The end result of a campaign matters. That’s a given. But it’s not just the output of a campaign that’s critical to marketing success. Oftentimes, the way a marketing team creates content impacts the end result. The creation and distribution process can impact: go-to-market speed, efficiency of resources, ability to be agile and strategic, and ultimately ROI.
And while the way marketing teams create content has never been more critical, it’s also never been more complex. As pressure mounts to deliver more campaigns, hone personalization, and adapt to an AI landscape, the creation operating model a marketing team uses to create content is now a key competitive differentiator.
At Stensul, we’ve worked with some of the world’s leading enterprise marketers, and we’ve identified four primary Creation Operating Models: Distributed, Design to Code,and Brief to Template.
First, we’ll define what a Creation Operating Model is, walk through these three models, explain why they matter, and discuss the future of all three in an AI-focused world.
What is a creation operating model?
Simply put, a creation operating model is how an organization structures its internal workflow from creation to deployment, primarily focusing on the processes, people, and technology.
Essentially: how a marketing team goes from idea to output.
Different orgs rely on different models, depending on a variety of factors including: in-house technical talent, design resourcing, volume, complexity of creation, size of team, etc. There are pros and cons to each (more on those later!). And for years, many of the models have served teams well. But the fact of the matter is: Today’s creation operating models are flat out broken.
On average, it can take more than two weeks to get a single email out the door. Even the most efficient teams still take more than 4 days to get a single email out. Not only is that inefficient, but in a world now fueled by AI creation, personalization, and instant gratification, speed-to-market is simply non-negotiable.
Inefficient campaign creation from a broken creation operating model:
- Wastes resources
- Decreases customer engagement
- Results in lost opportunities and revenue
Before we get into the fix for the broken process, let’s dive into each creation operating model individually to see which one your team uses.
The 3 types of Creation Operating Models
1. Distributed
Overview:
Where it’s often found: B2B and some B2B companies like media, EdTech and Real Estate
Who creates content in this model: Marketers building in templates in the deployment platform (usually Marketo, Eloqua, or Pardot)
Content time to market: Hours to days depending on marketer skill set
Key characteristics: Limited flexibility and marketers have to learn to use complex templates that can often break and need to be fixed. and
The Distributed model gives marketers autonomy, but it’s often at the expense of brand consistency and scalability. Either a QA team needs to check and fix every email or things can go out broken. Most importantly, marketers may spend hours fighting with templates or need to get help from a central operations team to help them.
Pros:
- For highly trained marketers, this may work well
Cons:
- No centralized oversight
- Marketers spend a significant amount of time fighting with templates
- Emails can go out broken if there is not a QA team in place
- Updating and telling marketers to use new templates is challenging
- Significant time spent on training marketers
2. Design to Code
Overview:
Where it’s often found: B2C companies
Who creates content in this model: Designers and Content Strategists make a full design file based on the marketing brief and developers translate it to code
Content time to market: 2–4 weeks
Key characteristics: High brand and creative value
While this model ensures strong designs and creative, it makes it challenging to scale as designers and production teams face increasing demands to do more with less time and resources.
Pros:
- Creative flexibility
- Strong oversight
Cons:
- Slower to market
- Inefficient workflow
- Limited time to analyze data and feed that back into creation
- Designers or Content Strategists usually need to put together a file with links, dynamic content instructions and a copy deck that goes along with the design file and give instructions to production
- High production time spent converting designs to code
3. Brief to Template
Overview:
Where it’s often found: B2B companies
Who creates content: Ops and campaign teams get briefs and copies briefs into templates
Content time to market: 3-12 days
Key characteristics: Strong oversight and workflow process
Brief to Template is optimized for control, but it sacrifices agility and creative flexibility. If the brief isn’t perfect, delays and rework are inevitable.
Pros:
- Strong oversight
Cons:
- Limited creative flexibility
- Heavy production time spent on copying briefs to templates and making edits that could otherwise go to strategy.
- Marketers can’t see the email as it’s being built and have to wait for production to see what it looks like
Future state: Redefining Creation Operating Models to gain efficiency
The reality of Creation Operating Models is that they’re much more complicated than they may seem. Teams must redefine their Creation Operating Models to incorporate guardrails in order to gain efficiency. By adding in guardrails, each of the three operating models are able to move to a future state that brings greater efficiency and agility.
The crucial thing to keep in mind with adding in defined guardrails is that with the shift in workflow, teams are now working in a state where emails aren’t sent out directly, but rather final checks are made to ensure compliance. Think of this this way: The guardrail addition allows content to be fully mocked up so that production teams don’t have to do that work anymore and can focus on automations, dynamic content, and strategy that drives lift in the program.
And with the rise of generative AI tools, this model is more important than ever.
Let’s take a deeper look at how a redefined Creation Operating Model with guardrails can impact all three of the current Creation Operating Models.
For the Distributed Creation Operating Model:
Teams are using guardrails to give marketers a safer place to create vs fighting with templates in the MAP.
- This saves marketing time with not having to fight templates
- Saves QA time by protecting the brand and code.
For the Design to Code Creation Operating Model:
Teams are using guardrails to allow designers to build in templates directly instead of a design program. These guardrails also allow some marketers to build simple emails like newsletters and skip the need for design and code. This allows:
- The designers can see what the emails will actually look like as they are building (mobile/desktop, dark/light mode, line breaks and links).
- Remove the need to packing the design file with a document of metadata and instructions for the production team
- Removes the need to move design to code
For the Brief to template Creation Operating Model:
Marketers can build emails in a safe place instead of submitting a brief and making edits. This allows:
- Marketing to see what the email looks like from the start
- Remove the need for production to copy brief content to templates and make edits
Of course there are cons to all of these as well, as they require a shift in behavior and tooling. But both of those adjustments can greatly impact a team’s workflow in the long run.
How (and why) to fix a broken Creation Operating Model
Now that you’re familiar with the different models, let’s dive into why you need to pay attention to your Creation Operating Model.
A broken Creation Operating Model can mean a slow and inefficient time to market. By increasing speed to market, two things happen that ultimately increase performance:
- More personalized emails can be created and sent and increase conversion rates.
- Internal operations resources can be reallocated to analyzing data, optimization and A/B testing to further drive incremental gains.
But in order to achieve this desired state, you need to remove the bottlenecks in your creation process today.
We’ve pinpointed three bottlenecks currently plaguing teams.
Creation Operating Models in the age of AI
AI is accelerating the pace of content ideation and creation, but it’s also surfacing a new set of challenges: more content means more room for inconsistency, compliance risks, and collaboration chaos.
Marketers are no longer just fighting against slow workflows—they’re fighting complexity. AI can help generate content faster, but it can’t fix broken processes or disconnected systems. That’s where the Self-Serve with Guardrails model excels.
It brings order to creation, without slowing it down. It lets marketers move at the speed of AI, but with the confidence of built-in brand governance and QA.
Operating models aren’t just process diagrams—they’re productivity engines. Choosing the right one can mean the difference between reacting to change or leading it.
The future belongs to those who can scale personalized, compliant content without slowing down. That future belongs to Self-Serve with Guardrails.
If you’re ready to evolve your operating model, Stensul can help. Request a walkthrough of your current operating model to see how Stensul can help.
