Learning how to create your email marketing calendar should be a priority, because email marketing is a money-maker. The good news is that you can create an email marketing calendar in 10 minutes or less (almost), instead of staring at a computer screen suffering through what we like to call a “marketer’s block”.
In fact, 4 out of 5 marketers would rather give up social media (all of it) than email marketing, according to Litmus.
There are a few things to keep in mind when creating an email marketing calendar.
First, you'll need to decide how often you want to send emails. This will largely be determined by your goals and the amount of content you have to share. If you're just starting out, it's probably best to send emails on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. As you build up more content, you can increase the frequency to a few times per week or even daily.
Next, you'll need to decide what kind of content you want to include in your emails. This could be anything from blog posts and articles to special offers and coupons. Make sure to mix up the content so that your readers don't get bored.
Finally, you'll need to set a schedule for creating and sending your emails. This will help you stay on track and make sure that your emails go out on time. Once you have a schedule in place, be sure to stick to it as much as possible.
An email marketing calendar - what for?
Email marketing nurtures your captive audience (those who downloaded a lead magnet, signed up for your eCommerce coupon, etc.), and returns $43 for every $1 spent.
That’s precisely it should get priority treatment as far as creating email marketing calendars, email marketing workflows for eCommerce, regular email broadcasts, and even transactional emails.
If you thought creating a content marketing calendar and social media planner or calendar was important, email marketing calendar should be your starting point.
Everything you need to know on how to create an email marketing calendar is here, thankfully. This is how you do it.
Prefer watching a video?
Here’s the complete process on how to create an email marketing calendar for tearing through any sort of creative block and power up email marketing campaigns for your eCommerce store.
For reference, we are using Panoramata. Get an account on Panaromata if you’d like to follow along and create your email marketing calendar for sharp, targeted, and smart email marketing.
Step 1: Which marketing moments are important for you?
On the left hand panel, get to “account lists” and create a list. Give it a title like “Email marketing calendar” (you can give it any name you want).
Choose a color for your list, if you like and give your email marketing calendar a description (so that you know why you created it). Choose “only me”, if you’d like to keep the email marketing calendar private.
Click on create list.
Step 2: Get Some Inspiration (Search for brands, ads, and emails)
As an example, let’s assume that your eCommerce store is about fashion. Further, your email marketing calendar obviously has a lot to do with fashion (as an industry). On the left panel, click on search brands.
You’ll quickly see that some of the world’s best fashion brands (along with their ad campaigns and email campaigns) are listed inside your Panoramata dashboard for you to quickly look at.
What kind of fashion eCommerce brands, you ask?
How about Nike, Zara, Everlane, GymShark Yelp, Tracksmith, Outdoor Voices, Parade, and many more?
Pick something you like (or a brand that you love). For example, let’s click on Parade.
A new screen opens up and you’ll have a navigation bar that shows tabs such as “emails”, “Journeys”, “snapshots”, “ads”, “insights”, and “Software” -- along with a timeline to the right that feeds you new updates as we add more ads, emails, and campaign ideas for that brand.
Click on “emails” to see a running list of Parade’s eCommerce email campaigns.Look out for campaigns that you find interesting, or something that triggers your creative gene.
Click on any single email you are inspired by. On the left side, you’ll see an option “Add to List”. You’ll also see use information about each campaign at a glance, such as:
- Subject line length
- Email campaign size
- Spam Score for that particular email campaign
If you find something worthwhile, click on “add to list” and it’s automatically saved to the email marketing calendar list you created (step 1 above).
Soon after you add an email campaign to your list, Panoramata will automatically display other campaigns. You can keep adding interesting or relevant email campaigns to your list.
Note: You can repeat the process for as many brands as you like, cycling over each brand and their respective email campaigns. Continue adding these campaigns to your email calendar list.
Step 3: Search More With Filters, Ad campaign angles, and more
Alternatively, there’s a dedicated tab on the left side panel called “Search emails” where you can directly go in and search for email campaigns of brands you like, those that you know of, or brands you admire.
While on this tab (search emails), you can also filter and pick by industries (such as personal care, technology, food, etc.), or brands (listed).
You can also email campaigns by specific advertising angles some of these campaigns might have taken. For instance, promoting reviews of products within ads and emails [link to previously written post on how to promote reviews in emails and ads] is an effective campaign type for eCommerce businesses. You can type in “reviews” in the search bar and get relevant email examples from brands that use reviews as their main advertising angle.
Other examples of advertising angles or campaign types could be “free shipping”, “You asked…”, and more.
Step 4: Review your Email Calendar List
Once you’ve had your fill, get back to the “email calendar list” you created (above) and review your picks -- all of the campaign types are listed here in a gallery type view so that you can quickly preview and check your choices.
Under each campaign, you’ll have an option to “remove” your choices, just in case. Remove those that you don’t think will fit into the general list of ideas for email campaigns that you are trying to curate.
You can also reorder these campaigns just by dragging and dropping these campaigns exactly where you want them.
Panoramata was built not just for eCommerce advertising inspiration, email campaign or ad campaign curation, but also to help you power through your eCommerce marketing like a pro.
Step 5: Keep it Or Share email marketing calendar with your team
Creating an entire email marketing calendar -- to use as inspiration for your own email marketing campaigns, email marketing journeys, email marketing creative, and more -- in 10 minutes or less is a super effective way to save time and get ready to bring in more results for your email campaigns.
At this stage, you are done with your list (you can always come back in and make changes to your list -- find more email or ad campaigns, sort campaigns into clusters, remove campaigns you don’t need, and more).
On the top right side, you’ll have options to edit your email marketing calendar, delete your calendar, or share your email marketing calendar with your team (even if they are not on Panoramata. They don’t need access to view your email marketing calendar).
It’s time to supercharge your eCommerce-specific email marketing campaigns, and say goodbye to the so called “marketer’s block”.
Sign up with Panoramata and create your email marketing calendar now.
