Resources for Professional Development

One of THE BEST ways to get more knowledge in the field is disgustingly simple; Twitter

Jump on, follow email people, engage, learn!

Mine is twofold - 1) Research and 2) Development

I'd always been one to do my research, but didn't realize how much weight I could carry into a group session by bringing in examples and literature to back up my argument/opinion. If your company is giving you the opportunity to grow, make sure you can give them some proof that you are!

I'm not a Pinterest person, but I bookmark everything I find (that's a good resource) so I can reference it later. That includes articles, blogs, images, ebooks, walls, tools, etc. Speaking of Pinterest, you can find some great resources both for inspiration and knowledge. I've found some great walls with infographics and template designs. I also second Dan - subscribe to newsletters from companies that you like and you know will push content pretty frequently. And because keeping abreast with technology and industry changes can be a daunting task, find those "role models" in the industry you like and subscribe to their website/blog/newsletter/Twitter feed; they'll keep you up to date without you having to do too much leg work.

The second part is development, but of the practice makes perfect variety. I find I don't really learn something until I work it through myself (and most people are the same way). The suggestions Jason and Mark made are excellent examples. And of course, your boss will be pretty impressed when you show him what you've built on the side!

I second everything that Jason and Mark already shared and I'd look for more ways to chat regularly with other people that do similar work. Like both of them said, I'd look outside email marketing to bring things into your work. I recently shared my template code with a front-end dev on our team and he vastly improved it with a nice commenting scheme.

There's always plenty to learn on the psychology behind messaging as well. "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely led me down a path of studying decision making and how I can apply that to designs.

As for me, I spend a lot of time checking out emails. I subscribe to a ton of things in a junker gmail account so that I can study them. I also look for ways to use tooling to improve my workflow so that more time can be spent on the actual messages.

Thank you all for your advice and ideas. Reading your replies has helped me realize that branching into other fields will strengthen not only myself as a professional, but also in my email development. With that said I've decided that I'm going to focus more on developing web apps using js and php. I can use this new knowledge to create apps that will streamline my email developing process.

I've already got a very basic app built for demonstration here. With this tool i'll be able to quickly piece together an email from modules on the right (drag and drop into the email.) Eventually it will spit out the bare-bones html which i'll run through a css in-liner for the final product.

thanks again for your reply's and helping me find more ways to develop myself in this amazing field!

In regards to twitter, I'll start right away!

are you a design or dev (or both?)

aside from specific email stuff (heartily recommend TEDC if you can make it!) there's plenty to learn around

• design concepts & ideas
• behavioural economics (Seth Godin is a good place to start here)
• various coding techniques/areas that complement email (eg. web code, CSS, Sass, Git Hub etc)

Attending #TEDC14 is absolutely a great idea, as is reading up on the subject. Other than that, I've always found side projects to be a great way to learn new skills and refine existing ones. Plus, they are typically loads of fun since you can build a side project around anything that interests you.

Admittedly, email can seem like a pretty narrow focus when it comes to working on a side project, as most people think of just starting a newsletter of some sort. But there are a ton of things that you could do. Work on something to improve one aspect of email marketing or design, build a new tool for generating code or previewing preheader text. Try building templates that are way out there and more abstract than what you typically send in your day job.

Writing about the process is also an excellent way to hone skills, as it forces you to really think about what you know and explaining it in a concise manner solidifies that knowledge. Start a blog, mess around with some crazy techniques, and write about it.

Finally, if you're in an area that has frequent meetups for your field, getting together with other designers and developers is a great way to share knowledge, network, and meet some new friends.

Hope some of these suggestions help. If you stumble upon any other ways, document it here, we'd love to hear how you get along!

I agree with Jason, I love a side project too. I set up my own website at the start of this year to play around with some ideas. The extra bit of research and though needed to write about something rather than just building it, helped me learn a lot more than I thought it would. I've been really busy with non-email stuff recently but in that time I've built up a huge list of stuff I want to write about.

I also try and keep up with what's happening in the web developer world, CSS Tricks is my favourite. He breaks everything down really clearly, so when I read it I can try and apply any single part of his code to email. I've stolen loads of ideas from there :)

Reading other peoples code. I quite often use the view in browser link and firebug or Litmus Scope to see how someone has done something clever or see if I can work out what's gone wrong when I see a bug.

Learning from your mistakes is a great way to learn but also learn from other peoples mistakes by answering questions on here and other forums.