Marketing campaign calendar: when to launch a newsletter

Do not rush to launch your newsletter the minute you create the template. The time of sending plays a significant role. The right time increases the chances that the subscriber will open your email, read it and even follow the link in it.

But what if your marketing team is hyperproductive and launches dozens of newsletters every day? How not to get lost in all these processes?

There is a campaign calendar in the Altcraft Platform. In this calendar, you can create an accurate newsletter schedule.

In this article, you will learn how to use the calendar and how to choose the right time for your newsletters.

How to work with the newsletter calendar

To open the calendar, go to "Campaigns" → "Calendar". In the calendar, you will see information about both upcoming and past newsletters: time, type, name, communication channels.

Let's look at the top toolbar. Here you can select which types of campaigns you want to see in the calendar:

• broadcasts
• regular
• multivariate tests

If you want to hide a certain type of newsletter, click on its button.

Use the buttons on the right to customize the calendar display:

• By day: displays all campaign launches on a certain day.

• By week: displays information about campaign launches during a certain week. Campaigns are grouped by day and launch time.

• By month (default): displays all information about campaign launches during a certain month. The calendar displays the first three newsletters for each day. If there are more of them, you can find a link to detailed information below.

The "Create" button will add a new campaign to the calendar:

Another way to create a new newsletter is to select a certain day in the calendar and click on it. The window will open. Click "Add campaign" in it:

Next, select the campaign type:

This will take you to the standard newsletter settings. If you have any questions at this stage, use one of the following guides:

• How to launch a broadcast campaign
• How to launch a regular campaign
• How to launch a trigger campaign

You can create a trigger newsletter from the calendar, but please note that it will not be launched on the selected day. It will be sent to your customer only after a certain event.

To view detailed information about any campaign in the calendar, click on it:

You will see the following information:

• Preview of the sent content (email)
• Campaign name
• Message template
• Exact launch time
• Communication channel (Email, SMS, Push, Telegram or your own channel)
• Campaign author
• Date of creation / modification
• Resource

When it’s best to launch a newsletter

There is no exact answer to this question. The data varies depending on the business area and the target audience.

What to pay attention to when choosing the time:

• Audience. Young people often read emails at night, average workers tend to read emails late at night or on weekends, entrepreneurs read emails during lunchtime.

• Content. From Tuesdays to Thursdays, people tend to read business emails, and on Friday evenings and weekends they prefer to receive entertainment content or emails that inspire them to make plans for the future (traveling, educational courses, etc.)

• Time zone. If your company works with customers who live in different time zones, it is necessary to take into account the time when they will receive your emails.

We have analyzed data obtained from studies of different services and highlighted several key points:

• On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the Open rate is higher than on other weekdays.

• In the afternoon from 1 PM to 2 PM and in the evening from 8 PM to 10 PM open rate is the highest.

• Do not send emails from 7 PM to 8 AM (Omnisend)

• It is better to send surveys on Mondays: customers are 10% more likely to take them on that day (SurveyMonkey)

• B2C customers tend to read emails on weekdays, while B2B entrepreneurs do it on weekends (Smart Insights)

Of course, it is better to conduct your own study taking into account the behavior of your target audience. Send newsletters on different days and at a different time, and then use analytics tools to understand which ones have proven to be the most effective. You can view the CTR and the Open rate of any campaign in the summary report.