A year-round email marketing calendar — campaign planning around Hong Kong and Taiwan holidays

Key takeaways

• Map out the year in advance so content, images and landing pages are ready early, rather than rushed before each holiday.
• Hong Kong and Taiwan share Lunar New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn, but some dates differ — Father’s Day, for example, is the third Sunday of June in Hong Kong and 8 August in Taiwan.
• A main campaign can run as teaser → launch → last call → thank-you or aftercare, but segment the list rather than send every email to everyone.
• Holiday emails need not be offers: greetings and practical information such as holiday opening hours are valuable too.
• Lunar-calendar festivals move each year; take public holidays from the Hong Kong government and Taiwan’s Directorate-General of Personnel Administration.

“What do we send this month?” is a question many newsletter owners face every month. Mapping out the year’s holidays and shopping seasons in advance lets you prepare content, images and landing pages early, balance promotion with useful content, and avoid a scramble in peak season. This guide sets out the main campaign windows in Hong Kong and Taiwan month by month, with the newsletter angle that suits each. The same planning method works for any market — swap in your own holidays.

Planning the year in five steps

1. List the windows: start from the table below and add your own key dates — company anniversary, product launches, annual member events.
2. Set a goal and audience for each: for the same holiday, new subscribers might get a greeting and useful information while long-standing customers get a member offer. See Email marketing strategy — using the funnel to turn strangers into loyal customers.
3. Plan a sequence for the main windows, for example teaser → launch → last call → thank-you or aftercare.
4. Leave room for non-holiday content: know-how, customer stories and product tutorials, so the newsletter does not become a flyer of offers.
5. Prepare early: images, copy, landing pages, discount codes and segmented lists, with time left for testing (checklist in Email design guide — layout, images, colour, mobile rendering and a pre-send checklist).

Hong Kong and Taiwan through the year

Lunar-calendar festivals fall on different Gregorian dates each year, so the table lists approximate months. For public holidays, go by the official sources: GovHK: General holidays for Hong Kong, and the government office calendar published by Taiwan’s Directorate-General of Personnel Administration.

Month	Hong Kong	Taiwan	Newsletter angle
Jan	New Year’s Day; pre-Lunar New Year shopping	New Year’s Day; pre-Lunar New Year shopping, year-end company dinners	New-year greetings, festive hampers, plans for the year
Feb	Lunar New Year (Jan or Feb depending on the year), Valentine’s Day	Lunar New Year (Jan or Feb), Lantern Festival, Valentine’s Day	Lunar New Year greetings, opening offers, Valentine’s gifts
Mar	Spring changeover	Spring changeover	New arrivals, end-of-season clearance
Apr	Ching Ming, Easter long weekend	Children’s Day, Tomb Sweeping long weekend	Holiday opening hours, family and travel content
May	Mother’s Day (second Sunday of May), Buddha’s Birthday	Mother’s Day (second Sunday of May)	Mother’s Day gifts, early booking
Jun	Dragon Boat Festival; Father’s Day (third Sunday of June); mid-year sales	Dragon Boat Festival; mid-year sales	Festive hampers, mid-year clearance, Father’s Day (HK)
Jul	HKSAR Establishment Day; summer holidays begin	Summer holidays begin	Summer activities, travel, seasonal products
Aug	Back to school	Father’s Day (8 August), Qixi, back to school	School supplies, Father’s Day (TW), Qixi gifts
Sep	Mid-Autumn Festival (Sep or Oct depending on the year)	Mid-Autumn Festival (Sep or Oct)	Mooncake and gift-box pre-orders, corporate gifting
Oct	National Day holiday, Chung Yeung	National Day (10 October); department-store anniversary sales begin	Long-weekend promotions, autumn/winter arrivals, anniversary sales (TW)
Nov	Double 11, Black Friday	Double 11, Black Friday, anniversary sales	Online shopping festival offers, member days
Dec	Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve	Double 12, Christmas, New Year’s Eve	Christmas gifts, year in review, holiday hours, new-year teaser

If you also run MMS promotions, the MMS page has a month-by-month retail calendar with creative direction.

Three ways to write a holiday email

1. A greeting

No selling — just good wishes for the season, such as a simply designed e-card. It keeps you in mind and suits new subscribers who have not bought yet. Keep it short: one clear visual and a line or two.

2. Practical information

What people actually need around a holiday is valuable too:

• holiday opening hours and customer-service arrangements;
• delivery cut-offs (“order by 20 December for delivery before Christmas”);
• gift guides and seasonal event picks.

3. An offer

State the offer, deadline and conditions clearly, and match the subject line. Who gets it matters as much: a member offer for loyal customers, a reminder for cart abandoners, a come-back offer for lapsed buyers all beat one offer sent to everyone.

Year-end: make customers feel valued

December is one of the months when recipients expect the most and receive the most email. Rather than adding one more big promotion, think about how to make each person feel individually looked after:

• Segment by purchase history and send recommendations and offers that fit;
• Send a year in review — their points this year, or the new services you launched;
• Send a thank-you with no sales agenda, simply thanking them for their support.

Do B2B companies need holiday emails?

Yes, with a different focus. Business customers rarely buy because of a holiday offer; they care more about:

• Holiday service arrangements: support hours, maintenance windows, emergency contacts;
• Year-end and new-year planning: budget cycles, new-year pricing, contract renewal reminders;
• Greetings and thanks: a brief, well-judged seasonal greeting rather than a pitch.

Peak-season cautions

• Do not over-send. Recipients get far more promotional email around holidays; sending several extra messages to the whole list for every window is the fastest route to unsubscribes and complaints, which hurt sender reputation (see How to keep your email and newsletters out of the spam folder — a complete guide for business senders). Send reminders and last calls only to people who showed interest, such as those who clicked the teaser.
• Keep Hong Kong and Taiwan apart where they differ. Father’s Day, Qixi, Double 12 and anniversary sales differ in date or importance between the two; with recipients in both, send by region.
• Think about send time. Reading habits change around long holidays; consider avoiding the holiday itself for important emails.
• Be ready to deliver: landing pages, stock, discount codes and support staff all need to be in place for the email to produce real results.

FAQ

How far ahead should holiday emails be prepared?
For the main windows — Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn, Christmas — start several weeks ahead to leave time for design, copy, landing pages and testing; for products that need pre-ordering, the teaser itself must go out early.

Should a holiday greeting go to everyone?
A simple greeting can go to all subscribers; offers and reminders should be segmented and sent only to the people they are relevant to.

How do I handle customers in both Hong Kong and Taiwan?
Record each recipient’s region. For shared festivals such as Mid-Autumn, use one theme with the wording adjusted for each; for windows that matter in only one place — or fall on different dates, like Father’s Day in June in Hong Kong and August in Taiwan — send separately.

What do I send in months without a holiday?
Know-how, product tutorials, customer stories and industry news. They give the newsletter value beyond the holidays — see How to write email marketing copy — ABC and AIDA frameworks, value-first content and calls to action.

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UFOSEND’s EDM email marketing service offers ready-made newsletter, promotion and event templates, segments built from lists, tags and custom fields such as region, and scheduled sending from the same dashboard.