What do you use for your marketing calendar?

[Anonymous]

I'm curious to know what Marketo customers are currently using for their marketing calendar? Spreadsheet? Google Calendar? A calendar app? What do you like or not like about what you're currently using? Also, who owns the calendar (or who put it in place) in your company?

Thanks,
Brian

[Anonymous]

We use Google spreadsheets to track the progress of the email campaign and the scheduling of them. At times, our emails have to go through other departments to get sign off/feedback. It is easy to keep track of the status in a spreadsheet. We also track the scheduled deployment date as well as the day that is actually deploys. This helps us go back and see which campaigns were delayed and why.

The fields in the spreadsheets are also color coded to relate to each brand. Some of our brands overlap and some do not. Having the color helps for a quick look to see which brands are scheduled on which days. 

[Anonymous]

Google calendar...shared to all groups.

[Anonymous]

We use Google calendar. Will your calendar show all emails that are scheduled to go out in Marketo? or will the calendar only be for planning our schedules? Currently, if we schedule emails in Marketo it is not possible to see all the schedules. It would be nice to see these on a calendar or table form.
Ray

[Anonymous]

We use a calendar on our intranet that's global and available to all business units.Our intranet is build on Wordpress and I beleive it's a standard module that they've implement. It gives us the ability to color code by activity. As it's avaiable to anyone in the organization it's helpful in scheduling and booking eBlasts that go out. Everyone is able to see what is in the queue and when they may be able to drop something into the calendar.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Brian,

I think it might be a matter of control -- they want to send emails when they want to send it. They don't use Marketo, they use clicktools.  This is a problem for me because I handle the logistics of when emails should go out and people receiving multiple emails from us in one day is not good.  

[Anonymous]

Brian- Just a thought...

In my old company when we'd schedule emails we would try to plan by verticle... so if a CPG newsletter was going out on Tuesday we would try not to plan a Pharma event invite Thursday (to minimize overlap, even though we did make our own "communication limits" tool). For this reason (and for analytics), I think it'd be cool for the new calendar to incorporate segments (maybe?) and have color-coding options?

[Anonymous]

Thanks Michelle, can I ask why the other department is not on board?

[Michelle_Tizian]

In my Marketing department, we use Google calendar which I manage and share. Most of the editorial broadcasts and events are in there too.  Both the other departments use spread sheets for their own purposes.  It's good to have the 3 department broadcast schedules in one calendar because we never want to send emails to the same people at the same time or day.  There's just one department who is not on board with our calendar. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input... yes, it's true that we'll be releasing a calendar product in Q4. As we gear up for the launch, I'm looking to understand how customers think/feel about their current calendars.

[Anonymous]

My current company is pretty small, so I just put any specified dates on my Outlook. At my previous company, we just would have Word calendar print-outs and "pencil in" dates on that. That way I could take it around or just pin it up at my desk and programs managers could see what all was going on. 

I have always been in companies where the person who is executing the emails is the calendar keeper. The big thing in my opinion is to only have ONE PERSON keep the calendar or it will become chaotic!

PS - Marketo is supposed to be releasing an email calendar later this year!!