6 months ago

Super Bowl Email Marketing Tactics for 2025

The Super Bowl offers companies a wide range of opportunities to capitalize on the excitement of the event for their own brand. Email marketing in particular offers you an owned media channel where you can reach an interested audience without having to pay for an expensive TV ad spot.

Take a look at our top Super Bowl email marketing tactics for 2025 below to start getting ready. And if you’re interested in more than just email, be sure to read our 2025 Super Bowl Marketing Strategy guide.

Three football fans celebrating while watching the game, an ideal audience for Super Bowl email marketing tactics

Insights on Past Super Bowl Email Marketing Performance

If you want to develop a strong Super Bowl email marketing strategy in 2025, it’s important to review the performance of past emails—both from your own company and others.

Lessons Learned from the Best-Performing Email Subject Lines in 2024

Looking back at the 2024 Super Bowl, it’s clear that subject lines should create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, while also demonstrating a bit of creativity. This is the winning formula for getting the highest open rates during a time when users are flooded with information vying for their attention.

Consider these top performers gathered by Mailmodo:

Super Bowl deals available now. Ready to buy?

Get in on the Action: Super Bowl Sweepstakes Entry!

Limited Time Offer: Exclusive Super Bowl Party Access

Gear up and get ready for Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl: Touchdowns, Tackles, and Tacos!

Want the Best Super Bowl Experience? Act Fast!

To replicate the success of examples like these, write subject lines that aren’t just attention-grabbing and timely, but also embody the unique excitement of the Super Bowl.

Analyzing Open Rates and Engagement from Past Campaigns

Traditionally, Sundays aren’t a great day for engagement on emails. Most people are relaxing on their day off rather than checking their inbox.

A previous study shows that open rates fare similarly on Super Bowl Sunday. But for those who are reading email during the game, it’s more often on smartphones and tablets than on desktops. Tailoring game day email content for mobile consumption is a smart way to leverage this data on user behavior.

Key Themes and Messaging from 2024 that Resonated with Audiences

There are some common themes among the messaging that resonated most with audiences in 2024. These include nostalgia, group experiences, and a shared love for the game. When crafting your Super Bowl email marketing for 2025, use similar sentiments to solicit engagement and solidify a positive emotional experience with your brand. For example:

Celebrity endorsements and pop culture (think: Taylor Swift in 2024)
Personal stories from football players
Highlights from past Super Bowls
Interactive game predictions

How to Build a Winning Email Strategy for 2025

Once you’ve reviewed examples and data from the past to inform your strategy, you’re ready to start working on your Super Bowl email marketing for 2025.

Optimal Send Times to Engage Football Fans

Think about key moments during the Super Bowl and how they align with your email content, your offerings, and the actions you want your audience to take. This will help you decide on the best send times to engage with your readers.

Weeks Before: If you’re promoting products, services, or resources that users will need before the game, start your email campaign 1–4 weeks before Super Bowl Sunday. For example, someone will need more time to consider, purchase, and set up a new armchair than they will to order glassware and serveware to use during the game.
Days Before: To share interactive content like game predictions, email audiences 1–3 days before the game. You can expect to drive the most engagement when pre-game excitement is at its peak.
During: Halftime can be an excellent time to capture users’ attention if you have content or offerings that are relevant during the game. If you’re running a game-day discount, for instance, you can catch people who may be opening up their smartphones or tablets during the break. But plenty of people will also be watching the halftime performance, so consider time-outs and other breaks as well.
After: Just when the game ends, consider sending a celebratory message or deal to bring attention back to your brand. Viewers will still be feeling energized from the game—assuming their team didn’t lose! If you’re a local business whose team did lose, you might want to hold off on any emails that could stir up an irritable audience.

Crafting Effective Subject Lines

Once you know the best time to send your emails, you should ensure their subject lines will be effective to encourage users to open them.

Use action verbs, such as “act now,” “buy,” or “prepare,” to create a sense of urgency.
Ask questions to engage users and spark their curiosity.
Use emojis, sparingly and if appropriate for your audience, to attract attention and keep things playful.
Personalize emails to grab users’ attention and get more engagement.
Keep it short, around 50 characters or fewer, to make sure it’s readable and impactful.
Use a little humor, if appropriate, to stand out and match the fun of the event.
Reference the game, when relevant, to feel real and get users’ attention.

Tailoring Content for Anticipation and Excitement

Next up is the content of your email. Of course, it’s always a best practice to make sure your subject line matches the content of your email to avoid mismatched expectations. And you’ll have your own objectives for your email, whether it’s driving downloads of a particular resource or getting sales for certain products. But to perform well during this major event, keep the following tips in mind too:

Countdown to the game and any sales if you have limited-time or limited-edition offerings to build a sense of urgency.
Tease flash sales that aren’t going to be announced until game day, then launch sales during halftime, emphasizing the unbeatable deals and their time-sensitive nature.
Relate sales or offerings to the game so your promotion feels relevant and inspires action.
Use vibrant imagery and team colors, if they don’t clash with your own branding, to maintain excitement and connect with the football fans in your audience.
Incorporate Super Bowl content, such as trivia, quotes from players, or real-time score updates or reactions, to get more engagement.
Write in an exciting tone to match the energy of the event, rather than falling flat amidst all the excitement of the game.

Don’t Ignore Post-Game Follow-Up

After the game ends and your emails are sent, don’t think that your work is over! Follow up with the customers you engaged to turn leads into conversions. Also, take the time to review the data on your Super Bowl email marketing campaign performance so you can learn from it for next year.

Following Up with Offers and Thank-Yous

After all your pre-game buildup, be sure to follow through with customers and keep the engagement going. Thank your subscribers for tuning into the game with you to help humanize your brand and build more loyalty. You can also offer exclusive content or deals based on the outcome of the game to stay relevant after the Super Bowl, keeping readers interested and engaged.

Analyzing Success Through Metrics and Feedback

Before you launch your Super Bowl email marketing, you should set goals you hope to achieve around key metrics, such as:

Open rates
Total opens
Unique opens
Click-through rates
Conversion rates

In particular, open rates are no longer a great measure of campaign performance on their own, so we recommend looking at unique opens as well.

After your email campaigns have run their course, collect data on how they performed to see where you met, failed to meet, or exceeded your expectations.

Outside of these quantitative metrics, you should also keep in mind more qualitative feedback from your subscribers. Review any responses to your emails as well as any interactive content you shared, such as polls. Consider sending a survey if you want to solicit more feedback. Look for trends and identify anything you’d like to replicate or change for next year.