\u201cHow are summer vacations like email marketing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth are more enjoyable when you delegate duties.\u201d<\/p>\n
My body is back home where it belongs, but my heart is still on the beach, where I spent a wonderful 10-day vacation. It\u2019s hard to have a bad time when the sun is shining, the drinks are flowing and the ocean is just a few steps away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But an idyllic setting and a congenial group of friends aren\u2019t enough to make a vacation successful. My go-to strategy is to give everyone a job and not try to do all the work.<\/p>\n
I usually book the vacation rental and plan the logistics, but I don\u2019t want to be the one making all the daily arrangements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I delegate. Dinner is a big event with this group of friends. We\u2019re all great home chefs, and we know everyone\u2019s preferences. Everyone takes a night to make dinner for the whole gang. We delegate other responsibilities, too. The result is that everyone does something, nobody does everything and everything runs like clockwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Delegation shows trust, not shirking<\/h2>\n
This delegation of authority \u2014 empowering the people you work with or who report to you \u2014 is also how I run my company. It\u2019s not about being the smartest person in a company. It\u2019s about surrounding yourself with people smarter than you. That\u2019s how a successful email team works, too. Even an email team of one! (If that\u2019s you, don\u2019t think this doesn\u2019t apply to you. Keep reading because there are ideas for you, too.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to tell people to delegate, but it doesn\u2019t happen as much as it should. People worry that they won\u2019t be taken seriously if they don\u2019t make all the big decisions. Or somebody will come along and take their jobs. Or they don\u2019t trust the people they work with to make the right decisions or hit their deadlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whatever the reason, it leads to burnout, distrust and a team that spends more time putting out fires than creating great email marketing that benefits the company.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s do something about that now during this relatively quiet period before it\u2019s time to jump back on the hamster wheel of email production. Take a little time to think about how you or your team assess your responsibilities and delegate authority inside the channel, who\u2019s in charge of what and what your dependencies are within your team and beyond it.<\/p>\n
The timing is right because you\u2019re in the middle of a cycle. You aren\u2019t doing it for a performance review or pay raise, so there are no distractions. Also, starting with assessment is essential before you start delegating because you must know who\u2019s doing what, what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t before you can change things.<\/p>\n
Dig deeper: Email marketers: What\u2019s on your vacation to-do list?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If you aren\u2019t the team leader, pretend you are for a few minutes. Answer these questions to assess if delegation is working and where to improve it.<\/p>\n Corporate America is famous for piling work on people they weren\u2019t hired to do but must get done to keep the company going. Do you know how widespread this is? There are a bunch of short videos on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube by Canadian business speaker Laura Whaley that riff on this problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019re hilarious because they\u2019re true, like this one<\/a>. Watch it after you finish my column. I guarantee you won\u2019t be able to stop with one.<\/p>\n \u201cPiling on\u201d happens to email often because of our reputation as the Swiss Army Knife of marketing. Everybody assumes we can do a whole bunch of jobs under the moniker of \u201cemail marketer.\u201d<\/p>\n In my company, I put people in roles based on what they love to do. When you put people in roles they aren\u2019t suited for or pile on jobs beyond their work skills, their work suffers. That slows things down and increases the opportunity for error.<\/p>\n As the email team leader, look at what people are doing. List everyone on your team and name the jobs they are good at, then the jobs they are marginally good at and then the jobs you don\u2019t want them to do because they aren\u2019t good at them.\u00a0<\/p>\n This analysis will reveal a couple of findings to create or refine your delegation plan:<\/p>\n Summer can be your time to rebalance the workload, especially if you find several people who are good at one job but work on something else.<\/p>\n This analysis is a self-examination of what you do regularly. Are you using your time wisely? Or are you the utility player, the one who gets plugged into any open spot and does the work nobody else can or wants to do?\u00a0<\/p>\n I have to watch myself as well. I don\u2019t want to take on work I\u2019m not suited for just because nobody else is doing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a leader during our company\u2019s growth, I\u2019ve been on a slow migration to offload some duties because now there are better, smarter people to do them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spending time on jobs that don\u2019t tap your strengths takes away from what you should be doing. If there is too much tactical work on your plate \u2014 the day-to-day work of getting things done \u2014 you don\u2019t have time to work on strategy and as a leader, your work is strategy.<\/p>\n If you aren\u2019t the team leader, this is a good place for you to take what you learn to your boss and say, \u201cWe need to hire a utility player to come in and take these things off our plates so we can do the jobs you hired us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, you will have to defend the labor cost, show the upside and create a presentation on what that new person\u2019s value would be to the company. But consider your work and what your hours and responsibilities are. You will likely discover an imbalance in your own work life.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you find that to be the case, maybe you can have some work reassigned to others. Or you could do what I will talk about next \u2014 bring in outside help.\u00a0<\/p>\n No company runs email in a vacuum. There are data people, coders, programmers and analysts. They might be on your team, in other departments within your company or working for the vendors you use to run your program. There\u2019s some dependency beyond your team but still within your company for what you do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many times, we email marketers take it on the chin when someone dumps a load of new work on us. We assume we must do it all because we think nobody else can do it or do it as well or nobody is answering our calls for help.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s why you need to assess what you get from external stakeholders. They must take responsibility for the work they are assigned for your program.\u00a0<\/p>\n This could be a big battle, especially if you work with other teams that routinely move your help requests to the bottom of the pile. But you must list those work responsibilities and draw those boundaries.<\/p>\n Besides these stakeholders, consider whether you could call on others in your company or even outside sources like contractors or agencies that could take over some work. That would let you concentrate on what you\u2019re being paid to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n You aren\u2019t outsourcing your entire email marketing program. Instead, you\u2019re carving off a slice of work you don\u2019t excel at and giving it to someone who does.<\/p>\n Dig deeper: How to effectively delegate tasks and manage projects<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As promised, here\u2019s my advice for marketers stuck doing everything under the sun and more, especially when the boss goes to an email conference, learns about a shiny new thing (hello, ChatGPT!) and adds it to your workload.\u00a0<\/p>\n Think about whom you could bring in to help you and calculate the costs versus the benefits to the company. Look at others in your organization who could take on the work or pitch to help you with your critical work needs.<\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019m still on the beach sipping on ros\u00e9. I didn\u2019t take a laptop, but I gave my team a specific time window where they could reach me. Drawing that boundary was important for my time and for my team\u2019s back home.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is hard to set that boundary if your boss doesn\u2019t respect it and emails, texts or calls you constantly. (Tip: For help coming up with a company-friendly way to say, \u201cLeave me alone on my vacation!\u201d I recommend Laura Whaley<\/a> again because her short videos give you plenty of real-world examples to copy.)<\/p>\n My last piece of advice: Take the damn vacation. Americans are notorious for taking the fewest vacation days (once again, Whaley\u2019s short videos also address the corporate attitude that vacation equals shirking duty, so watch a few for a laugh) and for going on vacations that trade one workplace for another.\u00a0<\/p>\n While on vacation, divorce yourself from work and let that part of your mind be fully present in whatever you\u2019re doing. This has a bonus: Inspiration can show up just when you take your foot off the gas. How do you think I came up with the idea for this post?<\/p>\n When you read my ideas here, you might think \u201cThat will never work in my world, Ryan.\u201d That\u2019s possible. But Yoda tells us, \u201cDo or Do Not. There is no try.\u201d Meaning, don\u2019t predict a behavior that you\u2019ve not participated in. You won\u2019t always win, but give yourself a chance first.<\/p>\n Work will be there waiting for you when you return to the office. Why don\u2019t you start writing your out-of-office email right now?\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff<\/a> and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em><\/p>\n3 questions to help you assess and delegate<\/h2>\n
1. Are your people doing what they\u2019re good at?<\/h3>\n
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2. Are you doing the right thing?<\/h3>\n
3. Review your external support teams<\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nHelp for one-person email teams<\/h2>\n
The power of delegation in email marketing<\/h2>\n