Our working lives have changed dramatically in the last two years. That goes double for email marketers. Demand has increased, so their workload has increased, but so has the pressure to increase email marketing’s contribution to the business ROI.
To achieve these new business goals and ambitions, a consolidated email marketing operation is now more important than ever. But what if your team is siloed and decentralized, making change difficult?
- What is a decentralised team, and do I have one?
- Four signs of a decentralized team
- Aims of centralisation
- How to begin centralizing your email management process
What is a decentralised team, and do I have one?
Decentralised teams do not work in a coordinated manner to achieve business goals. In most cases, this is unintentional and occurs frequently in larger organizations with multiple marketing teams or a single marketing team spread across multiple geographical locations.
Achieving the same goals using different working processes makes it difficult to work closely together when needed, resulting in issues and delays, errors and inconsistencies.
Four signs of a decentralized team:
- Excessive back and forth communication across platforms.
- Communication across time zones/languages
- Teams from various regions and business units work separately.
- Smaller marketing goals take longer, ignoring the big picture.
Aims of centralisation
Here’s why we think centralising email marketing is a good idea:
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Improved project and time management:
When everyone uses the same tools and processes and is transparent about their work, decisions can be made more quickly and accurately, and a more collaborative team can be formed.
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Increased visibility:
When everything is in one place, managing projects becomes much simpler and avoiding delays becomes much easier. This also frees up your team’s time to focus on personalisation, segmentation, and behavioral targeting.
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Centralized email stacks:
Your team can share the same resource, whether by bringing in something new that works for this purpose or by being more savvy with your existing tools. This could mean reserving their use for specific parts of the workflow or economizing by eliminating one or more entirely (especially if there is another equivalent being used already).
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Achieve greater goals:
Keeping your email marketing organized, streamlined, and agile lays the groundwork for your team to accomplish greater things.
How to begin centralizing your email management process
Step 1: Set the goal! Remember that you’re looking for a better process, not a solution to fill in the gaps.
Step 2: Create a space for your team to collaborate and share ideas. Ask your team about current frustrations, where your team suffers the most in your current process, and where the bottlenecks are that slow you down. Create a list that will help you build a better process by answering these questions.
Step 3: Draw a flowchart of your current workflow, highlighting key actions and deadlines. What information is required to begin? Making a first proof takes how long? When and who must approve? This will help build bridges between email operations, marketing, and the wider business.
Step 4: Examine your organization’s existing systems and workflow tools. There may be tools already in use elsewhere that can help you achieve your new goal.
In Conclusion
Finally, a good Email Design System prevents you from making mistakes by allowing you to set controls you couldn’t before. Inform your email coders and developers. We all know the challenges of emailing: from planning to designing and coding to testing and approval. Why have multiple tools, communication channels, and approval processes when you can consolidate them all into one, allowing for better collaboration and allowing you and your team to focus on more progressive and sustainable email marketing?
By clearly defining your email goals, mapping out current workflows, and consolidating processes, you can improve your audience’s engagement, conversion, and ROI.