How Brands Can Use the Calendar to Maximize Key Marketing Moments

Every brand aims to capitalize on key moments throughout the year, whether they be seasonal sales, product launches or cultural events. However, the lives of brand customers are busier than ever. Inboxes are overflowing and social feeds crowd out or dilute messages and key information that no longer resonates as it once did.

Yet marketers still have a job to do. Adapting to new technologies, cultural trends and changing purchasing habits is the name of the game. And it isn’t just about which communications channels are used, the frequency of the message, or the tone of a campaign. Timing matters. So how do brands ensure their audience actually remembers to engage when it matters most?

Rethinking the Calendar as a Communications Platform

In the midst of so much change and the preoccupation of modern life, more brands are turning to an unexpected tool to get their message through: the calendar. Unlike emails that get buried or sent to a spam folder, or ads that are scrolled past or the audience has learned to tune out, calendar marketing creates a direct, personal touchpoint that keeps consumers engaged before, during and after key marketing moments.

The key for marketers to make the most of a calendar is to understand how to leverage it. Rather than thinking of it as an old-school leatherbound bookkeeping device or even a semi-integrated tool for our smartphones and computers, it helps to think of the calendar — and the associated tools available to marketers — as a fully dynamic communications platform. More than just marketing or advertising, the modern calendar can be leveraged to engage directly with customers in a valued environment — the same place where they keep tabs on massage appointments, vacation plans and loved ones’ birthdays.

Related story: How Retailers Can Leverage the Calendar as a Marketing Tool This Holiday Season

Calendar Tools: Meet Customers Where They’re At

Calendar tools such as alerts, notifications, add-an-event features, subscription options, etc., don’t completely replace traditional marketing, however, marketers can think of them as rocket fuel for supercharging those efforts. In that sense, even just a one-time touchpoint can be converted into a lasting relationship with customers.

Consider: Your brand has a popular product drop coming up. Traditional marketing grabs audience attention, but the simple addition of an add-to-my-calendar button or a subscribe option to an email can integrate your brand and its events, messaging and more into that customer’s calendar moving forward. Brand subscribers then receive multiple notifications, brand messages and perhaps points or incentives for member status, building anticipation, incentivizing participation, and positioning your event and brand as top of mind.

Calendar tools allow brands to cut through digital noise without relying on third-party platforms, creating a direct connection to their customer base. They also provide the opportunity to give voice to your company culture and align campaigns around certain dates. With Google having removed key dates such as Black History Month and Pride Week from its platform, a brand can not only help mark important dates for its audience but also show where it stands and even help customers celebrate these moments with events or related products.

Even outside the context of a product drop, brand event or broader cultural celebration, calendar tools can help brands not only amplify their messaging but create deeper, direct and long-lasting connections with the customers they value most.

Joep Leussink is the head of growth at AddEvent, a San Francisco-based platform that provides event and calendar marketing solutions.