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How to Give Feedback to Email Designers

Email Designers

Everybody takes feedback differently.

When it comes to managing your email program you have an important relationship with your email designer. That person is responsible for coming up with the brilliant creative that will sell thousands or maybe even millions of dollars each year for your company.

It’s important to understand how this relationship works so you can get the best out of email designers and out of yourself.

Here are some tips for making the managers and designer relationship as good as it can be. It will be good for you, the designer and for the company.

Tip #1: Always Provide Positive Feedback, Too

When we think about feedback we often consider what we want to see improved. We’ll tell the designer what is wrong or what we don’t like about an email and we forget to tell them what we do like.

Positive feedback is just as important. You want the designer to know what you like about email design. When they create something let them know the elements you like and why you like them.

This process lets the designer know they’re on the right track and it also gives them knowledge they can use for future designs. You’re helping them and you’re also helping yourself because the designer is getting to know what you and your customer likes best.

Tip #2: Provide Concrete Examples Ahead of Time

All email managers should subscribe to a ton of email lists. You want to see what is out there and when you see something you like forward it to your designer.

But don’t simply forward the email. Also include a few sentences about why you like the email. This gets back to Tip #1 a bit. You want the designer to understand what you’re seeing in the design so they can pick up on those elements and create something similar, but different for your company email.

This is concrete examples and not just a simple example that you forward to your designer each week because you like it. Take the time to analyze it yourself and figure out what is good about it.

Tip #3: Be Consistent In Suggestions for Improvement

Nothing is more frustrating to a designer than hearing contradicting statements. One week you might suggest a long email that requires the subscriber to scroll and scroll and the next week you want a short email that is visible entirely above the fold.

Be consistent with your suggestions. You want the designer to know they’re working toward a great email formula that will work over and over again.

Tip #4: Share Results With Email Designers

This tip is important and it could be number one on the list. Always share results with your designers. Setup quarterly meetings to review the entire email program. Look at click maps or heat maps to see where subscribers are interacting.

Look at profit and sales. These are the metrics that matter and there’s no reason your designers shouldn’t  know how their email designs are performing.

Share the results and let the designer do their own analysis. They aren’t just interested in the design and creative side of things. Designers can be analytical too. Give them access to the stats and then get together to brainstorm ways to make improvements.

Tip #5: Be Timely With Feedback

Designers are under a constant time crunch. They’re working on emails multiple times a week and in some cases daily. They might also be working on website updates and social media updates. The list goes on and it all runs on a tight schedule.

When a designer sends you an email design make sure you respond fast with your suggestions for change. You want to make sure there is time to make adjustments without causing stress on their schedule.

When you wait to give feedback until the last minute your designer will be under stress and the result won’t be a solid email design.

Conclusion

The biggest lesson from this post is to involve the designer in the entire email process. Work with them to analyze the results. Provide both positive and suggestive feedback. You want the email designer to own the program so they feel vested in the results.

Are there any designers out there?

Share your thoughts on additional ways email managers can provide feedback to designers.

image: pexels-fauxels-3184162 CC0

Scott Hardigree
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