The goal of an editorial email strategy is simple: send the right content at the right time.
But how do you create a truly relevant and impactful editorial schedule?
One of the answers lies in exploiting the famous " marketing chestnuts ".
These recurring events that punctuate the year are a real gold mine to feed your list of austria whatsapp phone numbers content strategy and give meaning to your campaigns. You still need to know how to identify them and skillfully integrate them into your emailing calendar.
In this guide, we give you some advice and best practices to make chestnuts a pillar of your email editorial strategy.
Article_Chestnuts_Marketing
Summary
1. Marketing chestnuts: An underestimated asset for emailing
2. Practical steps to create your editorial schedule
3. Optimize your email campaigns with chestnuts
4. Measure and adjust your strategy
5. Common mistakes to avoid
1. Marketing chestnuts: An underestimated asset for emailing
Definition and importance of chestnuts in digital marketing
But what is a marketing chestnut tree ? Also called "highlights", chestnut trees refer to recurring events that mark the year, whether cultural, commercial or societal.
From sales to end-of-year celebrations, back-to-school and International Women's Day, the highlights of the year are prime opportunities to communicate with your customers and deploy your marketing imagination.
And this is particularly true in emailing, where chestnuts offer an ideal framework for deploying campaigns that are expected, targeted and engaging.
It's simple: by relying on highlights shared by everyone, you ensure that you capture attention by being perfectly in tune with the concerns of the moment. And this is the guarantee of delivering a more impactful message, likely to generate higher opening and click rates.
But beyond pure performance, chestnuts are also an opportunity to strengthen proximity with your customers by creating connections and emotion. All the more reason to fully integrate them into your email editorial strategy!
The evolution of chestnut trees in the context of emailing
Chestnuts have always occupied a prominent place in brand communication, but their use has evolved considerably with the rise of email marketing.
Initially used on an ad hoc and opportunistic basis, they are now at the heart of the editorial strategies of the most successful companies.
The reason? Technological progress.
Whereas in the past we were satisfied with a simple email of greetings or a generic promotion for sales, today we can go much further in targeting and personalizing messages.
Advanced segmentation of contact bases, dynamic content, automated triggering of sendings: marketing automation toolslike Actito allow you to create tailor-made and ultra-relevant campaigns, perfectly synchronized with the chestnuts.
Result: more anticipated, more engaging and ultimately more profitable emails .
2. Practical steps to create your editorial schedule
Identify the chestnuts relevant to your sector
The first step to effectively integrating chestnuts into your email editorial strategy is to identify those that are truly relevant to your business and your target.
Because not all the highlights of the year are equal , and it would be counterproductive to try to capitalize on each event without prior thought.
The challenge is to select the chestnut trees that resonate with your sector , your products and of course the expectations of your customers.
Some examples:
For a ready-to-wear brand, sales, fashion week or seasonal changes.
For a general e-retailer, key times like Christmas, Black Friday or back to school.
For a travel site, school holidays, long weekends and summer.
The idea is therefore to draw up an exhaustive list of the essential chestnuts for your business, but also to identify more original and less competitive highlights which will allow you to stand out from the crowd (world days, local events, etc.).
Tools and methods to organize your calendar
Once you have identified your chestnuts, you just need to arrange them in a coherent way in your editorial calendar.
To help you with this task, many tools are available to you:
Online calendars such as Google Calendar or Trello for a global and shared view of upcoming highlights.
Ready-to-use editorial calendar templates to save time. Asana and Airtable offer them…
Marketing activation tools that will allow you to both manage the calendar and orchestrate the sending of your campaigns. And here we are obviously thinking of Actito!
Beyond the tools, creating your editorial schedule also requires following some good practices :
Vary the types of events (commercial, seasonal, social, etc.) to avoid boredom.
Allow for “breathing time” between campaigns so as not to over-solicit your contacts.
Build in flexibility to capitalize on unforeseen events or emerging trends.
Concrete example of annual editorial planning
As an example, here is the Qualifio marketing calendar template , the perfect tool to get you started. Complete, intuitive and customizable, this calendar will allow you to plan your campaigns around the key chestnuts of your sector, while keeping an overview of your annual strategy. Don't leave anything to chance and download your template for free now to give your email campaigns a boost!
3. Optimize your email campaigns with chestnuts
Techniques for personalizing content according to events
Planning your campaigns based on the chestnuts is good. But you still need to make the most of them in terms of content and personalization. Because to transform these highlights into real performance levers, a generic email will not be enough .
The challenge, on the contrary, is to exploit all the possibilities of marketing automation to offer ultra-targeted messages and make each chestnut tree unique in the eyes of your contacts.
Here are some techniques to implement:
Segmenting your contact base based on criteria related to key moments. For example: buyers from the previous year for Black Friday, contacts with children for back-to-school...
Dynamic content to automatically adapt your emails according to each person's profile and preferences. For example: a different selection of products according to past purchases...
Sending triggers to orchestrate series of emails based on the behavior of your contacts. For example: a shopping cart abandonment during sales .
Tips for timing and frequency of sending
Another key point to optimize the impact of your campaigns is to think carefully about the timing and frequency of your mailings .
Here again, it would be a shame to settle for a single email on the day. To create a real experience and maximize results, it is better to play on the long term and recurrence.
Some good practices to apply:
Announce highlights in advance with teaser emails to build anticipation and engagement.
Increase the sending frequency as the event approaches to create a countdown.
Extend the experience after the event with review emails, highlighting customer testimonials, etc.
Offer limited-time or limited-quantity offers to encourage people to take action.
The goal, as you will have understood, is to create a real common thread around the chestnut trees to maximize their impact. This editorial strategy in email marketing is profitable, provided that over-solicitation is avoided.
Also read our guide “ How to create an effective newsletter ”.
