How to brief your emailing agency? (because we are not superhuman ;-) )

I almost called this article "All about the perfect brief!". But I probably could have also titled it "Why Brief Your email marketing consultant ? ". And I'm going to stay on that question for a moment. Why? Simply because the sentence "You have to make me a campaign for Monday, here is the page with the offer we want to push" is really not enough. Especially if Monday is less than four days away and you're taking Friday off. By the way, all the points that will be represented below are not only for working with an agency. If you work with an internal team, or even for yourself, it will allow you to have clear ideas and to work serenely while aiming at good performances. The question of deadlines, if it is important, is not necessarily paramount. We all know that a creative project tends to take time when one party or the other is waiting for information or feedback. With a well-crafted briefing, even in 48 hours it may be possible to pull off a quality campaign.

7 basic elements

We will detail them below, but we can categorize the information needed for a good briefing into 7 different points. One thing you absolutely must do is make sure you always fill in everything. Even if it's identical to the 47 briefings you've already sent to your teams or to your emailing agency! Why? Because maybe the person who usually takes care of you is sick, busy on another project, ... or it's been a long time since he worked on your projects.

Number 1: General information and identification of a SPOC

In this first part, we will find some general (but very important) information, such as the (code) name of the campaign, the planned date for sending, the number of variations to be made and possibly the brand (or brands) for which we must work (many companies have several brands/ranges at the same time). But what is very important to define is the main contact who will manage the project (usually you), what we will call a SPOC for Single Point of Contact (nothing to do with the captain, we are talking about a single point of contact). This person should ideally be available during the whole project (and not leave for a fortnight's vacation just after sending the brief). It should be possible to reach him directly by email and especially by phone. Setting up an instant messaging system (Skype, Slack, HipChat) can also be very effective. Fields to include in your briefing template:

• Title of the campaign
• Brand
• Expected date of shipment
• Number of variations
• Name of the campaign manager
• Email address of the person in charge
• Phone number of the person in charge

Number 2 : The objectives

It is not necessarily the easiest! Why not? Because the answer will often be the same, to sell! But in general, asking the question will allow you to slightly modify your approach in order to go towards more quality. If you never question your campaign objectives, it is likely that you will start to bore your recipients. That all your campaigns will look the same. That you will drop the relational and editorial aspects for pure commercial. Which is not a good thing. These objectives can be very varied, from product information to web-to-store, the list is to be completed according to your activity, while leaving a free field for objectives that would be out of the ordinary. The fields to include in your briefing template:

• Traffic generation
• Increase in online sales
• Product/service promotion
• Information on company news
• Other

Number 3 : The target

Here, you need to have two objectives in mind, two pieces of information to pass on to the creative in front of you. On the one hand, it's a complement to the previous point (objectives), since we're going to define whether we're addressing customers, prospects, subscribers, whether we're doing acquisition, loyalty, etc. This will change the way we need to present the message to the recipient. On the other hand, the description of the target must also touch on the sociological dimension. Even if you're talking to customers, the words you use will be very different depending on the age, sex, geolocation, lifestyle, etc. of the recipients. So it's important to be able to provide your agency or the creative team designing your campaign with a minimum of clues. emailing. Fields to include in your briefing template :

• Prospects
• Customers
• Subscribers
• Collaborators
• Other
• Selection criteria

Number 4 : The message

Here, we won't necessarily ask you to write the whole message! If you're using external resources, you probably need a hand or simply don't have time. Nevertheless, no one knows your business better than you do! That's why it's a good idea for you to give some hints. You are not asked to write the final object, or the whole content, but simply to give an example that will be reworked afterwards by the agency according to the concept it will have developed. The fields to include in your briefing template:

• Object project
• Main Title Project
• Call to Action Project
• Description of the main product(s)

Number 5 : Design

Here, of course, you don't have to develop the design for the designer. Again, it's all about inspiration. The ideal is to present some past campaigns that have worked well, or possibly campaigns from other companies that you like. It will also be an opportunity to present some images from your image bank. The fields to include in your briefing template:

• References from past campaigns
• References of images to use

Number 6 : Shipping

You're going to tell me that this section is only useful if you're working with a emailing agency in full service ! Not at all, it's useful not only for you, but also for your agency. The sending context defines a large part of an email's performance. So it's important to get it down on paper right from the start (which doesn't mean you won't change your mind along the way). Fields to include in your briefing template:

• Frequency of sending the template
• Sending time
• Date sent

Number 7 : Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous is for everything else. If there is other information that can be useful for the design of your emails, do not hesitate to integrate them. But we will use this part in priority to define possible AB test procedures or optimization. The fields to include in your briefing template:

• AB test ?
• AB test elements: Purpose / Design / Copywriting / Targeting / Other
• Other

Conclusion

This article cannot be exhaustive! You may have specificities of your business that will require an adaptation/customization of the different points described above. But a priori, you have here a good basis to start.

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