The importance of a content calendar
What exactly do we mean when we say you must build an “omnichannel content calendar”? Let’s define this, explaining how unifying your marketing plans in one place can result in a cohesive brand voice across channels and long-term growth.
Define your content pillars
To help build one, cohesive voice across your owned channels (e.g., email, text, and mobile push), it pays to:
- Determine branded content pillars (i.e., themes for your branded content).
- Stick to these pillars throughout the course of their yearly campaign content calendar.
While these pillars can vary for each brand and industry, below are the 3 most common options that you can apply within your own account.
Newsletter updates
Recommended channels:
- Email: Since you’ll share long-form, detailed content in each update.
- Website: Particularly blog posts.
Purpose:
A newsletter allows you to update, educate, and nurture your relationships with subscribers.
Best practices:
- Build a reusable template for recurring content (e.g., monthly) that includes: 1 main call-to-action (CTA), smaller upcoming or secondary CTAs, and supplemental links for additional resources as needed.
- Align content on both email and web; keep email callouts brief and link to blog posts for further details.
Include instructions, reviews, or case studies that reinforce the value in your brand.
Promotions
Recommended channels:
- Email: For email-only subscribers, when sharing details beyond 1 CTA, or when you intend to follow up over the course of multiple days.
- Text messaging: For any text subscribers, offer early access, special sales, limited-time offers, and other exclusive text-only deals.
- Push: For app-specific deals and time-sensitive reminders.
- Social media and web: Target non-subscribers on social, using paid ads and spotlights on brand social accounts and web pages.
Purpose:
Promotions focus on revenue generation, making you money. They can feature major company sales or spotlight a particular product, service, or incentive (e.g., buy 1, get 1 or free shipping).
Best practices:
- Keep messages short, void of excess copy, buttons, etc.
- Link to 1 CTA (e.g., “Shop now”).
- Add an enticing image to emails and ads. For push, only include images that add clear value; otherwise, focus on direct copy to drive engagement.
- A/B test the effect of images/gifs on text messages. MMS is more expensive and not available in every region, so be sure that it adds particular value before using it widely.
Announcements
Recommended channels:
- Text: Particularly useful to ping someone directly to capture their attention right away.
Push: Direct and can be useful, but only if the announcement directly relates to the brand’s mobile app.
Email: Convey longer details about the event, either in the place of text/push, or to follow up with text/push subscribers who have not interacted with initial outreach. - All: Target across a variety of channels, honing in on the method someone engages with most (social media, web, and even direct mail).
Purpose:
Announcements inform customers about upcoming or recent changes to be aware of or act upon; think: product launches, store openings, event invites, etc.
Best practices:
- Focus on a single CTA.
- Highlight why customers should be excited about this alert.
- In an announcement email, save space in your template for: several high-quality images, an easy-to-understand headline introducing the new offering or event, and several secondary CTAs that relate to your main message (e.g., to educate about a new offering or spotlight related updates).
Content planning best practices
Now that you have a better handle on the core benefits of each pillar and which channels are best to use for these content categories, let’s dive into planning out content with regard to your calendar timelines and when to send email, text messages, or push notifications during a peak sales season.
Plan out your sends in a high-level view
It’s important to plan, schedule, and organize your marketing campaigns before sending them. Using the campaign calendar tool, you can view what content is scheduled across channels in Klaviyo (e.g., email, text, and mobile push) over the course of the calendar year.
Plus, you can toggle on particular calendar views within Settings (by clicking the gear icon). For instance, use Klaviyo’s BFCM content calendar as inspiration for when and what to send based on industry best practices. Likewise, filter by campaign type, status, or tags.
Here’s an example of a weekly calendar view from SWAK, in which they view messages they’ve tagged as related to “sensitive skin.”
Build a plan for core holidays and sales seasons
It's important to juggle the various channels you use strategically year-round, but especially during key sales times of the year (e.g., Black Friday/Cyber Monday, regional holidays, smaller holidays specific for your brand).
Follow these omnichannel best practices to do so:
- Kick off your sale early via exclusive channels (e.g., text or push).
- Send an email to all subscribers at the main launch.
- Offer mobile app-only deals in the middle of your sale period with push.
- Launch social ads (e.g., on Google or social channels) if budget allows, targeting non-subscribers.
- Send the majority of reminders and promotions via email, including dynamic images and countdown timers to drive engagement.
- Close out your sale with more urgent, time-sensitive text or push.
Bonus tip: To maintain good text message deliverability, Klaviyo recommends sending 5-8 text messages per month. For instance, below is an example message timeline with text and email leading up to and during a short 24-hour sale:
Stay organized across channels
As you build out yearly, quarterly, monthly, and even daily calendars, it's important to stay organized. Wherever you format your calendar, your should clearly map out: who you're sending to, with what content, at what time, and via which channel.
Some tips for organizing your content calendar are:
- Clearly document your campaign goals, timelines, and results.
- Color coordinate the messages on your calendar by channel or goal.
- Add placeholder content in advance to ensure that you remember key dates, such as holidays or company milestones.
Looking for a customizable calendar view to use yourself? Make a copy of this omnichannel content calendar and start documenting your own monthly calendar view, across channels, today.