In email marketing, standing out during Halloween can be quite a trick. Brands everywhere vie for attention with spooky offers, festive themes, and promotional deals. What could be done if the challenge were twofold: create an email campaign that would be fun, creative, and engaging enough to inspire real interaction from subscribers?
In this case, Stripo email marketer Oleksandr Dieiev explains how you can combine a strong idea, captivating mechanics, and social context in one Halloween email campaign and still get marketing results for your business.
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About Oleksandr Dieiev
Oleksandr Dieiev is an experienced marketing professional passionate about direct marketing and its tangible impact on business growth. With over eight years of experience in marketing — five of those specifically in email marketing — Oleksandr has built a versatile skill set working across agency and SaaS environments. His background spans various sectors, including eСommerce projects, events, marketplaces, and SaaS products, making him well-versed in crafting tailored strategies for diverse audiences.
What Oleksandr loves most about email marketing is the vast potential for automation that enables businesses to scale their campaigns efficiently while maintaining personal engagement with their audiences. When he's not busy creating compelling email strategies or writing insightful articles for the blog, you can find him hiking in the mountains, reading history books, playing video games, or enjoying a game of DnD with his friends.
The key idea: Make a fun Halloween email with gamification
The key idea behind the Halloween campaign was simple: to create an email for Halloween because it's one of the critical dates we prepare for every year. It’s a significant opportunity to connect with our audience because only a few major events offer such a chance throughout the year.
Our marketing goals were the following:
- To remind users that with our pre-built templates, they can quickly and easily create engaging emails for Halloween.
- To popularize gamification. We believe in using fun, interactive mechanics to engage users, and Halloween provided a perfect opportunity to show how these playful approaches could enhance their campaigns.
- To showcase one of our newest features: the interactive module generator. This tool allows users to create their game mechanics effortlessly without any coding. Because this was a recent addition, it was crucial to let people know how it could make their lives easier and help them create something unique for Halloween.
We wanted our audience to understand that gamification wasn't just about having fun — it could also help them achieve important marketing goals. Whether offering Halloween discounts or running a themed promotion, incorporating an interactive element makes the message more engaging and increases the likelihood that customers will act on it.
In addition to simply creating an email campaign, as a socially responsible company, we wanted to add an element of charity and do something meaningful. The goal was to create a campaign to entertain, engage, and contribute to a good cause. We knew we needed more than just a pretty email — we needed a concept that would immerse our audience in an enchanting experience.
As a result, they unexpectedly got a much better interaction with the game because it was a significant motivation that worked even better than discounts.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
How we chose the winning idea for the Halloween campaign
Our preparation process included several stages.
Stage 1. Team brainstorming
We gathered a focus group to throw around as many ideas as possible.
There were many suggestions; some were filtered out — sometimes because they were too complicated to execute or didn’t fit the goal. But that’s a normal part of the creative process.
For example, initially, we had this ambitious idea about building a "monster generator" for Halloween — something interactive where users could see which Halloween monster matched their personality. It sounded fun and fitting for the occasion, but as we dug deeper, it became clear that it would be too complicated to execute. Plus, we were concerned it might be too difficult for users to enjoy.
We had faced something similar before. We once created an elaborate quest, and, while it was a cool concept, it ended up being too complex, and not as many users engaged with it as we’d hoped.
Stage 2. Details of the final idea
Ultimately, we landed on a feasible and engaging idea that our users could easily interact with. However, even that initial idea evolved during implementation. The final version was a game called “Guess the Halloween Movie,” in which users had to guess movie titles based on emojis — a concept that merged the Halloween spirit with something fun and easy to engage with.
As we worked through the details, we decided to offer some kind of reward to participating users. Promo codes are usually a popular choice, but we wanted to make the bonus uncommon this time. We needed a prize that would resonate with our users and give them a sense of reward without relying on discounts.
That’s when we thought about making a charitable donation. Given the current situation, with many people more aware of social issues, we felt it was the right time to do something meaningful. So, we came up with the idea that we would donate a dollar to a children’s charity for every person who completed the game.
Halloween is often associated with kids, so supporting a children’s organization felt suitable for the theme. It was a way to connect fun engagement with a good cause and struck a chord with our users. Every time they guessed the movies, they knew they were contributing to something positive.
Stage 3. Technical challenges
Technically, creating the campaign was challenging. Nothing was ready-made to fit perfectly, so we had to develop everything from scratch, specifically for this email.
By the way, most of the mechanics we include in our interactive module generator start as one-off ideas for a campaign. We take those concepts, test them, and refine them when they work well to make them available as reusable tools for everyone else.
This Halloween campaign was no different. We built the emoji guessing game mechanic specifically for this email, but we knew it had the potential to become something more.
In the end, we called it “Discover the Movie,” which was a fitting name because that’s exactly what it was all about — clicking through emojis to guess the movie titles. It was simple, fun, and worked well for the Halloween vibe we wanted to create. Above all, it was accessible, which was exactly what we aimed for — an interactive experience that wasn’t overly complicated and still made an impact.
Stage 4. The email production
We began with an initial meeting with developers, where we presented the concept and received feedback on its technical feasibility. The developers played a crucial role in refining the idea, identifying potential challenges, and proposing solutions to ensure smooth execution. Their input helped us balance creativity and practicality, thereby ensuring the final email would be engaging but not overly complicated to implement.
Next, we moved into the text and design preparation stage.
A vital life hack to speed up email production: I wrote the email copy early, which allowed our designer to visualize how the content and interactive elements would flow together. This phase ensured the design was cohesive, engaging, and aligned with the Halloween theme.
The designer then created a complete mockup that integrated the interactive mechanics with the email's overall look and feel.
Finally, the email underwent coding, testing, and revisions. The developer brought the interactive elements to life. Throughout this stage, we made small tweaks based on practical considerations. Once the coding was complete, we tested the email across multiple devices and email clients to confirm that everything — from the design to the mechanics — functioned as intended.
Solution: Halloween movie-themed experience
To sum up, the solution we found and the key features of our email campaign were:
- The game concept: We chose emojis as our game elements to make the experience fun and straightforward. Emojis are instantly recognizable and easily understood, which makes them perfect for a wide audience.
- Visual design: We created a visual representation of a movie theater with a big screen showcasing the emoji movie puzzles and little "monsters" sitting in the seats. This design choice wasn't just for aesthetics; it helped direct the user's attention precisely where we wanted it — onto the game screen, encouraging interaction. The movie reel and Halloween-themed colors tied the whole visual story together, making the email feel festive, inviting, and intuitive to navigate.
- User engagement: The game format allowed us to engage our subscribers directly. Clicking on an emoji or guessing the movie title was fun and rewarding, and the promise of a charity donation for each completed game added motivation. If users played until the end, we pledged to donate an amount corresponding to the number of completions.
Halloween email campaign with gamification
Here is the email we got as a result.
Subject line: You play, we donate👻
Preheader: Play right in the email
Step 1: Explain the rules of the game.
Step 2: Show the game.
Step 3: You are the winner! Congratulate players and give the links.
Results: A win for engagement and charity
The results exceeded our expectations in several ways:
- Higher engagement rates: Compared to our usual promotional emails, this campaign saw an 11% increase in the open rate and a 1.2% boost in the click-to-open rate (CTOR). The simplicity of the game and the allure of charity contributions played a big part in these higher-than-average engagement metrics.
- Conversions beyond the game: In addition to game engagement, the email led to increasing downloads of our Ultimate guide to email gamification and brought us new registrations for our Academy, which offered a course on creating AMP-powered mechanics. The interactive generator featured in the campaign also saw use, showing how practical a creative approach could be in driving multiple forms of interaction.
Key learnings: Keep it simple, keep it engaging
This campaign taught us several key lessons that could be valuable for any email marketer:
- Early collaboration is essential — bringing a developer into the process during the idea stage is always a good move. It saves time and helps ensure that your concept is achievable.
- Simplicity wins — one of the most crucial lessons was that simplicity is often more powerful. Our earlier campaigns had attempted more complicated interactive elements, which led to confusion. This time, we simplified everything — emojis were easy to recognize, the instructions were clear, and the game was direct.
- Guide the user visually — the movie theater design wasn't just there for Halloween flair — it served a functional purpose. We visually directed subscribers' attention to the game by structuring the email like a theater scene, guiding their focus to the critical interactive elements. It’s always worth remembering that design isn’t just about looking good; it’s about leading the user journey intuitively.
Wrapping up
This Halloween campaign proves that a creative yet straightforward idea can achieve great results. By leveraging familiar symbols like emojis, we made the game accessible to all subscribers, regardless of background or language. Adding an element of charity helped foster a sense of goodwill, and keeping the design intuitive ensured that users immediately understood where to click and how to participate.
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