Billions of people around the world celebrate Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival or Lunar New Year. On the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar, 2022 will come on February 1st. It’s a great occasion to run a promotion and enrich your email marketing activities.

One week before the New Year celebrations, companies in China increase the number of advertisements, discounts, and promotional offers. This period is called Golden Week. It can be successfully used for email campaigns.

Chinese New Year is an apposite cause to send both educational and commercial content. Don't miss this opportunity to drive more interest in your brand! Take a look at the tips and examples below for inspiration.

How to Write Catchy Subject Line

Use emoji in a subject line to grab a subscriber's attention. The following options will be relevant:

• emoji associated with China (paper lanterns ?, dragons ?, fireworks ?);
• symbols of the coming year (tiger ?, rabbit ?, dog ?);
• Christmas decorations (Christmas tree ?, gifts ?).

In the text, mention the symbols and traditions of the celebration. Thus, the subscriber will immediately understand what the email is talking about:

• Get your present for Chinese New Year!
• Good luck in the Year of the Tiger!

Announce any discounts you have. Offer the recipient to save so they can buy as many gifts as possible:

• Welcome the Year of the Tiger with big discounts!
• Big sale for Chinese New Year.
• Lunar New Year is coming! 20% discount especially for you.

Examples of Catchy Subject Lines

Give enough attention to the email subject line. By reading it, the subscriber determines whether they are interested in the received message. You will find general tips on how to write a short subject line in this article.

Here are some examples of engaging Chinese New Year subject lines that might inspire you:

• Holiday gifts continue✨
• Open your lucky envelope?
• Last chance to receive a gift for Chinese New Year?
• Another chance to start the year;)
• ? We want to pamper you with New Year's gifts again!
• The Year of the Water Tiger will bring many gifts...
• Hurry up to get a discount for the Chinese New Year
• Meet the Water Tiger!
• Last Hours: Lunar New Year Bonus?
• Get a Chinese New Year Bonus?
• And here the Tiger crept up... ?

How to Design Email

Use your knowledge of the target audience when designing your email. Ideally, segment your recipients and create multiple holiday email templates for each category.

Get professional expertise

Spring Festival emails are often based on the classic palette for the Chinese New Year — red and gold. We suggest taking a closer look at examples of global brands and getting inspired by their campaigns.

Red and Gold Color Palette

Red is a symbol of joy and celebration among many nations. It’s associated with love, happiness, and good luck. In China, red is the primary color for celebrations, especially New Year and weddings. That is why the festive campaign in classic red and gold evokes warm feelings among subscribers. Whether it is a background, text, or product photos in the mentioned colors, the email will get New Year's mood.

Now we’ll see how different brands add bright colors to their emails.

• Lo & Sons company recalls that it was founded by a Chinese-American family, thereby emphasizing that it honors traditions. Lo & Sons also offers to buy a charm with the symbol of the year and discover the Chinese Zodiac.

• Cath Kidston's Chinese New Year email features a collection of products in red and gold. The company simultaneously acquaints customers with updates and congratulates them on the upcoming holidays.

• UGG also designed banners inspired by the Chinese New Year. The main products are placed on a deep red background.

• Likewise, Michael Kors congratulated their customers for the Chinese New Year and offered to purchase items suitable for celebrating it.

• illy added information about discounts and a promo code to the email. The product photos were taken on a red background. The banner depicts festive symbols: Chinese lanterns and golden hieroglyphs.

Chinese Zodiac Animal

In the Chinese New Year email, you can successfully represent the zodiac animal of the coming year. There are multiple options to mention the symbol of the year in your email: products with corresponding images, illustrations, or text. Here's how well-known companies used it:

• Karen Millen creatively approached the main banner of the 2018 campaign with a funny photo of a dog.

• Paul Smith launched a campaign dedicated to the New Year collection featuring the 2019 symbol.

• "Live" pictures will help to attract more attention. Mecca added bull GIFs to their email to catch the subscribers' eyes and bring some dynamic to the design.

The second banner:

• Mungo & Maud chose neither red nor gold for their 2019 New Year emails. They stayed true to their style but used the zodiac animal, the pig.

Conclusions

The email should be laconic, contain one type of content (either informative or entertaining). Don't add congratulations, articles from your blog, and seasonal discounts in one message.

Recently, advent calendars have become popular. Your campaign can become such a calendar for subscribers. It could be a chain of emails with warm wishes, enticing offers, interesting facts, etc. So you will increase your subscribers' engagement.

Lunar New Year is an extra chance for brands to promote new products and diversify their email strategy. It's worth spending a little more time on your campaign to get more attention from subscribers.

Happy Chinese New Year!