[Worksheet] Your 2016 Email Marketing Planning Calendar

 Your 2016 Email Marketing Planning Calendar
So far, in our new series for retailers, How to Increase Sales with Email Marketing, we’ve shared some tools to help you find your email marketing opportunities for the year.
Today, you can use the marketing opportunities you identified to fill out your 2016 Email Marketing Planning Calendar.
Get started by printing out the calendar.
Next, look back at your 2016 Email Marketing Opportunities worksheet.

Throughout the year, you’re likely to send two types of messages:

  1. Time-based promotions
  2. Non-promotional emails
For time-based promotions, plan on sending a short three-part email series to get the word out. For example, if your shop is holding a promotion to drive jewelry sales for Valentine’s Day, your timeline might look like this:
  • February 1st – Announcement of your Valentine’s Day sale.
  • February 8th – Reminder of your sale and product feature.
  • February 13th – Last chance for Valentine’s Day sale!
Here’s how you could start filling in your calendar to plan for this promotion.
February calendar example
Your non-promotional emails will be less sales-driven and more focused on building relationships and providing value to your customers. Here, your store might offer an educational video that offers scarf-tying techniques, or a blog post with tips on caring for cashmere sweaters.
Create your email and schedule it to send at the optimal time for your industry. Or, schedule to send at the best time based on your contacts’ open history. Our Next Best Time feature calculates this optimal time for you based on when your contacts’ are most likely to open.
For retail stores, we’ve found first thing Monday morning is a trend for strong open rates. Here’s what a non-promotional email might look like in your calendar:
March calendar example

Start filling in your calendar with some dates and ideas of your own.

Even if you’re not ready to fill in all 12 months, take 15 minutes to plan out the next three months of your email marketing.
Want some help getting started? Watch a recording of Part One of our free virtual workshop series: The 15-Minute Email Marketing Plan. 
Mark this as the year you will increase sales for your retail shop with email marketing.

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