Expert Directory

These 49 practitioners have shaped how the industry thinks about email. They’re referenced throughout this guide where their specific insights are most useful. Follow them for ongoing education.

The categories below increasingly bleed into one another. The centre of gravity in email has shifted toward AI and automation: agentic email run through MCP, AI-drafted copy and personalisation, and flows that trigger on behaviour rather than calendar dates. Several practitioners listed under Platform Builders, Copywriting and Ecommerce now do most of their best work here. The grouping at the end pulls those threads together.

Strategy: Chad S. White (Zeta Global, author of Email Marketing Rules) | Kath Pay (Holistic Email Marketing, co-founder of Holistic Email Academy, 28+ years) | Jay Schwedelson (SubjectLine.com, GURU Conference) | Jeanne Jennings (Email Optimization Shop, Georgetown professor) | Dela Quist (Alchemy Worx, EEC 2022 Thought Leader) | Ann Handley (MarketingProfs, ‘Total Annarchy’ newsletter) | Ryan Phelan (RPEOrigin, Chairman Emeritus EEC)

Platform Builders: Nathan Barry (Kit, 600K+ creators) | Tyler Denk (beehiiv, ex-Morning Brew #2) | Jimmy Kim (Sendlane, DTC focus) | Brennan Dunn (RightMessage, personalisation pioneer) | Rytis Lauris (Omnisend co-founder & CEO, bootstrapped to 100K+ customers) | Nicolas Vibert (Relay Commerce / SmartrMail, AI product recommendations)

Copywriting: Joanna Wiebe (Copyhackers, coined ‘conversion copywriting’) | Laura Belgray (Talking Shrimp) | Ben Settle (Email Players, daily email approach) | Chris Orzechowski (Orzy Media, ecommerce copy) | Samar Owais (Emails Done Right, SaaS sequences) | Tarzan Kay (email marketing expert and boss-babe-in-recovery)

Deliverability: Matthew Vernhout (Netcore Cloud) | Troy Ericson (EmailDeliverability.com, ‘The Email Paramedic’) | Lauren Meyer (SocketLabs)

Design and Technical: Mark Robbins (Customer.io, CSS-only email) | Paul Airy (Beyond the Envelope, accessibility) | Justin Khoo (FreshInbox, interactive email) | Jason Rodriguez (GitHub, ex-Litmus)

Ecommerce and Retention: Chase Dimond (Structured Agency, $200M+ in email revenue) | Val Geisler (Fix My Churn, behaviour-based onboarding) | Reinis Krumins (agencyJR, DTC email+SMS) | Danavir Sarria (SupplyDrop, flow architecture)

Agency: Scott Cohen (InboxArmy) | Garin Hobbs (InboxArmy, lifecycle design) | Shaun Ernst (Email Experts, Klaviyo Platinum Master Partner, Melbourne) | Brenden Rawson (Andzen, first Klaviyo Elite Master Partner in APAC, Klaviyo Agency Partner of the Year APAC 2025)

Newsletter Growth: Dan Oshinsky (Inbox Collective) | Matt McGarry (GrowLetter, paid acquisition) | Liz Wilcox (‘The Fresh Princess of Email Marketing’)

Consultants: Ian Brodie (author of Email Persuasion and Unsnooze Your Inbox) | Jordie van Rijn (Emailmonday, platform comparisons) | Eman Ismail (ethical email strategy) | Andrew Kordek (iPost)

Content Creators: Alex Cattoni (Copy Posse) | Noah Kagan (AppSumo, 750K+ list) | Gavin Laugenie (Dotdigital)

AI & Automation: This isn’t a separate roster so much as where the people above are heading. The work that matters now is agentic email (running flows, segments and sends through MCP), AI-assisted copy and personalisation, and behaviour-triggered automation that replaces calendar-driven blasts. Watch Nicolas Vibert (Relay Commerce / SmartrMail) on AI product recommendations, Tyler Denk (beehiiv) and Nathan Barry (Kit) on platform-native automation and ad infrastructure, Danavir Sarria and Samar Owais on AI-built flow and sequence architecture, and Brennan Dunn (RightMessage) on dynamic personalisation. More directory entries will shift into this category as the practice settles. Five practitioners on designing with AI were added in v2.7, September 2026, and they get their own group below.

Designing with AI: Anshu Chimala (AI design writer, 12 years at Apple, the method behind Chapter 6’s Discover, Define, Deliver) | Karri Saarinen (Linear co-founder and CEO, ex-Airbnb design system) | Ryo Lu (designer, Head of Design at Cursor until August 2026, ex-Notion and Stripe) | Jenny Wen (Head of Design at Cursor, ex-Anthropic and Figma) | Lee Munroe (OneSignal VP of Design, creator of htmlemail.io and Postdrop)

Anshu Chimala wrote the method Chapter 6 runs on; the other four are the clearest public voices on why cheap generation raises the bar on judgement. Anshu Chimala: “AI loves to add more, but it rarely takes away. One of the biggest signs that a design is AI-generated is that it overexplains everything or contains elements that don’t serve any practical purpose.” Karri Saarinen, on AI tools: “They generate plausible outputs quickly, but they do not necessarily help you understand the underlying problem.” Ryo Lu, lowercase as he publishes: “what we need aren’t more tools that make more slop. it’s seeing through the chaos, and returning to what the thing actually is, and cutting everything that doesn’t serve that.” Jenny Wen: “When you are designing now with these LLMs, you basically can’t map out all those flows.” Lee Munroe: “In a world where AI can generate decent UI instantly, “good enough” is no longer a differentiator. Taste, clarity, and coherence matter more than ever.”

---