Hello Marketers,
Welcome to another post! Today, we'll talk about a discreet yet significant feature that's neatly tucked inside Zoho Campaigns: the calendar. It might look like an optional but somewhat unnecessary feature that you can use occasionally, but once you understand how it works, you'll realize its potential in organizing your email marketing activities. Let's dive in and see how.
Why Zoho Campaigns' calendar matters in email marketing
Email marketing isn't just about compelling content, beautiful templates, and hitting the send button. You need to plan your timelines, work on your designs, determine the right intervals between emails, and so on. This is where the Calendar becomes a key component. Whether you send newsletters weekly, product updates monthly, or promotional messages based on business needs, the Calendar keeps everything neatly organized.
Using Zoho Campaigns' calendar allows you to:
- See all your scheduled and completed campaigns at a glance.
- Maintain appropriate gaps between campaigns.
- Prepare content, visuals, segments, and CTAs ahead of time.
- Track campaign dates and compare performance later.
- Identify periods of high or low activity.
- Understand which send frequencies work and which don't .
Key features in the calendar
Let's walk through the major features that make Zoho Campaigns' calendar useful for daily, weekly, and monthly planning.
Monthly and yearly overview of campaigns
The calendar gives you a clear monthly and yearly overview of all email activities. You can instantly see:
- Scheduled campaigns
- Campaigns in progress
- Sent campaigns
- Campaigns created by specific users
This view helps you understand how your emails are distributed across time. You can avoid crowding too many campaigns together, which might lead to more unsubscribes. It also helps you identify gaps where you may want to add more engagement or nurturing emails.
For instance, if a brand sends newsletters weekly but notices a two-week gap due to internal delays, the calendar makes it easier to catch and correct that inconsistency.
Built-in list of country-specific holidays
The calendar also notes country-specific holidays, helping you plan campaigns that align with important dates relevant to recipients from different regions. This is especially useful for businesses that operate across multiple countries. For example, if your audience is spread across India, the UAE, and the US, you can set filters to view holidays specific to those regions and schedule emails accordingly.
Add private events
Not all important dates are associated with public holidays; some dates matter specifically to a brand. That's why the calendar enables you to add custom events, such as:
- Product launch dates
- Store anniversaries
- Webinar or event reminders
These private events let you map your emails in a way that aligns with your business needs.
Mark important dates and set reminders
Zoho Campaigns lets you set reminders up to 15 days in advance in the calendar. This is especially useful because it helps you stay ahead by prompting you to:
- Prepare content.
- Get visuals designed.
- Segment contacts.
- Complete internal reviews.
- Set up workflows.
For example, if you send a monthly newsletter on the first day of every month, you can set a reminder on the 20th of the previous month to begin drafting content.
Share marked dates with teammates
The calendar lets you collaborate with your teammates by sharing dates and reminders with them. Whether you work with content writers, designers, product owners, or reviewers, everyone stays on track without needing to dig through multiple emails or documents. This provides clarity, ensures smoother execution, and eliminates confusion about deadlines or sending schedules.
Stay organized with the Zoho Campaigns calendar: A use case
Let's use an example to understand how the calendar can help you plan your email marketing efforts.
Adam is a content marketer at Zylker Tech, a SaaS company. He needs to send:
- A weekly newsletter every Thursday
- A monthly product update on the first of each month
- Occasional promotional emails for webinars, events, and product releases
Until now, he's been tracking his schedule in spreadsheets and emails, which often leads to confusion—especially when last-minute campaigns need to be added. Sometimes, a promotional email goes out too close to a newsletter. Or the monthly update gets delayed because the team forgot to prepare images in advance.
Once he starts using Zoho Campaigns' calendar features, Adam can start planning in a more structured way—like so:
- He blocks every Thursday for the weekly newsletter.
- He marks the first day of every month for the product update.
- He adds reminders two weeks in advance to prepare content.
- He shares all marked dates with his team.
Now, his designer, reviewer, and product managers can all see these important dates. The team stays aligned without long email threads or constant follow-ups. When a new webinar is announced, Adam simply adds it to the calendar and checks whether the schedule looks too crowded. If needed, he adjusts dates to maintain balance.
These simple steps keep his campaigns consistent, avoids clashes, and ensures everyone works toward the same timeline. Over time, he also uses the calendar to look back at what was sent, when it was sent, and how each campaign performed. This exercise helps him refine his brand's email sending strategies.
Wrapping it up
Zoho Campaigns' calendar helps bring structure and clarity to your email planning. By mapping out campaigns, reminders, and important dates, you can work more efficiently and stay consistent throughout the year. It also helps teams stay aligned and ensures that no key task or deadline is missed. With regular use, the calendar can serve as an essential tool for organizing, tracking, and improving your overall email-marketing strategy.
Regards,
Aiswarya Jayaprakash
User Education
Zoho Campaigns Team