Mini Interview with Jaina Mistry

Continuing the mini interviews with web and email marketing professionals, this week I had the pleasure to interview Jaina Mistry.

Jaina is an experienced email marketing professional from the UK, currently based in Bahrain and working remotely for a start-up in London. She also enjoys photography and a good film. You can read more about her at her personal blog time-wellspent.com or say hello on twitter where she’s a regular on the #emailgeeks hashtag and not only.

Let’s see what did we talk about:

What is your favorite email app?

This is a bit of a strange one, but I don’t actually have one. I use Gmail via Chrome when I’m on my laptop and also the Gmail app on my Nexus 4. Yes, it’s terrible at rendering email, but I still find it incredibly useful for the actual email side of things. Perhaps I just need to be enlightened.

Can you share the homescreen of your iPhone / Android phone?

Jaina's Hoemscreen
Jaina’s Homescreen

Here it is. Nothing spectacular – stock android with my most used apps right in front of me. My backgrounds are via the app Muzei and the clock is Timely’s clock .

Email coding can some times be a pain. What is the most common / favourite hack you use in your templates.

One hack I use pretty much every single day is Actionrocket Lab’s Ghost Column hack – a lot of our customers still use Outlook 2007-13 and this one is pretty much indispensable for me. Oh and, to get around Gmail’s issue the min-width fix to force the width of container tables.

Email is (not) dead. How do you see the future for the email marketing professionals?

It’s just going to get bigger. Years ago, I started out in web design and development. Where you were a web designer and a jack of all trades. Quickly, the web design field started to get very fragmented with all sorts of specialities popping up. I feel like that’s exactly what’s happening with email marketing at the moment with people specialising in just the design, build, accessibility, deliverability, copy writing, etc. It’s pretty exciting.

You’re into photography as well. Do you have a special workflow for the organization of your pics. What apps / platforms do you use for editing / publishing?

photo

On my camera, I shoot everything in RAW – I like having the extra control over editing my photos. I’ve been using Lightroom to edit the photos for a few years now. My workflow’s nothing out of the ordinary – import the photos onto my Macbook, open them up in Lightroom and begin the cull. Not long ago, I used to keep almost all photos I took – even ones I knew weren’t great. Just in case. Whatever the just in case might have been!

But these days I’m a lot stricter with myself and do maybe 3 passes on one import to really nail down and find the good photos in whatever I’ve been shooting. Learning you have to be really critical in photography to really grow in it. Once I’ve picked out the photos I upload to Google+ Photos. What can I say, I’m a faithful Googler. It’s the ease of use – I can get at these photos wherever I need, once I’ve uploaded them to G+ Photos.

On my phone (Nexus 4) I use the stock Android camera and depending on the photo I’ll either edit with Snapseed or VSCO. VSCO’s a fairly new discovery for me, and enjoying it so far. In terms of publishing, every day snapshots go up on Instagram, which is mostly what I use my N4’s camera for. It’s a terrible camera! Looking forward to getting my hands on a new phone with a much improved camera system.

You currently work remotely. How was the transition from the normal office to your own space? Do you have any tips / tools that would be useful to other remote workers?

Strangely, it was fairly easy transitioning from a normal office to my own space. I’m pretty good at getting into the “working” mindset wherever I am. Once I’ve clocked-in to working hours, I’m on the job. Though there are some weeks when I never leave home, save for going to the gym, and by the weekend cabin fever can set in.

Remote working definitely isn’t for everyone. Though if you want to give it a go, you have to be incredibly disciplined. I think that’s the biggest part of remote working. Only you can hold yourself accountable and that has to be enough. Take regular breaks. It’s easy to work remotely from the morning to lunch time and not take a break. Get up and walk around a little bit every hour or so. On the topic of taking breaks – if you work to a set of office hours (As I do.) make sure you’ve got some sort of structure to your day. I try to make sure I get up a couple of hours before I have to start work – I’ll try to hit the gym before work, have a good breakfast and just sit and read while I eat. No screens, no emails, just some non-work alone time. In the evening I make sure that when I’ve finished with work, I really am finished with work. Wind down at the gym or just get away from my desk.

Jaina's workspace
As for tools, I’ve tried in vain to get the team using the likes of Asana and Trello, however it’s hard to get everyone onboard! We rely a lot on Google Docs for sync’d documents. Skype is the day-to-day communication app. Though with the entire business using Google, we’re slowly transitioning to Google Hangouts. I like to use Evernote to keep track of what I’ve done in a day and what I’ve got to do. Just some simple notes and checklists help me keep on track.

For most people, thinking of Bahrain brings images of luxury, fast cars and oil. How’s the daily life like?

Haha! Daily life is a little different. Of course you do see the luxury and the fast cars. But I find every day life here in Bahrain not that dissimilar to when I was back in the UK. Some things are easier and some are harder. English is widely spoken, so I’ve not struggled there! Food deliveries come at all hours and from all sorts of places. I can eat amazingly tasty meals for next to nothing or pay through my nose for it. Over 50% of the population of Bahrain are expats from the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, USA, UK and more – a lot of different cultures all mixing in here. The country’s got an incredibly relaxed feeling to it – which can be nice. It’s a welcome change from the pace of life in London.

However it can get frustrating when you need to get things done and no one’s working to your timetable. Then there’s the Internet. Yes, some websites are filtered here. That rarely impacts my day-to-day life, however the speed of the Internet does, especially working remotely. While I’ve got a lovely 4G router, speeds are rarely anything like you’d get on a 4G contract in the UK. Especially when the weekends hit (Which are Fridays and Saturdays here.) – I have to make an effort not to schedule any meetings on Fridays as I know I’ll just be competing with everyone else enjoying their weekend Internet time.

Any advice for your 18yo self?

Plans are great. In theory. They give yourself something to work towards. A goal. And everyone needs a goal. But don’t freak out if the plan doesn’t quite come together. Plans aren’t definite. They’re flexible. Oh, and you’re more adaptable than you give yourself credit for. And don’t forget to look after your knees!


Thank you again Jaina for taking the time to answer these questions, it was nice to get your insights and get to know you a little better.

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