The Big Christmas Emailing Checklist

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What Is a Workflow

An email workflow is the structured process that governs how emails are created, reviewed, approved, and delivered. In marketing and product messaging, workflows help teams ship consistently without breaking templates or losing track of changes. A good workflow balances speed with control.

What a Workflow Usually Includes

Most workflows combine planning, design, build, review, and release steps. In many teams, workflows are implemented through email automation logic so emails send automatically once the workflow conditions are met. For educational sequences, a drip campaign is a common workflow pattern because it defines a clear series of steps and timing.

Collaboration and Governance

A simple operational rule is to separate what can be changed without risk from what requires review. Copy edits and minor image swaps may be safe, while layout changes, link destination changes, and legal text updates should always go through approval. This keeps the workflow moving while protecting critical paths.

As teams grow, governance becomes important. An approval workflow prevents accidental changes from going live without review, especially for high-impact templates like onboarding and billing messages. Workflows also need traceability. Maintaining change history lets teams understand what changed, when it changed, and who made the change.

Making Workflows Developer Friendly

If you embed an editor in your product, define an explicit contract between the editor output and the sending system. For example, lock core layout blocks, validate links automatically, and store template versions with identifiers that can be referenced in logs. This makes debugging faster when a workflow step underperforms.

Developers often want workflows that integrate cleanly with product events and deployment processes. That means versioned templates, predictable output, and a clear separation between content editing and send logic. When those boundaries are respected, teams can iterate without introducing fragile one-off HTML.

Email Workflow and Topol

Topol supports structured email workflows by enabling reusable templates, safe editing, and predictable HTML output that fits well into modern product and marketing pipelines. Learn more at Topol or create an account at Topol signup.