Campaign Monitor Unveils Its Rebuilt Drag-And-Drop Email Builder

Although some email marketers are still getting up to speed with the channel’s capabilities, email remains the linchpin of many campaigns.

As such, it has to stay in style — with visuals resembling a brand’s website and an effortless ability to look its best regardless of inbox or device.

To help marketers with those endless tasks, email provider Campaign Monitor is today releasing a rebuilt platform that it says is faster, easier and more capable than its previous drag-and-drop version, which was released in September of 2014.

The HTML5, web browser-based tool now offers edge-to-edge imagery for any device and built-in image editing:

In-tool user segmentation allows a marketer to specify that this version of the email will go to one user group, while another group will get a slightly different visualization. There are also lots of new layouts, font colors and styles, buttons with drag-and-drop spacing and customizable business templates.

Chief marketing officer Kraig Swensrud told me that the previous generation of drag-and-drop email builders — even Campaign Monitor’s — was so limited that “some of our customers have resorted to coding HTML and CSS.”

“It was a nightmare to get it to work” correctly in the dozens of different kinds of email inboxes on all those different devices, he said, adding that there were also limitations of fonts, colors, layouts and templates, as well as “poor responsive design.”

If our first-generation drag-and-drop version “was our iPad,” he said, “this is our iPad 2.”

As for current competitors, Swensrud said his company’s newest incarnation is “significantly easier to use” than high-end marketing clouds like Salesforce’s or IBM’s, which are largely built around email marketing.

And, he contended, Campaign Monitor is more business-focused than the lower-end drag-and-drop email builders. Campaign Monitor’s 150,000 or so client companies include BuzzFeed, Coca-Cola, Disney and the San Diego Chargers.

“We don’t have any templates for school groups or soccer moms,” he pointed out.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.