When it comes to “frequency”, “content”, and other email marketing questions, there really is no standard. Several of the “experts” I follow email as often as twice a day. While others, I won’t hear from for a month or more. It’s entirely up to you – the business owner – to make the judgment calls on this one.

Now, having said that, I know there are still people who would just like to have a plan. So I’ve created a plan. A sort of content calendar to work as a guide in your email marketing efforts.

Please note that I am not making any claims or promises that this is the best plan of action for you. I will, however, say that if your current plan is nothing (because you’d still like someone to give you some guidance), then, by all means, use this. It’s not very aggressive and you can add more emails (or less) as your contacts respond to you.

Here we go. Here is your cheat sheet for following up with your prospects:

From here on out, you’re going to email your prospects once a week. It doesn’t matter what day or time, but keep the following ideas in mind:

• Weekends are usually for play. Unless you sell retail goods, you might not get a great response on the weekend.
• Mondays are catch up day. People are sifting through their inboxes, trying to get back on track after the weekend. Your message could get lost.
• Fridays are kind of like the weekend. Not a lot of motivation to take action on Fridays.
• Mornings are like mini-Mondays…it takes some time to sift through everything and get moving. Your message may not be a priority.

I know it sounds like I just told you to only email Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday afternoons, but I didn’t. What you should do is start with one of those and then switch things up occasionally to see if your business is one of the anomalies that gets better results on a random day and time.

One more thing, before we continue – you need to keep things fresh. The moment someone thinks they know what your email is going to say is the moment they mentally check out.

Switch things up frequently. And here’s how you’re going to do that:

The columns below are types of emails. I will give you the guide for when to send what type of email and you decide what content to put in there. Of course, I’ve provided you with some suggestions:

Now that you have some ideas what you can send, let’s get back to creating your content calendar. Before finishing, open an actual calendar. Sometimes, I give you the choice about what content to include. If the date falls near a holiday, it would make sense to run a promo. Based on the season, you may have some ideas that are applicable.

Another thing to keep in mind…if it’s a week you plan to run a promo, you’ll probably want to run a series of 3 emails (all in the same week). You offer the discount (or whatever) in the first email. Reminder them about it in the second. And tell them it’s their last chance to buy in the third. It’s okay to run multiple emails as you won’t be doing this often.

52 Weeks of Email Marketing Spreadsheet

Okay, picking up where we left off:

The truth is…3-4 months into the email marketing process, you’re not going to need a guide. You’re going to start to “feel” when you should be in contact with your people and you’re going to want to reach out to them every time you think of something that would be great in an email.

I don’t follow a pattern. I have automated emails in place for my new prospects (that basically follows the outline I gave you). Everything else is created when I feel inspired.

Now, if you’ve followed me to this point, I’m going to guess that in addition to a guide, you’d sure like to see what these emails might look like. And I am more than happy to oblige. In the notes, mention which emails, from the A-E categories you would like to see written. I’ll create an email sample and link to them directly from where they are listed in the columns.

Plus, I’d love to know if this was helpful to you in creating consistent follow up marketing.

52 Weeks of Email Marketing Spreadsheet