The Thank-You Email After the Holidays

Boxing Day in the inbox

Open any inbox today and count the sales. Boxing Day offers, year-end clearances, last chances, each with a discount in the subject line.

Most will be deleted unread, by people who have spent enough this month.

A short email from a business that says thank you for the year, and nothing else, is unusual enough to be read. It is the kind people remember, because so few businesses send one.

It needs an hour to write and a little thought about timing.

What it should say

• Thanks for the year, rather than for a purchase.
• One specific thing that happened, which only your business could say.
• The people behind it, by name where they are happy to be named.
• Practical details customers need now, such as hours in early January.
• A real signature from the owner or the team.

The second makes it a letter rather than a template. Thank you for your business could come from anyone; thank you for a December of skates sharpened until nine every night could not.

What to leave out

No discount code, no link to a sale, no new arrivals at the bottom. Any one of them turns thanks into a pitch, and readers notice the moment they reach it.

Leave out the newsletter furniture too: the banner, the row of social icons, the grid of products. A thank-you reads best as a short letter, in plain text or close to it.

Keep it short. Four short paragraphs is plenty, and three is often better.

When to send it

Not today. Boxing Day inboxes fill with sales, and a thank-you sent into that crowd is one more subject line among dozens.

The quiet days between the 27th and New Year's Eve suit it well. Many people are off work and reading email at a slower pace, and few businesses are sending anything but offers.

Later in the first week of January works too, especially for a business whose customers are other businesses, once their offices are back to normal.

Avoid New Year's Day and the morning after. The first is a holiday; the second is when everybody returns to a full inbox.

Keeping it personal

Send it from a person: the owner's name in the from line, with the business name beside it, and a reply-to address somebody actually reads.

Write it the way that person talks. Thanks for your patience the week our phones went down sounds like someone; we wish to express our sincere gratitude does not.

Use first names where your list has them, but do not fake intimacy. A line about each customer's own purchases, inserted automatically, reads as tracking rather than warmth.

If the list is small, a few lines added by hand to the copies for your longest-standing customers are worth more than anything else in it.

Replies are the point

A good thank-you email gets answers: customers saying thanks in return, mentioning a gift that went down well, or asking a question they had been saving.

Read them, and answer each one briefly, in the first week of January at the latest. A thank-you that invites replies nobody reads undoes itself.

Some replies will be enquiries. Pass those to whoever handles enquiries, rather than leaving them in the inbox of whoever happened to send the email.

A worked example

A hockey equipment store in a suburban plaza sells skates, sticks and protective gear, and sharpens skates for a good share of the minor hockey families nearby.

Its December emails had always been offers. Last year the Boxing Day one went out with a code, among a dozen others in the same inboxes, and the owner could not say whether anyone noticed.

This year the owner wrote a short letter instead, to go out on the 28th.

It thanks families for a season of early mornings, names the two staff who sharpened skates every evening in December, and gives the store's hours for the first week of January.

It also says skates given as gifts can be brought in to be fitted or swapped for another size, because a skate that does not fit is a present nobody can use.

There is no code and no link to the shop. The owner's name is in the from line, and replies go to the owner.

The consent question

A thank-you with no offer in it may still count as a commercial message under CASL, since it comes from a business and could reasonably be read as encouraging customers to return.

So send it only to people you have consent to email, with your usual identification and unsubscribe link, as with any other message to your list.

Customers with a purchase in the past two years usually count as implied consent; the rest of the address book does not.

A thank-you is a poor reason to write to people who never agreed to hear from you.

Once, not a series

Send it once. A thank-you followed by a reminder about the thank-you is a campaign, and it reads like one.

Then return to your normal schedule in January. The next offer reads better for arriving a few weeks after the thanks rather than alongside it.

The counter-case

A business that emails customers rarely, or only about orders and appointments, may find a year-end note out of character. A handwritten card to its best customers can do the same job.

A business that already sent warm thanks in its last email before Christmas need not repeat them a week later.

And a list gathered for something narrow, such as appointment reminders, is not the list for this.

For everyone else: one short, plain thank-you in the quiet days after Christmas, signed by a person, with nothing to buy.

This week

1. Pick a day between the 27th and New Year's Eve.
2. Write four short paragraphs in your own voice.
3. Name one specific thing from this year.
4. Remove every offer, code and shop link.
5. Send from a person's name with a monitored reply-to.
6. Send only to people with consent.
7. Answer every reply in the first week of January.

Step four is the hardest to keep. Somebody always suggests a small code at the bottom, just in case, and that code is what turns the letter back into an advertisement.

The email that went before it is covered in the last email before Christmas.

Frequently asked questions

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