The first impression of your company often comes from brand touch points. This can be anything from the subject line of a newsletter to the in-line image of a blog post to the look and feel of your logo.
Behind every strong brand is a design team setting the tone of every campaign.
If you’re a designer, think about how you realistically spend your time. We’d bet much of it is taken up acting as a “brand police” to make sure the company’s brand guidelines are actually followed.
If you’re struggling with the design-to-code process, you’re likely spending too much time troubleshooting code issues than designing. Even with a brief-to-template or brief-to-module process, the clock can tick away as you repair broken templates, instead of spending time coming up with the next big campaign.
The problem for designers
For designers, a blocked content supply chain can feel like a constant battle against inefficiencies. Endless revisions, waiting for approvals, and troubleshooting code issues leave little time for creativity.
What happens when the bottlenecks disappear? An optimized content supply chain removes these barriers, so that designers gain the freedom to focus on what they do best—creating impactful, high-quality content that drives results.
Here are four key things designers can achieve when an unblocked content supply chain unlocks their full potential.
4 things designers can do with an unblocked content supply chain
1. Produce stronger emails and landing pages
Designers care deeply about aesthetics—that’s a given. If you’re a designer, a streamlined content supply chain allows you to dedicate more time to perfecting the look and feel of marketing assets.
Instead of spending hours fixing template issues or double-checking brand compliance after rounds of feedback through a number of teams and tools, you can focus on enhancing the visual appeal of emails and landing pages.
With fewer back-and-forths, designers can refine typography, optimize color schemes, and ensure that layouts are visually compelling across all devices—all while staying brand compliant.
Marketing leaders would be wise to look for a more efficient process that enables designers to align their work with brand guardrails, tech, and timeliness while still pushing creative boundaries.
2. Iterate on designs faster
In many traditional workflows, designers must wait for developers or email production teams to generate proofs after every small change. This can slow down the iteration and approval process.
With an efficient content supply chain, designers can see real-time results of their work to ensure that emails and landing pages render correctly across different devices and platforms.
This real-time visibility allows for rapid iteration. This reduces the number of design versions required before final approval. If teams have immediate access to design previews, they can address potential issues—such as broken layouts, incorrect alt text, or misaligned images—before they become roadblocks, or worse mistakes that slip through the cracks.
3. Focus on innovation instead of troubleshooting
A major pain point for designers is spending too much time fixing design-to-code issues. Whether it’s ensuring proper mobile responsiveness, adjusting padding, or troubleshooting ESP/MAP rendering problems, these tasks consume valuable creative energy.
An optimized content supply chain eliminates these frustrations by providing designers with tools that simplify coding and reduce errors. This shift allows them to focus on creative storytelling, interactive design elements, and user experience improvements—rather than on fixing technical issues.
By reducing manual, time-consuming tasks, designers can think more strategically about campaigns.
In practical terms, designers can:
- Experiment with new design trends
- Innovate in a timely manner
- Respond to current trends and best practices
- Spend more time developing testing options
All of these means design teams can work more strategically and creatively to enhance engagement and conversion rates for campaigns, thus contributing to the overall marketing team’s success.
4. Strengthen brand consistency and governance with ease
Brand consistency is crucial, yet difficult to maintain in inefficient workflows. As AI becomes mainstream in the marketing creation workflow, the room for error widens. Designers often act as “logo cops,” ensuring that all emails and landing pages adhere to brand guidelines.
A disorganized content supply chain is the perfect breeding ground for inconsistencies that can force designers to spend excessive time on corrections. Or worse: miss things altogether.
With a well-oiled content supply chain, brand elements—logos, fonts, and color schemes—are standardized and easily accessible. This means designers can trust that all assets remain on-brand without manually reviewing every iteration.
By automating brand compliance, you can:
- Reduce errors
- Increase efficiency
- Maintain governance across all brands and sub-brands
- Ensure a polished, professional look across all campaigns
Creative potential, unlocked
A broken content supply chain stifles creativity and productivity. By embracing an optimized workflow, designers, copywriters, content teams, MOPs, and more can eliminate inefficiencies, accelerate production, and elevate the quality of their work.
Stensul’s Marketing Creation Platform streamlines the entire process—empowering designers to focus on what matters most: crafting visually stunning, high-performing marketing assets.
Want to unlock your team’s full creative potential? Learn how Stensul can transform your content supply chain today. Your designers will thank you.
