Mastering the Art of Creating an Email Marketing Calendar: A Guide for Bloggers

As a blogger, your email marketing calendar for your weekly newsletters isn’t just a tool — it’s an essential bridge that connects you deeply with your community. A simple plan of action for how you’ll get your new blog content into your audience’s hands will help you consistently deliver value, share resources, and promote products to your already-raving/waiting-to-hear-from-you fans on your email list. 

I mean, sharing is caring, right?

Whether it’s seasonal content, promotions, or regular engagement, a content calendar for your email newsletters — essentially the flow from taking your blog content to your email subscribers — ensures you’re always providing your audience with the kind of content they signed up for in the first place.

Your email content calendar isn’t just about structure, it’s a tangible representation of your commitment to your audience. You show up and share what you know will make their lives easier, better, or even tastier. (Looking at you, food bloggers! 🧁)

By consistently sharing your best content with your email list, you don’t just build engagement or send traffic back to your site — you foster trust. And trust is the cornerstone of any lasting relationship, isn’t it?

An Email Marketing Calendar is So Much More than Just a Tool

Sure, “winging it” in email marketing works just fine every now and then. But when has that ever felt super good? 😂

When you’re just getting started, or when life gets cuh-razy, just doing what you can as you think of it can get you by for a while — heck, that’s why I recommend RSS feed emails if you’re new to email marketing. 

But is going by the seat of your pants the best way to run your week-to-week email marketing strategy? Not by a long shot. 

Wouldn’t you feel a bit better if you were more prepared, even just a few steps ahead of staring at a blank page thinking, “I must send the MOST brilliant email in 20 minutes because I have to”?

Creating a content calendar — knowing what you’ll send to your list via email over the next few weeks — is a crucial step because it lays out a simple, structured plan of action. It allows you to make sure each subscriber — whether they’ve been on your list for years or only days — has the opportunity to engage with your new content or announcements regularly. 

This way they know you’re active, you’re delivering on what you promised them when they signed up — and by showing up with drool-worthy content that makes them happy, you’re giving them more reasons to know, like and trust you!

When you send out your best content consistently and regularly, a few amazing things start happening:

You Start to See Regular Subscriber Engagement

Regular emails mean more touchpoints. More touchpoints means more opportunities for your audience to engage with your content! 

So, instead of sending one heavy-duty email a month, spread your content out. This keeps your audience engaged and makes it more likely they’ll click through. Think bite-sized, valuable content.

More People Start Checking Out Your Blog

Emails are a fantastic tool to direct traffic back to your blog, YouTube channel, or any other platform where you want more eyeballs and engagement. 

This attentive marketing approach ensures you remain top-of-mind for your audience, encourages regular visits to your site, and allows for optimal content promotion, all of which can significantly boost your website traffic.

It Helps You Stay Consistent (Surprise, Surprise)

Yes, I’ll say it again — only because I know firsthand that one of the biggest challenges content creators face in building their email list is staying consistent! With ALL of the other things you’re doing — researching SEO keywords, creating recipes or how-to articles, optimizing your blog posts and learning to excel at decent photography — how in the heck would you expect to also send more emails?

Welllll, lo and behold! An email content calendar serves as a guide and a commitment to stick to a schedule, ensuring your audience hears from you regularly. 

You Can Plan Ahead, and Feel Absolutely Prepared

By plotting out content ahead of time, you can be proactive rather than reactive. And let’s be honest, creating content in an anxiety-driven reactive state is no-flipping-fun, right? 

When you have a structured calendar with a clear plan, your stress can melt into clarity because you know what content needs to be sent out to your list, and when. 

Plus, it helps you build into your email marketing other promotional activities, seasonal events, product launches, or important dates specific to your industry (so you don’t have to create anything last minute!).

And by planning a bit in advance, it takes a huge weight off of the “what do I send?!” worry (or the guilt you might be feeling because you haven’t sent an email in weeks… or months…).

You’ll Be Able to Do More of What is Actually Working

Having a calendar helps you keep track of what works and what doesn’t. By sending regular emails, you have a chance to try something new (testing ideas is marketing’s best friend!), whether it’s a product launch, an affiliate promotion or a new newsletter layout.

By monitoring the performance of emails sent on specific dates or seasons, you can make data-driven decisions on future content — like whether you’ll run a promotion like that again or pivot to try something different. 

You Can Still Stay Flexible!

Even with a calendar, there’s room for spontaneity. If something urgent or topical comes up, you can adjust your calendar accordingly. But having the calendar means you’re never left scrambling for content.

More content ideas are always a good thing, right? And with a content calendar, you can shift to make room for new content with ease.

Steps to Crafting an Email Marketing Calendar that Actually Helps You Out

An effective email marketing calendar is one that actually helps you out. There are so many different ways to plan out your content, so you really have to define what works best for you and your blog. 

The first step to creating any kind of plan — marketing or otherwise — is to set clear goals and have a clear picture in your mind of what success will look like. While some bloggers send out daily emails, you do not have to do that — find what works for you, then stick with it for a while. 

(Allea’s life rule: Don’t get discouraged by what others are doing; just keep your eyes on your own paper and do a dang-good job of creating value, and you’ll see the wins show up along the way.)

Here’s how you get started making an email marketing calendar that actually works for you: 

Set Clear Goals

Do you want to increase sales? Drive website traffic? Boost event attendance? Promote a product or service? Whatever your goal, make sure you put it in writing and make it clear, actionable, and realistic. 

Having a crystal-clear goal isn’t just about knowing your destination; it’s about making sure you’ve got a map that leads you straight to it. And nothing beats jotting down these goals to make them real! 

Here are a few examples: 

• Maybe you want to boost your blog traffic by 10% in the next two months. You could focus on sending great content that features trending topics.
• If you’ve got a webinar or event coming up, maybe your goal is to get 30 or more sign ups! You’ll want to spotlight it in an upcoming newsletter!
• Launch a great e-book or download? Maybe you’d love to get 100 downloads in the first month — plan a promo week!

Create a Content Bank and Organize with Thematic Buckets

Before anything else, create a bank of content ideas. Start by brainstorming those burning questions your audience might be having, survey your subscribers for insights, or keep a close watch on the hot topics in your niche.

But here’s my biggest tip — don’t just create a bunch of ideas, categorize them! It’s super handy to sort all these ideas into 3-5 thematic buckets. Why? It makes sure you’re consistently tapping into the core topics your readers love.

For instance, if you’re a food blogger you could focus on sending content in the following categories:

• Cooking tips and techniques
• Weeknight family meals
• Gluten-free desserts
• Traditional favorites

Whether it’s through brainstorming questions your audience might have, surveying your subscribers, or keeping tabs on what’s trending in your niche. With a content bank in your back pocket, you’ll never start with a blank slate!

Know Your Audience

Consider what it would be like to segment your email list based on various criteria like demographics, purchase history, and engagement levels so you can tailor content or promotions to specific groups, making your emails more personalized, more relevant, and more engaging. 

A great way to get to know your audience is to regularly survey your list to gauge what content resonates. This gives you fresh insights and can help tweak your approach to better serve your subscribers and speak directly to your readers.

Plan for Key Dates

What important dates do you have coming up — whether for your brand or for your industry (looking at you, Black Friday and New Year’s Day!)? These could include big holidays, product launches, or brand milestones (like your business birthday).

Put them on your calendar so you can make sure you’re delivering content when your audience is looking for it — or when you know you need an uptick in sales throughout the year.

Determine Your Consistency

Keep in mind that consistency is less about how often you’re sending emails and more about setting and meeting expectations to do them regularly. So choose a rhythm that aligns with your capabilities and stick to it. 

(And if you’re not sure you have the bandwidth to create new emails regularly yet, make sure your blog is at least connected to an RSS feed and sending out your brand new content to everyone on your list!)

You could also organize your emails thematically, whether based on content type or categories of things you love to talk about. For instance, you could spotlight recipes one week, delve into lifestyle the next, and then share a personal story or a YouTube video the next. 

Monitor, and Adjust!

Remember to always circle back to your larger objectives. Every piece of content you share with your email list should either serve your audience, push towards your business goals, or do both in one fell swoop!

Here’s how you can measure your audience’s engagement to see what’s working.

Top 3 Do’s and Don’ts When it Comes to Planning Your Email Marketing Calendar

As a blogger, moving forward with intentional email marketing calendar planning is so important because it helps make sure that your content aligns with your readers’ interests and expectations — while also supporting your business goals. 

Keeping your audience top-of-mind will help you do all of the above. It builds trust, and trust builds relationships, and relationships build brand loyalty and drive revenue! 

Here are our best do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you build out your email marketing content plan:

Email Content Planning Do’s

• Create a Content Bank: Always keep your ideas in a content bank to ensure you’re never starting from zero.
• Create a System: Develop a rhythm for your emails. Whether it’s theme-based or content type-based, figure out what works best for you and go all-in!
• Send More Emails: More frequent, bite-sized emails are better than one overwhelming monthly newsletter. It keeps your audience engaged and drives more regular traffic.

Email Content Planning Don’ts

• Overplan: You don’t need to have every week planned for the entire year. A rolling 4-5 week schedule is more than adequate.
• Assume: Never take for granted what you know and how it could impact someone else. Every bit of knowledge you can share is valuable to someone out there!
• Overstuff: Emails shouldn’t be a challenge to navigate. Keep them concise, clear, and purposeful. Click here for two questions to ask yourself when sending an email.

Your email marketing strategy should always align with your overall philosophy — this builds lasting brand loyalty! 

If you’re creating valuable content, your job is to make sure it reaches as many of your subscribers as possible — in the most engaging, valuable way. The key is to be authentic, stay committed to connecting regularly with your subscribers, and always remember that you’re offering real value to real people. 

To make it even easier, don’t forget that you can access my free content calendar here. It’s the same one I use; just copy and modify it for yourself!

Happy emailing! 

Want to know more about what it could look like for me and my team to get your email marketing strategy straightened up? Book a no-pressure discovery call with me to learn more about our email marketing services!