Running a pet store means juggling a lot—sales, staff, vendors, events, promotions, and customer communication—all while trying to stay ahead of what’s coming next. The Marketing Calendar was built to bring all of that planning into one clear, easy-to-use place.
The Marketing Calendar is your central hub for organizing store events and planning the marketing campaigns that support them. It helps you see what’s happening, what’s coming up, and—most importantly—schedule your marketing in advance instead of scrambling at the last minute.
Whether you’re planning a weekend sale, hosting an adoption event, promoting an Astro Offer, or scheduling an email campaign for an upcoming pet holiday, the Marketing Calendar helps you stay organized and proactive instead of reactive.
What the Marketing Calendar Is (and What It’s Not)
The Marketing Calendar is designed to support real-world retail planning, not just digital marketing.
It’s a place where you can:
- Plan and organize store events
- Coordinate marketing campaigns that support those events
- Schedule upcoming Marketing Suite campaigns directly from the calendar
- See Astro-provided opportunities you can opt into
- Build a clearer, more intentional marketing rhythm for your business
It’s not a rigid system or a one-size-fits-all marketing plan. You stay in control. The calendar simply helps you visualize your opportunities and take action with confidence.
Schedule Marketing Campaigns Directly From the Calendar
One of the most powerful features of the Marketing Calendar is how closely it’s connected to the Marketing Suite.
Instead of jumping between tools or trying to remember when to send a campaign, you can schedule your marketing exactly when it makes sense—right from the calendar itself.
Here’s the idea:
- Click on a date and time in the calendar
- Draft your email or marketing campaign
- Schedule it to send
- Move on with your day
Your calendar becomes more than a reminder—it becomes the place where your marketing actually gets done.
This makes it easy to:
- Plan campaigns around your store events
- Schedule emails or promotions days or weeks in advance
- Maintain consistent communication without feeling overwhelmed
- See your events and marketing campaigns together in one view
What You Can Plan in the Calendar
Retailers can use the Marketing Calendar to organize and plan things like:
- Sales and promotions
- Adoption events and fundraisers
- Educational events (nutrition nights, training demos, workshops)
- Customer appreciation days
- Pop-ups, vendor days, and in-store demos
- Local markets, festivals, and community events
Once your events are on the calendar, scheduling the marketing to support them becomes fast, intentional, and stress-free.
What Astro Adds to the Calendar for You
To make planning even easier, Astro Marketing publishes key opportunities directly into the calendar, so you don’t have to hunt for them elsewhere.
You’ll see things like:
- Pet Holidays you can build campaigns around
- Astro Offers sale events you can opt into
- Campaign suggestions tied to seasonal trends and retailer success
- Marketing Meet-Ups and educational events hosted by Astro
These entries are designed to spark ideas, support your planning, and help you align your store’s marketing with high-impact opportunities throughout the year.
Why This Calendar Is a Game-Changer
The biggest challenge in marketing isn’t creativity—it’s timing and consistency.
The Marketing Calendar helps you:
- See marketing opportunities before they sneak up on you
- Schedule campaigns ahead of time (and stop forgetting to send them)
- Avoid last-minute scrambling
- Space out campaigns so customers aren’t overwhelmed
- Align promotions with real store activity
When your events and your marketing live in the same place, everything becomes easier to execute—and more effective.
How This Fits Into Your Bigger Marketing Strategy
Think of the Marketing Calendar as the planning and scheduling layer that supports everything else you do in Astro.
It works alongside:
- Email campaigns
- SMS messaging (if enabled)
- Astro Offers
- In-store promotions
- Loyalty engagement
Instead of asking, “What should I market this week?” you can start asking, “What’s already on my calendar—and how can I promote it effectively?”
What’s Next
This overview article is your starting point.
From here, you’ll find additional Knowledge Base articles that:
- Walk through how to add and manage events
- Show how to draft and schedule campaigns from the calendar
- Share best-practice scheduling strategies
- Offer tips for planning around pet holidays and Astro Offers
The goal isn’t to give you more work—it’s to give you more clarity, more control, and more confidence in your marketing.
Your calendar already runs your business.
Now it can run your marketing, too.