Be very careful with email creation platforms!
Throughout my career, most of the many hundreds of marketing email projects I've been involved in have been first designed as layouts by art (usually a mobile layout and a desktop layout) and then programmed, mostly by hand, by a developer. This is fairly standard. But a lot of our clients and internal agency teams have become interested in using various online email creation platforms, which allow them to skip the layout phase and remove the need for a developer entirely. In theory this sounds fantastic!
The idea is that an art director (or anyone, really!) can take the email manuscript and the exported art assets and assemble them right in the online email creation tool. When they're done, the end result is a fully programmed, functional, responsive email, ready to go. The team and the client can review a test blast rather than marking up layouts in a route. This can all save a ton of steps, and time, and money. Sounds wonderful.
However, in the world of pharma marketing (where I've spent many years), I've seen a bunch of agency teams experiment with this way of working in the last few years, using various email creation platforms, and unfortunately I've mostly seen it go pretty badly. These platforms come with some big risks for pharma — but I believe there also ways to manage these risks, with the right processes in place.
The challenge
When I've seen pharma agency teams generate an email in one of these email creation tools, very often the email looks fine in the platform itself, but then when the test blast is sent, it looks wildly inconsistent across platforms, often downright broken in some of the worst ones — I'm talking about good ol' Outlook, of course. Most of the time, no amount of fiddling around in the platform can fix these issues. (I'll get to why in a bit.) These are the main issues I've seen come up:
- Background images disappear in some platforms.
- Fonts default to Times New Roman or some other ugly font in some platforms.
- Spacing is significantly off; too much space here, not enough space there.
- Some images appear duplicated in the email in certain platforms — this is very jarring to see!
- Images loading extremely slowly, or not loading at all! This is usually due to high-res art being uploaded into the platform.
- Certain text elements rag or break very strangely in some platforms, to the point of making the email look broken.
- Columns that should become rearranged from mobile to desktop (e.g. stacked for mobile, side by side for desktop) suddenly don't. (For whatever it's worth, we should always avoid designing elements to become rearranged like this in email.)
On top of all that, the whole process often ends up taking longer than it would've taken the old-fashioned way, with layouts and dev. The seemingly infinite rounds of trying to tweak things can burn up a tremendous amount of time and budget. An exercise that should've been refreshingly efficient ends up being just the opposite. This happens with alarming consistency. The email ends up being more expensive than it would've been if it were done the traditional way. How on earth can we explain this to our client?
So where did these problems come from, and why can't they be fixed? The problems came about because the team attempted to do things in the email creation tool that go against email best practice, and — inconceivably — the tool let them! Most (all?) of the email creation tools I've seen in action will happily allow you to do the following things that we should never do in email:
- Use Google fonts
- Place background imagery behind html text
- Reposition elements from mobile to desktop (aka column juggling)
- Swap in different images for mobile and desktop
- Accept high-res images that should have been exported at typical dimensions/resolution
- Insert hard line breaks in text that cause very ugly ragging in certain screen sizes
- Use font/background color combinations that are not ADA-compliant
- Use font sizes that are smaller than the recommended minimum size for accessibility
All of these things go against email best practice, and they're all strict no-nos in pharma. So, for whatever it's worth, just knowing not to do these things makes these email tools a lot safer and a lot more viable. The key is in knowing not to do them. And in most cases, an art director or marketing person operating one of these tools just doesn't know.
The biggest part of the problem here is how these tools are built. Why on earth do they allow you to do things that are not best practice? The answer there is that a lot of this stuff is okay for consumer brands, and the tech world largely just doesn't understand the requirements of the pharma industry. These email creation tools are mostly used by consumer brands, small businesses, etc, and those brands are different from pharma (with regards to email) in two big ways:
1. They can allow emails to degrade gracefully across platforms.
2. In many cases they can mostly ignore Outlook.
In pharma we can never get away with either of those things.
Another way to look at it is this: You may have read my article about the four things I look for when reviewing email layouts; if not, take a look! These email platforms do not check for any of these four things. They'll let you do things that are not compatible across platforms. They'll let you do things that are not ADA-compliant. They'll let you do things that are just not good for engagement. And they'll let you do things that are not good from an efficiency/streamlining perspective, thus making the email very expensive if you're not careful.
Now, give one of these email creation tools to someone who really knows email best practices inside and out — the dos and don'ts on the creative side, as well as tech, engagement, accessibility, and the requirements of pharma — and they absolutely will be able to create an email that meets these four criteria. They'll know how to avoid all the pitfalls. But these tools market themselves as being usable by anyone to make an email. I would argue that while, yes, technically that's true, anyone can cobble together an email using these tools... that doesn't mean that just anyone will be able to make a great email — or even a good one (or even one that simply passes our client's med-legal review).
What's the solution? I see two options:
1. Stick to doing emails the old-fashioned way, with art layouts that are reviewed by a dev team, modified as needed, and then programmed.
Or:
2. Invest in one of these email platforms, AND invest in hiring people to operate the platform who are very familiar with email best practices, inside and out, and make sure they're approaching email creation with those four points for success that I mentioned above.
One thing you never want to do with one of these email platforms
If you're going to use an email creation tool to create emails for your client, something you must never do is first design the email in art as a layout, then get that layout approved by the client, and then try to create the email in the tool. You will find that it's absolutely impossible to make the tool create an email that even remotely close to your layout. None of these tools offer that level of fine control. You will waste an insane amount of time and end up with a very disappointed client. I guarantee it. The only way to use these tools successfully is to essentially design into them. This means embracing their limitations — which is something our clients often aren't ready to do.
When we create emails the traditional way — with an art layout and a developer — we can expect a much finer level of control. However, I'm not saying we necessarily should do all of that! I really do believe in effiency above all for emails. Simple is good (and fast and cheap)! If we use an email creation tool in a way that's safe and smart, this really could be the way to go. This means fully understanding and embracing email best practices and limitations, making sure our clients do as well, and proceeding from there. I've trained teams on this! It's doable!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.