The email schedule and content schedule are different but work together. The email schedule is about frequency, deliverability, and call to action. Will we communicate with the audience weekly, daily, or perhaps several times a day. The email schedule can also determine what combination of subject line and CTA are driving the most traffic to the landing page.
The CTA links email to the landing page where content lives to tell a story. Email and content can be managed independently and oftentimes they are. For example, you may see a real estate agent who sends out listings but clearly her messages do not follow any sort of sequence or link back to a landing page which provides a memorable story. The email may go out every week but instead of building on the company story comes off as noise. These transactions are not coordinated attempts but random shots at the goal instead.
Realizing that nothing will work the way you expect without first planning an action you should also have an accurate expectation of what the outcome will be. Creating editorial and email calendars represent a guess of what potential customers want to see and ofcourse how that solution will be delivered to their inbox. The first draft most likely will be a mess but the system of keeping coordinated calendars will always lead to better and more relevant content over time if we pay attention.
With the creation of an email calendar, the tendency is that it will enhance the work of your entire team. There is understanding among the team about which interactions have the highest probability of scoring. When this happens, more users are impacted by your emails and they begin to respond the way you expect them to.
The two calendar solution is one way to organize production in a way that all of your content has a fair chance to be tested. We use the calendar as a way to get closer to buyer personas. Over time a clear distinction of your most valuable content will surface. But with so many moving parts, it's important we standardize some things. If the marketing team and writers are moving to their own beat, your contacts will not get the freshest content or benefit from the most optimized pages. The analytics team will most likely lose out on the opportunity to test their predictions and move closer to the predictable behavior you want. All these things can be coordinated through thoughtful integration of calendars.