As a global organization, how can you democratize email creation and deployment to reach customers in hours, not days or weeks?

That was the question Scaled Agile needed to answer. For context, Scaled Agile provides the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), a way of working that helps 20,000+ enterprises across the globe. SAFe® empowers enterprises to achieve and sustain business agility.

Scaled Agile’s clients are trained via a role-based curriculum in SAFe Studio™, an online platform for learning, practicing and managing SAFe. With more than one million professionals trained in SAFe® practices and a partner network north of 500 member companies, the organization fuels innovation across nearly every industry.

As Scaled Agile grew its reach, the company knew it needed an equally agile email solution. One that removed bottlenecks and expanded the number of capable collaborators involved in the email creation and revision process, all without slowing down time to market.

Once Scaled Agile saw the efficiency and productivity MessageBird’s product—Taxi for Email— could offer them, the decision to work together was a no-brainer.

The challenge: A tedious, inefficient email creation process

Before implementing Taxi, Scaled Agile ran every email, regardless of the sender or purpose, through a select few marketers. The team shifted back and forth between existing tools that didn’t give the right kind of access, UI, and creative autonomy they needed. The small team quickly became overburdened with edits to copy, design, and backend HTML infrastructure. Naturally, this approval process led to lengthy, inefficient email creation and deployment timelines.

“There were more bottlenecks simply because fewer people had the ability to build our emails,” said Adam Wilbur, Director of Marketing at Scaled Agile. “Even though we had a templated design system back then, anyone who wanted to put together an email needed at least some HTML knowledge.”

As a result, departments like sales and HR had to work with a copywriter in a Google Doc, then a designer. After that, every email went through multiple rounds of testing and executive approvals. Some teams simply went rogue and decided to fire off their own emails, without the guidance of the marketing team, to avoid the process entirely.

“All these reviews and revisions really bogged us down and made other departments over-reliant on marketing to get the job done,” added Adam. They needed one tool multiple teams could use to deliver email content and draft links to the right people without breaking any crucial processes or templates.

All that changed when Scaled Agile saw the marketing and communications results they could achieve using the features Taxi offers.

The solution: A flexible, easy-to-use email solution and process

Over and above ease of collaboration, Scaled Agile’s team sought an email partner to deliver the creative and process flexibility they craved. They looked at other providers, but each presented obstacles ranging from privacy concerns to limited seats per license.

In 2019, Scaled Agile got started with Taxi, using an email template. In 2022, as part of their rebranding efforts, they replaced the email template with a revamped and rebranded version as part of the business starter package. This package gave Scaled Agile the tools to implement a new look and feel across all their emails, to match their updated brand.

With Taxi’s help, Scaled Agile’s marketing teams reconfigured over 80 automated emails in just a few weeks instead of months.

Today, the Scaled Agile team uses Taxi to consistently hit their communication KPIs thanks to a robust process that empowers teams other than marketing to create unique messages that delight their clients (and stay on-brand).

Best of all, technical issues have been non-existent. Scaled Agile’s marketing leadership said they’ve only had to reach out to Taxi support once post-implementation because the platform is “so easy to use.”

How Taxi for Email helps Scaled Agile democratize email creation and boost efficiency

With MessageBird’s Taxi solution powering their email ecosystem, different teams at Scaled Agile have complete autonomy over what goes into internal or external messaging.

Before Taxi, administrators were anxious about giving access to users—one small change could cascade into a technical nightmare. Now, the sales and HR teams can make their own unique emails or campaigns without worrying about breaking anything or looping stakeholders in every time an edit is needed.

As a result, the marketing team is unblocked from tedious review tasks and can work on other initiatives that drive leads and revenue. As Lauren Clark, Partner Marketing Manager at Scaled Agile, put it, “The ease of collaboration takes a lot of the guesswork out of the process.”

“A good example of this in action is our HR onboarding email series called ‘Tip of the Day,’” she added. “New hires are sent 30 days' worth of emails with topics ranging from our wellness program to an email signature setup demo. Although we have cross-functional teams and contractors working on these emails, I’ve never had to look at a single one.”

“It’s a safe space for users to create, edit, and review together.”

Taxi significantly democratized the email rollout process across all of Scaled Agile’s business units. With more creators collaborating in one intuitive ecosystem, improvements are drastically noticeable in three main buckets.

1. The write-review-deploy email process is smoother and quicker

Using Taxi, the company has shrunk the turnaround time for email campaigns from several weeks to just a few hours. This improved agility enables Scaled Agile to get interconnected email campaigns and drips up and running in no time. Today, the company’s marketing and sales efforts are scalable and more competitive in the marketplace.

“Instead of having someone draft copy in a shared document, send it to a copywriter, then send it over to someone else for approval, we've reduced that cycle time drastically,” explained Lauren. “Employees just throw it in Taxi, share the email with somebody to get the necessary approvals, and you're done.”

A review process that lives in a single hosted URL location is the kind of optimized workflow you don’t typically see in marketing. “Usually, getting an email out can take a week or more, depending on the company's process,” added Eva. “With Taxi, I can get an email out in just a few hours.”

Unsurprisingly, Scaled Agile significantly increased its sent email volume across all its teams year-over-year with Taxi.

2. Deep customization and support are skyrocketing productivity

“Is it on brand?” is a question the Scaled Agile Marketing team no longer has to ask about their emails. Part of the reason email creation runs through several layers of marketing is that brand consistency is tough.

Manually ensuring all templates are designed correctly and guidelines are followed can be a tall order. Even if hours or days are spent on this task, it’s all worth nothing if other departments don’t follow the blueprint.

However, Taxi’s customizable email template system protected Scaled Agile’s brand from being the victim of design errors, messaging faux pas, and overall off-brand emails. The company’s marketing team updated over 100 emails with the easy-to-use clone and edit features, a process that would’ve otherwise taken them months to complete.

“It's so easy to customize emails using the parent version from a current or previous campaign and clone it to whatever customer specifications you need,” said Lauren. “It's helped our ABM strategy that, ‘Hey, we can send much more customized emails quickly. We don't have to wait.’ Design isn't making headers anymore. It's us just typing it in, which is so nice.”

This streamlined approach means employees, contractors, and other stakeholders can get as creative as possible without venturing outside established brand guidelines.

3. A/B testing and search functionality bring clarity to campaign configuration

Email marketing plays a major role in Scaled Agile’s winning communication strategy, largely because of the dozens of tests they’re running and learning from. Testing allows for tighter email version control, which ensures no rogue branding elements are sent to customers or prospects. Better testing has led to a simplified, efficient campaign rollout process for Scaled Agile.

Taxi’s testing and quality assurance (QA) features enable stakeholders to preview emails for desktop or mobile in real-time, even as others are making additional edits. These features equip Scaled Agile, a company that never had a formalized QA process, to run more than 55 tests in less than a year on elements like subject lines, images, audience segments, and button text.

“If I have a footer change I need to make in a 10-message series, I can instantly translate that across every email by editing the parent template,” added Eva. “It's beneficial for transactional emails and A/B testing for us now—way more than it used to be.”

With a catalog of all sent emails at their fingertips, Scaled Agile employees can leverage Taxi’s search function to access previous campaigns and use their sizable archive to inform future successes.

What’s next for Scaled Agile and MessageBird’s Taxi for Email

Following its Taxi implementation and recent rebrand, Scaled Agile lives in a state of email nirvana. Marketing is unblocked and thriving now that no one’s bogged down with hours and hours of email building or review.

With over 100 robust email templates for employees across sales, marketing, and HR teams, Scaled Agile leadership is looking to segment practices even further with “Brands” that’ll roll up under their master email templates.

“Brands is an option to create sub-templates of your master template and modify certain things,” explained Eva. “When the master template gets updated, those changes touch all associated Brands. So, instead of creating a separate template for Japanese, let’s say, you would have a Japanese Brand off of the master template.”

With Taxi’s help, Scaled Agile is well-positioned to expand its email operations to speak to specific regional and industry audiences and unlock even more revenue potential long-term.

About Scaled Agile

Scaled Agile, Inc. is the provider of SAFe®, the world's most trusted system for business agility. Through integrated solutions that help teams unlock better ways of working, Scaled Agile is redefining the way the world's leading organizations identify and deliver customer value, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and improve business outcomes. Over 20,000 businesses and government agencies rely on SAFe and Scaled Agile's Global Partner Network to accelerate digital innovation and compete in a fast-changing marketplace. Learn more at scaledagile.com.

About MessageBird

MessageBird’s mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power communication between businesses and their customers — across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service, or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed your interactions have been powered by MessageBird’s technology.

Our platform, our applications and our APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger, Instagram - and build powerful and engaging experiences. MessageBird's out of the box functionality and omnichannel expertise tips the scales for knowledge workers and helps them be productive right away, with tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences, or automated business processes.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, MessageBird processes over 5 trillion+ messages, calls, and emails for over 29k+ customers such as; Google, Facebook and Uber across channels like WhatApp, Email, SMS, and many more. Founded in 2011, we have grown to a powerhouse team of 800+ employees who represent more than 55 nationalities, and we’re proud to be a “Remote Friendly” company.