Sounds like you've got a number of wrenches in your gears: your boss's desire for creative/stylistic control, budgeting, project management, and bandwidth.

I've been a professional copywriter for about ten years now, so here's the first thing I'd say: if you're trying to find cheap talent AND meet your owner's standards AND hire only one person, then you've got a long road ahead of you.

I'd recommend hiring two different people for two phases: 1) raw content production (the most time-consuming part); and 2) editing, polishing, establishing brand voice.

You simply don't need top-tier talent to write your first drafts. I could help you find a good enough writer on Upwork.com who would charge $10-20/hour.

Where you want the heavy-hitter (who will be more expensive and will be worth it) is with the second phase, especially if you foresee needing the owner's greenlight before emails go out the door. Paying a premium to hire a pro will actually save you time and money in the end because s/he will be more likely to nail the first revision and will thus make fewer demands on the owner's bandwidth. Thus, you'll finish the emails faster and get them out into the wild faster where they will begin to create engagement and generate revenues faster.

That's another angle: how much is inconsistent email marketing costing the company right now? Thousands of dollars?

Here are the steps I'd recommend:

1. Brainstorm the various email drip campaigns.
2. Hire good enough talent to write the first drafts.
3. Bring in the expensive pro to polish them up.
4. Pay a virtual assistant to load up all of the drip campaigns.
5. Press play.

Happy to discuss in more depth on a call! I love this stuff.

Cheers,
Austin