How to design a spooktacular email for this Halloween

Every Halloween reminds me of the one time I went trick-or-treating with my friends. I dressed up as a zombie with a T-shirt that said "I love brains and I want your's for dinner", and of course, with a bad makeup.

My friends, on the other hand, wore realistic costumes and had better makeup. They ended up bagging the most candies compared to me.

Years later, working with DTC brands, I realized that emails work in a very similar way. The more appeal they have, the better it performs. According to Segment, 56% of consumers say they will become repeat customers after a personalized experience, bringing increased revenue.

One such personalization hack that you can use is to bring in the festive mode to your email designs. If the design doesn't feel Halloweeny, the experience becomes less personal and less appealing.

So, I've curated some email design tips that'll bring the spooky vibes:

Adjust the scare factor

Before you begin designing, decide on how scary you want the email to be. Whether you wanna go all out on the scare factor or make a kid-friendly design. This matters because, if you're selling products like children wear, kid-friendly designs would better match your products, and vice versa.

Here's a scary email from Licorice (personally, I'm not going anywhere near those pumpkins):

While, Baron Fig took a kid-friendly approach (I would keep these cute ghosts as pets if I could):

Use Halloween monsters with a twist

What's a Halloween without monsters? Create graphics from the wide range of monsters and spooky creatures, like ghosts, zombies, spiders & cobwebs, Frankenstein, vampires, etc.

Add your own brand twist to them like making those cute ghosts wear a bow-tie with your brand logo on it.

How 'bout monsters shaving using a Harry's trimmer:

Look how this ghost is trying to grab a Drizly drink:

Give life to Halloween with gifs

Gifs add an extra layer to the Halloween vibe. So, go crazy with your creativity and make gifs that catch's your reader's attention.

A few ideas for gifs:

• Bats flying around your copy
• Ghosts levitating on top of your CTA
• Spiders crawling up cobwebs in the corner
• Flickering lights inside a pumpkin,
• Werewolf howling at the moon
• Vampire covering their face with the cape
• Thunder striking a spooky castle, etc.

Here's a good example from Bluekazoo:

Postable had a fun mixed Halloween email:

Choose a Halloween color palette

Just as Iron Man feels incomplete without Robert Downey Jr., Halloween lacks it's special charm without it's distinct color palette. Variations of orange, purple, black and dark green are universally identifiable colors for Halloween.

You can use these colors in any combination but it's not necessary to use all the colors in a single email. Play around and find the best suiting colors for your emails.

Use this color palette as a reference:

Get spooky with the fonts

Usually, changing fonts is not a great idea since it messes up with consistency and affects brand recognition. But, Halloween emails are an exception, using spooky fonts compliments your other spooky visual elements and makes the email more Halloweeny.

Use the spooky fonts for copies that highlights FOMO, discounts and, for the CTA. Let your brand fonts fill the rest of the copy to secure your consistency and recognition.

Look how Tattly used spooky fonts to drive FOMO:

1BodyShop's font gives an old-school monster movie vibe:

Tie your products under an eerie atmosphere

Put your products in an eerie background, maybe even getting spooked by the monsters, or turn your products into monsters themselves. This is a great way to tie your brand with Halloween, and also to display your products in a dramatic way. Write a copy that matches the drama of the visuals.

RXBAR has nailed it (literally):

Cracker Barrel's products are caught in Halloween's plans:

What are you waiting for? let your creativity run wild, dress up your emails as monsters, apply makeup with Halloween colors and get ready to go trick-or-treating. You're bound to get your bag overflow with candies this Halloween.

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Thanks for giving our blog a read, if you're exploring more on this topic, you might find this helpful:

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