How Delegation Strengthens Your Email Marketing

“How does summer vacation look like email marketing?”

“Both are much more enjoyable when you delegate roles.”

My body was back where it belongs, but my mind was still at the beach, where I had just spent an amazing 10 day holiday. When the sun is shining, the booze is flowing and the ocean is just around the corner, it's hard to resist a bad feeling.

But ideal surroundings and a group of like-minded friends aren't enough to make a successful vacation. My go-to strategy is to give everyone a job, but don't try to do all the work.

I typically book the vacation rental and plan the logistics, but don't want to make all of the daily arrangements myself.

That's why I delegate. For this group of friends, dinner is a big event. We're all good cooks and know everyone's preferences. Everyone spends the evening cooking dinner for everyone. We delegate other responsibilities as well. The result is that everyone does something, no one does everything, and everything runs smoothly like clockwork.

Delegation shows trust, not evasion

This delegation — giving authority to the people you work with and report to — is also how I run my company. It's not about being the smartest person in the company, it's about surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you. This is how email teams succeed, too, even if they're just one person. (If that's you, don't think this doesn't apply to you; read on for some ideas that will help you, too.)

It's easy to tell people to delegate work, but in reality, this isn't done as much as it should be. People are worried that if they don't make all the important decisions themselves, they won't be taken seriously. Or that someone will come along and take their work away. Or they don't trust the people they work with to make the right decisions or meet deadlines.

Whatever the reason, it leads to burnout, distrust, and teams that spend more time solving problems than creating great email marketing that benefits the company.

Before you jump back on the hamster wheel of email crafting, take this time of relative quiet to do something about it. Take a moment to consider how you and your team assess and delegate responsibilities within channels, who is responsible for what, and what the dependencies are within and across your team.

The timing is right because we're in the middle of a cycle now, and we're not doing this for a performance review or a raise, so it won't be a distraction. Also, it's essential that we start with an evaluation before we start delegating, because before we can change things, we need to know who's doing what, what's working and what's not.

Learn more: Email Marketers: What's on your holiday to-do list?

Three questions to help you evaluate and delegate

If you're not a team leader, take a few minutes to pretend you are and answer these questions to evaluate whether your delegation is working well and where you could improve:

1. Are your employees good at what they do?

American companies are notorious for pushing people to do work they weren't hired to do but that they have to do to keep the company afloat. 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 talking about the issue.

This one is interesting because it's true. After you've finished reading my column, check it out. You won't be able to stop.

Email often has a reputation as the Swiss Army knife of marketing, which is why we often end up with a “mountain” of email work. Everyone thinks we can do many different things under the title “email marketer.”

At my company, we assign roles to employees based on what they enjoy doing. If we assign employees to roles they are not suited to or push them to do work that is beyond their job skills, they will be hindered in their work. This will slow them down and increase the chances of making mistakes.

As the email team leader, check in with what people are doing. Make a list of everyone on your team, what they're good at, what they're not so good at, and what you don't want them to do because they're not good at it.

This analysis reveals several findings for creating or improving a delegation plan.

• Are you putting people in the right positions?Are they doing the work they should be doing, or have they taken over because someone left and you decided to reallocate work rather than hire a replacement?

Summer can be a time to rebalance your workload, especially if you have multiple people who are great at one job but also do other things.

• How can you help your team members improve their skills? Can you offer training, one-on-one consulting, or professional memberships? These aren't formal performance improvement programs, just additional resources you can use in your current free time.

2. Are you doing the right thing?

This analysis is a self-examination of what you do on a regular basis. Are you using your time wisely? Or are you a utility player who squeezes into vacant spaces and does the work that no one else can or wants to do?

I have to be careful too. I don't want to take on a job that I'm not suited for just because no one else is doing it.

As the company has grown, as a leader, I have slowly worked to remove some responsibilities because we now have better, smarter people who can fill those roles.

Spending time on tasks that don't play to your strengths takes you away from the work you should be doing. If you're doing too much tactical work on a day-to-day basis, you won't have time to work on strategy. As a leader, strategy is your job.

If you’re not a team leader, a good idea would be to take what you’ve learned here and share it with your boss and say, “We need to hire some utility players to take these tasks off our shoulders so we can get the job done that you’ve asked us to do.”

Sure, you have to defend the cost, show the benefits, and create a presentation about what value this new hire will bring to the company, but think about your job, your hours, and your responsibilities. You'll probably realize that your work-life balance is out of whack.

If so, you might be able to reassign some of the work to others, or you can do what we'll talk about next: seek outside help.

3. Check with external support teams

No company operates in an email vacuum. There are data people, coders, programmers, and analysts. They might be on your team, they might be in other departments within the company, or they might work for a vendor that you use to run your programs. Your work has dependencies outside of your team, but they're still internal.

Too often, as email marketers, we hold back when someone dumps a ton of new work on us. We assume we have to do it all ourselves because we think no one else can do it, or can do it well, or that no one will respond when we ask for help.

Therefore, you need to evaluate what you can get from external parties. They must be held accountable for the work they assign to the program.

This can be a big battle, especially if you work with other teams that constantly push your help requests to the bottom, but you need to list those work responsibilities and draw boundaries.

Beyond these stakeholders, consider whether you can ask others within your company or outside sources, such as contractors or agencies, to take over some of the work, so you can focus on the job you're paid to do.

Rather than outsourcing your entire email marketing program, isolate the parts of the work you’re not good at and give them to people who are.

Learn more: How to effectively delegate tasks and manage projects

Help for one-person email teams

As promised, this is advice for marketers who have to do everything and more, especially when their boss joins an email conference, learns about a new topic (hello, ChatGPT!) and adds it to their workload.

Consider who you will hire to help you, and calculate the cost and benefit to your company. Look within your organization for people who can take on tasks or offer to help with critical business needs.

The power of delegation in email marketing

Yes, I'm still drinking rosé on the beach. I didn't have my laptop with me, but I did give my team specific time slots when they could contact me. Drawing those boundaries was important for my time and for my team back home.

Setting boundaries can be hard when your boss doesn't respect them and constantly emails, texts, and calls you. (Tip: To think of easy ways to tell your employer to leave you alone while you're on vacation, we recommend Laura Whaley again, as her short video is full of examples you can replicate.)

One final piece of advice: take plenty of vacation time. Americans are notorious for taking the least amount of vacation time (again, check out Whaley's short video for a few laughs about how companies view vacation as a dereliction of duty) and for switching jobs while on vacation.

During your vacation, step away from work and keep your mind completely focused on whatever you are doing. This has a bonus – inspiration strikes when you take your foot off the gas. How do you think I came up with the idea for this post?

You might be reading my thoughts here and thinking, “Ryan, that would never work in my world.” It can be. But Yoda tells us, “Do it or don't do it. No need to try.” That means you should never predict an action you've never participated in. You may not always win, but give yourself a chance.

When you get back to the office, work will be waiting for you, so why not start writing those out of office emails now?