Following are three of the best emails we received from financial providers in December.

Wells Fargo/ShareBuilder

For the second year in a row, our favorite holiday email came from NetStock’s ShareBuilder on behalf of co-branding partner Wells Fargo. The message was sent to existing Sharebuilder customers in mid-December (Dec. 16). Last year the message went out 2.5 weeks earlier on Nov. 28. We like the earlier timeframe. By Dec. 16, much of the target market has already made major holiday-purchase decisions, especially those shopping online.*

The superb image of a young child was from the same photo shoot, although a slightly different pose. We preferred the 2001 version with the text wrapped around the image, but that’s a minor issue.

Copy was very similar with the same short-and-sweet approach. However, the overriding call to action in 2002 was the more understandable Give the gift of stock rather than last year’s convoluted, Start a new holiday tradition with Wells Sharebuilder Investment Gift Accounts for children.

The main design improvement this year was the addition of an “open an account” button, an important design element in an HTML email whose recipients may not know that you can simply click through to the site.

The offer remained the same with a $25 bonus for accounts started before January 15, 2003 (last year the deadline was Dec. 31, 2002).

*We were still ordering from Amazon on Dec. 20, not the most cost-effective approach, but it worked.

Everbank

If you haven’t graduated to HTML email, it’s a little harder to make an impression in the holiday inbox. Everbank puts a holiday greeting in its Dec. 19 email heading, “Your Everbanker Online. Happy Holidays and More!”

However, those opting to view the entire message on the bank’s Website found no real holiday message or graphics, just a self-congratulatory discussion of the bank’s acquisition by First Alliance Bank (see screenshot below).

The merger was understandably top-of-mind for customers and employees alike, but the bank shouldn’t have sent a merger communication with a holiday header.

ModemMedia

The coolest holiday greeting by far came, not surprisingly, from interactive advertising agency ModemMedia. My personalized greeting was from Dan Springer, an early marketing whiz at NextCard, who departed before its fall from grace.

ModemMedia does everything right. First, the HTML message is very simple with a blue background that jumps out from the inbox. The main graphic is small, so even if the user’s email preview pane is relatively small, the entire image can be seen.

Clicking through to the special Web site (try it yourself at  www.merrymodem.com ), the user is treated to a 30-second interactive holiday message that accomplishes the agency’s goal, making you want to do business with a company savvy enough to craft such an elegant greeting.