Email Peeps 49: Chris Frantz

What was your experience with email before deciding to build Loops?

Created more <td>’s than I’d like to admit! I had spent quite a bit of time in Mailchimp and Intercom, along with some smaller products. I also spent time writing code for it, which was a nightmare.

What made you want to build an email marketing product?

It was one of the places I felt was underinvested in from a product UX perspective, especially in segments outside ecommerce. I didn’t feel like anyone had built a platform for me, someone building a SaaS company.

What’s your top email marketing tip for SaaS businesses?

Just ask users to reply to an email with questions. Single most impactful thing you can do if you care about talking to your users.

What’s in your toolbox?

Hardware:

M1 Macbook Pro that is on its last legs
Two pairs of Airpod Pro’s
Old BenQ display I should probably upgrade 🙂
M4 iPad Pro (great second screen, especially when traveling)

Software:

VS Code + various extensions
Notion for company docs
Linear for ticket management
Raycast for clipboard history, task switching, and overall pleasant experience
Superhuman for personal emails
Figma for designs
Framer for our website

How do you see AI changing the email marketing landscape in the next five years?

I think the biggest challenge that companies don’t like to talk about is hallucinations. It is not cracked as far as I’ve been able to tell and the brand damage is actually high risk when you’re sending an email out to hundreds of thousands or millions of customers. Once that is incredibly reliable, the combination of existing data on contacts stored in the user’s audience along with other platforms’ attached CDP should allow for a personalized email experience that hopefully also feels useful.

How do you personally use AI at work?

I like ChatGPT for brainstorming or getting unstuck. I also use it occasionally to rewrite awkward sentences.

Claude is nice for helping me clean up my messy code 🙂

And I use Copilot in VS Code for autocompletes of types more than anything else.

Which SaaS companies have the best email campaigns?

I think the most nicely designed emails have been Frame.io’s but I’m not sure how well they perform. If an email looks too polished it can give billboard-experience vs something you actually want to read. I think Linear’s changelogs and other one-off emails are concise, clean and inviting to read.

How do you manage work-life balance?

You just do. I have two kids under 4, and we’re in a small house 🙂 My days are one big flow of work and family and not much else. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove