Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden marketing calendar grow?

One of my favourite fantasies is living on a little farm, where I can devote all of my days to planting my little seeds and growing my little vegetables. *Pause for dreamy sigh* Until then, I’ll make do with growing money-making email strategies that customers fall in love with.

Building a marketing calendar is like planting a garden. They both require precision, planning, and a whole lotta patience. BUT done right, they reap huge rewards. And this time of year? You’ve gotta do pretty much the same things for both:

1. Remove weeds
2. Support healthy sprouts
3. Plant MORE seeds
4. Figure out what's in-season

Start with the weeding

It can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between a sprout that just needs some TLC, and a weed that needs to be yanked out of the garden.

So, you’ll need to start by figuring out what you’re looking for. Kick things off by doing a deep dive into the 12 weeks of reports you collected in Q1. (You were collecting reports in Q1… right?)

‍Pay attention to A/B test results, customer feedback, and underperforming flows and campaigns. Then, decide what’s salvageable and what needs to be ripped out of your garden marketing calendar. For example, did you test a new email design that really flopped? Scrap the losing variation and move on. Don’t look back without data to support doing so. Once the weeds are out, it’s time to take care of the sprouts 💚

Help your sprouts BLOOM

What’s growing going right? Look for the budding success stories within your flows, campaigns, SMS, and wherever else you’re connecting with your customers.

Those are your sweet lil’ money-making and engagement-nurturing sprouts. Water them! Fertilize them! Make sure they’re getting enough sunlight!

• Did a campaign perform 10000x better than expected? Make a guess as to why and test it again.
• Reviews are pouring in and people are falling in love with a new product? Customize flows for it.
• Your casual SMS language is getting more attention? B more caszual <3

Now that your babies sprouts best ideas are taken care of, it’s time to plant more seeds (after all, different plants thrive during different seasons).

Plant seeds for next quarter

Start by asking yourself what you want your garden marketing calendar to look like in Q3.

Because now that you’ve got your healthy sprouts from Q1 supporting your Q2 strategy, it’s time to get Q2 ready to support Q3. You’ll need to know:

• What goals you want to achieve by the time Q3 starts
• What tests you want to perform in Q2 that will support action in Q3 (like testing Black Friday sale ideas... hint, hint)

Write it all down and then measure and track EVERYTHING. (No reports = No money harvest)

REMEMBER: The more detailed your reports, the easier it will be to go through this whole process again at the beginning of next quarter. And lastly:

Use seasonal content to keep your calendar fresh.

This garden metaphor is a stretch, but bear with me. With plants, you need to watch the forecast for frost and wind and the like. For marketing, you need to know what’s in season so you can make content to match.

A great place to start: holidays and significant dates. And, lucky you, we summarized the big ones in 2022 for you:

You don't need to use all of them. In fact, you shouldn't. Find what fits your style, and run with it. Need a little more content inspo? We’ve been cultivating email marketing strategies for years. Check out our list of campaign ideas to help you fill out your calendar. Happy gardening!

P.S. Wish someone would just take care of this for you? We have a team for that! Book a call to see if we’re a good fit.