Do you have a mailing list that you’d like to regularly send email newsletters to? A great way to consistently email your mailing list is by having a content plan.

Keep reading to find out how to create a content plan for your email newsletter and consistently send newsletters to your subscribers.

 

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If you’re reading this then I’m going to assume you already have a mailing list to send your newsletter to. If you haven’t don’t worry  I can help you with that too. You can find out how to start an email newsletter right here.

Now there are lots of business owners and entrepreneurs who have a mailing list, but are not regularly emailing their subscribers. Maybe you are one of those people.

One of the reasons people are scared of starting a newsletter is because they feel they will run out of content. They know that consistency is important and they don’t start sending a newsletter because they are worried about having enough ideas to keep consistently sending the newsletter in the future.

This is a reasonable concern, but by thinking ahead and creating a content plan there really is no reason for you to sit down to write your newsletter and have no idea what to write. And you’ll be glad to know that making a content plan really doesn’t have to be complicated.

 

 

Example of a content plan template for your email newsletters

Here is a very simple content plan template that you can use for your email newsletters. It just has 5 things for you to consider, which I’m going to run you through.

 

 

 

 

Date: This is when your email is due to be sent out. Hopefully, at the moment, you have already decided the frequency of your newsletter. If you haven’t then now is the time to decide whether you’ll be sending out your email daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or something else altogether. Whilst it can be tempting to not choose a frequency I urge you to choose something. By having the dates in your plan it will help you to stick to the schedule and you always have the freedom of changing in the future.

 

Topic/Theme: This is a top-line look at what the email newsletter will be about. If you are producing other content you might decide that the email content should follow the same topic or theme as your blog, podcast or video show. If you aren’t producing content anywhere else, or just don’t want the topic or theme to match then you’ll have to make a decision about what you want to do. Some possible ideas could be:

• What is going on in your business?
• What you have been thinking about, listening to, reading etc?
• What you’ve been doing recently with your clients?
• Case studies and testimonials from clients
• Connect to an awareness day, holiday etc
• Share content relevant to one of your core content pillars

 

Purpose: What do you hope to achieve by sending this email? Every email you send out should have a purpose and by having this on your planning spreadsheet will help you to always consider the purpose.

• Is it meant to help you sell something?
• Do you want to drive people to some content?
• Are you expecting people to reply to your email?
• Is it meant to help position you as an expert?

 

Call-To-Action: What action do you want the reader to take? Normally this will be directly related to the purpose of the email. For example, if you want to sell something then your call-to-action will be a ‘Buy Now’ button. However, if you want to drive people to some other form of content then you might link to your latest blog, video or podcast.

 

Subject Line: When it comes to email marketing the biggest hurdle is getting people to open your email in the first place, which is why you should spend the time thinking about your subject line. Remember the purpose of a subject line is to get people to open so think about what will entice people to open.

 

How to create a content plan for your email newsletters

Hopefully, from above, you can see that you can easily create a basic content plan for your email newsletters. Above is just an example to get you started.

Depending on how you like to work you might create a spreadsheet on Excel or Google Sheets, or you might prefer to print out the spreadsheet and fill it in by hand. If you aren’t really a spreadsheet person and prefer to use a project management tool like Asana or Trello. If you decide to use a project management tool then you can set up a project that is specifically for your emails newsletters. Then you can create a board for each email that has the information inside that matches the columns. This can be a great way if you are someone who prefers to brainstorm ideas and then organise afterwards. However, make sure that you add dates to your boards so you keep to the sending schedule.

 

How to (actually) use a content plan

As you can see creating a content plan is simple and it won’t take you a lot of time but once you’ve set it up you need to use it.

To get started I would advise that you try and plan a minimum of 4 emails at a time. So if you are sending out an email weekly this will mean you are planning a month in advance.

By planning for multiple emails at a time not only are you making better use of your time because you are batching (Find out more about the power of batching here), but by planning multiple newsletters at the same time you can concentrate more on the experience on your readers and think about the journey you are taking them on.

Make a decision about how much time and how often you need to plan for upcoming newsletters, add that information into your diary, planner or calendar and then stick to it!

If you stick to regularly sitting down to plan your future newsletters it should mean you will never sit down to write an email and think “What should I write about today?”.  

That’s it! Hopefully, you have a clear idea of how to create and use a content plan for your email newsletters.

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When it comes to content I’m a consistency queen and that is because I plan in advance. I know exactly what, where and when I should be posting.

The great thing is anyone, including you, can become consistent. It all starts with having a content plan so you know exactly what you need to do.

Now obviously you can create your content plan by yourself, but if you would prefer to work with a content marketing expert then I’m here to help.

Book an intensive strategy day and in just one day we’ll get your content planned out for the next 90 days.