Email Marketing Calendars: What To Put On Them?

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

This is the third post in a series on using an email marketing calendar to manage your campaigns more efficiently. You may want to read Why You Need an Email Marketing Calendar and Planning your Email Marketing Calendar before continuing.

My two previous posts have focused on planning your campaigns in advance to improve their quality, consistency and cohesiveness.

Of course, picking out dates to send campaigns might seem pointless if you don’t have any idea what your emails are going to be about!

So today, let’s get into some email content ideas.

Annual Industry Events

Many of us work in industries that follow relatively fixed annual cycles, where certain things take place at the same time each year.

Since we know about such cycles/events well in advance, we can plan individual emails or multi-email campaigns to send in the time leading up to (and in some instances after) them.

Major industry conferences and trade shows

Other Consumer or Product Cycles

A publisher in the music industry might send an email newsletter about the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference (occurs every March); if you write about cars, you might put a campaign together around the North American International Auto Show (each January); golf experts could talk about The Masters.

Other industry cycles work well, too. Are you an accountant? Create a campaign to send your subscribers from January up until (and through) Tax Day. Winery? Let readers follow the winemaking process along from harvest through crushing, pressing, aging and bottling.

Don’t Forget Holidays!

Industry-specific events aren’t the only annual occurrences that you can work into your email marketing calendar.

Holidays, while they shouldn’t be a cause of empty greetings, can provide a backdrop for thought-out campaigns.

Many businesses create a series of emails for the “12 Days of Christmas”

The floral, candy and jewelry industries are known for putting together strong campaigns in the months leading up to Valentine’s Day, but this holiday can work well for anyone marketing a unique product/gift idea.

Creating email marketing campaigns around the holidays may sound tired/trite to some of you — and in some cases, it is — but in my experience it’s all about the planning and execution, and how narrowly you define “holidays.”

For more holiday ideas, check out our holiday email marketing calendar. It contains plenty of celebrations that you might never have considered…

"Special Features" — Narrowly-Focused Email Campaigns

Just as in other media, you can drill down to one particular area within the broader focus of your email newsletter and publish a group of articles on that topic.

Example: our features on email marketing for doctors, restaurants and realtors.

This type of "special feature" (to borrow the term from more traditional media) can be a welcome diversion from your typical email newsletter content, and grab the interest of particular groups of subscribers.

Are you a travel agent? Highlight 5 destinations that offer exceptional value. Interior decorator? Show how different color palettes can make a room exciting, calming, bigger, smaller, and so on. A woodworking expert could take a little-used wood and showcase 3 projects that your readers can tackle using it.

The beauty of special features is that they:

Spice up your email newsletter.

Have natural cohesiveness, making it easy for you to keep your content relevant (example: a 5-part series on "readying your classic car for the next show" gives you 5 emails that logically tie together).

Give you plenty of email content to spread over multiple messages and keep in touch with subscribers while providing value.

Unless your email newsletter focuses on so narrow a topic that there’s absolutely no room to vary your individual message content, you can benefit from this type of campaign.

(If you think your email newsletter’s focus is too narrow to do this, please explain in the comments… I’d like a shot at giving you some ideas for possible "special feature" campaigns!)

Small Series of Tips: Break Up the Monotony

The other ideas discussed so far are all for creating "primary content" — the main focus of each campaign you send.

Even with an idea of where to start, and plenty of writing experience, you may find it exhausting to continually crank out thoroughly outlined, researched and proofread articles for your email newsletter.

Quick tips/ideas can supplement your main email content. They fit well in the sidebar of a 2- or 3-column HTML email, or near the end of a plain text one.

The tough part about motivating yourself to keep doing those types of campaigns is that you know that some people simply won’t end up reading the article thoroughly. They won’t have time, or they’ll want something they can scan through quickly.

This is where little "asides" or "mini-articles" can help. Since these are short, people are likely to read them, and they also require less of your time than a full-fledged article (so you can write a bunch of them in advance, and then just drop them into your campaigns as needed!).

Take a topic that you’d planned to turn into a full-fledged article — the primary content for one of your email campaigns — and break it up into bite-size packets of information. Then, put each of them into a different campaign under its own heading.

For example, a chef could use part of each email newsletter issue to highlight a little-known cooking tool and what it’s used for (maybe linking to a page with more details, a demonstration by video, recipes and/or a purchase link).

Multichannel Marketing: Sync Your Communications

If you’re taking advantage of other marketing channels like direct mail, radio and/or print media, think about how you can tie your email marketing campaigns in with those other media.

You might use email to alert subscribers of an upcoming promotion, or to look out for a flyer/catalog/postcard you’re sending them (or vice versa — you could use email to follow up after a campaign run in another media).

Marc recently blogged on multichannel marketing and gave an example of how a retailer coordinated email and postal campaigns to raise their response rate.

To learn more about multichannel campaigns, check out the MineThatData blog.

It’s very advanced stuff, but if your business makes or plans to make significant use of multiple media channels to market to your prospects, it’s well worth your time to stop by.

Other Ideas?

What other types of content do you work into your calendar? Share them below!

Don’t Miss Out!

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Holiday Email Marketing Calendar

To see what upcoming events you can work into your campaigns, take a look at our holiday email marketing calendar — it contains plenty of well-known and lesser-known events you can use as the backdrop for a timely campaign!

Tags: content ideas, marketing calendar

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13 Responses

Tony
January 25th, 2008 at 6:30 am

Another excellent article on using an email marketing calendar.

I’m taking a number of ideas from this, and will be applying it to my marketing efforts immediately.
Kathy L
January 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am

Great article (yet again). You guys are geniuses.

My biggest problem with email marketing is making a newsletter that is informative and timely without sounding "fluffy".
Justin Premick
January 25th, 2008 at 9:55 am

Kathy,

That’s a challenge we all face - and one that I think that using a calendar helps to overcome.
Adam
January 25th, 2008 at 10:58 am

What kinds of ideas might you have for an executive recruiter who is trying to differentiate himself more effectively from the masses? I really need to go beyond the generic stuff about recruiting process, analyzing resumes, etc.
Justin Premick
January 25th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Hi Adam,

I’m not especially familiar with executive recruiting and typical marketing communications there, but here are a few off-the-cuff ideas:

* A series of messages on the most important executive skills for growing companies vs. mature companies, or for companies seeking to grow by acquisition vs. growing by increasing the productivity of existing properties (you can make a lot of comparisons like this that may be of particular interest to subscribers/companies in each of those positions)

* Create case studies of executive hires you’ve done, talk about why they worked out well. Get quotes from the company/candidate involved to work into the messages (as well as to use for testimonials on your site!)

* Pick out hirings that your readers might find interesting and discuss why you do/don’t think the candidate was the right fit, why/not, and what you might have done differently. Tie your content into what’s going on in mainstream business media.

* Run a series of emails on how executive compensation has changed/is changing - "3 Hot Trends in Compensation and How They Affect What You Pay For a CFO/CEO/CIO/etc"

Not sure if that’s anything like what you’re doing now, but if not, hopefully that gets the ball rolling for you.
Todd Gers
January 28th, 2008 at 4:51 am

I am from Oklahoma. I moved Melbourne Aust. about 5yrs. ago. The thing I notice right off the bat was everyone gets paid Wedsday night and by Thursday their spending. For me calender e-mailing is a excellent idea! Thats means my e-mail is arriving the same time people have money. Great idea !!!!
Ted Stevenot
January 28th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

I am completely revising my web approach. Does someone like you use RSS feeds? If so,do you use the same content, or something different?
Justin Premick
January 29th, 2008 at 9:55 am

Hi Ted,

Not quite sure how you’re referring to using RSS feeds.

We do publish an RSS feed for this blog (it’s linked in the sidebar above).

The content in that feed is our blog posts, though we do occasionally put slightly different content into the feed:

* calling on RSS subscribers to recommend the blog to others

* telling them when there’s a video on the site that might not play directly in their RSS reader (and providing a link to click to the video)

Is that the sort of usage you’re referring to?
Marina Rivon
January 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am

I am a graphic designer and my problem is knowing what my clients want to know… I don’t want to write for fellow designers, those I know what interests them. But how do I know what interests my clients… sometimes I think tips will do the trick but then I have to get too technical and I really don’t think they want (or need) that…

How can I differentiate myself from other fellow designers that are as good as I am? Any ideas?

Lost in Puerto Rico, Marina
Istvan
January 31st, 2008 at 4:16 am

I am glad that you posted this subject about e-mail marketing content and I am even more glad to learn that my idea to break certain topic into small follow-up messages that go out at a shorter interval than the rest of them was also a good idea.

I am running a a website that is designed to capture the visitors for a network marketing company and the focus of the website is finding and identifying potential leaders, business developers. It never occured to me before to discuss in the follow-up messages about the products of the company but I am open minded to hear your suggestion. I believe that would be inconsistent with the website content (but I have heard different opinion, too).

What would you recommend?

Thanks.
Justin Premick
January 31st, 2008 at 9:29 am

Hi Marina,

One of the best ways to find out what your clients want to know is to think about what types of questions/topics they often ask about while you’re working with them, or while they’re talking to you prior to hiring — you’ll likely see patterns that can give you several topics you can write about.

Technical tips are a possibility, but as you said, they may not all want or need that — you might consider showcasing past work you’ve done, talk about the creative and editorial thought processes that went into getting the finished product out, and what the client thought of the project (great chance to work in testimonials!).

Istvan,

I think it depends on what your subscribers are signing up for, and what the focus of your emails is. I don’t know that I would divert from the topic that subscribers signed up for, but you might start to work those products into other emails.

For instance, if you give an example of how certain leadership qualities translated into success when marketing one of your products, that gives you an opportunity to briefly highlight what that product is, in a way that’s still relevant to the message content.
Parthesh
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 am

Hello,

These articles seem to be very informative and interesting. I am working on number of projects with regard to content management and transformation and these articles have helped me a lot! Looking forward for more interaction. Please write to me for any discussion with regard to content and Data management.
Claire
February 4th, 2008 at 9:34 am

I run an Outsourced Credit Control Company and am just thinking about starting an Email Newsletter. Some of your tips are really useful and I will be asking friends, family and clients what content they would like to see in the news letter rather than writing about what I think they would like to read about. Do you have any ideas on content for a "first edition newsletter"?