January is not just for recaps and strategy revisions. It’s also the perfect moment to look for future opportunities and challenges, so you can create improvements — both for the short run and the distant future. To help you get started, we created a chart showing important holidays and seasons of increased customer activity, so you can see at a glance the worthwhile periods for advance planning and special attention.
The infographic calendar is a great starting point for setting campaign dates and objectives for the upcoming year. It includes dates of the most important U.S. holidays and seasonal themes that are popular with marketers — periods when your revenue figures typically go up.
(BTW, you enjoyed the Campaign Promo Planner last year, so we hope the updated version will be useful in 2013 as well.)
(Click image to enlarge and save the full size version.)
We designed the calendar to be clear and obvious. Still, remember to follow a few simple rules when you start planning your way around this year’s “marketing clock.”
1. Plan in Advance
Create a quarterly roadmap of the most important marketing opportunities and define the starting points and deadlines for campaign preparation. And make sure they don’t collide. It’s easier to be effective if you focus on one event at a time.
2. Be Selective
Each month brings opportunities for special deals. That doesn’t mean you have to grab them all. Collect data on when your industry’s customers are most likely to shop. Then choose events that in some way relate to your business.
3. Don’t Focus on Dates
Seasons bring a lot of themes, connotations and meanings that you can refer to in your emails. Go beyond specific dates — focus on real life. And refer to current affairs and topics — whatever is hot and on the minds of many people. This way your emails have more relevance and will inspire deeper emotions.
4. Go Beyond One Channel
Modern technologies offer you easy ways to automatically reach more new audiences at one time. So integrate, cross channels, coordinate email with social, social with blog, blog with email, email with landing pages… the combinations are endless. And now you can do it all inside GetResponse. If you use multiple channels to communicate with your audience, you can generate more responses, build more targeted audiences, increase recipient engagement, and ultimately — grow your performance metrics and revenue.
This is just a warm-up. The GetResponse team is entering 2013 with more energy and ideas than ever. So be on the lookout for more tips, resources and surprises. Some great things are coming this year!