To help you kick off this new decade with engaging email marketing campaigns, we created the 2020 Email Planning Calendar. It’s filled with out-of-the-box email campaign ideas, tips to mix up your marketing strategy, and a ton of fun holidays.
But here’s the thing—sometimes, with fun, new ideas, it can be challenging to know where to begin or how to put the new idea to action. To start you off on the right foot, we’ve taken a few of the ideas from our 2020 Email Planning Calendar and provided example campaigns.
These example campaigns use the templates from our Email Template Gallery, so if you like any of the templates below, click on them to download and use for your own campaigns.
January 4th: National Trivia Day
National Trivia Day is a great way to share fun facts about your industry or business. In the calendar, we suggest providing a discount to the recipients who participate in your trivia questions, but ultimately, the goal should be to engage your customers by testing their trivia knowledge.
In this example, I took one of the templates in our Template Gallery and used it to create a campaign around National Trivia Day. I used the fake pet store brand, Sploot, to write animal-themed trivia questions, and included a question around Sploot’s products to get recipients thinking about what they offer.
When you’re building your campaign, try to find images that pull in similar colors as your template or brand. The illustration of the elephant fits so perfectly because the elephant is a shade of orange, matching the top banner of the email. For additional email design tips, check out our guide, Email Design Best Practices for 2019.
February 9th: The 92nd Academy Awards Ceremony
It’s important to continually recognize and appreciate your recipients throughout the year, but you also don’t want to resend the thanks for being our customer email.
To spice up your email campaign and recognize your recipients for the stars that they are, leverage award ceremonies like the Emmys, Grammys, or a ceremony related to your industry.
In the example below, we altered the Black Friday Sale promotion email to the award recognition email on the right. For your award themed email, you could link to a surprise discount that asks recipients to click through the email to see what they received.
Since the theme of the campaign is light-hearted, have fun with the copy. You don’t have to go as cheesy as the copy I wrote for the brand, Euphoria, below, but do what feels right for your brand.
For extra pizzaz, use a star-studded theme in your images. If you don’t have any in-house, check out these awesome, non-stock photo sites to find the perfect visuals.
March 8th: International Women’s Day
To recognize International Women’s Day and/or Women’s History Month, send a campaign that highlights women leaders in your industry or women who have made a difference to your business.
In this example campaign, I downloaded the B2B Newsletter Email Template for the fake digital marketing brand, Needle+Tech.
I adapted the template to link to a video of how this digital marketing company has supported women in the community. (Just an FYI: we can’t embed videos in emails, yet, so you’ll have to link out to them for now.) Then, I included the headshots and quotes from women who worked on the project.
By using Twilio SendGrid’s design editor and the drag & drop modules, I was able to edit the layout of the template and rearrange the sections. If you’re not as comfortable with designing a template using code, then the design editor is an awesome option—no code necessary!
Let’s start planning!
These examples are a snapshot of what’s possible with just an idea. To start planning your own email campaigns, take a look at the 2020 Email Planning Calendar to see what ideas and tips you can adapt for your brand. Use the calendar as your jumping-off point to brainstorm your own creative, engaging campaigns that your recipients will love.
We can’t wait to see what you create!