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What attracted you to email marketing, and how did you get to where you are today?

Like many others, I fell into email marketing by accident when I was a marketing assistant, but it’s been a love affair that’s begun ever since I could see the impact of a well-made email campaign!

I loved email so much that I became an email marketing specialist. I’ve since been promoted to Head of Marketing in my last full-time role, but I am now working freelance as a self-titled Marketing Alchemist. 

However, I’m still a staunch evangelist for thoughtful email and lifecycle marketing tactics!

What’s your favorite email design or coding hack?

When you’ve completed an email design, zoom out and see whether the elements are ‘readable’. That means you can see if your text contrasts with the background, the elements of your email are distinct, and, most importantly, your CTAs stand out.

How do you stay creative, and where do you go for inspiration?

Inspiration can be found everywhere! When I’m feeling a bit stuck, I try to do things that are a bit of a ‘palate cleanser’.

For example, if I’m feeling stuck on a design, I’ll try doing something completely different to refresh my mind—it could be as simple as going for a walk or playing a game with a completely different aesthetic and feel.

The most important thing you can do whenever you’re facing a problem and can’t seem to draw from the well of creativity is to take a break!

What’s in your email marketing toolbox?

Hardware: My WFH Setup

• Laptop (wouldn’t be much good without it)
• Monitor – Samsung S24F350 which is great for when my laptop screen is just too tiny.
• My other monitor is an Espresso eD15T. I sometimes travel back to Singapore to see family, and it’s very handy to have an additional screen on the go. Plus, having three screens comes in handy quite a lot.
• Blue Yeti mic – Believe it or not, I bought this microphone about 12 years ago and it works just fine! One of my best buys.
• Keychron mechanical keyboard – It is so satisfying to type on and it has pretty colours. What more could an email geek what?
• Ring light – I can’t recall the model but as I create a lot of video content, it’s very handy to have set up on the back of my desk so I can simply switch it on when I need to.
• Collection of nerdy things – Random knick-knacks live under my big monitor like a Toad from Mario, Bulbasaur, Celeste from Animal Crossing and Poesi, my D&D character from my one-shot I played with a few other email geeks for charity.

Software:

• Design – Figma, Adobe Illustrator – sometimes ProCreate and Adobe Photoshop if I need to make custom illustrations.
• Throughout my career, I’ve used Adestra, Mailchimp, DotDigital, Customer.io, and Hubspot.

What’s your favorite email campaign of all time? Why?

I feel like that changes all the time and I have so many talented friends in the email geeks community who are constantly outdoing themselves!

Instead, I’ll talk about one of my favourite email campaigns that I personally worked on that I’m proud of.

I used to work for Help for Heroes, one of the UK’s largest military charities for wounded veterans and their families. We had a big campaign, 40,000 Strong, which was the number that represented the number of men and women who have had to leave the Armed Forces due to injury or illness in the last twenty years before that campaign.

I was proud of consulting on the design and copy, and creation of emails that told the story of the veterans and how their lives were forever changed.

I learnt a lot from my time at Help for Heroes like the power of great storytelling and just how important a well-designed email can be, especially for the non-profit sector.

Whose email newsletters do you consistently make time to read?

• Ann Handley’s Total Annarchey – I gotta admit, I’m a bit of an Ann Handley fangirl because I think her thoughts on writing are so funny and engaging.
• Avinash Kaushik’s Marketing <> Analytics Intersect – Data is one of the pillars of any good marketing strategy and Avinash writes these newsletters about marketing analytics with a lot of passion.
• Simon Harper’s Mail Mondays—Simon’s newsletter is always chock-full of great tips and summarises the need-to-know things for email marketers in a punchy way. I also featured Simon on my web series Email Breakdown and he has such a wealth of knowledge and a lot of love for email!

How do you manage work-life balance?

To be honest, it’s something I’m still working on! It’s a practice that I always try to be mindful of. 

I can be very single-minded about the things I’m passionate about, so it can be hard for me to step back and take a breather.

I think I’m a lot better and not running headfirst into burnout, but I try to actively make time for my mental well-being. For example, I journal, make time to go outside, and leave my devices behind—I’m lucky enough to live in Salisbury, where there are beautiful walks to go on.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove