One email design system for many brands and markets
Why large companies need fewer email templates than they think, and how one design system can adapt to every brand, market and business unit on its own.
Nicki Pabst Rasmussen
It usually starts with static templates in the ESP. You end up with a template per type of campaign, per market and per brand. Then someone needs to change the footer.
Static templates in the ESP
3 brands × 4 campaign types × 5 markets
60 templates
A new footer means updating every one of them.
One design system
The same setup for every brand, type and market
1 design system
A new footer is one change, in one place.
Moving to a design system helps, but a company can still end up with several that need the same work. Co-op had five design systems across its business units. They shared most of the same modules, so every change had to be made five times. Today, one design system serves all five.
When one design system is enough
Look at the structure. If the modules and layouts are more or less the same and the difference is styling, like the logo, colours and fonts, you need one design system.
Different logo, different colours, different fonts, same structure. That is one design system.
Languages don’t need their own design system either. A header or footer can change with the language of the campaign.
The one split that can make sense is promotional and transactional campaigns, if they are very different. Many companies use the same design system for both.
How one design system becomes many brands
People often call colours and fonts “brand tokens”, but a design system holds much more: approved icons, specific wording and URLs, and anything else that defines how your brand is used. In Better Email, you define all of this in the global script and global settings, and they can change with the context of the campaign.
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See the tripsSave more this year
Open an accountThe global script can set a brand’s styling from the destination the campaign is exported to:
{% if context.destination.name == 'Harbour Travel' %}
{% set_global brand_color = '#c2410c' %}
{% set_global heading_font = 'Arial, sans-serif' %}
{% elsif context.destination.name == 'Harbour Bank' %}
{% set_global brand_color = '#1e3a8a' %}
{% set_global heading_font = '"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif' %}
{% endif %}
Every module then reads global.brand_color and global.heading_font. The same conditions work on campaign types, and on modules themselves, so a module can be available to only one business unit:
{ "only_show_if": "context.destination.name == 'Harbour Bank'" }
| What changes | What it follows |
|---|---|
| Logo, colours, fonts, icons | The destination or campaign type |
| Wording and URLs | The destination or campaign type |
| Which modules are available | The destination or campaign type |
| Header and footer text | The language of the campaign |
The marketer doesn’t have to think about it
This is the part that makes it work. A marketer who only works in one business unit, or with one campaign type, creates a campaign and starts building. They see the right brand and the right modules. Nobody has to pick a template or remember which version belongs to them.
Each market or business unit builds its own campaigns, however the company is split up. Someone owns the design system, and it adjusts to the scope of whoever is using it.
How much flexibility to build in
That is a decision for your developers and designers. How much can a marketer change in the styling? Which layout options should a module have? A module can offer many options or very few, and validations on its inputs keep the content within the limits you set.
Who sees what
Folders are a good way to separate teams, whether you split by business unit, market or brand. You restrict a folder to a group of people, and that group works in it. The same goes for the rest of the setup:
- Destinations: restrict who can export to each one, like a business unit in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
- Design systems: restrict who can use each one.
- Campaign types: restrict who can create from each one, and lock its campaigns to a folder.
One change reaches every campaign
With templates in an ESP, a change means updating each template, and maybe each campaign after that. With one design system, you update it once. Publishing reaches everyone at the same time, and that is the benefit.
- Make the change in the design system.
- Test it as a candidate on a real campaign, and see how it affects your existing campaigns.
- Publish it. All existing and new campaigns in Better Email reflect the change.
- Export in bulk if you want the campaigns updated in your ESP.
What this looks like at Co-op
Merging the five design systems was also a chance to clean up. Co-op’s module library had grown to 46, and just 13 of those made up 90% of usage. The new library has around 20 modules, so an update is a change in one place. Twenty people have built or exported campaigns since go-live, and half of all campaigns reach Salesforce within a day of being created.
Read the full Co-op case study, or see how the design system works in Better Email.
