Meet our newest email superhero, Kiran Patel

We’re delighted to welcome Kiran Patel to our team of email heroes.

Bringing over 25 years of experience in email marketing, Kiran has helped high street brands including Estee Lauder, Selfridges, John Lewis and Arcadia Group to ace their email strategy.

We sat down with Kiran to find out why email marketing excites her, the biggest challenges facing email marketers, and which brands she thinks are getting email right.

Hi Kiran! Tell us more about your email marketing journey

Wow, it all started a very long time ago! I think my enthusiasm for marketing began when I joined BT’s graduate scheme. I was there for about eight years and ended up managing the marketing team, before joining The Guardian as a Data Analyst.

At the time we were using a product called CheetahMail. The potential of email marketing really excited me and five years later I joined their team as an Account Manager.

I think it was my second day when I was asked to present to Next, so right from the start I had the pleasure of working with some of the UK’s biggest high street brands. I really enjoyed the challenge of helping such big brands to improve their strategy and eventually worked my way to becoming Strategic Client Success Director.

In the last four years I’ve worked as a Strategic Consultant for businesses like myBench Ltd and dotdigital, and now I’m at Enchant! I have a real passion for what I do, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed in this field for so long.

What excites you about email marketing?

Email is constantly evolving, so I’m always learning. I’ve harped on about segmentation and personalisation for years, and now we’re really seeing how much it can achieve, which is so exciting. There's always room to improve.

Why did you decide to join Enchant?

When I started talking to Philip [Enchant’s founder] I thought, “this guy is too much like me!” I can talk to him about email marketing for hours without feeling like a nerd. Everyone at Enchant is there because they love what they do, and I know we can learn so much from each other.

What have you been up to so far?

I’m focusing on helping brands to grow their email marketing strategy, so that they can reach their goals in achievable, manageable ways. I’ve worked with some great clients so far here and it’s been really exciting to see their confidence build and the results they achieve.

What do you think are the biggest challenges email marketers face?

The two big challenges are segmentation and personalisation - getting the email out to the right person at the right time, with the right content.

A lot of brands invest in email, but don’t optimise what they’re doing by using the data they have. We need to make it easier to utilise the data available, create segmentation and personalisation and bring in fringe technologies like Fresh Relevance, Kickdynamic or Nosto. It’s definitely doable, with the right support.

Which brands do you think #getemailright?

I love Patch Plants - their emails just sing to you. They’re in totally the right headspace, because they’re always thinking about what their subscribers are going to want next. Butternut, The White Company, Cox and Cox and Bloom & Wild are also doing a great job.

What are you up to when you're not helping ambitious brands with email?

Oh, I love to cook, I just love all things food. I’m half Persian and half Indian, so I enjoy making Parsi cuisine - there’s a great Parsi restaurant in London called Dishoom which I’d highly recommend. I’m also a mum, and my kids have recently finished uni so I’ve been spending time with them.

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Get in touch today to discover where Enchant can take you.