Week 1–2 — Strategy, consent, and list health
You establish program goals tied to revenue, retention, or product adoption, then map ideal customer profiles without over-segmenting into unusable micro-lists. Lessons cover lawful consent capture, transparent unsubscribe paths, and double opt-in trade-offs for different regions. Deliverability drills teach SPF, DKIM, and DMARC at a practical level, plus list hygiene routines that suppress chronic bounces and disengaged contacts before they poison sender reputation. You also build a lightweight governance doc that marketing, legal, and support can reference when questions arise about data use or frequency caps.
Week 3–4 — Copy, creative, and mobile-first layouts
This block focuses on subject lines and preview text that earn opens without clickbait, body structures that respect scanning behavior, and accessible typography for small screens. You practice voice exercises that keep brand tone consistent across promotional and lifecycle mail, and you learn to localize currency and timing cues for key segments. Critique sessions use real anonymized campaigns so you can articulate why a layout feels cluttered or why a call to action lacks urgency. Templates you produce include modular blocks that non-technical teammates can reuse with guardrails.
Week 5 — Automation and journeys
You diagram multi-step journeys with clear entry rules, exit criteria, and branching that reflects real customer behavior rather than idealized funnels. Labs walk through welcome series, browse abandonment, and win-back flows with sensible delays and frequency caps. Emphasis stays on testing incremental changes—one branch at a time—and on logging decisions so future editors understand why a path exists. You also explore failure modes such as overlapping automations and how to audit them before peak season traffic.
Week 6 — Measurement, testing, and iteration
Closing lessons tie each send to business metrics beyond opens, including assisted conversions and cohort retention over ninety days. You design A/B tests with adequate power, ethical randomization, and clear success criteria, then summarize outcomes for executives without statistical jargon. The final project asks for a monthly performance narrative, a prioritized backlog of experiments, and a risk note on deliverability or compliance changes you would monitor next quarter.
