When you first signup for Benchmark Email, the header on the form says you can send your first email in 30 minutes. That’s true. However, that’s not necessarily how much time you can spend on every campaign. True to form with most marketing questions, the real answer is that it depends. It can range from 30 minutes to several hours and maybe more. Let’s look at what factors play into it.

If you did want to fire off a quick campaign, it’s perfectly acceptable to select a pre-made template, drop in some quick text and an image or two and send it on its way. This is an incredibly simple thing to do that works great if you don’t have much design expertise or want to send a campaign from a live event. Adding your logo and using a From Name which your subscribers will recognize will go a long way for branding, even with a ready-made template.

Creating your first campaign and your own custom template would obviously take a bit longer. However, with a drag-and-drop editor, it shouldn’t be too time-consuming. As you get more experience, the time will shorten too. However, that first time it could take you a few hours to get it just right. Be sure to send a few test emails to make sure it’s what you expected and get opinions from a friend or coworker … or both.

Once you’ve created a custom template just to your liking, you can copy it for future campaigns and just replace the copy and images. This may get you back into that 30-minute range, but likely will be about an hour or so. You don’t want to rush it, plus you’ll want time to review previous campaign reports to see what worked and didn’t and how you can improve.

If you want to send a design-heavy email campaign, perhaps one that includes an infographic, GIF or something else fun, it could take a day or two to collect all the design elements needed. You’ll want to do some extra testing for these types of campaigns too so that you can be sure all the graphics display properly.

So, how much time should you spend on your email marketing campaigns? Say it with me everybody…

IT DEPENDS!

How much time do you typically spend on your email campaigns? Let us know in the comments!

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by Andy Shore

Andy Shore found his way to Benchmark when he replied to a job listing promising a job of half blogging, half social media. His parents still don’t believe that people get paid to do that. Since then, he’s spun his addiction to pop culture and passion for music into business and marketing posts that are the spoonful of sugar that helps the lessons go down. As the result of his boss not knowing whether or not to take him seriously, he also created the web series Ask Andy, which stars a cartoon version of himself. Despite being a cartoon, he somehow manages to be taken seriously by many of his readers ... and few of his coworkers.