Murphy’s Law states that if something can go wrong, it will. The same thing applies to the typical process used to create an email with dynamic content. It’s complicated, with many points in the process for bad things to happen to email marketers and their emails.
Three things occur all too often that cause the email creation process to derail:
- Data isn’t available or reliable.
- The ESP/MAP dynamic content implementation isn’t optimal.
- Proofing, review, and approval of each module, and QA aren’t efficient.
There are more than three problem points, of course. Consider the less-than-user-friendly email builder in most ESPs/MAPs. It’s a big reason things go wrong.
Dynamic content email is predicated on the right code prompting the right content to appear in the right module when triggered at the right moment for the person. For that to happen, creators need to use a time-intensive process to review and approve each module. Once the reviewer finds they are correct, the modules are then converted to handle dynamic content.
Unfortunately, many creators will handle content while simultaneously working on the data/code in an ill-conceived attempt to save time. The potential for causing problems by doing these two things at once is high. What’s more, troubleshooting any code—and thus a content-related issue—is a major time-suck and never fun. When creators do not follow QA best practices, including testing each dynamic content permutation, the likelihood an email will be a resounding failure is considerable.
Let’s get back to ESP’s/MAP’s email builder. Even if you feel you’ve done everything right, you won’t know until you have that ESP/MAP send a proof. The first proof of an email created this way is rarely ready to be uploaded for deployment. What happens next is an often frustrating back-and-forth of reviewing, adjusting, more reviewing, and more adjusting until the email with dynamic content is right—in all its variations.
Things go wrong because creating emails with dynamic content this way requires too many steps and too much time, making the risk of production problems, launch delays, or worse unavoidable.
The option of simply not building dynamic content into emails makes little sense. Directing emails to individuals with messages that adapt to appeal specifically to them, which is what makes the content “dynamic,” raises click-through rates 15% and boosts transaction rates by 6x, on average.
A better way to create dynamic content emails
The way to simplify and speed the creation process while reducing the risk of error is to author and preview dynamic content from a single platform. Specifically, that should be an email creation platform where everything can be done with ease and control outside the ESP/MAP, allowing the MOPs team to focus that resource on its true strength—email deployment.
Creating dynamic content in this way lets you:
- Create and save segments in the email creation platform and build components from content and segments.
- Create content versions from existing modules.
- Publish components directly to your ESP/MAP or an HTML export with a syntax script included.
By placing an email creation platform that enables the creation and handling of dynamic content with the same level of detail as the other email components at the center of your process, your team will be able to create emails in a single, collaborative environment.
An email creation platform simplifies the creation process by removing much of the time-consuming back-and-forth. It doesn’t deploy emails. It sits in front of your ESP/MAP, letting you leverage its core strength.
An email creation platform empowers non-technical team members to create emails that are on-brand, compliant, and responsive every time due to robust guardrails that can have every element of your corporate branding guidelines programmed in.
Create with more control, speed, and safety
Creating an email in an ESP/MAP is already clunky. Now add dynamic content to the mix and it’s even more of a challenge for the MOPs person overseeing that system. They likely weren’t part of the campaign plan, can’t control what a user can build or write, and now have to test the dynamic content. What are the risks of using dynamic content? Besides bad code, the emails may not conform to branding guidelines, regulations, or even accessibility requirements, among others. Authoring emails with dynamic content in an email creation platform eliminates those issues. Robust, programmable guardrails ensure such emails will be high quality in all manner, shape, and form.
Along with control, an email creation platform allows you to create emails in up to 90% less time than the typical approaches. That’s key because email requests continue to rise, forcing you and your team to make the most of your time, resources, and skills. To be sure, creating new segments can require more technical help. The email creation platform lets you deal effectively with that requirement by compressing overall creation time.
If you run your review and approval process through an email thread, a workflow system, or messaging platform, there’s no way to see the result. You can’t view the dynamic elements of the email unless you prepare and distribute a proof of each version. Not being able to see dynamic results creates plenty of risks. Guessing what it will look like isn’t a prudent strategy and reviewing each version is probably out of the question unless you have an endless amount of time.
Using an email creation platform, you can see the email’s appearance before you produce your first proof. The platform lets an admin set up dynamic content once, so an end user can reuse that dynamic scripting in an easy, no-code way. Instead of needing to touch code with each dynamic email you create, you can reuse dynamic elements without knowing the technical back-end. That means even a non-technical person can create emails with dynamic content quickly, easily, and with the certainty they will work as planned. And by keeping people from accessing code, the chance it might break essentially becomes zero.
To learn more about creating emails with dynamic content faster, easier, and safer, download the Stensul eBook, The dynamics of dynamic content in email creation.
