Authentic Veterans Day email tactics
Generated by Klaviyo AI
This article outlines five Veterans Day email strategies that prioritize genuine appreciation over aggressive promotion. It explains how to use segmentation, storytelling, partnerships, and targeted discounts to honor veterans while building trust ahead of the holiday season.
- Gratitude without selling: Send Veterans Day emails that simply thank veterans for their service, using segmentation and geo-targeting where possible, and omit CTAs to emphasize sincerity over sales.
- Highlight veteran stories: Collect and share user-generated content and employee perspectives from veterans across email, social, and your website to center real experiences and build trust.
- Thoughtful partnerships: Collaborate with influencers or celebrities, including local figures, to expand reach and support veteran-focused initiatives, while tracking audience segments to assess impact.
- Broaden veteran recognition: Acknowledge veterans in all roles, not just combat, and feature authentic connections between your brand, veteran experiences, and relevant product benefits.
- Targeted Veterans Day discounts: Offer Veterans Day promo codes to specific segments—such as engaged subscribers, VIPs, or past November buyers—and allow sharing with veterans to extend appreciation.
There are 15.7 million veterans in the US as of 2024—nearly 6% of the adult population, according to the US Census Bureau. Many brands see Veterans Day as an opportunity to express gratitude to veterans and engage with their audience in a meaningful way.
But Veterans Day marketing strategies are markedly different from other holiday-specific campaigns, such as those for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM). Veterans Day isn’t about explicitly promoting your brand. It’s about showing appreciation and building brand trust ahead of the holiday season.
Here are 5 Veterans Day marketing ideas to help you build a meaningful connection with your audience this year.
Align your marketing campaigns with relevant holidays and year-round celebrations.
Get your marketing campaign calendar1. Thank veterans for their service, without a CTA
Emails without a call to action (CTA) are rare, and for good reason. Customer lifecycle marketing is about moving people through the customer journey, which means showing them a next step.
But if there was ever a time to forego a CTA, Veterans Day would be it.
According to Klaviyo’s 2025 Future of Consumer Marketing report, 42% of consumers felt that brand values mattered more that year than they did the previous year. Showing your brand cares about veterans by thanking them for their service without a sales pitch is a great way to establish brand integrity, which likely matters to your customers.
If you’re struggling to envision what a good CTA-less message could look like, an AI marketing agent can help you brainstorm some options. Start with a prompt like, “Write 3 different versions of a Veterans Day marketing email that expresses gratitude and appreciation, without a sales pitch or a CTA.”
Veterans Day marketing example: Tecovas skips the CTA to express thanks
In this Veterans Day marketing example, apparel brand Tecovas uses email to express their gratitude to veterans without a CTA button. They also include an in-line mention of their always available 10% discount for veterans, reflecting their brand values beyond the holiday itself.
Subject line: Happy Veteran's Day
Source: Milled
2. Share real veteran stories from your community
User-generated content (UGC) is particularly effective at building trust because it sets aside your brand’s point of view to center that of your customers. This is especially important for holidays like Veterans Day, which inherently are about personal stories that carry a lot of emotional weight.
In the weeks leading up to Veterans Day, here are a few reliable ways to collect UGC:
- Ask for responses via an email campaign.
- Create a mechanism for people to share stories directly on your website.
- Use a branded hashtag to invite your audience to share their own pictures, stories, and videos on social media.
- Reward those who share their stories with a gift card or discount.
As existing subscribers post and tag your brand on social media, you can gather their UGC in your CRM, specifically in each customer's profile. Once you’ve collected UGC from veterans (and permission to use it!), you can share it on your organic social media accounts, in your paid marketing efforts, on your website, and via email and text message marketing.
Veterans Day marketing example: Vital Proteins features veteran employees on their website
If you can’t collect enough customer UGC for Veterans Day, try asking your employees to offer stories instead. Even if they’re not veterans, ask them what Veterans Day means to them, if they have a veteran in their life, and how they celebrate.
In this Veterans Day marketing example, supplement brand Vital Proteins shares a genuine and heartfelt answer from an employee in a blog post on their website.
Source: Vital Proteins blog
3. Create granular Veterans Day segments with AI
If you have customer data that can help you identify who might be most interested in receiving a Veterans Day message, you can use AI to build complex sub-segments of people who browse and buy differently from one another.
A good place to start is anyone who engaged with your Veterans Day marketing last year. Similarly, if you know certain product categories tend to appeal to veterans or an audience that supports the military, you might build a segment of customers who previously bought from that category and are likely to buy another product soon.
An AI marketing agent can help you find these segments in your customer data and create variations of a message sequence for each. Here are a few examples of prompts for tailoring your Veterans Day messaging to a particular segment:
- “Build a segment of customers who clicked any campaign tagged ‘Veterans Day’ or ‘military appreciation’ in the last 18 months. Draft an email and text message campaign for Veterans Day, and lead with our brand values. Tone should be respectful, not salesy.”
- “Segment all customers who redeemed a military/veteran discount at least once, but haven't purchased in 6+ months. Create a text message for Veterans Day that gives them a reason to shop again, like new arrivals or a bestseller they haven't seen, and mention their military discount as a reminder rather than the main pitch. Use an appreciative, no-pressure tone.”
- “Create a segment of customers who have purchased military-related items or apparel in the past 90 days, or mentioned buying items for a military member or a veteran. Draft an email and text message, and include a ‘Thank you for your service’ message.”
Veterans Day marketing example: Every Man Jack thanks veterans on their email list
In this Veterans Day marketing example, personal care brand Every Man Jack thanks veterans by featuring images of service members and a special discount for those who served. The email is specifically geared toward veterans, with a link to claim the discount, which requires a verification.
For an email like this, you could ask your AI marketing agent to pull together a list of anyone who's redeemed a military discount, opted into a veteran-specific list, or mentioned military service in a support conversation.
Subject line: Thank you to our Veterans 🇺🇸
Source: Milled
4. Partner with a military service-aligned brand
You might be wondering how to authentically align with veterans if your brand isn’t connected to military service. Your customers will be able to tell if you’re promoting the holiday primarily to boost sales with no genuine connection. That’s where partnering with a more military service-aligned brand comes in.
Here are a few ideas for partnering with brands during Veterans Day:
- Share a cause or organization that’s connected to Veterans Day. Even without the promise of a financial donation, taking the time to raise awareness about an important cause is valuable.
- Donate a portion of your sales to a nonprofit or program for veterans. You can decide whether this is a dollar amount or percentage, and set a start and end date based on your budget constraints and goals.
- Offer to donate on behalf of your audience up to a certain amount, for a designated period of time. This is a good way to engage your customers and make them feel like they’re getting involved, too.
- Turn the partnership into a two-way conversation. Set up an automated WhatsApp conversation so that customers can ask about the cause and get a personalized gift recommendation for the veteran in their life.
Marketing example: Dollar Shave Club partners with Call of Duty Endowment to support veterans
Personal grooming brand Dollar Shave Club partnered with Call of Duty Endowment, which supports veterans preparing to enter the job market. The two brands offered shaving kits for veterans starting their next careers.
This partnership helps Dollar Shave Club reach new audiences and support veterans, a win-win for the brand.
Source: Call of Duty Endowment Instagram
5. Offer on-site support for customers shopping for veterans
Not every shopper knows what to buy the veteran in their life. This is where autonomous customer service, offered on your website or other channels such as WhatsApp, can help generate more revenue during the holiday.
Your AI customer agent can answer questions from shoppers who are veterans or who are buying for veterans, and recommend products suited for them. It can also point out details veterans might care about, like durability and safety features.
To personalize the customer experience even more, you can give shoppers a way to save gift ideas while they browse. With an on-site self-serve portal, customers can create their own veteran gift guide wishlist ahead of the holiday. Then, all they need to do is follow through on the purchase once they’re ready to buy.
Veterans Day marketing example: Nanuk’s AI customer agent recommends products for veterans
Nanuk, a brand that sells protective cases, has an AI customer agent on their website that can provide 1:1 support for shoppers during Veterans Day or anytime.
Here, the shopper asks, “My dad's a retired army veteran and I want to get him a present for Veterans Day. He travels constantly for work. What bag would you recommend for him?” The AI agent responds with tailored recommendations, along with an explanation for each pick.
Source: Nanuk
Show appreciation for veterans with Klaviyo B2C CRM
Your appreciation for veterans will have the most impact when you get in front of the most relevant segments of your audience with personalized messaging.
Klaviyo B2C CRM can help make sure you’re hitting all the right notes for Veterans Day, with:
- Composer: Describe a campaign in plain language, and Composer builds the copy, timing, and channel coordination for your approval. You can also use the built-in AI marketing agent to flag gaps across your existing campaigns, segments, and flows, so you know what to focus on next.
- K:AI Customer Agent: Klaviyo’s native AI customer support agent products and answer shopping questions in real time across email, text, web chat, and WhatsApp, 24/7.
- Customer Hub: Give every shopper a personalized on-site experience, with order management, loyalty points, recommendations, wishlists, and support all in one place.
- Omnichannel marketing automation: Launch automated flows like cart abandonment reminders, win-back campaigns, or post-purchase follow-ups across email, text message, and push, based on real-time customer behavior.
Power better customer relationships all year long with Klaviyo.
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