Optimizing and Securing Your Email Workflow

Coming up with blinding email campaigns and seeing them through to completion is easy, right? If only. With numerous stages involved, the whole workflow exercise is at risk of security vulnerabilities and failure.

But we can’t just give up on emails; they’re too important to completely ignore because of a few snags. What we need to do is optimize the workflow so that your business sends secure emails that are full of originality. We’ll explore how you can do this, but let's start with a definition. 

What is Email Workflow Management?

Imagine how fantastic it would be if you could just come up with a great idea for an email campaign and then send it out straight away, polished to perfection, with all security procedures correctly put in place. 

But things aren’t like that. In reality, email campaigns aren’t something simple that someone comes up with at the last minute. People spend time developing email campaigns to work toward a unified goal, which is usually recipient engagement. 

On top of this, it’s important to carefully consider security elements for email campaigns so that they can be totally trusted by the reader. And then, when an email campaign is launched, it needs to be monitored for success rates. 

Finally, once one email campaign has been sent, it will be time for another, so the next set of work has to be done for that. 

All this work takes place in what’s called an email workflow, and its sound running is called email workflow management. So far, so straightforward. But before we continue, let’s pause to consider why this technique is so crucial for an organization looking to be as efficient and secure as possible. 

Why is Email Workflow Important?

There are several factors to explore here. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it covers the most pressing concerns. 

Better Security

If there’s something cybersecurity threats like to take advantage of, it’s chaos when it’s unclear who has what responsibility and who owns what data. Breaching threats is much more likely. 

Using sound email workflow management, you can cut that risk considerably. When everybody is sure about their area of responsibility, it will be easier for them to understand their particular part in the team effort to maintain cybersecurity. 

Moreover, as we’ve mentioned, your email workflow management can include folder management so that individual emails funnel into appropriate folders and aren’t left hanging around looking for a home. 

Also, where necessary, folders can be designated as only accessible by a particular staff member, thus reducing the risk of unauthorized access. 

There will come a time when you'll need to involve a third party in the workflow, such as when you bring in a retail partner or another creative body. 

At this point, you'll need to undertake some solid third-party risk management. This process will be much more straightforward if you have a clear email workflow management policy that is clearly laid out for everyone, including the risk assessor, to read. 

Better Team Efficiency

Good email workflow management makes it easier for a team leader to see who’s working on what and what work needs to take place. This real-time reporting on progress is a key part of most email workflow management strategies.

When there is a clear set of steps for every email campaign, it’s relatively simple for the person directing the activity to know when to proceed and, sometimes, who to encourage a little to get them up to speed with the rest of the team. 

Better Individual Efficiency

Email workflow management can help individuals make sense of their email tasks by, for instance, providing them with a framework in which to perform their work. 

Email workflow management can set up a schema for using particular folders for particular kinds of emails, with some shared for better team productivity. 

Less Stress

Email workflow management is all about clarity, which results in more employee happiness. The more your team understands the nature of the task at hand, the less stress they’ll be under.

Stress is a significant drain on performance, so the better your staff feel about themselves and their jobs, the more optimally your email operation will run. 

How to Do Great Email Workflow Management

Let’s explore ways to implement email workflow management to boost your business.

Get Automated

There’s no doubt about it; the more automation (such as email integrations and sync-ups between systems) you introduce, the more efficient the result will be. Nobody likes to do dull, repetitive tasks, and you can remove this headache by speeding things along with automation.

Those staff who get freed from the mundane can now help to do the exciting end of things, like coming up with the next cracking piece of email ideation, perhaps with the assistance of transformer models. What is a transformer model? They’re generative AI tools that keep track of context, so only suggest words and phrases that make sense in that application. 

Even better than the efficiency boost, automation can also help with security issues. One of the biggest cybersecurity threats is human error, and human error thrives on lack of attention, which is just the kind of carelessness that creeps in with routine tasks. Get rid of the human element and cut down on the security vulnerabilities. 

Be Clear About Procedures and Roles

Nobody wants to feel overwhelmed by a huge blob of emails. But by arranging this incoming communication in an easy-to-use order, you can impose a little discipline on your day. Things all of a sudden won’t seem so bad. 

The same applies to knowing what you’re about. If you’re unclear on your role or a specific part of it, it can be stressful treading water until the solution presents itself. 

If you’ve got good email workflow management in place, you’ll find that you don’t have to scrutinize closely to see what you should be doing because it’ll be obvious. You can get on with it instead of worrying about what you’re meant to do.

How exactly can you do this? One idea is to put in place concrete steps that a member of staff has to comply with every time they send out an email. 

Put in a Centralized Calendar

If you want your staff to be as informed as possible about what’s happening in the workflow, you need a calendar that is accessible to all concerned. This will keep everybody up to date and focused on the priorities. 

It can also help highlight issues or encourage further ideas. If, for instance, there’s not enough prep time afforded to a big campaign, the calendar will make this clear. It’ll also show up any potential clashes that will divide the team's attention, affecting performance. 

Keep Things Tight

As businesses grow, it’s often the case that procedural steps get boggy. It can take an age to get a minor thing done, as you have to wait for somebody else to do something vital before you can continue. 

With this in mind, it's best to implement a workflow that is propelled by as few others as possible. While it’s great to get input sometimes, you don’t want to have to wait while many stakeholders decide whether they have anything to add.

In addition, the approval process must be kept as efficient as possible. More isn’t always better, especially when time-critical components are involved. 

Remember to Test

No matter how much confidence you have in an email campaign, build a test procedure into your email workflow, or you’re asking for trouble. The worst things can happen when you press send, and the only way you’ll know for sure that they’re ahead of time is if you test first. 

Use a tool like Litmus to see what an email looks like across a range of devices. This way, you’ll cut out any embarrassing scroll and sizing issues. Check all links to make sure they work. This is your chance to make sure that they’re all current and that they don’t lead anywhere unintended or even perhaps to a security-impaired location. 

Then, A/B testing will be used to see which of a number of approaches works best. This could include things like checking which subject line works best or whether or not it’s best to include a CTA box.

Always Analyze

Once your campaign’s gone out, you should be measuring its performance. What worked well? What didn’t work so well? How might it be improved? Were there any human errors? Were there any cloud email security issues? Any other vulnerabilities to cyber threats?

But here’s the important bit — this measuring should be part of the workflow. It’s not an afterthought only to be gone into if you have a spare afternoon. It’s an essential ingredient of the process, as important as ideation, team-based development, or any other aspect. So, make sure that post-campaign analysis features prominently on the workflow steps. 

Go with the Workflow

Just like so much in business, good workflow management thrives on great communication. It’s all about getting teams and individuals to understand thoroughly what’s expected of them. In this way, no steps get missed, and there’s less chance of any efficiency slips and security mishaps occurring. 

The good news is that once you start implementing email workflow management, it will become easier and more effective as the procedures become increasingly embedded in the organization and its individuals. Practice makes perfect—well, almost.