Email Marketing
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Making email can be a complicated process — there are many moving parts and several details to get right.
Often we spend so much time on the smaller details, we don't have time to look at the bigger picture. Here are 7 frustrations we hear time and time again from email marketers, and how we take care of them for you:
Staying on brand is important but can be hard to get right. For example, specific details such as brand colours can be hard to remember or time consuming to look up. Brand consistency is especially important in the inbox, where recipients may - consciously or not - question whether an email is genuine. It's not just brand colours - there are many elements of branding - from formatting and typefaces, to layout and tone, and it can be hard for everyone to remember the details.
Taxi helps the whole team stay on brand — specific details can be codified in your brand's Email Design System (master email template), ensuring that everyone can add content, without being able to make off-brand decisions. That means designers and coders can communicate their knowledge, and intent, without it being hidden away in guideline documents. If that's you — you can see how Taxi Syntax gives you precise control over brand and formatting in our Email Design Systems guide.
Making email can require many changes, edits and revisions to an email throughout its workflow. This can result in multiple files for the same email (V1, V2, V3 anyone?) As with anything that creates a lot of versions for the same projects, there is always a chance that the wrong one will be picked up and worked on, or even used as the final piece.
Email is no different. Working on the wrong file means time lost and extra effort. Loading the wrong code into your ESP can mean a rendering fix that has been added into a later version is not sent. And sending the wrong HTML can mean bugs, errors and unfinished work is sent to inboxes.
Taxi removes this potential pitfall by only having one version of your email with a revision history, rather than lots of html files with different revisions. By working in a closed system - avoiding the need to save files elsewhere - you can be certain that you are working with the latest version of your email.
When it comes to exporting, Taxi's ESP connectors enable you to export straight from the platform with one click, and with clearly labelled exports, So no need to save the HTML outside of your editor to then re-upload to your ESP. You save time, ensure accuracy and remove any potential errors from using the wrong code or HTML.
As we mentioned earlier, having different files for versions of your work can cause issues. Inconsistent file names, ad-hoc file structures and a lack of file permissions can all contribute to making finding the latest version of your work difficult. Hunting down your work can be stressful and time consuming. And if you are taking over a colleague's work, that can be even more challenging to locate and start.
Taxi's naming structure and organisational model help soothe these pains. Admins can set naming conventions so that any file names within a project must follow a set of rules. This means consistent file names and therefore easy file locating. You can also categorise and filter them to quickly find specific emails with Taxi's search function. This means less errors when setting job codes, easy categorisation and quick file location. So no more build_v3_final_THISONE_edited (2).html. Result!
The collaborative organisational structure also helps, as managers can choose who can access what project or mailing, meaning less confusion over who is working on what. This also enables other team members to pick up any work from one another that needs doing. Working as a team in Taxi means there is less reliance on an individual, and a reduction in any handovers.
Lots of HTML for the same version is one thing, but dealing with multiple versions can cause issues. For example, translating an email into several different languages may require more than just translated copy. It may also include a slightly different content, segmentation, personalisation and even if they are in a loyalty scheme or not. Being under the same project but with tweaks and differences can make it easy to make mistakes, duplicate work, and make it harder to make broader changes to multiple versions.
Taxi's inheritance model makes this a lot easier. By having a master version of a mailing that replicates any changes to it 'downwards' to other versions, it means that changes to multiple versions can be made once in the master version, and this is replicated across the other versions. And any changes made to a particular version (i.e. translations or different segmentation) don't replicate - this only occurs when editing the master version. So you can quickly and efficiently build different versions of an email whilst avoiding mistakes.
Email expert Kristin wants to get screenshots of her work — so that she can keep a record and share them with other people on the marketing team. It's a simple enough request, but can become complex. Sending a test, viewing in a browser, screenshots and then cropping — this is a repetitive task that takes up a lot of valuable time.
This is another small-but-powerful thing that Taxi helps with. You can avoid this legwork by exporting a screenshot automatically (including a mobile sized one) — or better, a PDF.
We know that email is an imperfect medium. Making sure your email looks as it should in every email client can take hours, and sometimes a fix in one app breaks something somewhere else. Building fresh HTML for every email campaign, or even just working directly into the code, not only means everyone needs to know the cheat codes, but also it takes a lot of repeated time checking and fixing.
Taxi helps you avoid this - by doing two things:
Some drag and drop/WYSIWYG editors are notorious for changing your code as you use them*. Other tools don't even allow you to use your own code; you have to do your best using the HTML provided. Both of these situations can lead to rendering issues, things going off brand, or simply not delivering the experience you want for your audience.
There are reasons for some drag and drop/WYSIWYG editors changing your code — it's a lot easier to build a tool if you make assumptions about code, and a lot of the code in Taxi's editor is there to avoid changing yours.
Taxi avoids this because it doesn't change your HTML structure — in fact we don't change your code at all aside from adding content. Developers and designers can have absolute control over how the Email Design System is built - because they build the HTML themselves. Then, using Taxi Syntax, they have precise control over how content writers build email campaigns in Taxi from the Email Design System.
When you export your code into your sending tool, we remove all traces of Taxi Syntax — so there is no bloated code and no risk of rendering problems (read more about our HTML principles).
Taxi is made by email marketers, for email marketers. So we understand what gets in the way. That's why we have designed our platform to eliminate as many of these as possible. And we continually update it to address more as they crop up! You can be confident that the little things take care of themselves, so you can concentrate on the bigger, more exciting things.
And what you see above is by no means an exhaustive list! Give Taxi a try and see how else it smooths your email creation process.
Taxi helps marketing teams make better quality email, quicker, at a larger scale.
