We build and manage email programs inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud. One thing we consistently see across enterprise teams is that email output is rarely constrained by strategy or content.
It’s the step between “the content is ready” and “the email is built, tested, and ready to send.”
Recently, we helped BBC Studios integrate an email creation platform, Stensul, into their non-UK newsletter operations. BBC Studios chose Stensul. Our role was to make it perform at the level their program required.
The experience reinforced something we already believed: the tools your team uses to produce emails matter as much as the emails themselves.
Here is what we learned, organized around the principles that matter most when evaluating an email production workflow.
BBC Studios runs a large and growing newsletter portfolio:
Under the previous workflow, journalists drafted content in a document. Once approved, someone with SFMC expertise rebuilt the email inside the platform. That double-creation step worked at lower volume. As the program grew, it placed increasing pressure on a small technical team.
BBC Studios saw where the program was heading and acted. They brought Stensul into the workflow so journalists could build emails directly, without SFMC knowledge.
The production model changed. The same volume could be supported with fewer steps. The program continued to grow without needing to scale the team at the same rate.
As more people build emails, maintaining consistency becomes harder. BBC Studios has multiple journalists producing newsletters under different titles on different schedules. Without structural controls, brand drift becomes a real risk.
At this scale, governance cannot rely on training or documentation. It has to be built into the tool.
When BBC Studios brought FanMail into the Stensul implementation, we translated the existing template architecture into Stensul’s modular framework. Each newsletter received a starter template built from shared, governed components: BBC-branded headers, correspondent byline modules, image-and-text story blocks, cross-promotion sections, and standardized footers.
These components are locked where they need to be (fonts, colors, layout) and flexible where editorial teams need control (content, images, and optional elements like subheadlines or dividers).
The result is consistency without friction. A journalist working on Royal Watch and another working on Tech Decoded produce emails that clearly belong to the same BBC ecosystem, without needing to think about design or structure.
That consistency is not maintained through oversight. The platform enforces it.
Most enterprise email programs depend on a small technical team to turn content into finished emails. BBC Studios’ newsletters are written by journalists whose expertise is storytelling, not HTML.
With Stensul, journalists like Kate Samuelson (The Essential List) and Sean Coughlan (Royal Watch) open a starter template, arrange content modules, add images, write copy, and see the email exactly as it will appear in the inbox.
When the email is ready, it is exported as HTML into SFMC, where a deployment team handles the send.
This is not about simplifying the work. It is about aligning the tool with the person doing it. The people who know the content best now own the production process, from draft to send-ready, without relying on a specialist for every edition.
For teams running on SFMC, any email creation tool has to end where Salesforce begins. The output must be clean HTML that lands in the sending platform without rework.
This is where FanMail’s role becomes specific.
“Supports SFMC export” and “exports cleanly for your templates” are not the same thing. Stensul provides the integration. What we provide is the knowledge of what happens on the other side.
Our email developers tested every template component against the SFMC export pipeline. Where does Salesforce render differently from Stensul’s preview? Where do content structures need adjustment? How does dark mode behave across Outlook and Apple Mail?
These are not questions a creation platform is built to answer. They are solved through testing, iteration, and experience working inside SFMC at scale.
That feedback loop between our developers and Stensul’s engineering team is what made the platform work for this program. BBC Studios gained a tool that their journalists can use. We ensured that what comes out of it meets the rendering and deliverability standards the program has always maintained.
A faster workflow only matters if it is also more reliable.
Under the previous process, content moved from a journalist’s document into a developer’s SFMC build. That handoff introduced a QA gap. Did the rebuilt email match the original intent? Were the images placed correctly? Did the copy carry over accurately? Issues were often caught late, when they were more costly to fix.
With Stensul, the journalist builds the email directly. What they see is what gets sent.
Governed templates prevent structural errors before they happen. QA shifts from checking layout, formatting, and structure to reviewing content. That reduces the surface area for error and speeds up the review cycle.
Collaboration improves as well. Editors and reviewers work in the same environment where the email is built. Feedback happens in context, not in a separate document removed from the final product.
For a program producing across multiple titles and schedules, repeatability is what makes the operation sustainable. Every send follows the same process. Every send meets the same standard.
In enterprise email, “agile” is not a framework. It is a reduction in the number of steps between the idea and execution.
BBC Studios’ workflow is a practical example. A journalist opens Stensul, selects the appropriate template, builds the email using modular components, and exports it to SFMC. No document handoff. No rebuild. The content owner produces the email.
This was a deliberate decision by BBC Studios to support continued growth. They identified the right tool and brought FanMail in to ensure the transition preserved the quality and standards already in place.
Our team worked with Stensul to tailor the platform and with BBC Studios to migrate the existing template architecture. The program has grown from a handful of titles to twelve, with more in development, without introducing additional production complexity.
Most enterprise email teams do not have a strategy gap. They have a production gap. We see it all the time across many media, music, sports, and entertainment companies.
The ideas are there. The content is there. But the number of emails that actually get built, tested, and deployed is limited by how many people can operate the tools and how many steps sit between content and send.
Teams that recognize this early gain the ability to grow without being constrained by their workflow. Other teams usually discover it only after growth has already exposed the limits of the process.
Production is the ceiling for most enterprise email programs. The teams that raise it early are the ones that scale.
At FanMail Marketing, we help enterprise teams get more out of the tools they choose. Not by selecting platforms for them, but by bringing our extensive expertise in email, marketing automation platforms, and audience development required to make those tools perform in real-world conditions.
FanMail Marketing is an email strategy and production agency specializing in enterprise email and marketing automation programs. We work with entertainment and media brands on lifecycle marketing, data, and e-commerce, building scalable systems that support audience growth and revenue. HyperDrive is our parent company.
Ready to crank up your marketing efforts? We look forward to hearing from you and learning how we can help.
