Winter is a time of magic, festive lights, and warm emotions everyone tries to convey, even through screens. Animated GIFs are the perfect tool to fill your marketing campaigns with holiday cheer and grab the attention of your subscribers. They add dynamism to emails and help them stand out among the many others in inboxes. It is especially important for Christmas marketing looking to increase engagement and conversions in terms of high competition.

Why are GIFs so popular? According to research, 58% of marketers actively use animation in their campaigns, and 43% note its positive impact on results. For ecommerce, GIFs have even more significant advantages. According to a MarketingSherpa study, animated GIFs can increase email click-through rates by 42%, conversions by 103%, and revenue by 109%. GIF animations are perfect for showcasing promotions, demonstrating products, or creating an interactive experience that motivates customers to complete a purchase. 

In this article, we have prepared a selection of great winter GIF animations for you. You will find inspiration here—from classic snowy motifs to interactive scenes. We'll also show you the best examples of how GIFs have been used in real-world campaigns. For example, just like a famous fashion brand Banana Republic used wordplay to create a vivid advertisement:

Check out the autumn GIFs examples as well for even more ways to create cracking messages.

Benefits of Using Winter GIFs in Marketing Campaigns

In ecommerce campaigns, winter GIF animations act like magnets, effortlessly capturing customers' attention, sparking interactivity, and weaving a festive atmosphere. 

Here's how animations can benefit your business:

1. Increase click-through rate and customer engagement

Customers receive dozens of emails daily, and your job is to grab their attention in seconds. GIF animations can make your offers stand out and spark interest.

• Use animations to show product movement, such as how the packaging is opened, accessories shine, or discounts come to life.
• Winter elements such as falling snow or twinkling lights create a festive mood that motivates people to open emails.
• Create a motion focus on key messages, helping quickly convey your offer's essence.

2. Improve the presentation of products and promotions

For ecommerce brands, visual presentation is key. GIFs help draw attention to specific goods or promotions, making them stand out from the crowd.

• Showcase new products or sets that are perfect for holiday gifts.
• Show dynamic discounts or limited offers that "disappear" in an animation to create a sense of urgency.
• Use motion to make your product demonstrations more emotional and convincing.

3. Create an emotional connection and motivation to buy

In winter, customers are looking for special emotions and unique gifts. GIF animations help to create a warm, cozy atmosphere that encourages customers to buy.

• Holiday GIFs add sparkle to emails, evoking associations with warmth and joy. 
• Humorous or unexpected animations are memorable and make your brand stand out.
• They help create a personalized customer experience that motivates to choose your store.

By integrating winter GIF animations into your emails, you will improve the visual perception of your campaigns and ensure greater customer engagement, ultimately boosting your sales.

When to Avoid Using GIFs for Marketing Goals

GIF animations can make your campaigns more vivid and attract attention, but in eCommerce, they must be used carefully. In some cases, GIFs can negatively impact brand perception or the effectiveness of your campaign. Always consider your goals, audience, and technical aspects to maximize your marketing efforts.

Here's when you should ditch GIFs in your eсommerce efforts:

• Product focus. If it is important to show the product in detail, GIFs can hide key characteristics due to the fast frame change.
• Loading speed. Large GIFs can slow page loading, especially on mobile devices, and scare away potential customers.
• Diversity of audience. Not all users perceive animation in the same way. Some prefer simple and static formats that clearly show the product. Most often, these are older people.
• Complicated mechanics of discounts or promotions. When it's essential to emphasize a specific offer with many details, GIFs can distract attention and make it difficult to understand.

For ecommerce, it is always important to focus on simplicity and clarity. Instead of GIFs, use high-quality static images, short videos, or interactive elements to help highlight your products and promotions. This will provide customers with a positive experience and increase the chances of conversion.

13 Creative Winter GIF Ideas for Ecommerce

If you have a talented designer on your team, they can no doubt create a few holiday or winter animations to spruce up your marketing campaigns. But even the most creative people sometimes need a source of inspiration to create absolute masterpieces.

That is why we have prepared a selection of ideas for winter GIFs that will drop a festive mood in your ads. These concepts will simplify the designer's work and be an excellent start for new experiments. Remember the variety of channels where animations can come in handy: website widgets, emails, banners in the footer or header of the website, etc. It's a great opportunity to prepare omnichannel campaigns. Create fascinating animations to captivate your customers and make your brand unforgettable this winter!

1. Of course, winter is the time for pre-holiday discounts and promotions, so every brand is sure to prepare winter GIFs with relevant offers. Familiar winter motifs are enough to make a banner look eye-catching, and informative.

2. You don't want to complicate things – just find a bright background and briefly describe what you offer. As a result, you'll get an equally striking ad with minimal effort.

3. Your product is your best business card, so why create greeting cards with incomprehensible pictures when you can turn your products into playful Christmas attributes? Check the next GIF as a great example:

4. The visualization of your offer will speak for itself. The reader will immediately catch the main message, and you won't need to come up with complicated slogans and long marketing texts. Moreover, the animation will do its job - it will catch the reader's eye and make them stop scrolling through the message feed.

5. Some companies choose vivid motifs for winter advertising so the user does not pass by.

6. By animating your email header, you automatically draw attention to the brand. Even a simple snow GIF will quickly set you apart from your competitors.

7. If your brand's theme allows you to add a little fun to your campaigns, you should definitely create a GIF that your readers will remember. Here's a fantastic example of a llama in a glass globe under the snow—it's pretty wintry and cool.

8. Funny animals have already become a kind of mascot for creative designers and marketers. If you want to make your campaign attractive and memorable, try maybe adding a funny dog. On the board. With headphones. And yes, this is a winter offer with a limited-time validity =)

9. If you are going to present a new product for the winter holidays, we have a great example of how to show it. А non-boring animated posts will definitely attract the attention of potential buyers.

10. Animation is an excellent tool for showing a product in action. For example, in the following GIF, you can see how a ziploc space bag shrinks several blankets, demonstrating the product's benefits.

11. This holiday letter shows a wonderful animation that brings customers back to childhood and creates a positive attitude toward the brand. This, in turn, helps build brand loyalty. In addition, the email has a gamification element: subscribers can interact with the email to find a gift inside.

12. GIF animation works great when you must creatively present a winter product collection. Of course, you need to come up with something new every season, so animation, even the simplest, will draw attention to your company's products. For example, the following GIF demonstrates how various models change smoothly in a clockwise direction, which very skillfully enhances the effect of urgency. Combined with the catchy "Get cozy" message, this design makes a great foundation for a successful campaign.

13. Another advantage of using GIF animations by retailers is the ability to quickly depict the variety of their products, as well as combinations with them. Reading about all the options in a text format would be boring. No one would read past the second sentence. However, when you can clearly see the options in front of you, the product suddenly becomes much more attractive.

13 Best Winter GIF Examples from Famous Brands

1. A striking example of a creative campaign from Banana Republic that works for any season. In this case, the brand used a direct message, "Good Things Come To Those Who Click," but made it more engaging and fun by incorporating GIF animation. The message is hidden and then revealed as a puzzle, which not only grabs attention but also creates a playful, game-like experience. The animation ends with a focus on the word "Click," making it clear what action is expected from users.

2. Like many other fashion brands, Ann Taylor uses GIF animations to draw more attention to their messages. One example is a cute winter GIF snowflake that turns into a watch — a kind of prompt for a quick reaction. This creative approach is similar to LOFT's strategy of using short emails to drive conversions.

Another animation from Ann Taylor in the style of urgency reinforces the feeling of slipping away benefits. 

3. As mentioned above, the Ann Taylor LOFT brand uses rather modest animations for its Christmas marketing, but they are no less attractive. For example, the company used an animated gift in the following email to spark curiosity and encourage subscribers to click on it and "unwrap" the surprise. It's a simple but very effective tactic.

4. A very atmospheric and cozy animation in an email from the men's casual wear brand Mr. Porter. This is a good example of how you can animate just one element, and it will captivate the reader's attention. A campaign with a "coming to life" fireplace in the email is a great solution for winter emails.

5. J. Jill's chose classic winter animation for the seasonal sale. A creative animated snow GIF created in Christmas colors reminds us to buy gifts for the holiday.

6. Uber decided to draw attention to its holiday promo email with many animated elements gathered as if in a red frame. They have succeeded because this design is simply impossible to miss.

7. Another example of presenting clothing in an email campaign for the cold season was demonstrated by the Jack Spade brand using GIFs. In the email, we can see how the company offers to insulate yourself, "If you don't like the weather..." It shows pretty clearly that it's time to put on something warm and comfortable. It's quite an effective and eye-catching way to boost ecommerce sales with an animated GIF in email.

8. Kate Spade Saturday used an animated girl in its winter marketing campaign to promote the "30% OFF" offer. The email clearly demonstrates the girl's positive emotions, automatically setting the reader up for the potential joy of participating in the promotion. The festive balloons enhance this effect. The overall design is bright and eye-catching.

9. Another striking example of holiday animation is an email from Kate Spade New York. A huge box that unfolds before the reader's eyes certainly attracts attention and encourages users to interact while waiting to see what the gift is. The sophisticated design of the winter GIF animation is admirable and deserves special attention. 

10. Vans added quirkiness with winter GIF animations to its Holiday Gift Guide email. Based on the brand's style guide, which is certainly loved by fans, Vans decided not to depart from tradition and made another campaign in a rather shocking and fun style.

11. J.Crew is a model for retail marketing in their animated email campaigns. They don't use shocking or "heavy" slogans, they don't immerse the reader in a tone of glitter, and they don't add any people to their emails. Only a light and unobtrusive explanation of their proposals. The following example is so stylistically beautiful and informative at the same time that you can look at it forever. Gifts on a moving carousel convey the feeling of packages that are on their way to you. This way, the recipient feels like they already own the products. Thanks to this strategy, the user becomes more inclined to order. It's a great example of how you can successfully add a winter GIF to your email and captivate your readers.

12. Equally popular are informative emails that convey the essence of a limited-time offer and are accompanied by attractive animations. A great example of this is the MOO brand, where the animation is sleek, modern, and very attractive.

13. When your product is so great that it's a crime to promote it in a static image, use GIFs to show all its benefits, and it won't go unnoticed. See the example of MeUndies using GIF animations to show the cool features of its Star Wars underwear.

Where to Find Winter GIFs? 5 Best Services

If our examples haven't inspired you enough to create an unforgettable winter newsletter, here are a few online resources where you can also draw inspiration.

1. Pinterest. A world-renowned platform with thousands of images and videos, where you can find examples of holiday marketing campaigns in any business area. Easy navigation, the ability to create themed boards, and quickly-shared pins—all this creates a great space for inspiration.

2. Giffy. A specialized platform with GIFs in different styles—from cartoon to vintage. Use the simple navigation to search for a variety of GIFs, Stickers, and Clips.

3. Tenor is very similar to Giffy and is also a very popular search platform for GIFs.

4. On The MailBakery Blog, you will find many useful tips on preparing email campaigns and examples of animated newsletters—just use the search bar in the sidebar.

5. Really Good Emails. As the name implies, this is a platform for finding inspiration when it comes to emails. An incredibly large number of categories and a search bar will help you find examples of emails for any occasion—including winter newsletters.

How to Add a GIF to Your Message in Yespo CDP

When you've created the best winter GIF for your marketing campaign, you'll have a dilemma: how to add an animated image to a message, automate your promotional campaigns, or add a pop-up to your website. But what if we say you could do it all on one platform? It's a simple process in the Yespo omnichannel CDP.

To add a winter GIF to your message, you only need to upload it from your computer to the adaptive email builder. You can also use common system GIFs or search the bank of animations.

If you don't have a picture as a ready-made file, please paste the HTML code into the appropriate section. 

Working in the email editor is very easy and intuitive. Here, you can choose a ready-made email structure or customize it to your liking by adding GIFs to any section that you consider appropriate for your marketing campaign. You can also add various elements, such as a timer, rollover, social media buttons, etc.

Adding an animated image to widgets is just as easy — add your image, use the image library, or paste an external link. Thanks to our editor, you can also create widget gamification, which will complement your winter marketing campaign.

Conclusion

Using GIFs in marketing campaigns significantly enhances the effect of brand presence and increases brand loyalty. Unlike static, boring text, a flickering image in an email will definitely not go unnoticed. The same goes for an animated banner in the header or a bright pop-up widget that reminds your clients that this cozy winter season is the right time to look for gifts for their loved ones at affordable prices.

If you don't know how to design a winter campaign in a stylish and colorful way, use our examples and other platforms for inspiration. For your convenience, use Yespo's editor to quickly create and edit messages, and send them to your customer base just as quickly.

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