Email Peeps 22: Andriy Boychuk
What attracted you to email marketing, and how did you get to where you are today?
When I hear this question, I always respond:
I was trying to survive, so I started providing email marketing services.
Back in 2014, I built and ran a website with information for Ukrainian immigrants (iPorada) here in the US to help them assimilate to the American lifestyle. There were over 500+ blog posts, 100+ videos, and 100+ podcast episodes. Since each person who visited the website was at a different stage of their immigration life journey, I had to curate a personalized experience for each person. Email marketing was the only solution at that moment which I knew how to implement. So, I went deep into learning and implementing email marketing for this website.
Fast forward 3 years, I quit my corporate job, and I was not sure what to do next in my life, but I did not want to go back to a standard workplace.
To be able to survive and support my family, I started freelancing.
I was offering all kinds of services, starting from web development to Facebook ads. Then I found that at that time, people who do email marketing were getting paid on average $46 per hour. I started focusing on email marketing projects.
Later, I narrowed down my focus even further, and I started doing only e-commerce projects.
That was the time when I started to gain massive traction, and I realized I could not do it myself, so I started building the team, which turned into an agency called Flowium today.
Whatโs your favorite email design or coding hack?
I personally do not design or code emails. However, when I assign a task to our team of designers to design an email, I like to check a bunch of different resources for email examples and piece together a framework for the email I need.
What could most ecommerce brands improve when it comes to email marketing?
In general, all ecommerce brands have a graphic designer in-house, someone who can design amazing and beautiful emails. However, what the brand is lacking is the skillset to implement that beautiful design, so it is properly set up in EPS and delivered to subscribers’ inboxes.
There is a big difference between a graphic designer and an email designer. The most significant difference is the technical part. One of our lead designers recorded a video explaining the difference.
Whatโs in your email marketing toolbox?
Hardware:
- Laptop – Macbook pro
- Desktop – iMac
- Paper ๐
- Whiteboard
Software:
- Figma
- Miro
- Email On Acid
- Litmus
Whatโs your favorite email campaign of all time? Why?
It is an extremely difficult question to answer; there are so many campaigns, but the ones I like the most are informative ones.
So probably the best one is from Magic Spoon, which is about different kinds of milk available.
It is my favorite campaign because it is well-designed, but most importantly, it contains information that speaks to me as a dairy-free person who was not aware of the different types of milk.
Whose email newsletters do you consistently make time to read?
The only newsletter I read is Emily Ryan’s from Westfield Creative. She has a very short newsletter that I can read in less than 1 minute.
How do you manage work-life balance?
It evolved over the years. When I was younger, both in age and business experience, I worked more and harder. Nowadays, I spend more time strategizing. Also, I have very rigid time boundaries. I do not work on weekends, and I do my best to keep all my work between 10 am and 5 pm. However, on rare occasions, I extend my 5 pm work cutoff like now; it is 5:14 pm on Tuesday evening, and I am still working, but I will be done after I send this article to Andrew.
Much love,
Andy
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove