The Best Green Monday Emails in Our Inboxes (And What We Can Learn From Them)

There are two kinds of people in the world: The ones who already have their holiday shopping checked off, cookies made, and tree lit the day after Halloween…and the ones who wait until the last possible second to get their holiday planning in order. (Hi, it’s me. I’m #2.)

Like clockwork, the last few weeks before the Christmas holiday sees a major surge in e-commerce sales. eBay saw this play out back in 2007, with the final push of year-end shopping doing so well that the company coined the term “Green Monday.” While it sounds like something related more to Earth Day than holiday shopping, it happens each December. The “Green” stands for, well, American money.

While email marketers (justifiably) emphasize Black Friday email campaigns in their holiday email strategy, it’s not your only shot to hit your end-of-year goals. Here’s what you need to know about Green Monday:

What is Green Monday?

Green Monday is on the second Monday in December and is typically the last sales push to make purchases for Christmas gifts.

As you’ll see in some of the examples below, Green Monday promotions often focus on the last days you can shop online and receive items via standard shipping by Christmas. This year, Green Monday lands on December 11th, 2023, but marketers don’t need to stick to a strict schedule with this event.

So, your company’s Green Monday timeline could vary slightly from other brands depending on your shipping speed and product availability. If you expect any supply chain issues or that you’ll sell out your most popular items, then your Green Monday might need to come a little earlier. Don’t forget that there’s a diverse set of year-end holidays, and you can use any of the email strategies below leading up to different events.

10 Green Monday email marketing strategies

Green Monday emails generally include holiday promotions or deals. 

The only problem is that you’ll be coming off Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) less than a month before, aka the most crowded time of the year in the inbox. You don’t want to repeat your existing campaigns, but if you’re not running any new promotions, it can be hard not to sound like a broken record. Can there possibly be other ways to talk about a sale or encourage customers to check out the latest items? Absolutely!

Let’s look at ten Green Monday strategies you can leverage this year to increase sales without feeling repetitive:

1. Remind subscribers about holiday shipping deadlines

If you suspect (or hope) customers will gift your products for Christmas, let them know the last day to order before the holiday. 

There are lots of ways to do this, like this playful and fun example from snack brand Moonshot:

Source: Really Good Emails

This simple, clear reminder of the final day for shipping:

Source: Really Good Emails

Or an in-your-face, now-or-never style messaging like this one:

Source: Really Good Emails

Remember, there are plenty of other holidays at this time of year than Christmas, so it’s smart to personalize emails for your audience and their location. To do this, you’ll need to send a pre-holiday email asking subscribers what messages they want to receive.

2. Send gift guides to help subscribers make a decision

We all have people in our lives that are just hard to shop for. (Or if you’re like me, the people who like to buy themselves the perfect gift three weeks before Christmas 🤦)

If you’ve got procrastinators on your hands, it might be that they’re struggling to come up with the right gift idea. Enter: The gift guide. Curate a few different gift guides on your website—you can choose standard categories or go deeper, like “the person who has everything,” “the best gifts under $30,” “white elephant gifts that people actually want,” and so forth. You can use your Green Monday email to highlight items for different interests or groups of people and help take the guesswork out of gifting.

These two examples, both from National Geographic, highlight two different personas that might love their products, along with suggestions for each: 

Source: Really Good Emails

Source: Really Good Emails

3. Highlight your best sellers

It may not be just about finding the right idea for a gift, though. This time of year, your subscribers have been inundated with emails. And ads. And catalogs. There is so much to choose from that it can create choice paralysis or the paradox of choice. This is when there’s so many options that our brains shut down and don’t choose anything. 

With so many options on the market for gifts, from your brand and countless others, it’s your job to help subscribers make a decision. Make it as easy as possible by offering up your best-selling items so that procrastinators can get in and out.

This Everlane example is a great way to do this. They choose no more than five options and offer a clean, easy-to-digest list in the brand’s traditional neutral palette:

Source: Really Good Emails

You can always personalize this, too, with recommendations based on their browsing.

4. Promote stocking stuffers or smaller items that tend to be last-minute

If you want to use Green Monday to boost sales but wonder if your audience has either a) finished buying gifts or b) is reaching the end of their budget, consider “stocking stuffers.” If you get folks browsing, they may just find the right (bigger) gift, too.

This email gives subscribers a variety of budget points to choose from to get started. 

5. Include gift-wrapping or packaging options

Think about the entire experience of someone procrastinating on gift-giving. One of the biggest consequences of all that last-minute ordering? A Christmas Eve all-nighter to get those gifts set up and wrapped. Help those procrastinators out by adding free or discounted gift packaging as part of an offer to sweeten the deal. One and done? Yes, please.

A great way to remind subscribers of how nice it is not to wrap your own gifts? Include imagery or animation of your gift packaging, like in this email from Lake Pajamas.

6. Gift one, get one

Chaco heard it was better “to give than receive” and thought, “Why not both?” Instead of a standard discount on items, Chaco promoted bundled items in their Green Monday email. Last-minute shoppers could scoop up a gift for someone on their list and score something for themselves. Double win. Feel free to use this positioning the next time you want to shake up a BOGO (Buy One, Get One) sale, too.

Source: Milled

7. Create a sense of urgency with a countdown timer

If you’ve got subscribers with lots of carts lingering, hoping for a better deal, now is the time to create a sense of urgency. Adding a countdown timer does just that, whether it’s a countdown to the end of the promotion, to Christmas, or to your shipping deadline.

Source: Really Good Emails

(Not sure how to get a countdown timer into your emails? Check out our free email template library for plenty of ideas.)

8. Use social proof to make decisions easier

If subscribers are on the fence about buying an item, a little social proof could make their decision easier. This email includes a selection of press quotes, but you could easily choose reviewers, note the number of five-star reviews a product has, or include a video testimonial to encourage folks to make a purchase.

Source: Really Good Emails

9. Kick off a “12 Days”-style campaign

If you prefer to trickle out your promotions over time, you can highlight a new item, deal, or piece of content every day. Each day, make a new item category on sale with a coordinating code or a surprise custom item.

Pottery Barn Kids focuses on a different gift category each day. While it’s not an explicit “12 Days of Christmas” campaign, the variety of promotions and gift ideas means there’s something for everyone.

10. The ultimate procrastinator’s gift: The gift card

When in doubt, there’s always the gift card option. (And bonus: No wrapping required!) Promoting your gift card is a great last-minute tactic that cuts through decision fatigue. 

This simple, but powerful, example from Bellroy is a great way to get those last-minute shoppers without overwhelming them. It’s never too late to give a gift card—make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to check out.

Source: Really Good Emails

Litmus helps your holiday email plans go as planned

Now is the time to start planning, previewing, and testing your holiday email campaigns. If you want to make this year’s campaigns your best yet, try Litmus for free to streamline your workflow and ensure every email is on-brand and error-free.