Elliot Ross is the founder and managing director of ActionRocket, the email veteran behind the successful digital agency that we are proud to be today. Since we’re dedicating this month to celebrating our big 1-0 🥳, it seemed fitting to sit down with the man who founded us - all the way back in 2012.

We dig a little deeper into Elliots background, he gives advice to future marketers, and answers the big question - where did our name come from?! So let’s see what else he has to say…

"Nail the core stuff — the message, what you want people to take away from your work — before getting distracted by shiny stuff."

Let’s start by going back to the very beginning. What inspired you to start ActionRocket?

In 2012 I’d been working in the creative team at an ESP for 6 years, and I left that to go freelance — partly for the freedom(!) to choose work, and partly because I’d got bored of the commute. Luckily over that 6 years I’d built up tonnes of connections and was able to get lots of work quickly. 

The thing everyone wants to know, where did the ActionRocket name come from?

Haha. For the first few months it was just me and my name, but then some of the clients I was starting to work with — whilst the CRM teams were cool, the procurement people were a bit hesitant about freelancers and wanted to work with an agency. To be honest it wasn’t long until the first team members joined and we got our first office, so I guess we were a proper agency then anyway. I think the name came about one night when I was trying to find domain names that were free, but I wanted something that sounded like we boost results for brands. 

How many email campaigns in total do you think you’ve been a part of?

I’m not sure, it must be tens of thousands by now. I like how what we do at ActionRocket is then taken and built on by brand teams, so the stuff we do filters into ongoing work. I’ve found random class names that I made for some online courses crop up in code all over the place, so maybe it’s more than that!

Which brand have you always wanted to work with and why?

I’m not sure right now. I always wanted Virgin Atlantic as a client, and I like the times we’ve closed the circle of getting clients that I’d previously worked with when I’d worked at “grown up” agencies. I’d say Apple, but I’ve seen their brand book — there’s no way you’re working without limits there! From a brand perspective, it’s nice to work with slightly mature startup brands, once they’ve got off the ground and have had that first brand redesign that makes them fly properly. 

What is your greatest accomplishment during your career so far?

I like the random opportunities that come up — like in the build up for the London 2012 Olympics we made an email to show on Eastenders, when Billy Mitchell was made a games maker. I like some of the chaotic stuff we did with EmailWeekly, when it gets instant reaction on Twitter — it got to the point that we’d make mistakes here and there and people would think it’s intentional. Aside from that, the obvious ones are where ActionRocket has gone over the last 10 years, and also co-founding Taxi for Email and growing that to the point we joined the MessageBird family last year. Personally I’ve also really enjoyed being able to travel and speak about email at conferences around the world. 

Final question, what’s your one piece of advice to people starting out in the email industry?

Don’t feel like you have to do everything at once - email is a great channel because it ships quickly, you can learn from the results and then try something to improve your work next time. It’s very iterative, much more so than other channels. Also nail the core stuff — the message, what you want people to take away from your work — before getting distracted by shiny stuff.