Managing the people side of dynamic content creation for email marketing

We all know dynamic content helps marketing emails perform better. And for that reason alone, we all want to be doing more of it. The trick is to have all the people involved in the process do what they need to do quickly and correctly.

Managing the people side of the dynamic content process well will mean your emails will be produced faster and in a way that lets you take full advantage of all that dynamic content can bring to a marketing email.

That’s easy to overlook, given it’s something that uses technology, but there are lots of people involved in the dynamic content process, touching the email as it moves along the path to completion, from ideation to execution.

To help appreciate that, let’s take a look at the five main steps in the process:

Dynamic content creation process steps

1. The request/ideation

A requestor or a marketer has to identify which audiences they want to target and what content they want to target them with. This is usually spelled out in a brief, usually as a Word or Google document. It lists out the audiences and provides draft content for each recipient. 

2. The content

The briefing then goes to copywriters and designers to build out more of the content.

3. The coding and data

Once the content is built for both the full audience and the individual pieces of content for each segment, it then goes to a production team. They’re the ones who make it work with the data and follow the instructions. 

4. Testing and QA

Once it’s coded, the builder has to make sure it all works as expected, so it needs to be tested and its quality must be assured.

5. Previews and feedback

Once the email has been coded, it then needs to be proofed by the requestor, legal, and compliance. This can be a challenge to show previews of each version to non-technical stakeholders who, nonetheless, have the power of approval.

69% of people say they’d more likely open an email if the subject line were funnier. Find out why humor, happiness, and bringing joy to your audience’s day matters in your dynamic content, email campaigns, and marketing with the Happiness Report.

By stepping through those five key steps of the dynamic content and personalization process, it should be clear to you that there’s much more to it than coding ,so the email works as envisioned. It’s really important for you to recognize that as the email moves through the process technical and non-technical people will touch it. If they don’t understand their responsibilities or handle them the right way, what’s already an often-time-consuming process becomes even more inefficient.

In simplest terms, to get the most out of your dynamic content creation capabilities—and the emails they produce—take the time to inform, educate, and persuade all those involved in the process to understand what they’re being asked to do, perform that action in the best possible way so they see how their efforts contribute to the results the given email produces.

Stensul+Oracle Eloqua dynamic content integration

The Stensul Email Creation Platform™ can help improve the efficiency of your dynamic content process by way of its first-in-the-category dynamic content integration with Eloqua. This integration brings all of the disparate steps of the process cited above closer together¾to make it easier for teams to more quickly create and utilize dynamic content so it can be used more often.

Learn step by step how to create an effective campaign with Oracle Eloqua by reading this user guide.

The way Stensul improves the process includes:

1. Content collaboration

On the requestor/marketer and copy and design side, Stensul adds guardrails to easily collaborate and create an email without breaking the code.

2. Bridging the technical gaps between stakeholders

We know that requestors/marketers and designers are not technical. Stensul lets them leave a note on each piece of content to say something like “only Gold members should get this content” without affecting the code. When it goes to production, the production team will not have to copy the content from a brief since that has been done already, allowing them to focus on converting the content that will be dynamic. Also, the content and instructions are connected so there is no confusion.

3. Dynamic preview

Stensul allows non-technical people to preview all of the rules-based content right in Stensul without anyone having to prepare multiple preview files for each audience. This limits the QA and review and approvals process.

Oracle Eloqua and Responsys (which are both part Oracle Marketing—Eloqua for B2B, Responsys for B2C) enable dynamic content in amazing ways—from a technology perspective. With that technology, the process, and the people aligned properly, creating dynamic content efficiently is more than possible. It will help accelerate program results and supercharge your entire email marketing team.

Seeing is believing. Check out Stensul in action here.

Learn more about creating dynamic content and email marketing that gets more clicks and conversions.

• Find out why humor, happiness, and bringing joy to your audience’s day matters in your dynamic content, email campaigns, and marketing with the Happiness Report
• Need help with email campaigns and content? See how the experts at Oracle Marketing Consulting can help.

Also check out:

• How Cisco used dynamic content and Oracle Eloqua to drive a 19.5% unique click-through rate for subscribers (a figure that continues to climb)
• How Bausch+Lamb India increased engagement and conversion rates with Oracle Responsys