As part of our material on email marketing trends in 2024, we continue to introduce you to the opinions of experts.
Email marketing consultants are often “above the fray” — they can see brands’ communications with customers from the outside and suggest ways to strengthen the strategy. And thanks to working with clients from different niches and industries, they accumulate interesting tips and strategies and follow trends.
That's why we decided to ask Natalie Rockall, founder of Eleven11 Digital and Total Email Marketing, about the peculiarities and perks of working as a freelance email marketing consultant and what industry trends will develop in 2024. Natalie is a freelance email marketing consultant who helps companies boost the results of their email marketing.
Interview Expert
Stripo: Why email marketing? What about this industry attracted you?
Natalie: After graduating, I worked as a marketing executive. It was a really varied role and covered a lot of different marketing channels. But email stood out to me as it was so quick to get a campaign developed and out the door compared to the likes of direct mail and PR, for example.
I loved the fact I could send an email and watch the results come in real time. Being able to see people opening, clicking, and buying within a matter of minutes really excited me, and I was hooked from there on!
About email marketing challenges in 2024
S: What email trends do you think will rule in 2024?
N: The announcement at the end of last year from Gmail and Yahoo indicated they would be cracking down on unwanted and spam emails by putting in new updates for bulk senders starting February 2024. I think this will make brands take a second look at their technology setup for email and CRM.
I predict more brands will spend time in 2024:
- Revisiting and understanding more details about email authentication.
- Check how their unsubscribe process works for their brand (hands up any marketers who haven’t clicked the unsubscribe link in one of their own emails to see what happens for users?!)
- Getting close to and reporting on the lesser-known email deliverability metrics, such as spam rate/complaint rate.
The other trend, of course, will be AI and its use and place in email marketing. From a tech point of view, AI has been used in email for quite a while now. You may use Send Time Optimization (STO) or have heard of A/B test technology where subject lines written by humans vs. computers are pitted against one another to get the best open rate.
I’m sure we’ll see lots of technology providers and agencies promoting AI as a big “fix” to CRM and email marketing teams challenges, especially those who have an email marketing team of just one person.
Equally, I expect the growing excitement and nervousness with AI development will encourage brands to carve out time to really think about how AI can help them achieve their objectives rather than just jumping on the “shiny new technology” bandwagon.
What are the peculiarities of email marketing consultants' work
S: Tell us about your work as a freelance email marketing consultant. What areas do you provide services in?
N: I help organizations work out the strategic side of email marketing. A lot of brands feel they should be doing more with their email, or the results of their current email campaigns and automation are dropping, but they just don’t know where to start. That’s where I come in.
I provide email audits, strategic planning, consultancy, training, and coaching. Having a strategy and plan is great, but implementing changes is where the power is, so I also help brands' internal teams implement my recommendations quickly and with less stress.
S: What industries do you have clients from? Who prevails? How important is email marketing to your clients' businesses?
N: My clients come from varied industries, such as travel, financial services, B2B, eCommerce, and more. I used to think I had to find a niche and choose one particular industry to work with. But I’ve found so many clients really need email to work in their business — be that for awareness and education or sales and retention. So it doesn’t feel right to exclude any particular industries from accessing my help and support. Email is critically important for so many brands and helps them achieve their marketing and business objectives.
S: Do you help your clients with email marketing strategies? Do you help your clients with building, sending, and analyzing email newsletters?
N: I specialize in helping brands with email marketing strategy, but I have many fantastic contacts from my 18 years in email, to whom I happily introduce clients if they require help building and sending emails out. The email marketing network is strong, so if there is something I can’t do, I’m confident I can connect them to a contact of mine to give a helping hand!
S: How long does one client work with you on average? What percentage of clients can be called regular?
N: Around 80% of my clients work with me for at least one year. The remainder of clients may just need support on a particular project or challenge they are facing, and once that’s complete, they can use that knowledge or skill to help themselves going forward.
My longest client has been with me for approximately 5 years, but it’s not uncommon for me to work on a regular basis with brands for over 2 and 3 years. Quite a few of my clients have consultancy agreements with me. They know they have a block of time over, say 6 months or a year, which gives them access to me if they have any questions or challenges, and they need a helping hand to move forward or solve a problem.
How email marketing consultants build communication with clients
S: How is the process of communication with the client structured at the start of work? How does the briefing take place? How do you understand what the client needs exactly?
N: I have two starting points:
- I normally start with a Zoom call where I listen to the areas the client is concerned with. The areas they are having challenges in, what objectives the business has, and any particular campaigns, automation, or area of email marketing which they want me to focus on.
- Then a kickoff call with my main contact(s) for the project takes place, and a questionnaire is shared so I can gather lots of vital information upfront.
S: What are the top three problems you see during audits of email marketing companies?
N: Most often, I see companies having problems that hinder the development of their email marketing channel:
- performance drops;
- processes being too complex or not detailed enough;
- technology and data issues.
S: What tools do you use for communication and documentation processes when working with clients?
N: Monday.com is a favorite of mine for planning and keeping track of projects and incoming requests, as it’s so customizable.
Other than that, it’s emails and regular Zoom calls alongside any particular tools the client likes to use — for example, Google Drive, Sharepoint, Slack, Teams, etc. It doesn’t matter these days if a client is 10 minutes down the road or on another continent. These tools make life easy and allow us to work efficiently together wherever they or their team are located in the world.
S: You have an online course through Total Email Marketing. How did the idea to create a course come about? Who comes to training most often, and with what tasks?
N: I teach live email marketing courses on Zoom through the IDM, but not all brands have the time or budget for this kind of training. So I wanted to develop an online course where CMOs and Marketing Managers can sign up their team to take the course when they have the time available (it’s nicely pre-recorded modules) when it suits them and their busy workload.
Freelance marketers also enjoy the online course as it helps them improve their email marketing skills, which many of their clients are asking for help with.
Wrapping up
Here are some insights for email marketing consultancy and best practices we will get after this interview:
- email marketing is useful for varied industries — for awareness and education or sales and retention;
- the most popular brand problems in email marketing are performance decreasing, increasing complexity of processes, and technology & data issues;
- think about how AI may help them achieve their objectives rather than just jumping on the AI technology bandwagon;
- in 2024 give attention to such trends as email authentication, email deliverability metrics, and unsubscribe process.
We appreciate Natalie Rockall for the interview, where we discussed important topics for the email marketing industry.
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