Document email campaigns for team continuity — Stripo.email

Picture this: Someone on your email marketing team goes on vacation, or a team member quits. Suddenly, no one remembers why a specific email design was chosen or what the latest A/B test results showed. Sometimes, all it takes to create chaos is handing off a project to another team within a large organization. Before long, it becomes impossible to tell which templates performed well and which ones are just sitting in the archive, unused.

Document your email production processes, campaign strategies, and testing outcomes to avoid wasting time, creating inconsistent branding, and doing duplicate work. Here’s how to do it in a way in a way that supports smooth handovers, keeps your team in sync, and maintains long-term clarity, no matter who’s running the show.

Why documentation is key to team continuity

Some may view documentation as the dullest aspect of email marketing. But seasoned teams understand that without it, they’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes, waste time starting from scratch, and lose valuable knowledge whenever a team member leaves.

All team members are involved in documentation — this is a culture of documenting tasks in which everyone should invest. This is what helps later to use time efficiently, without repeating mistakes, and having at hand a reference to where everything is described.

Kateryna Nazarenko,

Senior Email Marketing Specialist for CleanMyMac at MacPaw (in article for Stripo blog).

Clear documentation of processes and campaign results helps your team do the following:

• avoid chaos by aligning everyone’s actions, especially as your team grows;
• onboard new hires faster, eliminating guesswork or the need to start from scratch;
• preserve and reuse past insights, decisions, and strategies;
• facilitate smooth cross-functional collaboration — writers, designers, and analysts can all follow the same workflow.

In email marketing, teamwork documentation typically falls into three major categories:

1. Strategic documents: campaign strategies, brand guidelines, and creative briefs.
2. Workflow standards: internal rules and recommendations that unify email production across teams.
3. Campaign-specific documentation: detailed records of each email campaign that make it easy to retrieve decisions, assets, and performance data.

Strategic documentation: Setting the foundation for consistent email marketing

Strategic documentation lays the groundwork for your entire email marketing approach. These documents help define the core direction of your strategy and ensure alignment across the entire team, from daily contributors to senior leadership.

Here are the key types of strategic documents to have in place:

• email marketing strategy: This document outlines your current performance and growth plans. It typically includes an analysis of what’s working, audience segments, and personalization rules, KPIs being tracked, and a breakdown of team roles and responsibilities;
• brand guidelines: These cover all aspects of the visual identity and voice of your email campaigns, including layout principles, typography, tone of voice, and image usage. If your company offers multiple products or services, you may need separate guidelines for each one;
• client briefs (for agencies): If you work with multiple clients, this is where you store project overviews and client-provided input. These briefs capture goals, preferences, and any brand-specific requirements needed for building campaigns.

Strategic documents are typically developed with input from the broader marketing unit and are often reviewed or approved by C-level leadership. That’s what makes them “strategic” — they guide decision-making at the highest level.

Where should they be stored?

Most teams utilize tools such as Google Docs, Confluence, wiki pages, or Notion to create and store their documents. These are then shared across the team via links to ensure easy access.

Best practices for keeping things clean and organized

1. Create one master version per document. Avoid having multiple copies in different folders to prevent confusion and ensure everyone is always working from the latest version.
2. Set clear rules for updates. Define who is responsible for making changes and limit edit access whenever possible. This protects critical information from accidental edits or deletions.
3. Add a changelog or version history. Keep a brief record of key updates — what changed, when, and why. This facilitates tracking the evolution of your strategy and helps new team members quickly understand recent decisions.

Unfortunately, strategic documentation alone is insufficient for effective teamwork. Go further to standardize workflows and keep the entire email production process running smoothly across roles and teams.

Rules and recommendations for building a consistent email production process

This type of documentation includes practical guidelines that may evolve and are usually created while working with specific tools or workflows. Unlike high-level strategic documents, these are living documents that are regularly updated as your processes develop.

Your main goal at this level is to build a unified system so that everyone on the team follows the same set of rules. Without this structure, each team member might name templates, folders, or campaigns differently, and soon you’re stuck with five different systems for five different people.

That’s why it’s essential to document the following areas to promote consistency and teamwork:

• email production guidelines: A dedicated document that outlines everything your team needs to know about working on emails, including task setup, content requirements, design specs, the review process, and links to templates for each email type;
• email types guides: The types of campaigns you regularly send out (product updates, digests, transactional emails, etc.) and naming conventions for folders, templates, and campaigns to keep everything uniform;
   

  For example, we recently released a new Plugin. I had a checklist ready: which team receives the email, what GitHub links to include, what content to add, who’s responsible, and how to send it. Everything is documented step by step.

  

  Oleksandr Dieiev,

  Email Marketing Specialist at Stripo.

• list of active automations and triggers: An up-to-date list of all automation workflows, with a clear description of what triggers each workflow, what events it responds to, which user segments it targets, and the goal of each automation;
   

  I document every scenario: which events exist, how they’re triggered, what segments they use, and why they matter. That way, if I’m out, someone else can easily recreate or manage typical campaigns.

  

  Oleksandr Dieiev,

  Email Marketing Specialist at Stripo.

• template library and usage guidelines: A document with links to all approved templates and modules, including their names, where they’re stored, and the logic behind why and when to use each one. This helps avoid duplicate efforts and keeps everyone on brand;
• A/B testing results: Save a summary of results from key A/B tests, including insights into what worked and why. These insights can guide future decisions and prevent the repetition of unnecessary tests.

Where and how to store this information

At Stripo, we use Google Docs and Confluence to manage operational documentation. Each document lives in Google Drive and is linked to a dedicated Confluence section with a brief description of its contents. This setup makes it easy for anyone on the team to find relevant information while working on campaigns.

Best practices for maintaining clean operational documentation

1. Don’t wait too long to write things down. Operational documentation is most helpful when it reflects what’s working right now.
2. Be consistent with naming and structure. Use the same format and naming logic across documents so that anyone can jump in without getting lost.
3. Use shared storage and organize by topic. Whether it’s a Google Drive folder or a Confluence space, centralized storage makes your documentation easy to navigate.
4. Focus on what matters. Prioritize documenting decisions and processes that align with your company’s email marketing strategy.

We use specific senders for different content types. For example, the Stripo Webinar Team sends webinar invites, while the Product Team handles product updates and release notes. This structure supports our strategy and improves engagement.

Oleksandr Dieiev,

Email Marketing Specialist at Stripo.

Documenting current email tasks

This category covers everything your email marketing team is working on right now, including real-time discussions, approvals, feedback, and iterations for active email campaigns. It also includes suggestions for improvements and revisions — as many rounds as necessary — until everything is just right.

This is often the messiest part of documentation for a few key reasons:

• it’s easy to overlook because the main goal is “just to get the email out the door;”
• feedback and edits are often vague or poorly documented;
• different team members use different tools to leave comments, creating fragmented communication.

As a result, it can be hard to figure out why a particular email looks the way it does. It’s difficult to tell what changes were made, who requested them, and how the final version came to life. When this information is scattered, team members waste time trying to retrace decisions or repeat conversations.

To keep things organized and make your workflow more transparent, we recommend using the collaboration tools built directly into the Stripo email editor — specifically, Commenting and Version History.

These tools allow you and your team to collaborate directly within the email draft, keeping everything in one place and easy to reference later.

Best practices for keeping real-time work clean and collaborative

1. Leave comments for your colleagues on essential email elements, similar to Google Docs. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and discussing the same aspects. 
2. Allow your colleagues to leave comments in your emails so that you know exactly which parts need work or modification.
3. Track the discussion threads in each comment. Keep conversations organized by replying in threads rather than starting new ones.
4. Revisit approved comments when making decisions or reviewing changes.
5. Use the Version History feature to see what changed, when, and by whom, or to restore a previous version if something doesn’t work out.

See how simple it can be:

General tips for storing documentation and ensuring team-wide consistency

1. Centralize everything in one place, such as Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, or Airtable, to make it easy to find and to avoid reliance on individual memory.
2. Backlink your documentation. Connect related documents through backlinks; for example, link your A/B test log to the campaign brief and the brief to your automation map. This makes it easy to trace decisions and follow the flow of work.
3. Build in time for quarterly reviews or post-campaign retrospectives to update outdated information, fix gaps, and reflect on what’s working in your current processes.
4. Create and maintain clear templates for common documents, such as campaign briefs, test logs, and design specs, and ensure that every team member uses them. This keeps your documentation structured and easy to update.
5. Assign clear documentation responsibilities. Designate who’s in charge of maintaining each type of documentation. Writers, designers, and managers should have appropriate access, for example, through Jira and Confluence, as well as a shared guide on email production standards.
6. After each campaign, take a moment to reflect on the performance and quality of the documentation. Update anything that caused confusion, and record any new insights.
7. Provide new colleagues with access to shared folders, documentation tools, and a dedicated email guide pinned in your team channel. This guide should explain task setup, email structure, and who sees what, as well as links to templates for every email type.

Wrapping up

Clear, well-organized documentation keeps email marketing teams aligned, efficient, and ready to grow. Investing time in documenting strategies, workflows, and day-to-day decisions will make your team more resilient, especially during transitions or fast campaign cycles.

To ensure that the end result is a truly working, optimal system rather than a new chaos — now in documentation — try to keep as many processes in one place as possible. Start small and be consistent; your future self (and teammates) will thank you.