Which production line for a top email marketing strategy?

I admit, this article is a pretext to try to put in black and white a discourse that is often given to our customers... but it is not always easy to visualize for them. When you produces eCRM and email marketing campaigns at the (production) line, we often find ourselves with our mouths agape. We have not yet finished the programming of the sending of the newsletter of the day that our mind is already absorbed by the urgencies of the next one.

In fact, that's one of the main reasons to use an email marketing agency... to delegate, to outsource... to give yourself some breathing space, and perhaps to look at the horizon... to make long-term plans.

In short. In order to know where to put your foot down... you still need to have a vague idea of the (ideal? Who said ideal?) order of an eCRM campaign...

Let's prune a bit the subject and distinguish 3 types of cycles (this is a personal vision, if you see others, I'm a taker:

• The production cycle of "Ad-hoc" eCRM messages: i.e. messages that are sent only once, that are custom-made for a commercial action, that are sent to a large number of recipients
• The production cycle of automated/scripted campaigns: That is to say, everything that is of the order of the transactional message, the notification, the trigger. These messages are sent when certain conditions (linked to the customer/prospect data most of the time, but not only) are met. These messages are therefore sent "as they happen", without any manual control by the campaign manager.
• The strategic cycle: this is the one that often gets the short end of the stick, that we never have time to pamper, and yet it is ESSENTIAL to know where we come from... and therefore where we are going.

Let's tackle the most important thing? The "Ad-Hoc" production cycle

Yeah, well, it's not necessarily the most "IMPORTANT", but it's at least what you might want to discover first. I warn you, it's going to be a long version (Thomas might make a movie reference here, but don't ask too much of me)

• Writing of the campaign brief This is the beginning of everything! Sometimes, you will even get two briefs, a first brief from the people in charge of the products to be placed in your campaigns, and then a second more advanced brief. In the final brief, you will need to have a few elements that are absolutely essential for any email marketing campaign: a date, a target, objectives, a draft subject line (yes, I insist) and a draft AB test (I insist again).
• Writing the message No, no, no, you don't give a brief directly to a designer, you spend some time writing the message first. It is often interesting to go through a little exercise that will consist in writing word clouds: verbs related to the content, words that express the value that the reader will find in the proposal, words or groups of words that are essential to understand how to benefit from the proposal. And remember what Saint-Exupéry said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."
• Back and forth on the text If the writer has also conceived the brief and is in charge of the whole production chain (which is not really advisable), perhaps there will be no feedback. The risk in proofreading texts... is that everyone has their own opinion, and that everyone has the impression of being competent... which is not really the case (I'm probably taking some risks by saying that).
• Message design : Well, mhmmm, is there an email designer in the room (Thomas, you can stay seated). Not really the most common job. Email design is much more complicated than it seems, but the key word is "information hierarchy". A good email designer has two obsessions, to get at least one message across, and to invite a click. For this to be successful, the brief must be in concrete and clearly identify the primary information from the secondary elements. The mechanics of the offer must also be clearly explained so that it can be graphically rendered.
• Back and forth on design The design of an email is often... the revelation of bad writing... it's often frustrating for the designer, but there are many chances that you end up going back and forth on the text when it should have been finalized long ago. Again, on design, everyone has their opinion, tastes, colors, ... often to the detriment of the most important elements: hierarchy of information, inverted pyramid, contrast of calls to action, meaning of visuals, ... At worst, consider doing an AB test to decide (actually, not "at worst", do an AB test)!
• HTML integration What can I say... it must be perfect... or not (feel free to re-read this very old article on the principle of acceptable degradation)... it must be the best it is possible to do to make it readable in all environments! Yes, I know, it stings the eyes. Html integration for email is a very particular art. Where for the web, being compatible with the 4 main browsers in desktop and mobile version is enough... with email you have to be compatible with a dozen email clients, webmails and various other obstacles. Few are the specialists who master all the subtleties.
• Rendering tests It is an essential part of the production of an email marketing campaign, to check that all email clients display your messages correctly. There are specialized solutions for this, mainly Litmus and Email on Acid. If as an advertiser you don't see them coming... you should ask them to your agency, whether it is internal or external.
• Integration into the campaign management solution Phew, if you've made it this far, it means that the various other elements have been validated beforehand. This step does not only consist in copying/pasting the HTML code of your emails, but it is also the moment to track the links, to add personalization, to add the codes of the unsubscribe and mirror links, eventually to do some content parameterization (conditional blocks, info modifications according to some context elements, ...). There are some subtleties to think about at this time depending on the campaign management solutions used: Do you want separate stats for certain segments? Do you need to track sales? Do you need a reminder? Do you plan an AB test? (if yes, according to which rules) ... and many other things that should be included in your brief.
• Sending of the print order This is where you have to expect everything! In theory, everything should be ok on the first try since the previous steps have already been validated and there were no more remarks on the rendering. This step should only serve to validate the technical elements related to the integration in the campaign management solution. Nevertheless, most of the time, this proof will also be sent to a few people located one floor above in the hierarchy, who have not yet had the opportunity to see the message, and who might well want to add their grain of salt. It is also important to have several lists of testers for these proofs, as they can be very different depending on the products/brands targeted in your different emails.
• Import of data In an ideal world, there should be no manual data imports before a campaign is launched. Everything should be automated, right? In real life, it is still a necessary step in many situations: to create custom segments based on data from another information system, to load new leads that come from acquisition actions, data from data mining operations, ... and many other possibilities. This is a "dangerous" step. Think also about the security/destruction of this data which is unfortunately still too often exchanged by email.
• Segmentation Segmentation: This is a crucial step, which must again be well defined in the campaign brief. Ideally, the segmentation is not carried out so far into the production cycle, to allow for the return of counts and their validation by the client.
• Programming and sending the campaign This is a crucial step where the campaign manager must be extremely careful to verify all of the campaign's parameters. In an ideal world, this would require a third-party review of the campaign programming... because it's not really a step that can be "tested". Fingers crossed!
• Generation of campaign reports Ideally, in two waves 48 hours after the last email of the campaign is sent and then 5 days later. It is always interesting that this is in the hands of the campaign manager and that he/she forces himself/herself to write some comments on the most important indicators. This allows to be more attentive, to detect more easily possible anomalies and also to identify future optimizations.

Production of automated/scripted campaigns

On some steps, it is relatively similar to what we have seen previously on "Ad-hoc" emails, but unfortunately, everything will be multiplied tenfold. Indeed, there are few scenarios that contain only one message... We take the same ones and we start again! Most of the remarks explained above are still valid, so we will only focus on what makes automated scenarios specific.

• Writing of the campaign brief Specificity compared to a classic campaign, the trigger of the scenario must be defined very precisely, i.e. the conditions (based on the available data) that will activate the first step of the scenario for a contact. Then, it is important to graphically represent the different steps of the scenario in the form of a decision tree, specifying: the time between the different steps, the conditions that make a contact continue to move forward in the scenario, the conditions for taking one or another branch of the scenario, the recurrence of the scenario, etc. All this information must be technically validated by the campaign manager, who will have to put it into practice.
• Writing messages Nothing new here, except that there will be several to write and that there must be a common thread between the different stages of the scenario.
• Back and forth on the text : As usual
• Message design : As you can imagine, there has to be coherence between the stages, but otherwise nothing special in terms of production.
• Back and forth on design : As usual
• HTML integration : Here we should have a significant time saving, since a good part of the message elements will be the same on each step.
• Rendering test : As usual (but you have to do your render tests on all the steps eh 😉 ).
• Verification of data availability This is to check if the trigger can be set up with the data available in your campaign management tool. If it is not, you will have to either review the trigger itself or see if it is not possible to add this data. Another dimension to keep in mind is the speed at which the data arrives in your campaign management solution. If you need to send out a welcome script, but new customers are only coming into the system every 15 days... there are probably some adjustments to be made.
• Integration into the campaign management solution Once the messages are ready and the data has been validated, it's time to set up the scenarios in the campaign management tool. Chances are your eCRM campaign manager will need some clarification at this point regarding the elements presented in the brief.
• Design of the test plan  Step 2: This step is often complicated because it is necessary to take into account all of the scenarios present in the scenario, i.e. mainly the branches and customization options. Often it will be necessary to ensure that testers are in the test file several times... except that an email address can only be present once in your database. A trick is to use aliases, for example in Gmail boxes: myaddress+monalias@gmail.com. This way, you can have an alias for each case.
• Sending the tests : Here again, you have to take some precautions. To take the example of the welcome scenario, if it should send 4 emails every 3 days... you are not going to wait 9 days to test 4 emails! You will therefore have to change the sending delays between emails for the test period, and set the correct delays before activating the scenario (and don't forget to modify this).
• Activation of the scenario Good news, as your scenario is activated in small batches, the disasters should be less severe than in an Ad-hoc campaign... but that's no reason not to be careful, and not to have a colleague review this scenario.
• Monitoring the scenario In the first few days of execution, you will have to monitor the sends closely. Are the right targets going through the trigger, is the reactivity good on the messages...
• Generation of campaign reports In this case, we are in an "as we go" mode, so there is no question of sending one or two reports "once and for all"! Ideally, a monthly report should be generated, which includes the performance of the scenarios over periods of a week or a month. On this point alone, there is material for a dedicated article 😉

The "strategic" cycle: being able to take a step back from practices

The first two cycles, you probably practice them "more or less" correctly, probably at full speed... but without looking back. The worry is to think that when it will be a little calmer... you will have time to settle down, to analyze, to reflect, to consider working better! But this moment never arrives. So you have to force yourself a little. At Badsender, we have a service which is used for that, it is the strategic coaching, which allows you to introduce a third party who will do some of the thinking for you, and force you to have a rhythm in it! But we're not going to lie, you can also do it without us 😀

What should we put in this cycle? First of all, we usually run it over 3 months, which allows us to avoid too much pressure (a monthly meeting is also a risk of repeating the same thing over and over again) and to have a minimum of hindsight on the major structuring actions that we will have decided to put in place.

We will start with two actions that can be considered out of cycle:

• State of the art and benchmarking The idea is to make a small inventory of everything that is going well and everything that is going badly, rather in the form of a emailing diagnosis rather than a lengthy audit. At the same time, it's an opportunity to realize a performance benchmark of your campaigns by month and, if relevant, by brand and type of mailing. This will give you an idea of the seasonality of your results and enable you to objectify the structural changes you're going to make to your campaigns.
• Realize a eCRM workshop The goal is to redefine the set of automated scenarios that should accompany your customers and prospects in their relations with your brands and products, without taking into account the existing ones. You should come up with at least 5 or 6 priority scenarios to deploy in the next 12 months.

Once this is done and you have decided to change your practices, it is time to start this famous strategic cycle. This cycle consists mainly of a quarterly meeting during which the different points below will be discussed:

• Analysis of aggregate results and comparison with the benchmark Basically, we continue the benchmarking work initiated earlier and use it as a point of comparison to see the trends over the quarter and year-1.
• Analysis of the results of the best and worst campaigns: we choose a top 3 of the best campaigns, a top 3 of the worst campaigns of the quarter, and we compare, we comment, we discuss, we debate.
• Analysis of the results of the automated scenarios : Here too, we build a benchmark, but scenario by scenario, in order to see the trends and to discuss the possible optimizations that should be made.
• Analysis of the results of the AB tests performed : Yes, to enrich your test log, to see what is systematically optimized and to decide which AB tests to deploy in the next cycle.
• Definition of the objectives of the cycle What are the areas of optimization? What are the new scenarios you want to deploy? How can you improve production processes? Don't be too ambitious, but set yourself concrete objectives that you can measure at the next quarterly meeting.
• Planning point : A planning point what!

Beyond the quarterly meeting, you obviously need someone to follow up on a day-to-day basis to ensure that the schedule is being respected and that the objectives are being deployed one after the other.

Of course, some of this is theoretical... but not that much. These are basic recommendations that will allow you to have a better vision of what your production cycles should and should not be. If you have some comments, differences of opinion, another vision, ideas, ... I will be happy to discuss with you in the comments of this article or by email. Good luck!