An email brief is still a creative brief, but the audience already said yes to you once. The work is less about getting noticed and more about the reason they stopped, the order the emails arrive in and what happens when someone clicks.
Below is a full example for a made-up company, written in the eleven sections of a one-page creative brief. The shaded notes are the places an email campaign brief needs something a standard brief doesn't. If it's close to what you're working on, you can start from this example and change it.
Supper Club win-back series for paused customers
Supper Club sends meal kits to about 60,000 homes. Around 18,000 customers have paused their deliveries in the last six months. The menu has changed a lot since then: shorter recipes, a 20 minute line and smaller boxes for two people.
People paused because cooking the kits took too long on weeknights, and they don't know that's been fixed.
Paused customers stay paused. The only emails they get are generic promo codes, which trains them to wait for a discount and doesn't tell them anything changed.
Couples and small households who liked the food but paused after a few busy weeks where boxes went uncooked. They open email on their phone, usually in the evening, and delete anything that looks like a sale.
“It was good, but I felt guilty every time a box sat in the fridge.”
“Oh, they have quick ones now. I could do that on a Tuesday.”
Supper Club got faster, so it fits a weeknight now.
A new line of recipes that take 20 minutes or less, with the time printed on every card. Boxes for two with three meals instead of four. You can skip any week in one tap, up to the day before it ships.
No discount in the first two emails. Every email links to the skip-a-week setting. Plain text version for every send. Subject lines under 45 characters.
A series of three emails over two weeks, with subject lines and preview text for each, plus two subject line options per email for testing. A landing page showing this week's 20 minute recipes. A version of email three with an offer, for people who haven't opened the first two.
Kickoff 6 October, copy and design 14 October, client review 17 October, build and test sends 22 October, first send 27 October.
The One-Page Brief is free and there's no sign-up. It checks your brief for the usual problems, and you send it as a link so people can comment on the section they mean and approve it with their name.
Need it as a file?
The One-Page Strategy Kit has the creative brief, the messaging framework and the measurement plan as fillable PDFs and Word files, for when a client wants a document. It's $19.
Get the filesFrom the same desk
A weekly note on account planning for agency strategists. One thing that changed, the tension in it, and what I'd do Monday. The first part of every issue is free.
Written by Cody Simmonds. I also write The Rationale, a weekly note for agency strategists.