The Lunar New Year is mostly a Chinese tradition. This holiday is gradually moving away from the name Chinese New Year because the holiday is celebrated with different traditions in South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and other countries in Asia as well as diaspora communities. Although the names also include Spring Festival and White Moon in Mongolia.
There is no doubt that the Asian audience is significant. That’s why it’s important for marketing, meaning you should get involved in this holiday with your Lunar New Year newsletters. In 2025, the Lunar New Year will be celebrated on January 29. Considering that January is the slowest buying season of the year, you need to make the most of this event to keep up the tempo after the New Year. Here, in this blog post, we’re going to share the best strategies to improve your email marketing for the Lunar New Year.
Lunar New Year Email Marketing in 2025
Reaching and pleasing an audience is never easy. When the audience is wide, the task is simpler, but harder if it is foreign. The same goes for this holiday. To satisfy the audience, you need to do some additional information research on the topic. After all, little is known about this holiday in Western culture, since it is not celebrated so widely.
To learn more about the sales trends of this holiday, we have selected some relevant statistics, to show you why you should send a Lunar New Year email:
- According to the latest Kantar Worldpanel report, people aged 18-35 are the main buyers of this trend. More than 40% of total sales during the Lunar New Year festival were made by young people and young families. At the same time, their average spending is higher than that of the mainstream customers.
- Lunar New Year-themed emails often achieve a high rate of engagement by using traditional elements such as red and gold colors, fire-breathing dragons, and references to prosperity and fortune. Brands such as Uniqlo and Kate Spade have successfully used these motifs to connect with audiences across cultures.
- Hotels and brands such as InterContinental and Hotel G Singapore have statistically proven the effectiveness of hyper-segmentation. They have used hyper-segmentation to tailor their email campaigns for the Lunar New Year. The results showed a 533% increase in performance, proving that creating personalized emails for a specific audience is incredibly successful and increases click-through rates.
- Another interesting trend is the linking of holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year by some companies. This dual-purpose approach can optimize the impact of marketing efforts during overlapping holiday periods.
Best Lunar New Year Newsletter Ideas
This section will give you some useful ideas that can also serve as strategies for your Lunar New Year email marketing campaign. We have selected the best ideas and examples for the content and design of your unique email.
Happy Lunar New Year Email
Wishing a happy Lunar New Year is a very basic email, but still effective. The main message of this email is to show your involvement in these celebrations and to greet your Asian audience.
Lunar New Year’s email idea: Sincere words in warm congratulations are an integral part of wishing luck in the coming year, even if it is the Lunar New Year. Such an unloaded email can be useful if you do not want to get deeply involved in this event. However, if you do decide to add promotions to your Lunar New Year emails, we recommend that you do so in a separate letter. Among the promotions, you can present discounts that were presented during the regular New Year as a reminder. Or provide new ones.
Thematic Products for the Lunar New Year
If you want to harmoniously advertise products, link them to the theme. You can relate them to both the color scheme and holiday symbols.
Idea for Lunar New Year email: The symbols of the Lunar New Year have always been red and gold. Advertise products that have a similar color palette and your letter will immediately become fashionable and bright. Unless you think these colors are too overused. Lunar New Year 2025 is the year of the green wooden snake. That gives you some extra room to tie in. Add green or snake-related products.
Red Envelope Campaign
The red envelope is another significant symbol of the Lunar New Year. They are luxurious and usually used for putting money in to be gifted.
Lunar New Year idea for an email: Make an interactive lucky draw for discounts on purchases using one of the main symbols. The red envelope will help you with this. Style your game to look like it and create an unusual interaction. In this activity, when you click on the envelope, it will give you a discount, a promotional code for certain products, or a gift. This is an unusual idea of a lottery with a special symbol.
Honoring Traditions
Emails that are not loaded with promotions are also useful. This idea will show you how to create a newsletter for this holiday for subscribers who are not familiar with it.
Newsletter idea for the Lunar New Year: One of the few ideas for the informative content of your email is to tell about the origin and lore of the Lunar New Year. Describe the religious and traditional history behind the holiday. Choose to include additional history about the origin of the traditions. For example: why the color red is important, who the Nian monster is, and why fireworks are essential. Add the story behind certain symbols and traditional foods.
Festive Countdown
Countdowns are suitable for many promotions and are an original idea for holiday calendar newsletters. They are often in use, but wouldn’t it be better to set them on days when the whole world is watching the clock?
An interesting email idea for the Lunar New Year: Just like on traditional New Year’s Eve, Lunar New Year also means that everyone is watching the clock ticking to indicate the arrival of the new year. Therefore, the countdown you implement related to the arrival of the new year will automatically be linked to the main timing that your customers are thinking about. There are two options for countdowns. The one that informs about the promotions that are coming to an end and the other, after which new special offers start.
Customer Appreciation Messages
A great reason to thank your customers. This occasion is especially nice because emails on Lunar New Year fall under a special audience.
Lunar New Year’s email idea: Send a thank you email to your customers. The content of this email will express your gratitude for your customers staying with you and that you are excited to enter the new year with them. Offer a giveaway as a gesture of gratitude.
Lunar New Year Recipes
Another idea for newsletters is to offer interesting and unusual recipes. The Lunar New Year campaign contains a wide range of delicious food that is both familiar to the traditional audience and interesting to the unconventional one.
The idea for the Lunar New Year campaign: Offering recipes is a popular email idea because there are a lot of holidays and events with interesting dishes. The Lunar New Year is no exception. Among the recipes you can suggest are: Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), Chunjuan (spring rolls), and Niangao (rice balls), as well as unusual recipes for fish, meat, and noodles. Such emails are a great solution for food companies as they can offer their products and dishes.
Lunar New Year Email Examples
In addition to our ideas for your emails, we’ll also look at some Lunar New Year newsletter examples. We will review and analyze examples of effective emails from other successful companies and tell you what their advantages are and why they are effective.
Lego Group
Lego Group is a Danish private company engaged in the production of the same name series of educational toys, which are sets of parts for the assembly and modeling of various objects—constructors. It is the second-largest toy manufacturer in the world. We think you’ve definitely heard of this brand, as it is globally popular. But have you seen their newsletters?
This one is the perfect Lunar New Year email example. As you can see, they created a limited-edition product dedicated to this holiday. The email is not overloaded with information and products but shows the most necessary good that will be a great holiday-themed decor. We value simplicity in newsletters since it helps to focus attention on the essentials. In our case, it’s the product, description, and call-to-action button at the bottom. Instead of long advertising descriptions, they briefly described why this product is necessary for customers at this time.
Kerastase
Kérastase is a professional cosmetic brand for skin and hair care, owned by L’Oreal. Just like the previous company, they presented a unique limited product line. They also created a very special fashionable design dedicated to the Lunar New Year symbol of 2024. Moreover, they also stylized the product itself in the classic colors of the Lunar New Year, namely red and gold. And the letter itself is extended to advertise more of the product.
The buttons are attached to the email to spread the product’s advertising. They didn’t limit themselves to a single CTA button to buy the product but also added links to additional information about the benefits of the product and its components.
Miles
Miles is an online point-based reward app that provides points for daily commutes and travel. Users can earn points on regular trips regardless of the mode of transportation. They also linked the design, text, and promo code to the 2023 symbol. The result is a stylish email with symbols of the Lunar New Year, as well as the number of bonus points dedicated to the year 23. Generally, the newsletter is associated with the number of the year, the symbol of the year, and the colors of the symbol. That makes it a good email example for Lunar New Year. Remember to add an email signature to your emails, as shown here along with other company information.
Astrid & Miyu
Astrid & Miyu is a British-based contemporary jewelry brand known for its unique approach to stacking, styling, and piercing. They also made a rather minimalist style and advertised products in the colors of the Lunar New Year as gifts for oneself and loved ones, supported by gift points, which are displayed in large numbers for greater interest. Which is also a good strategy for Lunar New Year email. Calls to action in which their products will help are highlighted in large text. They preferred multimedia to text, so the products are not described much, but rather pictured, with only their name and a CTA button. Another example of professional email marketing.
Kurt Geiger
Kurt Geiger is a British fashion footwear and accessories brand. Like other famous brands, they have developed a limited edition product for this holiday. Both the email and the accessory design were based on the symbol and colors of the Lunar New Year 2024. This shows the significance of using symbology in Lunar New Year emails. The design of the email itself was kept simple to highlight the advertised product. The email was not overloaded with buttons, adding only a separate one for a specific product and general products. Their email contains a small amount of information and is mainly focused on advertising the limited edition product.
Tips from Flowium on Creating Successful Lunar New Year Emails
- Retention of attention
Don’t overload your newsletters with information, multimedia, and CTA buttons. A mindful minimalist design will help focus customers’ attention and adapt the design and structure to focus on the point.
- Customer Segmentation
Improve the effectiveness of your email campaign with customer segmentation. Build separate emails for loyal customers and regular customers who are just planning to interact with you.
- Target audience
When creating a thematic email, consider which part of the audience will be more attracted to it, and based on your conclusions, structure the newsletters for this audience.
- Preparation
Prepare your emails in advance, and make sure your team members know what their task is. Approve your plan and strategy for the Lunar New Year campaign so that you can clearly and precisely communicate your wishes to your email service provider.
- Automated campaign flow
Setting up drip email campaigns will be more efficient and less time-consuming. Automated emails not only for the Lunar New Year but also throughout the year will create constant engagement. Especially among customers who are just preparing to purchase something, the effectiveness of attraction will be increased.
Lunar New Year Subject Line Ideas
Subject lines are the first thing that catches the eye and boosts email open rates, so they should entice your customers to open them. These festive Lunar New Year email subject lines are catchy, and engaging and will make your customers want to click through.
- 🎊 Ring in 2025: Luck, Happiness, and New Beginnings!
- 🌙 A Bright Start to the Lunar New Year 2025!
- Step into the New Year with Savings.
- 🐍 Lunar New Year 2025: Embrace Prosperity & Fortune!
- Welcoming the Year of the Snake in Lunar New Year 2025
- Wishing You Success & Joy for the Lunar New Year 2025
- Gong Xi Fa Cai! (Wishing You Prosperity)
- ✨ Celebrate Lunar New Year 2025 with Joy & Prosperity!
- Start the Year of the Snake with Hope and New Opportunities
- 🎇 Welcome the Year of the Snake in 2025!
Starting a Lunar New Year campaign with Flowium
That concludes our tips and examples for the Lunar New Year email campaign. We hope you found them useful and helpful in creating your annual email campaign. While analyzing the examples, we recognized that symbolism is an integral part of marketing newsletters for such a tradition-filled holiday.
However, these are still only a few of the nuances that need to be taken into account to create a successful email. To stand out among the crowd, you need more than good fortune. You need a team of experts that can take the guesswork out of email marketing. Contact us to create professional and effective email campaigns developed specifically for you.
