How to Plan Your Entire Month of Emails in Just 30 Minutes
Stop me if this sounds familiar: You mean to plan your emails every month. You have the best of intentions to map out content that builds trust, showcases how you work, and drives your audience to take action.
And then 3 weeks — or 3 months — go by. Your list has started to go cold and you’ve missed more than one opportunity to connect with an audience that actually wants to hear from you.
As a solopreneur who’s done this more than once, let me tell you how I fixed the “what do I even send to them?” problem. (Spoiler: it’s a simple 30-minute check-in I use to keep my email marketing consistent and strategic.)
Here’s the exact process I use for my clients to send emails that work hard in the background while you work on other aspects of your business — or take an impromptu spa day.
1. Step One: Review What’s Working (5 minutes)
Start by look at the past month’s emails.
Do a quick scan of open rates, CTRs (click-through rates), replies, and unsubscribes. See if you notice any patterns.
Based on the data, ask yourself: What resonated? What flopped? Any surprises?
This step is important. If you decide to do nothing else on this list, take the 5 minutes a month to look at the back end of your email service provider. Because if you try to create content without data, well, you’re just kind of vibing. It might be fun to write whatever you feel like writing and hope it resonates. But if you’re in business to make money, your focus should be on profitability. And the quickest route is noticing what’s worked in the past.
2. Step Two: Reconnect With Your Goals (3 minutes)
Think about what you’re selling or leading people toward this month. This is where so many of us go wrong. Each email you send should have a purpose. Get crystal clear on the main purpose of each email you send.
Assess what’s happening in your business right now that you might want to talk about. Launching something? Promoting a freebie? Going all-in on visibility? Off-season nurturing?
Tie all your list activity to revenue. Even if it’s just a “hey, get to know me” email, you should have a clear idea why you want the people on your list to get to know you.
3. Step Three: Brain-Dump Content Ideas (7 minutes)
I find it most helpful to “bucket” content ideas into one of these categories: Value, Connection, and Conversion.
If nothing immediately comes to mind based on your calendar, you can pull content ideas from client questions, common objections, your best-performing content, and anything you’re genuinely excited to share.
Try to come up with a solid 6-8 ideas.
Note: Try not to self-edit while you’re brainstorming, I know, I know — not always easy. But over and over again I’m reminded that the inner editor has no place in the idea-generating phase of creating email content. Tell that inner editor (I call mine Kelly) to sit down and be quiet for now.
4. Step Four: Map Out the Actual Emails (10 minutes)
Nowwwww you can start to edit. Pare down your ideas and choose the 4–6 email ideas that support your goals.
Decide on the CTA before you start writing. Decide exactly what you want readers to do after they finish your email. Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to reply? Do you want them to click over to your sales page? That should guide the content of the email.
Lightly outline each email so Future You isn’t struggling to remember that great idea you had and wondering what you meant when you wrote down “affiliate promo.” I use a chart like this one:
My barebones monthly email planning tool
Notes on this email planning tool:
This is just one example of a planning tool. I’m sure there are Google Docs whizzes out there who would make this thing way fancier. You could also create something similar in Excel, Notion, Asana, Trello — whatever works for you. No matter how you create it, it should be a container for the essential elements of an email.
Date: Choose a format and stick with it. (I write out the entire date because I am, in some ways, a digital dinosaur.)
Subject line(s): It’s not strictly necessary, but A/B testing your subject lines can give you great data on what resonates for your audience.
Goal: What’s the point of this email?
Audience: If every one of your emails goes to everyone on your list, your unsubscribe rate could be higher than it needs to be. Segment your audiences so you can send the right message to the right people without turning off the rest of your list.
CTA: What’s the exact action you want them to take after reading your email?
Key content: Roughly sketch out what you’re going to talk about in the email. Make this as detailed or as barebones as you like. Just make sure you have an idea of what you’re going to write so you don’t have to start from scratch when it’s time to write the content of the email.
Status: I create a dropdown with options for planned, drafted, scheduled, and sent. Create whatever works for you or your team.
5. Step Five: Quick Tech + List Health Check (3 minutes)
Look for broken links in recent sends. (And always, always, always send yourself a test email before it goes out to your list.)
Make sure your welcome sequence or evergreen funnel doesn’t need tweaks. I once deleted a blog post and didn’t realize for months that my welcome sequence was going out with a link to a 404 page. Facepalm.
Do a speedy segment check: new tags, moved contacts, any weird activity.
See? It’s That Easy!
You just planned entire month of intentional email content in under half an hour! It’s really not rocket surgery. Consistency gets so much easier when a plan is baked in. If you’re feeling creatively inspired, you may want to plan out the next 3-6 months. But let’s start with the basics first so you can start sending emails that grow your business!
If you want to turn this planning exercise into a hands-on working session (and have me help you plan your next month in real time), my Inbox Intensive is basically this — but with me helping you strategically plan out months of email content. If you’ve already got a plan but the actual writing is the bottleneck, the Intensive can also be a “done-with-you” copywriting session. Let’s get your emails working for you!