The underground eMail elite by Andrew Kordek @AndrewKordek

There are quite a few visible elite email marketers out there today.  Some I consider my friends and most I consider my colleagues.  The email marketing elite are folks that I classify as being extremely active in the email marketing community on many levels. Most write articles, publish blogs, belong to private email discussion lists, and participate in communities including twitter, the EMC and others, while finally some have even published books on email marketing.  A few do all of the aforementioned and I like to call them the UBER email marketing elite.

A good portion of the elite hold high level positions at organizations, but most are not on the client side.  What I mean by the client side is that most do not actively run or have never run an email program at any organization.  A few have been on the client side, but have been far removed from the theater for many years and in that time, email marketing has changed dramatically.

The email marketing elite have great ideas, talk a good game and have some amazing credentials.    They are extremely knowledgeable about email marketing and most offer some great advice to those who wish to consume it.  They are the email elite because of their visibility and their ability to draw an audience wherever they go on the net or in person.

That being said, I believe that there is an underground email elite.  These underground email elite don’t do anything on the net or in person to garner attention to their knowledge and practice of email marketing.  In fact these elite will never be heard from and the community at large will never be able to tap into their incredible sense of innovation and view on email today.  I believe that the real email elite are folks who run the email programs, who are not in high-level positions and have some trepidation on becoming visible.

The underground elite are the folks that block and tackle and make plays that go unnoticed.  The underground elite are people that make things tick and roll in the industry, while the visible elite take the learning’s from the underground and make it known to the rest of the world.

The real question is can the roles be reversed.  Can the visible elite go into organizations and run an email program.  They certainly have the knowledge, but do they have the talent? Consequently can the underground elite go and become a recognizable expert and talk to the crowds about email marketing. They have the talent but do they have the knowledge.

I am a visible email marketer, but do not consider myself to be elite. I am a student and will always be learning about this wonderful craft.  I don’t hold a high level position at my organization nor do I have a fancy title, but am responsible for general direction and strategy of email at Groupon.  My posts going forward will be from the insider point of view and will center more about practicing theory or best practices that people often talk about.  Being in the trenches every day affords me real world experience to the implementation and integration of email best practices. My posts will be written from a non-commercialized point of view. I write for passion and nothing more and I kinda like it that way.

Long live email marketing.

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