4 Tips to Streamline Your Asset Creation Process

June 13, 2022June 15, 2022 Stan

Whether you’re just starting down the path of marketing automation, or you’ve been sending emails through Eloqua for a while, one thing is true – marketing automation sounds like it will free up more of your marketers’ time to work on other projects. However, without a good asset creation process and making sure they are up to standard, your team will not save much time or effort.

A typical process might include ideation with the marketing team, a handoff to the design team to create imagery, another hand off to the copywriters to perfect the message, then yet another handoff to the automation team to actually create the emails, landing pages, and audience targeting necessary. All those handoffs slow down the process and introduce missed details and communication errors, resulting in fire drills to get your emails sent at the right time.

Luckily, there are a few surefire ways to keep your asset creation process as streamlined and efficient as possible, keeping your mistake to a minimum while decreasing the time between inception and implementation.

1 – Create a couple reusable and flexible templates in Eloqua for emails and landing pages

This may seem like a step that will limit the creative process, however, five to seven modular templates for both emails and landing pages can cover most campaign necessities and a wide range of format and imagery options. To figure out exactly how many you need, make a list of the types of emails you send most often, and the different landing pages you’ve created. Once you have some standard templates in place, it will be easy to direct your design teams on the sizes and number of images needed for each asset. Not to mention your copy team will understand the length of text they will need for each email and landing page included in a project. Plus, when the operations team is working with templates, asset-build time can be cut to minutes without having to fill in repetitive details, like sender names and reply to email addresses on each asset.

2 – Always start with a kickoff meeting

It may seem like a chore to convene a meeting at the outset of each campaign, but the 30 minutes spent together can save loads of time later in the process. If all parties creating your campaign can discuss details and get on the same page, many times each subset can work on creating components of the campaign at the same time. Without a kickoff, the marketing team would have to find time to pass information to each subset of the team, and depending on scheduling, that could take a number of days, creating longer lead times and a whole lot of “telephone tag.”

3 – Find a way to centralize documentation and campaign components for each project

This one can be tricky. Depending on the size of your teams, and the number of campaigns you’re producing, you may not need a robust platform like WorkFront. However, any type of content repository where imagery, copy, campaign documentation, and project plans can be housed will certainly streamline asset creation. The concept here is similar to the purpose of a kickoff meeting. If all the details are in one spot, teams don’t have to keep touching base throughout the process to find the answers any questions that emerge, they can just look in the centralized project plan. Find a system that works for you and your team, and stick with it that, whether it’s a platform like WorkFront, Trello, Asana, or even just Microsoft Teams.

4 – Consider a Digital Asset Management platform

Sending out an out-of-date image or piece of content has happened to every marketer. And there is nothing slower than constantly making sure you have the most up-to-date version of a PDF you want to share with customers, or the image with the approved fonts and recently updated brand colors. A digital asset management (DAM) tool is great for version control and keeping track of all the shareable imagery and content your company has. Once all your content is uploaded, it’s easy to update a PDF with new contact information if something has changed, or a new logo if your company has rebranded. Plus, then everyone is looking in the same spot for their messaging and imagery needs.

With even one or two tweaks to your asset creation process, it’s possible to save a few days’ time between inception and launch – and more importantly, reduce the stress induced by each project. Start today and see just how far these few tips could advance your team on its marketing automation journey. If you’re looking to streamline your processes, we’re here to help! Contact us today.

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