They say teamwork makes the dream work, right? But let’s be honest. There are times when communicating and collaborating with colleagues is more like a nightmare. Too often, that’s the case with email design and development.
There are plenty of reasons why email developers and designers struggle to work together:
- Sometimes it’s a lack of design knowledge or coding skills.
- Other times it’s a lack of understanding around email’s limitations and capabilities.
- For agencies, it could stem from clients with unreasonable expectations.
- An email developer who refuses to try new things could also be problematic.
However, when email developers and designers share knowledge, find common ground, and agree on best practices, amazing things can happen in the inbox.
My colleague, Sr. Graphic Designer Francois Sahli, and I have been working together for less than a year at this point. Yet, by combining our areas of expertise and developing repeatable processes, we’re moving towards a more streamlined and flexible way of doing things.
Francois and I recently talked about what’s working for us. We also asked some peers from the  to weigh in on the topic of email developer and designer collaboration. That includes Anne Tomlin of Shannon Crabill of , as well as Ben Clay and Weng Lam from the agency  You’ll get advice from all of us on how email developers and designers can work together.
Collaborating in different jobs and situations
Every job opportunity, marketing team, or client presents its own communication challenges and advantages. In some situations, you may have complete control over email design and coding. In other cases, you’ll have to do your best to bring another person’s ideas to life.
Here’s some advice on getting things done in four common career scenarios:
There have been times in my career when I’ve been what you could call a “lone wolf email marketer.” And that sort of job definitely has its ups and downs.
When you’re an  you have control of almost everything from start to finish.
On the one hand, you’re in charge of writing, designing, and sending emails the way you think is best. If you have an idea or want to fix Japan Phone Number List omething, you just do it. The only thing everyone else cares about is whether the email went out on time and looked decent.
Working as a freelancer
On the flip side, you’re handling everything, and you may be working all alone in a silo. You’re missing out on getting the opinions and perceptions of other people. There are big benefits to getting feedback from teammates with different levels of experience and expertise.
As a one-person show, you have to build in a lot of time to handle all the steps of the email production process. At some point, maybe because the company grows or increases the frequency of emails being sent, it’s no longer realistic to operate as an email team of one.
In one of my previous roles as a solo email UAE Cell Number marketer, I was sending out an email nearly every day. Even though I had templates and wasn’t hand-coding every email, it was still a lot of work for one person to handle.
Enjoy your freedom! But if you’re going it alone, don’t hesitate to reach out to colleagues or others in the email geek community for advice and ideas. When the workload gets to be too much, make sure to let people know that the success of the email program could be impacted without more help and resources.
Freelance email developers may work alone, but they often find themselves collaborating with their clients’ design teams. That can be quite the challenge.
