Creating a Newsletter Planning Template: What You Need To Know

Have you been putting off your newsletter planning until the last minute? Or have you ever been stuck trying to develop ideas for your newsletter? You know you should send them out regularly, but coming up with fresh content can take time and effort.

Stop procrastinating and start acting! With so many newsletter planning options, choosing which newsletter planning template suits your needs can be overwhelming. We’re here to help make that choice a little easier.

What is a Newsletter Planning Template?

You’ve done the hard part: building the foundation of your business! Now, it’s time to flex your creative muscle and keep your audience up-to-date with your business.

How do you do this?

You create an email newsletter! After hours of deliberating on what to put into your welcome email newsletter and crafting the template, you finally sent it to your subscriber list. Now, what do you do next?

To stay relevant, you want a strategy that will ensure you’re maximizing your subscriber base. With a well-thought-out newsletter planning template, staying relevant is a breeze!

How Do You Plan a Newsletter Strategy?

First, you need to determine your end goal. You want to focus on providing relevant and valuable content for your subscribers to help you reach your goals.

Second, you’ll have to figure out how you will achieve those goals. Will you invest in an all-in-one email platform with various email templates for your business needs? Or is your strategy to find a tool to determine the best time and day to send your emails? Once you’ve answered some of these questions, you can start newsletter planning.

Here are the super-basic steps of newsletter planning:

1. Define your goal(s).

2. Identify your audience.

3. Determine your content strategy.

4. Build out your email list.

5. Choose your email template.

6. Start your email campaign.

For a more detailed breakdown of these steps, check out our article on email marketing planning.

A newsletter planning template will help you stay organized with creating and releasing your newsletter. You’ll be able to pinpoint what topics you’ll want in your newsletter, which target audience to send it to, how you’ll structure the newsletter’s layout, and more.

Newsletter Content Planning (Key Considerations)

Your newsletter content plan will be as unique as you. However, there are a few key things every plan should include.

• When you’re structuring your newsletter, offer multiple different stories so you can increase your chances of hooking your reader.

• Don’t flood your newsletter with too many call-to-actions (CTAs); that will only overwhelm your readers.

• Always present the most crucial information first.

• Use images to help enhance your newsletters–but only a few, so that internet service providers won’t flag you as a spammer!

• Find a balance between the graphics and content within your newsletter. The 80/20 rule (80% content, 20% images) is a good place to start.

• Stay compliant with legal requirements–for example, does your newsletter include an unsubscribe link and a physical address?

Newsletter Content Planning Template (Best Options)

Content is king in 2023. Let’s be honest; your email will get trashed, or readers will unsubscribe, if your content is lacking. To prevent your newsletter from getting to that point with your readers, ensure your content strategy is on point!

You can download a content planning calendar from Smartsheet to help you structure and organize what content you’d like to feature in your newsletters. Or, you can check out other options. Below, we have compiled some of our favorite tools for newsletter content planning, all of which offer templates to help remove any concerns you may have when creating your newsletter!

beehiiv

beehiiv is an all-in-one email marketing platform that offers stunning pre-built templates to help enhance your content! You can customize your newsletter with drag-and-drop features and quickly add content from other sources, like YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter. Plus, beehiiv has analytics features to track who opens your newsletters and how they interact with your content. Another excellent feature beehiiv offers is A/B testing, so you can test different newsletter versions!

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most popular options out there for newsletter planning templates. It has features like drag-and-drop customization options, pre-built templates, and analytics capabilities, so you can track how users interact with your newsletters over time. Mailchimp also allows you to segment users based on their interests or demographics so you can tailor your content accordingly.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another excellent option for those looking for an easy way to plan their newsletters. The platform offers a wide range of customizable templates and tools that allow you to A/B test different versions of the same email until you find what works best for your audience. Constant Contact also has robust reporting features that track users' engagement with your content over time.

Drip

Drip is another popular choice for creating effective email campaigns tailored specifically for e-commerce stores or small businesses looking to grow their customer base through targeted emails sent directly from their website domain name (no third party involved). It also allows users to automate tasks, such as setting up welcome series emails or abandoned cart emails, without manually sending them each time someone signs up or leaves something in their cart.

Newsletter Planning Template (Top Pick)

The best newsletter planning template in the market goes to (🥁 roll, please) HubSpot Marketing!

HubSpot Marketing offers an email marketing planning template that breaks down what each of your email newsletter topics will be. It also gives you the option to put in email send dates. For big-picture planners, this gives you a high overview of your email campaigns for the week or month.

With this template and HubSpot’s marketing platform, you can drill down to see which email newsletter performed well, and which didn't. Also, HubSpot’s marketing platform offers a variety of customizable templates for newsletters that you can easily edit with drag-and-drop features. It also has an AI tool that helps you create engaging content by suggesting keywords and phrases in your newsletter copy.

Newsletter Planning (Closing Thoughts)

Whether you’re new to creating newsletters, or looking for more advanced options, there’s a solution out there that suits your needs perfectly!

Newsletter planning templates provide an easy way to design beautiful emails without coding experience and without spending hours tweaking settings manually–plus, they're often free or low-cost!

Newsletter content planning templates also provide ease of mind regarding what information you’re presenting to your audience weekly and monthly.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one email platform with which to start your email newsletter journey, beehiiv is a fantastic tool to help you grow your audience. Why not sign up for your free account today?