Franchise systems thrive on consistency—brand consistency, customer experience consistency, and operational consistency. But when it comes to email marketing, many franchises are anything but consistent.
At ActiveCampaign, we’ve worked with franchise brands of all sizes. Over the years, we’ve identified three common (and deeply flawed) approaches to email marketing that repeatedly emerge across the diverse range of organizations we’ve encountered. If your franchise falls into one of these buckets, don’t worry; you’re not alone.
More importantly, there’s a better way.
Bucket 1: The “Franchisor Does It All” (and burns out trying)
Some franchisors take full control of email marketing, managing campaigns on behalf of their franchisees. On paper, this seems like a great idea—maintaining brand standards, ensuring messaging consistency, and delivering professional, polished campaigns.
In reality? It’s a logistical nightmare.
We’ve seen franchisors resort to logging in and out of individual franchisee accounts, copy and pasting the same email dozens (or hundreds) of times, and manually updating content relevant to the local franchisee. This process is so labor-intensive that email marketing efforts become infrequent, leaving franchisees under-supported and customers under-engaged.
The result? Minimal campaigns, wasted time, frustrated franchisees and a frustrated marketing team stretched too thin.
Bucket 2: The “Franchisees Do It” (and chaos ensues)
Other franchisors take a hands-off approach, empowering franchisees to manage their own email marketing. Again, this sounds reasonable. After all, franchisees know their local market best, right?
The problem is that this leads to a fragmented, “Wild West” style email marketing ecosystem.
Franchisees use different platforms (if they use any at all). Some send emails sporadically, while others flood inboxes with off-brand messaging.
The franchisor has zero visibility into what’s being sent, how campaigns are performing, or whether anyone is following best practices.
In the best-case scenario, the franchisor provides templates and guidance, but enforcing consistency across dozens or hundreds of independently owned locations is like herding cats.
The result? Inconsistent branding, wasted resources, and no insight into what’s working.
Bucket 3: The “Forget This!” (and a massive missed opportunity)
Then there’s the third group: those who give up entirely. These franchisors recognize the challenges of managing email marketing at scale and say to themselves “forget this!” and simply decide it’s not worth all of the effort..
But abandoning email marketing is the worst possible move.
Email remains the highest ROI digital marketing channel. When done right, it drives customer engagement, repeat business, and revenue growth. Yet, many franchise brands are leaving this opportunity on the table, frustrating franchisees who feel unsupported and missing out on a key driver of local and national success.
The result? No email marketing, no customer engagement, and no competitive edge.
The elusive 4th bucket : The “Consolidation Mirage” (and the inevitable breakdown)
Franchisors don’t realise they are in this bucket until it’s too late.
In an effort to reduce costs, maintain control, and keep branding consistent, some franchisors take a different approach: feeding all franchisee contacts into one single account and relying on segmentation to separate locations.
At first, this seems like the best of both worlds—franchisors keep control, franchisees don’t have to worry about email marketing, and everything runs from a single system. There’s no ‘logistical nightmare,’ ‘herding cats,’ or ‘Forget This!’ pain… to begin with.
But as the franchise grows, this approach begins to crack. This is called the Consolidation Mirage. What happens when the franchisor falls into this bucket?
Scaling becomes impossible
What works for 10 locations starts breaking down at 50. At 200? It’s chaos.
Franchisors end up managing massive, unwieldy lists, spending more time maintaining segments than actually running campaigns. Franchisees, meanwhile, struggle to execute local area marketing because everything is built around national initiatives.
Mistakes happen (And they’re costly)
We've seen franchisors accidentally send promotions for a Texas location to customers in Florida, or send franchisee-only communications to their entire customer list. One wrong email erodes trust—not just between franchisors and franchisees but between the brand and its customers.
Local franchisees lose faith
The more a franchisor prioritizes a national approach over local execution, the more franchisees feel disconnected from their own customers. They start relying on their own tools (breaking the system even further), or worse, they stop engaging customers altogether.
The result? A fragile, bloated system that can’t scale leading to frustrated franchisees, disengaged customers, and a brand struggling to manage its own growth.
The better way: Effective, scalable email marketing for both franchisors and franchisees
So, how do franchisors get out of these broken models and into a system that actually works?
The answer lies in centralized control with local execution.
With the right technology, franchisors can:
- Create and control the brand messaging while allowing franchisees to customize local elements.
- Automate email campaigns at scale without logging in and out of multiple accounts.
- Give franchisees an easy, guided way to participate without making them responsible for everything.
- Gain visibility into performance across the entire network to see what’s working and optimize accordingly.
- Avoid costly mistakes by structuring email marketing in a way that actually grows with the business.
Franchisors don’t need to choose between “doing it all,” “letting go of control,” or “abandoning email marketing entirely.” The right solution bridges the gap—giving the franchisor the ability to lead while empowering franchisees to succeed.
Let’s fix franchise email marketing, together
If your franchise system is stuck in one of these broken models, it’s time for a better approach. ActiveCampaign HQ is built to solve this exact problem, giving franchises the power to run effective, scalable email marketing campaigns that work for both franchisors and franchisees.
Let’s talk about how we can transform your email marketing and help your franchise grow. Get in touch today.
