Monica Caraway
Every December, B2B marketers ask the same question: “Should we send a holiday greeting email?”
And every December, our answer is the same: PLEASE DON'T! Why the bah humbug? Because every email you send costs unsubscribes.
Even the nicest, most harmless message sheds a slice of your audience. That is the unavoidable price of sending email. Which means you should save that cost for something meaningful. Spend your unsubscribes on value, insight, or revenue-driving content, not on a seasonal greeting that does nothing for your audience and quietly hurts your email list.
To see why a simple holiday email can create outsized harm, you have to look at what December does to inboxes and filtering systems. The environment shifts, and not in your favor.
1. Holiday Email Volume Spikes and Filters Get Aggressive
December inboxes are chaos. Retailers send everything imaginable. B2B teams try to spread cheer. Spam filters tighten. ISPs overreact.
Sending a big, sentimental message to your entire list, especially unengaged contacts, is like asking inbox providers to judge your domain harshly.
One holiday blast can:
- Increase bounce rates
- Trigger spam complaints
- Hurt sender reputation
- Lower deliverability for months
All for an email most people will skim or ignore.
2. Unsubscribes Hurt More Now That Traffic Is No Longer Guaranteed
In the past, unsubscribes felt replaceable because website traffic was steady. Not anymore.
We are living in a zero-click world. Google AI Overviews, LLM answers, and SERP snippets give buyers what they need without visiting your website. Less traffic means fewer form fills and fewer new subscribers.
You used to replenish a damaged list. Now it is far harder.
Your email list is an owned asset. In a zero-click landscape, an owned audience is everything. Why risk subscribers on a holiday greeting that will not move the needle?
3. Most Holiday Emails Are Irrelevant and Everyone Knows It
No B2B buyer has ever said, “Thank goodness this vendor sent me a Merry Christmas email. Now I want a demo.”
Holiday sends are usually:
- Generic
- Interruptive
- Poorly timed
- Sent to unengaged people
- Misaligned with buyer priorities
And unsubscribing from your holiday message means unsubscribing from the emails that actually matter later.
That is a terrible trade.
4. Deliverability Rules Are Tighter and Mistakes Have Faster Consequences
As we explained in The Truth About B2B Email Deliverability, marketing email is more regulated than ever. Authentication, domain reputation, and engagement all matter.
Your reputation depends on:
- Consistent sending
- High engagement
- Clean lists
- SPF, DKIM, DMARC
- Controlled volume
A holiday blast violates several of these in one move.
The result can be a cascade of problems. Cold outreach fails. Nurture sequences get filtered. Customer newsletters disappear into spam. This is not alarmism. It is how deliverability works today.
5. AI Discovery Depends on Trust Signals, and Email Reputation Is One of Them
In one of our recent articles, we explained why nearly 500 marketers reacted so strongly to HubSpot’s link-building outreach. That moment highlighted a broader shift in digital visibility. AI-driven discovery is rewriting the rules, and authority signals now matter more than ever.
In search, that means citations and backlinks. In email, that means domain reputation, authentication, and engagement.
Your list is no longer just a distribution channel. It is part of your credibility footprint across the entire digital ecosystem.
Everything is connected, which means you cannot afford reckless sending.
6. But Aren’t Holiday Emails About Relationship Building?
In theory, yes. In practice, there are better options.
Stronger relationship builders include:
- Thoughtful, one-to-one communication
- Consistent value-driven content
- Respecting inbox fatigue
- Staying out of the way when people are clearing their inbox before vacation
Holiday emails feel nice to send, but recipients rarely feel nice receiving them.
Better alternatives include:
- A handwritten card
- A social post thanking customers and partners
- A short banner in your December newsletter
- A thank-you message in January when engagement rebounds
So What Should You Do Right Now?
If your team is debating the holiday send, here is the simple plan:
Do not send a mass email.
If you absolutely must send something:
- Send only to engaged contacts from the past 30 to 90 days
- Keep the list small and the message personal
- Avoid promotions, graphics, and CTAs
- Or better yet, do a nice holiday LinkedIn post from your business and from you personally
And put your real energy into:
- Q1 nurture flows
- Cleaning your list
- Improving your deliverability setup
- Creating content worthy of citations in the AI-indexed world
- Strengthening first-party data capture before zero-click spreads further
Your future self will thank you.
The Bottom Line
Your email list is one of the few assets you truly own. It is limited, fragile, and difficult to rebuild. Do not risk it on a seasonal greeting that adds no value to your audience.
Protect your list.
Protect your deliverability.
Protect your Q1 pipeline.
And enjoy a holiday season without domain reputation anxiety.
...and if you missed our email deliverability ebook - you gotta check it out. Good tips in there to help you contend with Google's tougher restrictions and land in the inbox!
