Meet Naomi from EmailCharacters.com

Meet the individual who makes sure your subjectlines and pre-headers don't get embarrassingly cut off

Naomi is an #emailgeek from Canada who recently launched a great google chrome plugin that helps you count how many characters your subjectline and pre-header have and if they get embarrassingly cut off in your inbox. We all have had it happened before, right? It really is such a great idea, so we asked Naomi who she is and why she made EmailCharacters.com

First things first, how did you fall into email?

I landed in email back in 2016 working a jack-of-all-trades digital marketing gig. I found out I could use a tool called Autopilot to email people on my behalf multiple times, over multiple days. I thought it was the best time-saving hack, and most of my email audience thought the emails were legitimately handwritten by me. “This is so cool!” I remember thinking. I ended up crafting multiple flows for onboarding, cross-sales, education, win-back, etc without knowing really anything about email marketing or HTML. Four years later I joined Braze as an Onboarding Manager and was quickly brought up to speed on the world of automation technology.

What do you enjoy about email marketing & what keeps you in email marketing?

Email is never boring. Between copywriting, design & build, deliverability, and analytics, there’s something for everyone. I work primarily in SaaS email marketing, and I love it because I have to think about going beyond just driving users to a traditional purchase event (no hate on e-commerce). It’s interesting to look at the whole lifecycle of the subscriber from the moment of acquisition straight through to retention and see what emails can drive certain behavior.

Creatively, I find email to be the richest channel in terms of content and design. You can control the balance of imagery and text, the audience, and the delivery timing. There are so many possibilities for the use of email.

What tools do you use in your email marketing job?

My email tech stack is always growing, but here are a few of my daily go-to’s.

• Braze is my favorite automation tool for multi-channel messaging (although I will admit I am biased from working there previously). In second place comes Klaviyo for its robust e-commerce capabilities.
• Litmus I rely on for up-to-date content on email trends, and reports.
• Whocanuse to determine color accessibility when working on a new email design
• Parcel for email development.
• Grammarly to review all my email copywriting.
• Miro for lifecycle mapping and whiteboard exercises since going remote.
• Amplitude and/or Mixpanel for robust post-send reporting.

What do you think about the job market for email marketers?

It is a great time to be an email marketer. In the past two years, I’ve noticed that companies are realizing they need a dedicated individual for email roles, so people are in demand! It is definitely a seekers market and it benefits the seeker to have experience in other channels as well (push, in-app message, SMS).

I am a Canadian working for a US-based company and I wish that more US-based companies would be open to hiring their neighbors up north! Canadian companies usually pay substantially less, so I am hoping that as the market heats up in the US, Canadian companies will start to realize they are going to need to pay more to retain or attract talent.

Which companies do email right?

Grammarly does a brilliant job of presenting account-related data and probably would be my dream company to work for, it’s always my go-to company for dynamic, personalized email inspiration.

Any projects you are working on and why?

EmailCharacters.com is a chrome extension I just launched that allows a user to highlight text intended for a subject line or preheader and determine if it’s at risk of cutting off on various email clients and devices. The idea came from growing tired of cross-referencing character limits outside of a google doc, manually testing on devices, or copying and pasting copy in various locations.

I also freelance under my own name at NaomiWest.ca - it gives me an opportunity to work in ESP’s and tools outside of my 9-5, brainstorm strategy in different industries, and connect with individuals that are genuinely keen to learn about email. My favorite projects are email audits where I’ll work with brands that are wanting to know how to improve their email automations. I’ll audit their ESP and provide a report of improvements they can make themselves, and growth strategies they can expand upon to drive their email marketing further.

We'd like to thank Naomi for creating her awesome chrome plugin and for contributing to our new blog. If you have a story to share, hit us up via [email protected].