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December 2022

Your 2023 Marketing Calendar - Key Dates and Events for 2023

By Mail Designer 365 Newsletter Academy, Mail Designer 365 Newsletter Academy, Mail Designer 365 Newsletter Academy, Mail Designer 365 Newsletter Academy

It's no secret that a good email marketer always needs to be two steps ahead in terms of planning. Having your email content mapped out is a good way to stay motivated and reach your marketing goals.

With this in mind, now is a great time to start looking at your email marketing plan for 2023. When deciding on your campaign ideas for the year, it’s useful to have a clear overview of all key events taking place over the next 12 months. This will help you create email content which is relevant and interesting to your target audience.

We've created some handy resources to help you get started with your email marketing planning for 2023, available for you to download free:

  • Digital weekly email campaign planner - with important dates marked and space for planning your upcoming email campaigns
  • Email marketing calendar - 2023 email marketing calendar packed with all key dates

2023 marketing resources delivered directly to your inbox

Enter your email address below to unlock access to your 2023 marketing calendar and campaign planner!

 
 
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email marketing resources 2023

Make the most of your free resources:

Once you have downloaded your free 2023 marketing calendar, you can skim through all the most important dates, holidays and sales periods coming up in 2023. Use these dates and any others you want to include to fill out your  2023 email campaign planner.

Throughout the year, you can carry on noting down todos, campaign ideas, important links, etc. and keep track of all your campaign planning in one useful document. We’ve already provided you with some useful links to help you get started.

How to get started with your first campaign

  1. Build your email newsletter using the creative tools in Mail Designer 365.
  2. Upload design drafts to Mail Designer 365 Approval to get feedback and ideas from your team members.
  3. Once your team has approved your campaign, you can go ahead and export directly to use with your ESP.

Want more inspiration for 2023? Keep reading to discover more unique marketing opportunities your business can get involved in this year…

12 dates you need in your 2023 marketing calendar 

Every year has those key marketing dates that a marketer can't do without, such as Valentine's Day, Halloween, "Black Friday", etc. What really sets your business apart from the rest is getting involved with unique holidays and events that keep your campaigns fresh and interesting to your target audience.

Here's a monthly breakdown of exciting events coming up in 2023 that you can adapt for your own creative campaigns.

January 11th - International Thank You Day

January 11th is International Thank You Day and poses the perfect opportunity for your business to show your gratitude to customers in whichever way you see fit.

One idea could be to launch a "thank you" sale or promotion, allowing customers to save money after the costly holiday period. You could also hold a special event in store, offer a free gift with every purchase, or simply send out a warm thank you email to all your subscribers. Tip: Here are some great ideas for thank you emails.

Say thank you to your customers this January on International Thank You Day

February 20th - Start of Carnival Season

Traditionally, in Christian countries, Carnival is known as a pre Lent celebration (the time leading up to Easter.) However, Carnival events are celebrated today by people of all backgrounds and are a great excuse to dress up, take to the streets and have some fun.

Carnival Season presents many opportunities for email marketers and potential email campaign ideas range from travel tips, events, costume and fashion inspiration, hair and make up services, street rood recipes, etc.

Incorporate the Carnival spirit into your email designs by opting for bold. bright colors and eye-catching fonts.

carnival masks display

Encapsulate the Carnival spirit in your email designs with bright colors

March 25th - Earth Hour

There's never been a more important time to raise awareness about climate change and sustainability. The Earth Hour movement is all about taking time out to reduce our impact on the planet and switching off the lights to reduce global energy usage.

There are so many ways your business could get involved in raising awareness for this cause, for example by using your platform to share tips and ideas and to get the word out there. The Earth Hour website also has plenty more ideas and resources for you to explore.

Earth Hour is an extremely important movement that your business should be part of.

April 23rd - UNESCO World Book Day

Everyone loves a good book! Celebrate the power of reading by recognising World Book Day in your email campaigns this year, whether you have a book to promote yourself, are selling books in your store, or want to advertise a reading event.

World Book Day is also a great opportunity for a charitable campaign, such as raising money tor reading-related causes or holding a book drive for disadvantaged communities.

Celebrate the power of books and reading on World Book Day 2023

May 15th - European Song Contest Final

This year, the ESC final will be taking place in Liverpool, as the UK host for last year's winners, Ukraine.

Eurovision is a major celebration of diversity and culture and is also a great excuse for a party! Campaign ideas could include holding a Eurovision themed event at your venue or sharing tips and party ideas for customers watching at home.

This year, the Eurovision Song Contest is being held in Liverpool, UK

June 1st - LGBT Pride Month begins

In the USA, and many other countries worldwide, June 1st signifies the beginning of LGBT Pride Month. During this time, events and parades are often held to celebrate LGBT people and promote tolerance and equality.

In recent years, more and more businesses have been getting involved and showing their support for the LGBT Pride movement. Whether that be for their LBGT members of staff, LGBT customers, or simply to demonstrate the company's overall values.

Perhaps you also want to take this opportunity to hold a special Pride event, give LGBT voices a platform, or simply share a few words with your email subscribers about the importance of acceptance and tolerance.

Outline your business's core values this Pride Month by promoting tolerance, acceptance, love and equality for everyone

July 20th - FIFA Women's World Cup

There's not much that unites people in the way that football does and the World Cup is always a great opportunity to provide special email content for your subscribers. Whether you're helping them prepare to watch the big game at home with friends and family, or hosting your own viewing party.

The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup is a great opportunity to celebrate the uniting power of football

August 8th - International Cat Day

Cats are an internet sensation and a funny cat meme or video can be the ideal addition to liven up an otherwise standard email campaign. Of course, if your business is related to cats in any way, or you are a cat charity, then this is also a very important date for your diary.

Stuck on ideas? Try incorporating our feline friends into your campaigns in August for International Cat Day!

September 8th - Start of the Rugby World Cup

Rugby is hugely popular in Europe and many other countries worldwide, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

This major sports event will take place in France and is set to run up until October 28th. The tournament could present a unique marketing opportunity for your business: Think live stream events, viewing parties, travel offers, sporting equipment sales, etc.

Celebrate the Rugby World Cup in September 2023

October 10th - World Mental Health Day

The importance of taking care of your mental health is something which is being emphasised more and more. World Mental Health Day allows your business to use your platform to raise awareness.

You could run a social media campaign inspiring people to open up and support one another, or set up a charitable campaign encouraging donations to leading mental health organisations. Alternatively, sharing tips and resources on dealing with common mental health problems is another useful way your business can help show support.

Mental health matters: World Mental Health Day falls on October 10th

November 25th - Small Business Saturday

Everyone's heard of Black Friday but have you heard of Small Business Saturday? As the name suggests, this is a day to show support for small, independent businesses in the run up to the holiday sales season.

If you are a small business owner, this is a great focus for your main seasonal sales campaign to drive more customers to your physical store or website.

Taken from the US Chamber of Commerce website:

"Small Business Saturday... encourages consumers to support local businesses by shopping small. American Express launched this shopping holiday in 2010, at the height of the Great Recession, as a way of redirecting holiday shopping to local stores. A decade later, it’s observed in all 50 states, and in 2011, the Senate passed a resolution recognizing Small Business Saturday."

December 6th - St Nicholas Day

St Nicholas Day is a Christian celebration based on the origins of Father Christmas. The holiday is celebrated in many countries throughout Europe, including France, Germany and Belgium, and provides a chance for your business to get super festive in early December. Especially if you have a big target audience in Europe, holding a sale or special event around this time could be a great warm up for Christmas.

Celebrate St. Nicholas Day in the run up to Christmas.

Getting started with Email Marketing in 2023

We hope we have given you some ideas and inspiration for your 2023 email marketing calendar. Alongside the regular holidays and events in your planner, these events should give you some fresh and interesting new subject matter to create engaging emails with in 2023.

Don't forget to enter your email address to get our free resources for your 2023 email marketing calendar delivered straight to your inbox. The extensive email campaign planner and downloadable events calendar are both completely free and a great way for you to get your campaigns organised this year.

Need help building awesome email templates to use with your campaigns? Check out Mail Designer 365. Sign up free today to discover all the Design Ideas, creative tools and resources you need to create amazing emails in 2023…

Until next time,
Your Mail Designer 365 Team

Get started with Mail Designer 365 today

Start your 7 day free trial and use your Mac to create stylish email newsletters for your business.
No credit card required
Compatible from macOS 10.13 onwards

Enjoyed this post?

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Check Out these Epic Email Fails You Should Avoid at All Costs

By Uncategorized

To us email geeks, it seems like common knowledge that an all-image email is just not the way to go when it comes to email design best practice... So why is it that so many businesses (big and small alike) are still making this mistake as well as a variety of other "rookie" design errors?

To find out how big the problem really is, we've scoured the web for some of the most *facepalm* worthy email design fails and what you can do to actively avoid them!

Mobile respon-what?

In this day and age you'd think it would be obvious that anything digital/HTML based (we're talking websites, emails, etc.) should be optimized for viewing on smartphones. Mobile responsive design is massively important, as studies show that 81% of consumers check their emails most often on their smartphones. If this really is the case, why are businesses still forgetting to make their designs mobile-friendly?

I hope you've got your magnifying glasses at the ready, because here are a few painful examples of brands who did not get the mobile memo...

If you're wondering how to avoid this mishap without using any complex coding methods, Mail Designer 365 automatically creates a mobile optimized version of every email design. Switch to the mobile view and you can create content especially for people viewing your email on a smartphone. Clever right? Things like shorter text segments, single-column layouts, and mobile-friendly fonts are all great for your responsive design.

Mobile view preview

A picture DOES NOT speak one thousand words...

...If your customer's email client doesn't automatically display images! We know it's tempting to create email designs that are all image based. They look cool and you can probably enjoy more design freedom, but it's not good practice.  Here's a few reasons why you should avoid image based emails where possible:

They're way more likely to end up in the spam folder
Spam filters are getting stricter and most spam filters are programmed to watch out for all image emails; probably because it's not good practice and not something to expect from a pro designer! Once your emails start landing in the spam folder, your deliverability rates are going to start going downhill, and the content you spent so long working on will be missed. Is it worth it? Definitely not!

This email design from Mara Hoffman sure looks cool, but it would have been 10x more effective if it didn't land in my spam folder.

They load much slower
It's fairly clear that an image (especially a high resolution image) will load slower than text. This is why we always advise a healthy balance of both image and text in email newsletters. The images keep things interesting, whereas the text ensures readers still have some content to consume if the images take too long to load - especially important when using a slow public WiFi or mobile data.

Obviously an all-image email won't provide this balance, and if it doesn't load, you're left with something like this...

...Not really a great selling point for your product.

If you want to create a similar effect to the previous design from Mara Hoffman, try using a photo background. This way you can still incorporate real text in your email, as well as creative, colorful design.

If you think this is bad, even big name brands are guilty of it too! Yes we're looking at you Google.. This all-image email design is definitely not on point.

HTML horror stories

Many common email mistakes often arise from bad HTML or coding gone wrong. HTML can be tricky to work with. Even if you make one tiny mistake, it can have massive consequences on your email design. To save time and money, there are quite a few businesses who attempt to use DIY coding methods which don't always go to plan. This paired with a lack of proper testing can lead to email blunders such as this one from West Elm... This is exactly why a WYSIWYG editor is always a good idea guys!

Segmentation Gone Wrong...

Segmentation can also be a huge problem when it comes to email marketing. Just one wrong click and your email could be sent to a completely different target group than what you expected. Take this example from PopSugar: "Win a trip for 2 to Sri Lanka" - sounds pretty exciting, right?! Too bad you can't enter because of your location... Oops!

Another shudder-inducing example was the infamous baby registry email from Amazon a few years back. A harmless transactional-style email designed to inform parents-to-be of a new gift went terribly wrong and turned into a PR nightmare for the global brand. Instead of sending the email to expecting couples, it went to people not expecting a baby at all! Awkward for Amazon and another reason to pay close attention when hitting that send button.

Catastrophic Call-To-Actions

Any email marketer will tell you that the call-to-action (CTA) is the heart of your newsletter. If you get this wrong, then your email isn't likely to succeed. Despite having this drilled into them since day one, many designers still manage to get it wrong. Generally speaking, your CTA should be prominent and easy to find. In this design from Macy's, there are so many different CTAs that the customer doesn't know where to look (or click.) If it were me opening this email, I wouldn't be inclined to click through to their website. Too much choice is never a good thing when it comes to email marketing...

On the other hand, with this email from Tom Ford, it seems the designer was trying a little too hard to be minimalistic. So much, that the reader can barely find the CTA.. Your customers definitely won't click on your links if they can't even see them in the first place!

Hopefully you've found these epic newsletter fails somewhat amusing if not helpful! If you come across any more cringe-worthy email fails you want to share with us, drop us a tweet or send us an email!

Until next time!

Your Mail Designer 365 Team

Get started with Mail Designer 365 today

Start your 7 day free trial and use your Mac to create stylish email newsletters for your business.
No credit card required
Compatible from macOS 10.13 onwards

Enjoyed this post?

Get more inspirational tips, tricks, and best practice examples in the Mail Designer 365 Newsletter Academy -
your one stop hub for all things email marketing strategy and newsletter design.

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