Email Applied: The Perfect Date
Inclusion of Internal Events and Important Marketing Efforts for Your Company
Each company has its own internal marketing cycle that must play into your email planning. Special events (e.g., new store opening), new product launches, seasonal product changes, enhancements to your website and newly added services all need to be added to the calendar plan.
Also, be sure to think about other marketing efforts that are taking place that should be on the calendar.
Consider the following:
- Are you sending a direct mail campaign? You may want to let customers know beforehand and feature the catalog cover or outside envelope in an email.
- Have you just created a page on Pinterest or another social media site? You may want to send a dedicated email to your list to get them involved.
- Are there great customer reviews on your site that you want to create a promotion around?
- Have you created videos that would be helpful to your audience?
- Is there an upcoming contest on Facebook or Twitter that you want to share with your email audience to get them involved in another digital channel?
- Do you have a blog? Your email subscribers might be interested in checking it out.
Some of the ideas above would result in a single email, but others should be added to your calendar for periodic additional sends. For example, if you find customer reviews increase your metrics in multiple ways, you may want to send emails on top-rated products every six weeks to eight weeks.
Ensure There's a Variety and Cadence
It drives me crazy when almost every email I receive from a brand screams discount and sale. This isn't good marketing and it cheapens the brand. You need to mix it up and present your readers with a variety of themes, promotions and subject lines. A calendar can help with that. Here are my thoughts on how detailed your calendar needs to be:
- Upcoming month: very specific with promotions, holidays, offers, themes and products to be featured. Subject lines should be specific (although they can be tweaked). The number and types of emails to be sent and the segments they're to be sent to should be addressed.
- Next two months to three months: higher level showing holiday tie-ins, planned offers, general product categories to promote and any special emails by topic that are outside of the normal schedule. A series of bullet points is fine. Include a general plan for targeting segments.
- Following four months to six months: top level mapping out of overall promotions, holidays, announcements and themes.
As you can see, the upcoming month is granular in detail. As time marches on, you need to flesh out the specifics to keep on pace. Planning is everything. Calendars are an important tool to keep your audience engaged. Use them and you should reap the benefits of higher opens and clicks.
Reggie Brady is the president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and email marketing consultancy. Reggie can be reached at reggie@reggiebrady.com.
