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Why impressions — not clicks — reveal email's real power, and who's quietly profiting from your inbox.
Email is still treated like a messaging channel, and that mistake is quietly destroying value. In this episode, Jacqueline sits down with Dela to challenge the default rules of email marketing and reframe the inbox as what it actually is: owned media and intent infrastructure. Nearly every sacred KPI is put on trial, including opens, clicks, suppression, and frequency caps, and replaced with a media-first lens focused on reach, impressions, and long-term behavior.
Dela breaks down why email only feels "free" because you are the product, how Gmail captures behavioral data at a massive scale, and why unopened and even archived emails still drive search, site visits, and revenue weeks later. The takeaway is blunt. Brands overpay for paid media while underusing the cheapest, most measurable audience they already own.
Sponsor
Brought to you by Hightouch — Went all-in on a big marketing suite but still struggling to get value? You're not alone. Our sponsor, Hightouch, spoke with 50+ enterprise teams and found 79% are frustrated by high costs, slow innovation, and rising complexity, often needing specialized teams just to keep things running. They'll share the full findings in a live webinar on February 12, plus what they're seeing from organizations updating their Martech stacks. Get the report and register!
Timestamps
00:55 — The lie at the center of email marketing
08:55 — Gmail didn't give you free email: it took your data
12:10 — How unopened emails still create intent and sales
18:20 — Advertising works even when attribution fails
29:10 — Why "inactive" subscribers are your most valuable audience
43:05 — Your list is a legal right, not a platform asset
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Creators and Guests
What is Making Sense of Martech?
Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.
00;00;00;01 - 00;00;19;16
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Making Sense of MarTech podcast, where we interview leaders and put them in the hot seat. I'm Jacqueline Friedman, founder of monarch and global head of advisory for the MarTech weekly. Today, we're talking about the overlooked backbone of digital marketing your inbox. Today we're with strategic advisor Della Quest, and we're going to dig into why email isn't just messaging.
00;00;19;16 - 00;00;37;24
Speaker 1
It's data. Data platforms like Google and Meta are quietly profiting from your own data. So let's unpack why your campaigns are fueling someone else's machine and what you can do about it. And so, to help us make some sense. And who's been warning us about all of these things for years? Della, welcome to the podcast.
00;00;37;25 - 00;00;58;17
Speaker 2
Thank you. Jacqueline. It's like I have to say, I'm really looking forward to this as well. And when you send me the questions, I had to sort of sit up. I was like, oh my God, I have to bring my best game with me because I think you, you kind of understood what I was really saying. And most people skip through articles and posts and you clearly read it.
00;00;58;17 - 00;01;01;25
Speaker 2
So I'm really looking forward to seeing to the discussion, to be honest.
00;01;01;28 - 00;01;20;04
Speaker 1
Right back at you. But and for those who aren't aware, della wrote an incredible piece that we're really going to dive into today that immediately I was like, we have to have this conversation on the podcast. Because no one else is thinking like this. And so really excited to get started. But first, I want to formally introduce you.
00;01;20;04 - 00;01;41;13
Speaker 1
Della is a strategic advisor and the founder of Alchemy Works. He's an email marketing veteran with more than 20,000 hours logged in the trenches of deliverability, subject lines and audience behavior. And he spent years flipping the script on how brands treat their email programs, turning what's often seen as a tactical tool into a strategic asset. Alrighty, I'm excited to dive in.
00;01;41;13 - 00;01;47;17
Speaker 1
So first up, we've got our rapid fire round with five quick hits. So what was your first martech platform?
00;01;47;18 - 00;02;05;06
Speaker 2
I've never released a martech platform. In fact, I was proud of doing so a few years ago when I was ahead with running the agency. I pointed out that I've never actually hit send on an email outside of personal. And so one day someone called me into like an office and said, della, della, come here and just hit that button.
00;02;05;06 - 00;02;22;05
Speaker 2
So I pressed the button that was hitting send on the campaign. So that's the only martech stuff I've done. Having said that, I've deliberately done that. As soon as you start using a tool, your brain becomes tramline by that tool and how it works and you like it or you don't like it, and it makes it hard for you to use another one and have an open mind.
00;02;22;05 - 00;02;49;19
Speaker 2
And I'm trying to think strategically the tools that change my life. I would say search, and I don't mean search as in Gmail. As such, I mean inbox search. And your hard drive search. Okay. Because, growing up, I'm a very disorganized person, and I found that in the hierarchy of office working and company hierarchy and everything else organized people could beat.
00;02;49;22 - 00;03;07;00
Speaker 2
Well, let's put it this way. All things being equal, an organized person will get promoted faster than a disorganized person just because of the way their desk looks, for example, and being able to find stuff. And I'm like, why should finding stuff be a skill? So search just changed my life in an instant, and it's kind of the reasons why.
00;03;07;00 - 00;03;17;07
Speaker 2
And I kept everything in my inbox. And that's kind of why I've literally almost never deleted an email in my life. So I have personal experience and I started really early.
00;03;17;09 - 00;03;19;22
Speaker 1
That makes sense. Are you an inbox zero person?
00;03;19;24 - 00;03;40;20
Speaker 2
No. I an inbox like 10 million person. I'm zero is such a rare inbox zero is right at one end of the bell curve. Where I am is right at the end of most people just don't give a damn and on average have tens of thousands of emails in their inbox and at least 30 days worth on a side riff.
00;03;40;22 - 00;04;02;15
Speaker 2
And if it wasn't that, think about it. Why do all the inbox providers only delete spam after 30 days? Why do they do it in a day, or a minute or a year or two years? Right. I just look at stuff like that and I go, they know, right? There's a reason. And it's about I would think that most people keep emails in their books for about 30 days or like maybe 30 years.
00;04;02;15 - 00;04;19;28
Speaker 2
It doesn't really matter. And the second piece is much more recent. Is AI right? So right. Why I the answer is because I've always been able to articulate verbally. Right. If you'd asked me to do this on paper and send it to you, you'd never get it right. Just this first question. I'll never answer it because I just I have a mental block.
00;04;20;00 - 00;04;40;14
Speaker 2
There's loads of terms. I have three kids and different ones have different aspects of this. And it's a neuro diversity thing. And I just find it really difficult. And I just allows me to talk like this and it just organizes it and it's literally transform things. The other thing it really helped me with, which I didn't give it credit for, is image.
00;04;40;17 - 00;04;58;01
Speaker 2
Now, for every article, you're supposed to find an image, and if you write a lot of articles, that's a lot of looking for, large, like royalty free imagery that hasn't been used that fits your brain idea. And even if you had a paid for creative person, they get annoyed with you after the fourth iteration, even if you're paying for it.
00;04;58;05 - 00;04;59;19
Speaker 2
Those are the two things that have helped me.
00;04;59;19 - 00;05;07;09
Speaker 1
Understood. All right. Gearing us back to email, what is your biggest email marketing pet peeve? Oh.
00;05;07;12 - 00;05;13;16
Speaker 2
Rates. Period. Anything with a rating it open right click rate thingy to something else, right.
00;05;13;18 - 00;05;16;19
Speaker 1
They I will say unsub rate is important, but.
00;05;16;23 - 00;05;27;13
Speaker 2
Unsub numbers matter. And by the way, rate is. Here's another reason. Okay, that's a that's an exception that proves my rule. Okay?
00;05;27;15 - 00;05;30;00
Speaker 1
I'm always going to look for the corner cases.
00;05;30;03 - 00;05;40;21
Speaker 2
That's an exception. Yeah, an unsub rate, but that's imposed on us right by the inbox providers. And I'll give you an example of how stupid it is.
00;05;40;23 - 00;05;41;09
Speaker 1
Go for it.
00;05;41;17 - 00;06;13;12
Speaker 2
You tend to say, for the sake of argument, you send 300,000 emails today. Okay? The Unsubs are going to start coming through over, not just immediately. Most will happen immediately within an hour. Or I talk about this a lot, but the most are going to start coming through over the next 2 or 3 days. Okay, the next day all you do is send beautiful triggered emails to people who deserve to get this wonderful email because they abandoned a cop, or they did this, or they were ready for that or something.
00;06;13;12 - 00;06;41;08
Speaker 2
Okay, there were only a hundred of them. So you send out 100 emails that are completely perfect, completely legitimate. And because you send out 100,000 or 200,000 the day before, you get 30 bounces or unsubscribes or spam rates or whatever it is from the day before, and those idiots who have the best algorithms in the world will think about blocking you, so that you just got me off on a really early rant.
00;06;41;11 - 00;06;48;10
Speaker 1
I have a lot of nuts, but we're in rapid fire, so I'm going to do my best to contain my own cell.
00;06;48;13 - 00;06;50;10
Speaker 2
I'm sorry.
00;06;50;12 - 00;06;57;19
Speaker 1
It's okay, it's okay. All right. Last question. In our rapid fire, who is someone you admire either professionally or personally?
00;06;57;21 - 00;07;17;03
Speaker 2
Quick answer to that. I focus on respect rather than admire. Okay, people I respect and I would say in this space, thinking email and focusing on it. Ben Chestnut, founder of one of the co-founders of MailChimp. What he did will never be replicated right? Everything he did was right. They made a lot of mistakes. History calls him right.
00;07;17;03 - 00;07;37;24
Speaker 2
If you go and ask him, he's a very humble person. He'll tell you all the mistakes he made and everything else. And I had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times. He got everything right, even to when he sold the business almost to the minute. My humble opinion. We talked about that another day. Right. Okay. He got that absolutely spot on.
00;07;37;24 - 00;07;59;15
Speaker 2
I think he exact the peak value for the company and exited in exactly the right time. So not many people get to do that, and not very many people get to bootstrap $1 billion company or a $11 billion company. And so hats off to him for that. Plus, he knows more about data and tech and everything else.
00;07;59;15 - 00;08;17;24
Speaker 2
And right from the get go, he built a platform that people wanted to use. He didn't build one for the industry. He noted that everybody wanted to use to grow your user base from 4 million to 10 million in like three years. Scary.
00;08;17;26 - 00;08;19;07
Speaker 1
So impressive.
00;08;19;09 - 00;08;23;25
Speaker 2
All right, that's my answer. And by the way, if you could ever get him on, get him on.
00;08;23;28 - 00;08;48;01
Speaker 1
I will take the introduction. If you know him. All right. I would like to set the stage and really dive into the truth about your email and your emails inbox. And so what really intrigued me about your initial piece was what you stated was, we've been told this story that the consumer email is free, it's unprofitable. It's just generic.
00;08;48;01 - 00;09;11;17
Speaker 1
Everyone has it. But that's a strategic smokescreen. And in reality, it's the age old adage of the product is free. You are the product and you outright say it. I nearly saying every email trains the ads platforms I your ad campaigns generate content which platforms then auction back to you. It's a very bleak reality that I find deeply, deeply unsettling.
00;09;11;19 - 00;09;23;07
Speaker 1
And I'd like to go even deeper with you. So you've written the inbox isn't a cost center. It's the most valuable behavioral data layer in digital marketing. Let's unpack that together.
00;09;23;12 - 00;09;43;15
Speaker 2
I'm gonna go back a little in history, and earlier on when we were talking before this, I was telling you you'd, like, think you're just fortunate about timing, right? Age, timing, my background, my knowledge. It all just comes together. And plus. Now, time to think about stuff. I'm not running a company anymore and stuff. So let's go back to the beginning.
00;09;43;18 - 00;10;04;18
Speaker 2
I was there at the beginning when al Gore and folks were talking about the information superhighway, right? I was sitting there right in the middle of business and publishing and talking about that. Now, e-mail right from the get go was on everybody's agenda. Okay. So it was seen as an extension of the Royal Mail or United States USPS, right?
00;10;04;19 - 00;10;20;13
Speaker 2
That's what it was seen as. It's a legal right of everyone to have an address and have something delivered to them. The magic of the digital thing was still like, oh, you do it right. Remember? Like in 1998, we had no idea of what today would be like, but we still have this idea that bring it into digitize everything.
00;10;20;14 - 00;10;37;03
Speaker 2
And at the time it was seen as so valuable. It was a big news story. Sweden decreed that they were going to give an email inbox to every Swedish citizen, okay? And they were going to pay for it and it was going to be infrastructural and every government was jumping on the bandwagon. And the UK said, oh, I know what, let's get tenders.
00;10;37;03 - 00;10;51;12
Speaker 2
So they were inviting tenders from IBM and ICL, which then became Fujitsu in the UK, and various other big tech companies to come and build a state of the art $100 billion whatever it is email system for kids.
00;10;51;12 - 00;10;53;24
Speaker 1
Sounds a little familiar right now.
00;10;53;25 - 00;10;54;17
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00;10;54;19 - 00;10;56;07
Speaker 1
It's as if history, right?
00;10;56;08 - 00;11;23;28
Speaker 2
It always does. Which is why being old helps. Okay, you kind of remember you seen this before. So they but then Hotmail happened and Hotmail completely destroyed that business model okay. And at the time all the telcos were trying to make email inboxes, things that they could charge for as part of the telco package. And everything else. And Hotmail blew that away completely.
00;11;24;01 - 00;11;50;03
Speaker 2
And so that will change. So now suddenly it's like eyeballs. And so everybody was focusing on eyeballs and the whole original model was eyeballs. And everyone knows, yeah, your website is a cost, but you pay for it reliably. So email was in that same thing. Then Google happened. Now Google got it. And Google I think ultimately a probably apart from maybe a chimp at the only people who really understood what email is about, that's my view.
00;11;50;06 - 00;12;06;17
Speaker 2
And they understood because of the algorithm and what they were doing and how they were selling search and how they were packaging search and learning about behavior. They were also super early into AI and LMS. I don't know if you remember, but Google gave away. We used to call it in the UK directory inquiries when you called up, right?
00;12;06;17 - 00;12;13;16
Speaker 2
You and you asked for an address or where someone left Google gave it away for free use. Have to pay what in the whole of the US right?
00;12;13;17 - 00;12;18;17
Speaker 1
I didn't google just to get on it. Why so fine language training?
00;12;18;19 - 00;12;31;12
Speaker 2
Right. So someone at three in the morning drunk, picking up the phone. Can you take me? Yeah, they would just figure it all out. And they used it for language training. Interesting. They had that same thing. These guys are not stupid, right? So they do.
00;12;31;12 - 00;12;32;21
Speaker 1
Oh, they're very smart.
00;12;32;24 - 00;13;01;14
Speaker 2
So when Gmail came out and they offered a gigabyte, you have to understand people were talking about megabytes before that. Right. Why would you do that now at the time I didn't really get it, I saw it, it was still eyeballs. And so it's only like you learn and you figure out what's going on afterwards. And it's only when I then moved into email and I spent 20 years running an email agency and looking at email data and figure out what people did in the inbox and understanding how hard it was and fighting is.
00;13;01;14 - 00;13;29;03
Speaker 2
How dare these guys used deliverability to stop me a legitimate brand sending a legitimate legal email to my customer, right? And so I was very apparently anti deliverability, but I wasn't. I was just anti, right to send to our own customers. And when I started writing recently in a more pro way, it's because providers have been backed into a legal corner where if they accept responsibility for the message going in the legal implications are too big.
00;13;29;03 - 00;13;42;18
Speaker 2
And I'm really simplifying this. So everybody's saying, whoa, the subscribers deciding, right. Yeah. And effectively they've said we'll deliver anything apart from if it breaks the spam rate law.
00;13;42;20 - 00;13;55;02
Speaker 1
Well, and just to push back a little bit there, 99% of all emails are stopped at the gateway. That 1% is what you're referring to. That is the brand side. Not bad actors.
00;13;55;04 - 00;14;17;24
Speaker 2
Let's take that case value. And this is another example of how things are presented. Okay. Yeah, you're absolutely right 99.99. But recently okay, Google announced they bought this other super new tech okay. That was going to help them be super, super better at stopping spam and phishing. And do you know how many additional emails they caught?
00;14;17;26 - 00;14;18;24
Speaker 1
I have no idea.
00;14;18;29 - 00;14;21;12
Speaker 2
200,000.
00;14;21;14 - 00;14;24;19
Speaker 1
That's it. That's that's it. Like half a millisecond.
00;14;24;27 - 00;14;49;21
Speaker 2
They are so good, right. That only super simple good stuff gets by, right? If that was the case, your spam folder would have a hundred times more email in it than it does. You rarely see anything, even in your spam folder, that you couldn't figure out why it was there. Right? They are that good, and we either believe they're that good or we don't.
00;14;49;25 - 00;15;14;12
Speaker 2
But we can have it both ways. And this industry is super good at having it both ways. So yeah, it's kind of a a myth that we are inundated with spam and whatever it is, if it was truly the case, our inboxes would be inoperable and they're not now. So I take my hat off to the providers for getting to that place, but they could also have done it if they had license or recognized, which they can.
00;15;14;12 - 00;15;33;00
Speaker 2
Because how do they know about domain reputation? How do they know that Walmart is Walmart? Right? So when Walmart sends an email, why are they putting them at the same level of strictness as spam spammer from a random place in China selling something ugly, right? I mean, how hard is it? Okay.
00;15;33;02 - 00;15;41;18
Speaker 1
I mean, there are a lot of bad actors and abuse. So I it is a very tricky challenge not to say I don't disagree with you.
00;15;41;20 - 00;16;04;13
Speaker 2
But that's not the point about it, is that's how you make people believe that this inbox is such a miraculously difficult, wonderful service that they provide that you overlook what it really does. Okay. And that's what I mean is I suddenly thought, why would they give you a gigabyte? That was more than most people's entire hard drives. Yeah.
00;16;04;15 - 00;16;15;03
Speaker 2
Okay. Back in the day, they wanted your data and they were saying keep, don't ever delete an email. They began to see that people went back to a three year old email and clicked.
00;16;15;03 - 00;16;20;03
Speaker 1
And that's why the archive exists. Instead of just delete.
00;16;20;05 - 00;16;35;11
Speaker 2
They don't like deleting. Now, why would they do that if it was so costly? Right? Is because the benefit now I'm probably jumping ahead. So how do I say okay? Like how does it translate to things like search okay intent right.
00;16;35;13 - 00;16;37;12
Speaker 1
That intent data and behavioral data.
00;16;37;15 - 00;16;59;01
Speaker 2
Exactly from things that you couldn't necessarily predict. Does that make sense? So for you to find a search term you have to go to Google. Right. So Google has to be the biggest front of mind brand in anybody's search. And they had to pay billions of dollars to be in Netscape. And every, all the outlook everything paid millions to be that.
00;16;59;01 - 00;17;28;13
Speaker 2
Why okay. Simply because they have to pay for you to search now with email. Every email you send drives people to search, right? Whether deliberately or go into the browser window and type the searching. Okay. It does. I can show it to you. I can show you spike in sales from people who received an email but didn't open it two hours after they got the email and they randomly went to the website and bought something, or they randomly went into the store.
00;17;28;20 - 00;17;52;13
Speaker 2
I mean, please, marketing is about saying this isn't random at all. We make you do that. And that's how I began to understand that the emails making people do things and I understood more than ten years ago, probably 15 years ago, that the biggest driver to search was Gmail. Right. And the reason I know that is because all my customers had the biggest visits to their website.
00;17;52;13 - 00;17;54;24
Speaker 2
On the day they sent him our email to their entire list.
00;17;55;00 - 00;18;06;24
Speaker 1
So that makes sense. So if we're talking about misunderstandings, what else do brands misunderstand about the long term value of their own subscriber list?
00;18;06;26 - 00;18;09;15
Speaker 2
Where do I begin?
00;18;09;17 - 00;18;12;16
Speaker 1
At the beginning and then finish at the end?
00;18;12;19 - 00;18;31;06
Speaker 2
I think nobody gets the email right. Very few people do that. Two reasons. So first of all, they immediately conflate personal email with commercial email, right? They act as if we are physically incapable of telling the difference between an email from our mom and an email from someone else, and we treat them with exactly the same amount of love and hatred and everything else.
00;18;31;09 - 00;18;53;21
Speaker 2
Nonsense, right? So first thing is, separate the two and you understand one is just to make my life easier, and the other one is between me and my mom and everything else. And only an idiot can't tell the difference between the two. The second thing is cost, right? We allow this idea and it's really weird. And I know you could be all tin hat about a tinfoil hat about it and conspirator, but it's really weird.
00;18;53;29 - 00;19;20;12
Speaker 2
The cheapest channel that's existed. In fact, I would go further, I would go email is the cheapest channel that has ever existed and ever will exist. Okay, we're talking about $0.30, $0.10, $0.05, a thousand people to send a piece of creative that probably costs you $600, even if you spent $1 million on it. Right. Like you did a TV commercial.
00;19;20;15 - 00;19;40;06
Speaker 2
It's just crazy. And many years ago I used it. When I first started, I had an email and I was being really evangelistic about it because everyone's on email. Oh, I hate it when we spam spam. I used to say that even on the sermon on the Mount cost more because it cost five loaves and two fishes to reach 10,000 people.
00;19;40;06 - 00;20;05;28
Speaker 2
I could do it for a tiny fraction of that amount in email, right? So reach a frequency. Bingo. It's all there for you, right? So they just don't understand this. And the other thing is, the only way of reaching these people is to pay someone. Yeah. So you have them at $0.10 a thousand. Right. And you pay $25 a click for the word car insurance tomorrow.
00;20;06;00 - 00;20;10;17
Speaker 2
Right. And it's someone you already have their email address. Right.
00;20;10;17 - 00;20;21;26
Speaker 1
That's where for me it's the acquisition versus retention tension. And no one focuses on the retention piece because that's the most important and hardest part versus acquisition is not hard. It just is costly.
00;20;21;29 - 00;20;42;15
Speaker 2
Well that's the whole thing. Email is your biggest acquisition platform. Get over it. So here's another thing, another way of looking at email. Let's say you have a list of a million people, right? Or 100,000 doesn't matter. All 10,000 if you're in B2B. Okay. What fraction of Google's customer base or Facebook or TikTok is that? It's nothing. It's meaningless.
00;20;42;15 - 00;21;05;07
Speaker 2
Right? You're unimportant. Okay, now take that number and say what percentage is that number of the total people who might buy my product, right? Right. Now I just think about a different thing. Now, say, who might buy my product and actually opted in to hear from me.
00;21;05;14 - 00;21;06;23
Speaker 1
Okay, smaller.
00;21;06;26 - 00;21;26;28
Speaker 2
You are now talking about your media is actually the same as maybe being the top program for, history documentaries on Netflix. Does that get what I mean? You don't. You don't have to be bigger than everything else on Netflix. You just have to be in the history documentary slot. It'll be in your name that.
00;21;27;01 - 00;21;27;09
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00;21;27;14 - 00;21;44;24
Speaker 2
And then now imagine what you have to pay to get to those people. If you suddenly, if you were stupid enough to go to Netflix and say, I want to target people who only watch the history, they will charge you right card. But if you just sit around and, don't really care, just give me untargeted crap, then they'll send you there because no one wants to tell you that, right?
00;21;45;01 - 00;22;01;02
Speaker 2
But it's the same people. Customer match. All works that way, right? So that's another thing that people don't understand. It's just crazy that they actually have whole departments spending tens of millions of dollars.
00;22;01;04 - 00;22;02;21
Speaker 1
Or hundreds, depending on where you.
00;22;02;22 - 00;22;07;17
Speaker 2
Are, or hundreds depending on where you will work to reach people whose email address they have.
00;22;07;17 - 00;22;16;17
Speaker 1
It is baffling to me that people don't recognize their email list or just generally their company. Why? That data is their capital that is there.
00;22;16;20 - 00;22;37;11
Speaker 2
Again, AD was first party to all of this and suddenly so that's what I mean is where do I begin? I mean, ultimately, this is the thing about it. Anybody who really utilizes the email channel properly must by definition, they can't not do it. Spend less on search. Take it from there.
00;22;37;14 - 00;22;39;05
Speaker 1
There we go. All right.
00;22;39;05 - 00;22;40;28
Speaker 2
So, media in general.
00;22;41;00 - 00;22;55;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. Building off this, you're of course, arguing that email isn't just engagement but intention generation. And you've already alluded to this. So how is this currently maybe being misused or worse, harvested by others?
00;22;56;00 - 00;23;08;27
Speaker 2
I'm going to be slightly tongue in cheek. I think people being too stupid to misuse it, they just don't know what they're doing. Right. And just tell you now, the only people who do, you know, are not telling you about it. It's right.
00;23;08;27 - 00;23;09;27
Speaker 1
They're getting it.
00;23;09;27 - 00;23;32;11
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's here's the big secret, right? The big secret just isn't about email. Okay. Well, it is actually about email. And it's why it doesn't lead into email. It's about accepting that impressions and advertising works. Right. Why do you think there's. I think half my advertising works, but I don't know which bit. And yet we spend more and more on advertising.
00;23;32;11 - 00;23;32;22
Speaker 2
Right.
00;23;32;24 - 00;23;35;23
Speaker 1
Don't get me started on attribution.
00;23;35;25 - 00;24;07;12
Speaker 2
Yeah, we could have a whole call on that. Right? There's a whole vested industry, and I don't mean this in a bad way. So conspiratorial, but it just doesn't make sense for anybody to actually admit that advertising makes a difference. So let me take it back to the old days. The reason we were able to and still are able to, up to a point to advertise tobacco, alcohol and things like that is because we put the billboard up there and go, hey, you chose to look at it, you chose to do something about it.
00;24;07;17 - 00;24;29;17
Speaker 2
And I put a disclaimer, right, contact me on that now with email. I'm sending you a message, not putting something that you accidentally said, well, I'm actually going, I see it, and I sent you an email. Yeah. And then it says, I know how you feel or you behave, and I can actually exploit that and make you behave in a different way.
00;24;29;17 - 00;24;35;20
Speaker 2
It's much easier to track that in email than any other channel.
00;24;35;26 - 00;25;01;24
Speaker 1
That's true. Well, so I'm going to push you on that. So you're saying that email behavior is the most trackable. However, the metrics that we typically know as being geometrics or signals are no longer as accurate as they ever once potentially were. What do you recommend then, if that's the most important component of email being the best channel yet, we can't actually trust the data.
00;25;01;29 - 00;25;27;28
Speaker 2
That's not true at all. The opposite is true, and I'll probably answer your cookie question at the same time, okay. Because it's kind of it's just the most auditable thing that exists. It's so auditable. It's not true what we're doing by focusing on opening. And in fact, I think my next article, which may go out tonight for my newsletter, frequency file, but maybe tomorrow morning is really around.
00;25;27;29 - 00;25;49;10
Speaker 2
It's subject lines matter more than opens. Okay. It's the message that you're actually telling and the impression counts. So in every other sort of media, you buy impressions, put search to one side. But in essence with your buying impressions. What Google does is reduces the number of impressions it takes to deliver your clicks. Does that make sense? But that's their problem.
00;25;49;17 - 00;26;14;13
Speaker 2
But it's essentially around impressions. So we have impressions matter, which is why you put a billboard on a busy street and on a quiet street. It's why everyone knows that if you see an impression ten times or ten impressions is better than one impression. Okay, the same is true in email. So if I said let's pick two denim brands identical in every way and they both have me or you on their list, does that make sense?
00;26;14;20 - 00;26;25;28
Speaker 2
One sends one a month, one sends three a week. Right. What do you think the chances that brand eight sends one a month will get the sale versus brand B that's in three week. It's nearly zero.
00;26;26;02 - 00;26;27;15
Speaker 1
Based on your logic. Yes.
00;26;27;17 - 00;26;57;01
Speaker 2
No no no no no no. If it wasn't the case, advertising wouldn't work at all. And you know something else? Every one of the top brands is also the top spend advertiser in their category. There is no such thing as a mom and pop brand that can break out of a small neighborhood into the mainstream without being funded by a VC, or bought by a large thing because you cannot crack the market as a small player.
00;26;57;04 - 00;26;57;26
Speaker 1
Unless you're MailChimp.
00;26;57;29 - 00;27;14;14
Speaker 2
No, but but do you know what MailChimp did? MailChimp did the unicorn thing. It's once a you can't sit down and say, everybody can win the lottery, right? The lottery is there to make every idiot pay a dollar a week for something they shouldn't be doing right. So the one winner is for everybody else. So MailChimp is for everyone else.
00;27;14;14 - 00;27;39;13
Speaker 2
And I'm not being cynical about it. It's kind of true. Okay. And I know you're being provocative, so. And I'm rising to it. I am rising. But the point and the point I'm trying to make to you is that if you understand the inbox properly, right? And you move significa to proportions, if you're thinking your effort into building and acquiring and not having people unsubscribe, that's your only job.
00;27;39;15 - 00;27;58;11
Speaker 2
Don't unsubscribe. That's it. Everything else is reaching frequency now. Why does that matter now? Sometimes as soon as someone engages, what do you do then? Your automations trigger. And oh, they did this. Now bad news about da da da da da da da da da. And then so all of that comes out of it. But you have to create those new users from your inactives.
00;27;58;11 - 00;28;15;16
Speaker 2
And I'm sort of answering three questions at the same time. So your inactive profile costs you nothing to reach. Right. And if you use your common sense, there's no deliverability issues because you continue to mail them. You don't just follow them. And then on Black Friday, mail all of them at once. That's just stupid. What do you do?
00;28;15;23 - 00;28;21;05
Speaker 2
Well, never stop mailing them. You never stop mailing them. You keep mailing them and you build a.
00;28;21;05 - 00;28;27;08
Speaker 1
Kind of that impact because you're sending a reputation, which then as a result, yes it does. Yes it does.
00;28;27;10 - 00;28;51;01
Speaker 2
Oh, Gina. Something again. Think about this. Gmail either knows what everybody does or it doesn't. We're trying to have it both ways. Okay, so if I am a brand, call me Wal-Mart or even Della Quist with my 10,000 subscribers who they won't even see, but let's say it's delicacy of a million subscribers. And I saying dream hours a week, every single week to all my subscribers.
00;28;51;01 - 00;29;14;02
Speaker 2
I manage my subscribers, I go decon, SPF or whatever it is. Why would they ever block me if they've got the ability to tell that? I looked at an email, blinked twice, didn't like it, and so therefore, what? You going to spam? I mean, that's just on a level. You either are good at it or you're not. And they are super, super, super, super good at getting emails into the inbox and understanding what's going on.
00;29;14;04 - 00;29;51;23
Speaker 2
And I think that that's kind of what it is. They know exactly. I would know, and my advice to everybody is they're using the same signal. So let's go back to it. Every time you send an email, the message is the subject line. Forget whether they doing this or not. To answer your question, it doesn't matter. You have a time stamped brand impression to a unique individual with a totally unique UID that you know, and you can connect with every other part of your CRM, for whom every downstream activity comes with an additional time stamp and log.
00;29;51;25 - 00;30;13;25
Speaker 2
Give you an example. I send an email the person didn't open. They showed up at my website. Bingo time stamp log. I know exactly who they are. How do I know? Because I got an automation that triggered and said browser and then boom, there you go. You add those two things together. Let's say for the sake of argument, someone got an email at three in the morning, didn't open it, and then comes back and opens it the next morning, does nothing.
00;30;13;29 - 00;30;32;02
Speaker 2
And then the next day, at three in the morning, they go back open and make a purchase. What does it tell you about that person? Okay, what if they look to the email four times, didn't make a purchase and popped into your bricks and mortar store and opened, you know, bought $1,000 worth of stuff, right? Right. This is what we pray for.
00;30;32;04 - 00;30;51;28
Speaker 2
Okay? You cannot get this in any other channel. Anybody who says they can do that is lying. I've been able to do that with email for over a decade, and the only thing stopping me lack of computing power, which is why I has brought me to this place so I can actually talk about it's now a realistic prospect.
00;30;52;00 - 00;31;07;21
Speaker 2
And the second thing is lack of people to ask me. The question is like, you have and get it right and be able to take the robust push back, because I will and it's fun and it's, you know, we're having fun as we do. It's banter. Absolutely. It's really good banter. So so that's kind of the way I look at it.
00;31;07;21 - 00;31;18;23
Speaker 2
I'm like, this is just obvious because I can count. If I sent just my logo to every one of my million customers, right.
00;31;18;23 - 00;31;20;22
Speaker 1
I'd be kind of a lame email.
00;31;20;25 - 00;31;40;29
Speaker 2
It will probably beat every email you've ever sent, but you can only do it once, okay? And it will certainly be the best targeting you ever did to your best 500 customers with a VIP offer to do X, Y, and Z, it will beat it hands down. That's why I always work. That's why. Oops, work. That's why. Letter from the CEO works.
00;31;41;04 - 00;31;54;04
Speaker 2
Anything different actually works, but that only happens when you have set a really good. And I'm kind of back to the point cadence that's recognized by the inbox. And your subscriber.
00;31;54;06 - 00;31;56;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Is that trust has been built.
00;31;56;05 - 00;32;14;18
Speaker 2
And you don't change that trust. The newspaper comes out daily at the same time in the same way for a reason. Right? It's an expectation. They also make sure that they have a bit of sport, a bit of fashion, a bit of this news at the front, this is the back, you know what I mean? So everybody knows where it's at.
00;32;14;18 - 00;32;46;29
Speaker 2
It's kind of publishing. So if brands acted like publishers first right. That's the start. If they then and this is the clever bit, suddenly realize that they now have the data that Google uses and it's the only channel where they do they can start acting that way and start saying, okay, I've realized that when I send three emails, right, my people visit my website 50% more, or when I mention this in my subject line, okay, my average order value goes up, right?
00;32;46;29 - 00;32;58;02
Speaker 2
If someone sees three of this and not that, or if they see the high price first and then the lower price, they're more likely to buy, that's what you would do if you knew everything. And what I'm saying is, you do know everything. You're just not looking.
00;32;58;07 - 00;32;58;23
Speaker 1
That's very.
00;32;58;23 - 00;33;16;05
Speaker 2
Fair. It's been driving me nuts for years and I'm only just getting to the place where I actually have the language and the time to try and articulate this point and universe, and that's slowing down, etc., etc. because I've done the passionate stuff. I'm sort of saying this is actually a really serious point.
00;33;16;09 - 00;33;17;09
Speaker 1
Oh, it's more effortless.
00;33;17;13 - 00;33;18;15
Speaker 2
Huge opportunity.
00;33;18;16 - 00;33;19;18
Speaker 1
Than anything else.
00;33;19;24 - 00;33;39;03
Speaker 2
Yeah, sure. But well, it's also practical because if I said to you, look, I'll come in and do an audit of your campaigns, right. And it'll take me about four weeks and I'm going to charge you 30, 40, $50,000 to come and tell you to send more email rates.
00;33;39;06 - 00;33;45;09
Speaker 1
The irony is, is one, I don't charge quite that much. And to I definitely don't say that.
00;33;45;11 - 00;33;57;05
Speaker 2
Well, I kind of do. I say, listen, send more email, but don't be stupid. Hashtag DBS. I used to say hashtag don't be stupid, but I now say hashtag. Do be smart because for some reason people prefer to be smart. There's no reason.
00;33;57;07 - 00;33;58;25
Speaker 1
I wonder why.
00;33;58;28 - 00;34;20;10
Speaker 2
So what? What does DBS mean? It means if I say leave the building, there's the fire alarms going. Don't say I'll die if I jump out of the 10th floor window. That's stupid. Right? Well, it's not smart. What you do is say, oh, let's find the fire escape a walk down, calmly. So if I say send more email, right.
00;34;20;11 - 00;34;53;03
Speaker 2
Don't go find the worst email you can possibly send. And then pick the worst customers who might engage with you and send it 50 times and go, I told you right? That's just I'm not so sure. What you do is say, how would I do this? And I say one email at a time. So if you set up a happy birthday automation, right, that means 1/365 of your list gets a new an extra email on that day, and it's if you do purchase anniversary, that means someone gets one more email on that day, right?
00;34;53;05 - 00;35;07;28
Speaker 2
And actually all of those are smarter and smarter. And one of my favorite stories is this is going back quite the old time. It was Valentine's Day and it was in Atlanta chocolate store and back in the day they were silver pepper. Customer sorry, how long a guy was.
00;35;08;01 - 00;35;08;28
Speaker 1
Throwing us back.
00;35;09;04 - 00;35;15;02
Speaker 2
And on Valentine's Day they sent 24 emails in 24 hours.
00;35;15;05 - 00;35;15;26
Speaker 1
Oof!
00;35;15;28 - 00;35;35;11
Speaker 2
Ouch! Why would you say that? You see, everyone automatically grimaces with anything with email. Let me tell you what I saw. Right? Here's an thing. First of all, it was the best email they had ever sent by a country mile, right? It was so far away. The best that I think they did it the following year. Okay, now what do you do?
00;35;35;13 - 00;36;00;06
Speaker 2
What they did said if someone bought stop, right? If someone opened four times and didn't do, they sat down and figured out all the common sense stuff, right? And if you got all 24, it's probably because you didn't open any of them. Right? But it was relevant only hour. And so if you didn't open all of them, sure, it's in your inbox and blah blah blah, but you would understand because they probably told you and said, we're having 24 emails in 24 hours.
00;36;00;06 - 00;36;20;12
Speaker 2
If you want to opt out, opt out. How hard is that? Right? So when I say send my email or whatever it is. So if I engage with the client on speaking to them, I just say common sense. This is the goal, right? The goal is everybody on your list must get at least one email a week, preferably the same one.
00;36;20;15 - 00;36;23;18
Speaker 2
No segmentation, nothing. Second and third.
00;36;23;23 - 00;36;26;16
Speaker 1
No, no, that is a hot take right there.
00;36;26;16 - 00;36;45;16
Speaker 2
Yeah okay. Why do I say that. Where's your benchmark. Right. If you don't have a benchmark where you can understand how the same message works differently from very good customers and very bad customers and people who do this and people who don't do that or all of those sorts of things. And you try an AB test and everything else.
00;36;45;16 - 00;37;07;07
Speaker 2
You learn nothing. And most people learn nothing in email, so it's actually your benchmark. Give you a good example. Active has the best customers. What most people do subject line test AB test. They will go on AB, test their subject line, all their creative on their most active best customer list and then run it against the unengaged. How stupid is that?
00;37;07;13 - 00;37;26;04
Speaker 2
They complete different people okay. And what you should be doing is looking at the unengaged people. And that's why the one email to everybody because one weekend another, you're saying I'm sending it to everyone, and some weeks it's more tilted towards your active customers. One week is inactive. One, it's just, oh my God, we had to send out a product announcement or this or that.
00;37;26;09 - 00;37;48;22
Speaker 2
Over time, you look for the spikes in the unengaged file, right? Because every unengaged person becomes engaged and as soon as they become engaged. Okay, they become somewhere between 7 and 50 times more valuable. Right? So someone who's open in the last 30 days is between 7 and 50 times more valuable than someone who hasn't opened in the last 30 days.
00;37;48;29 - 00;37;51;01
Speaker 1
I have to push back a little bit.
00;37;51;04 - 00;38;17;06
Speaker 2
It's true. Going to anybody, almost every every single agency brand out there, and everyone who's paying for to use MailChimp for their active subscribers. Right? They all pick 30, 60, 90 days for your opens and they pick 90, 122 years for clicks. Right? And they set that and that's what they call engaged or not. Yeah. And I'm saying you don't do that.
00;38;17;06 - 00;38;23;18
Speaker 2
But what you do is you look and see when someone who has an open for a year suddenly opens, I want to know what that subject line was. Right.
00;38;23;21 - 00;38;33;25
Speaker 1
That's fair. You're advocating for better analysis on your long tail data than anything else, because you want to see what the moment was.
00;38;33;25 - 00;38;51;13
Speaker 2
Okay, no, no more than that. If I was to value the list, let's say for the sake of argument, I got ten opens, okay from my unengaged list out of 100 or whatever. Reasonable add 2%. So let's say I got 20 opens out of a thousand or something like that. 2% of those 20 people go in the revenue per email.
00;38;51;13 - 00;39;09;07
Speaker 2
If you choose that, it's a rate. That's why I don't like it, but a lot of people use it. The revenue per email grows by between 7 and 50 times from people who opened an email in the previous 30 days. It's just so much so that some people don't even email anyone after 30 or 60 days, they go, oh, it's not worth doing it.
00;39;09;09 - 00;39;26;27
Speaker 2
So I value each engaged person as 30, not a 2% click rate, not on the 2% over rate, not an average order value of half of what the engaged is. I'm saying I've got 20 new people who've suddenly gone up in value 7 to 50 times. That's what I'm looking at.
00;39;26;28 - 00;39;29;26
Speaker 1
Where do we get that number? To the 7 to 50.
00;39;29;29 - 00;39;55;13
Speaker 2
Oh, let's take 138 times ROI spending on emails 38 times ROI. I continue any number of studies from MailChimp, from any big agency. Like they all say, emails 38% ROI. Do you know the only thing the 38% ROI? Fluoride. Fluoride in water? Fluoride? How weird is that? I gotta make these numbers a fake right? So yeah, yeah, how weird is that?
00;39;55;13 - 00;40;20;06
Speaker 2
It's just such. And how can that number persist without changing for 25 years? So. But I'm saying I know MailChimp did a fantastic survey of all their data, and they showed you the exact uplift of someone opening an email from being inactive. So the biggest number you have is the people who've done nothing. Zero is your biggest number on every list, one is the next biggest two, blah blah blah.
00;40;20;06 - 00;40;41;21
Speaker 2
But it shrinks really small by the time you get to five purchases. It's like yellow, right? Yep. But we like there's anybody could be a mom, but they can't write going down narrow very, very quickly. So the biggest number is 0 to 1 one two to the next biggest and blah blah blah. But we all figures spend all our time on 1 to 2, 2 to 3 because all the matter in the funnel, we know what they're doing.
00;40;41;23 - 00;41;08;27
Speaker 2
Okay. I'm going. I will just deliver you once, okay? I have more of them than you will ever have. Okay? The ones are. 60% of your list is not done anything in the last 12 months, right? 1% of your list that your most active customers who buy every week and in that are more likely to find people that look like that in my list than you are to make them move from 5 to 6 and 6 to 7 and 7 to 10.
00;41;09;00 - 00;41;28;20
Speaker 2
But it doesn't look clever because rates change at the bottom of the funnel. Numbers change at the top of the funnel. So what I'm trying to say to you is that everybody should focus on inactive as their number one prime resource, and they should actually never test, use test for the axis only. In fact, they wouldn't do it the other way round.
00;41;28;20 - 00;41;43;07
Speaker 2
They wouldn't run a test on their worst customers and then say send it out. So don't do it the other way around by sending out the same email to everybody once a week. You see, I could do the wave and come back again once a week. What you're basically doing is you're setting a baseline and you're saying, I said this to everyone this week.
00;41;43;07 - 00;42;01;16
Speaker 2
The axis worked really, really good. That tells you something. Oh, this is a good subject line practice. I'll remember that right. Another week you'll be in axis and you go, oh, this is a really good one to enact Inactives and you can do something with that. And over time you build a knowledge of what actually makes your list move from 0 to 1.
00;42;01;21 - 00;42;23;18
Speaker 2
That's my big thing. What I found is the biggest single thing is just a change. You set a ribbon. Okay, so you send a weekday email. Everyone gets the week email that's written once a quarter or every two weeks. You make it a short subject line instead of your regular one. Or another week you make it a long blog, or you put the word unicorn and you never use the word unicorn in the subject line.
00;42;23;18 - 00;42;33;06
Speaker 2
Do you get what I mean? Or you send a letter from the CMO, right? You just every once in a while you just throw something random in and it's like, oh, well, they do it.
00;42;33;09 - 00;42;43;22
Speaker 1
It's kind of like writing. No one wants to read the same rhythm of sentences. You need to have diversity of sentences and structures in order to be engaging.
00;42;43;24 - 00;42;44;00
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00;42;44;01 - 00;42;48;04
Speaker 1
And and so it's basically the same except for.
00;42;48;08 - 00;43;06;16
Speaker 2
The thing my writing is it's hard to be prolific without being repetitive. In fact, it's impossible. Right? Name anyone who's written ten books and I'll tell you, they're repetitive. They have a formula. You cannot not beat you. You just can't. Correct. But so the formula is important and then you build.
00;43;06;16 - 00;43;13;11
Speaker 1
So that's you have to have your variance. And actually that's where segmentation AI can be really powerful is helping you with those very.
00;43;13;11 - 00;43;30;13
Speaker 2
But it comes it's not the prime it comes off. Right. Right. So as soon as I trigger new behavior, what happens if someone hasn't opened an email for a year and I open an email, what happens immediately? Go into a oh hello, welcome back set. That's what your job is, right? And when they do that, they get to a certain point.
00;43;30;13 - 00;43;52;06
Speaker 2
And if they do this, they go there and maybe go back to the old list or they stay here for a bit. I mean, that's the job, but the biggest driver of behavior, and it's going back to where I started from originally, is the impression, right, the fact that an email came from you, I know that at least I didn't unsubscribe.
00;43;52;06 - 00;44;13;26
Speaker 2
Whether I remember whether I subscribed or not. Your familiar brand. You've been in my inbox at least once a week, up to three times a week. I almost don't see you, but I process every email that I get right? Right. And those emails come in and over time, if I said to you, I'm going to do three tweets a week, okay, that's 156 tweets over the year.
00;44;13;28 - 00;44;25;13
Speaker 2
Would you wake up every morning and start from scratch? No you wouldn't. You'd sit down and say, oh, let me plan this out, I'm going to do holiday season. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. And why do we do that? An email subject lines every email has to be perfect on the date set.
00;44;25;13 - 00;44;44;07
Speaker 2
Like rather than saying I'm telling a story. So I look at it over time and say a lot, we've got 150 emails. You can't make a mistake. If you do a bad subject line this week, you can fix it over the next three weeks. It's just life. And you just you just go into a rhythm and you don't get angsty about it.
00;44;44;07 - 00;45;10;13
Speaker 2
But the most important thing, and this is the thing that you've alluded to and I've skirted around every impression counts. Sending an email is the biggest driver of everything that happens, okay? And it triggers all behavior. Gmail knows it, right? It triggers everything just the same way as a commercial on TV drives behavior. You can't say it doesn't.
00;45;10;15 - 00;45;20;23
Speaker 2
Geico wouldn't exist if it wasn't for TV, right? They couldn't exist. They were. They were just a nothing brand and they just came from nowhere. And now they're really big because they spent billions of dollars. Yeah. We'll pay.
00;45;20;25 - 00;45;49;19
Speaker 1
Yeah, I hear you, because we've transitioned into really talking about the nitty gritty of talking about tech, whether it's signal segments. I feedback loops. I guess outside of impressions, what do you see as inbox signals that matter the most? Is it opens B deletion lag full during. And how do you reconcile whichever that is with non-human clicks and non-human impressions that are opening or clicking?
00;45;49;22 - 00;45;57;24
Speaker 2
So the answer is all of the above, right. The older, the older the impression, the more powerful the signal. Okay, so tell.
00;45;57;25 - 00;45;58;18
Speaker 1
Me more.
00;45;58;20 - 00;46;03;25
Speaker 2
If someone opens an email the minute they get it and processes it, Gmail knows that.
00;46;03;27 - 00;46;07;25
Speaker 1
So it's almost the one time like the first instantaneously.
00;46;07;25 - 00;46;12;15
Speaker 2
Then you've got what I would call an inbox zero person, right? Inbox zero go to within an hour.
00;46;12;18 - 00;46;13;17
Speaker 1
Guilty as charged.
00;46;13;23 - 00;46;26;13
Speaker 2
And you just go to clearing. And that's why you must you if your inbox zero you cannot not visit the spam folder. How could you live without having zero in your spam folder. And you probably do it as regularly as your regular folder, but that's another story.
00;46;26;19 - 00;46;29;00
Speaker 1
I don't open those emails, but yes, I.
00;46;29;02 - 00;46;50;00
Speaker 2
Unless it's in the wrong place. And by the way, we're trying to do that because every brand will say to you, oh, if your receipt went into make sure you go and check. I mean, we're trained to do it by everybody. So the further away they are, the more powerful they are. Right? So if someone opens an email a week after it was sent, they're nearly 100% likely to make the transaction.
00;46;50;03 - 00;47;06;21
Speaker 2
Why would you go back to a week old email? Why would you keep a week old email? Right. So an email personal file it and another person just goes in and goes. It looks as though I'm sure I have an offer from target somewhere. I know there it is. Boom. So and I've seen people open, click and buy from an email that was sent a year ago.
00;47;06;24 - 00;47;09;28
Speaker 1
Good reminder. If you migrate, you're going to lose all of those images.
00;47;09;28 - 00;47;29;00
Speaker 2
I also have data that shows if you take every email and throw it back to the time of send. So whatever, you know, over a five year period, everything. Zero is the time it was sent. Whether it was this week, last week, a year ago, whatever it is, and you go one, two, three, four, five, right. 90% of opens and clicks happen within 24 hours.
00;47;29;03 - 00;47;43;20
Speaker 2
Right? 36 hours. Okay. Only 10% of sales. It takes a week to get to 50% of sales. Okay. And 20 or 30% of sales come from emails that were sent 21 or more days before.
00;47;43;21 - 00;48;06;17
Speaker 1
Are you suggesting a new, I hate to say, rate because you dislike it? However, are you suggesting we should be calculating send time, open time, click time? Every single key metric and the time span between each one noting which was the first action item likely open.
00;48;06;19 - 00;48;10;01
Speaker 2
But then no just received the first. Is it received.
00;48;10;03 - 00;48;12;04
Speaker 1
Fair? Fair. So first it.
00;48;12;04 - 00;48;16;11
Speaker 2
Says you can't open an email or delete it without processing it.
00;48;16;13 - 00;48;19;28
Speaker 1
Correct. If it doesn't come into your inbox, no information.
00;48;20;00 - 00;48;39;12
Speaker 2
No you cannot. You cannot delete an email that you didn't know what it was. The word ignore has willful in the definition, right? So whether I delete it or whatever it is I have to go. What am I deleting. Oh that's the from that's target or whatever the brand is. Right. Oh what's the subject line. Oh don't care about that because I'm not buying utensils this week.
00;48;39;12 - 00;48;59;12
Speaker 2
Do you see what I mean? Oh is it safe? No, no, let me save it. And you save it or you delete it. That is such a powerful cognitive load. That doesn't happen in any other channel. You don't deal do that with billboards or TV or any other thing. But in email you actually have to physically process it.
00;48;59;14 - 00;49;22;08
Speaker 2
So much so that if you want to go into like really esoteric stuff and way out there, let's go. It's a protocol. Email is actually a protocol. The inbox is actually as close as possible to a representative of your mind that exists, which brands you like, how you transact, all of those things when you buy, how often you buy, whether you buy on the toilet, whether you buy it in your bed.
00;49;22;10 - 00;49;41;05
Speaker 2
Google knows all of it. Your phone knows all of it. Now me, me. The sender doesn't know to that level, but I definitely know whether you open that email three times before you bought or once. If I cared. Most people don't care, right? And so what I'm saying is, if you were to take this data into another channel, people would be all over it.
00;49;41;08 - 00;49;57;20
Speaker 2
Imagine if I could give you this on a TV ad. So your TV ad goes out and it goes out on broadcast. Okay, was the person in the room the TV was on? I know that, but were they in the room? Were they not in the room? Did they make a cup of tea? I don't know, but let's pretend they were in the room or words in the room.
00;49;57;22 - 00;50;19;08
Speaker 2
Let's say they didn't. They weren't there. But then did they go back and watch it streaming right in email? I know, but streaming you wouldn't know. You would say, oh, well, on average people do five downloads of streaming, blah blah, blah, whatever it is. So you're guessing all the way through. Now, if they then went into the store because you didn't know exactly when they streamed and you couldn't tie together and you didn't know where it was.
00;50;19;13 - 00;50;42;10
Speaker 2
So email is nearest, damn it. The only way that you can actually know I did this to that person at that moment. And once you know that, you can start looking at what the impact of those little micro touches are. Now, do you see why people don't spend a lot of time talking about it? Because actually we're in a place where if ESP existed, if we could do ESP, if you could marketing.
00;50;42;11 - 00;50;44;00
Speaker 1
Like say like psychic.
00;50;44;02 - 00;50;45;23
Speaker 2
Yes. If you. Yes. If you could cause.
00;50;45;23 - 00;50;47;23
Speaker 1
Esp for me as email service provider.
00;50;47;25 - 00;50;56;05
Speaker 2
Yes I know no but what I meant it is no, no. What I meant is if marketers could project marketing into your brain. Okay, that's how I.
00;50;56;05 - 00;50;58;06
Speaker 1
Mean, it's about what they.
00;50;58;06 - 00;51;19;21
Speaker 2
Do already. And in fact, I wrote an article saying, hey, we're ESP or it exists. We just don't call it that. Right? So basically telepathy. So it's marketing telepathy. Okay. If it existed, we would have to have a mental inbox. We could not live with just everything coming at you. We just couldn't. And we'd have to folder and have a spam folder and have this and of that.
00;51;19;21 - 00;51;39;24
Speaker 2
Do you get what I mean? Because it's just a protocol. Because what it is. And to answer one of your questions, because I hope we don't forget it is a brilliant question. Where does your list exist? It doesn't. Your list is the right to email a particular person legally at will, at your will. That's where the list resides.
00;51;39;26 - 00;51;59;02
Speaker 2
And that list could reside in an ISP. Or you could do it manually, or you could actually walk to the people's houses and shove something through the door. You could do whatever you like, but it's the rights that's your list. It's not in a place, it's not in an ISP, and it's not even in Gmail. Your list is as valid as their list.
00;51;59;02 - 00;52;19;19
Speaker 2
It's just theirs is bigger and yours is a subset of their list. Another way you could look at it is theirs is a subset of your list. Yeah, because not everyone on your list is Gmail. They could be Yahoo or something else. Going back to what I was saying about the value of it is that in essence, you don't have to look at it in that way and go, oh, okay, my list is that permission, right?
00;52;19;22 - 00;52;36;17
Speaker 2
And it's that legal right that no one has the ability to prevent. In most countries in the world, it's illegal to interfere with the map. Correct. Which is why I found it ironic that email was able to get away with interfering with the mail. Right?
00;52;36;17 - 00;52;37;14
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
00;52;37;17 - 00;52;56;16
Speaker 2
And making decisions about who got something or didn't get it right. And I thought about that for years and it's almost gone away. And that's why I've kind of become on the side with deliverability. So so that's really what it is, is the interfering with the right and your list, is that right. And so every time you get that right, first of all, spend all your life seeking that right.
00;52;56;18 - 00;53;22;01
Speaker 2
Businesswise. And then remember all you need to do is don't make them unsubscribe within reason. If you had kids that were 2 or 3 and you subscribe to a kid's toy thing, do you get what I mean? In theory, you should never unsubscribe because you might have grandchildren in 30 years, but you got 30 years worth of emails to get from a kid's store to get to you relevant.
00;53;22;01 - 00;53;40;18
Speaker 2
And so it's about relevance. And then people got to not for me. I'm out. So this is the other irony. We spend all our time talk about respecting people's rights. You know, the right to do this and the right to do that, but we don't respect their rights to continue being emailed until they say so. We make a decision on their behalf.
00;53;40;20 - 00;53;48;00
Speaker 2
Unilag truly, we decide that they're too stupid to really understand whether they want my email or not.
00;53;48;02 - 00;53;52;00
Speaker 1
I wouldn't say stupid. I wouldn't say whether or not it's it's being relevant.
00;53;52;02 - 00;54;00;08
Speaker 2
No matter what does relevant mean. How do you know that? Right. So we're now sitting down and playing God for million individuals, right.
00;54;00;12 - 00;54;01;20
Speaker 1
That is very fair.
00;54;01;22 - 00;54;19;19
Speaker 2
Why I don't play God. And it really depresses me when people do. And so they're sitting all, well, we will give them what they want when it's so small stuff. Right. But yeah, but when it comes to being relevant, I'll decide for that because obviously I know more than them. They buy off me for stock.
00;54;19;21 - 00;54;21;00
Speaker 1
A very valid.
00;54;21;01 - 00;54;21;19
Speaker 2
00;54;21;22 - 00;54;34;06
Speaker 1
Very, very, very well, we don't want to play God,