A Day in the Life: Gangsta Rap and Email Design

A day in the life of an email marketer or email developer – what does that entail, exactly?

Earlier this summer, we ran a contest where we asked our customers and followers to share their Email on Acid story. We received a ton of great responses and we look forward to continued feedback from our subscribers. (Shout out to our winner, Lois, who was chosen at random and received a $50 Amazon gift card!)

While reading through some of your responses, we were struck by the fact that we got a glimpse into so many different email worlds – big, small, old, new, international, domestic – we heard from email pros from all backgrounds and skill sets.

We also realized that we wanted to hear more. What was a day in the life like for these email experts?

So, we decided to chat with a few of our subscribers and users to hear about their day-to-day on the front lines of email. First up is Eric Seenarine, a web designer and developer at Cara Operations who has used Email on Acid as part of his email workflow for six years.

I am a web designer/developer at Cara Operations in Ontario, Canada. I’m responsible for the design and development of brand sites along with the development of weekly e-blasts across Cara’s restaurant brands.

The first thing I do when I come in for the day is go through my inbox and develop a to-do list for the day. This could involve anything from web and email development to scheduling meetings to kick off a brand site. Then, I complete each task based on its priority level. Often, a tornado will interrupt my flow of work. During these times, I throw on some gangster rap to handle it.

The toughest part is troubleshooting code and teaching clients the difference of what is achievable in email vs web. Clients will often see an interesting feature on the web (example: parallax scrolling) and they will often request to have this functionality within an email, not understanding the best practices for email development and lack of support for functionality in certain email clients. Coding for email is like coding for the 90’s; we’re using tables, inline styles and .gifs “to make it pop.”

Keeping your audience engaged. If your email fails to be relevant to users and/or generate clicks, it’s not a successful campaign. Sending personalized emails based on users sign up preferences and creating automation behavioral trigger emails (welcome offer, birthday offer, thanks for purchasing) are a great way of doing this.

I’ve been using Email on Acid since I first started developing and designing emails in 2012. Since then, I’ve seen the software grow in terms of functionality and the continuous update of browsers. It’s now 2018 and I’ve worked at three companies, and at each company, I’ve requested and subscribed to Email on Acid software simply because I find it extremely fundamental in my line of work.

Because I have a team that manages brands with over 2 million subscribers, it’s very important to have and use a tool that will allow us to troubleshoot the code and see how our e-mails render on all platforms in a consolidated fashion.

Every now and then I do see that the Email on Acid software goes down for updates — which slows us down for a while considering we’re pumping out almost 20 emails per week — however, it’s not a make-or-break issue, as Email on Acid is dependable and accurate with its email test.

My favorite feature is seeing the email previews on all clients in real time – seeing these results instantly makes the email development process faster. Also, I like the inspiration feed; it’s great to see what other brands and competitors are doing.

Mistakes are stepping stones that will take you where you want to be. Never underestimate yourself.

Are you an email developer, marketer or #emailgeek with a story to share? We’d love to hear about your “day in the life”! Give us a shout on Facebook or Twitter, or shoot us an email: hello@emailonacid.com.

If you’re one of the thousands of email developers out there strapped for time and resources, Email on Acid can make your life a little easier. We’ll test your email code across 70+ email clients and devices in seconds, so you know you’re sending out a perfect email, every time. Give us a try for seven days and see for yourself.

Start testing today for free!