Here’s a nice example of how the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia, based out of Temple University, used one of MailChimp’s Holiday Templates to send out a year-end recap email.  One thing that is unique and interesting about this campaign is  the embedded a video recapping some of the group’s favorite moments of 2008. (click the image to view the archived version of this email online)

Although you can’t embed video in your HTML email and have it play within your recipients’ email program, it will work when they click the link to “view this email in a browser,” because at that point the email is being rendered as a web page.

Here’s a nice example of a “not-too-late-for-the-holidays” campaign, which you can’t do without the magic of email. Have an online retail store or provide services (massages, hair salon)? Why not send out an email to let your customers know there is still time to purchase a holiday gift certificate?

Kudos to Federica Cavallaro Therapeutic Massage and her agency, Rubic Design, for this beautifully designed email.

When we created our email header designer, we made it integrate with Picnik, a really cool online photo editing tool (like Photoshop, but in your browser—and free). Anyway, if you don’t want to use our free email holiday email templates, you can use Picnik to slightly modify your existing email headers for the holidays. Here’s a quick demo:

This was a pleasant surprise for me. Just received an email invitation to our accountant’s holiday “client appreciation party,” and I thought, “Wow, that’s a nice design for an accountant.”

Then I noticed she was using our own free email holiday templates!

Neat! I hadn’t even considered that these could be used for holiday party invites.