Source: Phrasee
Email marketing is a booming industry filled with amazing people.
Here at Phrasee, we’ve made it our business to get to know as many people as possible via social media and various industry functions, and we’ve genuinely really liked everyone we’ve met (so far).
From the outside, the world of email marketing (both in real life and on social media) may look random and chaos filled, but there are patterns, if you know where to look for them.
And, if there’s one thing we know about people, it’s that they love patterns. Another thing they love is being analysed and put into categories.
You may not fit any of these, and that’s OK, because you are a beautiful and unique snowflake, after all…
1) Salty McBittermouth
“Open my emails, dammit!”
You’ve been email marketing just a little bit too long. Any inconvenience which interrupts your insanely inflexible routine is so intolerable that you must let the world know it. You tweet angrily about every lousy ESP which doesn’t meet your expectations and every client who doesn’t understand your genius.
You know everything there is to know about email marketing, and everyone else knows nothing. You dream daily about flipping over your desk in a fit of rage and running screaming from the office, punching morons as you go.
But you’ll probably just keep email marketing.
2) The freelancer
“A full time job? Too constrictive, man.”
Freedom is more important than money. You’ve always known this.
You’ve tried working for “the man”, but it didn’t take. You are a creative free spirit and you need to spread your wings. You carry an impressive list of the companies you’ve worked for over the years in your back pocket, ready at a moment’s notice to be weaponised against anyone who questions the nature of your professional existence.
Your varied skill-set allows you to adapt to the demands of (almost) every client who makes use of your services. If you and a client see things differently, that’s ok, you can just walk away. Your finest moments come when a client who is pleased with your work attempts to bring you on staff, so that you can reply with “no thanks, I prefer the freedom of freelancing” and leave them to hire someone less skilled than yourself.
Groovy.
3) Old-boys network email guy
“Back in MY day…”
You were into email back before email was cool, and that’s the way you liked it.
All this new-fangled technology is just a bunch of baloney, a passing fad like the hoola-hoop, and those darn Pokémon. You want things explained to you in plain language, since all this new tech-speak is just a smoke screen for incompetence.
You’ve been saying the same things for 10-20 years. In the battle to remain relevant in a rapidly changing industry, instead of finding some new things to say, you simply say those same old things – just louder, and more frequently.
An interesting strategy, to be sure…
4) The startup CEO
“I don’t know how to put this, but… I’m kind of a big deal”
You’re bold. You’re brash. You are just a few steps away from fabulous wealth and success that will make every person who ever turned you down for a date rue the day they made such a terrible decision (like that girl you once drove 500 miles for in 2004 only to be told to get back in your car and go home when you arrived ***true story***). Industry buzzwords and catch phrases roll off your tongue so smoothly and effortlessly that even the most sceptical investment capitalists are certain to sprain their greedy elbows scrambling for their fat wallets to buy in.
You haven’t quite accepted the role of “late-thirties CEO of a successful company” wholeheartedly yet, as evidenced by the fact that you stubbornly pair your fashionably cut suit jackets with punk rock t-shirts and jeans on the regular. Your reluctance to settle into this lifestyle seems strange, as those who know you can see that it is the role you were born to play.
Also: Your drunken 2am tweets amuse your colleagues to no end.
5) Deliverability guy
“Everyone is stupid except me”
When it comes to deliverability in email marketing, you know it all. You have tested, studied, tested again, and studied some more. You’ve written a few tomes on the subject, and consider the matter closed.
Now all there is to do is wait.
Wait for some unsuspecting blogger or tweeter to open their big dumb mouth and spout off about deliverability in some way. Then, like a coiled cobra, you strike, belittling and humiliating them using your impressive arsenal of deliverability facts and figures until they crawl back into their pathetic little holes in shame.
Is this a good way to spend one’s time? Yes. Yes it is, and you’ll hear no more on the subject.
6) The blogger
“I’ve got just the gif for this!”
You don’t know nearly as much about email marketing as most of the people who read your blog, and deep down, you know it. To compensate for this information asymmetry, you use bluster and humour in equal measure, making bold, uninformed pronouncements about industry developments and trends, then hide behind jokes when questioned.
Is that post you just submitted for review about email marketing archetypes just clickbait which lacks substance of any kind? It doesn’t matter. As long as people read it you can rest easy, safe in the knowledge that the job you got because you knew a startup CEO is safe, at least for another day.
Come to think of it, maybe you should go back to the “startup CEO” section and tone it down a bit…
7) The statistician
“Oh yeah? Well 50.1% of people agree with ME.”
60% of the time, citing statistics wins arguments… every time. You have a head for numbers, and you’ve done your research. Woe betide the imbecile who dares to question you on social media, helpless as you unleash the statistical hounds upon them.
Stats from blog posts, to which most readers react with an absent “Hmm, interesting!” and then move on, are consciously committed to memory, burned into your temporal lobe for eternity, lest you be found statless when participating in a lively twitter dialogue about the relative benefits of email marketing automation.
8) The job hunter
“Hi! Got any leads?”
Despite the fact that you interact regularly with other email marketing folks on social media and at meetups, you seem to be inexplicably perennially out of work.
Nobody understands exactly why this is, and theories range from you having a job but secretly hating it and wanting desperately to escape, to you actually being insanely rich and not really wanting a job at all. Whatever the case, the whole scenario makes everyone vaguely suspicious of you and thus reluctant to really get involved in your job search in any meaningful way.
9) Mr. Ambitious
“Can you help me with something for a second?”
When an email marketing campaign goes well, you claim its success is due to your suggestions and input. When a campaign performs poorly, you ALWAYS know whose fault it is, and it’s NEVER yours.
You have big plans. There is a ladder to climb, and you are fixin’ to make it right to the top. Ideas and credit that aren’t yours will be claimed anyway. Some people are useful in helping you climb, and you befriend those people. Some people aren’t, and those people are ignored at best and stepped on at worst.
Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. You suck.
10) The social media fiend
“My follower-following ratio is bananas”
How do you ever get any work done?
Throughout every single workday of every single workweek, you tweet and post things at breakneck pace. You barrage everyone’s timelines with photos, comments, and retweets so frequently that it is a wonder that you manage to hang on to a job at all. The fact that these posts are always loosely related to your work seems to keep your employers happy, but your co-workers aren’t buying it.
When the workday ends, you are a social media ghost.
11) The meetup socialite
“Which bar are we meeting at after this speaker is done?”
Business is all about fostering relationships. And what better place to do that than at a meetup?
You are, presumably, quite skilled at what you do, but it is at meetups that you really shine. You know everybody in the field, and everybody knows you. While your colleagues silently duck their heads or pretend to answer the phone to avoid being roped in to attending yet another digital marketing conference/festival/meetup, you stand tall, volunteering your services loudly and clearly.
A few hours of speakers followed by drinks on the expense account and an Uber home on the company’s dime is your wheelhouse. A couple of photos with some other email marketing folks for the company Instagram represents a job well done, and always will do. Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this?
You’ve found your niche. Ride it ’till the wheels fall off!
12) Code nerd
“Gmail hacks, anyone?”
Code, code, and more code. It’s the only thing that activates your antenna in that special, magical way. You are one of the chosen few who speaks the exclusive and elusive language of code, and you love it.
You scoff at those who wonder how anyone could possibly think of anything code-related to tweet about. You’ve got code tweets for days.
Most people don’t understand what the hell you are talking about, but that’s OK, because you weren’t talking to those idiots anyway. You’ve found some folks who get it, and you live with them in a mystical coder world, happy and content in your coder Shangri-La.