How to embed them directly into your email production workflow — Stripo.email

Imagine a large email marketing team — or multiple teams across different countries — each building campaigns using slightly different logos, colors, or fonts. The emails go out before anyone notices the inconsistencies. It’s not a disaster, but it’s definitely not what your subscribers expect.

So, how can you ensure that every team member always has access to the most up-to-date brand guidelines? And how can they find and use those guidelines without wasting time searching across folders or platforms?

In this article, we’ll answer these questions and explore how to streamline your team’s workflow by embedding brand guidelines directly into the email production process.

Why effective use of brand guidelines matters in email marketing

Maintaining brand consistency is an important requirement of email marketing. A convenient tool for this is brand guidelines, which provide all the recommendations for email design and visuals that you can follow when preparing emails.  

Here’s why this matters, especially for large or distributed teams:

• 65% of marketers surveyed by Frontify said more than half of their company needs to create or use branded materials every week;
• yet only 28% of companies from Litmus The State of Email Report 2025 use a centralized template system to maintain brand consistency across emails;
• among those who do use templates, 55% update them regularly, 15% only after major campaigns, and 30% have no set update schedule. (The State of Email Report 2025, Litmus).

For large or global teams, keeping everyone aligned can be challenging. The key is to make using brand guidelines easy and automatic rather than an extra step that slows down the process.

How brand guidelines for email marketing are created

In large organizations, email communication requires a clear, standardized system. At the core of this system are brand guidelines — internal documents that define design style, voice, and messaging rules to ensure consistency across all campaigns.

For global brands, this standardization starts not with email but at a higher level. It begins with defining the need to maintain a consistent brand identity across countries and communication platforms. Email brand guidelines are typically a refined version of broader brand standards, tailored specifically to the email channel.

Here’s how brand guidelines are usually developed:

• development of brand identity at the global level;
• detailing standards for different channels;
• description of localization features for different countries and languages;
• checking and approval of all legal aspects;
• final approval of all materials at the C-level and with the founders.

Channel-specific guidelines, including a dedicated version for the email marketing team, are distributed to teams only after completing this process.

To adapt a general brand book for email marketing, a few additional elements are needed:

• mobile optimization best practices — since a large share of emails are opened on phones;
• email-safe fonts — choosing web-safe options that render consistently across clients;
• dark mode-friendly color palettes — to maintain visual integrity in dark theme environments.

What do email brand guidelines include?

Email brand guidelines are your team’s North Star when creating campaigns. They ensure that no matter who is building the email, every message reflects your brand’s identity — clearly, consistently, and professionally. While they’re often adapted from your company’s broader brand book, email-specific guidelines go deeper into the nuances of email design and content. 

A solid set of email brand guidelines typically includes the following elements:

• logo usage: Approved versions of your logo, proper placement, size, and padding rules;
• color palette: Primary and secondary brand colors, plus any background or accent colors commonly used in emails;
• typography: Recommended web-safe fonts for headers and body text, font sizes, and line spacing for desktop and mobile;
• button styles: Standardized button shapes, hover effects, border radius, and colors to keep CTAs uniform;
• CTA tone and structure: Guidelines for language, capitalization, and placement;
• image style: Preferences for photography, illustrations, or iconography, including filters, aspect ratios, and alt text rules;
• header and footer layout: Standard elements such as social links, unsubscribe text, or legal disclaimers to include in every send;
• spacing and layout rules: Recommendations for padding, column layouts, and mobile responsiveness;
• voice and tone: Brief examples that clarify how the brand should “sound” in emails — friendly, formal, and playful;
• localizations: Adaptations of all the above for each language you use in email campaigns, accounting for differences in typography, word length, and character sets;
• team workflow and documentation: Clear task briefs, visual requirements, and links to templates for each email type. This includes explanations behind design decisions, so everyone understands not just what to do, but why.

These guidelines act as a shared language across the team, keeping everyone aligned — whether they’re designing, writing, reviewing, or sending. The result? Emails that are polished, on-brand, and trustworthy in your audience’s inbox.

Beyond alignment, brand guidelines also help teams work faster. With clear requirements baked into templates and checklists, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel every day. Stakeholders know exactly what to provide, and email marketers know exactly how to build it.

What tools do teams use to create email brand guidelines?

There are several ways marketing teams create and store email brand guidelines — from static documents to built-in tools and advanced brand management platforms. Let’s explore the most common options and how they work in practice.

PDF or online document

The most common method is to compile brand guidelines into a PDF, Google Doc, slides, or Confluence page. These documents may include links to Figma boards with visual assets, templates, and brand colors.

Teams often add quick-access links to these docs in their project management tools (such as Jira or Miro) or pin them in Slack channels for email production. While practical, this setup typically creates friction, especially for large teams. Searching for the latest version, checking formatting rules, or confirming image use can slow things down.

In most cases, marketing teams rely on a centralized document and expect everyone to follow it, even though it’s not embedded in the tools they use daily.

Stripo Brand Guidelines kit

Stripo offers the Brand Guidelines kit, a tool designed to integrate brand rules directly into email workflows to simplify the creation and use of email-specific brand guidelines.

With this kit, you can generate a brand guideline based on email templates built right into the Stripo editor. The system automatically creates a branded guide that includes all the essential elements, which you can export as a PDF or store inside the editor. This means that your whole team can access it at any time, without leaving the platform.

How teams can manage brand guidelines in a practical and accessible way

When brand guidelines are just static files, it can be time-consuming to look things up, especially across long documents. That’s where brand management platforms come in. They centralize digital assets, templates, and brand rules in one place and make them easily accessible.

Digital asset management (DAM) or brand management platforms 

Instead of static PDFs, these tools offer interactive, always up-to-date online brand hubs. Team members can preview email elements, download assets, and ensure everything they create stays on-brand.

Popular platforms such as Frontify, Artwork Flow, Bynder, and Xara Cloud are especially useful for large, global teams.

(Source: Frontify)

Key features of these platforms include:

• storing all email brand assets, guidelines, and templates in one place to ensure consistency across teams, regions, and campaigns;
• enabling team members — whether in-house or remote — to comment, review, and approve email designs directly within the platform, keeping feedback clear and actionable;
• using AI-powered tools to automatically review email content and design for alignment with your brand’s tone, visuals, fonts, and layouts — reducing errors and speeding up approvals;
• defining rules for colors, typography, and CTAs, and tailoring specifically to your email campaigns, using automation to enforce them at scale;
• tracking every change made to your email templates or guidelines, comparing versions, and ensuring updates are properly reviewed and applied.

Features built into ESPs

Some email service providers (ESPs) offer built-in tools for managing brand assets. For example, Mailchimp’s Content Studio allows teams to store and reuse brand assets, such as logos, images, and graphics, to keep campaigns consistent.

While not as robust as full DAM platforms, these features help teams stay visually aligned without switching platforms.

(Source: MailChimp)

Stripo’s built-in tools for teams

As mentioned above, Stripo’s Brand Guidelines kit helps teams create and store email brand guides right inside the editor — no extra tabs, no lost files. To create an email, team members go to the editor knowing that the brand guidelines are there at their fingertips. You can easily update them or generate a new version in the case of rebranding.

For even greater flexibility, Stripo also offers Custom Brand Palettes, with which you can assign unique brand colors to specific projects or groups. These colors then appear at the top of the palette in the editor to ensure that everyone on the team always uses the correct shades without having to guess.

Whether you’ve just completed a rebrand or updated your templates, you can regenerate your brand guide in a few clicks, keeping your whole team up to date, without additional training or documentation.

Why built-in tools are better for email production teamwork

Tools that are integrated into your email workflow help teams:

• onboard new members faster;
• reduce training time;
• eliminate the need to switch between tools;
• ensure brand consistency without slowing down production.

Unlike standalone brand platforms — which are great for managing dozens of brand versions — Stripo’s tools are purpose-built for emails. You don’t need to “shoot a cannon at a sparrow” when a lightweight, efficient solution is readily available.

Best practices for managing and enforcing brand guidelines

Creating brand guidelines is just the first step. To ensure they actually work and are used correctly by everyone on the team, they need to be accessible, easy to follow, and seamlessly integrated into your daily workflow.

Here are some proven ways to make sure your team sticks to the guidelines and gets the most out of them:

1. Make guidelines visible at every step

   Don’t hide them in a folder that’s hard to find. Embed brand guidelines directly into the tools your team uses every day — such as your email editor, asset library, or project management platform. The fewer clicks it takes to check a rule, the more likely people are to follow it.

2. Build modules and template-based workflows

   Using modules and templates is one of the easiest ways to enforce brand consistency. Lock in key design elements — such as logo placement, color palette, font choices, and CTA styles — so team members don’t have to guess or manually recreate these elements with every email. This reduces room for error and speeds up production.

3. Set roles and permissions

   While all team members should have access to brand guidelines, only designated people (such as brand managers and team leads) should be allowed to update them. This helps avoid accidental changes and ensures that updates are strategic and reviewed.

4. Use change logs or version history

   If guidelines are updated, team members should be able to see what changed and when. Version control helps avoid confusion and ensures that everyone is working with the most current rules.

5. Use pre-send checklists

   Before hitting “send,” use a quick checklist to ensure that every element aligns with your brand. Checklists help maintain quality, especially when multiple people are involved in creating an email.

6. Establish an approval process

   Build in a review stage before each campaign goes live. Having one or two people responsible for reviewing emails for brand consistency can prevent costly mistakes and help coach others on best practices.

7. Identify and empower brand champions

   In large or distributed teams, it helps to have “brand champions” — team members with deep knowledge of the guidelines who can support others, answer questions, and ensure that best practices are followed. They act as internal experts and help scale brand consistency across growing teams.

What to avoid

Even the best guidelines won’t help if they’re too complicated or hard to use. Watch out for these common pitfalls:

• overly complex brand guides: If the document is long, confusing, or full of unnecessary detail, team members may avoid using it, increasing the risk of errors;
• scattered resources: Do not force your team to dig through multiple tools, tabs, or platforms to find the information they need. Consolidate everything into a single, easy-to-access hub;
• inconsistent enforcement: If some team members follow the guidelines and others don’t, the whole system starts to break down. A consistent process and clear expectations are key.

Wrapping up

When multiple people are involved in email production, brand consistency shouldn’t be left to chance. By creating clear, email-specific brand guidelines — and making them easy to access and use — your team can work faster, make fewer mistakes, and build campaigns that always reflect your brand. Whether you’re using a shared document, a full brand platform, or built-in tools, such as Stripo’s Brand Guidelines kit, the key is to integrate those standards right into your workflow. The easier they are to follow, the more consistent and effective your emails will be.