Email is one of the most prevalent forms of business communication. Businesses all over the world send hundreds of email every day to communicate with their customers in a personalized, intimate way, providing useful information, special offers, records of business transactions, official news or messages and much more. Right from one or two-man projects to large Fortune 500 companies, every business entity uses emails on a daily basis to stay in touch with their base of customers. As a company grows, the number of daily emails that need to be sent also increases.
With an ever increasing number of emails to send, it might get more and more difficult to get all of them effectively out the door at the right time and to the right recipients. Also, with the increasing use of mobile devices, there is also the need to send mobile friendly emails. The best way to manage this substantial and important requirement is to have an efficient and intuitive workflow in place which makes use of email modular design. This approach makes it much easier to deploy interesting, thought-provoking and mobile friendly emails to all your customers.
The Need for the Right Workflow
Sending emails used to be an extremely simple procedure many years ago. With passage of time, it has become a complicated and multistep affair. Earlier, sending HTML-based emails would involve writing some simple steps of code with HTML and CSS into a text editor and using that as a template to send all your emails. However, a large number of new tools and techniques have evolved over time, with customizable templates, email tools, editors and even fully functional email frameworks doing the rounds. What you need to successfully implement your email strategy is the right combination of these fantastic tools and the right structured workflow which can be followed to bring good results. To allow for quick turnover and continued iteration, you need a finely tuned workflow that suits your needs the best.
Email Modular Design
Modular design is a complete method of structuring a system consisting of self-sufficient and self-contained components which can then be arranged, rearranged, stacked, used or not used according to the requirements of specific situations. The main aim here is not to have to make changes to the system as a whole, but still to be able to easily adapt or change specific individual design patterns and layouts. The inclusion of modular design into your email workflow is a sure way of improving the overall quality and consistency of your emails, while adding a lot of speed and simplicity to the daily process of sending them out.
Email modular design involves three main simple steps –
- Creating a Design System – The best way to manage variance in iteration while being on top of things is to take your design use cases and to break them down into small, self-contained components, made of content and media. These can then be put together easily into multiple configurations like putting together LEGO blocks to form shapes. To start with, you need to make a list of your use cases. Think of how many different types of emails you require to send, their nature, their common elements and their variable elements. You can then design a library of patterns from where design elements can be pulled and used contextually according to your specific needs for a specific case.
- Setting up a Framework –Once you have a full pattern library, you can go on to implement your patterns into an external framework. You can use existing email frameworks for light email loads, but for heavier loads, creating your own custom email framework can work out to your advantage. You can customize the framework to suit your particular needs, put in options and features to save time and effort, have more customization options for your layouts.
- Iterating Designs –The last step is to test and implement your design iteration. You can make use of available data like email metrics to improve on your core design and focus on providing a better experience for your customers. Making small, incremental changes and taking time to fine tune your system can pay rich dividends, and the modular design feature makes these changes easy and intuitive.
Jack Dent is mobile application developer at Veepal IT Services Pvt. Ltd leading company in mobile application development and Microsoft Dynamic CRM development in USA.
