An email marketing calendar template is a tool for management and keeping track of email marketing projects, campaigns, and newsletters. It acts as your regular calendar and task manager in one: You can plan ahead, see the process as a whole, keep track of several different campaigns at every stage, neatly organize your email marketing efforts, and always be on time without getting overwhelmed.
An email marketing calendar template can be as simple or as complex as your framework and needs are. If you are the only person responsible for sparse email marketing campaigns or you have a small business and don’t organize too many campaigns, you can schedule them in your device’s default calendar app. However, if your email marketing management is a team effort, and your company has a lot of campaigns planned or you manage multiple projects at the same time, you can try building a template using a special platform or app. There are many services that allow you to create a template automatically, so you won’t spend much time on it.
So, what are the advantages of an email marketing calendar template for your business? Here’s what you can gain from using it:
If you decide to create an email marketing calendar template in a dedicated app and not simply add the campaigns to your regular calendar, you can choose one of the platforms from this list. Here are the top 5 tools you can use for email campaign planning and management.
One of the most convenient ways to create an email marketing calendar template is by using Google Sheets. The app allows you to share your calendars with your team, access it from any device, and customize it the way you want. You can also search for the premade calendar templates online. This tool is a good solution for those who work on simple projects, such as newsletters and don’t need to develop complicated campaigns.
Features: formulas for data organization and analysis, 22 languages available, Smart Fill with public data suggestions, integrations with other Google apps and Salesforce.
Price: All essential features are free, Google Workspace paid plans start at $6 a month and allow more storage space and access to a no-code app-building software AppSheet.
Another tool that is worth giving a try is Notion. Notion is a project management tool that also has a calendar feature for working on your projects with your team. You can integrate your calendar with other platforms, such as Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, and the Notion workspace. Plus, you can access your calendar via a website, desktop and mobile apps.
Features: Built-in meeting scheduling, multiple time zones visualization, 12 languages available, ability to connect several calendars.
Price: Free.
CoSchedule is a platform offering multiple marketing solutions, such as content calendar, social calendar, headline analyzer, and more. With the Content Calendar, you can create custom calendars to work on with your team members. There are options to group related projects into a single campaign, create different calendar views, a kanban board for prioritization, automation, and reusable templates.
Features: Up to 5 users, custom fields and statuses, reports, AI features, and more.
Price: CoSchedule has a limited free plan for individual use. To purchase the content calendar, you need to schedule a call with the sales representative.
Asana is a platform that helps organize and keep track of your work processes. You can collaborate on your projects with other team members and integrate your email marketing calendar with other tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Figma, and Canva. There’s an option to switch between calendar and list views, a resource management function to see the team members’ workload and availability, and reporting.
Features: Desktop and mobile apps as well as a web version, security management, and automations.
Price: The platform offers both free and paid plans. The free plan allows collaborating with up to 10 team members, unlimited file storage and messages. The paid plans start from $13.49 per user per month and offer collaborating with more team members, more views like timeline view, advanced search, custom templates, and more.
Trello is another project management platform that allows you to organize your schedule and keep track of work tasks. You can also collaborate on your campaigns with other team members and customize your email marketing calendar. It’s easy to plan with a day view, and there is a variety of labels and checklists to customize the task cards.
Features: Integrations with apps like Google and Outlook, due dates, assignees, a web version, desktop and mobile apps and more.
Price: The calendar is available on the Premium and Enterprise plans which start from $12.50 a month.
Now that you’ve learned what an email marketing calendar template is and what benefits it has, it’s time to create one! Follow these steps to make an email marketing calendar template for your campaigns from scratch.
The first step is choosing a platform to keep track of your marketing campaigns. If your business is small, you can use the calendars on your device or Google Calendar. We’ve gathered our top tools recommendations in the previous section of the article. Make sure to check the features available to see if a platform is suitable for your plans.
After choosing your software, think about what data you are going to put into your calendar. It might be a campaign’s name, its details, dates and deadlines, audience information, etc.
Here is an example in Google Sheets. In this calendar, you can also link your email marketing content, note the email list, and write a subject line and preview text.
Enter all the campaigns you want to schedule and note their statuses, assignees, and other details. Here are some of the email marketing campaigns you might want to plan:
After you fill in the special campaigns, note the email cadence. Think about how frequently you want to send emails to your customers and organize the calendar plan accordingly. If you need to add more, come up with email content ideas and fill in the gaps. If you see that you are going to send emails too often, move campaigns around or discuss this with your team.
If you work with a team, make sure to share your email marketing calendar template with the members, so that they can edit and work on it too. It will also be easier to track the performance within the team and check the updates. Schedule a call to explain a new system, if necessary.
When all of the preparations are done, you can start using your template.
After you set up your email marketing calendar, follow these steps to plan and launch your campaigns.
Think about what you want to achieve with your campaign. It may be driving sales, generating leads, announcing a launch of a new product, or driving your website traffic. Depending on the specific goals, you can create an efficient marketing campaign.
Suppose you are planning your Mother’s Day email campaign. The goal here can be to stimulate sales of holiday-suitable products.
Identify the information needed to segment your audience, such as behavior, demographics, interests, previous purchases, etc. This can help you make your campaigns relevant and increase engagement rates.
For example, your Mother’s Day campaign’s target audience would be your US subscribers and subscribers from other countries that celebrate the holiday. It’s commonplace now to allow people to opt out of the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day campaigns out of personal preference. So, in our example, you will need to exclude these subscribers from the list or send an email with a suggestion to update preferences first.
Define the key dates for launching your campaign. Some of them are the launching date, the deadlines for the planning period and the content creation, and the promotion duration. Some types of emails, such as a summer newsletter need to be sent on the dates of some relevant holidays or seasonal events.
For the Mother’s Day campaign, in the USA, the holiday is on the second Sunday of May, May 12th, 2024. So, you might start planning your campaign in March.
After considering all the key dates and deadlines, select a date for sending your emails. Make sure it matches your subscribers’ preferences and your marketing strategy. If you need to, set up the dates for resends or follow-ups.
You can start sending your Mother’s Day newsletters one or two weeks before the holiday to build anticipation among your subscribers.
Next, allocate responsibilities to your team members working on the campaign. For example, assign campaigns to other email marketers, designers, analysts, etc. Ensure everyone understands the objectives and the steps to achieve your campaign goals. You might need to have a few meetings to let your team know about the project’s details or the calendar’s features.
After you are all set with the planning and selected the dates, it is time to prepare your emails. Carefully think about the content, main message, images, and interactive elements. Don’t forget to include calls-to-action too.
For the Mother’s Day emails, you could make a list of ideas to spend the holiday or make a gift guide for your subscribers.
To optimize your campaign performance, you should run an A/B test. To do so, prepare two versions of your email and send it to two different groups of subscribers. This can help you identify your subscribers’ preferences. You can test subject lines, email copy, visuals, and more.
After launching your email marketing campaign, you can analyze the results to enhance your future campaigns. You can reserve a spot in your calendar for comparing the reports of some of the recent campaigns or add a call with your team to discuss the results. Analyze your click-through rates, open rates, engagement, the amount of revenue generated, and other metrics. Think about what you can improve and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your approach.
Want your email marketing calendar template to work even better? Below, we’ve gathered some tips you can use to do so:
An email marketing calendar template is a great solution for planning your marketing campaigns, newsletters, and other projects. It allows you to keep track of your campaigns, set and achieve your marketing goals, and organize all the processes efficiently.
To create a template, do the following:
We hope that this article can help you organize your email marketing calendar and launch an efficient campaign. Make sure to also check out our sales prospecting email templates article and other useful articles in the Selzy blog.
