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Meterstab
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Review of JUNE’s drag-and-drop email builder
There are many drag-and-drop email builders. JUNE , by the Hamburg-based software company of the same name, wants to overcome the limitations of established e-mail editors and thus stand out from the crowd: The editor not only enables email marketing managers to design newsletters easily, but also offers real added value. As an email templating and production solution, JUNE is an integral module of the JUNE multichannel marketing automation platform. However, the email builder can also be used standalone. An amazing list of well-known companies that send their marketing emails via Salesforce Marketing Cloud or SAP Marketing Cloud, for example, use JUNE in this way. For us, this was reason enough to put JUNE’s integrated email editor to the test and find out whether the solution can really do more than the other building blocks we have tested. By the way, JUNE also offers a landing page editor, but we did not look at it in detail for this test.
Email creation with the JUNE editor
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More flexibility, more freedom
Anyone who has ever “tinkered” with an email newsletter or landing page using a builder knows that almost every modular system sooner or later reaches its limits and either design compromises or elaborate custom coding are inevitable. Here JUNE actually offers more flexibility and freedom than any other solution known to us and scores with many convenient features.
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Drag & Drop Editor with Focus on CI Conformity
The web-based JUNE editor works (like almost all editors nowadays) based on the drag-and-drop principle. It offers ready-made templates that are sorted into different categories. These templates can be customized and saved according to your own CI and stylesheets (colors, fonts, spacing, button styles). Alternatively, you can start with an empty template and let your design creativity run wild.
Elements and blocks can be flexibly moved, copied and adjusted, as known from editors of this kind. In addition (and not many editors allow this), elements within a block can also be repositioned, moved and hidden. A decisive advantage in everyday business: with JUNE, designed and filled elements can be saved as favorites and reused for other mailings or projects. -
Mobile First and Finetuning
Responsive emails are generated by every editor nowadays – what distinguishes JUNE from the competition are more options for “fine-tuning” the layouts. For example, it is possible to define the spacing of the elements among each other or to the borders of the email, or to choose between different (CI-compliant) button designs – in other editors, you usually have to create several blocks for different designs.
Another advantage of JUNE is that blocks and elements can be hidden or shown in the drag-and-drop editor on mobile devices. Spacing and font sizes can be customized individually or globally for the mobile version of the newsletter. This means that anyone who wants to design their marketing emails “mobile first” will certainly get their money’s worth with JUNE.You can tell that a lot of practical experience has gone into the development of the tool. JUNE has considered and avoided many things that would “break” an email in production. Images scale themselves when inserted into the editor. You have the option to insert formatted text with or without formatting (many other editors require you to go through cumbersome intermediate steps to remove formatting). And in case you made a mistake while editing an email or a colleague overwrote something that you want to get back: There is a back button and a history that shows the previous editing states for all users who worked on the email, so you can also restore an old version.When previewing the emails, one can switch between different preview modes such as desktop, tablet or mobile. In this way, email producers can ensure that the email looks good on a wide range of devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. -
Useful features
If you use JUNE not only as a stand-alone email editor, but as an email marketing platform, you can target your communication very conveniently based on the click behavior of the recipient via several triggers: text links, buttons or images are provided with a click tag and a click score, which you can evaluate specifically and use for behavior- and interest-based communication.
To add variety to email marketing communications, JUNE also offers dynamic and interactive elements in the email builder: Slideshows, Image Carousels, Countdowns and Interactive Forms, e.g. to submit ratings directly in emails. Unfortunately, cross-platform and cross-client support for dynamic (“kinetic”) elements is still not well off (more on this in our blog post Moving email newsletters) – many recipients will only see the fallback variants. But still, it’s a big advantage that JUNE provides these elements “out of the box” and you don’t have to program them separately or rely on third-party tools. The countdown timer element is very simple and doesn’t include any elaborate background designs or effects. But for anyone who wants to include an ad hoc countdown for a special promotion, it’s a good option with no extra costs.Another plus point from us is that JUNE also shows you directly in the editor whether the linked page actually exists or not. A great support for the quality assurance of a newsletter! -
Image editing directly in the email editor
JUNE is also flexible when it comes to artwork: users who want to quickly add a few free stock photos will find what they need, as will marketers who want to use their own images. JUNE provides an integrated image database with royalty-free photos, but you can also connect your own asset management. Images can be edited directly in JUNE. This applies not only to resizing and cropping; even overlays/layers can be added without an additional graphics program. And you can also compose images, for example adding a frame or Polaroid look, or placing overlays on the image (such as a play button or price tag), adding headlines and filters – all directly in the editor, which then scales the images to the correct resolution for email.
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Dynamization and individualization
JUNE allows you to dynamize and individualize blocks for different target groups. Product images and information can also be dynamically queried via a store integration or the Google Shopping feed using article numbers (SKUs) and integrated directly into the e-mails.
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Template programming
In other editors, you often have to make compromises in template design because certain blocks or structures cannot be realized in the construction kit. JUNE, on the other hand, gives experienced developers/designers the possibility to design and optimize templates granularly, even on the level of CSS/HTML code within the JUNE template framework. Templates do not have a fixed structure that users have to fit into.
Finally, with its well-designed template framework, JUNE ensures the correct display of finished emailings in over 50 email clients, including Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and Yahoo! Mail. -
Roles and rights management
To prevent everyone from “messing around” with the code, there is a sophisticated roles and rights management system that can map various responsibilities, authorizations and competencies within the company in a team-oriented manner. For example, an “editor” is only allowed to fill a template with content and has very little creative freedom in terms of design. A “designer” can influence the design of the newsletter and a “developer” can even edit the HTML source code and thus strongly individualize a prefabricated template.
Furthermore, external partners such as creative agencies, copywriters or graphic designers can be given access only to the email builder in order to protect sensitive content such as personal customer data in compliance with the GDPR. -
Email export and dispatch
Finished mailings can be exported with a few clicks and transferred to the respective sending platform. Alternatively, the email HTML or AMP code can be downloaded.
Of course, emails can also be sent via JUNE itself. For campaign management, JUNE offers a campaign overview in list and calendar form.
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Usability
It is obvious from our description: Rarely have we seen a tool that offers so many freedoms and possibilities and, in addition, a lot of useful and convenient features. This also applies to the usability: Overall, the editor is highly customizable to the respective (system) requirements of the users. For easy handling, the editor has keyboard shortcuts, right-click context menus, a layer overview and several preview views.
If you get stuck at any point, you can contact JUNE directly in a live chat without having to leave the editor. With many other platforms, support chats often refer to generic help pages and only deal with a problem in detail after multiple requests. JUNE developers and designers can log directly into the customer account and provide live help.However, the multitude of possibilities can be both a curse and a blessing – JUNE is complex and comprehensive. Those who have worked with a simple editor so far should expect some initial training. Afterwards, however, almost innumerable possibilities open up as far as newsletter design is concerned. -
Costs
JUNE offers various module packages that start at 190 euros per month. Compared to pure email builders, this seems a lot at first, but it can be well worth it due to the ease of work that the JUNE editor offers in everyday life. In return, you not only get a powerful drag-and-drop editor, but also a multichannel marketing automation platform with features that we otherwise only know from much more expensive enterprise platforms. The costs do not rise exorbitantly with high numbers of recipients, as is the case with other providers, and are therefore worthwhile quite quickly, especially with high shipping volumes.
JUNE Impressions
Summary and conclusion
Plus points: The JUNE editor …
- is highly adaptable to the (system) requirements of its customers.
- is perfectly suited for the creation of responsive emails.
- allows access to the template’s source code for even greater customization.
- guarantees correct display of emails in 50+ email clients including future updates.
- offers immediate support service directly in the editor itself – with direct contact to programmers & designers.
Minus points: The JUNE editor …
- requires a certain amount of training and familiarization due to its complexity.
- is cost-wise above the level of many small external “standalone” editors.
JUNE is in a league of its own – it can do much more than many editors integrated with marketing automation platforms or than other standalone editors we have tested. The fact that this entails higher costs and more training effort is, in our view, entirely justified. If you have high expectations for your landing pages, website and store content, you should definitely take a look at JUNE.
