Email Marketing

The importance of a good email marketing brief

You want to send an email campaign to your customers. The marketing department has everything planned out, more or less, so that only leaves the production stage. No problem – just send a few notes over to the email devs. They’ll know what do do. Now, await a test email in your inbox, ripe for approval.

But you don’t receive the test. Instead you’re bombarded with a series of questions from the production team. Cue a lengthy to‑and‑fro sequence of messages. Looks like the devs didn’t know specifically what was required all.

So, what went wrong? There was a critical missing ingredient: a clear brief.

Detail pays off

When passing work to other teams, a structured brief is the best form of communication. Without it, holes appear – leading to confusion, guesswork, questions… and potential mistakes. The bottom line is time and money.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to save time by throwing together a quick brief. That way the other team can begin their contribution sooner and you get to tick a task off your to-do list. In reality this hasty approach will only serve to add more time for all parties in the long run. That’s not good for anyone’s stress level!

Some email brief pointers

Include as much information as possible

Layout, images, colouring, links, copy, tracking, subject line, preheader, dynamic content, audience – there’s a lot to cover for even a single email. What may seem obvious to one department, may be a mystery to another – particularly when external agencies are involved.

The design itself is part of the brief

It’s possible that you’ll be sending a design file such as a PSD to the dev team. While that will cover many aspects of the build, it must be supported by a comprehensive brief. How should the content stack on mobile? Which segments are to see which features?

Keep irrelevant information out

While it’s important to include all necessary information, it’s best to do so concisely. It’s unlikely that the developers will need to know why something is being marketed a particular way.

Timelines

An often-overlooked aspect of briefs is the internal timeline. When do you want initial tests? How long is to be allowed for review and feedback. On what day must everything be signed off and set up? Setting a timeline for the project helps other teams prioritise their work and you can plan your other activities in accordance to the project schedule.

Jargon

Your jargon may not be someone else’s! Plain English is in everyone’s interests. Alternatively, it may be helpful to include a glossary of terms in your documentation.

Placeholders

Ideally a brief should only be supplied in its entirety. But this is the real world. Some assets might not be ready on time, particularly in the retail industry. Maybe an image is still with retouching department, or the new product you want to advertise arrived later than expected and a photoshoot still needs to take place. In these kind of situations a descriptive placeholder can make all the difference. Flag pending content to the other teams and answer those confused questions before they can even crop up.

Template

A good brief takes effort. But that effort doesn’t need to entail reinventing the wheel for every new job. By creating a brief template, you ensure consistency both in information and where to find it. Familiarity will soon follow and everyone will know where to find what.

Sign-off on creative assets

Layout, images and copy should be ideally signed off before anything is sent to the production team to be built. Something that may seem like a quick edit could in reality take far longer. Maybe that additional comma needs to be added across multiple versions of an email. And then there’s the re-upload, re-testing and re-approval process. It’s always worth aiming to finalise creative decisions before the coding stage.

Feedback

Once the email is built and you have the tests, you might have some amendments. Perhaps a link on the website has changed, or one of the products in the email has gone out of stock. It is important that when sending feedback that the information clear and to-the-point. For example: this is the new product URL, or swap product X with product Y. The feedback should be treated as a mini brief and follow the points above.

A simple email brief example

Simple email brief example

Final words on how to write an email brief

Writing an effective email brief isn’t always a quick or easy task. But going the extra mile at that stage, will save everyone a lot of time in the future and get you the desired end product. I guess you could say let’s not be brief.