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It’s October, so Halloween isn’t far off, and the first Halloween emails are already showing up in our inboxes. Michaels, See’s Candies, and Sharper Image all sent theirs in the last week of September. If you’re still working out what to send this year, it helps to see what other brands did last time, so we went back through the Halloween emails we saved last October and picked ten of our favorites to inspire your campaigns.
A lot of Halloween emails look the same, with an orange and black palette, a pumpkin in the hero, and a sale with “spooktacular” somewhere in the subject line. The ones below stood out because the brand tied Halloween back to what their product actually does, or because they tried something with the content we hadn’t seen before. They were sent anywhere from October 6 to Halloween itself, so there’s still time to plan something similar. Each one includes the subject line and send date, and you can click through to see the full email on Email Love.
1. Zound turned hearing damage into a horror movie
Subject line: Watch this Halloween Horror 🫣 · Sent October 29, 2025
Zound sells earplugs for concerts and festivals, which isn’t an obvious fit for Halloween. They got around that by making the whole hero a poster for a horror film called The Ringing. The tagline is “They went to the concert without protection,” it’s starring “You (without your earplugs),” and there’s a fake rating box that says it’s restricted for relentless ringing and permanent regret.
What we like is that the joke and the product pitch are the same thing. You can’t get the poster without also getting why you’d want earplugs. The rest of the email is short: a line asking if you want to star in a movie with a better ending, a 2×2 grid of the four colorways, and one Shop Now button.
2. Ketone-IQ backed up its zombie joke with some scary stats
Subject line: 🪦 Don’t be a Zombie… · Sent October 31, 2025
Ketone-IQ sent this one on Halloween. The hero says “Fuel for the Living” over a row of grey zombie hands reaching up, with one human hand in the middle holding a bottle of Ketone-IQ. The copy carries the idea on: most people are “wandering through life like energy-deprived zombies.”
The next section is what makes it work. Three big stat boxes say 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, 75% are overweight or obese, and 34% are pre-diabetic, followed by “But you don’t have to join the energy undead.” The button says Escape the Energy Graveyard. It’s a good example of a health brand using a Halloween joke to make a serious point without it feeling heavy.
3. Rest wants your old sheets to become ghost costumes
Subject line: 🛏️ Spooky Sale Starts Now · Sent October 16, 2025
Rest makes cooling bedding, and its Halloween email is built around a pun on the brand name: “Put your old bedding to rest.” The hero photo is a group of people dressed as ghosts in old bedsheets, with the line “You’ve held onto your old sheets long enough. Maybe it’s time they serve a new purpose this Halloween.”
The sale itself is up to 35% off, but the story gives you a reason to replace your sheets that has nothing to do with the discount. It also stays on brand with a dark blue palette instead of orange and black, and the product copy keeps the theme going with “no jump scares from night sweats.”
4. Brightland told some olive oil horror stories
Subject line: Olive Oil Horror Stories 👻 · Sent October 15, 2025
Brightland’s email is really a competitive comparison dressed up for Halloween. Under a dark, candlelit hero that says “Olive Oil Horror Stories,” it walks through three numbered problems with supermarket olive oil: oils labeled just “olive oil” or “light,” vague “Product of Italy/Spain/Greece” labels that hide blends, and clear bottles that go rancid under store lights. Each one is followed by how Brightland handles it.
The call to action is Read the Blog, not Shop Now. It’s a good model if your brand doesn’t have a natural Halloween angle, because the theme is just the wrapper for something that teaches the reader something.
5. Uber found a ride for every mummy and monster
Subject line: Take 40% off rides spooky season 👻 · Sent October 27, 2025
Uber’s email opens with “No tricks. Just trips.” over a white car and some bats on a black and purple background. The offer is 40% off your first trip, up to $10. The part we keep coming back to is the module below it, where Uber lists its ride types and rewrites each description for Halloween. UberXL has “space for every mummy, monster, and mate,” Uber Black is for “a hauntingly stylish entrance,” and Wait & Save lets you “scare up savings.”
None of that needed a new template. It’s Uber’s standard product module with new copy, and it reminds you that Halloween night is a night when a lot of people need a ride home from a party.
6. TUSHY went for the bathroom humor
Subject line: Is your butt going as a skidmark for Halloween? · Sent October 6, 2025
TUSHY was one of the earliest Halloween sends we saved last year, and it’s one of the funniest. The hero says “It’s always spooky season if you wipe” over a pyramid of toilet paper rolls with a few bats flying around it, on a soft peach background. The first button says “Cleanse yourself,” and the body copy is about reversing “the curse of wiping.”
The email is short and sells one product. It shows how a brand with a strong voice can use a holiday to make the same point it always makes. The press logos at the bottom (VICE, CNN Underscored, The New Yorker, goop) help with a product some people are still unsure about.
7. Pamos mixed a Halloween cocktail with skull ice cubes
Subject line: Try This Spirit-Lifting Cocktail 👻 · Sent October 13, 2025
Halloween drink recipes were everywhere last October. De Soi, Cumulus Coffee, Soul, and Harmless Harvest all sent one. The Pamos version stood out for its art direction. “Buzzed to the Bone” is set in a vintage orange serif over a photo of a skeleton, a bottle, and two red cocktails with skull-shaped ice cubes, with the line “High spirits, zero horrors.”
The recipe itself is easy to follow, with measurements for each ingredient and a one-line method, and the button says Mix the Magic. After that, the email moves on to the rest of the product range and a store locator, so it still works as a sales email.
8. Škoda UK turned a car boot into a monster and asked readers to make their own
Subject line: Something frighteningly fun for Hallowe’en, Andy. · Sent October 22, 2025
Car brand newsletters are usually model news and finance offers, so this one surprised us. Škoda UK’s DRIVEN newsletter opens with “The Spooky Edit” and a photo of a Škoda with its boot turned into a monster, complete with eyes, paper teeth, and a big red tongue. The intro is written by Hattie Newman, a papercraft maker and director, who made the “Šcary Škoda” and walks you through how she did it in a how-to video.
Then it asks readers to make their own “boot beast” and send in a photo for a chance to win one of three £500 shopping vouchers. Further down, it announces the winner of the previous competition, a reader named Kirsty whose photo of her Kodiaq at a campsite won her a camping kit. That’s a newsletter that creates its own content for the next issue, and it gives people something to actually do on Halloween instead of something to buy. The model news and EV updates are still in there, they just aren’t the lead.
9. Tushbaby’s customers made their babies part of the costume
Subject line: Meet the ultimate Halloween Hack 🎃 · Sent October 31, 2025
Tushbaby sent this one on Halloween itself, and it opens with a grid of four photos of parents in costume carrying their kids in costume: a beekeeper with a baby bee, a Top Gun family, and Princess Leia carrying a little Grogu. They look like they came from customers rather than a studio shoot, and the line under the headline calls them “parent favorites.”
The subject line frames the hip carrier as a trick-or-treating hack, and the rest of the email backs that up with a cowgirl mom carrying a baby dressed as a cow, then copy about saving your back and keeping your hands free on the night. It finishes with a multi-brand family sweepstakes and an SMS sign-up for early Black Friday access. Photos of the product being used on the night are more convincing than a studio shot, and it’s a good reminder to ask your customers for their Halloween photos.
10. Goldbelly’s last call came with a full dessert menu
Subject line: LAST CHANCE for Halloween! 🎃💀 · Sent October 27, 2025
A lot of last-chance emails are a countdown and a button. Goldbelly’s opens with “Last chance for Halloween” and a mummy cake, tells you that you have to order today for Halloween delivery, and then shows a full grid of Halloween desserts. Each tile names the bakery and the city it ships from, like Edgar’s Bakery in Birmingham and Flour Shop in Los Angeles, so you can see where each dessert comes from.
The email uses bright orange, purple, and yellow blocks of color, and each product sits in its own tile. Below the grid, Goldbelly is already promoting the PieCaken for Thanksgiving and a Double Points October offer, so the email still has something to sell after October 31.
A few more we almost picked
There were a few others we liked. Lactaid sent Halloween recipes made by Instagram creators and credited each one by handle. De Soi sent a Witches’ Brew recipe with edible purple glitter. Cumulus Coffee turned an espresso martini into “an elixir only a spell could summon.” Harmless Harvest dressed its coconut water bottles up as a vampire and a fairy. And Marley Spoon skipped orange and black altogether for mint and aqua.
What the best Halloween emails had in common
Looking at all of these together, a few things show up again and again.
- The theme connects to the product. Zound, Ketone-IQ, Rest, Brightland, and TUSHY each found a Halloween idea that only works for what they sell. If you swapped in another brand’s logo, the email wouldn’t make sense.
- Customer and creator content stands out. Škoda UK handed its newsletter to a papercraft artist and asked readers to send in their own creations, and Tushbaby led with families wearing its carriers on the night.
- You don’t need orange and black. Rest stayed in dark blue, Škoda UK in green, Tushbaby in soft beige, and Marley Spoon in mint and aqua, and they all still read as Halloween emails.
- New copy can be enough. Uber kept its usual product module and rewrote the descriptions. If your team doesn’t have time to design a seasonal template, start there.
- The subject lines are funny. “Olive Oil Horror Stories” and “Is your butt going as a skidmark for Halloween?” both give people a reason to open before they’ve seen the design.
See more Halloween emails
There are plenty more Halloween emails in the Email Love Halloween collection, including this year’s sends as they come in. If you’re planning your own campaign, it’s worth a scroll to see what your competitors did last October.
And if your team designs emails in Figma, the Email Love Figma plugin lets you build a seasonal email like any of these and export it as production-ready code for your ESP, so you can spend your time on the idea instead of the rebuild.
Much love,
Andy
Andy has spent two decades building email programs for brands and agencies, and now co-runs Email Love: the inspiration gallery of 480,000+ emails and the Figma plugin that lets teams design, build, and export production-ready email without leaving their design file. He writes about email design systems, production workflow, and where the industry is heading.
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