7 January Newsletter Ideas (and Why They Work)

After the mayhem of the golden quarter, January can seem like a long-overdue break for ecommerce marketers.

That sense of relief lasts right up until you remember that you’ve still got targets to hit. At that point, things get a little more… difficult.

January is a tough time for retailers. In 2021, it saw the second-lowest US retail sales total of any month:

(Source: YCharts.)

That’s hardly surprising. With the average US adult expected to spend approximately $870 on Christmas gifts in 2022, the last thing on our minds is to spend even more. Instead, our priorities switch to looking after our cash, with Bank of America research revealing that our #1 New Year’s resolution heading into 2023 is to save more money.

With the majority of ecommerce holidays having just ended, customers are less willing to make many purchases.

And the bad news doesn’t stop there, because January is also a barren period for email marketing.

January languishes in the bottom quartile for average email open rates by month, at 19.83 percent. That’s almost 11 percent lower than the highest month, November. To make matters worse, January also sees the joint-highest email unsubscribe rate of any month (0.12 percent).

In other words, consumers aren’t spending money or opening emails in January—and when they do engage, there’s a higher-than-average chance they’ll unsubscribe.

So should we all just give up and take January off? Never. For the best marketers, every challenge represents an opportunity. Get your messaging right and there’s still money to be made.

Want some good news? I’ve done the hard work for you by rounding up seven of the best January email marketing ideas from Drip’s bottomless email swipe file…