Maximizing email campaigns for more customer reach
Company: Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications
My role: Digital Marketing Manager leading an EMEA initiative, and overseeing 2 junior marketers and 10+ agency specialists
Project summary
Context
- Decreased effectiveness of email campaigns
- Delays to deliver
- Compromised quality of emails
Objective
Increase main KPIs (% click rate) while ensuring better quality & faster delivery of regional marketing campaigns
Challenges
- Brief process is complex and often not followed
- 10+ stakeholders
- Long approval process
- External agency (-5hrs timezone) handling email execution
Roadmap
- Conducted in-depth regional CRM email audit, run A/B tests
- Revamped email HTML templates & workflows in EMEA
- Trained teams & optimized strategies for ongoing email success
Outcomes & key metrics
email click through rate
time to market for regional email campaigns
reduced errors in email sends
Impact:
- Increased email click through rate KPI from 22% to 26%
- Improved email campaign delivery time by 30%
- Reduced content/technical errors in emails
- Established strong working relationship with agency and internal cross functional teams
3 things I’ve learnt:
- Recognizing that stakeholders possess varying degrees of digital literacy is crucial for effective communication and collaboration.
- Utilizing visual guides and clear documentation significantly accelerates project delivery and ensures consistency.
- While customization is valuable, establishing a set number of templates for frequent tasks, such as managing 70+ monthly emails, enhances scalability without sacrificing quality.
Before & after: delivering impactful improvements
Moved headline and CTA above the fold to optimize % click rate
Reduced image area size to focus on action and optimize % click rate
"We’re grateful for Ksenia’s input on email campaigns optimization process. Her feedback and insights have really helped drive our approach to create the most comprehensive assets quicker."
- Principal Marketing Manager, Workday
How I achieved results step-by-step
Problem assessment
- Conducted an in-depth assessment of email campaign practices across 9 EMEA regions
- Assessed existing email templates and identified inefficiencies in template usage
Optimization and testing
- Led the reorganization of 17 email templates into 8, aligned with specific use cases
- Implemented a rigorous A/B testing framework to refine email template designs and content
- Analyzed performance metrics to optimize templates for increased click-through rates
- Addressed gaps in the process causing delays in email delivery to prospects and customers
- Streamlined campaign briefs to make them easy to fill and created visual guidelines for stakeholders, addressing the lack of assets/info causing delays
Training and implementation
- Trained internal and external teams on the optimized email templates and process improvements
- Collaborated closely with the in-house team and external marketing agencies to ensure the implementation of best practices and efficient testing processes
- Educated external agencies on email requirements, templates, and tools through training sessions and documentation
- Introduced QA checklists and ensured testing by the in-house team to maintain email quality
- Continuously monitored and refined the email campaign strategy for sustained success
Created Project Brief Guidelines with visual reference to educate 30+ stakeholders working on email campaigns (with different digital literacy level) about all email elements
