The short answer
- Stay with a spreadsheet if one person plans, you send to one market, and nobody outside your team approves emails.
- Move to software when a second market, a translator, a client or a stakeholder joins in, or when “which version is final?” starts coming up.
- You don’t have to choose blind: start from our free calendar template, and if you outgrow it, it imports straight into Mailfois.
Who’s writing this: I’m Liam Kane, and I built Mailfois, which is the software I mention below. I’ll be honest about when you don’t need it.
What a spreadsheet does well
- It’s free and everyone already knows how to use it.
- It’s flexible: add a column for anything, filter, sort and colour as you like.
- It handles any structure, including a row per market or per language.
- It’s portable: share it with anyone, export it anywhere.
Five signs you’ve outgrown it
- Approvals live in email chains. You can’t tell from the sheet who approved which version, or when.
- “Which version is final?” The email changed after someone said yes, and nobody noticed.
- Markets drift. One market sends on the wrong day because its row wasn’t updated.
- Translations are tracked in someone’s head. Copy goes out to translators, and coming back is a guess.
- You chase people. Reminders, follow-ups and “did you see this?” take up real time every week.
You’re not alone if approvals are the slow part. In Litmus’s 2023 survey of more than 440 email marketers, “collecting feedback” was the biggest bottleneck, named by 35%, and 62% of teams said building an email took two weeks or more.
Side by side
| Spreadsheet | Email planning software (for example Mailfois) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Mailfois: free plan; Pro £12 a month; Team £24 per seat a month |
| Send dates by market | A row or column per market, kept up to date by hand | A send date and progress per market on every campaign |
| Approvals | Outside the sheet, usually in email | Review rounds with versions, comments and a record of who approved what |
| Outside approvers | Share the sheet, then collect yeses by email | Private links, no account needed, with automatic reminders |
| Translation | A status column | Copy extracted from the email, sent to translators and tracked per language |
| Checks before sending | A checklist tab, if you keep one | Brand, accessibility and link checks on every email |
| History | Whatever’s left in the sheet | Every approved email kept in a searchable library |
A middle way
You don’t need to throw your spreadsheet away. Keep it as the plan if you like, and add software only for the part that hurts, usually approvals. Or move the whole plan across in one go: Mailfois imports Excel, CSV or pasted cells, matches the columns for you, and puts anything that doesn’t fit into notes, so nothing is lost.
What to put in your spreadsheet calendar
Whichever you choose, these columns save trouble: campaign name, send date, time and time zone, market and language, audience, owner, builder, copy due, translation due, build by, sign-off due, and a status. Our free template has them all, and the 2027 email marketing calendar lists the key dates by country.
Frequently asked questions
Is a spreadsheet good enough for an email marketing calendar?
Often, yes. If one person plans, you send to one market and nobody outside your team approves emails, a spreadsheet works well and costs nothing. It starts to struggle when you add markets, translators or outside approvers.
What should an email marketing calendar spreadsheet include?
Campaign name, send date, time and time zone, market and language, audience, owner, builder, copy due, translation due, build-by and sign-off dates, and a status for each market.
Is there a free email marketing calendar template?
Yes. Mailfois has a free email marketing calendar template for Excel and Google Sheets, with example campaigns across several markets. It also imports straight into the Mailfois planner.
How do I move my email calendar from a spreadsheet to software?
In Mailfois, open the Planner and choose Import. Upload an Excel or CSV file, or paste the cells. Columns are matched for you, each row becomes a campaign (or a market on a campaign), and anything that doesn’t fit a field goes into notes.
Liam Kane is an email and marketing automation specialist with over ten years in marketing and seven in email, planning and building campaigns on Marketo, Bloomreach and Silverpop. He founded Mailfois, so read his take on it with that in mind. More about Liam.
Sources, checked 14 October 2026: Litmus State of Email Workflows 2023, Mailfois calendar template. Prices are in the currency each company publishes and change over time, so check before you buy. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.