Email Design Process

Mapping out your process is a great way to see if your process is bloated or streamlined.

I once had three clients at the same time. Brand A and Brand B could produce 12 email designs per month while Brand C could only produce 4 email designs per month. All brands had the same amount of designers...

I decided to map out each brands email design process, divided vertically into lanes:

1. Communication Calendar Finalized

2. Email Calendar Finalized

3. Email Briefs Written

4. Campaign Deck Updated With Comms

5. Email Design & Copy

6. Email Building & Scheduling

Here's what I learned

• Brands A & B had a 14 step process // Brand C had a 22 step process.

• Brands A & B used 1 project management tool // Brand C used 2 project management tools and one of them was being used like a Google doc (aka not fully or correctly utilized).

• Brand C's process varied when it came to writing briefs. These were housed in a Google Slide deck (one deck per campaign) where all channels write their briefs and other people comment on them and you change them whenever there is an update to the campaign.

• Brand C's Email Design & Copy phase branched off four ways based on the type of content that was in the email.

• None of the brands do batch reviews with multiple teams. They prefer for each person to leave their comments separately in the project management tool (aka an Asana task houses an email brief). Batch reviews are a HUGE opportunity for other teams to educate each other; this leads to improved performance in the future.

• None of the brands used Figma as a means to view an entire months worth of content at a time. This can be achieved by using a Figma Project as a month board. Emails can be built directly in Figma.

Successful Processes

• All teams understand that the processes & tools that got them here... won't get them to where they want to go. Meaning... processes that worked for you in the past usually don't scale so you'll have to abandon them for completely new processes.

• Multiple teams use one project management tool and don't use email chains to confirm information.

• Multiple teams join a weekly creative review where all assets are viewed as a team and any issues/concerns are brought up in this meeting.

• The project management tool is used to its fullest capacity: automations & rules are utilized.

• A project management tool won't be fully effective unless the companies top employees (VPs & Senior Managers) fully adopt the it-- any company whose VPs & Senior Managers won't use a PM tool will never scale and effectively grow.