In this article, we’ll discuss modular email design and its features that can become trustworthy pillars of email marketing in big teams. What are these features? How do they work? These are the questions we’ll answer.
A famous proverb says, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” It is rare that a company's entire email marketing is performed by a single person. Email creation often involves many specialists, from designers and copywriters to direct marketers who are directly responsible for the email distribution process. But what about marketing agencies? In such agencies, email marketing is the responsibility of dozens of specialists who lead hundreds of projects and companies at the same time. Thus, here the following question arises: How to ensure a convenient email design process and smooth teamwork? Our answer is modules.
We will consider the main features of modules that boost teamwork and joint email design process so that you can clearly see how your processes can become better with modules. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Why are modules a big deal for teamwork?
First, let’s talk about why modules can be your trustworthy tool for a joint email design process. The overall philosophy of modules is reusable chunks of emails that you can save and use as many times as you want in other email campaigns. It’s a classic and a good benefit to have at the outset. This philosophy can be divided into two parts: snippets and modules themselves.
Snippets combine the most basic functionality of modules, which supports the “save and reuse” philosophy. Meanwhile, modules are a more advanced version of snippets, which allow you to update modules, work with data, and use other advanced features.
The basic snippets provide marketing teams with an easy way to quickly build emails without straying from brand design rules. You just create a module library, and your other colleagues can use them for their newsletters. The same goes for the marketing agencies, as they can create different packs of modules and share them with other projects they lead for marketing teams of their clientele.
Meanwhile, modules are an advanced approach, which also makes the life of email marketing teams easier. They allow working with data within modules, set permissions on editing, bulk updating dozens of modules in a few clicks and much more. All these features boost email marketing pipelines, both for big email marketing teams with many email projects, as well as the marketing agencies that create emails for their clients.
Okay, enough with the basics. Let’s talk about the main features of modules you can use, to make your email marketing teamwork easier and more efficient.
Feature 1. Roles and permissions
The first feature we want to discuss is directly tied to joint email marketing: Roles and permissions. This feature allows marketers to fine-tune access not only to account features but also to editor features. For example, a proofreader does not need to have access to the email code editor, and a writer should not be able to edit images. All these capabilities and restrictions are embedded in the roles of the same name, which can be assigned to users.
Why is this feature great for teams?
Creating emails is rarely a one-person job. A designer, copywriter, email marketer, and the department team lead also contribute to the final look of the template, which will be sent to the audience's inboxes.
Roles and permissions allow you to limit or, on the contrary, expand the capabilities of colleagues within Stripo. For example, a colleague with the Proofreader role can make changes to the texts and visuals of an email, test it, but that's where his access ends. Meanwhile, the Designer role opens up all the available functionality of the editor, but at the same time, the designer cannot make any edits to the company structure; the designer cannot assign roles. This is the general concept of how this feature works.
Roles and permissions allow you to distribute capabilities and features among different colleagues, assigning them certain roles so that they do not interfere with each other during subsequent joint work and there are no situations in which the writer accidentally deletes an image from an email that the designer inserted earlier. A writer simply won't be able to do it, because their role doesn’t allow it. This ensures order, efficiency, and convenience of work in one package.
How does this feature work?
Currently, there are 6 predefined roles you can choose from:
- Owner.
- Admin.
- Designer.
- Writer.
- Proofreader.
- Viewer.
Each role has a set of access permissions and restrictions, both for the email editor and the account. However, if you need a specific role with specific permissions, you can create a custom role using detailed options by ticking all the needed boxes.
Each user in your company can be assigned to any of the roles, thus making your email marketing team a structured and organized one.
Assigning roles correctly is the key to email marketing team productivity. Learn how to do thin in our dedicated article.
Feature 2. Module library
Imagine the file cabinet. All these neat drawers are filled with folders split into categories. That, is your module library. It stores all your modules that you can conveniently categorize as you create and save modules. Each module you save can be named, tagged and applied to a category for an easy search later.
Why is this feature great for teams?
The modules are based on the “save and reuse” philosophy, so it is obvious that modules need to be stored somewhere, and a module library is that place. But how can a library be useful for large teams? The answer is quite simple — structuring. A module library, where each module has a clear and intuitive name, where all modules can be divided into groups, and where any employee can quickly find the necessary module without searching for the person who formed the library, is the very tool for boosting email design processes in large teams. One person creates, agrees on the legend of what and which modules are called, and then the whole team uses it and updates it as needed.
When creating your own module library, you should remember that modules can be given any name and tag that can characterize the module and help the team better identify it in a large library. For example, modules can be named after the units or marketers who created these modules. Modules can have project names, campaign names, and dates when the modules were last updated (to understand how fresh the modules are). Such a detailed description of each module not only makes the library clear and complete, but also allows different team members to navigate it more effectively, even if they were not involved in creating these modules.
How does this feature work?
Now, does this feature work in Stripo? Yes! All the modules you save go straight to the library in the “My modules” section.
To make it easier for your team to find specific modules, we implemented convenient feature like search field where you can enter the name of your module, its tag or ID.
If you can’t remember any of this, you can narrow down the search by using the filters button and search modules by categories or tags.
These are the library features that can help you and your colleagues quickly find the module you’re looking for. However, this library will be of no use if you don't take care of the convenient cataloging of modules at the stage of saving them.
When you save the module, you can give it a name and a detailed description.
Both these things help to identify which modules are which, as sometimes on the preview, they can look the same at first glance. Both the name and the module description can be seen when hovering over the information button under each module in our library.
Besides that, you can set a specific category for each module from the list, which will help you and your colleagues search for it using our library search features.
Important note: You can’t set custom categories yet, but we are actively working on that feature. Stay tuned for our updates.
Last but not least, each module can be saved with custom tags and ID, which also are the ways to search your modules within your library.
These features are designed to help you and your team members create extensive libraries of modules that can be easily navigated by all your colleagues or clients for whom you create modules.
Feature 3. Synchronized modules
Email marketing projects can have dozens of templates. Not to mention marketing agencies with hundreds of projects and thousands of templates. Updating all templates manually in various scenarios is a huge chore. For example, remember how Twitter changed to X? Now imagine yourself in the place of a marketer in an agency who needs to change the logo in the templates of their clients in a huge number of projects.
Here, you face a fork in the road. Update everything manually and stay overnight in the office, or use synchronized modules.
Why is this feature great for teams?
Synchronized modules are of great help in managing large email libraries. Over time, a large number of templates tend to become accumulated for various campaigns; thus, it becomes increasingly difficult for these templates to remain fresh. Synchronized modules not only make it easier to update dozens or even hundreds of templates but also allow any team member to do so.
Teams can work more smoothly when the templates they manage comprise synchronized modules. Every team member can centrally update their parts of the modules. Copywriters update texts, designers update visual aspects, while marketers add the necessary data. All the changes reflect in all emails with these modules; this enables every team member to see the current version of the templates and work on their part without worrying that someone else forgot to update this exact paragraph in this specific template.
How does this feature work?
Synchronized modules is an advanced feature that saves the day. It allows marketers to update the module once, and all email templates that include this module will be updated automatically. Instead of repeating the same update sequence 20 times, you do it once. You prepare email templates using synchronized modules, and you or your colleagues can now update emails in a few clicks at any time.
Turning this feature on is also simple. Making the module synchronized requires saving the module as synchronized first.
Once saved, your module will have an orange border and a special mark Sync Off, showing that the synchronized feature is applied, but currently not activated.
The last step is activating the Sync feature by clicking on the module and then on the Synchronized module switch.
After that, all changes you apply to this module will be applied to any email templates with this module in your library. For example, if you change the color of the button, the same color will appear in other emails. Plain and simple.
Feature 4. Smart modules
The next feature is especially crucial for ecommerce businesses, however, it can be applied to any industry. Let’s imagine that you need to create a product card with the name of the product, its description, a photo, and price. Doing it manually is tiresome, but that’s where smart modules come into play. Smart modules allow marketers to pull data from the source into the module by simply pasting the link.
Why is this feature great for teams?
Smart modules can become a cornerstone of your joint email design process with your colleagues, as this feature is suitable not only for creating modules with data but also for updating them. For example, if you’re on vacation but there is an urgent need to change the product in the email card, your colleague can easily do this by simply inserting a link with new information into the module. There’s no need for others to recreate the module from scratch just to change the necessary data elements. Any marketer in your team can both create or update smart modules fast and easily.
The same applies to agencies. There is even more work with data there, and smart modules make working on several client projects much more convenient — just pull the data from the sources into the corresponding modules.
How does this feature work?
For example, here’s our product page we want to add to our module with a product card.
Simple pasting the link into the respective field of this module will do the job.
Clicking on the Get button will pull the data from the product page into the module.
The data is pulled and now we’ve got our new image, title, and product description.
We’ve made a full-fledged step-by-step guide on creating email with product card using modules, and we show in more detail how to use smart module feature. Check it out to hone you modular email design skills.
Any module you create can be turned into a smart one, so you, your colleagues, or your clients can work with data fast and without a headache.
Feature 5. Sharing and copying modules
There’s no teamwork without sharing. Even when it comes to modules. Stripo allows marketers to move created modules between different projects.
Why is this feature great for teams?
Sharing modules is an essential feature for any email design process. It facilitates more convenient interaction between team members. For example, a designer creates all the modules in one project and transfers the finished ones, and the marketer simply assembles an email using these modules.
Moreover, email marketing agencies leading several projects simply can’t do without this feature. Agencies lead hundreds of projects that involve dozens of marketers from different departments (for example, designers, copywriters, marketers, etc.). They often work on different parts of the email campaign. The ability to share and copy modules enables each team to work on specific portions of the email (such as headers, footers, or promotional sections) while ensuring they all use the same design building blocks. This eliminates the need for constant back-and-forth, thus streamlining the collaborative process. For example:
The same goes for the different mistakes that can happen in big units. In larger teams, multiple individuals may unknowingly recreate the same designs or sections, which leads to redundant work and potential errors. By using shared and reusable modules, agencies can avoid this problem. If any errors or updates are needed (such as correcting a broken link or changing a logo), teams only need to edit the module and save it again in their library.
How does this feature work?
You can hover over any module in the library and open its options pop-up menu.
Once clicked, you’ll see the Copy to Project and Share to Project buttons. These are your go-to buttons if you need to move modules to other projects.
Clicking on any option will open a side menu where you can choose to which of your created projects your module will be copied or shared.
However, there’s a small detail you should always keep in mind. Copying and Sharing module works differently.
If you copy a module to other projects in the company, some invited users will be able to edit and delete the modules according to their roles. This means that the users with Owner, Admin, and the Designer roles will be able to edit modules and delete them, while other roles can only use modules to create their own emails.
However, if you share the module with other projects, invited users will not be able to edit or delete these modules. No matter what role they are assigned, your modules will be safe from deletion or editing.
Important note: We discussed synchronized modules above and how they work. However, when copying synchronized modules, they lose their “sync” ability, so keep that in mind when deciding to work with them in other projects.
To make it synchronized again within your own projects, you need to save these modules as synchronized in your own library and then create emails using these modules. After that, you can synchronize them and update freely.
Learn how to work with modules, all their ins and outs in our special article.
Wrapping up
As you can see, modules are integral to ensuring a smooth email design process for large teams and agencies. They provide teams with an easy way to update modules and a fast process of working with data in email. But most importantly, modules give teams an extensive library of brand-oriented email parts, which everyone in the team can use to create brand-consistent emails fast, no matter what their email design skill level is. Teamwork can live without modules, but why live without, when modules make the team's life easier?
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