Hi Alessandra. It’s a pleasure to meet you, thank you so much for joining me on Send Some Love. This series is all about highlighting the great people doing great things in the email marketing space and certainly a fitting description of you. To start us off, would you introduce yourself?
I live and work in Ravenna, Italy, and I work full time in email marketing and automation. Apart from work, I love traveling and trekking, I'm a feminist and climate activist, proud mother of an 18yo son, and trying to leave this world a little better than I found it.
I’ve heard lovely things about Ravenna (and the beaches) and am grateful for your activism and involvement. I’d love to dive into your background a bit more. Can you tell us about how you got into email marketing?
I've been working in digital marketing since the late '90s. I started with a little web studio, then a bigger agency, then in 2010 I went solo and worked as a freelancer for more than a decade; it was then that I started working more and more on email marketing and automation, and I soon became sort of an unofficial Mailchimp evangelist in Italy. I was the 1st Italian to join the Mailchimp Experts Directory and then the Partner Program, and I had the privilege of attending a Partner Lab in Atlanta in 2019, at Mailchimp Headquarters.
In the meantime, I wrote some books, gave speeches in many events, and worked with small and big companies, helping them to make the best of email marketing and automation. Then, in 2022, I co-founded Palabra, an agency entirely focused on email marketing and automation
That’s a really impressive background, Alessandra. Can you share a bit more about your agency, Palabra? What type of services do you provide and for what type of clients?
In Palabra we only do email marketing and automation, from start to end: email marketing audit, email strategy, data modeling, automation building and optimization, campaign design and management, deliverability audit, competitor analysis and so on. We work with many different kinds of clients: ecommerce, B2B companies, nonprofit organizations, medical services and so on.
We work with many ESPs, and we define ourselves as tech-agnostic: every platform has its pros and cons, its optimal domain, and we want to help our clients to make the best choice and make the best of their tools. Our mantra is "Relevance + Respect = Results", and we believe that email is a wonderful channel to build and nurture a positive relationship between a brand and its customers.
Truly start to end, that’s very impressive. I also have to note that I love that mantra, it really resonates with me. As you work with your clients today, what are they most concerned about - where do organizations need the most help with email marketing and automation in today’s environment?
I see that many organizations have a hard time in defining a clear strategy that combines push emails, good segmentation, and smart automation. Many of them send newsletters to the whole list and barely set up a welcome series, let alone different welcome journeys for different entry points. I see lists lacking a smart database design, growing in numbers without constant data enhancing and engagement monitoring. Lack of strategy, and the temptation to use email as a merely broadcasting channel, while email is an opportunity for conversation and interaction.
Alessandra, any tips for organizations out there that are trying to develop a more comprehensive email marketing strategy?
Look at yourself from your clients’ point of view: what kind of information do they need? When, how often? When do they buy, and why? What kind of content can keep them engaged in between two purchases? Avoid being self-centered, if a message is not useful for those who receive it, it won’t be useful for the sender.
That’s a great one. And for someone just getting started in the email marketing space, any words of wisdom you could share?
Start small and be prepared to fine-tune your strategy in time. There is no such a thing as “set it and forget it”!
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview, Alessandra. My last question for you, where do you draw your inspiration from (for email or otherwise)?
I subscribe to many newsletters, of course, and I do competitor analysis for many clients (Sendview is a great tool to do it). But I also draw inspiration from looking at the world around me, reading a lot, and talking to people. What I love about my job is that I meet many different people, on many different kinds of projects, and I can’t possibly get bored!