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Understanding the difference between localization and language translation in email marketing

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Understanding the differences between localization and language translation can help your email campaigns perform well.
Digital marketer thinking about localization for an email campaign

When it comes to email marketing, language is a critical component. After all, you want your message to be clear and understandable to your target audience, no matter where your customers are. But, as many marketers have discovered, simply translating your emails from one language to another doesn’t always cut it. That’s where localization comes in.

What is localization?

Localization is the process of adapting content to a specific locale or region. This includes translating the text and ensuring the content is culturally appropriate and relevant to the target audience. In other words, localization considers the nuances of a particular language and culture and adjusts the content accordingly.

For example, you’re a global brand launching a new product in Japan. Localization would involve adapting content to appeal to a Japanese audience, using appropriate language, images, and cultural references. Localization would involve adapting your content to appeal to a Japanese audience, using appropriate language, images, and cultural references. Your English marketing materials would suffice. But considering the cultural differences between the two countries, your message could stay flat.

What is translation?

Translation is simply converting text from one language to another. While it is essential, there are other considerations. Without localization, your message may not resonate with your target audience, even if translated accurately. 

How does localization relate to email marketing?

When it comes to email marketing, localization is essential for reaching international audiences. Whether you’re targeting a specific region or trying to connect with customers around the globe, localization can help ensure that your message is clear, relevant, and effective.

You’re a retailer with an online store that ships internationally. You want to send an email to customers promoting a new line of products. Rather than sending the same email to all subscribers in every country, consider creating different email versions for each region. This would involve adapting the content to appeal to each audience, using appropriate language, images, and cultural references.

How can Stensul help with localization?

The Stensul Email and Landing Page Creation Platform simplifies and speeds up email campaign creation. One of the platform’s key features is Stensul Localization, a set of capabilities allowing marketers to create localized versions of their emails quickly and easily.

Stensul lets you localize emails at scale. From the Stensul Creation Platform, simply export an email in your base language to over 15 translation platforms via an industry-standard format, then upload multiple files to create localized email copies. You follow that by sharing the localized emails with relevant local teams for collaborative review and approval. 

Before Stensul Localization, creating an email campaign in multiple languages was highly time-consuming. Every element of an email would have to be manually extracted, sent for translation, and then copied back into a new file for each language. That meant if there were 20 target languages, 20 individual translated versions of the email asset would have to be created. Then each is reviewed, adding significant time, especially if specific versions need changes after being checked by local teams or native speakers.

Stensul Localization reduces the time to complete that process by as much as 80 percent. As more marketing initiatives go cross-border, sending emails in the preferred language of their recipients – an essential element of personalization – handling this efficiently is critical.

In addition to simplifying the process of creating localized emails, Stensul also helps ensure brand consistency across multiple regions. Robust, programmable guardrails ensure marketers that their branding and design parameters are consistent no matter the location of their customers or who might be creating the email. 

Learn more about Stensul Localization.

While translation is essential to creating localized email campaigns, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Localization, which involves adapting content to a specific locale or region, is essential for ensuring your message is clear, relevant, and effective. With the Stensul Localization feature, marketers can easily create localized versions of their email campaigns, helping them connect with customers worldwide.

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