What advantages does Figma bring to Email Marketing?
The adoption of Figma among email designers in email marketing companies is growing all the time. We have seen this well in the agency, where a significant number of clients and creative agencies we collaborate with have started working with this tool. Figma's success among designers is mainly due to the fact that it is a highly collaborative, web-based tool. Projects are accessed through a browser and the information is stored in the cloud. This allows access to any project from any internet access point (it is worth mentioning that it was precisely during the months of pandemic confinement that the adoption of Figma accelerated among designers). This allows projects to be modified in real time by different users at the same time.
What advantages does Figma bring to Email Marketers?
One of the main advantages are the plugins that allow the export of HTML code for email (with inline CSS) and the display of mobile and desktop versions from the design. These components are a great advantage, as they save the layout step (the HTML is exported automatically). However, this solution is only valid in cases where we can work with standard or common (not customised) structures and functionalities. When the layouts contain brand specificities (button formats, structures, fonts), we will have to spend a lot of time configuring these layouts in plug-ins and we may not be able to fine-tune them when using pre-existing components. In addition, we do not have direct control over the resulting HTML, so in complex designs the result may not be exactly as desired or generate small errors in certain email services. In short, if we have email developers, existing plug-ins do not provide reliable value, as they detract from the flexibility and reliability of the resulting HTML. The development of an ad hoc plug-in would allow us to have total control over the components to be generated, both in terms of design and html.
The advantage of working with Figma for the production of email marketing campaigns lies in the operational agility and time savings.
On the other hand, in development teams like the one we have at Digital Response, where we always work with client designs, and where many email marketing campaigns are produced daily, the advantage of a client or agency working with Figma lies in the operational agility and time savings. Specifically, we are referring to the possibility of receiving the designs via a link instead of a file (PSD, AI, Sketch...). This saves time spent compressing, sending and receiving the design file, downloading it, saving it and opening it again. We can save between 3 and 5 minutes per file if we access the file directly through the link provided by the design team. This may seem like an irrelevant amount of time, but when you multiply it by the number of times a design has changed at the last minute and we have to receive it again, and by the average of 5 jobs a layout artist does per day, the savings can be up to 1 hour per day. A production environment dominated by a high volume of work and very short production times requires optimising every stage of the process, and Figma is proving to be a good solution.
We are adapting to collaborating with our clients and creative agencies in the Figma environment. We continue to investigate what options exist to make HTML development work more agile, including process automation. We'll see what new features we can share with you in the coming months.
