Eblasts are one of the few ways organizations can communicate regularly with their audiences—so every message needs to count. For retirement plan provider RPB, maintaining consistent, engaging eblast communications at scale required a more sustainable system.
To meet that need, RPB partnered with Thinkso to build an eblast system designed for impact and efficiency. Standardized best-practice designs. Clear content strategy and editorial guidelines. Plug-and-play modules. All of these now give RPB the tools to create polished, audience-specific emails in minutes.
“The new component-based email template system—aligned with our new tone of voice—makes emails consistent, easy to skim, and instantly recognizable by content type and audience. Thinkso did a great job!” Stephanie Berger, Chief Marketing Officer
The system contains a wide variety of content modules designed to add visual interest to the eblasts. They can be “stacked” like building blocks in any order to meet almost any communications need, quickly and easily.
The templates are packed with strategic design elements that directly improve the user experience. The structured modules are scannable by design. Readers can skim quickly, zero in on what’s relevant, and grasp the overall message with little effort. Color and scale contrast to make the high-level messages, CTAs, and key takeaways stand out and the details sit back.
And they’re accessible by default. The pre-built modules bake in ADA-mandated color, contrast, and type-size standards.
It looks great, but the communications strategy under the hood is a big part of what makes the system so effective and valuable.
We streamlined the architecture of RPB’s eblasts by category and audience, and differentiated between routine, critical, and targeted messages. To signal these differences, each was given a clear visual signature.
Built-in content strategy ensures whoever writes the eblast is focusing on the right message and putting it in the right place. Each template module has a short editorial guideline with intention, style, and content recommendations, what to say (and not to say), and word count limits. To make things even easier, these guidelines are included in a companion Word doc template.
And it’s all at the author’s fingertips. With a menu of modules for different content types, the eblast writer simply considers the audience, objective, content, and desired recipient action. Then, it’s just a matter of choosing the template and modules that will get the job done.
The entire system was developed directly within RPB’s MailChimp account, leveraging the platform’s user-friendly interface to empower their marketing team to create and edit emails without external editorial or design support
If you’d like to read more about our approach to email templates, we describe how to build a system that’s smart, scalable and always on-brand in our article, Anatomy of an Eblast.