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Using Drag to manage Content Marketing Creation

Marketing content creation is often an email-driven workflow managed in spreadsheets or task management software. With Drag, you can handle content creation directly from Gmail. No more copy pasting back and forth from email to management tool. This guide explains you how to turn Gmail into your new marketing content creation management system with Drag.

Contents:

How to set up Drag to manage Marketing Campaign content creation
- Create boards to manage marketing content creation.
- Prioritize content ideas.
- Define where email replies will load on Drag boards.
- Create automations to save you time.

How to manage marketing content creation with Drag
- Control when and by whom things are getting done.
- Give context to all content ideas with Drag tabs and internal chat.
- Get help on replies with shared drafts.
- Add new tasks manually.
- Track your team's performance.

Pro tips
- Share boards with freelancers outside your organization.
- Read a real case study on how customers use Drag as a marketing management tool.

How to set up Drag to manage Marketing Campaign content creation



Take these first steps to customize Drag according to your content marketing workflow.

Create boards to manage marketing content creation



The first thing to do is create a Marketing board, where you can receive ideas or write them down directly into the backlog. Whether your campaign creation email address is a real email account (with password), a Google Group, or simply an alias, you can plug them into your Drag boards to receive propositions into one shared workspace. You will need to:

Create a board.
Invite team members to the board.
Add incoming emails (i.e., choose which inbox or Google Group you want to assign to that board).

Here's a step by step to create a new board for your marketing content creation inbox.

This is how a Content Marketing board looks like:

In Kanban view:



In List view:



Here's how you can change between kanban or list views.

If you go for the Kanban view, don't forget to customize the columnsā€™ width by dragging and dropping them like in a spreadsheet cell šŸ˜‰.

Prioritize content ideas




Planning gets easier when you can easily visualize the priority of each content in the workflow and backlog without asking around or digging in for information. You can categorize content ideas in 4 ways using Drag:


1. Customize columns / lists for marketing content creation


Customize your columns (if you are using Kanban view) or lists (if you are using list view) to adapt Drag to your content creation workflow. For example, you may want to split inquiries into:
Backlog
Creative assets
Pending approval
Ok to archive

Or you can create your own. To rename the columns/lists, simply click on their titles (on the top left). There will be an inline editing input field, just type the desired title and click outside the input field. The names will be auto-saved.

2. Use shared tags with key information


Create Drag's shared tags to prioritize content ideas based on key information. For example, you may want to tag contents according to campaigns, channels, cost, impact, or anything else.

You can easily filter your boards by tags, which is very handy when there is a mix of different items on a board.



3. Use color coding for visual segmentation


You can also organize your cards visually with color-coding. Each color can represent the level of urgency of a campaign, its current status, or something else.

Extra tip: Create a fixed card with the colors and respective meanings to quickly help the team get used to them.



Define where email replies will load on Drag boards



When you receive replies to existing emails on Drag boards, you can choose if those replies will stay on the same column where they were left or go back to the first column of that board.

For example, if your board is divided into "Backlog", "Pending Approval", ā€œSent to clientā€ and "Ok to archive" and you receive a reply to an enquiry that is under the "Ok to archive" column, that content is likely not "Ok to archive" anymore and may require further action from your team. In this case, it can make more sense for you to change the board configuration to move replies back to the "Backlog" column.

Learn how to set up replies in this article.

Create automations to save you time



Why do the same things over and over if you can automate them? Our automations allow your Marketing team to put lots of things in auto pilot.


A few examples include:
Moving a card through the workflow once all of its subtasks are marked as complete
Assigning contents to a specific team member based on which customer sent the email.
Moving emails automatically to a specific board or column based on which alias they were sent to (e.g. support-europe@ vs support-latam@).

How to manage marketing content creation with Drag



You have set up your workflow inside Drag, well done! šŸ‘ Now, it's time to learn the best way to operate it on a daily basis.

Control when and by whom things are getting done



Now that you have your board all set up, emails start coming in. How do you know who is working on what and when? Use assignments and due dates to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

With assignments, you always know who is working on what.

Oh, and you can see what inquiries are assigned to you in 1 click with the "Assigned to Me" view under each board.



Content marketing also depends highly on keeping up with the content plan. By assigning due dates to tasks, they will be displayed on the board, and the team will prioritize contents and keep the production speed.



Besides, this feature is integrated with Google Calendar, which means the due dates go straight to your schedule to remind you of deadlines.

Give context to all content ideas with Drag tabs and internal chat



Lots of times, itā€™s not possible to create a piece of content immediately, or with one single agent. Drag allows you to track the progress of contents, collaborate on them with other team members and add more context around a specific task. Read more about these features here.


1. Notes and ToDo Tabs

Sometimes there is important information about a content idea that can't be lost or specific tasks that need to be done to complete it. That's what the "ToDo" and "Notes" tabs in Drag are. They can be found on the top of the email detailed view, next to the email title.

Example:
You were requested at a meeting to produce a piece of content marketing. Instead of writing down on pen and paper your meeting notes, you can make notes directly in Drag Notes before sending the problem to your team.


2. Internal Team Chat

Sometimes content production depends on communicating with teammates to gather information on features, metrics and developments. Thatā€™s why there's an internal team chat inside each card. Instead of going to a chat app to talk to other team members and give all the context about a specific campaign, you can simply mention them on the chatbox and start talking about that particular email or task.

Example:
You are requested a piece of content for a campaign but donā€™t have the required information on the contentā€™s style. But you know that your colleague Samantha has done something similar for another campaign a few days back. Instead of finding Samantha on Slack + copying the content of the email request and pasting to her + explaining what the campaign is + explaining what you already know and what pieces of information are missing, you can just ask: "@Samantha, how did you solve it last time"? I bet Samantha would appreciate that too šŸ‘Œ.




Get help on replies with shared drafts



Rather than copying and pasting text and sending it through other channels to get help or approvals for drafts before sending emails, it's possible to share email drafts with colleagues simply. This feature offers collision detection to avoid misunderstandings while your team is drafting an email.

You can read more about how to used shared email drafts here.

Add new tasks manually



When colleagues send content ideas to your marketing inbox, they load automatically in your Drag content creation board, that's great. But what if a colleague called you instead to report an issue? You certainly don't want to lose track of that.

That's why with Drag, you can add new cards manually into the same Shared Inbox board where your email is already loading.

Track your team's performance



When you have all the data about email usage, you can measure your teamā€™s productivity, in a whole scenario or individually. Itā€™s crucial to have a better idea of how efficient the team is performing.

With Drag, you can have insights with the Analytics feature and generate reports across all of your boards' performance. Click here to learn how to use analytics and reports.



Pro tips



Share boards with freelancers outside your organization



It is very common to order marketing contents from freelancers. Instead of forwarding emails around or managing the external production of marketing assets on a different platform, Drag allows you to share boards with people outside your Google Workspace.

Example:

Sometimes your team needs to outsource the production of a piece of content because they are at capacity. In this case you can create a board with the approved freelancer, shared with them and the coworker responsible for their works quality assurance. Then you can simply drag the tasks beyond your teamā€™s capacity onto this new board.

To do that, just create an empty board, invite the people responsible for that board and drag tasks into that board when needed. Boom šŸ¤Æ!


Read a real case study on how customers use Drag as a marketing management tool


Curious to see how all of the above works in practice? Read how Absolute Marketing saves 20 hours a month with Drag. Hereā€™s how they increase productivity and save valuable employee time and overhead.



And there you are! You can now use Drag to manage the marketing content production seamlessly, using all the available features.

Still need help? Our Support Team will love to help at support@dragapp.com.

Updated on: 07/03/2022

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