Your gift guide is about to get skipped
Somebody is writing your gift guide this week, and they’re sorting it by price.
Under $25, under $50, under $100. We’ve built that guide, you’ve built that guide. It’s the easiest one to make and the hardest one to shop, because nobody opens an email already knowing what they want to spend on their sister in law.
Lush went the other way this year. Their sections are people, and every one of them is a joke.
Eight products in the whole email and not one discount. We cut it up section by section below. 👇
Lush's gift guide sorts by person, not by price
Gift guides are the easiest holiday email to write badly. Pick a price band, drop in twelve products, send. It converts a little, because some of those products were going to sell anyway, and it teaches you nothing.
Lush built theirs around who the gift is for, and the result is worth copying even if you sell nothing like bath bombs. Here it is, section by section.
1. The sections are people, and the subtitles are jokes
Four sections, each one a recipient rather than a category:
✓ For the sweetest person.They open their entire Advent calendar on December 1st.
✓ For the “I see them once a year” friend.Your catch ups are on a seasonal basis.
✓ For the dreamer.The alarm clock is the least used app on their phone.
✓ For the besties.Ride or dies deserve everything.
The gag is doing the work. A reader doesn’t scan these and think about budget, they think about a specific person, and the joke is what makes them certain which person. That’s the whole mechanic: you self-identify by laughing, and once you’ve pictured someone you have a reason to keep scrolling.
Price never appears. Not in a band, not on the products. For a gift guide that’s a choice, and it keeps the email about the person rather than about what they’re worth to you.
2. Two products per section, never twelve
Each persona gets exactly two gifts, side by side, with a name, a one-line description and an arrow. Bon Bon and Sticky Dates. Starry Night and Golden Slumbers. Lush Garden and WOW!
Two is a decision. Twelve is a research project. And because every section has the same shape, the eye learns the pattern in the first one and skims the rest at speed, stopping only at the persona that landed.
Eight products total across the whole guide. Most gift guides carry three times that and convert worse.
3. The offer is shipping, and it is stated twice
Free express shipping over $100, called out under the hero copy, then given its own section at the bottom with the regional cutoff dates.
Notice what the offer is not. There’s no discount anywhere in this email. For a gift purchase that’s the right call, because the anxiety isn’t price, it’s whether the thing arrives before the day. Free express shipping answers the actual worry, and the threshold quietly raises the basket.
Putting the cutoff dates in the email rather than on a landing page is the underrated bit. The question gets answered where it gets asked.
4. The design does the season so the copy doesn’t have to
Tartan borders, snow, ornaments hanging off every section header, a hand-drawn headline. It is loud, and it means the body copy never has to say the word festive.
One more detail worth stealing: a nav bar above the hero with Trending, Snow Fairy and Christmas. Snow Fairy is their own cult product, treated as a category. If you have a product people search for by name, it deserves its own door into the site.
The footer carries the values icons, naked products, vegetarian, no animal testing, ethical buying. In a gift email that’s not decoration. The person buying is often buying for someone whose preferences they half know, and those icons answer the question they can’t ask.
Steal this before your guide ships
✓ Write your sections as people, not prices. Four is plenty. The one you can’t name is the one your guide doesn’t need
✓ Give every section a one-line joke that makes the reader picture somebody. If the line is generic, the section is doing nothing
✓ Two products per section. Pick them so they differ on something obvious, like a cheap one and a showy one, not two versions of the same thing
✓ Make the offer shipping rather than a discount, and put the cutoff dates in the email
✓ Keep the layout identical between sections so the fifth one reads as fast as the first
The reason this format keeps working is that gift shopping is not shopping. The buyer is trying to describe someone they love to a website, and a guide that names the person does half of that for them.
Eight sends between now and December 26th
It’s November 2nd, which means the whole quarter is already spoken for. Here is every send worth having on the calendar, and what each one is actually for.
Mark your calendar November 12th. Pick the offer and write it down in one sentence. No send. This is the decision that unblocks the other seven, and it’s the one everybody keeps moving. November 19th. The heads up. One email to your best customers telling them the date, with no discount in it. You’re buying attention for the 27th and finding out who’s warm. November 24th. Early access for whoever clicked the heads up. Small list, real head start, no sitewide announcement. November 27th. Black Friday. Send it early and send it again that evening to the people who didn’t open. November 30th. Cyber Monday. A different offer or different products, not Friday’s email with a new header. December 14th. Green Monday, the second Monday of December and the biggest spending day of the month. Most brands are quiet here because they’re tired. That’s the opportunity. December 17th. The cutoff email. USPS recommends Ground Advantage by this date for Christmas delivery, so put the date in the subject line and the arrival promise in the first sentence. December 26th. Gift cards, returns, and the people who unwrapped your product and have never heard from you. That last group is the warmest list you’ll own all year and almost nobody emails them. |
Carriers confirm their final dates through November, so check USPS and your own 3PL before you print the 17th on anything. Everything else on that list is yours to move.
9 retention roles that went live this week
Shapewear, denim, lighting, supplements, sporting goods, furniture, kitchenware and skincare. Every one of them ships physical things, and the list runs from coordinator to senior director.
→ Senior Director of Loyalty at SKIMS, Los Angeles, CA
→ Director, Global and US Loyalty at Levi Strauss & Co., San Francisco, CA
→ Director of CRM Lifecycle Marketing at Visual Comfort & Co., Skokie, IL
→ Senior Manager, Lifecycle Marketing at Rugiet, Austin, TX
→ Technical Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Arrae, Remote
→ Manager, Marketing and Personalization Technology at Academy Sports + Outdoors, Katy, TX
→ Email Marketing Manager at Bryan Ashley, Chicago, IL
→ Email Marketing Operations Specialist at Pampered Chef, Addison, IL
→ Coordinator, Email Marketing at TATCHA, San Francisco, CA
