Importance of a Content Calendar

One key aspect that is often overlooked in email marketing is planning. A lot of brands don’t plan in advance the content they have to create for campaigns they want to launch during a certain period. Instead, they might send several campaigns during a period, failing to notice important events that might be during that time. To avoid missing out on special days and posting a constant amount each month, a brand must create an email content calendar.

What is a Content Calendar

An email content calendar helps you visualize your schedule in a calendar form. This helps you to plan your campaigns for a month, quarter, or year – ensuring a holistic strategy for your brand. This will simplify your campaign creation, helping you prepare in advance and spot potential overlaps or content opportunities. Your email content calendar could look like the following:

As you can see, the days campaigns are sent are clearly defined. Moreover, important days are noted, such as the national liberation day in Italy, the King’s birthday in the Netherlands, and Easter Monday. All relevant events for a business that operates in the European market.

How to Create an Effective Content Calendar

Step 1 - Find Industry Best Practices

While many brands believe that the more emails you send, the more you’ll convert, that doesn’t necessarily hold true. Don’t simply spray-and-pray—follow this advice to scale your email marketing:

• Determine a realistic campaign send schedule based on your business resources

• Base your campaigns on your target audience

• Consistency is key. Send a harmonious number of campaigns each week/month and slowly increase as you scale

  
  

Step 2 - Identify the Best Days to Send Your Emails

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t send campaigns every day to the same customer list—this may lead to recipients disengaging from your brand.

• Monday to Wednesday: These days recipients are getting back to work, which means they’re mentally prepared to learn—making these days ideal for informative content.

• Thursday to Sunday: Subscribers are preparing for or enjoying the weekend, making these days great for promotional offers or reminders of a new product launch.

  
  

Step 3 - Testing

While Step 2 provides good information to start, you should test different sending days and times to see if it impacts your engagement.

Once you’ve tested different days and times and found what works best for your brand, you can create content calendars that cover longer periods of time—helping you to take a broad and holistic view of the incoming year.

This is all you need to know to set up your email content calendar. Should you still have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at:

info@eledia.co