That’s no longer a hypothetical. Welcome to the world of conversational AI-powered analytics. Mailjet is thrilled to add its open-source MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server to its suite of AI-powered tools, a new way for email marketers, senders, and developers to redefine their relationship with data. 

What is an MCP? 

Think of an MCP as a universal translator that allows a conversational AI, like Claude, to talk directly and securely to another application’s API, in this case, Mailjet’s. It acts as a bridge, enabling you to use plain, natural language to ask complex questions about your email performance and get immediate answers. Instead of navigating through dashboards and manually filtering data, you can now have a direct conversation with your analytics. 

Why this is game-changing for email marketers 

The Mailjet MCP Server marks a fundamental shift from rigid dashboards to a fluid, natural language interface. This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about transforming how you work and strategize. 

You can see how it works in Mailjet below: 

Some practical use cases for marketers and senders 

So, what does this look like in practice? Here are just a few ways you can leverage the Mailjet MCP Server to elevate your email marketing: 

For the developers: A look under the hood 

For our technical audience, the real magic of the Mailjet MCP Server lies in its architecture. This isn’t just a new feature; it’s a commitment to open standards and developer efficiency. 

At its core, MCP is a standardized API framework built on JSON-RPC, a lightweight remote procedure call protocol. It was open-sourced by Anthropic to create a common language between AI models and real-world APIs, using a familiar request/response pattern that’s a natural fit for the web. 

The architecture consists of three key components: 

1. The AI Assistant (Claude): The conversational interface where the user makes a request. 

2. The MCP Server: The open-source middleware you host. It translates the AI’s standardized JSON-RPC call into a specific Mailjet API request. 

3. The Mailjet API: The final destination for fetching the requested data. 

By default, the server provides read-only access to your email data, giving your team the freedom to explore and analyze performance without any risk to your production environment. For advanced use cases, developers can easily extend the implementation to enable write-access endpoints if needed. 

This approach allows you to interact with the Mailjet API at the speed of thought, turning raw data into actionable business insights in moments.

Unlock your campaign insights  

The Mailjet MCP Server redefines email analytics by connecting your Mailjet platform to the power of conversational AI. It’s designed for both marketing and development teams who want to unlock deep, actionable insights from their email data simply by asking questions. 

Ready to start the conversation with your data? 

The post Meet the Mailjet MCP Server: A new era for email data  appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

Fear not – we’ve got you covered.

Here, we’ll show you some shockingly good Halloween email subject lines from your industry and share our recipe for higher open rates. Then, we’ll head to the lab, run through some A/B tests, and discover why data should decide your Halloween-style subject line. You can come out from under the bed now.

37 Halloween email subject line examples for every sector

You have around 40 characters to convince your reader to open an email. No pressure.

Knowing your audience is key. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to email subject lines, but you can definitely draw inspiration from what other brands are doing.

Get your creative juices flowing with these email subject line examples from different industries.

Ecommerce & retail

Everyone loves a “spooktacular deal.” Online shops are in a prime position to offer scary savings and Halloween flash sales. Sometimes, a short mysterious message is enough to pique a reader’s curiosity. Or, you could be cheeky and ask the reader a direct question – come on, what are you scared of?

Check out these creative Halloween subject lines from ecommerce and retail brands:

• Club Kiddo – Boo Ya!
• Paper Source – Get These Spooktacular Best Sellers Before They Ghost!
• Motif – Trick OR Treat? Why not both? 👻
• Crate And Barrel – All treats, no tricks.
• RIFLE PAPER Co – Send Your Boos Some Love?
• Etsy – Practically Magic
• Yellowmoon.org.uk – A frightfully good offer – up to 50% off Halloween costumes

Tech

Larger tech companies generally want to be perceived as thought leaders, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a geeky side too. They might not take it as far as ecommerce businesses, but tech brands also know how to get into the Halloween spirit.

Here are some Halloween subject lines from the tech industry:

• Pinterest – Your Guide To Carving Pumpkins
• Grammarly – A Happy Halloween Quiz from Grammarly
• Email Monks – Witching You Happy Halloween
• WeTransfer – Pumpkin spice and all things (not) nice

In comparison, startups are trying to be seen as less corporate and will get away with a more “buddy-buddy” vernacular.

Food & spirits

A Halloween party is nothing without Halloween treats. Tempt your customers this season with tantalizing offers or content they can’t refuse. From trick or treating to parties and movie gatherings, make it clear there are savings to be made in your subject line. Recipe guides are another very popular method to attract users into your email.

Get Halloween subject line ideas from these top food and spirits brands:

• FitOn – 👻 3 Scary Good Meals to Die For 💀
• Dunkin Donuts – Click Your Treat and Earn 3X Points
• Cadbury – 15% Off All Ghoulish Goodies
• Betty’s – Double, double toil and trouble
• Land O’Lakes – 👻 Ghoul, treat yourself with these recipes
• Blue Apron – Forget the candy, this deal is the sweetest one yet!
• Archie Rose – BOOOOO: Introducing our Halloween Monster Smash 👻🎃🍸
• Plant People – Happy Halloween 🎃 Ward off monsters with Wonder Mushroom Gummies

Entertainment

The battle for our attention is fierce around Halloween and you only have one seventh of a Tweet to work with. Curiosity is your best weapon, but that doesn’t mean going too vague or your email will just sound generic. The best email subject lines tease out content. Use imperative words like “see”, “fall into”, or “go” to encourage readers to open the email.

Draw inspiration from these Halloween subject lines from some top entertainment brands:

• Disney+ – See what’s screaming — er, streaming!
• Vimeo – Fall into these sweet new features!
• Universal Orlando Resort – Go Behind the Screams
• Riley at Stanza – Only treats this Halloween 👻
• Lego(R) News – Brick or treat! (Toys)
• The Pokemon Company – 🎃 Tricks and Treats! 🍬

Finance

After the last credit card statement, nobody expects another scary email from their bank. As a trusted institution, it’s best to tread carefully with your subject line. You don’t want to be seen as suspicious and marked as spam. Make sure your subject line clearly states the matter at hand – with Barclaycard, it’s fraud.

1. Barclaycard – Freddy, give fraud a fright this Halloween

Finally, adding some personalization to your subject line conveys trust, don’t you think, Mr Krueger?

Now you have the subject lines cracked, it’s time to create a campaign. Find everything you need in our blog post – Tips and tricks to create stunning Halloween emails.

Home décor

While Halloween decor typically transforms homes into haunted abodes, these home décor companies showed how to bring the festivities to your inbox. See if you can’t unearth some ghoulish email subject lines for yourself with the help from these examples:

1. Bed Bath and Beyond – Boo-tiful Upgrades 🎃 Up to 40% Off* Halloween Decor 🦇
2. Bed bath and Beyond – 15% off for a Fresh + Frightful Halloween 🎃
3. Bed bath and Beyond – 17% off for Your Halloween Feast 🎃👻
4. World Market – Set out a deadly spread: It’s a Halloween boo-fet!
5. World Market – Fresh from the coven: Our spookiest kitchen finds 👻
6. Pottery Barn – Our New Halloween Collection, fright this way…

Transportation and travel

We’re not sure about you, but when it comes to transportation and Halloween, the first thing that comes to mind is Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, and the rest of the gang saving us from the supernatural in the Mystery Machine.

It has to be the most iconic Halloween automobile, right?

While we’re not expecting that much every time we jump into a rental, here are a few ideas for subject lines from fellow transportation/travel brands:

1. Europcar – 👻 Halloween is coooming… let’s go! 🚗
2. Greyhound – Happy Howl at the Moon Day! 
3. Greyhound – Book a Spooktacular Getaway 
4. Jenolan Caves – How Can You Measure the Ghosts at Jenolan? With a Spirit Level!
5. Data Cars – Halloween – Treat & Treat

How to write a killer Halloween email subject line

Strong Halloween email subject lines are essential for grabbing attention in crowded inboxes and setting the tone for your campaign. As the first point of contact, they drive open rates and complement your broader Halloween email strategy by creating intrigue, urgency, or seasonal relevance – ultimately boosting engagement and conversions during a high-traffic marketing moment.

But what exactly makes these headlines fit for Halloween?

Get creative with your tone of voice

The holidays are a time of fun and joviality, so take this opportunity to get creative. While writing your subject line, keep in mind that people love authenticity and fun, but be mindful not to stray away from the anchor that is your brand voice.

If your brand voice is human and approachable, then avoid overbearing or indecisive wording.

Take advantage of puns (Hallow-queen) and wordplay (All treats, no tricks) to set the stage for your email content and tap into the mystery and intrigue of Halloween by choosing out-the-box vocabulary like “enchanting”, “magical”, and “potion”.

Even mega corporates get in on the fun

If your brand voice allows so, you can also go wild with punctuation, including exclamations for excitement and question marks to challenge your reader. Use emojis to bring color and fun to people’s inboxes and tempt their cursor to take a look. Don’t abuse them, though – keep it to one to two emojis.

Use marketing psychology to increase open rates

Halloween comes but once a year, so advertise your Halloween sale as “last chance”, creating a feeling of scarcity (or FOMO) in the reader. Your Halloween deals can tie in nicely with a countdown to Halloween marketing campaign. For instance, you could send “One week until…” or “3 days until…” emails to remind your subscribers they are running out of time.

Paper Source – Get These Spooky Best Sellers Before They Ghost!

As always, character length is key. Aim for no more than 40 characters to avoid being cut off by Hotmail, Live, and Yahoo Mail clients. There is evidence to suggest that shorter punchier subject lines can improve open rates. However, every audience is different. The only way to truly know your reader’s appetite is to A/B test a variety of subject lines to determine the winner.

Similarly, highlighting the value proposition of an email can improve open rates significantly. Don’t get lost in wishy-washy Halloween lingo – tell the reader why they should open the email. Whether it’s discounts, free gifts, ideas, or advice, make it clear in the subject header.

If you prefer to save the value proposition for your email body, try something short, mysterious, and punchy like this email from Etsy and use the preheader to complement your subject line.

Make it personal with contact properties

Personalize your campaign with contact properties. Nothing grabs your attention more than hearing your own name. Your ears perk up – it’s a reflex response.

Yet, many email marketers still don’t personalize email marketing, giving you the competitive edge if you do. Go further by segmenting your subscriber lists into categories like age and gender. Put yourself in their shoes and adapt your tone of voice for that person.

Avoid the dreaded spam folder

Spam is such a dirty word that we should really call it s***. There are some misconceptions regarding subject line spam words – no, there’s no secret list out there that will take you straight to the spam folder – but certain terms can be deceiving and tend to get lower engagement and higher than normal complaint rates. Just think of all those emails promising a “free” gift. How many of those were actually “free”?

If your sender reputation and email engagement are high, the content of your subject lines probably won’t land your email in spam folders. But if your sender reputation and email engagement are low and you talk like a spammer, chances are you won’t land in the inbox. Spam is a complex and ever-changing subject, so check out our definitive guide on how to avoid spam filters.

Utilize software testing to polish your copy

When you have done everything you can, turn to robots for help. Try running your subject line(s) through an email subject line tester to see how it performs. Once your robot gives you the green light, run the template through an email preview software like Email on Acid to preview emails on all devices and clients.

Lean on AI for a helping hand

While fear is a particularly relevant emotion considering the theme of this blog post, email marketers need to start overcoming it when it comes to AI. In some circles it’s still frowned upon, with traditionalists convinced AI is destroying the craft of copywriting, but that’s simply not true.

Listen, we’re not saying ChatGPT should write all your customer communications. After all, there’s nothing more important than that authentic human touch when it comes to building strong customer relationships.

But AI can help you push through writer’s block within seconds, saving hours in ideation and drafting. Your experience as an email marketing professional is then invaluable in honing that copy – something artificial intelligence cannot replace. But it’s always nice to get a little help to get things started, right?

Use Mailjet Assistant – an AI powered tool designed to quickly craft email content in a chat-like experience right within the email builder – to help with your Halloween email subject lines. You can then easily generate, refine, translate, and adjust your text with guided actions and contextual suggestions.

50 Halloween subject line ideas to inspire you

At Sinch Mailjet, we practice what we preach. So, we’ve decided to put ChatGPT to the test and get AI’s helping hand in coming up with 50 ideas you can use to kickstart your Halloween brainstorming sessions.

Below we’ve added 50 Halloween email subject lines coaxed out of Open AI’s generative model. Are they all usable off the bat? No. Are some of them frighteningly awful? Yes. That doesn’t mean they can’t be u to as inspiration for your own creative copy.

ChatGPT’s 50 subject line ideas to promote your sales and drive conversions during the Halloween shopping season:

1. “Boo! Get Ready for Spooktacular Savings!”
2. “Frighteningly Good Deals Await…”
3. “Trick or Treat Yourself to Our Halloween Specials!”
4. “🎃 Scare Up Some Savings with Us! 👻”
5. “Creep It Real: Our Halloween Sale Starts Now!”
6. “Witch Way to Spooky Savings?”
7. “No Tricks, Just Treats: Halloween Discounts Inside!”
8. “Haunted by High Prices? Not Anymore!”
9. “Don’t Be a Scaredy-Cat – Check Out Our Halloween Offers!”
10. “Ghosts, Goblins, and Great Deals Await!”
11. “Eerie-sistible Halloween Savings Are Here!”
12. “UnBOOlievable Savings for Halloween Night!”
13. “Halloween Flash Sale: Save Big on Spooky Goodies!”
14. “Get Ready to Scream… with Joy! Our Halloween Sale Starts!”
15. “Spooktacular Discounts – Shop Now or Never!”
16. “Ghoul-tastic Deals Are Lurking…”
17. “Hocus Pocus – Savings Focus: Halloween Edition!”
18. “Don’t Let These Deals Haunt You Forever!”
19. “Pumpkin-Spiced Savings Inside!”
20. “Trick or Treat: Pick Your Discount!”
21. “Ghostly Greetings and Frighteningly Good Prices!”
22. “Boo-kmark Our Halloween Sale Now!”
23. “Dare to Click? Exclusive Halloween Discounts Await!”
24. “Get Your Boo-ty to Our Halloween Sale!”
25. “Don’t Let These Deals Ghost You!”
26. “Spooktacular Savings: No Costume Required!”
27. “Wickedly Good Deals for Halloween”
28. “Unlock the Coffin of Savings: Halloween Edition!”
29. “Last-Minute Halloween Savings – Don’t Miss Out!”
30. “Halloween Flash Sale: Fang-tastic Offers Await!”
31. “Cackle-Worthy Discounts for Halloween!”
32. “Goblins Can’t Stop These Savings!”
33. “Witches Brew Up Discounts – Grab Yours Today!”
34. “Bats, Cats, and Big Discounts – It Must Be Halloween!”
35. “Haunted House of Savings – Enter If You Dare!”
36. “Spooky Savings for a Fang-tastic Halloween!”
37. “Get Your Ghoul On: Halloween Discounts Inside!”
38. “Don’t Be a Zombie Shopper – Get Our Halloween Deals!”
39. “Ghostly Greetings: Halloween Discounts Have Arrived!”
40. “Save Your Soul (and Wallet) with Our Halloween Deals!”
41. “No Costume Required for These Spooky Savings!”
42. “Boo-tiful Discounts Await: Shop Halloween Now!”
43. “Wickedly Good Deals: Halloween Edition!”
44. “Cursed with High Prices? Our Halloween Sale Has the Cure!”
45. “Pumpkin-Spiced Savings Just for You!”
46. “Trick or Treat Yourself to Discounts Galore!”
47. “Goblins Beware: Halloween Savings Are Here!”
48. “Ghosts Can’t Stop Our Spooktacular Offers!”
49. “Sink Your Teeth into Halloween Savings!”
50. “Witches and Wizards Shop Here: Halloween Discounts Inside!”

A/B test your Halloween subject line to success

At this point, you may have the most original and engaging subject line to grace the email space. But without A/B testing, you won’t know for sure. Let the audience decide what they like and dislike.

A/B testing is the practice of sending a variety of different subject lines to 20-35% of your audience. The winning subject line is decided by the highest open rate and will be sent to the remainder of your email list.

Here are some A/B test ideas for your Halloween email subject lines:

• Long vs. short subject lines
• Subject lines with and without personalization
• Subject lines with and without emojis
• Negative Statements, questions, and exclamations
• FOMO vs. clickbaity subject lines
• Vague vs. straightforward subject lines
• Subject lines promising discounts or generating a sense of urgency

A/B testing is OK. But A/B/C/D/E/F/G testing is better. That’s why Mailjet’s A/B Testing feature allows you to test up to 10 versions of an email subject line simultaneously. Try a combination of the techniques mentioned above to create subject line variations for testing.

You could try 10 small variations of the same subject line. Or you could go with 10 totally different ideas altogether.

Create Halloween email marketing campaigns with Mailjet

It’s that time of year to celebrate Halloween, go trick or treating, and get creative. However, between email design, AB testing, and subscriber list segmentation – there’s not enough time in the year to work on your marketing strategy.

Mailjet’s intuitive and collaborative email platform comes packed with tons of treats to help with those troublesome details, including two boo-tiful Halloween email templates for your campaigns.

Template examples from Mailjet’s Email Editor

Still looking for help with those Halloween subject lines? Check out Sinch Mailjet’s A/B Testing feature to automatically discover the best-performing headline. You can spend less time with the troublesome details and more time writing that killer subject line. We’ll look out for your Halloween email in our inbox soon!

This is an updated version of the post “21 Eye-Catching Halloween Email Subject Line Examples & Tips” written by Phil Adams and posted on the Sinch Mailjet blog in September 2022.

FAQ

1. What makes a Halloween email subject line effective?

Effective Halloween email subject lines are attention-grabbing, seasonally relevant, and create a sense of curiosity, urgency, or excitement. It should align with your brand voice while tapping into Halloween themes like spookiness, treats, or limited-time offers to encourage opens.

2. How long should a Halloween email subject line be for best results?

The ideal length for a Halloween email subject line is between 30–50 characters. This ensures your message is fully visible on most devices, especially mobile, while leaving enough space to spark interest and include relevant seasonal keywords or emojis.

3. Should I use emojis or symbols in Halloween subject lines?

Yes, when used strategically, emojis and symbols can enhance Halloween subject lines by adding visual interest and reinforcing spooky or festive themes. Just be sure they align with your brand and don’t overpower the message –🕷️, 🎃, or 👻 are popular seasonal choices.

4. What are some examples of high-performing Halloween subject lines for e-commerce?

High-performing Halloween subject lines often include urgency, wordplay, or themed language. Examples include:

• “👻 Scary Good Deals Inside!”
• “Trick or Treat Yourself – 24 Hours Only!”
• “You’ve Been Boo’d – open for a surprise…”

Testing variations can help identify what resonates best with your audience.

5. How early should I start sending Halloween-themed emails?

It’s best to begin sending Halloween-themed emails 2–3 weeks before October 31st, with teaser campaigns or product previews. This gives your audience time to plan purchases or events, while allowing you to build momentum through follow-up reminders or last-minute offers.

The post 87 email subject line ideas and examples for your Halloween campaigns appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

To help you out, we’ve handpicked some scarily good ideas to help you spice up your Halloween emails. Check out these tips and start brainstorming how to turn your campaigns from good to…devilishly good.

Ideas and examples for your Halloween email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is an incredibly important communication tool, especially in our current climate. But despite all the doom and gloom, US consumer spending around Halloween is expected to hit $13.1 billion 2025, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual consumer survey. And for those with a sweet tooth, candy and food shoppers are expected to spend around $3.9 billion (up 11% from 2024).

And no matter how things change, email still remains the best digital marketing tool for ROI.

NRF: Planned annual Halloween expenditure in the US from 2015 to 2025.

Wondering how to make the most of this spooky time of the year? Check out these timeless Halloween email tips to help you create a thrilling Halloween-themed campaign.

Include a trick and a treat in your Halloween emails

Take a look at how Postable incorporates a fun GIF into their email to catch your attention and add a good offer of 15% off with a themed code. Not only is this Halloween email example a good way to give the customer a good laugh, but it also cleverly encourages free brand marketing. Take this as an example and start thinking about how you can leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing (WOM).

A real treat for those who know Pumpkin Man.

Ensure your Halloween email marketing looks devilishly good

Halloween is the perfect time of year to dress up your emails to give them an edge. LendingTree combines its tried-and-true informative, helpful tone with fun graphics and memorable copy. The subject line is eye-catching, and the email expands on the reader’s curiosity while keeping the tone light. As a bonus, LendingTree cleverly describes the idea of becoming debt-free as being “easy like magic” – thus sticking to the Halloween theme while giving their services a positive connotation.

LendingTree’s Halloween email design is eye-catching and tidy.

Create Halloween emails that build up the suspense

A mystery Halloween sale can be a great way to keep your subscribers hooked and get them to visit your website. EmailMonks’ (now Uplers) “Face Your Fears” Halloween-themed email campaign invites customers to face their fears and step into a haunted house.

Spicing up your emails with a sense of mystery will help your click-through rate, as your contacts are likely to be tempted to try their luck, which translates into visits to your website.

Try including a game in your Halloween email campaign.

Customize your Halloween email marketing campaigns

Engage subscribers with helpful, relevant email. This includes anything from on-trend topics, customizing email to their preferences, or catering to their Halloween needs.

This Crate & Barrel campaign includes useful content for the time-strapped shopper, with links to everything one might need to transform their home into a haunted house radiating that Halloween spirit.

Let the reader know that you have a cure for all their pain points, that you have what they are looking for, and that they won’t need to look anywhere else. They won’t need to do any tiring Halloween decoration shopping after work or trying to craft their own. No more hollowing out pumpkins or applying fake blood…sort their Halloween party in just a few spooktacular clicks!

Crate & Barrel’s email includes everything you need to throw the perfect Halloween party.

Free all kinds of creative monsters in your Halloween emails

Make your Halloween email stand out by being bold and using fresh, innovative content. Lands’ End does this cleverly – by bringing its products to life with animation, an element that will most definitely attract the reader’s attention. They also give their email a different twist, opting for “Black Magic” as their title, rather than the usual “Trick or Treat.” They even top it off with a short Halloween-themed email poem. Talk about spellbinding!

Be creative, innovative, and original, then see how your effort pays off.

Want to see the animation in Lands’ End’s Halloween email? Check it out here.

15 Halloween email subject lines to increase your open rates

The other factor you’re going to have to keep in mind is your Halloween email subject line. Just like your Halloween costumes, they should be creative and eye-catching. Remember to keep it short, ensure it’s relevant to the contents of your email, consider adding some spooky emojis (but not too many), and have fun with it! We have a couple of great examples for you below:

1. Blue Apron: Forget the candy, this deal is the sweetest one yet!
2. Land O’Lakes: 👻 Ghoul, treat yourself with these recipes
3. Email Monks: Witching You Happy Halloween
4. Betty’s: Double, double, toil and trouble.
5. Dunkin’ Donuts: Click your treat!
6. Vimeo: Fall into these sweet new features!
7. 8AM: Nightmare-fuel to ship your pants to ⛴👻
8. Disney+: Boo! See what’s screaming — er, streaming!
9. Magic Spoon Cereal: Candy for breakfast! 🍬
10. Lush: Need to calm a sugar high?
11. Crate And Barrel: All treats, no tricks.
12. WeTransfer: Pumpkin spice and all things (not) nice
13. Restream: 🍭 We’ve conjured a few treats for you this week!
14. Slice: What’s a ghost’s favorite dinner? 👻
15. Changelly: 🎃 24H left to win some Halloween treats!

Halloween email examples for every industry

For some industries, Halloween-ifying their email content can be quite straightforward, but others might have a bit of brainstorming to do. If you’re not feeling your most creative self before the witching hour, here are a few ideas on how to give your holiday email metrics some magic:

Ecommerce Halloween emails

Bring your products to life in Halloween style. List the essential ingredients for the perfect peculiar party, and let the reader know that you have everything they need for it. Mango stays true to its personality with this elegant yet rather cheeky message. The title is eye-catching, set in sharp contrast against the white background, and the paragraph adds a twist, combining its spooky theme with some intrigue.

Hand-drawn sketches can really make a featured image pop.

SaaS Halloween emails

Add a spooky twist to your product, perhaps include an invite to an exclusive Halloween-related event or link to some exclusive content. If you have software updates or changes to your service, you can put a boo-tiful spin on your email copy. Ensure your email is clean and informative but take the time to nod to the time of year and make the email more engaging than a flat, traditional update email. Use your own design and copy to put a new spin on software emails.

Google shows customers creative ways to use their software for Halloween

Travel & experiences Halloween emails

Draw together some Halloween events or experience days local to your subscriber, or use this opportunity to promote some inspiring destinations. Many places have their own local traditions around Halloween (like Día de Los Muertos) – it could be a great opportunity to promote them! Check out Airbnb’s email below, where they promote spooky properties for the more adventurous traveler.

Food & spirits Halloween emails

Give your contacts Halloween recipes that are so good, your readers will want to stay up cooking all night. Focus on classic ingredients (pumpkin!) and fang-tastic dishes. Want to make it even better? Run a contest and ask your subscribers to share photos of their creations with you. User-generated content will be your new best friend!

Beauty & well-being email Halloween emails

Let your subscribers know that whether they want the perfect make-up for their costume or to look a bit less like a monster, your products can work magic. Check out Lush’s Halloween season email below, where they nod to the concept of a “sugar high” to promote their wellness products. What can you offer your little monsters?

Create spooky Halloween email campaigns with Sinch Mailjet

Need a little help creating the perfect Halloween email? Don’t be scared – Sinch Mailjet has your back. With our advanced Email Editor and personalizable Halloween email templates, you and your team can quickly and easily create campaigns that will be spooktacular treats for your recipients.

Template examples from Mailjet’s Email Editor

And when it comes to tricks and treats, email marketers know that it takes work to turn a great idea into great copy and design. Draw inspiration from these Halloween email campaigns and make sure your email wins best dressed in the Halloween inbox. As for your own winning costume, you might need to look elsewhere. Happy Halloween!

This blog post is an updated and expanded version of the post: “Fright School Friday: Email that wins the holiday inbox”, published on the Mailjet blog on October 30th, 2015 by Sasha Seddon.

The post Tips and tricks to create stunning Halloween emails appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

And here’s the catch – if those connections aren’t encrypted, your message is essentially a postcard. Anyone handling it along the way – internet providers, compromised routers, even malicious actors – could read or modify the contents. 

Now think about what kinds of messages you’re sending: 

• Order confirmations with customer details 

• Password reset links 

• Marketing emails tied to customer identities 

Would you be comfortable sending that on a postcard? Probably not… 

This is where TLS comes in. 

What is TLS? 

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that encrypts the connection between email servers. Think of it like sealing a letter in an envelope before it’s sent through the postal service. TLS ensures that your emails travel in that sealed envelope – hidden from prying eyes, protected from tampering, and delivered with the trust your brand depends on. 

When both the sending and receiving servers support TLS, messages are transmitted securely. This protects sensitive information, maintains customer trust, and helps ensure compliance with privacy standards. 

Why does TLS matter for email senders? 

Email isn’t just a marketing channel anymore, with businesses sending invoices, verifying identities, resetting passwords, and communicating sensitive details. Every one of those messages deserves protection in transit. TLS helps in five key ways: 

Protects privacy and security 

Without TLS, your email can be intercepted, read, or even altered by anyone who has access to the network between servers. This could be an ISP, a compromised router, or a bad actor performing a “man-in-the-middle” attack. 

With TLS, the connection is encrypted. Even if someone does intercept the traffic, all they see is scrambled data they can’t read. 

Builds trust with your audience 

Customers are becoming more aware of digital security. If they discover your brand sends emails without encryption, it reflects poorly – even if nothing malicious happens. 

Some email clients and providers even display security indicators (like a padlock icon) when TLS is used. These subtle cues reinforce that your brand is professional and trustworthy. 

Supports compliance requirements 

Regulatory frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and industry standards such as PCI DSS expect that businesses take reasonable steps to protect personal data in transit. TLS is considered the baseline. 

Failing to use TLS doesn’t just put your recipients at risk – it could also put you out of compliance, leading to fines, audits, or contractual issues with partners. 

Improves deliverability and reputation 

Mailbox providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook) care about the security of their ecosystems. If you send without TLS, some providers may deprioritize your messages, flag them as less secure, or in some extremely rare cases, reject them. 

Meanwhile, consistent TLS usage signals to providers that you’re a legitimate sender who values secure practices. That can help your sender reputation and improve inbox placement. 

Defends against downgrade attacks 

Without enforced TLS, attackers can sometimes trick servers into downgrading to plaintext delivery. This leaves your message exposed, even if both parties support TLS. 

By configuring STARTTLS with enforcement, you block this risk. Your email is either delivered securely or not delivered at all there’s no insecure middle ground. 

STARTTLS: Taking the next step 

By default, many email servers try to use TLS if both sides support it, but if TLS isn’t available, they’ll fall back to unencrypted delivery. That means your emails could still be traveling like postcards. 

STARTTLS is an email protocol command that tells an email server to switch from an unencrypted connection to an encrypted one using TLS. And importantly, you can configure your system to enforce STARTTLS – requiring that all emails to a given domain are encrypted, or else not delivered. 

As mentioned, this prevents downgrade attacks, where a bad actor forces the connection to drop back to insecure delivery. 

What do I need to do?  

The good news for senders is that most modern ESPs and security standards now require TLS 1.2 or higher (including Mailjet) and don’t require any action on your behalf. This means you’re already operating on a secure baseline. However, some platforms still accept TLS 1.0 and 1.1, which are considered outdated and less secure. If you manage your own infrastructure, make sure your servers support TLS 1.2 or higher.  

Conclusion

TLS is no longer optional. It’s the standard for protecting your recipients, your brand, and your deliverability. By enabling and enforcing STARTTLS, you ensure that your emails aren’t just delivered, but delivered securely. 

The post Why every email sender should care about TLS and STARTTLS  appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

In our recent Mailjet Email Academy webinar, Plan, send, and succeed this BFCM and holiday season, in-house experts Natalie Lynch (Principal Product Manager) and Julia Murljacic (Senior Email Marketing Manager) walked through the exact steps you need to make sure your campaigns don’t just sail out into the ether – they land, get read, and drive results. 

Here’s a full breakdown of the key takeaways and step-by-step process outlined in the webinar. 

TL; DR 

If you’d like to watch a full replay of the webinar, simply scroll down to the bottom of article.  

Step #1: Plan early and set yourself up for success 

So, when should we start thinking about our BFCM campaigns? Well, some interesting insights reported in our BFCM email marketing: What consumers want in 2025 indicate that over 50% of consumers want to hear from brands at least one month before Black Friday. If you’re waiting until Thanksgiving week, you’re already too late. 

And it’s not just about timing. We also saw that email remains the preferred channel for Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, with 56.5% of respondents selecting it over the likes of WhatsApp, websites, and social media ads. Planning early ensures your campaigns reach customers where they actually want to hear from you. 

You can see some of the data below: 

Define your goals and KPIs 

Before you start any kind of campaign planning, you need to define your goals. What are they? What does success look like for you? Here are some tips that Julia highlighted in the webinar: 

• Tie each campaign to a clear goal so you know what to measure. 
• Be specific: Do you want a 20% revenue lift, 15% higher repeat purchases, or more website traffic? 
• Don’t just say “increase engagement” – define whether that means. Higher click-throughs, conversions, loyalty sign-ups? 

Identify your stakeholders and resources

OK, so you’ve got an idea of what you want to achieve – now it’s time to think about everything needed to make that happen. Firstly, you’re going to want to lock in your audience and segments. Who does this campaign benefit, and within that group, do you need to segment down further? Then you can start getting more tactical. 

Julia highlighted some further areas you might want to consider  

• Map out who needs to be involved internally within the organization: design, copy, developers, compliance, sales… (if you’re a one-man band well, that’s you!) 
• Gather campaign assets early: graphics, product images, promo codes, and landing pages. 
• Coordinate across channels – align your social ads, SMS, and website banners with your email campaigns for a consistent brand experience. 
• Map out the timing of your sends. 

Strengthen your deliverability foundations 

Emails that fail to reach your customers and prospects are missed opportunities to connect and engage. That’s why deliverability is often referred to as that “invisible layer” of campaign success. If you skip this, even the best campaigns will fall on deaf ears. So, to combat that, Natalie suggests that you: 

• Authenticate your sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to prove legitimacy to mailbox providers. 
• Regularly clean your lists and validate contacts – in our Road to the Inbox 2025 research, 39% of senders admitted they rarely or never do list hygiene, even though it’s essential for inbox placement.  
• Implement a one-click unsubscribe – not just for compliance, but to prevent recipients from marking emails as spam. 

Step #2: Send smart and build momentum 

With inboxes more crowded than Anfield on derby day, you can’t afford to make mistakes. This means how you roll out your sends – who you target, how you test, and how quickly you scale – can make or break the performance of your campaigns.  

So, how do you ensure success?  

Warm up before you go big 

Warming up your list before BFCM helps inbox providers see consistent, positive engagement, so your emails actually land in the inbox instead of spam. If you blast your entire list at once, you risk high bounces, complaints, and a damaged sender reputation right when you need deliverability most. 

• Begin with your most engaged contacts (e.g., those active in the last 30–90 days). 
• Gradually expand to larger segments to build positive signals with ISPs. 
• Avoid sending to your full list cold – it increases the risk of being filtered to spam. 
• Keep an eye on performance metrics and refine your segments throughout the warm-up phase. 

Segment and personalize 

Generic emails blend into inbox clutter. Segmenting and personalizing your campaign ensures subscribers get offers that feel relevant, which boosts opens, clicks, and conversions. Sending one-size-fits-all blasts, on the other hand, leads to lower engagement and a higher chance of being ignored or marked as spam. Some options you have are to: 

• Segment by behavior: loyal customers, first-time buyers, inactive subscribers. 
• Segment by engagement: openers/clickers in the last 90 days vs. dormant contacts. 
• Use personalization: names, product recommendations, location-based offers. 

This isn’t just theory – our research shows that email campaigns that feel anticipated, personal, and relevant perform best. Consumers are more likely to engage when emails look like they were created for them, not for “just another name on a list.” 

Test before launch 

Now, before hitting that send button, it’s important to test and see how your BFCM emails render. This ensures you catch any links, images, and layout issues across devices and inboxes, protecting you from embarrassing mistakes. It also saves revenue and credibility that could be lost if customers see broken or unprofessional emails.  

• Preview your emails across devices and clients. A design that works in Gmail may break in Outlook. 
• Ensure your A/B tests are set up correctly. 
• Run through every link, coupon code, and personalization token to avoid embarrassing errors. 

NOW you are able to hit send… 

But remember, timing is everything. You don’t want to send your campaign at 9:00 AM Eastern if you’ve segmented your audience by region and this group live in California. Also, make sure you’re using email automation to help schedule your campaigns. Unless you’re the type of sender that needs their finger on the trigger, this can help save a bunch of time and manual effort. 

Step 3: Measure and optimize for long-term success 

Don’t set and forget! Hitting send does not mark the finish line – it’s the start of a feedback loop. Success around BFCM isn’t about a single campaign but about learning and improving continuously. 

Track the right metrics 

Beyond checking that the campaign was sent correctly, what metrics should you be tracking, and why? Here are some of the most common to keep top of mind: 

• Engagement: opens, clicks, unsubscribes. Which content resonated most with your audience? 
• Delivery: bounce rates and spam complaints.  
• Conversions: revenue, coupon redemptions, and goal completions from email. 

Remember, you’re not just track for the sake of numbers – insights matter. Inboxes are crowded, with consumers receiving dozens of promotional emails a day. Measuring what cuts through will help you refine your future sends. 

Wait at least 48 hours after the campaign has been sent to start gathering performance data. This gives enough time to all subscribers to access and engage with your campaign. 

Keep the party going

So, what’s next? While you might be ready to hang your hat up and pat your back on a job well done – the real goal here is long-term retention. How can we keep these new subscribers and buyers engaged beyond the holiday season campaign? Natalie ran through a few options for you to consider: 

• Send thank-you emails or follow-ups with related product recommendations. 
• Provide educational or loyalty-focused content as part of an onboarding or nurture workflow. 
• Build post-holiday nurture flows so seasonal buyers become year-round customers. 

Watch the full webinar

The holiday season is crowded, but the senders who succeed are the ones who prepare early, send smart, and measure carefully. By strengthening your deliverability, segmenting audiences, and continuously refining your approach, you’ll be set up not only for BFCM but for long-term engagement. 

Did you miss the live session? Then catch the full recap below: 

The post Email Academy: Plan, send, and succeed this BFCM and holiday season  appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

One of those email actors leading the way when it comes to change is Gmail, which is constantly incorporating features and automations to take the inbox experience to a new level. Of course, with an estimated 1.8 billion Gmail users in 2023, understanding the inbox’s features is a must for email marketers.

In this post, we’ll talk about the Gmail automated unsubscribe feature, what it means to senders, and why this is going to be so important to you come February 2024.

What is the automated unsubscribe feature on Gmail?

A while back, we talked to you about how Gmail was already adding some then-new sophistication to this header option that allows users to easily cancel their subscription to marketing emailing lists.

While the ability to unsubscribe from a contact list on Gmail has been available for some time, it had always been up to the users to determine which ones they wanted to be removed from.

Currently, Google has fully leaned into that sophistication by automating that process and actively asking the users whether they’d like to unsubscribe from certain promotional emails they haven’t opened in the last 30 days or more.

The unsubscribe suggestions are based on how many emails users receive and open from a specific sender and it means that, with just one click on the Unsubscribe button, the newsletter subscriptions will be terminated, making it even easier for recipients to stop receiving all of those unwanted emails.

How can recipients unsubscribe from your emails on Gmail?

As a marketer, it’s worth understanding the different unsubscribe options available to recipients using Gmail.

Let ’s go through some of them quickly.

Unsubscribe link in emails

The first way recipients can unsubscribe from emails is by clicking on the unsubscribe link that needs to be included in all email marketing campaigns.

Of course, as you’ll be following email marketing best practices as a sender, you’ll include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link at the bottom of your newsletter template, making it simpler for unengaged recipients to say goodbye.

This is good practice for protecting your deliverability and it also ensures you’re completely compliant with anti-spam legislation (GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, etc.). And in 2024, it will be a non-negotiable for bulk email senders targeting Gmail and Yahoo users.

Here’s an example from our newsletter below:

Gmail’s unsubscribe button on the email header

If you’re a Gmail user yourself, you’ve probably noticed that some emails have an Unsubscribe button at the top of the email, next to the sender’s email address.

You can clearly see it highlighted in the example below.

Sometimes, this unsubscribe link is also accessible by clicking the sender card to get more details.

If you’re a frequent Mailjet reader, you’ll know that adding an unsubscribe link is the best way to protect your sender reputation and avoid users from sending your email to spam.

That’s why many senders choose to incorporate a list-unsubscribe header to their emails, which makes it easier for webmail clients like Gmail to find unsubscribe settings and display them at the top of the email. If you’re sending emails from Mailjet, the list-unsubscribe header is added to your campaigns by default as a way to protect your deliverability.

On mobile apps, this unsubscribe button can be found by entering the email and clicking on the options icon in the top right-hand corner of their screen – shown as a three consecutive dotted symbol.

This will force a drop-down menu (such as the example below) with the option available to unsubscribe.

Gmail’s block option

A block isn’t the same as an unsubscribe, but sometimes recipients will default to this if they can’t find an easy way to cancel their email subscription.

Gmail’s block option is easy to find both on desktop and mobile by accessing the message options via the three dots on the right-hand side.

Marketers should beware of this block option, though. When a recipient chooses to block an email address or sender, Gmail will directly reroute this mail to the spam folder. As a sender, you’ll never know you’ve been given the silent treatment – you’ll just see the impact in your email deliverability.

An unsubscribe, on the other hand, lets us know that they no longer want to receive a certain type of content (newsletter, new blog postings, etc.,) with the onus then being to remove recipients from said list. That’s why at Sinch Mailjet we always recommend giving recipients an easy way out.

Automated unsubscribe recommendations

The final option for recipients is Gmail’s automated unsubscribe feature, of course.

Just as we previously explained in this post, this automated feature flags brands the user hasn’t interacted with in a period of time and offers recipients a fast way to unsubscribe from them.

While the previous options rely on a user actively choosing to opt out of your email program, Gmail’s automated unsubscribe recommendations create a new dilemma for marketers: What can you do if Gmail is telling your contacts to unsubscribe? And what will this mean for your email program?

What does the Gmail automated unsubscribe feature mean for email marketers?

Quite frankly, it means that your recipients have an easier way to cancel their email subscription. So, if your newsletters are boring or irrelevant, and the reader has not opened them in a while, they’ll be prompted to unsubscribe.

Don’t panic, though. The Gmail automated unsubscribe link doesn’t have to be seen as an enemy. They could already do this with tools like unroll.me, couldn’t they? In fact, it can be seen as a way to help you clean your contact lists, which in turn improves your deliverability rate.

On top of that, if you apply email list cleaning best practices, like regularly sunsetting inactive contacts and running requalification campaigns to re-obtain consent from your newsletter subscribers, you have an up-to-date database of contacts that are interested in receiving your communications and your content. And we’re pretty sure you did, didn’t you?

All in all, what’s important to remember is that this is yet another way to keep your email list clean. At Sinch Mailjet, we always recommend that you remove inactive contacts every three to six months to ensure your open and click-through rates remain at a healthy level, to ensure the best deliverability.

The bottom line is, if you continue to strategically plan and implement your newsletter campaigns, you don’t have to worry about the unsubscribe feature.

What are the February 2024 Gmail unsubscribe link requirements? 

You may have heard that Google and Yahoo plan to make some serious changes when it comes to securing subscribers’ inboxes.

Well, you heard right – as of February 2024 Google announced it’ll be requiring senders to abide by a set of industry best practices to both improve email authentication and deliverability. 

These new requirements will affect bulk senders – those sending over 5000+ to Gmail addresses in one day – with one of them being the mandatory inclusion of a one-click unsubscribe option for readers.

Now, seeing as most email senders will be attempting to reach Gmail and Yahoo inboxes, this likely affects you. So, what can you do to ensure you comply with these new mandates?

How to avoid Gmail mass unsubscribes

At Sinch Mailjet, we think the strongest email campaign is the one your contacts really want to receive. The best solution to avoid contacts unsubscribing is to create targeted and relevant emails, and to only send them to those that actually interact with your communications.

To help you maintain an engaged subscription base, here are some top tips.

Segment your contact lists

Don’t send the same email to all your contacts. Use segmentation to send content that is tailored to your contacts based on different data, such as behavior, location, age, and gender. Combine it with personalization to make it even more human. The more relevant your email is, the more engagement it will generate among your subscribers.

Send reactivation and retention campaigns to inactive contacts

Every three or six months, identify subscribers that haven’t interacted with your emails and send them a special campaign in which you remind them of the value they offer, and in which you ask them to confirm their subscription or take an action using their account. You can include a survey to understand what content they’d like to receive, or highlight what they have missed in those past months. Because of these reminders and attention, they’re less likely to take the unsubscribe option and more likely to stay with you.

A great example of a reactivation campaign comes from the home decor company Framebridge. In this email, they ask the recipient to confirm that they want to stay on Framebridge’s mailing list.

The email is short, to the point, and gets its message across. Additionally, the email uses color to draw attention to its call-to-action, which takes the form of a large, colorful button. It’s very easy for any reader to understand how to take action and keep themselves on the mailing list. This email deserves a frame, right?

Okay, we tried.

Set up sunset policies for inactive users

No, this doesn’t mean inactive users are jetted off on holiday to the Andalusian coast, cocktail in hand, to enjoy one of Europe’s finest sunsets…

A sunset policy is a common email segmentation strategy that identifies and discontinues sending emails to disengaged contacts or subscribers who don’t open your emails.

However, there’s big difference between cleaning your list and sunsetting.  While you often only conduct list cleaning every few months, an automated sunset policy allows you to automatically identify disengage contacts and promptly exclude them from your email sends, effectively mitigating the negative impact they could have on your email deliverability.

Use our Exclusion List to avoid sending emails to inactive contacts

If you don’t want to remove your zombie contacts from your list forever, you can add them to your Exclusion List. This way, contacts will stay in your database, but won’t receive your emails.

You can find your Exclusion List inside the Mailjet app. To do so, you’ll just need to click the Exclusion List button under the Conctacts drop-down in the top menu.

Wrapping up

The Gmail automated unsubscribe feature might feel spooky at first but, by following the above tips and continuing to use email best practices, you can ensure that you’re keeping your email program as healthy as possible. That way, as Gmail and other services continue to refine their features, your mailing list and customer relationships will stay strong.

The post What is the Gmail automated unsubscribe feature? appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

Noreply addresses are the brick wall of digital marketing – no matter how much recipients try to get their message through, there’s just no way to contact the sender.

But what role does this type of address play in an email strategy? In this post, our friend Chris Arrendale, CEO and founder of Inbox Rev, explains what a noreply address is and why sending your marketing emails using a reply-to address is always the best idea.

What is a noreply email address?

A noreply email is an email address that is not monitored and blocks customers from replying. You’ve likely seen this type of sender address before – most of the time it looks like this: noreply@domain.com.

There is a misconception that sending from a noreply email address is the best way to go to avoid being flooded with email replies. Many businesses use this type of email address for receipts or account creation and shipping confirmations. However, it can confuse and frustrate customers if their replies go unanswered or worse – bounce.

Noreply email examples

Still unsure of what a noreply email looks like in your inbox? We’ll highlight a few of the most common examples you’ll likely receive from brands:

Product/Service subscription

Terms of service changes

Email/Account verification

Welcome email

Order/Purchase confirmation

Let’s explore why it’s never a good idea to use a noreply email address for your email marketing campaigns and what you should use instead.

Why you shouldn’t use a noreply address in email marketing

While noreply addresses are tempting, there are a few reasons why you shouldn’t use one. Here are the most important things to consider:

It decreases deliverability and increases spam foldering

Certain ISPs, network spam filters, and customers’ personal email security settings are set up to send noreply email to the junk folder. This will decrease your open and overall deliverability rates and will increase your chances of landing in the spam folder. Being inboxed less leads to lower possible conversions, especially when sending blast emails.

Also looking at email trends from a broader sense, 53% of email is opened on mobile devices. To accommodate for the smaller screen, many email clients set their inboxes on mobile devices to just show a preview of the sender and your email address as well. As a consumer, would you open an email with a noreply email address? You’re more likely to feel like a company is unapproachable.

It can hurt your customer experience

When a customer replies to an email, it’s because they have something to share. They could have a support question, a comment about your product or service, or just some constructive feedback that can help a brand with its marketing efforts. Adding your contact information to your email campaigns will help direct some of these comments, but it’s likely many of your customers still opt for just replying to your campaigns. If they get an auto-reply notification telling them the email can’t be delivered, how do you think they’ll feel?

Post-GDPR, it is also more important than ever to take the time to evaluate whether you should use a no-reply address for your marketing campaigns. How can you expect your subscribers to contact you to claim their rights if you don’t allow them to do so? An autoresponder is just not good enough.

Swapping out the noreply for a reply-to address

Most ISPs do not allow email recipients to add noreply emails to their address books. If a recipient can’t add you to their address book, you’re more likely to be flagged as spam and sent to the junk folder. It is also much more likely for subscribers to hit the spam button if they can’t reply back requesting removal of their email address. I’ve seen cases where customers unsubscribed from some of their favorite brands because noreply emails addresses were not being monitored.

Another interesting point to remember is that it shows credibility to ISPs when recipients engage with your email, replying to your email being one of those cases. Safe sender privileges include bypassing some of an ISPs mail filters and delivering straight to the inbox.

Best practices when sending email replies

Hopefully, by now you understand the importance of adding a reply-to address to your marketing and transactional emails. To help you implement yours, here are some best practices you should keep in mind.

Create a dedicated email address for email responses

Setting up a dedicated reply-to address will help you filter and follow up on customer feedback. Create an email distro and ensure relevant team members, like support team agents or community managers, have access to the address.

For example, you could set something up like:

• hello@company
• contact@company
• helpdesk@company
• information@company
• support@company

Sometimes, that dedicated email address might be connected to support software tools like Zendesk, which allow companies to create a generic support email address for incoming support tickets.

If you’ve not set up a custom domain yet, we highly recommend you do so. It improves your sender reputation, builds brand credibility in the inbox, reduces susceptibility to phishing, and helps with email authentication.

However, if you’ve not got around to setting up a custom domain yet and are using a free email provider such as Gmail, this can still be set up easily.

Set up filters for specific autoresponders

We’ve all suffered it. Every company’s reply-to address usually receives an influx of out-of-office messages and other automated responses after a campaign is sent.

To avoid these types of messages clogging your dedicated email address, filter out messages containing keywords such as “delivery notification” or “out of office” in the subject line or body of the email. This will make handling the legitimate messages easier.

Keep an eye on the unsubscribes

As mentioned before, some people skip over the unsubscribe link and reply directly to your email asking to be removed. These customers bypass the unsubscribe link because they’re afraid it will only flood their mailbox with more emails.

Make sure you honor these requests promptly and remove the email addresses from your list. The last thing you want is for these recipients to feel like they are being unheard and in frustration, mark your email as spam.

Also, monitor your reply email address if you’re sending to a domain where the recipient never opted into your email program (something you shouldn’t be doing anyway). The mail administrator (at the recipient’s domain) may try to contact you at your reply email address.

This is a crucial moment because if you don’t respond back, the email recipient may report you to a blocklist and/or try to contact the email service provider (ESP) or data center to complain about your email.

Build the best conversation

A reply-to email address is essential to any email marketing program. It fosters two-way communication and nurtures the conversation between you and your customers.

Many B2B senders will use a sales person’s email address as the reply-to to keep the conversation personal and on a more one-to-one level, while B2C senders may use a general reply-to address that may be monitored by multiple email marketing professionals.

Both scenarios build the confidence that when the recipient replies to the marketing email, the email will be received and followed up on.

Provide support throughout the customer journey

Often, customers reply to emails because they have a support request or concern, or there’s probably something in your email they want to know more about.

When planning your campaigns, think about the kind of questions users might have and proactively offer resources that help answer them.

This will be especially important post-purchase or during the onboarding period. Including links to additional resources, FAQ pages, technical documentation, or your help center will help reduce the number of responses your reply-to address gets and improve your customer experience overall.

Summing up: Say NO to noreply email addresses

To sum it up, the noreply email address should never be used to send from. It tells your customers that you don’t really care what they have to say.

By using a noreply email address, you’re also missing out on an important opportunity to collect feedback and learn how to improve your product and also it’s not the best way to grow your email list.

So now you know: Swap your noreply to a reply-to email address and build a stronger relationship with your recipients.

Want to learn more about email deliverability best practices? Sign up to our newsletter now and get all the tips and tricks in your inbox.

***

This blog post was written by Chris Arrendale, the CEO and Founder of Inbox Pros. Chris has more than 13 years of experience in the technology and software industry and has worked directly with many different ISPs, webmail providers, spam filter providers, blocklists, and partners to resolve email deliverability and privacy issues. He works with many leading organizations and enterprises to ensure regulatory compliance and maximum deliverability across all systems.

The post Noreply email address: Best practices for your email strategy appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

In this post, we’re going to tell you about email headers, how they can help you, and of course, where exactly you can find them.

What is an email header?

Emails contain three main elements: the message body, the envelope, and the message header. You probably already know what the body of an email refers to – the main text of the message. That’s where your design goes. Everything written in an email, from “Dear Professor Dumbledore” to “Sincerely Yours, Harry Potter,” is considered the body of the message. The message’s sender and recipient can both see this information.

The message envelope is something that neither the sender nor the recipient sees. The envelope is the information that the email program and outgoing server use to communicate and deliver the message to the correct email address. When the message writer hits send, this information is created before the email lands in the recipient’s inbox (hopefully not the spam folder).

Finally, the email header is a log of an email’s technical details that both the sender and recipient can see, though it can’t be as easily viewed as the email body. It contains details regarding the sender, receiver, and message. This includes any email addresses that are involved in the conversation, the servers the email passed through while being sent, and more.

Email headers appear complicated, but they include valuable information for email professionals and SMB marketers.

What are email headers used for?

Email headers are typically used to see information, such as who sent and received a message, where the message passed through a mail server, and what kind of errors may have prevented the email from reaching its intended destination.

Let’s explore the multitude of ways email headers can be used.

Improving email deliverability

For email deliverability, headers can provide helpful information about positive or negative interactions with a message. They help identify any errors that may have impacted delivery. This data is invaluable to understanding why messages may be failing to reach the intended recipient and can provide clues on how to fix deliverability problems.

Checking for errors or changes

Email headers help you verify if the message was secure in transit and reached its recipient without errors or changes. If the message encountered a problem on the way to its destination or was never delivered at all, a tech-savvy user can review the header and figure out exactly what affected the message. Did Harry’s email go to Aberfoth Dumbledore, instead of Albus?

After identifying issues, the user can then fix problems that help new emails get where they need to go.

Protecting against spam and phishing

Email headers are a great way to verify the source of an email and can help protect against spam and phishing attacks. It is recommended to always inspect email headers to verify the sender’s address before responding to an email. Doing this can help ensure that messages are coming from trusted sources, and can warn users against responding to spoofing or malicious emails. No one wants to be duped!

Tracking an email’s route

Since the header contains the email’s routing information, you can view exactly which mail servers, ISPs, and email platforms the message has been through. This can help with tracking the originator of a message, as well as identifying any points where the email may have been tampered with. Knowing all the stops an email has gone through is especially helpful in cases of malicious activities.

Identifying the sender and receiver

Email headers can also be used to identify who sent an email as well as the recipient’s information. This is especially useful in understanding whether or not a message was actually sent from the sender in question, or if it was a third party attempting to impersonate the purported sender.

Due to their ability to quickly help solve many issues, headers are a valuable resource for organizations concerned with deliverability and the technical process of sending an email.

If you’re beginning an email marketing campaign, it’s important to correctly configure your delivery systems beforehand and send a few test emails. With the right tools in place, you will be able to give yourself a leg up in deliverability before your email even leaves your outbox.

What are the standard parts of an email header?

Email headers provide you with important information. The standard parts of an email header are below:

Elsewhere in the header, you can also find the following:

How do you find an email header in your email client?

Almost all webmail providers contain email headers for each message. Below, you can see instructions for finding headers on popular email clients.

Email headers in Gmail

To find headers in Gmail, you:

1. Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the email message
2. Select “Show Original”
3. This will show you the email header

A few clicks is all you need to find email headers in Gmail.

Email headers in Microsoft Outlook (Hotmail) website and app

To find mail headers on the Microsoft Outlook web browser, you:

1. Click the three dots in the upper right corner of the email
2. Click “view message source” in the drop-down menu
3. The full email header should then appear

The popular Microsoft Outlook email client makes it easy to find email headers.

In the Microsoft Outlook app, you:

1. Double-click the email to open it in a separate window.
2. Then, right click “file” and “properties”.
3. Then, you can see the header information in the “internet headers” section at the bottom of the screen.

Email headers in Yahoo Mail

To find email headers in Yahoo Mail:

1. Open the message in the webmail client
2. Click the “more” icon (three dots) above it.
3. Then, right click “view raw message.”
4. The mail header should then appear.

Quickly locate email headers with Yahoo Mail.

Email headers in Apple Mail

To find email headers in Apple Mail, you:

1. Open the message and select the “view” option in the menu.
2. Then, choose the “message” option
3. Then, click on “All Headers”.
4. This will display your message’s email header.

Apple’s emphasis on transparency includes making headers easy to locate on the Apple Mail client.

Email headers in Mozilla Thunderbird

Viewing email headers in Thunderbird is straightforward as well:

1. Simply open an email message
2. Then click “View”, “Headers”, and “All”
3. This will make the email header visible

Email headers in ProtonMail

To find headers in ProtonMail:

1. Log in to your email ProtonMail account
2. Then, open your email message
3. Click the three-dot icon at the top of the message.
4. Next, select “View headers.”
5. The email headers will pop up in a new window.

How to find email headers in ProtonMail with just a few clicks.

Email headers in AOL Mail

To view the full headers for an email message in AOL Mail:

1. Open an email message
2. Then click, “More” in the top menu.
3. Then select “View Message Source.”

Email headers in Zoho

To find email headers in Zoho mail:

1. Open the email that you’d like to view
2. Then click, the downward arrow for “More Actions” in the upper right corner.
3. Next, click “Show Original”.
4. This will still show only the major header details. To view the entire HTML source of the formatted email, click the “Show Full Content” option.

Zoho has a number of options for viewing and downloading full email headers.

Email headers in GMX

To find email headers in GMX:

1. Log in to your GMX account
2. Open an email message
3. Then, click the “information” icon, which is positioned in the top right corner of the message.
4. A popup will appear that shows the “Extended Header Information”.

It just takes two steps to find and view full email headers in GMX.

Email headers in Mail.com

To access the full email headers on Mail.com:

1. Log in to your account
2. Open an email message
3. Then, click the information icon in the top right corner.
4. A popup should appear that provides “Extended Header Information”.

It just takes two steps to find and view full email headers in Mail.com.

Key things to remember about email headers

Email headers may seem unfamiliar to those who have never viewed them. However, they’re an important part of a good deliverability strategy.

You can use email headers to find outdetailed information about your emails’ journey and if they’re being properly delivered. Becoming familiar with them will help you launch successful email campaigns and view their results.

The post Email headers: What are they and how to read them appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

Setting up contact lists and creating your first newsletter are great starting points, but if you’re looking to take the next step in your understanding of email marketing, then you should take a closer look at SMTP relays.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is the backend system that helps you and your company send, receive, and relay messages between email senders and receivers. Let’s look at what an SMTP relay is and how it works.

What is an SMTP relay?

An SMTP relay is a protocol that allows email to be transmitted through the internet, from one SMTP server (commonly referred to as a “smart host”) to another. It was first created in 1982 and continues to be the internet standard widely used today.

An SMTP relay is an email relay service that works in two steps:

• It receives the outgoing email from the sender’s SMTP server (that is, your amazing email campaign).
• It delivers it to the recipient’s SMTP server.

Simple enough, right? To make things even clearer it might help to define some of the commons terms you’re likely to hear around SMTP relays:

How does the SMTP relay protocol work?

To better understand how an SMTP relay works, let’s imagine the journey that your normal snail mail may take to get to its destination:

Email relay is the process of transmitting an email message from one server to another. In the picture above, the local post offices would be the SMTP servers and the email transfer that happens between them is what we call ‘relaying’.

So, for example, when you send out your latest campaign “Cute puppies looking for a foster home”, your company’s SMTP server relays your email to the recipient’s server.

But if you were to send that campaign to someone within your organization’s domain, there would be no ‘email relay,’ as your domain’s SMTP server wouldn’t need to transfer the email to a different SMTP server.

Why is SMTP relay important?

Despite all this talk of SMTP relays and servers, the question remains. How does the SMTP relay process impact my email marketing efforts?

Well, as an email marketer, understanding the SMTP relaying process and its role in bulk emailing is important for several reasons:

Widespread usage

SMTP is one of the most widely adopted protocols for email transmission (along with email APIs). Many senders use it to send and receive emails.

This makes SMTP crucial for ensuring your marketing emails reach their intended audience across various email providers, regardless of their location.

Email campaign performance

SMTP protocol allows email delivery and tracking platforms, such as Mailjet, to more accurately analyze the performance of email campaigns.

Monitoring SMTP response codes can provide insights into the success of your email deliveries, including delivery rates and open and click rates, and identify potential issues that need addressing.

Email bounce monitoring

When an email cannot be delivered to the recipient’s inbox for various reasons (an email address doesn’t exist, the mailbox is full, etc.), the receiving server sends a bounce notification back to the sender.

The SMTP protocol helps email delivery and tracking platforms manage these email bounce messages, allowing you to clean and maintain your email lists to improve deliverability and sender reputation.

SMTP authentication and security

SMTP authentication mechanisms, such as SMTP AUTH, enable you to add basic email authentication protocols such as SPF and DKIM. These help guard your campaigns from email spoofing, spam, and phishing attacks.

Additionally, SMTP uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) – the successor to SSL (Secure Socket Layer) – to encrypt communication between email servers, further enhancing the security of your email communications.

Sending through an SMTP server with an email service provider

So, what does this protocol look like when it comes to an email service provider like Mailjet? Getting the most out of your own SMTP relay server is not easy, so most businesses that need to send mass email to their customers (email marketing campaigns and transactional emails) use SMTP relay for ease of maintenance and added analytics insights.

Sending through an email service provider via an SMTP relay saves companies from having to run their own mail server. As you can see in the diagram below, the business or sender creates the email, and their server routes it through Mailjet’s SMTP server to prepare and send it out to recipients.

To combat spam, many webmail providers and email clients (i.e., Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) put a limit on how many emails you can send to different recipients per day. As businesses who need to communicate en mass with their audience would often exceed this limit, they will require the services of an enterprise level email sending platform – like Mailjet.

An SMTP relay provider can help businesses and organizations deliver large volumes of email without getting them mislabeled as spam or running up against small sending limits.

Email service providers (ESP) invest a lot of resources into building their own email infrastructure to handle large volumes and work closely with the major internet service providers (ISP) and webmail providers to improve email deliverability and deliver these emails straight to the recipient’s inbox.

Behind the scenes: SMTP server tracking

There’s an added layer of value to sending through an email service provider. With Mailjet, before our SMTP servers send an email, our system automatically adds link trackers to the body of your message. This then allows you, as the user, to properly track opens and clicks after an email has been received.

Mailjet also translates feedback from ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.), since each one communicates in its own way. Our service saves developers time by converting this into an easily identifiable response, displaying whether an email has been delivered or has bounced. These metrics make it easier for you to identify issues that might impact your email deliverability.

Choosing an SMTP relay port

Aha! Another tricky aspect of the email world. To understand what SMTP ports are and how they work, we need to take a step back and see what happens when computers communicate with each other on the internet.

Let’s say you are trying to reach mailjet.com. In this case, the Domain Name System (DNS) is converting this to the actual IP address that is hidden behind the name of the site. In Mailjet’s case, this is 104.199.110.216. You could remember 4-5 IPs like ours, but who can remember more, or really…who would want to?

An SMTP port is meant to be used for SMTP connections. Here are some of the SMTP ports you’ll find in use today: 

These few ports are the most used ones for these types of connection, and because of that they are almost always open, which means you should be able to reach your destination.

Wrapping up

Ultimately, SMTP relay makes our lives as marketers much simpler by handling all the heavy lifting in the backend so that we can spend more time crafting content and building out our contact lists.

So, if you’d like to improve your email placement, have greater insights in email performance, and get your emails straight into the inbox, take a look at our SMTP Server.

The post What is an SMTP relay and why do we use it? appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.

To help you with that, we’ve decided to recap all relevant dates for 2025 in one blog post so you can strategize for the year ahead. Read on and find out which dates you should include in your marketing strategy and get our free 2025 Marketing Calendar. Time to get the diary out.

Why is it important to have a marketing calendar for 2025?

Some people think that implementing a marketing strategy is the longest part of the process. Well, they’re wrong. The implementation itself is actually one of the easier steps at the end of the process.

The real work comes before when you have to set goals and establish priorities. The earlier you start planning through every step of the strategy, the fewer problems you’ll run into down the line.

To do that in the best way possible, we’ve created a marketing calendar with all the key dates you’ll need to remember in 2025:

Download the 2025 Marketing Calendar.

These last few years have shown us that unpredictable circumstances require brands to be able to adapt their communication strategies to engage with their target audience and make the most out of their marketing efforts.

Preparing your marketing strategy and marketing plan

Before you start, ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want to achieve and how can you get there?
• What are your unique selling points (USPs)? Why should people buy your products or services?
• What sales promotions can you offer (special deals, freebies, discounts…)?
• What distribution channels are best to achieve your goals?

Keep in mind that a year has so many special dates, holidays, and marketing moments – planning is a must in business and in life!

It is important to decide which promotions (like special deals or key product sales) you want to plan your marketing activities around. This decision should be based on the goals you established for yourself when you mapped out your marketing strategy. Focusing on the wrong promotional strategy can easily ruin your KPIs, and nobody wants that!

When thinking about your holiday or special day marketing campaigns, remember to plan out your promotions in different stages:

• Before the actual date: Let your customers know about what’s coming ahead of time and how they can benefit.
• During the day itself: Make your big sales push via email and leverage any social media buzz.
• After the main event: Don’t forget to follow up with those that converted to obtain their feedback on the process or offer additional products or services.

Finding the right marketing channels

Once you have decided what the right marketing strategy is and what kind of sales promotions you’re going to offer, you’ll need to focus on getting your marketing messages out to your audience.

For marketing promotions around special dates, like the ones we’ve added to our 2025 Marketing Calendar, the best strategy is to go omnichannel. Marketing campaigns that combine different channels (for example, in-store, online, social media, sms marketing or email marketing) allow you to engage with your audience in a different way and also provide many upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

There is a range of channels for you to leverage, but that doesn’t mean you should try to use them all just to tick those boxes. While something like TikTok might be a bit of a stretch if you’re trying to sell dental implants, there are a few must-haves that will apply to most businesses.

One of those channels is email (yeah, you probably guessed that…). Email continues to be the best marketing channel for ROI at $35 and $40 for every $1 spent, as it allows you to personalize, segment, and optimize your email campaigns with detailed stats. Another big plus is that your marketing messages will stay in your contacts’ inboxes for them to use that promo code or find your store’s address when the time comes.

Use tools to organize your marketing calendar

No marketer can possibly remember every single date on the calendar. Use organizational and project management tools to free up that much needed headspace:

• Use project management tools like Google Sheets or Excel to streamline your workflow by tracking the types of content required from the marketing team.
• Remember your marketing goals and KPIs to ensure every campaign is providing value to the company. Track these metrics in your ESP’s campaign statistics dashboard.
• Powerful tools like Asana have functionality to ensure you won’t miss any marketing milestones and allows you to collaborate with the entire team in real-time and organize your content marketing calendar.
• Set reminders using simple calendar tools like Google calendar or the calendar view in Outlook to remind you to chase/collect docs, podcasts, webinars, etc for your campaigns.

To plan and schedule your email campaigns right on time, let’s have a closer look at 2025 dates to keep in mind.

A day in the life of an email marketer.

Key dates in the 2025 Marketing Calendar

Looking for a 2025 marketing calendar to guide your marketing strategy for the new year? We’ve got you covered. We’ve listed all the key dates below and paired them up with great resources to help you plan the best campaigns in 2025.

January

January is all about New Year’s resolutions, goal setting, and mourning the loss of the holiday season.

Start off by wishing your users a Happy New Year, and use this month to offer special deals on products or services that might come in handy when they start working on those New Year’s resolutions.

Other special dates in January include the traditional Winter Sales in European countries and Blue Monday, so think about what you can do to make your users’ days a bit warmer!

Dates you shouldn’t miss in January:

• January 1st – New Year’s Day
• January 12th – Australian Open
• January 20th – Blue Monday
• January 28th – Data Protection Day
• January 28th – Chinese New Year

February

The excitement of the new year might be gone for some, but February has its own share of special dates for marketers to celebrate!

In fact, February has three of the biggest moments of the year: Black History Month, Valentine’s Day, and the Super Bowl.

According to the National Retail Federation, US Valentine’s Day gift-givers spent an estimated $26 billion in 2024, and around $16.5 billion on food, decorations, and team apparel for the Super Bowl, with each person spending an average of $86.5.

Looking at these figures, February is definitely a month to keep in mind when it comes to planning your marketing efforts.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in February:

• February 1st – Black History Month (US)
• February 1st – LGBT History Month
• February 2nd – Groundhog Day
• February 4th – World Cancer Day
• February 9th – Super Bowl
• February 14th – Valentine’s Day
• February 28th – Start of Ramadan

March

March is all about women, but it’s also a key period for the Islamic faith.

Starting March 1, we celebrate Women’s History Month with International Women’s Day taking place on March 8th. Use this opportunity to share stories from the women in your company and how you support equality in the workplace.

Ramadan marks the start of the most important dates in a Muslim’s calendar. With 1.9B followers worldwide, Muslims make up a quarter of the world’s population. Like any religious event, Ramadan is to be celebrated and respected.

Other special dates in March in our 2025 Marketing Calendar include World Wildlife Day, International Transgender Day of Visibility, and a fan-favorite… St. Patrick’s Day!

Dates you shouldn’t miss in March:

• March 1st – Women’s History Month
• March 3rd – World Wildlife Day
• March 8th – International Women’s Day
• March 13th – Mardi Gras
• March 14th – National Pi Day
• March 17th – St. Patrick’s Day
• March 30th – End of Ramadan

April

With Easter starting in April this year, you can look forward to longer and warmer days for your easter egg hunts! Fun fact – Easter takes place on the first full moon after the spring equinox.

For some, Easter is all about tradition, be it religious or not. For others, it’s more about the chocolate rabbits and egg hunts. So why not hide an Easter Egg in your marketing campaigns to increase engagement this April?

Other special dates include Earth Day and April Fools’ Day, so it’s a great excuse to send a serious message about climate change or have some fun with your email marketing calendar.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in April:

• April 1st – April Fools’ Day
• April 7th – World Health Day
• April 11th – National Pet Day
• April 18th – Easter Friday
• April 20th – Easter Sunday
• April 21st – Easter Monday
• April 22nd – Earth Day
• April 23rd – World Book Day

May

There are a few important dates in May, but is there any more important than Star Wars Day? Whether you’re a fan or not, there’s no denying that this is a BIG date on social media, so make sure you leverage it. May the 4th be with you.

Many countries also celebrate Mother’s Day in May. This is a time for many to show appreciation towards their mother(s) and mother figures. This day (and of course the other 364 days in the year) is perfect for lavishing mothers with lots of love, flowers, and chocolate. But be mindful, many people have lost their mothers or never had a mother to begin with – consider sending an optional opt-out to your subscribers before your Mother’s Day campaign.

Other special dates for May in our 2025 Marketing Calendar include the Eurovision Song Contest and May Day (International Workers’ Day).

Dates you shouldn’t miss in May:

• May 4th – Star Wars Day
• May 5th – May Day
• May 5th – Cinco de Mayo
• May 12th – Mother’s Day
• May 13th – Eurovision Song Contest
• May 25th – Roland-Garros (French Open)
• May 26th – Memorial Day

June

It’s getting warmer and warmer outside, and that means it’s time for summer fun.

For many companies, the summer means a slump in sales. Instead of (online) shopping, events like vacations and other outdoor activities are in people’s minds. So, don’t be surprised if your marketing performance starts to decline rather than grow during the next few weeks.

Does this mean you should interrupt your email marketing campaigns? Absolutely not!

In fact, the summer might be the best time of year to stand out from your competitors and get in touch with your contacts. Make sure you start working on adjusting your email marketing strategy for the next couple of months.

June 1 also marks the start of Pride Month. Other important dates include Father’s Day (in the US and other countries) and the start of the Wimbledon tennis competition.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in June:

• June 1st – Pride Month
• June 5th – World Environment Day
• June 15th – Father’s Day (US)
• June 15th – FIFA Club World Cup
• June 21st – Summer Solstice
• June 21st – World Music Day
• June 21st – National Selfie Day
• June 30th – Wimbledon

July

The holiday season is finally here! And even though we warned you to plan ahead in June, you might be finding it quite challenging to keep your users engaged during the summer.

However, this summer comes packed with great sports events, including the Tour de France, the Wimbledon final and of course, the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup Final.

Other special dates in July include the Fourth of July (obviously!) and Emoji Day!

Dates you shouldn’t miss in July:

• July 1st – Canada Day
• July 4th – US Independence
• July 5th – Tour de France
• July 7th – World Chocolate Day
• July 14th – Bastille Day – French National Holiday
• July 17th – Emoji Day
• July 31st – National Intern Day

August

August is generally a slow month in many countries. The summer is in full swing, but as the weeks pass, more and more people start coming home from their vacation. So, it’s the perfect time to target them with any offers or promotions they might’ve missed.

How do you do this effectively you ask? Well, with email segmentation, of course!

With email segmentation, you can filter contacts based on their past behavior (for example, anyone that hasn’t opened an email since a certain date) and resend them any special summer offers they might have missed.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in August:

• August 1st – International Beer Day
• August 13th – International Left handers Day
• August 19th – World Photography Day
• August 21st – World Senior Citizen’s Day
• August 26th – Women’s Equality Day

September

September is here and it’s back-to-school season…and not just for kids!

In fact, September sometimes feels like a second January. Some might hate it, some might love it, but we all feel it. New goals, new projects, and new marketing opportunities. Children (and adults!) can’t wait to buy new school bags, pens, pencils, and planners for the new school year.

Keep that in mind and use your marketing plan calendar to create some campaigns to re-engage your customers after the summer with incentives like special promotions, sweepstakes, and exclusive offers.

And don’t forget to target people who left goods and services in their online cart.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in September:

• September 1st – Labor Day (US)
• September 15th – Start of Hispanic Heritage Month
• September 20th – Oktoberfest
• September 21st – International Day of Peace
• September 25th – National Daughter’s Day

October

The scariest month of the year has finally arrived!

Autumn is officially here, and so is Halloween! This means that, offline as well as online, monsters and other creatures could be just around the corner, waiting to scare people.

For marketers, October marks the start of Q4 and the holiday season, a huge period for brands everywhere. With big dates coming up, it is the time to start planning what your holiday strategy will look like, and it is also the moment to let your creative juices flow and start getting festive.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in October:

• October 1st – International Coffee Day
• October 10th – World Mental Health Day
• October 13th – Columbus Day
• October 13th – Thanksgiving (Canada)
• October 15th – End of Hispanic Heritage Month
• October 16th – World Food Day
• October 20th – Diwali
• October 31st – Halloween

November

November is the strongest time of the year for B2C sales, and it’s the official month for buying our holiday gifts. Immediately after Thanksgiving come dates like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, so it’s time to kick it into high gear.

In other words: You should definitely have these dates marked in red on your marketing calendar for 2025 so you can send special promotions and offers.

We know you won’t forget, but just in case, we’ve already marked them for you on our downloadable 2025 Marketing Calendar.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in November:

• November 1st – World Vegan Day
• November 11th – Veteran’s Day
• November 20th – Transgender Day of Remembrance
• November 23rd – National Espresso Day
• November 27th – Thanksgiving
• November 28th – Black Friday
• November 29th – Small Business Saturday

PS: Have you checked out our new Black Friday and Cyber Monday email templates yet?

December

The best comes last: It’s finally Christmas!

It’s cold outside, the streets are covered with snow, and there are festive decorations and lights everywhere! While some prefer to go outside, those that stay in might do a lot of online shopping for those last-minute Christmas presents. This is your chance to give Q4 a final push with special holiday campaigns and offers.

But December is not just about selling – it’s also about joining in on the festive atmosphere and thanking your contacts for spending the year with you.

You can get creative and run a little Christmas competition on social media (best Christmas tree or craziest holiday decorations) where your customers can win coupons or goodies, or film your team singing Christmas carols for an original Merry Christmas newsletter.

As you can see, it doesn’t get more creative than December to end the year successfully.

Dates you shouldn’t miss in December:

• December 1st – Cyber Monday
• December 14th – Start of Hanukkah
• December 22nd – End of Hanukkah
• December 24th – Christmas Eve
• December 25th – Christmas Day
• December 26th – Boxing Day
• December 31st – New Year’s Eve

How to build your own marketing calendar for 2025

Building an effective marketing calendar requires more than just plotting dates on a chart: It requires thoughtful consideration of long-term business objectives, your target audience, and different product releases. For some, the idea of pulling all that together can seem a little overwhelming.

So, we’ve decided to help out and outline the key steps you need to follow below:

1. Timeline: First off, you need to decide how long you want to plan for. Typically, a year gives you a holistic overview of the key campaigns and promotions of your business.
2. Software: Which software will you use to program your calendar? It needs to be something simple, easy-to-use, and collaborative across the entire organization for better cross-team alignment.
3. Goals: Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or launching a new product, having well-defined goals will shape your marketing calendar.
4. Channels: You need to define which channels you’ll be leveraging across the team for each campaign and marketing action.
5. Team members: Consider which team members are going to be involved in executing those campaigns.
6. Content: Outline the themes, topics, and types of content you’ll be creating for each campaign. This includes blog posts, social media content, email newsletters, etc. Our 2025 Marketing Calendar is a great starting point for planning those campaigns.
7. Flexibility: While it’s important to plan ahead, make sure you leave room for flexibility. Markets can change, unexpected opportunities may arise, and adjustments might be necessary.

Creating a marketing calendar for the new year is a great way to work ahead and get aligned over the campaigns you want to run in 2025.

Download the 2025 Marketing Calendar

We’ve saved the dates you can’t forget and given you all the resources you need to make 2024 your best marketing year yet. Now, it’s up to you to work on your campaigns and increase engagement with offers, promotions, or competitions.

Want to take the 2025 Marketing Calendar with you?

This is an updated version of the article “Marketing Calendar 2022: Dates you shouldn’t miss this year“ and published on the Mailjet blog on October 31, 2022.

The post Marketing calendar 2025: Dates you shouldn’t miss this year appeared first on Mailjet: Email Delivery Service for Marketing & Developer Teams.