Plan your email year

A business that emails when it remembers sends too little, then too much at once. One page, written before any email, fixes both: what email is for this year, who gets what, how often, and the few dates that matter. Each date becomes a short sequence, prepared weeks ahead.

The short version

• Write the year on one page first, in eight lines: the goal, who, the regular day, the sequences, the dates, list growth, tests and review dates.
• Build the sequences first. A campaign earns on the day it goes; a sequence earns every day someone signs up, clicks or buys.
• A steady weekly email is the backbone. The dates sit on top of it, and the year still comes to about 5 to 7 emails a month.
• Pick four to eight dates that fit what you sell and where your customers live, and run each as a short sequence: tell early, open the offer, remind, last chance.
• Get ready before the peak: grow the list in September and October, win back the quiet in October, and keep the weekly email going all autumn.
• In a peak, the extra emails go to the people who engage. Never to people who've already bought.
• Every deadline is real, says its time zone, and leaves time for delivery.
• In January: welcome the new, win back the quiet, and stop mailing the silent.
• Know what a subscriber is worth before paying for one.
• Review five numbers every month, and re-plan every quarter.

The plan on one page

Write it in this order, because each line depends on the one before:

1. 1

   The goal, as one number for the year: sales from email, bookings or donations. Beside it, the five numbers that show how email is doing: Measure what matters.

2. 2

   Who: the few groups that change what you'd say. Usually new subscribers, customers, people who click but haven't bought, and the quiet: The right email for the right people.

3. 3

   The regular rhythm: which day, and how often.

4. 4

   The sequences that run all year.

5. 5

   The dates: four to eight that fit the business, each a short sequence.

6. 6

   List growth: where people join, and how many must join to make up for the year's losses: Build your email list.

7. 7

   Tests: one question at a time: Test your emails.

8. 8

   Review dates: monthly for the numbers, quarterly for the plan.

Fern & Fig, a houseplant shop with 5,000 subscribers, fills it in like this:

Build the sequences first

• Omnisend, 2025: automated emails were 2% of sends and 30% of revenue, earning $2.87 per email against $0.18 for a scheduled campaign.
• Klaviyo, 2026: sequences were 5.3% of sends and about 41% of revenue.

A campaign earns once, on the day it goes. A sequence earns every day someone signs up, clicks or buys. So build them in this order:

1. 1

   The welcome, started by the sign-up form.

2. 2

   A follow-up for people who click an offer and don't act.

3. 3

   After the sale.

4. 4

   The win-back.

Shops add abandoned-cart reminders next, where their tools support them. Seasonal campaigns come after all of these, because each covers only a few days of the year. Each one, written out: The emails a business sends.

A steady rhythm, with the dates on top

• Zhang, Kumar and Cosguner (Journal of Marketing Research, 2017): the most profitable frequency averaged 7 emails a month, from 5 to 14 depending on the customer. Sending 4 a month lost about 32% of lifetime profit; sending 10 lost about 16%.
• Google tells senders to "send email at a consistent rate" and to "avoid sending email in bursts".
• Nonprofits sent each subscriber about 50 messages in 2025, about one a week (M+R).

A weekly email makes 48 to 52 a year. Add six dates of three emails each and the year comes to 66 to 70, or 5.5 to 6 a month: still under Zhang's average best of 7. A plan can carry its dates without the year becoming too much, as long as the weekly email stays steady and most of the extra goes to the people who engage.

Staying top of mind with a list of 18,000: a newsletter every week on a set day, with room for a few offers in between. Through the year that's 5 to 7 emails a month, with the offers' reminders going only to the people who engage.

The day matters as much as the number. A regular day is part of the promise made at sign-up. How often, by kind of business: How often to send.

Pick the dates that fit

A date earns its place when what you sell fits it, Mother's Day for a florist, the end of the financial year for an accountant, and your customers already buy around it. Four to eight a year is plenty for a small business. A date that doesn't fit takes a slot from one that does, and adds email nobody asked for.

Each date is a short sequence, not one email:

1. 1

   Tell people early.

2. 2

   Open the offer.

3. 3

   Remind the people who haven't bought.

4. 4

   Last chance, on the final morning.

Leave out everyone who has already bought, and afterwards follow up the people who clicked and didn't buy.

How far ahead:

The late email for gifts that need no posting is worth sending: 27% of US holiday shoppers planned to give an experience in 2026, up from 19% five years earlier (NRF survey).

The same day falls on different dates

The US, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand share Christmas and Easter, and little else:

In Australia and New Zealand the seasons are reversed: Christmas falls in summer, the school year starts in late January or early February, and the end-of-financial-year sales run in June. A business selling in several countries sends each its own dates, written for the season its readers are in.

Every date for the year ahead, market by market: Dates for your email calendar.

For shops, the holiday season

• The size of it: NRF forecasts US retail sales in November and December 2026 at $1.013 trillion, 4.2% up on 2025.
• When people buy: 64% of US consumers said they'd likely wait until Thanksgiving weekend for most of their holiday shopping, against 51% five years earlier (NRF survey, October 2026).
• Why they choose a shop: sales and discounts 56%, quality 51%, selection 46%, free shipping 37%.
• What they spend: in the last quarter of 2025, Omnisend's shops saw clicks fall and average order value nearly double.
• Small Business Saturday: one in five holiday shoppers planned to buy at small or local businesses, and 71% of them did it to support their community (NRF, November 2026).

So tell customers early, from about mid-November, and open the main offer on Black Friday through Cyber Monday: Friday 27 to Monday 30 November 2026, and Friday 26 to Monday 29 November 2027. Lead with the deal, and with free delivery if you can afford it. A local shop adds the Saturday in its own voice, and leads with community, the reason its shoppers give.

Before the peak

Mailbox providers judge a sender by how its recent mail was received, so the reputation you take into November is the one you built in September and October.

1. 1

   Grow the list in September and October. People who join then get the welcome before the offers start.

2. 2

   Win back the quiet in October, early enough to finish before the peak. Leave anyone who still doesn't respond out of the peak's extra emails.

3. 3

   Keep the weekly email going all autumn. A list that hears from you every week takes a heavier December in its stride. A list woken for Black Friday after months of silence behaves like a cold one: more complaints, more spam folders: Get into the inbox.

In the peak

• Google: keep the spam complaint rate under 0.10%, and never let it reach 0.30%.
• Klaviyo's split for a steady programme: about 70% of sends to people who engaged in the last 30 to 60 days, 20% to those who engaged in the last 90 to 180 days, and 10%, for major promotions, to everyone.

A peak is when complaints rise: more email, to more of the list, most of it selling. The answer is who gets the extra:

• The main announcement of a big sale can go to everyone still on the list, if the list is clean.
• The reminders and last chances go to the people who clicked, replied or bought in the last 90 days, and never to anyone who has already bought.
• Step up; don't jump. A weekly sender goes to twice a week in the fortnight before, then daily for the engaged over the sale's last days.
• Cap what any one person gets, counting campaigns and sequences together.
• Watch complaints every day. One per 1,000 emails is the line. Above it, send the next emails only to the most engaged.

Deadlines that hold

When an offer ends is a fact, like what you sell and what it costs.

• Say the time zone: "ends midnight Sunday, Sydney time". Or end the offer late enough that every reader is still inside it.
• For posted goods, use the carrier's own last posting dates. They change every year. After the cut-off, switch the email to what still arrives on time: gift cards, vouchers, bookings, local pickup.
• Send the last chance on the final morning, not in the final hour. A big list doesn't land all at once.

After the peak: January

January is for the list, not for selling harder.

• The new: everyone who joined in the peak goes through the welcome. Many joined for an offer; the welcome is where they learn what else you are.
• The quiet: people who haven't clicked, replied or bought for some months get a win-back of several emails over at least two months. Lapsed subscribers who came back took 57 days on average (Return Path, 2014).
• The silent: people who still don't respond stop getting campaigns. Spamhaus puts the usual window without engagement at three to twelve months, and Google says: "Consider unsubscribing recipients who don't open or read your messages".
• The review: compare the peak with the same weeks last year, never with the weeks just before it. Before-and-after mixes the change with the season.

Nonprofits: December first

M+R's 2025 figures:

• Nonprofits received 37% of their online revenue in December.
• The last week of the year brought 10%, and the last day alone 4%.
• Hunger and poverty groups raised 46% in December, spread more evenly: only 8% came in the last week.

So a nonprofit plans December first:

1. 1

   A Giving Tuesday appeal: Tuesday 1 December 2026; Tuesday 30 November 2027.

2. 2

   A story in mid-December.

3. 3

   Three emails in the last three days, 29 to 31 December, the last on the 31st.

The 31st counts because it ends the tax year for individual donors in the US and Canada. Australian charities add a tax-time appeal in June, before the financial year ends on the 30th. The rest of the year keeps the regular rhythm, about one email a week, most of them not asking for money.

Business buyers and local services

A business buyer's year turns on budgets and tax dates, not gift days:

• Send the important emails before the deadline that matters to the buyer. An Australian firm selling something its clients want before their year ends writes four to six weeks before 30 June.
• Keep the quiet weeks light: Christmas to New Year everywhere, much of August in parts of Europe, and late December into January in Australia and New Zealand. Send something useful rather than an offer, and nothing that needs a reply that week.

For trades, clinics and salons, the season is the calendar: book-ahead reminders before the busy period, heating before winter, the garden before spring, and reminders built from each customer's last visit.

Fresh starts are dates too

Dai, Milkman and Riis (Management Science, 2014) found that searches for "diet", gym visits and commitments to goals all rise after "temporal landmarks", such as the start of a new week, month or year, or a birthday. They called it the "fresh start effect". If you sell something people aspire to, fitness, learning, money, health or a project at home, the first days of January, the start of a month and a birthday are natural moments for an offer framed as a new start. The study measured behaviour, not email: that email timed to these dates sells more is the inference.

What a subscriber is worth

The value of one more subscriber is revenue per subscriber a year × your profit margin × how many years they stay. It's the most you can pay to win a sign-up and still break even. Worked through for a shop: Measure what matters. On those figures, a subscriber is worth about $25.

What sign-ups cost:

• Facebook lead ads averaged $27.39 a lead, from $12.30 for careers and $13.74 for real estate to $50.91 for beauty and $61.56 for dentists (LocaliQ, September 2026). A "lead" there is often a quote request or a booking, not a newsletter sign-up.
• Paid traffic to a sign-up page: at LocaliQ's $0.60 a click and Unbounce's median landing page converting 6.6%, about $9 a sign-up. That multiplies two averages, so treat it as a rough guide.
• Your own website, shop, checkout and counter cost only the form.

Payback, for a shop whose subscribers each bring $4.94 of profit a year: a $27.39 lead takes about 67 months to repay, longer than the average five-year stay. A $9 sign-up repays in about 22 months. The same sum can say yes: a business whose subscribers each bring $100 of profit a year can pay $27 for one and repay it in about three months.

So grow from your own traffic first, pay for sign-ups only once you know your revenue per subscriber, and judge paid sign-ups by their own clicks and purchases, kept apart from the rest.

Tests and reviews through the year

• One test question at a time: one a month on a list big enough to read a result each month, one a quarter on a small list.
• Test in ordinary weeks. A peak brings different people buying for different reasons, so its results say little about the rest of the year. Use the peak to apply what the tests found.
• Review the five numbers every month against your own figures from before, not an industry average.
• Re-plan every quarter. A quarter is 13 weeks, the span of one graph.
• Graph the peak on a held scale. Set the top from last year's peak week plus the growth you expect, never from October's weeks. A shop whose weeks run £600 to £900 and whose best week last year was £3,600 scales £0 to £4,000 at £500 a line, and keeps that scale all season.

Doing it here

• Each campaign is planned as one whole, with every email and its job, before a word is written: One plan, the whole campaign.
• Pick the day and time each campaign goes, and it waits its turn: Can I schedule a campaign for later?
• Mail goes out at a natural pace across each day's sending window, so a big list can take more than a day to reach everyone. Start a deadline's last-chance email early enough: How long does a campaign take to send?
• Every send is paced for you, so a peak never needs a ramp planned around it. Your part is who gets what, and how often: Natural pace, and why it isn't warm-up.
• A landing page's form can start the welcome for each new sign-up, and a click in a campaign you name can start a follow-up: What starts a sequence.
• From a sale's announcement, send the reminder only to the people who didn't open it, or didn't click: Can I send a campaign again?
• A campaign pauses itself if too many emails bounce hard, and a version that draws spam reports is paused on its own: A campaign that protects itself.
• Every email carries an unsubscribe link and the one-click unsubscribe headers, so a peak's extra emails never need one added by hand.
• The Results page shows your numbers for the last 30 days, 90 days, 12 months or all time, for the monthly review: What your results count.