- You don't need an email for every holiday on the calendar. Pick the ones your customers actually shop for, and skip the rest.
- Your own moments, like restocks, launches and retail wins, often beat the holidays. One snack brand's restock email made $48,771, its best campaign ever.
- Plan backward from the date. Shipping cutoffs and stock decide when the email goes out, not the holiday itself.
- Every holiday email needs a reason to buy. A "Happy Fourth" email with no offer or news is a send you could skip.
Which holidays should a CPG brand email for?
Start with a simple filter: would your customer buy your product because of this day? If the honest answer is no, don't force it.
A snack brand has a real reason to email before Halloween and the Fourth of July. A supplement brand has a real reason to email in January. A skincare brand has a real reason to email before Mother's Day.
The holidays that fit most consumable brands fall into three buckets:
- Gifting moments: Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and the December holidays.
- Routine moments: New Year, summer and back to school, when people reset habits.
- Sale moments: BFCM, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day, when customers expect deals.
The 2027 ecommerce holiday email calendar, month by month
Here's the year I'd start from for a consumable brand. The 2027 dates come from a published US holiday calendar (linked in Sources). Adjust it for your product, your list and your stock.
January. New Year's Day is Friday, Jan 1. This is the routine reset. For wellness, supplement and food brands, lead with habits and stocking up. It's also when holiday first-time buyers need a reason to come back. I cover that in January email marketing ideas.
February. Valentine's Day is always Feb 14. Gift sets, shareable sizes and "treat yourself" angles work here. Send your gifting email early enough that people can still get it delivered.
March. Easter is Sunday, Mar 28 in 2027. It matters most for food, candy and snack brands. Spring is also a natural time for a routine refresh in skincare and wellness.
April. No major gifting holiday. Use it for your own moments: a new flavor, a restock, a bundle. It's also when I'd start building the Mother's Day plan.
May. Mother's Day is Sunday, May 9. Memorial Day is Monday, May 31. Mother's Day is a big gifting moment for skincare, wellness and food brands. A lot of brands now let people opt out of Mother's Day emails, which I think is a kind move. Memorial Day is a sale moment if you run one.
June. Father's Day is Sunday, Jun 20. Summer starts. Beverage and hydration brands, travel sizes and on-the-go snacks have an easy story here.
July. Independence Day is Sunday, Jul 4 (observed Monday, Jul 5). For food and beverage brands, think cookouts and stocking up. For most others, it's a light-touch sale or a skip.
August. Back to school. Lunchbox snacks, routines, energy and focus. Parents are buying for the whole house, so bundles and larger sizes fit.
September. Labor Day is Monday, Sep 6. It's the end-of-summer sale moment, and the last quiet stretch before Q4 planning gets serious.
October. Halloween is always Oct 31. Big for snack and candy brands. For everyone else, October is BFCM prep month: segments, flows and stock.
November. Thanksgiving is Thursday, Nov 25, 2027, which puts Black Friday on Nov 26 and Cyber Monday on Nov 29. This year, in 2026, Black Friday is Nov 27 and Cyber Monday is Nov 30. My full plan is in BFCM email strategy.
December. Christmas is Saturday, Dec 25. The gifting window runs from right after Cyber Monday until your last shipping cutoff. After the cutoff, switch to gift cards or "treat yourself" angles.
Your own moments beat most holidays
Holidays are moments everyone else is emailing about too. Your own news is something only you can send.
My rule: when something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month. A snack brand doing about $650K a month sent a restock email with the subject line "We're back baby!" It made $48,771 from 30,498 people, its best campaign ever.
Launches work the same way. A haircare brand's new product launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders, and email went from 23% to 47% of total revenue that month.
And if you land a big retail account, tell people. Send to the area near the stores first, then tell the whole list at some point. Even people who can't get to the store like seeing the brand win. More on that in email marketing for a retail launch.
So when you build your calendar, put the holidays in first, then block out your own moments around them. If a restock or launch lands near a holiday, the restock or launch usually gets the bigger send.
How do you plan emails around a holiday?
Plan backward from the date, not forward from today. In my calendar process, a holiday is one input, next to the brand's products, offers, launches, shipping cutoffs and what's worked in past campaigns and flows. Here's how it fits:
- Start with the month's story. The main product, the secondary one, the offer, and what customers should understand by the end of the month.
- Break the month into 3 to 5 phases. For example: educate, push the hero product, the holiday or promo cluster, show the product in real life, then an end-of-month conversion push.
- Give each product a role. A hero, a support product, an add-on that raises order value, a promo or gifting product, and a trust product: a proven seller that lends credibility to newer ones.
- Set the cadence. Normal campaigns go out about every other day. A major promotion gets sends on consecutive days. A large promo window usually gets 2 to 4 emails, plus 1 to 2 final reminders near the end.
- Work back from the shipping cutoff. For a gifting holiday, the cutoff is the real deadline. Put the final reminders before it, then switch to gift cards or "treat yourself" angles after.
Every campaign gets a short brief before anyone writes copy, and subject lines start from the brand's past winners, not from scratch. I go deeper on the monthly side in how to build an email campaign calendar.
What should a holiday email actually say?
Holiday emails fail the same way other emails do: they say "Happy holiday" and stop there. Content warms people up, but somebody has to ask for the sale.
Give every holiday email one clear reason to buy:
- A gift set or bundle made for the moment.
- A real deadline, like the last day to order for delivery.
- News, like a seasonal flavor or limited run. Across 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns I looked at, subject lines that shared news beat ones written in brand voice.
- An offer, if it's a sale moment. Keep it to the moments customers expect a deal. My email discount strategy covers when discounts help and when they train people to wait.
And send it to the right people. A gifting email to customers who've bought your gift set before is a different send than a gifting email to someone who signed up yesterday.
Not every email in a holiday window should feel like a sale, even when a sale is live. In my process, the offer is a conversion layer, not always the main idea. An educational email mentions it softly near the button. A gift guide gives it a medium mention. The promo email and the final reminder lead with it.
FAQ
What holidays should ecommerce brands send emails for?
The ones your customers actually buy for. For most consumable brands, that's New Year, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, summer, back to school, BFCM and the December holidays. Skip the rest unless your product has a real tie-in.
How many holiday emails should I send?
In a large promo window, I plan 2 to 4 emails, on consecutive days for a major promotion, plus 1 to 2 final reminders near the end. Normal campaigns go out about every other day. Smaller holidays get one email or none.
When should I start planning holiday emails?
I plan a month at a time, so a holiday goes into that month's calendar with its shipping cutoff as an input. For BFCM, start prep in October: segments, flows and stock.
Should I let people opt out of Mother's Day emails?
I think it's a good move. Mother's Day is hard for some people. A simple opt-out email a few weeks ahead shows you're paying attention, and it costs you very little.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.