When it comes to managing email creation in most companies, it’s not just about the weekly e-newsletter. All units have a need for emails and need them created. For example, Customer Success wants to communicate with specific customer segments, Sales needs to connect with leads that might be going cold, and the CEO wants to send a personal note to customers, partners, and investors about some exciting upcoming developments.
Those examples reflect what you may have been seeing. Email requests keep rising, which is understandable as email continues to show its ability to outperform just about all other communications methods.
For the teams practicing an agile process, the sudden jump in email requests is doable. But for the marketing operations leaders who were already struggling to keep up with those requests, adding one more campaign to the existing project list only intensifies existing challenges. When you are in the middle of the chaos, moving from one project to the next, it is difficult to identify the primary pain points in your email creation process, much less address them. But being able to name the problem is the first step to fixing it.
In our time working with marketing operations and marketing leaders, Stensul has discovered five primary signs that an email creation process may be broken:
Problem #1: Email campaigns take too long to get out the door
If the time it takes for an email to go from idea to delivery is regularly delayed because of your review and approval process, then you have a problem. Something as simple as a revision to your footer content or an outdated image needing to be replaced in the email becomes a place delay point in the system. The product manager doesn’t like new copy, so the copywriter has to rewrite it, or a designer adds an unapproved photo. That email has to go back to the start of the approval process, taking up time that no one has.
With the Stensul Email Creation Platform, permissions can be set so only approved images are available, and sections of the email can only be revised within parameters defined by Marketing Operations (MOPs). Reviews and approvals no longer have to be a back-and-forth process that lasts for days, even weeks. The process stays on track and deadlines are met.
Problem #2: Your team keeps fixing the same content errors week to week
Often MOPs teams tasked with managing email campaigns feel their hands are tied when it comes to streamlining the email creation process. When you have multiple business units contributing to your email creation process, it’s easy for branding guidelines to be overlooked — or worse, problematic creative elements get added to an email that end up causing rendering issues.
Stensul eliminates the need for MOPs professionals to act as proof-readers. With Stensul, emails are created using custom modules built by the MOPs team that allows for more creative flexibility than a limited set of rigid email templates. Each module has guardrails that can be put in place around email elements like fonts, colors and text styles, enabling an error-free collaboration process.
Problem #3: Someone outside the MOPs team is using a ‘rogue’ tool
There is nothing more exasperating for a MOPs leader than learning someone outside of the team is using an email creation method or system without checking to make sure it will work with existing systems. A simple design tool can be a major roadblock if the technology does not integrate with the platforms and apps already in place.
It is the MOPs team’s responsibility to oversee the full martech stack. If someone outside their group is using a “rogue” tool, the entire process can be delayed – or worse, come to a screeching halt. To make for a smooth process, each piece of your email marketing stack should easily integrate with each other. Any email creation platform that doesn’t integrate with your email automation tools or major platforms like Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Eloqua and Adobe Campaign is not only a red flag, it will most likely break whatever email creation process you have in place.
Problem #4: Compliance issues are an ongoing challenge
GDPR and CCPA legislation have made compliance a front-of-mind matter for marketers. However, MOPs teams have long been making sure their business’ email programs follow the legal guidelines set forth by CASL, CAN-SPAM, ADA and other industry-specific regulations.
The only problem is, if your organization has a decentralized team, there is a chance not everyone creating emails knows the rules. Do all emails include an unsubscribe link and list your company’s postal address in the footer? What about a link to your company’s terms and conditions? Do the images in your emails include alt tags to meet accessibility guidelines? If you can’t confirm that every email contains this information, your email programs may be violating legal regulations and your company is at risk of incurring substantial penalties and fines.
With Stensul, MOPs teams can easily enforce compliance guidelines across campaigns by setting rules within the custom modules. This means your email creation process can be just as easily managed with a decentralized team as it can within a centralized team.
Problem #5: Non-stop flow of email requests is limiting productivity
Does it sometimes feel as if your team cannot come up for air due to the influx of email campaign requests? If your MOPs team is not embracing an agile practice within your email creation process, you’re likely spending way too much time on production-related activities and not nearly enough on strategy.
You may not be able to control the number of email requests your team receives, but you can control how you manage those requests. Putting an agile process in place and implementing an Email Creation Platform like Stensul’s can help increase productivity, save time, reduce costs, and create emails that perform better.
Whether your email creation process takes too much time or your MOPs team is repeatedly having to correct the same content errors, the remedy can be as simple as adding Stensul to your martech stack. Putting the right solution in place can help you adopt a more agile practice – allowing your team to focus more of its time on strategy and less on execution. Productivity increases, cost efficiencies become more apparent, and best of all, your email creation process aligns with your business’ overall goals.
