Here are four fashion retailers are beginning their Christmas email campaigns, but for more on this topic read our posts on six paid search tips for a very merry Christmas and why Christmas begins early for online retailers.

House of Fraser

Christmas has landed at House of Fraser with an online shop dedicated to gift ideas for the festive season.

The email has one main generic call-to-action, ‘Shop Christmas gifts’, followed by links to other sections of the site such as decorations, dresses, and toys.

There’s also a link to the gift finder tool, which I’ll explore in more detail at a later date.

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Overall the email successfully promotes House of Fraser as a destination for Christmas gift ideas without trying to link to too many different sections of the site.

This is a tricky balance for department stores to strike, as we’ve previously seen with Macy’s confusing email messages.

Mr Porter

Luxury retailer Mr Porter made a relatively subtle reference to its new Christmas shop as part of more general marketing email.

The newsletter mentioned the new shop in the subject line and at the top of the email, but the link to the gift finder section of the site appeared underneath four other sections for winter clothing ideas.

Mr Porter seems to be aiming for a drip feed approach to Christmas marketing, sowing the seed early on before ramping it up as the big day approaches.

H&M

H&M has begun pushing its Christmas decorations ahead of its gift ideas, which is potentially a winning idea as I would assume that people think about decorating their house before buying gifts?

Surely I’m not the only person who does all their gift shopping the week before Christmas?

The email begins with a heartwarming image of a home decorated entirely using H&M’s decorations, which successfully got me in the Christmas mood.

The CTAs aren’t great unfortunately as the black colour fails to grab the reader’s attention, but personally I would never have considered buying Christmas decorations at H&M so this email is well timed in my opinion.

Urban Outfitters Europe

Another retailer getting in early to announce the opening of its Christmas shop.

Interestingly it then promotes gift cards rather than individual product ideas, as if accepting that the youth of today have no imagination.

Urban Outfitters also promotes a Facebook competition at the bottom of its email using the hashtag #ME2UO. People can nominate a friend to win a gift from UO if they first follow the brand on Facebook. Sneaky.