Services: The Core Of Your Email Program
The stigma around email marketing being cheap, easy, and hugely profitable is, quite frankly, bullshit. The email department is often the most understaffed and underfunded in organizations. Yet, they are being asked to do more, make more and be innovative in a digital channel which is often shit on by the average consumer. To add insult to injury, there are over 140 areas where the “email marketer” needs to excel to do well and to be honest, that person does not exist. If someone says they are exceptional in ALL areas of “email marketing,” they are either lying or plain ignorant.
Several years ago, I created a video summarizing the 8 types of email marketers to lay out what I mean when I say that you cannot be exceptional in ALL areas. Please look and either agree or disagree with what was said.
At my core, I am a strategist first and an analyst second. I can be dangerously effective in deliverability and hold my own as a generalist. So, with that, I created a list of services for Email Nucleus that exploit my core and can be highly effective for your organization. Please give it a look. If it's not listed, then I won’t do it, but I can undoubtedly recommend people whom I trust that it will be their core.
To be fair to all who read this, I am very selective about the clients I intend to take on, and the original intention of this site is NOT to sell services since this is only a part-time gig for me.
Driven by a profound passion for email marketing, I've embarked on this journey after retiring from full-time work in December 2023. With 24 years of experience in the field and a keen understanding of the unique needs of both large and small organizations, I bring a valuable asset to the table: my brain. This venture not only allows me to keep my mind sharp and curiosity alive in semi-retirement but also adds a touch of enjoyment to the process.
I came up with fair pricing and charge an hourly rate for my work. I will be upfront about how many hours it will take me to do the work for you, and if I happen to go over it, it is up to me to absorb the costs of my time. However, if you are one of these clients who likes to jerk consultants around and consistently have them do work for free outside of scope, waste time on endless meetings and changes, be late on paying, and have unreasonable timelines for payment, please move on, as I have zero patience for that sort of drama.
My hourly rate is $89, but let's break that down: $38 goes to taxes, and I pocket around $51 per hour. Those taxes are due quarterly, so if your terms are net 90 or 120, that is a losing proposition for me, and I will not take you on as a client. Don’t take it personally; you are not a fit for me.
You may find someone offering cheaper services, but can they match my level of experience? Perhaps, but it's a universal truth that you get what you pay for. This video succinctly captures my point.
So, if you are still interested after reading all of this, get in touch below. If not, I wish you all the best with your email program.
PRICING
Services I Offer
Messaging
How do you know if your messaging to your subscribers makes your program successful? Brands are often asked to segment, but segmentation doesn’t work if you don’t message differently. If you are thinking about changing your messaging or are just curious about its current effectiveness, I can help.
Deliverability
You can’t make money unless you get to the inbox, and in today’s ISP climate, the goalposts are constantly moving. If you are in a jam and need a person to help get you onto the path of the inbox, then I can help. However, if you knowingly shot yourself in the leg with idiotic practices, blaming everyone but yourself, and want someone to perform a miracle, kindly f*ck off.
General
I am your man if you need someone in the background to help or act as your consigliere. I have been there with hundreds of organizations and worked as a trusted advisor in all areas of email marketing. Sometimes, having an experienced person who has seen it all is an excellent person to be there for when needed.
List Hygiene
Need your list cleaned or hygiened? Let me help, as I have relationships and special pricing with some of the best validation/hygiene companies out there. I can guide you on who you are using and recommend others if who you are using is the digital equivalent of a 4:30 PM meeting on a Friday.
Full Review
This is my way of saying I am going to audit your program. It’s comprehensive and will allow you to map out what to do over the next 18-24 months. That said, it can get overwhelming (like 40-60 hours worth of work), so we will want to discuss the scope before diving into things further. You can never go wrong with a good old-fashioned audit, but I have performed nearly a hundred of these things in my career, so I have to warn you that you may or may not need one.
Lifecycle
There are plenty of ideas around lifecycle emails, but the question is always: Are they effective? Whether you have 3 or 33 in place, what are you doing to optimize them and know if they are still worth having? Let’s work together to find the answers because I will almost guarantee that there is work to do.
Prioritization
Have you just been handed a program, received an audit, or been mandated by management to perform a miracle in your program but don’t know where to start? I can help identify the places (sometimes hidden) on where to begin and make you an email marketing bada$$.
Agencies
Most agencies claim to have an email marketing offering for their clients, but it rarely moves beyond setting up and sending emails. Most suck at strategy as they tend to lump in strategic consulting as an afterthought, often pawning off “strategy” merely as tactics learned from books and blogs. If you are an agency that needs help with the strategic guidance of your clients, I can help and also allow you to have a healthy profit margin
KPIs &Analytics
There are so many metrics to track beyond opens and clicks these days that it is frightening. I have talked about and implemented “other” metrics for over 20 years, unique to the organizations that used them as strategic weapons for testing and optimization. If you're an Excel organization regarding tracking, I have developed a proprietary template for this very thing. Stop using just what your ESP is giving you and think about taking the next step, as I guarantee you will not regret it.
Content
If you need a few subject lines written, use an online tool. But if you need a series of content or emails to be developed or copywritten because of your vertical needs, then I can help. My content skills and ideas are fantastic, but let's have a few discussions to see if I fit the task.
Personalization
Are you sick and tired of hearing the words “personalization works”? I am. For the last 20 years, pundits have used a variation of this statement to say that it makes your program better. Some will argue that using “first_name” is not enough or even personalization. I call bullshit on this because it is subjective to the brand, industry, and amount of usable data you have. If you want a personalization strategy that works for YOUR organization, let’s chat and see what we can do together.
ESP Review
Most ESPs suck, so the challenge is finding the one that sucks the least for your organization. If you are fed up or just curious about what others are offering, I can help cut through the B.S. that most ESPs claim and find out if they are the real deal. I can also be the person in the back of the room (like I have done many times) during the RFP process and be the “bullshit” meter to what they are saying.
Validation
Just got an audit done and am cautious about what they are saying to you on what you should do. Free audits of your program should never be free as they likely plug and play a “strategy” that looks and sounds good but ultimately will not optimize the way it should. I have done hundreds of audits in my career (99% of them were bespoke), and I can sniff out the dogshit ones from truly the best of them. So, if you want a second set of eyes on it to validate the good from the bad, I can help.
T&T
There is gold in transactional and triggered-based email, and it's just waiting for you to discover it. I have previously owned a $65M T&T-based program and consulted with some of the world's most prominent brands about uncovering and optimizing this part of your program.
Test Design
For the past few decades, evangelists have preached that you should “test it” but give minimal direction or substance on how to begin and then continue testing. I have been testing in email for the last 23 years and have developed a proprietary way to help guide you to start and become addicted to testing.
Journey Mapping
When did you last create a journey map for your email program? Do you even know what the average subscriber “experience” is? If the answer is no, I can help create a journey map to see if stuff is firing correctly and give the overall picture of the experience's good or bad. (hint: it likely isn’t what you think)
Segmentation
“You need to segment your audience” is another popular term amongst strategists, yet there has not been a long-term case study that shows that it works. In fact, people push for more segments, yet this ties into the messaging that you need to have differentiation on. I believe in simple segmentation based on usable data and testing. If you struggle to start or even continue segmenting, I can help clear things up.
SMS & Email
SMS and Email are like a great French fry/hamburger combination; they are excellent when paired correctly. Let’s explore what you are doing with SMS and Email and see if there are ways to optimize the two channels’ work together completely.