7 Tales of Horror in Email Creation

If you’ve worked a day or a decade, you’ve come across the type. You know, the sort who’s very busy, very important, and never has time to wait when it makes sense. When it comes to following procedures, this type acts like rules are for everyone but themselves.

Few deal with that type as much as Nathan. He leads digital marketing at a networking systems company doing business around the globe. To say his job involves a lot of moving parts and people would be an understatement. Nonetheless, his email marketing team numbers just 4, including himself. They handle about 25-30 different email initiatives each month, with several of them consisting of multiple emails that need to be created. That’s a lot of work done by not a lot of people.

Nathan will admit that all those requests can be overwhelming at times. It’s not that he and his team don’t want to turn ideas for emails into actual HTML-coded emails. The process used at the company, called Design-to-Code, has them creating a single marketing email in about two weeks.

That method is the email equivalent of custom-tailoring. Each garment is unique, bespoke, handmade in a meticulous fashion. Each email is hand-coded. Craftsmanship has its place, but not in the case of an email to build attendance for a seminar being held in a hotel conference room somewhere on the globe. It needs to get done and deployed fast, or the opportunity to fill the room and make an impact on a group of prospects is lost.

In those instances, Nathan has to deal with the very busy, very important types. No one is busier or more important than Bernie. He’s a Director of Field Marketing, covering the company’s APAC region. Nathan accepts that Bernie has lots to do, but it always seems to be done in a panic-mode manner.

He suspects Bernie might have a problem with program planning and time management. Despite telling Bernie numerous times that his email team needs 10 to 14  days to fulfill an email request properly, his show up five days before they need to be sent.

Each time that happens, Nathan sends Bernie a message via the company’s Teams platform to let him know in real-time that his request can’t be handled adequately in the time asked. Usually, Bernie would make a Zoom call to ingratiate himself to Nathan.

“Hey, Nate…c’mon, buddy. You gotta do it for your pal Bernie. I need you to do this email. I need it in a couple of days.”

Nathan’s eyes gazed off to nowhere in particular. The blood vessels in his neck throbbed visibly. He slowly inhaled and spoke.

“Bernie, I’m not your pal or your buddy. I’m just like you, trying to do my job. Why can’t you get your email requests to me in enough time for my team to produce something we can all be proud of, something that works for you…that helps make your field marketing efforts more successful?”

“Nate, I need this email. I need you to create it now. Wow, what do I have to do?”

At that, Nathan cut Bernie off.  With a cold, emotionless voice, he said, “Nobody calls me Nate. No one and especially you. I told you what you have to do…get your email request to my team with enough time for us to create it properly. You haven’t done that…again!”

This reaction was all new to Bernie. He usually cajoled Nathan into performing miracles for his late email requests. It flustered then angered him. He needed this seminar to work. The APAC sales head was ratcheting up the pressure daily. He snapped and decided to go rogue and create an email on his own.

“Listen, Mister Email, you think your team are the only ones able to create emails? Well, you’re not! I know more than you think. I don’t need you for this! Goodbye…pal.” With that, he clicked on the End Meeting for All button and watched as Nathan’s image faded to black.

Bernie still had permission to go into the company’s MAP from when he was a member of the corporate marketing team at worldwide headquarters. He made his way to the email builder that’s part of the system. Bernie thought, “Hey, it’s drag and drop. How hard could it be?”

Somehow he managed to cobble together an invitation to the product seminar and sent it to prospects and customers across the APAC region.

He was pleased with himself.

Nathan walks across the company parking lot to his office three days later when his boss, Stan, comes up from behind. A physically imposing man, his tap on Nathan’s shoulder felt more like the strike of a hammer. Startled, Nathan stopped in his tracks and turned to see his boss quite angry.

Stan pulled a sheet of paper from his backpack and waved it at Nathan. “What kind of email is this? How in heaven’s name did this get out? You’re the one leading the email team. Explain it!”

Nathan took the paper from Stan’s hand and looked at it. He hadn’t seen it. As his eyes scanned over it, Nathan noticed typos, use of colors that weren’t part of the corporate palette, and, most disquieting, the footer of the email displayed the logo replaced 18 months ago.

“Well, Nathan, explain it!”

“Stan, I can and I can’t. He told of his recent heated exchange with Bernie, ending with the APAC field marketer threatening to go rogue and create the email himself, which he had done.

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I tried, but I really can’t. If someone can get into the MAP, they will try to build an email, even one that’s error-filled.

“Nathan, you lost control of this one. Sorry to say, but it’s on you. Figure out a way to stop this from ever happening again, and share your thinking with me tomorrow morning.”

Nathan nodded and watched his boss storm off to the office building. He followed close behind and started his work when he heard the alert for an incoming Zoom call.

He clicked on the button, and on his screen appeared a smirking Bernie.

“Hey Nate, old buddy…want to let you know the seminar was a smash hit. That email invite worked like a charm. Every seat was filled, and half of the attendees requested further discussion. I could not have done it without you. No…wait…I did! Later, pal.

It doesn’t have to be that way

There will always be those who will stretch the envelope till it tears. When that happens, it usually impacts those who urged against pushing beyond the limits of a  protocol, as it did with Nathan. He’s a person who feels it best to “stay within the lines,” but was undone by someone who thought otherwise.

However, what real controls did Nathan have? How could he control the likes of Bernie, who created his email, albeit chock full of errors? Access to the email builder was not as tight as thought, leaving the marketing organization more vulnerable to emails that could damage its reputation and financial performance.

Bernie’s going rogue wouldn’t have happened if the company had a way to create emails in hours, not weeks, by non-technical people guided by robust guardrails that ensure design and brand and regulatory compliance were constantly maintained.

Nathan and his boss, Stan, could have put a Stensul Email Creation Platform™ at the center of their email creation process to prevent Bernie from going rogue. It provides a single environment that brings together all involved to streamline collaboration and simplify email creation, eliminating much of the back-and-forths so common, and time-consuming in other email creation workflows.

If this tale of horror email creation strikes a little too close for comfort, let Stensul show you how to reduce your email creation times by up to 90% and keep your Bernies from going rogue.