23,000 subscribers, three very different clients.

Allstate — automation at Fortune 500 scale

The work here was designing and deploying welcome sequences, thank-you sequences, and reminder automations across a list of more than 11,000 people for an Allstate executive agent.

Insurance is a category where the email has to do a specific job: stay useful without becoming noise, and show up at the moment a policy decision is actually being made. Renewal reminders and post-signup sequences aren't glamorous, but they're the difference between a list that's an asset and a list that's a liability people unsubscribe from.

What mattered most on this account was reliability. Marco, the executive agent, put it this way:

"Collin delivered everything on time without me having to follow up once. In an industry where that's rare, I really appreciated it. Would absolutely work with him again."

Grails SF — 8,000 subscribers

Campaigns and automations for a list of 8,000. Consumer resale is a category where speed and relevance decide everything — the audience is already engaged, already knows the brand, and responds to timing more than persuasion.

The work was building the recurring machinery: what goes out, when, and to which segment, so revenue stops depending on someone remembering to send something.

Heavenly Kickz — 4,000 subscribers

Same discipline on a 4,000-person list. Smaller audience, and a useful demonstration that list size isn't the variable that matters most. A 4,000-person list of people who've actually bought outperforms a 40,000-person list of people who once entered a giveaway.

What carries over to a service business

Most of my email volume has been consumer brands and insurance, and I'm not going to pretend a sneaker list and a plumbing customer list are the same thing. But the mechanics transfer directly:

• Welcome sequences become the emails a new customer gets after their first job
• Reminder automations become maintenance reminders — the HVAC tune-up, the annual inspection
• Promotional campaigns become seasonal offers timed ahead of demand rather than during it
• Reactivation becomes customers from two years ago who've forgotten your name
• Thank-you sequences become the automated review request that feeds your LSA ranking and Google Business Profile

The honest guidance: if you have no customer list yet, email isn't your first move. Build the list with LSA and Google Ads first. If you've been in business a few years and have hundreds of past customers sitting in your invoicing software, that's an asset you're currently not using.

What I'd do for a similar client

1. Audit the list before writing anything. How many are real, how many are active, how they were acquired.
2. Build automations before campaigns. Automations run forever without you; campaigns need someone to press send.
3. Segment by behaviour, not demographics. Bought before, quoted but didn't buy, never engaged — three different messages.
4. Write like a person. The reason these accounts worked isn't clever automation logic. It's that the emails didn't read like marketing.