If your team builds email campaigns in your marketing automation platform, you likely already understand the importance of QA. And even if you don’t build and send out emails, you’ve likely received an oops email in your inbox at some point (it even happens to well-known brands!).
The more campaign assets you create and emails you send out, the more likely you’re going to miss something that becomes obvious — after you’ve sent it to thousands of prospects or existing clients. Mistakes happen. We’re all human, after all.
I started out in QA when I first joined DemandGen (now BDO Digital) in 2010. We’ve had to evolve our QA processes over the years as tools and technology changed, web browsers were updated, and new anti-spam laws went into effect (I’m looking at you, GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act!).
My team is currently supporting an enterprise tech client by building out a large volume of email campaigns, so the importance of having a solid QA strategy has been top of mind for me lately.
Why? Because a lot of assets means a lot of QA.
We average about 100 email requests per month for this one client. They vary in scope from a single email to multiple emails promoting a webinar series with a landing page (and don’t forget the confirmation, reminder, and follow-up emails!).
A member of our team is solely focused on QA and reporting for this particular client. Due to the high number of campaign requests, however, we’ve also assigned two backups. Because let’s be honest: reviewing 25 email campaigns per week multiple times during the review and change process is a lot for just one person.
Regardless of whether you send out 5 or 100 emails per month, having a solid QA strategy provides strategic value to both your team and your company by:
- Maximizing efficiency. We all have a million different things going on at any given moment (even more so over the past year and a half). Having a formalized, repeatable process takes the guesswork out of doing QA and makes it easy for someone else to jump in and lend a fresh pair of eyes to the email you’ve already looked at three different times. (If you’re ready to put a formal QA process in place for your organization, check out this helpful blog post.)
- Saving time and resources. It’s difficult to quantify, but not having to stop what you’re doing and create an oops email will definitely save you some time (not to mention your dignity). That means your team can move forward and focus on the next campaign. And if you’re supporting a client like we are, high-quality work fosters trust and a positive, long-term partnership.
- Building trust and confidence. Regardless of whether you’re sending email campaigns to your customers and prospects or building them for your clients, an error-free, fully functional email and landing page builds trust and confidence in your organization’s capabilities and reputation. After all, if you can’t create a quality email, how good can your product or service be? It also strengthens your team’s confidence and frees up time and mental energy to come up with creative solutions for more challenging email builds.
QA isn’t most people’s idea of a good time, and it’s often the first part of the process to be abandoned when marketers are feeling overwhelmed. That’s probably why Litmus found in its 2020 State of Email Workflows report that 78 percent of email marketers agree that email plays an important role in their company’s success, but only half have made it a priority to optimize their email workflow.
Having a QA strategy in place is important for any email marketer, but it’s critical for organizations that send out a high volume of emails. That’s when it becomes really easy to miss a typo or coding error in the rush to meet your deadlines. And if you meet your deadlines at the expense of quality, you’ll lose out in the end.
If you’re struggling with this part of your campaign process (or simply don’t enjoy it), our Campaign Services team can jump in and take over QA for you. Or, if you’d like to outsource email campaign execution altogether so you can focus on strategy and other high-priority initiatives, we can do that, too. We’re committed to making marketing heroes, and that includes flawless email execution.
Pam St. George is a seasoned campaign manager who oversees all aspects of campaign execution services, including quality control of campaign requests and supervising the BDO Digital Demand Generation Group team responsible for executing campaigns. She strives to improve effectiveness and efficiency of work on a daily basis in order to provide the best value and service for her client. She firmly believes that excellent service equals total client satisfaction.
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