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Tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you get to where you are today?

Like a lot of email marketers, I fell into email marketing. Way back when, I worked at an online/TV retailer as their web developer/designer. Email was just a part of the job. I’d design, develop, and even send emails as part of my job as a web developer.

That’d be a wild ask for a web developer today!

I began noticing more and more companies looking for designers/developers with hands-on email marketing experience—from large organisations to small businesses. I freelanced as a general email marketer with a focus on email design and development for a few years until I landed a role at a very small startup as their sole email marketing specialist.

It was then that I really fell for email marketing. Creating an email marketing strategy from the ground up, designing & developing emails, and occasionally placing orders to help stock the kitchen (such is the way at a startup!).

In 2016 I joined Litmus as their email marketing specialist. This was a big deal for me. I’d been following—and using Litmus—for years. And now I got to work there!

And there I’ve been since. I’m now Litmus’ Director of Email Marketing and lead the email marketing team. We look after (almost) every email that comes out of Litmus, from newsletters to transactional emails, onboarding emails, nurtures, and beyond.

What’s your advice for new email marketers entering the market in 2023?

Network! Whether that’s through Twitter, email geeks, or even LinkedIn. The email community is vast and incredibly generous. I would not be where I am in my career today had it not been for the email geeks I got to know on Twitter all those years ago.

If I could offer a second piece of advice it would be to get to know—and master—the basics first. Whether that’s design, development, copywriting, segmentation, or personalization strategies—walk before you run. Yes, there are countless blog posts talking about trends like interactivity in email and hyper-personalization. But email at its core is a form of 1:1 messaging between you and your customer/subscriber. Focus on perfecting that before diving into the trends.

Hardware:

• Macbook Pro
• 2 screens
• Jabra bluetooth earbuds
• 1 logitech webcam

Software

• Litmus
• Todoist to help me manage my day-to-day tasks
• Jira for project management
• Notion for daily note taking
• Slack
• Google docs, sheets, slides, forms, and analytics

What piece of work are you most proud of?

Collectively, the newsletters we produce at Litmus. Beyond the typical metrics and business those newsletters bring in—it’s the fact that so many of the subscribers take their time to reply to the newsletters to tell us how much they enjoyed the content or design. More recently, our October issue of Litmus News where we went deep into the Twilight Zone theming. I am super proud of the team and their creativity with that one!

How do you spark creativity?

Some of the time, I need to take a step away from whatever I’m working on to give myself some space to get into a more creative mindset. Whether that’s physically stepping away from my desk or switching to work on something else. It’s in those moments where I’m letting my mind not focus too hard that I’m able to be creative.

Most of the time, it’s brainstorming with my team. I love our “nothing is a bad idea” conversations where we’re throwing it all out there in a Zoom call. We all have such unique experiences and backgrounds that a kind of magic happens when we have a creative challenge we need to overcome.

What email marketing tool can you not live without?

Can I say Litmus 😂? It’s the one tool that truly gives me peace of mind. And while I may not be in it as much as the rest of my team—just knowing they’re in it and using it to preview, QA, and Proof emails allows me to spend my mental energy elsewhere.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove