Key takeaways ✨
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Digital advertising and marketing businesses have heard it a thousand instances earlier than: electronic mail advertising and marketing is useless.
However you already know higher. Contemplate that:
- 35% of firms see an ROI of 36:1 or extra from electronic mail advertising and marketing.
- 58% of selling groups ship emails weekly or a number of instances per week.
- 76% of selling groups produce emails in a single week or much less.
E-mail remains to be (nonetheless!) some of the highly effective channels you’ll be able to optimize to your purchasers—which is strictly why they name you for assist.
The most typical electronic mail sort, based on the businesses we surveyed for the 2025 State of Email Report, is newsletters (68%). And with practically 1 in 5 firms working with freelancers or businesses to get their emails out the door, electronic mail advertising and marketing remains to be a top-tier service you’ll be able to provide your purchasers.
On this put up, we’ll speak by agency-specific concerns on electronic mail workflows, greatest practices, instruments, and extra so you’ll be able to ship the very best package deal to your purchasers—whether or not you’re a marketing campaign supervisor of 1 or an enterprise-level company.
Desk of contents
Company electronic mail made simple
Automate testing, centralize approvals, and save hours on electronic mail manufacturing for each shopper marketing campaign with Litmus.
When purchasers belief you with the creation of their electronic mail campaigns, a rigorous evaluate of marketing campaign design and content material is crucial within the inventive course of. Your emails should exit typo-free, with the correct copy, photos and call-to-action, designed and formatted to encourage opens, clicks, and conversions wherever your purchasers’ subscribers see them.
In 2024, 62% of electronic mail groups wanted two weeks or extra to supply an electronic mail. That quantity has been slashed to simply 6%—groups have gotten extra environment friendly, however automation and AI have lastly caught as much as electronic mail marketer’s wants.
As an company, all of the automation on the earth can’t power a shopper to lastly say sure to an electronic 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 inside groups to assist your purchasers attain their targets.
Technique and transient alignment
In response to our State of Email Workflows Report, 35% of electronic mail entrepreneurs report that amassing suggestions is the largest blocker to getting an electronic mail produced and despatched.
A solid briefing process will get forward of this by aligning inside and exterior stakeholders forward of time round your strategic targets for the e-mail marketing campaign, how will probably be produced, who might be assigned the content material creation, and the way you’ll measure your success.
Whereas electronic mail advertising and marketing will be simply as a lot an artwork as a science, just a little knowledge can go a good distance together with your strategic decision-making. Utilizing tools like Validity BriteVerify for segmentation and phone verification helps determine precisely who this inventive is for, why you’re doing it, and what success appears to be like like. A Black Friday electronic 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 precious a part of the e-mail is the message you select to ship.
That’s why content material creation has grow to be some of the coveted abilities for a marketing campaign supervisor’s workforce, with 30% of marketers prioritizing it for his or her new hires. “By doubling down on content material creation, manufacturers are specializing in what really drives connection: tales, worth, and relevance to the client. It’s finally 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 essential talent? AI literacy, which can grow to be extra essential as businesses 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 dropping what purchasers rent you to do—the storytelling—in favor of productiveness. You don’t have to completely outsource your inventive work to generative AI, both. Litmus Assistant, for instance, can optimize your copy by suggesting compelling topic traces and duplicate alternate options in several tones.
However we all know that AI in electronic mail is right here to remain: 29% of electronic mail entrepreneurs imagine that AI-driven content material technology and analytics would be the largest change in electronic mail advertising and marketing this yr…perhaps even this decade.
Construct and modular coding
Subsequent is constructing the e-mail to deliver it to life. After we talked to electronic mail entrepreneurs for the State of E-mail Report, we have been stunned to search out that solely 28% of firms report that they use a centralized design template system to keep up model consistency throughout electronic mail sorts, though electronic mail templates can save time and inventive power for everybody.
Even much less widespread is utilizing a set of modular coding snippets and partials that enable electronic 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 another recent survey seeing “vital enchancment” utilizing modular improvement 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. Because Litmus partners with all of the major ESPs, it’s also possible to 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 inside and exterior stakeholders concerned, the evaluate and approval course of wanted to finalize the work is simply too usually an inefficient assortment of particular person actions.
First, somebody in your workforce needs to test and proofread the email, which completed 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 no software like Litmus Testing to see what your electronic mail appears to be like like in 100+ purchasers and units earlier than you ship—and that’s earlier than the adjustments even begin. We’ve all had purchasers that determine they need the alternative of no matter was within the transient on the final minute (thank goodness for billable hours.)
This could be why amassing suggestions stays the largest bottleneck on this course of. You possibly can automate testing and QA with instruments like Litmus Testing, however you’ll be able to’t automate that magical “appears to be like good” electronic mail out of your shopper. That’s the place Litmus Proof is available in. It permits you to centralize suggestions in a single place, utilizing a visible format that’s simple so that you can handle feedback, tag stakeholders, and observe approvals in a single place.
Ship with whole confidence
Preview emails in 100+ purchasers, catch errors, and guarantee accessibility. Reduce QA time in half. Due to Litmus Take a look at.
Launch, reporting, and optimization
After you have the ultimate “okay” from the shopper and your workforce, you’ll be able to really hit ship. The most well-liked ESP to try this with is Mailchimp total, adopted by Salesforce Advertising Cloud (by the way, additionally the most well-liked ESP for businesses, probably as a result of it’s received each potential bell and whistle a shopper might ask for!)
However that’s not the top of the e-mail manufacturing workflow. Now it’s as much as your workforce to watch how the e-mail carried out. Consider engagement metrics like opens, click-through charges, and browse 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 electronic mail greatest practices businesses 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 advanced email marketing best practices can present your purchasers simply how highly effective electronic mail will be, with the additional *one thing* that makes them re-up their retainer repeatedly:
1. Assist purchasers accumulate zero-party knowledge
Google could 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 sort of knowledge for his or her concentrating on efforts, they’re going to overlook out.
That’s why zero-party data is so essential.
Zero-party knowledge is explicitly given to you by your viewers, by conversations through electronic mail, chat, or by types and surveys.
Your purchasers already accumulate this knowledge—issues like names, addresses, and demographic info—however it could be in several programs or laborious 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 and marketing program, however particularly electronic mail.
There’s a purpose “know your viewers” continues to be nice advertising and marketing recommendation. For those who’re undecided 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 electronic 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 seeking 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 experience (and re-target them on different channels.)
2. Make your emails interactive
A part of what makes electronic mail advertising and marketing so labor-intensive is that you simply’re not simply constructing one model of any given electronic 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 electronic mail based mostly on upcoming occasions. 44% of marketers say they construct 2-3 variations of each electronic mail, on common, whereas 18% construct 4-6 variations.
What if it might be a lot, a lot simpler to give your clients personalization at scale?
As a substitute of attempting to construct new drafts from scratch for each section, tailor your content material to particular subscribers with interactive components. Whereas 95% of electronic mail entrepreneurs we polled for the State of Email Innovations Report mentioned they did some type of personalization, solely 3% add dynamic components into their campaigns.
Wait, what? Dynamic content material is straightforward to drag off with the correct software? ( 👋) You possibly can go approach past [first name], although in fact that’s an ideal place to begin. As a substitute, 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 characteristic.
- Countdown timers: add a way of urgency and pleasure for occasions or retail drops.
- Live 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 appears to be like like in motion:
Drive engagement with dynamic content material
Design emails with dwell polls, customized photos, scratch-offs, and extra with Litmus Personalize. No coding expertise required.
3. Handle deliverability at scale
Do you know 1 in 6 advertising and marketing 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 is going to all have been for nothing.
Examine in case your purchasers:
- Arrange their electronic mail authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC appropriately. Bonus factors in the event that they’ve added BIMI to this listing—few firms take the time to set it up, which is considered one of a number of the reason why we at all times suggest it. Doing so provides a verified checkmark and/or a emblem within the inbox, giving them prime model visibility.
- Cleaned their electronic mail listing lately, eliminating widespread errors like typos and phased out subscribers that don’t frequently interact together 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 guidelines.
Validity Everest can monitor deliverability at scale for a number of purchasers, alerting you of potential points with their electronic mail lists (look out for spam traps!), watching spam complaints and unsubscribes, and serving to you construct a stable sender status that maximizes their probabilities of touchdown within the inbox.
4. Spend money on accessibility
It’s unhappy that this tip goes within the “superior” part, as a result of accessible electronic mail design is a primary tenet of sending nice electronic 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 more accessible, take note of your visible and coding decisions:
- 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 tips for colorblindness.
- Alt tags on each picture for screen reader accessibility that really describe what the picture is, as a substitute of one thing generic like “app retailer.”
- Semantic components all through your code to delineate textual content hierarchy and assist display screen readers make sense of your tables.
“Accessibility in advertising and marketing is now not only a greatest observe. 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 and marketing content material—accessible to these with disabilities. Entrepreneurs ought to take proactive steps by auditing current 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 electronic mail campaigns
Each shopper involves you with a unique maturity stage for his or her electronic mail advertising and marketing. Some could also be utilizing WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop components; others could have electronic mail devs on their workforce with sturdy opinions about how they code their tables.
Assist them perceive why you’re recommending sure copy, design, or coding decisions with visible instruments like Litmus Testing—to allow them to see precisely what their electronic mail appears to be like like on 100+ electronic mail purchasers and units. 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 electronic mail appears to be like bizarre.
Additional concerns for enterprise purchasers
Enterprise electronic mail advertising and marketing is remarkably like campaigns for smaller firms, with one main exception: The enterprise electronic 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 property, it’s important to negotiate layers of approvals from a number of groups. After which hope that somebody you’ve by no means heard of gained’t leap into Salesforce Advertising Cloud and fiddle together with your electronic mail simply as you’re about to hit ship.
…And it’s important to do that with a stage of safety and governance that enterprise firms want, for a number of enterprise models and departments, each single day.
On your enterprise purchasers, be sure to’re:
- Selecting an electronic 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 most well-liked company decide.
- Aligning all stakeholders on electronic mail cadence forward of time, and setting a transparent “final name” for feedback and approvals earlier than an electronic mail ship goes out.
- Working with authorized and/or IT groups to ensure your knowledge administration follows top-tier safety tips, both by implementing protocols like SOCI or SOCII to your personal databases or by acquiring logins to their setups
- Consolidating approvals and suggestions into one place like Litmus Proof, the place you get a visible rundown of all feedback and may observe approvals as you obtain them to maneuver the method by key steps extra rapidly
Enterprise electronic mail, simplified
Energy your enterprise electronic mail technique with superior testing, automation, and safety to scale effortlessly.
Pricing and packaging electronic mail providers profitably
You possibly can package deal electronic mail advertising and marketing providers in three major methods:
- Consulting/advisory providers: Monetizing your strategic experience, delivering on segmentation, personalization, deliverability, and cross-channel advertising and marketing technique.
- E-mail advertising and marketing providers: Hours spent drafting, constructing, and testing an electronic mail for deployment, in addition to monitoring A/B tests or different analytics.
- Single providers as merchandise: As a substitute of working per electronic mail marketing campaign, provide one or two areas of the e-mail manufacturing course of, like testing/QA or electronic mail listing hygiene.
- Single electronic mail campaigns as merchandise: As a substitute of specializing in a single space, you’ll be able to provide a sure sort of electronic mail to create. For instance, 68% of the businesses we surveyed for the 2025 State of Email Report mentioned newsletters have been the highest electronic mail sort they ship.
This may be hourly (billing towards hours labored), retainer-based (a set charge at the beginning of the month that covers sure providers advert nauseam), or value-based (cost for one-off tasks from begin to end).
You’ll need to determine which mannequin resonates probably the most with you and your skillset. Most entrepreneurs outdoors of electronic mail don’t perceive the nuances between the completely different electronic mail manufacturing steps, or why an electronic mail developer won’t have any expertise writing electronic mail copy and vice-versa.
Case snapshot: how three businesses 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 businesses to stroll us by precisely how they use Litmus to indicate their purchasers the facility of electronic mail advertising and marketing:
1. How DEG, Linked by Isobar creates higher electronic mail, quicker
DEG, Linked by Isobar is a full-service company specializing in digital advertising and marketing methods for the final 20 years. Their workforce of Marketing campaign Specialists sends practically 3 billion emails over the course of 1 / 4 on behalf of their purchasers—and each single one must be excellent. That’s why they use Litmus with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to construct, take a look at, and ship pixel-perfect, correct electronic mail, quicker.
With Litmus, their workforce has two choices: They will use the Litmus Chrome Extension to run an automatic pre-send Litmus Test proper alongside SFMC’s Content material Builder, saving time and the effort of switching between instruments. Or, they’ll code immediately in Litmus Builder and use ESP Syncing to attach with SFMC, making certain their code is at all times updated.
“We love how the platform is designed for enterprise-level businesses. We will have all of our purchasers in a single place and simply and securely leap 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 persistently nice work.
MacDonald provides, “With the Litmus Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration, we’ve lower our electronic mail QA time by over 50%, giving us time to focus our efforts on segmentation and different strategic marketing campaign improvement alternatives.”
2. How ThomasARTS streamlines the approval course of
Utah-based digital promoting and advertising and marketing company ThomasARTS helps a broad vary of purchasers with electronic mail advertising and marketing providers, creating and sending hundreds of thousands of emails each week. Naturally, every a type of emails have to be excellent. So, an intensive evaluate and approval course of is essential for the workforce and its shopper operations.
It was the evaluate course of that stored the workforce from assembly their full potential. “Our evaluate and approval course of was tedious—and price a variety of treasured time,” mentioned Jon Gerber, advertising and marketing automation director. This was an inefficient system of emailing, downloading, screenshotting, and importing to view, touch upon, or recommend adjustments on message drafts or mock-ups.
That’s why ThomasARTS put Litmus Proof, a single, centralized tool for providing feedback, on the middle of their evaluate course of. Now, all reviewers mark up and touch upon the identical electronic mail draft inside Litmus. Reviewers can reply quicker and all workforce members can see one another’s feedback.
The end result? ThomasARTS was in a position to lower its proofing course of in half with out sacrificing accuracy or sturdy suggestions. “Litmus Proof has helped us enhance our workflow considerably. The flexibility to ask everybody into one setting and to see all suggestions and feedback in a single place actually made us understand how a lot of a ache level this was for us earlier than.”
3. How Altos simplifies their electronic mail workflow
Altos offers bespoke digital advertising and marketing options, the place electronic mail advertising and marketing is on the core of their providers. “Once you create distinctive, bespoke, artisanal work for purchasers, testing each electronic 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 arrange reviewers and guarantee everybody has the suitable stage of entry to every venture. Litmus Proof, their centralized hub for electronic mail evaluate and collaboration, lets them tag reviewers and observe approvals to ensure they hit each deadline.
As soon as emails are authorized, Altos makes certain to totally take a look at them with automated pre-send checks in Litmus Email Previews, Litmus Test, and Spam Testing to allow them to create an ideal expertise for each subscriber and produce enterprise outcomes for his or her purchasers.
Including these instruments into their workflow elevated their electronic mail accuracy by 25%, improved total deliverability by 20%, and diminished the time it takes to create an electronic mail by 10%, giving them extra time to be strategic advertising and marketing 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 electronic mail. Litmus offers us the strategic perception, accountability, and stage of perfection we have to drive success for our purchasers.”
The right way to get began with Litmus as an company
Constructing, testing, and iterating on tons of of emails throughout a number of manufacturers could be a big headache for even probably the most gifted marketing campaign specialist. Litmus makes it simple to juggle completely different ESPs, electronic mail methods, and model voices by providing you with instruments to construct, take a look at, and approve your emails in a single place.
See why businesses love Litmus: litmus.com/industry/agencies →
From idea to ship, quicker
Reduce electronic mail improvement time in half with Litmus. Create on-brand emails rapidly, with or with out HTML abilities.
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