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A regular podcast from marketing veteran Rob Voase (sometimes with his co-host Jen Clinehens), who discuss everything from CRM to Customer experience to Brand to Marketing careers (with occasional swearing. Sorry Mum).
Hello, welcome to the first everybody hates your brand of 2026. This podcast continues to operate without a defined schedule, but this is the start of a run of episodes over the coming months. Today, talked to Ian Reeves. Ian is the managing director of flourish CRM, an independent specialist CRM agency with offices in both Bristol in The UK and Dubai, where they create award winning campaigns for clients like Nissan and Samsung. We talk about how an agency like his is, if you'll pardon the pun, flourishing in the febrile world of huge holding companies like Omnicom and WPP and a martech sector that is undergoing extraordinary change.
Rob Voase:Ian, welcome to the podcast.
Ian Reeves:Thanks, Rob. It's a pleasure to be here.
Rob Voase:It's lovely to have you here. Regular listeners to this podcast will know we start the same way with every podcast we do, which is what I call the credibility section. It's just a space for you to explain yourself, who you are, your experience, your current role. So give people some context about your opinions and and how they should take those opinions. So would you mind giving us a bit of a sort of retrospective of your career and and where you are now?
Ian Reeves:No, not at all. So, yeah, I started life as an account manager in agencies with a specialism in website development. I was building or helping to build managing large scale websites for government agencies in The UK. Probably the largest was for the department for education. And when I got bored of that, I moved over to a brand job for McCann Erikson in The Midlands, Birmingham in The UK, where I worked on brands like Mercedes, Maybach, SLR, that Mercedes family.
Ian Reeves:And I'm really proud of launching Mercedes Benz World here in The UK. And and and that's where I found a passion for print. And I think that's that's kind of added to where I am now. And so following some stints at some specialist agencies, including a web gaming agency, when Flash was still around, And and a bit of time in Australia looking after, special projects for CommBank. I moved back to The UK and that kind of offline and online experience, kind of culminated in finding a role at Flourish.
Ian Reeves:At the time, Flourish was a digital and direct marketing agency. Today, I'm the MD of Flourish. We're a specialist CRM agency. We're platform and channel agnostic. We have offices in Bristol, Dubai, and a small office in London.
Ian Reeves:We send over a billion emails a year for some fantastic clients, including three of the top five largest brands in the world. So I'm proud of what we've achieved. And, I feel like I found my home somewhere that combines that kind of brand experience with that kind of human computer interaction. And ultimately, our job is to encourage people to take action.
Rob Voase:That's great. So great experience. I think when we started, we were talking about you coming on the podcast. I think I had sort of two chunks of topics if you like in my head. And the first one of those was around being an agency and being a in being an independent agency and a specialist.
Rob Voase:And I think the story of 2025 and already in 2026 is one of consolidation in the agency world. I think you just have to look at what's what's happening with Omnicom and IPG in The US. You have to look at the wonderful situation WPP have found themselves in, close to home, Armadillo, feel Bristol competitors bought by a Canadian company Bond. It seems like being a specialist independent agency in that world creates some real opportunities, but also has some some cons and some challenges. And I wonder if you could kind of articulate some of those pros and cons, please.
Ian Reeves:Yeah. It's a mad world out there, isn't it? Oh, yes. And I think change change is good. I think it needs it.
Ian Reeves:I would say for us, we see it as an opportunity. There's more pros than cons in that from our side. We find ourselves competing with some of those big consultancies. We're lucky enough to have big enough brands to find ourselves at the table and to be invited to the table, To pitch against big consultancies, to pitch against some of those big agencies. And we have a really good win rate against them.
Ian Reeves:As a specialist agency and any specialist agency around the world, no matter what discipline, they'll always have something that those bigger agencies can't offer. Our senior team work really closely with those clients, they work really closely with the work, that passion comes through, that knowledge comes through, And we find our clients really respect that. I think at the same time, scale is obviously a challenge. But I see that slightly differently and I talk to many a business where they're working with a large scale business, some that you've already mentioned. And maybe they've got 300 people dedicated to CRM or building emails.
Ian Reeves:And I think we take a different view on that. We talk to them around how we can save costs. That team doesn't need to be that many people that actually machines can solve some of that now. And that leads nicely into the AI conversation that everybody's happening now. But I think ultimately, we're not a challenger to some of those big businesses as well.
Ian Reeves:We naturally sit underneath the brand agency, especially with the discipline of CRM and all of the channels that can potentially sit under CRM. They're not going to sit in a brand book, they're not gonna be designed. And actually we operate in a space where brand and data collide. And quite often find ourselves sitting nicely under that brand agency, helping to give them insight for what the bedrock of data is saying, and how we can tweak that brand into something that will resonate with their audience. Through CRM, are smaller pools.
Ian Reeves:We're not looking at this brand identity works for everybody. We're looking at how we can tweak that brand, what messaging we can give. And I think that puts us in a really lovely spot. What that has meant for us is that we've seen decent growth. We've seen decent growth over the last five years, and long may that continue.
Ian Reeves:We are consistently being invited into more pitches where those bigger agencies are present. But as you say that some of those specialists are leaving and and that for us, you know, we're we're able to pick up great talent.
Rob Voase:Yeah. I think that that would your point about specialism, think. And you know, worked for big brand agencies like DDB was in CRM and have worked for independent agencies. And I think unlocking the specificity of those channels is something that big brand agencies aren't particularly great at. It's just like, here's the TV ad or here's whatever it is.
Rob Voase:And we'll just take that image and we'll whack it in an email. No. You've got and that's one thing that strikes me about CRM at the moment is the multitude of channels that are available and the differing strengths and weaknesses are not among those channels. And I'm I'm keen to kind of talk a little bit about that as we get into further into this podcast. One of the things that is also interesting is where you're currently based, based down in the lovely town of Bristol, big fan of Bristol, lovely place in the Southwest Of England.
Rob Voase:And you talked about attracting talent. From your perspective, what impact does being in Bristol give you? Does it make recruitment harder? Or do you see it as a positive? What are the pros and cons of that location?
Ian Reeves:I'm really proud of being a regional agency. In The UK where there is that central kind of London hub, probably Manchester and Birmingham next, Bristol somewhere in that pecking order, but there's breadth and depth of talent, you're right. There are some really good talent here and we don't compete for business, we definitely compete for people. And I think building an agency, we really need to build an agency with the right culture, with the right values. The vision, the mission is so important, but building an agency where everyone understands where we're heading and where we're going is so so important.
Ian Reeves:So keeping hold of people, that's key. We're lucky enough, executive director and one of our art directors, they've worked with us for twenty years. So I I think that's in agency world, that's a rarity. But but I think it also shows that we we're doing the right thing and and focusing on that and and adding something a little bit different. We operate a program of Flourish Together.
Ian Reeves:It's a programme of additional non contractual benefits, but we all contribute to that and it's about trying to create the right culture. But equally giving something back. That's the keeping hold of people, but you're right that as we grow, we need to look wider for that talent density. We're lucky we have an office in Dubai and we can look at the seas for that. Dubai has equally a really good depth of talent.
Ian Reeves:Someone mentioned something to me a few years ago, about not being able to have a monopoly on good people. And that being that we're 70 people globally, we can't employ everybody we want to employ. And that means investing in training, it means allowing people to look, to spend time with what they're interested in. We don't have any ceilings at Flourish and people grow into roles that probably didn't exist maybe two or three years ago. We have a head of CRO, we look at that as a CRO in CRM.
Ian Reeves:It's not an offering that I see in many CRM agencies. Thinking about things differently, looking at what probably more traditional agencies have, but also web agencies and non traditional roles has really helped us to attract really good talent. But as you say, it's a challenge, but one that I think we've done really well with. Obviously, the previous question around some of those big agencies losing top talent. It's a great thing for the for for independence.
Ian Reeves:And there's there's great talent around.
Rob Voase:Yeah. And I imagine that extends also to to the context of like working practices. A lot of lot of RTO mandates, a lot of this and that kind of thing. I think as an independent agency, maybe people are nimble, a bit more live and in terms of how you're how you're making those decisions. Think I think I think that nimbleness has got to be a real benefit.
Ian Reeves:It has. It has. We I've worked for big agencies in the past, and I I I've seen how many models they roll out and and and how I think agencies sometimes try to make clients work in their way. We we try to keep things simple. We are proudly pragmatic.
Ian Reeves:We have one agency model. It's optimize, elevate, transform. It translates really well into client language. And optimize is about small tweaks without cost a lot of money. What can we do to to show your boss that the investment in a CRM agency makes sense?
Ian Reeves:Elevate is how do we take to that next stage? Where do we go? And transform is that five year plan, that north star, thing we hope you never get to, the thing that keeps moving is as we optimize and elevate. But to do that, we have to be agile, we have to change and we have to react really, really quickly. I think a lot of competition out there and if we're reacting quickly, then we're letting our clients down.
Ian Reeves:So we'll talk about it in a minute, I'm sure, but we have a culture of curiosity at Flourish. And I'm really proud of that. And I think asking questions, constantly trying to get under the skin of a client and figure out what's new means that we're not only reacting, but it allows us to go to clients with ideas. And that nimbleness and proactiveness of doing that makes a difference in an independent agency.
Rob Voase:Now speaking of somebody who started or had the first half plus of his career client side, an agency that understands your business is worth its weight in gold, because I think sometimes there's a little bit with some agencies and that amount of institutional arrogance like we know best. You hired us. But it's like, yeah, but you need to understand our business what we can and cannot do. So and I think what you're saying is exactly that. It's okay.
Rob Voase:Okay. You can't do that. Fine. Maybe we put it on the five year one, but here's what we can do right now. And I think that's hugely important.
Rob Voase:You mentioned Dubai, and I think that's a really interesting thing. I think you've great success in twenty twenty five's DMA Awards with a golden two bronze Nissan Nissan Patrol, if I remember rightly across The Middle East. How did the Dubai think of that?
Ian Reeves:Yeah, so we've been in Dubai for ten years and we grew with clients. So we used to have Samsung in The UK, Australia and Dubai. And so out of, we had Samsung in The UK for twelve years. And out of the success of Samsung in The UK, we opened an office in Australia, then in Dubai. So we're lucky enough to open with clients and that really helps.
Ian Reeves:It makes things a hell of a lot easier. With Dubai, we were lucky enough to be able to move some of our team over. And that meant that they really understood our ethos, the way that we operated. It meant that we were opening an office with the same culture effectively, despite it being in a different country. We lost Samsung, they moved to a global agency model, and then we won them back last year in Dubai.
Ian Reeves:So we're delighted that Samsung came back. However we've grown the agency in Dubai, there's 16 people in the office in Dubai now. And we've seen some massive change in Dubai over that time. I think Dubai, when we first started, CRM was seen as a technology, not a discipline. And I think that's really changed.
Ian Reeves:I think it's matured in terms of the view of CRM. And that's allowed us to continue to operate, to continue to grow. The time zone helps, not too different. There's a massive expat community, but equally there is a really diverse cultural team in our office. Think that's probably 10 different languages spoken in our office.
Ian Reeves:Dubai's done fantastically well. Last year saw fantastic growth, and a long way that continue. We're seeing the alliance of independent agencies opening an offering in Dubai, and there are increasingly independent agencies popping up that weren't there before.
Rob Voase:That's great to hear. Fascinating stuff. Okay. I feel that we've covered a little bit about the world of agencies and where that's going, and I'm kind of keen to talk to you. We talked about your approach and all that kind of stuff, approach.
Rob Voase:Talk a about the work. There's a question I like to ask, and this is, I guess, after 63 or 64 of this podcast. And this kind of questions that I like to ask that have almost acted as longitudinal data over 60. You know? I'm sure one day I'll look back at some of the transcripts and see if I can pull out any, you know, grand grand themes or any of that kind of stuff.
Rob Voase:And I've asked this to the few agency leaders, which is what are the kind of challenges that you are being asked to take on by clients? And what are and and specifically, what is coming up regularly? Because if you look at, like, historically with CRM, it's usually something like, I've got this bit of Martech, I don't know what to do with it. Or, you know, we're not we're not doing it like we're exploiting the best of what we can do. I'm I'm really interested to know what are the challenges that your clients are coming to you with and are they commonalities or is it more random?
Ian Reeves:Yeah, I think I'll answer that in a couple of ways. People tend to come to us with one of three challenges. It is, I've got a CRM platform and I don't know how to use it. I've got a CRM platform and I think I need a new one. Or I've got a particular challenge.
Ian Reeves:And that particular challenge normally tends to be something around sales. CRM as a channel isn't delivering the sales it needs to, or a particular challenge like my win back campaign isn't working anymore. And I'd say that's probably how most people tend to come to us. There's a challenge in that, in that quite often what they're coming to us with is not really their problem. And maybe that is because they're using email over direct mail, for example.
Ian Reeves:And I remember a big campaign with eBay a few years ago where they were sending emails and their high net worth customers had stopped spending. We sent DM instead and got a 40% better return on investment through DM than we did through email. All of those things we've spoken about allows us challenge that. What I do find is that we are increasingly working with businesses to change their view from a CRM point of view on what good is. And I think when we're talking about sales from CRM not providing the results that they're expecting, maybe they're measuring the wrong thing.
Ian Reeves:Maybe they're measuring metrics like email opens and clicks, rather than contribution of CRM as a whole. I'd love to see, and I've never seen it, and I and I ask for this quite a lot, what impact has CRM had on return on ad spend? And I'd love to see that being reported at board level, rather than the questions of, and what has email done? And I think quite often we fall into a trap that email is marked like paid media, or is just seen as another channel. And I'd say, to answer your question, the thing that people come to us mostly with is underperformance or underperformance against expected business targets.
Ian Reeves:I don't think that's always the case. We spend a lot of time trying to educate a business into what success looks like, and the contribution of CRM. We worked with a client probably not so long ago, I won't tell you who they are, but all of the individual agencies who worked on the accounts were targeted individually, and it meant that nobody shared any data. So we weren't encouraged to share data with the media team because we were marked on how well our individual channels were performing. It's naive, and I think it takes a mature management team to understand that every channel has to work together.
Ian Reeves:And ultimately it is that overarching contribution that they all
Rob Voase:It's happening more and more now, but even at a simple level, people understanding what's a control group is, what's a fellow group is, why you should have them, when you should take that. That that stuff is it still surprises me that those conversations still still happen at client level. And I think that's that's a really interesting challenge. Two of the three things you said, two of those were martech related. And I think you're right.
Rob Voase:Part of it is culturally we're maybe looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. But it is no doubt that the the world of Martech is the thing that has continues to change, has changed extraordinarily over the last and it has accelerated, I guess, over the last two or three years since generative AI became became a thing. And and and even as predictive AI becomes better and better and better, there was a status within a state of Martech of Portland, saying that over three quarters of new products added in the last twelve months were were quote unquote AI native now. What that means, where someone just slammed the word AI on top of it, is another question. But AI is the big transformative thing.
Rob Voase:You mentioned it earlier or it's being touted as such. What are
Ian Reeves:the things you're seeing?
Rob Voase:What are the AI innovations or the things that are changing or transforming or just making more efficient work for your clients or for your own sort of agency operations? What are the things that are really kind of like have moved the needle for you?
Ian Reeves:Yeah, I mentioned this earlier actually, and I think this conversation has cropped up a lot of times with some larger clients in that maybe there's a team of a few 100 people implementing email as a channel, let's just take email for as an example. We don't need that anymore. And actually machines and AI can save a hell of a lot of money, be quicker and be just as effective. There's a lovely stat which I like to quote from a litmus report probably a few years ago now, which is, I think I've probably tweaked it over the years, but I think it's 85% of CRM is done outside of a platform. And when you think about CRM as a discipline, actually, what do you want to employ?
Ian Reeves:Do you want to employ a platform expert or do want to employ a CRM expert? If AI and platforms are becoming increasingly automated, how do we gain an advantage over our competitors? Because it's leveling the playing field. And I think there are some smaller challenger brands that are seeing this as a real opportunity. And actually they should see it as an opportunity.
Ian Reeves:You didn't mention AgenTik AI and especially search. I think that's a real opportunity for smaller brands. Machines cannot tell whether something's soft or hard, it can't tell you what, how something feels. And actually, where there's a small product portfolio where you can start describing a hell of a lot more about what that product feels like, what it and and how it physically sits in a room potentially. When you've a small product catalog, that's a hell of a lot easier to do by hand or or by a human.
Ian Reeves:When you've got a big product catalog, that's really, really difficult. And I think we'll start seeing some smaller brands actually gaining an advantage over some of those larger brands with a massive product catalogue who aren't able to have that depth of data, especially an energetic search point of view. I I welcome AI. I think it is a real opportunity for us. I also think it will change consumer behavior, and it's very easy for us to talk about what advantages that brings from a platform.
Ian Reeves:But ultimately the thing that makes CRM a success is the customer. And I often come back to that with every single client is, what does the customer want? We only saw Google release an update, or release news the other day that Gemini is changing the way that we'll see email within Gmail. And that will change customer behavior. It will change the way that people interact with email.
Ian Reeves:I think we have between eight and ten seconds at the moment to grab someone's attention with an email. That's probably quite a lot in reality, that's gonna change. And we'll see people don't go and fetch email anymore. They're not as task orientated. You'll get a prompt or just quickly scroll through, and now you'll get an AI summary.
Ian Reeves:So it's not gonna happen in every single email appliance, and and and the discipline of doing email well or doing SMS well, or or whatever channel you're choosing still still needs to be there. But I think doing the basics well, segmenting data properly, That batch and blast is, there's no room for it now. There's definitely no room for it in the future. And personalization is that term that we always band around as people who work in it it becomes more and more important that that messaging is not personalized. Not, hi, Ian, but but the whole message is tailored towards lead.
Rob Voase:I I wrote an article recently about personalization is optional, relevance is mandatory was the title of the article because I think you can be you can be relevant without being personalized. You know, you said you could, hey, hi. And then the product bears no relation or it's at the wrong time or whatever, the wrong context or all those kind of things. And I think AI is going to force people to up their games, especially from an an email perspective. And I also think it will I think it will push people to channels outside of the email, potentially a little bit more as well.
Rob Voase:Human beings to a degree are lazy. So I think if I can get the same thing from SMS or WhatsApp, whatever it is, And I'm not going to get the interference of a, maybe I'll go there. And I think that's going be interesting to see how those other channels go. From a from a you talk about AI and all that kind of stuff. From ethical or practical perspective, but I'm telling them within your own work, how do you set those creatively?
Rob Voase:Like in terms of like, where where does the ethical element of AI sit with you as an agency?
Ian Reeves:It depends on the client. Think it's part of the answer to that. It sounds like a bit of a get out. I think what we see from an AI point of view is that legal teams within clients are still unsure. And that means for a lot of clients we're not able to use AI.
Ian Reeves:From an idea generation point of view, from a copywriting point of view, we can use it to a certain point. But humans are still really really important, in that process. And I think it'll be a long time before we're completely replaced, so Fingers crossed.
Rob Voase:Yeah, lot
Ian Reeves:of the time it is down to the clients. Where we are seeing real success however, is using AI to check effectively what we're doing. We train AI on an individual client. So we know that if their feedback contradicts something they've said before, we can question it. What we're no longer relying on is a human to remember that.
Ian Reeves:And what that allows us to do is to, that QA process but also the briefing process. It just makes it a hell of a lot quicker. And it means that we can focus on the things that really matter, rather than just going through and double checking apps and everything. We're not completely reliant on it, it definitely speaks to that process. So I think for us it's a tool that we use, we use a lot, but we can't do everything because the legality issues that still exist around AI for our clients.
Rob Voase:I think the point you talk about is a tool. It's a tool, not a crutch. Is the way I could because I was reading some research the day about how it was in academia and students at university overuse of AI can lead to kind of cognitive decline. Essentially, don't think as well as you used to. I think it's the thing that I can kind of sometimes feel that sometimes it's like, oh, just check.
Rob Voase:Am like, no, come on. You know this. What are you what are you why are you doing that for? But I think as a research tool and as a research assistant, almost like trading is like a junior research assistant. So I go away and find out this, like invaluable, like absolutely invaluable.
Rob Voase:And then as long as you make sure you're checking the links and not taking what it turns out at face value, I think it's it can be hugely valuable for that kind of research activity.
Ian Reeves:Yeah, I don't disagree. Still think there's a hell of a lot bias there though. And I think that's in the prompt engineering is becoming just as important as understanding what comes out. I wouldn't take anything on face value. I still think there's a hell of a lot of research that needs to be done.
Ian Reeves:So where I'm saying for some things that we're using it for is time saving, actually kind of depth of research is really good. But we're still taking just as much time because we're having to fact check. We're having to go through each thing and make sure there is no bias there. What about
Rob Voase:link twenty ten and it's twenty twenty six? See that sort of stuff all the time,
Ian Reeves:yeah. But things are moving all the time and things are moving so quickly maybe that will change in a few years time or maybe a few months, a few weeks time.
Rob Voase:And that leads on to my, I guess, last question, I guess, on AI, which is, again, there's a great report. It talked about the idea that AI capability is improving at an exponential rate, but companies kind of grow at a logarithmic rate. So there's this gap that's growing between what AI can do and what companies are able to do with it in a sense because of their own limitations and their own data and capability. We're in this kind of weird liminal space between, oh my god, this amazing thing and yeah, but our data still exists on some IBM mainframe from the nineteen seventies or something. I'm trying to understand how you navigate and how your clients are navigating that liminal space of like this promise, but the reality and where that sits and how you manage that situation.
Ian Reeves:That is a tough question. I don't think there's an easy answer to that. And I think that the answer will change depending on every single client and every single individual scenario. I think what we have to go back to ultimately is what's the use case? And it's a very typical agency answer to go, ultimately what are we trying to achieve here?
Ian Reeves:AI is the answer, not all of the time. AI is an enabler. And if ultimately that helps us to be more accurate, to have better results, to shortcut something, to get somewhere quicker, cheaper, then it's great. But it is not the only solution. So for us it is really important to go back to what ultimately are we trying to achieve, and is AI part of that solution?
Ian Reeves:Is technology part of the solution? Is a human part of the solution? But really importantly, what do we need to learn along the way, and how do we fail quickly, or how do we learn? You mentioned something earlier, which I was gonna mention another point, I think it's kind of relevant here, is that we are big advocates of including things in CRM campaigns that people don't click on. And that's where success factors sometimes, for us, it's we need to know what people aren't interested in as well as what people are interested in.
Ian Reeves:And that means that we can tailor and be more personalised and be more relevant. Actually, that's where that use case comes in. What are we ultimately trying to achieve? If we're using AI to generate something, maybe that human element of what's the opposite to that? What can we put in to learn about?
Ian Reeves:How does that data journey work? So all of that's important. The short answer to you is, let's go back to the use case. What are we trying to achieve and what's the best way to do that?
Rob Voase:It might not be AI. I think that's a great so from your perspective as a specialist and expertise, that way of helping your clients navigate that, I think is really important. Think what I'm sort of interested in, especially in bigger companies is where the C suite expectations are versus the people actually, forgive me, do the work. What the reality is and how those two things mesh, I think that's going be really interesting over the next couple of years is that is that we want we want this, but we can't. And and how that's gonna work, I mean, it's really interesting.
Rob Voase:Alright. I'm conscious of time. So I'm gonna skip on to one one question that I think there's part
Ian Reeves:of
Rob Voase:me, the nostalgia part of me that kind of goes, you know, I'm I'm glad I grew up as a CRM practitioner in the world of direct mail because the fundamental cost of direct mail means that you have to your targeting has to be right. Your you know, everything has to be right because you're spending back in the day, was a lot less, but you're spending a bunch of money on print production, the whole nine yards. So you you can't just blatch and blast. It's gotta be and and I think that's I think part of me is that the the the grumpy old man who yells at cloud just kind of like, I wish people today had come up in that content. I wish the email cost, like, 50 p a pop because then the world would be a little bit different.
Rob Voase:Are there are there things that you wish you could turn the clock back on ten, fifteen, twenty years? Are there are there some things you think we've maybe lost in this race for for progress?
Ian Reeves:It's a really good question. I do I I just pick up your point on DM for a second. I love a bit of DM. But but but I think it's a risk these days. I think I think it is seen as a risk because that cost is high.
Ian Reeves:And I actually think that email has become easy. But have we got stuck in a rut? Have we got ourselves in a hole and actually trying new channels? Has that become too restrictive? Because we've let that happen.
Ian Reeves:Our CRM managers too scared now to go, I tell you what, let's use Viber because this massive APAC audience, let's let's use Viber. Let's use WeChat. That's gonna be alien to a lot of boards and and that's hard. So the thing that I think I'd roll back the clock on, and I've made mistakes over the years, as I'm sure all we have, we all have, and they've changed me, probably for the better. But I think we've lost, we've lost the culture of curiosity.
Ian Reeves:And it's something we to, we try to encourage massively at Flourish. I think my younger self, I asked more questions. I was more inquisitive. I read more books. And I think if I could roll back the clock and look at all of this, all of the things that we're talking about where it's a hell of a lot easier to access things now, has probably made us slightly lazy.
Ian Reeves:So for me that thirst for knowledge, that let's read more books, let's take notes, let's scribble in the margins, let's ultimately ask more questions. And I think if we did that now, we'd probably act sooner, we probably wouldn't wait to make decisions. And I think would make life slightly different. I think that of, BBC News. I get BBC News prompts and it's very selected, news.
Ian Reeves:It's news I don't really wanna hear. It's most often bad news. And that affects me immensely. And I'm sure it does I'm sure it affects the state of the nation. So roll back the clock a little bit.
Ian Reeves:Let's pick up a newspaper.
Rob Voase:100%. Well, look, thank you very much. We have we have one question I ask of all my guests, and it's always fun. We have the Everybody Hate Your Brand Room one zero one. Everyone knows the concept from the book 1984.
Rob Voase:This one's a slightly more related to the BBC TV show of the sort of nineties and February where celebrities will come on and they would suggest something that they annoyed them and repeat their case for the host, which was usually Paul Merton, to put it into room one on one for purgatory forever. And I've been running this for a long time, I've had some great answers, some tiny, small little things, some huge philosophical things. So I am presenting you with this opportunity now, Ian, to tell me, what would be the thing that you would like to do to do with sort of marketing a bit or business that you would like locked away for eternity in Room 101?
Ian Reeves:I'm going to go for one of the small things. I'm going join that crew. Good.
Rob Voase:I like petty. Let's do petty.
Ian Reeves:It is petty. It's something I that is petty, but I'm very passionate about. And I'd like to set everyone a challenge for this as well. But the thing that bothers me the most, the thing that I'd like to lock away is social media icons at the bottom of emails. They are completely flawless.
Ian Reeves:We stick them there because we think it's best practice. But I challenge everybody to go and see how much they clicked on. We ran, we've done this across six months with some massive clients. They had a point 01% click rate. We spend so much time looking at whether we should have round corners, square edges, whether the contrast is right, but yet we ignore those social media icons that don't get clicked on.
Ian Reeves:It is sent for a different reason. We're sending emails for a specific reason. Social media icons do not belong in a footer. Put a different ETA in that footer, your email will be more successful. Lock it away.
Rob Voase:I love that. That can go in a 100% because a, I like it. I like a petty not petty onward, but I like I like a a small specific thing. I think that's a good one. Great.
Rob Voase:And the other thing is it builds off what CRM is all about, which is what's working and what's not working. And we can actually see that and do something about it. So I think that's fantastic. Well, Ian, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today.
Ian Reeves:I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Rob Voase:Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Some fascinating points and an optimistic but pragmatic view of the world for sure. Please remember to subscribe on your platform of choice and maybe give a positive review of this podcast if you found it useful and have the time. And until next time, as my mom always says, take great, great care and be vigilant out there.