Many marketers are familiar with using a content management system to update content on their website. They are generally very accessible and enable the marketing department to take control of an otherwise technical job. This article looks at the benefits that marketers could see from using a content management tool to update their email templates.

1) No need for external assistance
As mentioned above these tools ensure marketers with no HTML skills can update their templates. This saves on costs by not having to employ an agency to edit the HTML each time. Timesavings will also be seen, as there is no briefing and approval process between the agency and the client.

2) Give users confidence
Most content management tools have built-in fool-proof mechanisms to stop users from breaking the HTML or from permanently destroying a page. These mechanisms give users confidence to edit their templates safe in the knowledge that they cannot break anything!

3) Control look and feel of the templates
A content management tool allows you to define what areas of the HTML can be edited, what HTML can be used and what fonts and colours can be used. This ensures that all templates remain consistent and stick to brand guidelines.

4) Ensure email client compatibility
By defining the HTML used and locking down areas of the template improves the likelihood that the email will be displayed correctly in different email clients.

5) Improved productivity
Compared to using tools such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver to edit your templates content management tools are usually quicker for users to use as they are purely aimed at updating the content.

6) Complex tasks are made easy
Content management tools are aimed at non-technical staff so therefore they make complex tasks easy. Often you will find wizards for inserting tables or the ability to browse to a web page to select a hyperlink.

7) Built-in image editing
Most of the image editing required for email templates is simply cropping or resizing an image to fit in the template. Some content management tools have a built-in image editor that enable users to do this within the template.

8) Reduce the load on your website
When sending a large email campaign this can put an enormous strain on your website. This is because of all of the extra visitors to your website that have clicked-thru and also because images in the email are being pulled from your web server when recipients open the email. To relieve this pressure your content management tool can be configured to host images on a different web server.

Maxemail has been designed so it can be integrated with any content management solution. We recommend Macormedia Contribute for use with Maxemail as this is user friendly, has advanced features such as built-in image editing, is cost effective and it produces very clean HTML code. For more information on our content management module for Maxemail click on the link below.