Clicks, curiosity, and campaign wins: Joshua Worley’s guide to smarter email marketing

Clicks, curiosity, and campaign wins — sounds like a recipe for email marketing success, right? But how do you actually get there? In this interview, we go beyond generic tips and examine what really drives performance, from segmentation that makes sense to the unexpected power of an “Oops” subject line.

Joshua Worley, email marketing specialist and founder of Elementary Creative, an email-first agency, shared how his team structures collaboration, what most marketers get wrong about automation and attribution, and why AI still struggles to write emails that feel genuinely human. His advice is practical, refreshingly honest, and rooted in real campaign results.

Joshua Worley is the founder and CEO of Elementary Creative, an email-first agency that helps brands transform email from an overlooked channel into a top-performing revenue stream. Today, he’s an established email marketing specialist — but his path into the industry was anything but traditional.

Before launching his agency, Joshua held a variety of roles across sectors — from lounge hosting for Virgin Money to analyzing intelligence for the City of London Police. He built his career without a formal degree, relying instead on curiosity, adaptability, and self-taught skills. By age 22, he already had worked with teams across industries, picking up insights that now inform the strategic and creative work he does for clients worldwide. And as he told Stripo, that diverse background is a big part of what makes his email strategies so effective today.

From wine to workflows: How Joshua Worley found his passion in email marketing

Stripo: You had quite a diverse career — from lounge hosting to intelligence analysis — before founding Elementary Creative. What led you to email marketing specifically, and what is it about the channel that continues to captivate you?

Joshua: Yes, I’ve definitely had quite a diverse career. I think I’ve always known I was better off working for myself than for someone else — I get bored quite easily. That’s why I’ve gone through so many jobs: I’d do something for a while, and then want a new challenge. Eventually, I realized I was better off creating my own path, rather than following someone else’s.

One of the many jobs I had was at Virgin Wines, a major wine merchant here in the UK. I held a few roles there, but one of them was as an email marketing assistant. That was really the first time — beyond occasionally dabbling in Mailchimp — that I saw the artistry and mastery behind email marketing. The person who ran the email program there was Andy Jenkins, who’s still highly regarded in the UK industry. I recently saw he was speaking at a major email marketing conference. He’s been in the game a long time and really knows the channel. Thanks to him, email played a huge role at Virgin Wines and accounted for a large share of revenue.

That was the first time I saw the real potential of segmentation and personalization — getting the right message and product in front of the right people at the right time, and all the different ways to do that. It fascinated me. It felt like both a science and an art.

I went on to do other things, but a few years later, a colleague from Virgin reached out. She was working at a company called Sweet Analytics, and they needed an email consultant. She asked if I’d be interested. I said “yes” immediately. I was still passionate about the space, and it felt like the right opportunity to finally go out on my own and start my own business. So, those two things came together at the right time.

What continues to captivate me about email is that while the tools evolve — becoming more advanced, or platforms like Stripo helping us create better campaigns — the core of email hasn’t really changed. The back-end mechanics are stable. It’s not like paid media, where just as you get used to something, Facebook or Google completely changes the rules. With email, you’re constantly perfecting and always learning, and that experience becomes something really valuable that you can bring to your clients. And that’s what I love about it.

How to conduct effective teamwork in a digital marketing agency: tools, processes, and real-life lessons

S: Elementary Creative is positioned as an “email-first” agency. Can you unpack what that means in practice, and why you believe email should be the starting point for a brand’s digital marketing strategy in 2025?

J: Yes, so we do offer other services — we design and manage websites, and we handle social media for clients — but email is our bread and butter. It’s the bulk of what we do, and that’s intentional.

Despite that, email often gets neglected because it’s not as flashy as Google or Meta ads. But the truth is, the one constant since the 1990s is that everyone has an email address, everyone checks their inbox, and people still engage and purchase through email, especially from brands they feel connected to. That hasn’t changed, and it doesn’t look like it will.

Of course, a multichannel strategy is important, and we’re well aware that email isn’t great for recruitment. You do need acquisition channels, but relying solely on acquisition — just throwing money at recruiting new customers — isn’t sustainable.

S: Your agency offers clients a single point of contact, yet email campaign production involves designers, copywriters, strategists, and developers. What internal communication practices have you found most effective in keeping the team aligned?

J: Honestly, I don’t know where we’d be without Slack. It’s been essential for our internal communication. We also use WhatsApp a lot — our clients really appreciate that because it gives them a reliable, familiar way to contact us anytime. There’s a mutual understanding, though: Slack is for work hours, 9 to 5, while WhatsApp can be used outside of that when necessary. We try to be respectful with messages and avoid reaching out at inappropriate times unless it’s urgent. That applies both to our team and to clients.

We’ve also gone through quite a few project management tools — Monday, ClickUp — but we’ve finally settled on using Moxie. It’s a fantastic all-in-one platform. We use it for project management, our campaign calendar, and even client communication. Clients get a portal where they can see progress, approve work, and give feedback — all in one place. We also handle invoicing and accounting through Moxie. Having a single tool with one login that covers so many areas has made our workflow much smoother.

S: Could you walk me through how your campaign production process works? From onboarding to briefing the team — how do you manage it?

J: That’s definitely something we’ve had to learn over time. We’re still a relatively new agency, as we started in 2022, and one of the biggest learning curves has been how to onboard and engage clients effectively. A strong start is key: Everyone needs to understand how the process will work, what to expect, and when.

I’ll be honest: We’ve had our fingers burned. Early on, we overpromised, said “yes” too often, and ended up stretched thin. Some clients would send over briefs the day before a send date or ask for major changes at the last minute. We’ve had to learn to set clearer boundaries and expectations.

Now, our golden rule is to work at least two weeks ahead. We begin with a content calendar planning meeting with the client to map out upcoming campaigns. From there, we brief our team on the emails for the following week — not the upcoming one — which gives us a full week in between to gather client feedback and make revisions. By the time the in-between weekends arrive, the campaigns are finalized and scheduled. It gives everyone breathing room.

We also have a solid onboarding process and prioritize regular communication. We do weekly calls with each client to review performance, align on strategy, and ensure the campaigns we’re working on are still in line with the bigger picture. It’s our chance to pause, reflect, and recalibrate if needed before moving ahead.

S: When you begin crafting an email strategy for a new client, where do you typically start? Segmentation, content planning, automation — or something else entirely?

J: It’s quite often segmentation because that’s usually one of the things a client hasn’t been doing properly. Alongside that, we start building an A/B testing strategy. We look at what metrics are underperforming and what kinds of tests we can run over the coming weeks and months to improve those areas.

Automation also plays a hugely important role. We always review it in the initial audit and strategy-building stage of onboarding. Automations are great — they make money while you sleep — but they can easily become stale. 

Just because they require less day-to-day input than campaigns doesn't mean they should be forgotten. I've seen many clients who have beautiful campaign designs, but are still using the default welcome flow from when they first signed up to Klaviyo years ago, often without realizing it.

That creates brand inconsistency. A customer might receive a beautifully branded campaign and, on the same day, a generic-looking automation using Klaviyo’s template. It can feel off to the recipient — some even wonder if it’s a scam. So, we make sure to overhaul automation, ensure clients have the right flows in place, and explain the difference between things like abandoned browse, abandoned cart, and abandoned checkout. Many people don’t realize that Klaviyo’s “abandoned cart” template is actually an abandoned checkout flow — it causes a lot of confusion.

What marketers miss: metrics, mistakes, and making sense of attribution

S: You’ve conducted numerous audits — what are the three mistakes you consistently see that even experienced marketers overlook, and what does it reveal about the state of email operations today?

J: One big one is not thinking deeply enough about segmentation — not asking, “What are we trying to achieve?” The default advice — like Klaviyo’s recommendation to use 30-, 60-, 90-, and 180-day engagement segments — is fine, but it’s just one way to look at your audience. If your list is small, those segments might not be useful at all.

There’s a lot more you can do with behavioral data, touchpoints, and deeper customer insights. Klaviyo is starting to embrace RFM segmentation more seriously now, but many people still fall back on the same basic engagement windows just because “that’s what everyone does.” In reality, more meaningful segmentation can significantly improve targeting and personalization.

Another common mistake is not doing any A/B testing at all. It’s surprisingly widespread — and a missed opportunity to learn and optimize.

A third mistake is ignoring responsiveness. Some brands forget to test emails on mobile, while others neglect desktop views. Not all audiences are mobile-first — some clients I work with have 60% of their opens on a desktop.

S: With iOS privacy updates and increasing tracking limitations, which KPIs are you encouraging clients to prioritize now, particularly given that open rates are no longer a reliable metric?

J: Definitely clicks and click-through rate, but we also focus on revenue per recipient and revenue per campaign — those are much more useful than just looking at total revenue per send. For example, a campaign might bring in $1,500, but that could be from one customer placing a huge order. Revenue per recipient helps you benchmark more realistically and see how your campaigns perform on average.

Attribution is another tricky area. ESPs are known to overinflate their numbers, so we always consider attribution windows. Klaviyo’s default is five days, which I think is far too long. I recommend two days tops, but changing that can be difficult: If you take over a client account and tighten the window, revenue numbers will appear to drop, and the client might assume you’re underperforming. In reality, you’re just getting more accurate data.

That’s where using other reporting tools helps. We use Google Analytics, Triple Whale, and Sweet Analytics — a platform we work closely with. You’ll often see different revenue numbers in each tool: Klaviyo says one thing, GA says another, and Shopify says something else. I always tell clients that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Being upfront with clients about attribution helps manage expectations. That way, if they later compare data across platforms and see discrepancies, they already understand why and don’t feel like we’ve misled them.

S: Let’s talk about multitouch attribution. How well do you think small and medium-sized enterprises are adapting to it? What tools or methods would you recommend to help them understand email’s true impact on the sales funnel?

J: Honestly, a lot of what I said earlier about attribution ties directly into this. I think small and medium-sized brands are starting to recognize that there’s more to attribution than just trusting whatever Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Omnisend reports.

Budgets are tight, especially now, and many companies are spending significant amounts on paid media. Naturally, they want to understand how those investments connect with results — and how each marketing channel contributes to the final sale.

We’re also seeing a growing awareness that the buyer journey isn’t linear. It’s not just, “I saw a Google ad, so I bought.” There are often multiple touchpoints. For example, someone might click a Google ad, visit the website, sign up for emails, abandon their session, and then convert two days later after receiving a campaign. In that case, both the Google ad and the email played a role in the purchase.

We work closely with Sweet Analytics, a UK-based company with clients around the world. They specialize in this kind of multitouch attribution. Their tools help show the complex customer path and assign value accordingly. Other platforms, like Triple Whale or Polar Analytics, are also great options. Tools like these give brands a more rounded picture, which is essential for making smarter budget decisions across channels.

AI, ‘Oops’ emails, and unexpected tactics that actually work

S: AI is everywhere in marketing now, but when it comes to email, where do you see the most meaningful use cases? Have you found it valuable in areas like analytics, segmentation, or content generation, and what kind of impact has it actually delivered for your clients?

J: The obvious answer is that most brands — especially smaller ones — think AI is going to help them most with content generation. But in reality, I haven’t yet seen a single AI-generated email that I’d call good. And yes, I’m biased as an email marketer, but I can spot an AI-written email from a mile away. They often lack nuance, tone, and human empathy — things that really matter in email communication.

Where I do think AI has potential is in analytics and strategy. There’s a real opportunity in having AI analyze performance across a set time frame and generate meaningful insights. For example, if your open rate or revenue per recipient dropped last month, AI could help interpret those changes by looking at related metrics and suggesting possible causes — maybe your subject lines shifted in tone, or deliverability dropped.

S: Finally, what’s one controversial opinion you hold about email marketing that goes against popular industry advice, but that you’ve seen deliver results in the real world with your clients?

J: I always tell clients that “Oops” emails will almost always be some of your best performers. It’s a bit morbid, but I think it comes down to human curiosity. It’s like when you see a car crash on the motorway — you just have to slow down and look.

If you send an email with a subject line like "Oops, we made a mistake," people want to know what happened. You could be a brand they’ve ignored for years, but suddenly, they’re opening your email just to see what went wrong. That curiosity drives engagement.

And I genuinely believe some brands use that to their advantage. I’ve seen “oops” campaigns that conveniently include a voucher code meant only for friends and family — except, oops, it was sent to everyone, but now that it's out there, the brand says, “Well, you might as well use it for the next 24 hours.” We've all seen it. As marketers, we might roll our eyes and think, “Here we go again,” but these tactics work. Most subscribers aren’t analyzing it the way we are — they’re just happy to grab the discount.

That said, the key is to use this kind of tactic sparingly. If you’re going to drop a cheeky “oops” email — whether there’s been an actual mishap or not — don’t overdo it. Keep it believable. And if you’re having a slow sales period, it can definitely give your performance a lift.

Wrapping up

Big thanks to Joshua Worley for this open and insightful conversation. His hands-on experience, creative approach, and sharp observations made this interview particularly valuable for anyone looking to elevate their email marketing efforts, whether you’re building a strategy from scratch or trying to squeeze more value out of your current setup.

Here are some insights from this interview with Joshua Worley:

1. Segmentation and A/B testing should come first. Many brands skip or underuse them, but they’re the foundation for improving performance.
2. Automations drive revenue, but they can’t be forgotten. Outdated flows damage brand consistency; review and refresh them regularly.
3. Responsive email design is critical — and often overlooked. Image-only emails are bad for deliverability and unreadable on mobile devices.
4. "Oops" emails work. A well-timed “we made a mistake” message taps into curiosity and often outperforms regular campaigns.
5. AI is better at analyzing data than writing emails. Use it to extract trends and opportunities, but keep human writers in charge of content that connects.