Adobe summit 2019 - Executing with Precision: Robust and Scalable Email Marketing Operations

© 2019 Adobe. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Executing With Precision: Robust and Scalable Email Marketing
Operations
Iryna Zhuravel | Digital Marketing Operations Director at JUUL Labs

What we will cover:
 Assembly line approach to email marketing operations
 Design your process: anatomy of an email campaign
 A production assembly line using tokens, templates, and snippets
 Localization at scale
 Bullet-proof QA

Assembly Line Approach to
Email Marketing Operations

Assembly line approach to marketing operations
“Automation “, “precision”, “scalability” – what comes to mind?

Industrial Revolutions and Marketing
 First Industrial Revolution – steam engine
 Second Industrial Revolution – internal combustion engine, electricity, telephone
 Third Industrial Revolution – personal computer, the internet, and information and
communications technology
 Fourth Industrial Revolution – robotics, artificial
intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, The Internet of Things
The digital and physical worlds are converging, marketing needs to keep up

Manufacturing Quality Management Principles
Popular systems:
• Six Sigma
• Lean Manufacturing
• Lean Six Sigma
Key principles:
1. Focus on the customer
2. Identify and understand how the work gets
done
3. Manage and improve the process flow
4. Remove Non-Value-Added steps and waste
5. Remove variation and bottlenecks
6. Error-proof your process
7. Communicate clearly and train team
members

Assembly Line Thinking in Marketing
Principles for marketing operations:
2. Map and document your process
4. Automate and template as much as
possible
6. Educate the team
Benefits:
• Precise, repeatable, scalable = marketing
operations excellence
• Save time and resources, improve quality
for companies of all sizes
• With Marketo and other Adobe products
you already have all the machinery you
need

Automation Gone Wrong …

Design Your Process: Anatomy
of an Email Campaign

Principles:
2. Document your process
possible
6. Educate the team

Marketing Campaign Process Flow Blueprint
Campaign
Objectives
Target
Audience
Key
Message
Delivery Analysis
• Campaign objectives – what are we trying to achieve and why?
• Target audience – who is the right audience for this campaign?
• Key message – what are we trying to tell them?
• Delivery – how will we deliver the message?
• Analysis – how will we measure results?

Email Campaign Execution Flow Blueprint*
Define
Audience
Write Copy Design Production Localization QA Send
When mapping your own process answer the following questions:
• What teams are responsible for every step?
• What parts of the process can we streamline and automate?
• How will we communicate/ train the team on process changes?
*This is a high level overview of the process, real-life process flow will include a lot more steps like A/B testing, approvals by
stakeholders, etc.

Reduce Waste and Bottlenecks
Do It
Inspect It
Do It
Again
Most common bottlenecks in email
marketing:
• Rework loops or backtracking
• Bad data
• Poor communication

A Production Assembly Line
Using Tokens, Templates, and
Snippets

Principles:
2. Document your process
possible
6. Educate the team
Define
Audience

Define Audience: Segmentation at Scale
How many times have you
build a smart list like this?
Problems:
• Time consuming
• Imprecise
Define
Audience

Segmentations are pre-set database
divisions that run automatically in the
background and are much faster than
Smart Lists.*
• Can be used as filters in campaigns
and smart lists
• Power personalization in Marketo:
dynamic content and email scripting
• Maximum number per instance is 20
• One person can be in one segment at
a time
*https://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/how-to-create-marketo-
segmentations-1371/

There is a better way: segmentations and universal smart lists in the “Database”

Makes sense to create segmentations
for:
• Database management
• Regions and languages
• Funnel stages
• Industry
• Personas/customer profiles

Key Message and Copy
The copy of the email should:
• Be crisp and easy to understand - average time spent reading an email is 11 seconds
• Have a clear call to action visible in the first scroll
• Make sense to you, if it doesn’t make sense to you, it most definitely does not make sense to your
customers
• Be approved by all stakeholders before it goes into production – this is a stage to review, edit and
approve the copy, once it leaves this stage edits should be avoided as much as possible
Define
Audience

Email Templates
1. Design and build modular email templates, make sure they are flexible enough to cover most cases
2. Test on all email clients and devices
3. Create email templates portfolio with all the available designs, word count limits, image sizes, etc
4. All emails should fit the templates, custom design should be used only in exceptional cases
5. A/B test your templates periodically to improve performance and allow enough flexibility
6. Communicate and educate the team
Define
Audience

Email Templates
Pro tips:
• Use agency or freelancers if you don’t
have in house design and development
resource
• Check out Marketo out of the box
templates
• Email testing tools – Litmus, Email on
Acid
• Best formats for templates portfolio –
Google Slides, PPT in Box, Confluence

Production
Key elements:
• Local tokens
• Snippets
• Program templates
• Universal folder tokens
Define
Audience

Production: Local Tokens
“My Tokens” or local tokens are custom variables
that you can create and use in your programs or
campaign folders. They look like this: {{my.Name of
Token}}
• You need to create them yourself
• Available in the “My Tokens” tab
• Can be inherited and overwritten
• Changes to the tokens are applied
immediately across all assets, you don’t
need to reapprove them

Production: Local Tokens
Pro tips:
• Put as much of your content into tokens
• EXCEPT for the subject line, if you do,
your subject line will show up as
“{{my.subject_line}}” in reports and
Marketo sales insight
• Put https:// before tokens containing urls,
e.g. https://{{my.token}} – otherwise
Marketo won’t register an email click
• You can use tokens in smart campaign
flows
• DO NOT overwrite inherited tokens

Production: Snippets
Snippets are reusable HTML components which can
be embedded into Emails and Landing Pages and
which can be segmented for dynamic
content. Snippets don’t have associated templates,
and can be created and deployed within other assets
within Marketo.
Snippets:
• Are created in Design Studio and can be used in
all emails and/or landing pages in your instance
• Are great for unsubscribe footers and sales alerts
• Need to be approved before use, do not create
drafts of all the assets they are used in

Production: Program Templates
• Create a program template for every type of
campaign
• Put all your content into the local tokens
• Clone, rinse and repeat
Resources:
Marketo Tokens: Ins and Outs
My.Tokens of Affection: Develop a Token Strategy
You'll Love
One Template to Rule Them All

Program Template

Production: Universal Folder Tokens
• Put everything, EVERYTHING, inside a Universal
folder
• Create folder level tokens for things like copyright,
send from/reply to, trademarks
• Add folder tokens to all the applicable assets
• Changes to folder tokens apply immediately to all
assets

Production: Nesting Hierarchy

Production : Localization
• Plan for localization and evaluate the impact (the “why?”)
• All the techniques above will help you scale localization
• Create a language field, proactively ask what language your
customers prefer
• Create a language segmentation
• Explore localization management tools (Smartling,
CloudWords, Lionbridge)
Define
Audience Write Copy Design Production Localization QA Send

Bullet-Proof QA
• The QA process needs to be formalized and
documented, then it can be used as standard
operating procedure (SOP)
• Every campaign needs to go through a QA checklist
where reviewer actually ticks a box for every step
• Every error needs to get a post-mortem and be
reflected in the QA list
• Every campaign ALWAYS gets a second pair of eyes
• Tools: Evernote, ProcessStreet
Define
Audience Write Copy Design Production Localization QA Send

Bullet-Proof QA

Key Takeaways
 Focus on the customer
 Document your process
 Manage and improve the process flow
 Automate and template as much as possible
 Error-proof your process
 Educate and communicate
Define
Audience Write Copy Design Production SendQALocalization

Thank You!

Adobe summit 2019 - Executing with Precision: Robust and Scalable Email Marketing Operations

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