How to Create and Use an Email Content Calendar With Examples
Knowing what content you need to create and when it needs to be sent can significantly reduce the stress of email marketing. An email content calendar frees you up to focus on the quality of content creation, rather than scrambling to meet deadlines.
With an email marketing content calendar, you can plan email campaigns around holidays, product launches, or industry trends to keep your content timely and relevant.
Excited to up your productivity? Read on to learn how a content calendar for email marketing can level up your game.
What is an Email Content Calendar?
An email content calendar is a tool used by email marketers to plan, organize, and schedule email campaigns over a specific time period.
This calendar helps email professionals organize email marketing efforts — it’s essentially a schedule that outlines what emails they’ll send when they’ll send them, and what content the emails will contain.
A content calendar can be a roadmap for the entire email marketing strategy; it’s also a good way to keep track of past campaigns and engagement metrics. A content calendar is especially useful if you wish to combine email marketing with social media marketing or PPC (Pay-per-click) campaigns, as it helps stakeholders from different marketing teams to work together.
It plays a key role in keeping track of the types of email campaigns being sent — if one kind is being repeated too often, the content calendar will make it obvious.
Why Do You Need a Calendar for Email Content?
There are 7 compelling reasons to create and adhere to a content calendar for your campaigns.
1. Consistency
A structured content calendar for email marketing ensures you send emails regularly, maintaining a consistent presence in the inboxes of your audience. This consistency helps build brand recognition and trust.
2. Overall Marketing Goals
Creating a calendar ensures all email campaigns are aligned with the company’s 360-degree marketing plan. It allows you to craft emails around product updates, sales, holidays, and other key events, ensuring the email content supports parallel campaigns such as social media promos, live events, or web ads.
3. Efficiency
Scheduling emails in advance allows you to allocate resources effectively. You can ensure content creation, design, and approval processes are completed on time, avoiding last-minute rushes and achieving high-quality outputs.
4. Audience Segmentation
A structured calendar can help you send targeted email campaigns for different customer segments of your email list. By scheduling specific emails for different demographics, preferences, or behaviors, you can improve results by focusing on content relevance.
5. Performance Tracking
With a structured email content calendar, you can track the email performance of your campaigns.
This makes it easier to get an overview of metrics such as:
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Open rates | The percentage of recipients who open an email. |
| Click-through rates (CTR) | Number of unique clicks divided by the number of emails sent. |
| Conversion rates | The percentage of recipients who complete a desired action. |
Calendars also help you understand how to optimize future emails, based on what works best.
6. Flexibility
While a structured calendar provides a clear plan, it also allows for flexibility. By studying the calendar, you can adjust/move campaigns in response to changing market conditions, emerging marketing trends, or unexpected events. This ensures your email marketing strategy remains effective.
7. Better Collaboration Between Teams
A well-defined email marketing calendar facilitates better collaboration among your team members. Everyone involved in the process, from content creators to designers to analysts, can see the plan and understand their roles and deadlines, leading to more efficient teamwork and smoother execution.
How to Make an Email Content Calendar
We’ve written a detailed guide on creating your own email marketing calendar template, but we will summarize it in this section.
This 7-step guide will help you get your email calendar up and running:
- Choose a calendar tool: Decide on a tool (for example, an Excel/Google sheet, a project management app, or even a CRM that has a calendar function).
- Plan your content: Outline the different types of emails (newsletters, promotional, behavioral, etc) you want to send.
- Schedule the emails: Decide on frequency and timing and include important dates (flash sales, holidays, webinars).
- Create the calendar template: Decide on what data you wish to track and create a template. Include columns for basic data such as dates, campaign types, status, and metrics (more on this below)
- Fill the calendar: Add all the data to the calendar. Add permissions, if necessary.
- Allocate resources: Assign tasks to your team members (content creation, testing, scheduling, etc).
- Update the calendar: Regularly review your campaigns and add data to the calendar. Optimize future emails and adjust the calendar as needed.
Next, let’s look at what details to track on your email calendar.
Email Marketing Content Calendar: What Data to Add
You can use relevant fields from the table below to create a comprehensive email marketing calendar:
| Fields to include | What information does it hold? | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Date | The send date for the email. | 06/28/24 |
| Send time | The time for sending the email. | 10:30 AM PT |
| Email type | The type of email/campaign. | Product launch, re-engagement, newsletter, etc. |
| Subject line | The subject line used. | “The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is Finally Here” |
| Preheader text | The preview text used for the email | “Bookings open” |
| Sender name | The name shown in the “From” field of the email. | John Smith (Product Manager). |
| Status | The current status of the email. | Ongoing/Completed/Testing. |
| Customer segments | The target audience for the email. | Customers who signed up in the last 30 days. |
| Call to Action (CTA) | The desired action. | “Discover the S25 Ultra” |
| Campaign metrics | Performance metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. | OR: 63.4% or CTR: 22.08% |
| Sender’s email address | The email address seen by recipients. | promos@company.com |
| Email marketing template | The design template used for the email. | Template 1097. |
| Links included | All URLs included in the message. | Company blog, store links. |
| Email attachments | Any files attached to the email. | S25Ultra.pdf, Quarterly report.xls |
| Approval status | Whether the email content has been approved for deployment. | Approved/Pending/Completed. |
| Campaign manager | The person who created the email content. | John Smith. |
| Campaign name | The name of the email marketing campaign. | Samsung S25 Ultra Launch, Newsletter #307. |
| Budget | The budget allocated for this email campaign. | $2,500. |
| Notes | Any notes or comments. | All campaign-related comments. |
The more data you track, the better it is. Some calendar tools will even let you create graphs from data analysis.
The next section shares popular calendar tools used by marketers.
Best Tools to Create an Email Content Calendar
If you’re wondering if there are tools that can make the job of creating a calendar simpler, we’ve got you covered. The below options are popular with marketers looking to make a simple and efficient email content calendar.
Google Sheets / Microsoft Excel
This is the simplest option to create a calendar for your email marketing content. Both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel are versatile spreadsheet tools that can be customized in multiple ways.
With both of these tools, you get benefits such as:
- Access to customizable templates,
- Your team members can collaborate on calendars using simple links,
- These files are easy to share and access,
- They also support data analysis and formulas, if required.
Asana
Asana is one of the most popular task and project management tools in the world. It can be valuable for creating and managing your email calendar. It is most useful if there are many team members involved in the process of email creation, as it breaks down each step into tasks.
For each email campaign, you will have to create an individual task. This task will house all the information and steps related to that specific email. Asana is convenient for team communication, feedback exchange, and real-time collaboration on email content.
The best part is you can switch to the calendar view in Asana to visualize your email content calendar with deadlines and assigned tasks for each campaign. This provides a clear overview of your email marketing schedule.
Notion
Notion is a versatile workspace platform that functions as an all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, databases, and project management. It allows you to create and manage your email marketing calendar in a highly customizable way.
With Notion, you get:
- A range of templates for calendars and databases,
- Integration with other tools (Google Calendar, Slack, etc.),
- Collaborative editing and sharing,
- Rich media support (images, files, links).
You can choose from different database formats like tables, boards (kanban view), or calendars to best suit your workflow preference. Notion’s filtering capabilities even let you focus on specific email segments or upcoming deadlines.
WordPress with Editorial Calendar Plugin
If you are comfortable with WordPress, then this is the perfect solution for you.
The Editorial Calendar plugin integrates seamlessly with your WordPress dashboard, adding a dedicated calendar specifically for managing your blog posts — but you can swap this out for email campaigns.
It features a drag-and-drop interface, easy post-scheduling, and integration with email marketing plugins. You can edit post titles, content, and scheduling details directly within the calendar view.
The calendar view helps visualize your content strategy and identify gaps or areas for improvement. It’s highly customizable and easy to use.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule’s Content Calendar allows you to plan, organize, and schedule all your email campaigns. You can also use it for marketing content across other channels such as social media, events, and blog posts.
CoSchedule caters to a variety of marketing teams and businesses, from small startups to large enterprises. It helps you manage multiple email campaigns, assign tasks effectively, and collaborate with teams within the platform.
Your Email Content Calendar Should Include These Campaigns
Using a content calendar is a great way to review your email marketing strategy for the year.
For good results, it is important to keep things interesting for your email subscribers. Sending the same type of email repeatedly can lead to subscriber fatigue and increased unsubscribe rates. Variety in your campaigns prevents monotony.
Below are 10 types of email campaigns to consider.
1. Welcome Series
A welcome email series is crucial for nurturing new subscribers and introducing them to your brand. The primary goal is to establish a positive first impression and set clear expectations for what readers can expect from your emails.
Typically, a welcome series consists of a sequence of emails delivered over a specified period after someone joins your list.
2. Newsletters
Email marketing newsletters serve as a regular touchpoint with your audience and should be a staple on your calendar.
They typically contain a mix of company updates, industry news, blog posts or videos, upcoming events, and featured products/services. The content is curated to provide value to subscribers beyond promotional messages.
3. Promotional Campaigns
Promotional emails are popular with readers, as they typically offer special discounts, promotions, or incentives. They’re important for your business as they can help drive sales numbers.
These campaigns are particularly effective during peak shopping seasons, holidays, or to capitalize on specific events.
They can include:
- Announcements of seasonal sales,
- Limited-time offers,
- Flash sales,
- New product launches,
- Exclusive discounts for subscribers.
4. Educational Series
Educational email campaigns focus on providing valuable information, tips, and resources that educate and empower your audience. You can find slow periods in your email calendar to schedule these emails. But they can also be used to drum up excitement for an upcoming product launch.
These campaigns may include:
- How-to guides,
- Tutorials,
- Case studies,
- Tips that demonstrate expertise,
- Articles that help readers solve problems/improve their skills.
5. Gamified emails
Email gamification incorporates interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, contests, or games to engage subscribers and encourage participation.
These emails leverage the power of gamification to make the email experience more enjoyable and memorable for recipients. By offering interactive activities, gamified emails increase engagement and also drive traffic to your website or promote specific products/services.
6. Product/Service Announcements
Announcement emails about new products or services through email campaigns help generate excitement and interest among your recipients. Typically, the marketing department knows about product launches well in advance, so you can add these to the calendar early on.
Remember, the email campaign schedule can be affected by changes to the overall campaign — so leave a few days around the launch period for adjustments.
7. Re-Engagement Campaigns
Did you know acquisition costs for a new customer can be 25 times higher than retaining an existing customer?
This is what makes re-engagement emails so critical. With these messages, you can target inactive subscribers, reignite their interest, and encourage them to engage with your brand once more.
You can use a friendly reminder or offer a special incentive to reconnect. You can also include email surveys to collect feedback; this will help you understand why subscribers became inactive and how you can improve their experience going forward.
8. Seasonal and Holiday Campaigns
Seasonal and holiday email campaigns are must-haves on your email content calendar. They offer a fantastic opportunity to connect with your customers and drive sales at the same time.
With holiday emails, you can leverage the festive spirit and cash in on shopping trends associated with specific seasons. Use themed content such as holiday greetings, seasonal promotions, gift guides, or limited-time offers tailored to the occasion.
9. Loyalty Campaigns
Loyalty emails deserve prime spots in your email calendar because they help you target your most valuable customers. And since returning customers spend on average 67% more than new customers, they deserve additional attention!
10. Upsell Campaigns
These are pure sales emails — the goal is to upsell and cross-sell by recommending additional products or services that complement a customer’s recent purchase or browsing history.
In such campaigns, you can showcase relevant products and emphasize their benefits.
Mastering the Email Marketing Content Calendar
Want to use your email calendar like a pro? Here are our top 8 suggestions:
- Mix things up: Plan a balanced assortment of email types (promotional, educational, informational) to cater to your audience’s needs and avoid overwhelming them with sales pitches.
- Space out campaigns: Factor in buffer time when scheduling emails to account for unexpected delays, content revisions, or design iterations.
- Control email volume: Maintain a consistent sending cadence to keep your audience engaged and avoid email fatigue.
- Write clearly: Use clear and consistent naming conventions for your email campaigns in the calendar to make identification and organization easier.
- Use colors as cues: Visually differentiate email types or priorities using color coding for a quicker overview of your content calendar.
- Tagging and filtering: If the calendar tool supports tags or filtering functionalities, leverage them to categorize emails by type, target audience, or campaign goals.
- Assign tasks: Within the calendar, clearly assign tasks to team members for each email campaign, ensuring accountability and avoiding confusion.
- Use notes/comments: Utilize the calendar’s commenting or notes features for internal communication.
Next, let’s check out different email marketing content calendar templates.
Email Marketing Calendar: Examples
Notion’s flexibility allows you to create a highly customizable and collaborative email content calendar that can perfectly fit your team’s workflow.
HubSpot
If you want a template you can upload to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, grab this free calendar from Hubspot. It has separate sections for the planning and results, making it convenient to study campaign history.
Semrush
SEO giant Semrush has also created an email template you can copy to Google Sheets and edit for your own email campaigns. It’s very basic but you can always add more fields depending on your requirements.
Jotform
Jotform is a company that makes varied types of editable forms. It also has a vast library of pre-made form templates for various purposes, saving you time on design and layout. They have free templates like the calendar template above that you can edit and download.
Campaign Refinery: The Best Way to Reach Inboxes
With your new email calendar all configured, the next challenge is to unlock the best email deliverability. Today, getting your messages past spam filters and into subscribers’ inboxes is an elite skill — and the email platform you use has a critical role to play.
That’s exactly why you need Campaign Refinery; we have the best inbox placement rates in email.
At Campaign Refinery, we simplify email marketing in various ways:
- Powerful segmentation tools help you organize your contacts better.
- Managing campaigns is a breeze thanks to our simple interface.
- Our branch and rule builder rocks! Even a child could create automation flows.
- Want sky-high engagement? Try our gamification feature.
- Integrate with thousands of marketing tools both natively and via Zapier.
Campaign Refinery is the best place to achieve your email marketing goals; to know more, apply to become a user today!
