your New Year newsletter (+ examples)
What you decide to do with your New Year emails will depend on your business goals and the needs of your audience. No matter your preference, Kit offers a wide range of customizable email templates to make the process quicker.
Idea #1: Thank your subscribers
Undoubtedly, the best (and easiest) way to start out the New Year is by thanking the subscribers who’ve stuck with you this far.
Why it’s effective: People like to be recognized, and expressing gratitude makes your readers feel seen and valued by you. It also creates a sense of connection between you and your audience and encourages them to stick with you for the next year.
How to make it work: Make your thank you New Year email more impactful by sharing a discount code or exclusive access to a new digital product or service. Don’t forget to mention how long the code or access will be valid and how readers can redeem it.
New Year email example: Imagination Soup
Melissa Taylor thanks subscribers with a New Year email offer
Melissa Taylor shares book lists and educational resources on her blog, Imagination Soup. For her 2023 New Year email, she shared the site’s updated design and thanked subscribers for sticking around. She also shared a new free two-week email series, which subscribers could opt into by clicking on a link in the email.
Idea #2: Look back on your business’s year and achievements
The New Year is a great time for self-reflection and for thinking about your business’s successes in the past year. Share your findings with your audience.
Why this is effective: People love behind-the-scenes content. Especially if you’re a service-providing creator like a coach, chef, designer, podcaster, or musician, sharing your wins can be a great way to boost your credibility.
How to make it work: Share hard numbers to show how much your community has grown, how many clients you’ve served, how many times your podcast has been downloaded, and other intriguing details. If you’re not a numbers person, try recapping your best content or creating a list of yearly favorites instead.
New Year email sample: Modern Mrs Darcy
Don’t be afraid to show off your top content
Blogger and podcaster Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs Darcy shares a “Superlative central” section in her New Year email newsletter, highlighting some of her best content of the year.
Idea #3: Sum up your clients’ milestones and activity
If you serve clients, it’s not enough to only share your accomplishments. You can also share how your clients have collaborated with you in the past year and with what results.
Why it’s effective: Sharing how specific subscribers have engaged with your products or services requires an incredible amount of email personalization. Personalized emails get more opens, link clicks, and responses—all while giving your readers the warm fuzzies for being acknowledged.
How to make it work: Use Kit’s email personalization tools to highlight specifics about their activity with your brand. For example, you can thank them for purchasing a particular product, referring a record number of subscribers, or signing up for a specific course.
Idea #4: Send heartfelt New Year’s wishes
Another sweet way to start out the year is by sending genuine New Year wishes (no strings attached).
Why it’s effective: Some subscribers might be maxed out with the end-of-year and New Year promotional emails in their inboxes. Be a breath of fresh air with a sincere, well-wishing message and nothing else.
How to make it work: Send a warm email thanking subscribers for hanging around and sharing some uplifting thoughts for the new calendar year. Focus on making them feel appreciated and putting a smile on their faces—no self-promotion necessary.
Example of Happy New Year email: Happily Ever Elephants
Lauren of Happily Ever Elephants shares a sweet New Year message
Lauren is an attorney and the blogger at Happily Ever Elephants. She shares book lists and reviews for kids. Her 2023 New Year email was sweet and to the point sending good wishes to her audience.
Idea #5: Ask subscribers and clients for feedback
A practical way to evaluate how your audience felt about your content, products, and services in the past year is to ask for their feedback.
Why it’s effective: To be a successful creator, your content must resonate and bring value to your audience. If you’re failing to do that, their responses could help you find your way back on track, and if you’re doing well, it could be much-needed validation.
How to make it work: A survey is one of the best ways to evaluate your subscribers’ feelings about your content. Make your survey easy to complete by keeping it short, using objective (multiple choice) questions whenever possible, and keeping subjective (short or long text) responses to a minimum. If possible, offer an incentive for entering the survey.
New Year email sample: Ashlyn Carter
Learn more about your audience by adding a survey to your New Year email
Copywriter for creatives Ashlyn Carter includes a survey link in her New Year email to allow her audience to chime in. She makes the survey appealing by sharing an estimate of how long it will take to complete and including an incentive (“15% coupon code” + “$100 cash-money prizes”). According to Ashlyn, over 380 subscribers took the survey!
Idea #6: Offer a discount or special promotion
Greet your subscribers with a special discount code or promotion to start the new year. It’ll give them an extra reason to open your first email of the year.
Why it’s effective: Sometimes, people miss the end-of-year holiday discounts because they’re busy, indecisive, or even broke (after all the holiday spending). New Year emails with discounts provide a second chance to snag that product they’ve been eyeing. It also gives you a chance to clear out old inventory if you sell physical items.
How to make it work: Keep the email short and focus on ensuring that readers don’t miss the offer. Again, don’t forget to share how long the offer will be valid.
New Year email example: Tilley
Offer a special discount in your New Year email
Apparel brand Tilley uses its New Year email to promote a seasonal sale. The email is brief with a single call to action to shop the sale.
Idea #7: Promote a (new) product or product bundle
Got a new product you’ve been dying to launch? Your New Year’s email is the perfect opportunity to break the news.
Why it’s effective: Few people can resist the draw of the “New Year, new me” resolutions—and that’s one reason why it’s the perfect time to launch a new product. In 2021, 74.02% of the adult American population resolved to learn something new, make a lifestyle change, or set a personal goal to better themselves, according to research by Finder.
How to make it work: Although there’s no bad time to start working on a new goal, remind people that the new year feels like a blank slate—a new chance to start fresh. As with any product launch, showcase the potential benefits of your product and how it can help your audience reach their goals.
Happy New Year email example: Lawrence Yeo
Your New Year email is a great chance to promote a new product
Storyteller Lawrence Yeo started off 2023 by telling his audience about his new free product, a new 10-day storytelling series. The series included 8 lessons and 2 workshops and eventually nurtured subscribers into his paid 4-week course, Thinking in Stories.
Best practices to get the most out of your New Year email campaign
Now that you have some ideas and examples of New Year emails to try, we’ll share some extra tips (besides the usual email best practices) to give your emails the best chance of success.
Pay special attention to your New Year email subject lines
If you want subscribers to open your special email, make sure you craft irresistible New Year email subject lines. The best subject lines tips for New Year emails:
- Go beyond merely saying “Happy New Year!”
- Trigger curiosity in your subscribers and stand out in their inboxes
- Offer a potential benefit to opening them
Examples of the best New Year’s email subject lines
Here are some examples worth copying:
- Your 2023 Goals *Are* Achievable, and the Enneagram Can Help! by Enneagram with Abbey
- How to organize & grow your freelance business in 2023 by Content Connect
- 💙 Logan’s Love Letter: Date smarter in 2022 by Logan Ury
- Resolve to write this year—only a few more days to save! by Catapult Writing
Notice how all these examples focus on the newsletter’s benefits to the reader, not on the sender.
Categorize subscribers according to their actions
The key to sending personalized newsletters that wow your subscribers and make them feel cherished is proper segmentation. With Kit, you can categorize your subscribers (using email tags) based on multiple factors, such as where they live, whether they’ve purchased products from you in the past, or whether they’re subscribed to your paid emails.
Automate your New Year email sequence
The new year is perfect for running several email sequences. Whether it’s cleaning up your email list, setting up an evergreen email sequence to share your best posts, or building a sequence to share posts based on subscriber preferences.
Kit has multiple email automation templates to help you get started. The easiest to start with is a re-engagement email automation, which attempts to reconnect with your cold subscribers and deletes those who’d rather stop receiving emails.
Send your New Year greetings email between January 5 and 8
Typically, New Year’s Day and the first few days after are hectic for people as they travel back home and return to work. It would be frustrating if, after all this planning, your audience is too busy celebrating the holidays to open your emails. So, it’s wise to choose a good time to send your New Year email.
A study by Seven Atoms shows that the best time to send out your New Year email is between January 5 and 8, when people start to catch up with emails. Sending yours at this time means they’ll catch it at the top of their towering inboxes. This would also be a good time to send the first email in your sequence.
Create a thriving New Year’s campaign with Kit
The New Year can hold a lot of promise for businesses, but it can also be a daunting time after the comedown from holiday sales. You don’t need to trudge through January. Use our tips to try various New Year emails to clients and keep sales coming in.
Kit has dozens of features to support all your marketing efforts. If you still don’t have a Kit account, now’s a good time to sign up.
