Key takeaways ✨
Purchasers don’t simply need emails—they need higher emails. Right this moment’s company work isn’t nearly writing copy or hitting ship. It’s about delivering nice storytelling in an e mail that’s accessible, interactive, and focused to the proper subscribers.E mail approvals are nonetheless the largest bottleneck for companies. Whether or not you’re working with a solo founder or a Fortune 500 advertising group, chasing down suggestions can kill momentum on your e mail advertising campaigns.The appropriate instruments make the distinction. From pre-send testing to spam checks and analytics, companies that use Litmus save time, shorten the approval course of, and sync their work throughout shopper ESPs—making it simpler to ship top-tier work for each shopper, each time.
Digital advertising companies have heard it a thousand instances earlier than: e mail advertising is useless.
However you realize higher. Think about that:
35% of firms see an ROI of 36:1 or extra from e mail advertising.58% of promoting groups ship emails weekly or a number of instances per week.76% of promoting groups produce emails in a single week or much less.
E mail remains to be (nonetheless!) one of the vital highly effective channels you’ll be able to optimize on your purchasers—which is strictly why they name you for assist.
The commonest e mail sort, in keeping with the companies we surveyed for the 2025 State of E mail Report, is newsletters (68%). And with almost 1 in 5 firms working with freelancers or companies to get their emails out the door, e mail advertising remains to be a top-tier service you’ll be able to supply your purchasers.
On this put up, we’ll speak by means of agency-specific concerns on e mail workflows, greatest practices, instruments, and extra so you’ll be able to ship the very best bundle on your purchasers—whether or not you’re a marketing campaign supervisor of 1 or an enterprise-level company.
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When purchasers belief you with the creation of their e mail campaigns, a rigorous evaluation of marketing campaign design and content material is crucial within the artistic course of. Your emails should exit typo-free, with the proper copy, photographs and call-to-action, designed and formatted to encourage opens, clicks, and conversions wherever your purchasers’ subscribers see them.
In 2024, 62% of e mail groups wanted two weeks or extra to provide an e mail. That quantity has been slashed to only 6%—groups have gotten extra environment friendly, however automation and AI have lastly caught as much as e mail marketer’s wants.
As an company, all of the automation on the earth can’t drive a shopper to lastly say sure to an e mail. Or eradicate obscure and meaningless suggestions like, “Make it pop.” 🫠 Marketing campaign-building in an company setting is a collaborative effort, bringing collectively the abilities and know-how of your inner groups to assist your purchasers attain their targets.
Technique and transient alignment
In keeping with our State of E mail Workflows Report, 35% of e mail entrepreneurs report that accumulating suggestions is the largest blocker to getting an e mail produced and despatched.
A strong briefing course of will get forward of this by aligning inner and exterior stakeholders forward of time round your strategic targets for the e-mail marketing campaign, how will probably be produced, who shall be assigned the content material creation, and the way you’ll measure your success.
Whereas e mail advertising will be simply as a lot an artwork as a science, a little bit knowledge can go a great distance along with your strategic decision-making. Utilizing instruments like Validity BriteVerify for segmentation and phone verification helps determine precisely who this artistic is for, why you’re doing it, and what success seems to be like. A Black Friday e mail for a retail shopper is totally completely different from an in-depth publication for a B2B tech model.
Copy and design collaboration
From there, it’s time to herd the cats produce the e-mail. Whether or not you go copy first or design first, probably the most worthwhile a part of the e-mail is the message you select to ship.
That’s why content material creation has develop into one of the vital coveted expertise for a marketing campaign supervisor’s group, with 30% of entrepreneurs prioritizing it for his or her new hires. “By doubling down on content material creation, manufacturers are specializing in what truly drives connection: tales, worth, and relevance to the client. It’s in the end the content material that converts somebody from an off-the-cuff model follower right into a loyal buyer,” says Rohan Bhat, Sr. Advertising Supervisor at Adobe.
The second most vital talent? AI literacy, which is able to develop into extra vital as companies are requested to do extra with much less. The important thing with utilizing AI instruments like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini is that you simply’re not shedding what purchasers rent you to do—the storytelling—in favor of productiveness. You don’t have to completely outsource your artistic work to generative AI, both. Litmus Assistant, for instance, can optimize your copy by suggesting compelling topic strains and duplicate options in several tones.
However we all know that AI in e mail is right here to remain: 29% of e mail entrepreneurs imagine that AI-driven content material era and analytics would be the largest change in e mail advertising this yr…perhaps even this decade.
Construct and modular coding
Subsequent is constructing the e-mail to convey it to life. Once we talked to e mail entrepreneurs for the State of E mail Report, we have been shocked to search out that solely 28% of firms report that they use a centralized design template system to keep up model consistency throughout e mail sorts, though e mail templates can save time and artistic vitality for everybody.
Even much less widespread is utilizing a set of modular coding snippets and partials that permit e mail builders to maneuver extra rapidly with out being caught in a set template. It helps transfer manufacturing considerably extra rapidly, with 77% of respondents to a different latest survey seeing “important enchancment” utilizing modular growth methods.
With Litmus Builder, you’ll be able to simply code HTML emails and save snippets and partials so you need to use them later. As a result of Litmus companions with the entire main ESPs, you can even use Litmus Extension to pop out and in of your shopper’s ESP with out lacking Builder’s extra superior performance.
Testing, proofing, and shopper approval
That is the place even probably the most meticulously deliberate course of falls aside. With each inner and exterior stakeholders concerned, the evaluation and approval course of wanted to finalize the work is simply too usually an inefficient assortment of particular person actions.
First, somebody in your group wants to check and proofread the e-mail, which achieved manually means sending round a bunch of notifications on Slack or Groups asking somebody with an Android or Yahoo! Mail to try the e-mail. That may take hours with out a software like Litmus Testing to see what your e mail seems to be like in 100+ purchasers and gadgets earlier than you ship—and that’s earlier than the modifications even begin. We’ve all had purchasers that resolve they need the other of no matter was within the transient on the final minute (thank goodness for billable hours.)
This may be why accumulating suggestions stays the largest bottleneck on this course of. You’ll be able to automate testing and QA with instruments like Litmus Testing, however you’ll be able to’t automate that magical “seems to be good” e mail out of your shopper. That’s the place Litmus Proof is available in. It lets you centralize suggestions in a single place, utilizing a visible format that’s straightforward so that you can handle feedback, tag stakeholders, and observe approvals in a single place.
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After you have the ultimate “okay” from the shopper and your group, you’ll be able to truly hit ship. The preferred ESP to do this with is Mailchimp general, adopted by Salesforce Advertising Cloud (by the way, additionally the preferred ESP for companies, probably as a result of it’s obtained each attainable bell and whistle a shopper might ask for!)
However that’s not the tip of the e-mail manufacturing workflow. Now it’s as much as your group to watch how the e-mail carried out. Consider engagement metrics like opens, click-through charges, and skim time, or conversion metrics like purchases with the built-in instruments out of your ESP or add-on instruments like Litmus Analytics or Everest Engagement Analytics. Then, monitor your deliverability post-send with Validity Everest.
Superior e mail greatest practices companies can ship (and promote) to purchasers
Your purchasers employed you to construct their emails as a result of they wished one thing greater than what they may do themselves. You’re already juggling a number of purchasers (and perhaps a number of ESPs, yeesh!) and nonetheless they ask for extra, extra, extra.
These superior e mail advertising greatest practices can present your purchasers simply how highly effective e mail will be, with the additional *one thing* that makes them re-up their retainer repeatedly:
1. Assist purchasers acquire zero-party knowledge
Google might not have phased out third-party cookies in spite of everything, however they’re nonetheless considerably much less helpful than they was once with elevated consideration to knowledge privateness. In case your purchasers depend on this type of knowledge for his or her concentrating on efforts, they’re going to overlook out.
That’s why zero-party knowledge is so vital.
Zero-party knowledge is explicitly given to you by your viewers, by means of conversations through e mail, chat, or by means of varieties and surveys.
Your purchasers already acquire this knowledge—issues like names, addresses, and demographic info—however it might be in several programs or onerous to search out. Advise your purchasers to get their knowledge so as in the event that they need to take advantage of any digital advertising program, however particularly e mail.
There’s a purpose “know your viewers” continues to be nice advertising recommendation. For those who’re unsure the place to begin, go for the “whereas I’ve you…” tactic. For instance, if somebody desires to opt-in for a back-in-stock e mail, you’ll be able to ask them their dimension or shade preferences or their telephone quantity to opt-in to texting. Or in the event that they’re trying to speak to a gross sales rep, you’ll be able to ask for extra detailed details about their firm dimension, job title, or providers. All of this provides as much as extra info you need to use to personalize the subscriber expertise (and re-target them on different channels.)
2. Make your emails interactive
A part of what makes e mail advertising so labor-intensive is that you simply’re not simply constructing one model of any given e mail. You’re constructing a number of to fulfill completely different segments of an viewers, iterating on copy by persona, or swapping out items of an e mail primarily based on upcoming occasions. 44% of entrepreneurs say they construct 2-3 variations of each e mail, on common, whereas 18% construct 4-6 variations.
What if it might be a lot, a lot simpler to present your purchasers personalization at scale?
As an alternative of attempting to construct new drafts from scratch for each phase, tailor your content material to particular subscribers with interactive parts. Whereas 95% of e mail entrepreneurs we polled for the State of E mail Improvements Report mentioned they did some sort of personalization, solely 3% add dynamic parts into their campaigns.
Wait, what? Dynamic content material is straightforward to tug off with the proper software? ( 👋) You’ll be able to go approach past [first name], although after all that’s an incredible place to begin. As an alternative, take into consideration:
Curiosity indicators: show dwell click on totals so you’ll be able to construct buzz round sure product objects, articles, or no matter your shopper must function.Countdown timers: add a way of urgency and pleasure for occasions or retail drops.Stay polls: subscribers can select their favourite and get real-time outcomes from different subscribers.Scratch-offs: create a way of caprice by giving subscribers one thing to disclose in-the-moment.
Right here’s what Litmus Personalize seems to be like in motion:
Drive engagement with dynamic content material
Design emails with dwell polls, personalised photographs, scratch-offs, and extra with Litmus Personalize. No coding expertise required.
Personalize emails
3. Handle deliverability at scale
Do you know 1 in 6 advertising emails by no means attain the inbox? When your purchasers rent you, they’re relying on outcomes. But when your carefully-designed emails by no means make it to the inbox, it should all have been for nothing.
Test in case your purchasers:
Arrange their e mail authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC accurately. Bonus factors in the event that they’ve added BIMI to this listing—few firms take the time to set it up, which is certainly one of a number of the explanation why we all the time advocate it. Doing so provides a verified checkmark and/or a emblem within the inbox, giving them prime model visibility.Cleaned their e mail listing lately, eliminating widespread errors like typos and phased out subscribers that don’t frequently have interaction along with your emails.
Up to date their emails to incorporate a one-click unsubscribe hyperlink, which is required by the brand new Gmail and Yahoo pointers.
Validity Everest can monitor deliverability at scale for a number of purchasers, alerting you of potential points with their e mail lists (look out for spam traps!), watching spam complaints and unsubscribes, and serving to you construct a strong sender repute that maximizes their probabilities of touchdown within the inbox.
4. Put money into accessibility
It’s unhappy that this tip goes within the “superior” part, as a result of accessible e mail design is a primary tenet of sending nice e mail. However once we requested entrepreneurs, solely 47% of firms did any primary accessibility greatest practices like alt textual content of their emails. As an company, you are able to do higher.
To make your emails extra accessible, take note of your visible and coding selections:
Make your emails mobile-friendly—not simply with responsive coding however by making CTA textual content tappable and your emails scannable.Use a excessive shade distinction between your textual content and the background shade that meet the WCAG distinction ratio pointers for colorblindness.Alt tags on each picture for display screen reader accessibility that really describe what the picture is, as a substitute of one thing generic like “app retailer.”Semantic parts all through your code to delineate textual content hierarchy and assist display screen readers make sense of your tables.
“Accessibility in advertising is now not only a greatest apply. In the US, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (ADA) has lengthy established the authorized basis for accessible digital experiences. Quickly, the European Accessibility Act (EAA), set to take impact in June 2025, will mandate that companies make services— together with digital advertising content material—accessible to these with disabilities. Entrepreneurs ought to take proactive steps by auditing present supplies, making use of accessibility greatest practices, leveraging accessibility instruments, coaching groups, and staying knowledgeable as requirements evolve.“
Man Hanson VP of Buyer Engagement at Validity
5. Present, don’t inform, with shopper e mail campaigns
Each shopper involves you with a unique maturity degree for his or her e mail advertising. Some could also be utilizing WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop parts; others might have e mail devs on their group with sturdy opinions about how they code their tables.
Assist them perceive why you’re recommending sure copy, design, or coding selections with visible instruments like Litmus Testing—to allow them to see precisely what their e mail seems to be like on 100+ e mail purchasers and gadgets. That approach you’ll by no means have a shopper who makes use of Outlook or an historic iPhone pinging you within the wee hours asking why their e mail seems to be bizarre.
Additional concerns for enterprise purchasers
Enterprise e mail advertising is remarkably like campaigns for smaller firms, with one main exception: The enterprise e mail approval workflow. (Cue the horror film violins.)
Past the same old asks from purchasers like consideration to element, unbelievable visuals and storytelling, and arranged supply of belongings, you need to negotiate layers of approvals from a number of groups. After which hope that somebody you’ve by no means heard of received’t soar into Salesforce Advertising Cloud and fiddle along with your e mail simply as you’re about to hit ship.
…And you need to do that with a degree of safety and governance that enterprise firms want, for a number of enterprise models and departments, each single day.
To your enterprise purchasers, be sure you’re:
Selecting an e mail service supplier that may deal with enterprise-level workloads. Most enterprise manufacturers we surveyed use Salesforce Advertising Cloud (46%), which can also be the preferred company choose.Aligning all stakeholders on e mail cadence forward of time, and setting a transparent “final name” for feedback and approvals earlier than an e mail ship goes out.Working with authorized and/or IT groups to ensure your knowledge administration follows top-tier safety pointers, both by implementing protocols like SOCI or SOCII on your personal databases or by acquiring logins to their setupsConsolidating approvals and suggestions into one place like Litmus Proof, the place you get a visible rundown of all feedback and might observe approvals as you obtain them to maneuver the method by means of key steps extra rapidly
Enterprise e mail, simplified
Energy your enterprise e mail technique with superior testing, automation, and safety to scale effortlessly.
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Pricing and packaging e mail providers profitably
You’ll be able to bundle e mail advertising providers in three important methods:
Consulting/advisory providers: Monetizing your strategic experience, delivering on segmentation, personalization, deliverability, and cross-channel advertising technique.E mail advertising providers: Hours spent drafting, constructing, and testing an e mail for deployment, in addition to monitoring A/B checks or different analytics.Single providers as merchandise: As an alternative of working per e mail marketing campaign, supply one or two areas of the e-mail manufacturing course of, like testing/QA or e mail listing hygiene.Single e mail campaigns as merchandise: As an alternative of specializing in a single space, you’ll be able to supply a sure sort of e mail to create. For instance, 68% of the companies we surveyed for the 2025 State of E mail Report mentioned newsletters have been the highest e mail sort they ship.
This may be hourly (billing in opposition to hours labored), retainer-based (a set charge firstly of the month that covers sure providers advert nauseam), or value-based (fee for one-off initiatives from begin to end).
You’ll need to resolve which mannequin resonates probably the most with you and your skillset. Most entrepreneurs outdoors of e mail don’t perceive the nuances between the completely different e mail manufacturing steps, or why an e mail developer may not have any expertise writing e mail copy and vice-versa.
Case snapshot: how three companies win with Litmus
It’s one factor to know what a software can do, and one other to see it in motion. We requested a couple of actual companies to stroll us by means of precisely how they use Litmus to indicate their purchasers the ability of e mail advertising:
1. How DEG, Linked by Isobar creates higher e mail, quicker
DEG, Linked by Isobar is a full-service company specializing in digital advertising methods for the final 20 years. Their group of Marketing campaign Specialists sends almost 3 billion emails over the course of 1 / 4 on behalf of their purchasers—and each single one must be good. That’s why they use Litmus with Salesforce Advertising Cloud (SFMC) to construct, take a look at, and ship pixel-perfect, correct e mail, quicker.
With Litmus, their group has two choices: They’ll use the Litmus Chrome Extension to run an automatic pre-send Litmus Take a look at proper alongside SFMC’s Content material Builder, saving time and the trouble of switching between instruments. Or, they will code straight in Litmus Builder and use ESP Syncing to attach with SFMC, making certain their code is all the time updated.
“We love how the platform is designed for enterprise-level companies. We will have all of our purchasers in a single place and simply and securely soar between accounts,” says Adam MacDonald, Director of Marketing campaign Administration, DEG, Linked by Isobar. Litmus helps them deal with a excessive sending quantity whereas sustaining an accuracy fee of 99.5%—so that they proceed to construct belief with their purchasers by producing constantly nice work.
MacDonald provides, “With the Litmus Salesforce Advertising Cloud integration, we’ve minimize our e mail QA time by over 50%, giving us time to focus our efforts on segmentation and different strategic marketing campaign growth alternatives.”
2. How ThomasARTS streamlines the approval course of
Utah-based digital promoting and advertising company ThomasARTS helps a broad vary of purchasers with e mail advertising providers, creating and sending tens of millions of emails each week. Naturally, every a kind of emails have to be good. So, an intensive evaluation and approval course of is essential for the group and its shopper operations.
It was the evaluation course of that saved the group from assembly their full potential. “Our evaluation and approval course of was tedious—and value a number of valuable time,” mentioned Jon Gerber, advertising automation director. This was an inefficient system of emailing, downloading, screenshotting, and importing to view, touch upon, or recommend modifications on message drafts or mock-ups.
That’s why ThomasARTS put Litmus Proof, a single, centralized software for offering suggestions, on the middle of their evaluation course of. Now, all reviewers mark up and touch upon the identical e mail draft inside Litmus. Reviewers can reply quicker and all group members can see one another’s feedback.
The consequence? ThomasARTS was capable of minimize its proofing course of in half with out sacrificing accuracy or strong suggestions. “Litmus Proof has helped us enhance our workflow considerably. The flexibility to ask everybody into one surroundings and to see all suggestions and feedback in a single place actually made us notice how a lot of a ache level this was for us earlier than.”
3. How Altos simplifies their e mail workflow
Altos supplies bespoke digital advertising options, the place e mail advertising is on the core of their providers. “While you create distinctive, bespoke, artisanal work for purchasers, testing each e mail you create is a should,” mentioned Joe Savitch, Advertising Supervisor at Altos. “We imagine our purchasers’ success is a mirrored image of our personal.”
Devoted subaccounts assist Altos set up reviewers and guarantee everybody has the suitable degree of entry to every mission. Litmus Proof, their centralized hub for e mail evaluation and collaboration, lets them tag reviewers and observe approvals to ensure they hit each deadline.
As soon as emails are authorised, Altos makes certain to completely take a look at them with automated pre-send checks in Litmus E mail Previews, Litmus Take a look at, and Spam Testing to allow them to create an incredible expertise for each subscriber and produce enterprise outcomes for his or her purchasers.
Including these instruments into their workflow elevated their e mail accuracy by 25%, improved general deliverability by 20%, and decreased the time it takes to create an e mail by 10%, giving them extra time to be strategic advertising companions for his or her purchasers. Stated Savitch, “We knew we wanted Litmus to have the ability to present our clients the true worth of e mail. Litmus provides us the strategic perception, accountability, and degree of perfection we have to drive success for our purchasers.”
get began with Litmus as an company
Constructing, testing, and iterating on lots of of emails throughout a number of manufacturers is usually a large headache for even probably the most proficient marketing campaign specialist. Litmus makes it straightforward to juggle completely different ESPs, e mail methods, and model voices by supplying you with instruments to construct, take a look at, and approve your emails in a single place.
See why companies love Litmus: litmus.com/business/companies →
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