How to structure your organization in EmailShepherd

Overview

EmailShepherd uses a hierarchical organization structure that provides flexibility for teams of all sizes while maintaining clear access controls and resource sharing. This structure allows you to organize your email campaigns, design systems, and team collaboration effectively.

Organization Structure

Organization
  |-- Users
  |-- Roles
  |-- Workspace (requires membership for access) (Enterprise only)
  |   |-- Team (requires membership for access)
  |   |   |-- Project A
  |   |   |   |-- Email A
  |   |   |   |-- Email B
  |   |-- Email Design System
  |   |-- Personalization tags
  |   |-- Conditionals
  |   |-- Images
  |   |-- Dynamic content profiles
  |   |-- Connectors
  |   |-- ...Most other resources

Core Concepts

Projects

What is a project? A project in EmailShepherd is a collection of related emails that share a common purpose or campaign goal. Projects provide a way to group emails logically and manage them as a cohesive unit.

Key characteristics:

• Owned by a single team
• Can contain multiple emails
• Provide organized workflow for email campaigns

Examples of projects:

• "Q4 Product Launch Campaign"
• "Monthly Newsletter Series"
• "Onboarding Email Sequence"
• "Holiday Promotions 2025"

Teams

What is a team? Teams are the primary organizational unit for managing access and ownership in EmailShepherd. Teams own projects and control who can access and modify the emails within those projects.

Key characteristics:

• Own and control access to projects
• Members can view, edit, and manage team projects
• Users can belong to multiple teams
• Team members can invite other users to join

Access control:

• Only team members can access projects owned by that team
• Team membership determines project visibility and editing permissions
• Invitation-based membership system

Why use teams? Most organizations should structure their projects using teams to maintain proper access control. This approach ensures that teams can only access their specific emails and projects, while still allowing all teams to share common resources like Email Design Systems, personalization tags, and other workspace-level assets. This provides the right balance of security and collaboration.

Team structure flexibility: Teams are designed to adapt to your organization's unique structure and workflows:

Organizational alignment:

• Functional teams: Marketing, Sales, Support, Customer Success
• Departmental teams: HR, Operations, Product, Engineering
• Geographic teams: North America, Europe, APAC

Product or initiative-based:

• Product lines: Product A, Product B, Mobile App
• Business units: Enterprise Division, SMB Division
• Campaigns: Black Friday 2025, Q1 Product Launch, Back-to-School

Temporary workstreams:

• Events: Conference 2025, Webinar Series
• Initiatives: Customer Retention Program, User Onboarding Redesign
• Seasonal: Holiday Campaigns, Summer Sale

Workspaces (Enterprise Only)

What is a workspace? Workspaces provide complete resource isolation within your organization, creating separate environments for different divisions, regions, or business units that require independent email operations.

When to use workspaces:

• Complete resource isolation needed: Different divisions that shouldn't share design systems, personalization tags, or other resources
• Regulatory compliance: Separate legal entities or regions with different compliance requirements
• Brand separation: Multiple brands or subsidiaries with distinct email strategies
• Development environments: Separate staging and production environments

Workspace-level resources: All workspace-scoped resources are isolated between workspaces:

• Email Design Systems + Brand Profiles
• Layouts
• Personalization tags
• Conditionals
• Images and media library
• Dynamic content profiles
• Connectors and integrations
• AI Agents and Reviewers

Access control:

• Users must be granted membership to access a workspace
• Workspace membership is separate from team membership
• Users can be members of multiple workspaces

Practical Examples

Small Marketing Team

Organization: Acme Corp
└── Team: Marketing
    ├── Project: Monthly Newsletter
    │   ├── Email: January Newsletter
    │   └── Email: February Newsletter
    └── Project: Product Launch Q1
        ├── Email: Announcement
        └── Email: Follow-up

Large Enterprise (with Workspaces)

Organization: Global Corp
├── Workspace: North America
│   ├── Team: US Marketing
│   └── Team: Canada Marketing
└── Workspace: Europe
    ├── Team: UK Marketing
    └── Team: EU Marketing

Multi-brand Company

Organization: Parent Company
├── Workspace: Brand A
│   ├── Team: Brand A Marketing
│   └── Team: Brand A Sales
└── Workspace: Brand B
    ├── Team: Brand B Marketing
    └── Team: Brand B Customer Success

Best Practices

Team Organization

• Keep teams focused: Align teams with clear responsibilities and workflows
• Regular review: Periodically assess team structure as your organization grows
• Clear naming: Use descriptive team names that reflect their purpose

Project Management

• Logical grouping: Group related emails that share timing, audience, or purpose
• Descriptive naming: Use clear, specific project names with dates when relevant
• Archive completed projects: Keep your workspace organized by archiving old campaigns

Workspace Strategy (Enterprise)

• Minimize when possible: Only create separate workspaces when true isolation is required
• Plan resource sharing: Consider which resources should be shared vs. isolated
• Access governance: Establish clear policies for workspace access and management

Getting Started

1. Identify your team structure: Map out how your organization creates and manages email campaigns
2. Create teams: Set up teams that align with your workflow and responsibilities
3. Invite team members: Add users to appropriate teams based on their roles
4. Create your first project: Start with a simple project to test the workflow
5. Consider workspaces: Evaluate if your organization needs workspace-level isolation (Enterprise only)