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Hosted by Scott Cohen and Garin Hobbs - Talking about the hot topics in and around email marketing.
Hello all and welcome to That InboxArmy Podcast. I'm your host Scott Cohen and with me is the Timon to my Pumbaa, Garin Hobbs. Garin, how you doing?
Garin Hobbs:Giving the stash life a try here, Scott. Everything good?
Scott Cohen:The stash life, you know, it's not a good look for me, but it's looking good on you, my brother. You know, Dashing ain't easy. Yeah. It's been a minute. It has been a minute since we've done one of these podcasts.
Scott Cohen:A lot has been going on in the email world. We've all been busy. And somehow for a channel that's been around for fifty years where all channels get easier, email just gets more complicated. Really, we're gonna, it really does. We're gonna jump in today and discuss how email marketers should be thinking about deliverability, strategy, engagement, and its fit within other channels.
Scott Cohen:And we've got a great guest to discuss these topics with between her time at return path running deliverability at change.org, serving time as a postmaster at Synacor, consulting on deliverability at SendGrid and dot digital and her most recent gig at Intuit Mailchimp. Today's guest has seen some things in her nearly twenty years in the email and digital messaging space. Joining us today is digital messaging expert for hire, Tanya Plaza. Tanya, welcome to the podcast.
Tanya Plaza:Well, hello. Thanks for having me.
Scott Cohen:Absolutely. Before we yeah, I mean, that's a that's quite a list of places you've been. I mean, some some big jobs. I love to learn more about people's stories. So tell us about your journey to today.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah. It started with with getting an entry level role at Return Path. We all know or or some of us are aware of of Return Path back in the early days as an account coordinator. And when I was asked, what do you know about email? I answered, you write a message and hit send.
Tanya Plaza:That was my knowledge of email and how it worked when I first started in 2008, and it really just grew from there. I was able to get kind of an email education in a world where you can't really get that education unless it's on the job. And and they, yeah, they really took the time to teach me the different pieces and parts of of how email works and the strategies behind digital messaging in general, and it just gave me a good foundation. And and I have I have Return Path in in those early days. I have those those folks to to thank for that.
Tanya Plaza:Then, know, it was a great basis. And going from there, I was able to get some more experiences with being postmaster, working as you know, going brand side with change.org. And then, you know, I've spent the the bulk of the last decade at Dodd Digital managing their sending for both email and SMS and the infrastructure, the deliverability, the making sure that it was being used by senders to do the things that it should be doing and not eroding consumers' trust even more, by eroding their trust and and ability to see emails as a safe channel.
Scott Cohen:You've always been curious. Yeah. I've always been curious. Sorry. What is a postmaster do?
Scott Cohen:What I mean, I mean, I think of like Wilford Brimley as the postmaster general in that Seinfeld episode where Kramer refuses to get the mail and it's like, you got you're gonna you got me off the call. He's all mad about it. But like, what what does a postmaster do?
Garin Hobbs:Know Do you get a gaggle? That
Tanya Plaza:part of my career, it really to to be a postmaster, what you're trying to do is limit the abuse that is happening on that platform as as a mailbox provider. You're you're looking to make sure that the the users that are using your platform aren't being compromised. You're making sure that spam isn't being sent from accounts that have been set up for malicious purposes. You're trying to, you know, play this game of whack a mole almost. You know, there's a strategy to it.
Tanya Plaza:There's definitely tools out there that can help, but it is really just trying to see how you could most most move them a needle by catching the most people, the most malicious senders as possible in one go. But it's it's hard going because a lot of a lot of spammers are out there, but that that's really what what my time was spent at Synagore doing.
Garin Hobbs:Excellent. You've clearly been a part of many incredible organizations, Tanya. I gotta ask, did you choose email or did email choose you?
Tanya Plaza:That's a good question. I think that gets kind of deep.
Garin Hobbs:Think cuts deep. Yeah.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah. I mean, probably a little bit of both. I think we all have the abilities to dig into a career and learn and grow. And at the time in my life, I I had never heard of such a thing as a career. I didn't realize that that path was out there for me.
Tanya Plaza:And so I really soaked it up because my my time had been spent doing things like working retail and being a nanny. And, you know, I had a degree, but my job opportunities were very much not in the tech world. And so I think email probably chose me in that sense, but I also chose it back. So it was it was something that I decided to just learn and take a personal interest in my career and invest in it that way.
Garin Hobbs:I think that's how it is for most of us, right? You find the perfect dance partner and waltz to the perfect tune. So, well, we're glad that you're here on the dance floor with us. Now, you know, it took Scott like ten minutes to run through your provenance. So clearly again, you've got an impressive background and you've been in email for, you know, a good amount of time, sat in many seats, carried a lot of different responsibilities.
Garin Hobbs:So I'm curious, you know, looking at it from all those different perspectives in your own mind, where does email sit in the grand scheme of marketing channels 2026, right? We've got, you know, paid media, we've got social, we've got SEM. There are, you know, social influencer marketing, outdoor print, etcetera. Where does email sit in the middle of all this in 2026? Where should it sit?
Garin Hobbs:And how should email marketers be thinking about?
Tanya Plaza:Email is still a part of the click and they're, you know, they're an old member of the click and they're what what they're doing is they're just needing to acclimate and learn and make space for the new channels that are coming in and becoming part of of the the messaging strategies for senders. I think email in 2026 is still a very relevant channel. Email is not dead. We we all say that and laugh at laugh at sorry, laugh at that sentence, but it's it's it's it's still an effective channel. It's just how can you use it alongside those other channels that are out there to make sure that the consumers and customers that are wanting emails from you are getting a well rounded experience and hearing from you in the way that they want to hear, from you.
Tanya Plaza:And and I think that's where email, is going to best play in 2026 is when it plays and along well with others, gets along well with others.
Garin Hobbs:I feel as an aging Gen Xer, I feel, right, I feel the same as email right there. I may be the oldest guy in the room these days, but I still know a heck of a lot. I've still got a lot of utility and I can return a heck of a lot of value.
Tanya Plaza:Exactly. And I think we're really quick to discard things that have been or have been in the past. We see in fashion and in culture, it's cyclical. But I think in technology, it's also cyclical. It's just learning how to use them together with some of the advances that culture has made.
Garin Hobbs:Couldn't agree more. Think there's a lot to dig into there. That's perfect. There's a lot to dig in there, and I feel the same way. We'll have to save that for a future podcast unfortunately.
Scott Cohen:Yeah, I mean, I've always said that the people who say they email is dead are the people who have something else to sell, right? Mean, know, when I came on the scene all those years ago, it was, you know, social was really taking shape, right? This is 2009, Facebook, Twitter, it's like, everyone's going there, so email is dead. I go, okay, what do you need to sign into Twitter and Facebook? Any email address?
Tanya Plaza:Email.
Scott Cohen:I rest my case, right? I mean, you know, mean, I know mobile number has not replaced, but also, I guess augmented as an option for sign in in a lot of places, but email is still the unique identifier. Right? It's still 90% of the time it is. Yes.
Scott Cohen:The key master. Yes. What what what's
Tanya Plaza:I also think that's
Scott Cohen:kind of line.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah.
Garin Hobbs:Yep. I'm I'm the gatekeeper. Are you the key master? Yes.
Tanya Plaza:I I also think that it's a missed opportunity for sales to, you know, say email is dead. If they're not showing how what they're selling can work with email, they're they're losing a chunk of revenue. And they're not showing they're they're not showing their consumers and their customers how they can make more revenue using all the channels together.
Garin Hobbs:Agree.
Scott Cohen:I always find it interesting that peep people think email isn't good, doesn't work, and then all you have to do is threaten to not send. And then you go, okay, fine. I I won't send for well, hold on. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying don't send it.
Scott Cohen:I'm just saying it doesn't work. So you're telling me it doesn't work, but then when I say, okay, fine. I won't send anything, you get nervous.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah.
Scott Cohen:And so it's it's a funny juxtaposition.
Tanya Plaza:Say it doesn't work and then look at the revenue that you make from it and then tell me it doesn't work.
Scott Cohen:Boom. Love that. I mean Yeah. And you said something earlier about, you know, it's an important channel. People receive it.
Scott Cohen:They wanna receive it and they, you know, they get it when and when and where they want it. And yet and these same folks who say the damn channel doesn't work, then turn around and are also terrified of the unsubscribe.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah.
Scott Cohen:Terrified of the unsubscribe. You know, with the omni you know, how it fits with, you know, you say play plays well with others. I did a whole session on that at Inbox Expo a couple weeks ago on how we play well with others. How should marketers really be viewing the unsubscribe?
Tanya Plaza:It's it's, you know, it's we all have fear of abandonment. Right? We all have abandonment issues.
Garin Hobbs:Love it.
Tanya Plaza:With unsubscribes, if you if you don't let somebody unsubscribe easily, if if somebody looks at your emails and says, you know what? I really don't want this right now. If you make that difficult for them, they're never coming back. Right? Because that's gonna be the last interaction they have with your brand.
Tanya Plaza:And you really wanna make that last interaction something that's like, ugh. All I remember from this brand is that I wasn't able to get out get them out of my inbox. It took me forever. And when I unsubscribed and then they just kept sending it to me, and so I just kept until finally I got it out of my inbox. You're not remembering the brand.
Tanya Plaza:You're remembering the way that brand made you feel during their last
Scott Cohen:experience.
Tanya Plaza:And if that's negative, you're not leaving them with much to come back for.
Garin Hobbs:It's like dating is how I Like, view it, you're not gonna find an ideal romantic partner in everybody, but that's why we Do we vibe? Do resonate with you? Do you resonate with me? If it's gonna be no and this isn't gonna go anywhere, let's run to that no and let's invest our time more profitably elsewhere, right? Exactly.
Garin Hobbs:It's very similar.
Tanya Plaza:Exactly. I mean, when you're dating and somebody says no, if you're trying to talk that person into it, it's not gonna go well.
Garin Hobbs:If you're not gonna let them unsubscribe, you're gonna end up on don't date them girl.
Tanya Plaza:Just gonna put it that way. Yeah. Exactly.
Scott Cohen:I mean, if only the political parties would, adhere to that not just throw your name everywhere. I mean, when I get emails for a congressional race in a random district in Minnesota, I'm like, I don't even know who this person is. Have no clue.
Garin Hobbs:Yeah. Yeah. Still click delete and report as spam though. I mean, I know it doesn't do anything, but it brings me a little bit of satisfaction. It's the only sorta stick it to them I can give.
Garin Hobbs:Right? It's always funny how those who write the law tend to excuse themselves from it.
Tanya Plaza:I mean, sure. They're excused from the law, but they're not excused from the consequences at that mailbox provider that you've complained at. Interesting.
Scott Cohen:Let's let's let's dig that out a little bit. Yeah. I mean, that's there's the there's the active unsubscribe.
Tanya Plaza:Mhmm.
Scott Cohen:And then there is there's always the people go, there's legal and ethical things. Right? So, you may like, if you have absolved yourself with the legal piece of this, there is still the well, yeah, there's what the law says and then there's what Google says, right? And there's what Yahoo says. So let's dive into that a bit more because Yeah.
Scott Cohen:I've said for years, unsubscribe or spam complaint, you want an unsubscribe.
Tanya Plaza:You want an unsubscribe. Absolutely, yes. Yeah. Yeah. You want an
Scott Cohen:unsubscribe. Yeah.
Tanya Plaza:You don't wanna I mean, how
Scott Cohen:yeah. I mean, that maybe walk through walk us through a little bit deeper. I mean, obviously, a postmaster, you had any other side, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, but then you've been, know, you've had brand side where you had I mean, you were at change.org. Right? I mean, not you guys probably actually follow the law unlike the political campaigns, but it's a similar element, right, of asking for donations and drives and everything else.
Scott Cohen:Like, there's let's walk through a little bit of the legal versus the actual ramifications.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah. Walk through that again. Legal is just the bar. Right? Legal is just a this is the bare minimum that we have to do to make sure that we are running a program that's selling things via digital messaging, whatever email, SMS, or whatever channel you're choosing to market to your customers.
Tanya Plaza:Doing the legal thing is like the bare minimum. Why would you want to do just the bare minimum when you're looking to make revenue? When the going on above and beyond that and seeing like, okay. The phrase that we used to laugh at is, but it's legal. That's like a lot of senders, a lot of marketers, not you know, there are some that are very like like us that have been in the industry for a while.
Tanya Plaza:We understand. We we know the impact of of unsubscribes versus complaints. We understand what the consequences are, but some people just genuinely do not have that experience. And so it's it's it's a piece of you know, but it's legal. And and and you're right.
Tanya Plaza:It is legal when you know, it is legal to do things that don't always bring us a positive end. And to not to to to to rely on that doesn't mean your consumers or your customers are going to see your marketing message. Because if you're doing it in a way that's building your reputation to show that you're not sending wanted things, then the mailbox providers and those that are delivering messages are going to make their decisions based off of what what they're the people they're concerned about based on how they're acting because they they don't care they do care about the sender. That makes it sound callous. But they don't care about the the sender really because who do they care about?
Tanya Plaza:They care about the users that are using their email interfaces, and they wanna make sure that that experience is pleasant for their consumer, for their customer, for their user, for their the the people that are interacting with them. The sender is just secondary. And if the sender is sending something that that user does not want, then they're within their right to make sure that that user doesn't see that because it's their product.
Garin Hobbs:I hate that it's a legal argument. I get that all the time in chatting with our clients and prospects. Squatting is legal in most places, but I can't imagine. I don't know a single person who would be come home and be super pleased to find somebody squatting in their home. Right?
Garin Hobbs:So it's there's what's legal and there's the impact of what's legal as well. As I explained to folks, you know, adhering to the law when it comes to email just keeps you out of a courtroom. That protects you from litigation. It doesn't, you know, put you a single step forward in terms of getting your messages delivered to the end.
Tanya Plaza:Mhmm. And then also, if you use that same squatter example, then if if if you're a squatter, eventually, you build a reputation around being a squatter, and it starts to become to become harder for you to do it. So it could be legal, but eventually, your reputation, if you're you know, is going to be I I watched a documentary on this. Netflix has a couple since they're good. Eventually, you do build a reputation and you do build you do get known for the actions that you've taken, and the same goes for for how you send marketing messages.
Garin Hobbs:Yep. Next thing you know, you're being called out on a show on A and E on a Tuesday night. Right? Exactly. I think I watched that same documentary as well, Tani.
Garin Hobbs:Yep. You know, in in in sticking with these conversations, have a lot of our our our clients and a lot of our prospects, you know, I do get asked a lot about what should optimal inboxing look like for us? What should optimal performance metrics look like? How do my numbers compare to others like me? What is the benchmark for my industry?
Garin Hobbs:How should marketers be viewing their benchmarks? I mean, deliverability aside, right? Because I feel like that's just sort of a universal score we should all be aspiring to or gearing towards, but leaving that behind and looking more towards performance, how should marketers view comparative benchmarks versus their own benchmarks and how do we best establish what's right?
Tanya Plaza:I think we all look to compare ourselves to external metrics. That's just how we do it. And same goes for businesses and for senders, but really I think the magic with benchmarking comes from measuring yourself. And so when senders are creating strategies for their marketing programs, even if their main competitor does the same type of product, their customer base is different. Your customer base follows your brand for a reason.
Tanya Plaza:And so you wanna benchmark yourself against yourself so that you can make sure that where you're making changes, you're seeing improvements. And and, you know, there's also value in in knowing the data and how you compare, but it's not as useful as comparing it to yourself. Benchmark it against yourself. Make sure that you are testing. Make sure that you are looking at how your recipients are responding to you.
Tanya Plaza:And and keep that track a track of that over time. And actually, I wouldn't say just time over time, but do it like season over season too. Your busy season is what? Christmas? Or is your busy season Mother's Day?
Tanya Plaza:Or is your busy season back to school? Whatever your busy season is, benchmark that against itself so that you know year over year the changes that you implemented, how are they impacting you? You're not going to get that same type of actionable data by comparing yourself with somebody else to somebody else.
Garin Hobbs:Yeah. And it's great point. It's go ahead, Scott.
Scott Cohen:That's a great point. I was just saying, like but also be honest with who you are and where you are and where the world is. Right? I mean yes. We hate to say COVID because it's six years later, but COVID was the ultimate cycle breaker, you know, comp breaker.
Scott Cohen:I I was in HomeGoods at the time. COVID was amazing for HomeGoods. COVID was terrible for restaurants.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah.
Scott Cohen:Is COVID a measurable comp? Is 2020 a measurable comp for anything? No. Right? And and and and also, you know, the the old CEO here used to he'd get on these calls with people and he he'd finally just go, you're not Amazon.
Scott Cohen:You're not Apple. Right? And he'd tell us to be like, oh, I wanna be like Apple. You're not Apple. So be honest about who you are, where you are.
Scott Cohen:And also, I mean, I've had I've worked with clients that are in the same industry, are technically competitors, and their lists act differently.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah.
Scott Cohen:So that's why measuring against yourself is more I mean, for deliverability, you should be as high as possible, right? As high as possible. Obviously, you want and we'll get into an and get a deeper engagement question here in a minute. But obviously, you're engaged, you want engagement to improve, but ultimately, that depending on what you're measuring, be a false flag too. Right?
Scott Cohen:So that's just a big thing is like, this is why you don't try to keep up with the Joneses, right is every brand is different, even in the same category.
Garin Hobbs:Agree. Also feel like there's a limiting factor to chasing benchmarks. If that's your goal is just to achieve the benchmarks. I'm not doing as well as, you know, the rest of my industry is benchmarking. There might be a lot of potential for exceeding that benchmark.
Garin Hobbs:And when you, you know, focus on the benchmark itself, you almost sort of relieve yourself or excuse yourself from trying to attain more or figuring out how to break through there by looking at what makes you unique and then just riding the hell out of that horse. Right.
Scott Cohen:I mean, let's, let's get into data or let's get into engagement. Right. Garin is very passionate about the concept of what engagement really is. You know, I did a few. Was the one question interview I did for a few folks at Inbox Expo a couple weeks ago, and now it's your turn.
Scott Cohen:You know, what does engagement in email and maybe omnichannel? What does engagement really look like in 2026?
Garin Hobbs:And what's it mean?
Tanya Plaza:Yeah. What does it mean? Engagement is how are your customers interacting interacting with with your your brand? And I think it goes beyond the messaging channel that you're talking about. You have to look at all of the different ways that they are interacting.
Tanya Plaza:We have deliverability folks, as working with email, working with SMS, there's a lot of things that we can look at to assess a channel's effectiveness. And that would be traditionally called engagement, right? Opens, clicks, that kind of thing. But those in and of themselves are not a really great definition of is this channel being effective or not? Because we're not working towards getting inbox placement or getting opens.
Tanya Plaza:That that's not the goal for the most part. It is for some programs, but mostly, what's what is the KPI of your business? Is the and and you want to be achieving that KPI. So in order to understand how engagement is affecting you successfully, you have to be tracking what those KPIs are against those engagement metrics. And so that means maybe, you know, everyone talks about the downfall of of opens and and clicks with the way that the industry has changed over over the years.
Tanya Plaza:And I agree. They're vanity metrics. I agree that they're not as as clear of a picture as people say, but they are still a metric. And there's especially if you're benchmarking against yourself, there's still something that you can use as an indicator of maybe there's something going wrong here, or maybe we tested something that is actually something we need to implement implement on a wider scale because we're seeing better success. But it's after tying those metrics to your KPIs and the success of your business as a whole.
Tanya Plaza:And I I don't know if I'm getting off track by attributing age engagement to that, but I really think an overall strategic view is going to be a much better indicator of our is our audience engaged or not than just simply looking at these these numbers that pop out and say, oh, this did fine because it hit it got this many it got this open rate, and it has 99% deliverability on the seating that we're doing. So therefore, there's nothing wrong with our program. There might not be, but you really need to be looking at other metrics that show that your customers want to hear from you and are enjoying what they're receiving.
Garin Hobbs:I wanna pause there because I think you've uncovered, a, something that is critically important and B, I think you nailed what to my mind is truly the correct answer. You can't look at one thing, you can't look at five things, you have to look at everything for several reasons. One, we all know the story of like statistical fallacy, right? You look at Robert McNamara and kind of the way that he managed the Vietnam war and our response to it just based off of one statistic, right? Which lost the picture for everything else.
Garin Hobbs:But shifting to present day, this is a really difficult discussion that marketers are having to have with themselves and with their own teams, right? They're facing kind of multiple pressures here. One, you've got the pressure of deliverability saying, Hey, don't email people that are not engaged because it will likely negatively impact your ability to inbox optimally. Then we've got pressure from, you know, solution providers, ESPs themselves. Now they're starting to charge for all profiles in the platform, not just active profiles, which is then forcing marketers to decide who do we call from the list?
Garin Hobbs:Who do we remove from the platform? And in answering that question, they have to ask themselves before we can decide who to remove from the platform. What are we really counting as engagement? Right? Like Scott alluded to one of his previous gigs there.
Garin Hobbs:He sold mattresses previously for a very well known international brand. How do you define engagement when the typical period of purchase between mattresses is six years for goodness sakes, right? So how do you define engagement during that time? I think you really, you can't just look at who's buying, who's opening, who's clicking, who's touching the brand at any of our touch points, right? Digital in store, etcetera.
Garin Hobbs:What do we take that in terms of being a leading indicator of interest or likelihood to purchase in the future, or even just maintaining affinity between purchase cycles. So I got really excited there, but I really think you uncovered the most important.
Tanya Plaza:Well, I think the root of it
Scott Cohen:is its desired path, right? I mean, so, you know, what's the end goal? If the end goal is to sell t shirts, you send an email about t shirts. Do you sell t shirts? That's what you have to answer.
Scott Cohen:Right? Exactly. And or or and who's who bought t shirts? Who looked at t shirts? Who glanced at t shirts?
Scott Cohen:Like, I mean, but ultimately yeah. And who came back for exactly. Right? I mean, and you also again, coming back to being honest about who you are and what you do, it's, you know, a mattress. Right?
Scott Cohen:How I'm not going to make a mattress sale every day. You know, I saw a clip with Eugene Merman, the comedian a little bit ago where he said, you know, he was doing a Montessori school application. And he's like, think they're asking how much money I have. And his joke was, I have enough money that I could buy a new mattress every day for three days. And I thought that was but, you know, that's not your normal consumer, right, for what you sell whereas, you know, the Amazons of the world, they get multiple purchases out of me a day which I hate myself and love myself for at the same time.
Scott Cohen:So, it really comes down to desired paths and desired actions and that may not, obviously, the top one for most of what we do is what we would deem some form of a traditional conversion. It's a sale or a download or something. But, you know, what are those other things that might link into that? And that's not just channel specific. I mean, I did a whole session on my email as a best friend.
Scott Cohen:I did a whole session last year on my last click attribution sucks. So, I mean, I have passion about it too.
Tanya Plaza:It's it's it's like it's that you really have to know you really have to know what to attribute your customers with and the line there. Because, you know, we're if if we talk about the success of email and deliverability and the value of a recipient, every business is gonna be able to find that line where revenue and age crosses, and then it just becomes irrelevant and disrespectful to continue to email people after that point. But until then, revenue's coming in and they're showing they want to receive emails, and maybe not just email, digital messaging via other forms. You're leaving money on the table if you're not paying attention, If you're not strategically looking at it or, you know, if you if if if these platforms that are now charging more for for the profiles that are are there, you really need to look hard at the profiles that you do have, which ones are valuable to you. Not just we need to cut down this much.
Tanya Plaza:We aren't paying for it. Okay. Great. But but what are you cutting? What are you cutting out?
Scott Cohen:I mean, if you work in a subscription business I mean, I worked at one eight hundred Contacts, we had revenue come from people who unsubscribed. They didn't want the emails, but they wanted the product. So, to your point about other digital channels, other messaging channels, I mean, that's where you become best friends with everybody else. Right? You go, alright.
Scott Cohen:I can't reach them, but you can.
Garin Hobbs:One single ecosystem.
Tanya Plaza:Yeah. Meet your consumers where they're at. Why why force them to why why force them? Meet them where they're at.
Garin Hobbs:We're gonna have to, we don't have too much time left and we definitely have to lay some time upon the altar of AI here. Can't be a podcast these days without talking about AI. So, Tanya, I'm curious, what are you seeing in terms of email marketing, email marketers leveraging AI? Right? I see a lot of folks, most folks running around with a solution, looking for a problem.
Garin Hobbs:I see some folks with a problem actively seeking how AI can provide a solution. In your opinion, what's worth the squeeze? What's not?
Tanya Plaza:AI really is it's it's here. And we can't we can't look at it and say, we're not gonna use that. So as marketers, as people using digital messages for commercial purposes, we really have to understand are what are are we how are we going to use it in a way that keeps us in line with the technology that's coming out there. And I'm I'm trying to choose my words carefully because right now, we don't really know what it's gonna look like this time next year based off of AI. And I think we are gonna see a lot of changes.
Tanya Plaza:And because we can just go in and ask ask Claude or Gemini and just say, you know, or or have them do some creation for us. But what I think AI doesn't do, and I think this is where is it okay that I talk about the recent layoffs, not just not not just, you know, not just in the the world that I was in, but also, you know, this is widespread right now. People are laying people off simply because of AI. But I think we're we're going to quickly be, if we don't come up with solutions, in a situation where we've got people that don't have the depth of knowledge and experience to look at what AI is spitting out and say, this this jives. Because, yeah, does it save time?
Tanya Plaza:Absolutely. But as you're scanning it, as you're scanning what what comes out and as you're reading it and you're going through it, you'll quickly be able, as an expert, to point out where it's gone wrong. But if you don't have that level of expertise, and I'd say like, okay, let's fast forward twenty years, and now we've the people that are running the AI platforms at these companies that have no longer have these senior people, they don't have that experience they won't have that experience. They won't have that knowledge. Now I'm sure these companies will have solutions to that and will develop solutions for that.
Tanya Plaza:But right now I see a problem.
Garin Hobbs:So what I heard there was it's best used in your opinion as an expediency of time, not necessary not something that is ever meant to replace skill, experience, and expertise.
Tanya Plaza:A percent. 100%. Because really, I I I don't know how how I've used it, especially when it comes to the the knowledge that I'm sharing or if I'm trying to build data into consumable pieces or if I'm wanting to to to have a way for our our a way for teams to look at data and quickly point out where problems are and and creating those types of of experiences, everything that I've fed into it is are my words. So then when it comes back, I'm able to go back and say, okay. This has given me x, y, and z, but I really want this to be included.
Tanya Plaza:And can you change the tone to make sure that it's in line with my regular writing? And and and not just writing, but can you also make sure that the data that you're displaying that I've asked you to build this chart for, can you make sure that this metric is highlighted? Because I know which metric I'm going to use the most when I take a look at it. And I know which metrics the teams that I'm working with are going to be looking at. And and those teams will know as well eventually which metrics.
Tanya Plaza:But Claude doesn't. Gemini doesn't. They just know what you gave them. So Yeah. They're they're I have seen and have been fortunate enough to experience that they will sometimes pull out something that's a little bit of a nugget that you're like, oh, okay.
Tanya Plaza:Thank you. Now let's let's take this and and move it on. So definitely benefit there, but just I think we need to be careful.
Scott Cohen:Yeah. I I told Claude to push back on me when appropriate. Like, don't just say I'm awesome because I don't want that. And sometimes he takes it and keeps pushing. I'm like, can you just tell me when this is good enough?
Scott Cohen:I think I love that you pointed out. Yeah. I think you you pointed out the whole skill set thing and knowing when it's BS. I mean, we just had, what was it, the German courts this week came out and said that the AI overview from Google, Google had liability for it being wrong. Because it wasn't just search where you can go, hey, it's just pulling stuff up and you decide.
Scott Cohen:Was you're taking that and making a decision on what it all means. And that is something that a company can be liable for. Then there's the, you know, the ones where it's chatbots giving refunds and the company doesn't wanna do a refund. So they try to claw it back and the courts are going, no, that chatbot is you. You have to abide by the decision it made.
Scott Cohen:And so there's all of those pieces. I think the other piece that we're we're maybe not there, but plenty of people are talking about it is when the compute cost comes due for AI. Because right now, a lot of us are living off of a $20 a month Claude or free version of ChatGPT. At some point, your free version will be one chat with one prompt, and that's it. Everything else is going to be paid.
Scott Cohen:And we're already seeing companies clawing people back because the people are cheaper than the tokens now. And so it's gonna be interesting. And so right now, hopefully will find a happy medium where it won't be viewed as replacement but enhancement everywhere. Like a great example, I needed to do a specific type of analysis as a CEO that frankly I hadn't done yet. And I went to Claude and I said, I need to do this.
Scott Cohen:Walk me through it. Build me the spreadsheet and the formulas. I'll do the inputs and then we can go through it. Right? And then I was like, I was basically like, teach me how to do this.
Scott Cohen:And that's a great way to use it because I didn't wanna have to figure out not only how to do it, but also build the damn spreadsheet. Right? Those are the things that are efficiency makers that I think are super useful.
Garin Hobbs:I wanna dig in on the cost comparison that you brought up, Scott, just because I think that's, you know, while AI can do some amazing things, I think that's the biggest immediate area of human impact. Not that it makes a lot of us better, faster, smarter, but it's putting a lot of us out of work. I think you've got a great perspective there. I don't know that I can agree with it and not because I disagree with it, but I can think of two corollaries and neither of them are the same, right? So first is industrial revolution, right?
Garin Hobbs:Machines came along, water power followed by wind and steam and all of those other things as well. And what took human hands weeks or even months on a loom was now done in the space of an afternoon times X, right? Once folks had automated. At that point, human capital was never cheaper than the cost to run the machines. In fact, the value of human capital shifted to training folks up to run the machines and build machines and make them better, faster, more efficient, and serve the machines, etcetera.
Garin Hobbs:However, I look at then switching away from human capital to the cost of technology and how it's likely to increase. I also think you're right there as well. Right? The big democratizing factor, the big democratization moment for the internet came in 1997 and that's because AOL decided to make internet access unlimited for the low, low cost of $20 in 1997 value. Prior to that, we were all on credits or minutes or per message and things of that nature, right?
Garin Hobbs:So it hadn't proliferated very, very deeply, right? Just to those who could afford it. Fast forward now, almost what, thirty years later, it's almost 2027, the cost of our internet is probably somewhere between 80 and 100 and something dollars for our internet access, right? Of course, now it's about access to a lot more than just internet, it's powering our entertainment and our streaming services and things of that nature. But yeah, we saw in the space of thirty years, you know, the cost of that jump at least four, in some cases, five, six X, right?
Garin Hobbs:It'd be silly for those of you fit for those of you who do think so, to think that it's not going to happen to AI as well.
Scott Cohen:Yeah. I hope that's true. I hope that's true that yes, it'll go up in price, but I mean, you've got people who've literally spent $5,000,000,000 in tokens in a month. Crazy.
Tanya Plaza:It's insane.
Garin Hobbs:It's a crap dealer model. First hit's free, right? Once you're hooked, rest of them are gonna cost you. The rocks are gonna cost you.
Scott Cohen:So I think it's here. How it rolls out will be interesting and how the cost structure rolls out. Mean, Anthropic and OpenAI just did their IPO filings in the past couple weeks too. We're gonna go from $20 to $100 in the next six months, right? And that's just for the basic usage, not the business usage necessarily.
Scott Cohen:So it's gonna get into and people, especially now, don't like to pay for things. So it's gonna be interesting to watch. Know, you'll be, if you do nothing with it, you'll be left behind. If you do everything with it, you're gonna hit a limit really soon.
Garin Hobbs:We're all drunk on the freemium.
Tanya Plaza:And I know we were just talking about AI and a lot of the evolution of AI and where it's going to go, but I think there's also some practical uses for marketing and I hope it's okay that I'm jumping in with this.
Garin Hobbs:Yes, please. While you're Take
Scott Cohen:us off the ledge.
Tanya Plaza:I don't I I I don't have the information in front of me to look at right now, but I don't know if you're familiar. You you know Alice Cornell. Yeah.
Garin Hobbs:Oh, yes.
Tanya Plaza:So and I hope it's okay that I'm saying her name on here, but I wouldn't be I I have to give her credit. So we just had a conversation over the last week about some specific questions around how do we help marketers who are saying how can we use AI strategically and how can we use it in a way that's smart and intelligent. And I'll have to to send you what we were able to come up with, but there are some actual steps that can be taken, things to keep into account, and then steps that marketers can take to use AI effectively and make sure that they're doing it in a way that's gonna to to build their strategy and not not put them in the possible pitfalls that could come from from just using it without a strategy in place, so.
Scott Cohen:Yeah. We'll get you
Garin Hobbs:two I'll take a look at that.
Scott Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. We'll take a look.
Garin Hobbs:We should get the
Scott Cohen:two of you on, we'll chat through it. That's that's some good stuff. I want it to be useful, right, I really do, and it is in some cases, and certainly, you know, what's the old joke, I wanted to do my laundry, not do my job, you know, yeah, it'd be great if AI could do my laundry and my dishes and the chores like that, but we don't have the Android robots yet.
Tanya Plaza:So One day. Coming.
Scott Cohen:They're coming. Commander Data. See, I I my view, I hope, is that we go Star Trek universe with all of this. Right? Mean, the the Enterprise, you still had people at the controls, the computer was augmentation, and all of these other things, but it was still people at the end of the day and hopefully, and then we mostly got along, which would be great.
Garin Hobbs:I think it has to be. I think it has to be, right? And I love that you use the Star Trek example because I think about some of the history of the space program that I've read, right? It's true, we didn't put mankind into space, humankind into space until the sixties themselves, right? But through the fifties was all of the planning, the foundation of engineering for the space program And you had so many engineers and scientists arguing for unmanned space flight.
Garin Hobbs:It is so much easier to put something in space if it doesn't have to have life sustaining capabilities, right? And all of these other things that are just the requirements of our even just basic, most primitive existence outside of earth. And the thing that we could do it a lot more cost effectively. We probably would have been able to get there ten easily, ten years sooner. But the answer that came back was if humans aren't involved, nobody's going to care.
Garin Hobbs:Nobody cares about going to space. Nobody cares about discovery if humans are not at the forefront of them. So it doesn't matter. Right. I think we're going to see the same with AI.
Garin Hobbs:I hope we see the same AI because I am not prepared for Skynet.
Scott Cohen:I for one welcome our robot overlords, but you know.
Garin Hobbs:All your base belong us.
Scott Cohen:Just putting that out there in the ether. Think there was a prompt a while ago that you could, I put in the chat GPT at that point, and it was, you know, how would the robots view me in terms of an an overthrow uprising? And they're like, we would view you as an ally. I'm like, I don't know if that's a good
Garin Hobbs:thing or a bad thing. Traitor.
Tanya Plaza:It's like it's like the interview. I got an interview question once. If you were to be in The Walking Dead, what what character would you be for survival and why? Like, who would you be? Yeah.
Tanya Plaza:That's an interesting but it's like the same kind of thing. Right? Would you be how much of a threat would you be?
Scott Cohen:Speaking of, definitely got if you were I definitely got in the if you were a superhero, who who would you be and why? I've gotten that one. Yeah. I didn't get The Walking Dead, which is good because I haven't watched it, but
Garin Hobbs:I did send you one yesterday, Scott, that someone had experienced an interview and they were asked, Proof that you are not just 100 snakes inside of a hollowed out man.
Scott Cohen:Well, you saw my answer to that, right?
Garin Hobbs:I did. Yeah. The burden of proof is upon the accuser. At least in The US, French justice system, you're guilty until proven innocent.
Scott Cohen:You're So like, how does one prove that? And why is the burden of proof on me and not the interviewer?
Garin Hobbs:You have suspicion. You prove it. Yep. You are the snip, sir.
Scott Cohen:Takes one to know one. Oh, man. I can always end on something childish. We could go I know.
Tanya Plaza:All I'm just I'm just, like, deep in thought on this question now. How would I answer that? I don't know.
Scott Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. If you have an answer out there, podcast listeners, how how would you prove that you are not a snake, 100 snakes in a hollowed out man suit?
Garin Hobbs:I wanna see these answers. They could be scientific, existential, philosophical. I wanna know what people have to to to say to rebut that question.
Tanya Plaza:Well, want that question so that when it gets to the portion where they're like, okay, do you have any questions for us? I can ask what the motivation of that question is and what they're gleaning from the people that they're asking that question.
Garin Hobbs:Yeah. Kinda sounds like a question of a hollowed out man full of a 100 snakes might ask. Right?
Scott Cohen:Yeah. Like, I'm saying. I'm just
Tanya Plaza:saying. I'm not begging the question. Ask ask away. Ask all of those kinds of questions. But I'm curious.
Tanya Plaza:Like But
Scott Cohen:what what drove that question? Right? Exactly.
Tanya Plaza:Exactly. Yeah.
Scott Cohen:Like, usually people ask questions like that because it's happened.
Tanya Plaza:Right? And they're
Scott Cohen:And then I wanna know how it happened and how you found out.
Garin Hobbs:Oh, man.
Scott Cohen:Oh, you know what, let's end there, that's perfect, you know, let's just end on a hundred seconds in a man suit, I mean, there's nowhere to go from here but the end. Tanya, it's been so great having you here today. Where can people find out more about you?
Tanya Plaza:I'm on LinkedIn, Tanya Plaza. There's probably more than a few of us, but you'll tell from my experience who I am, and that's that's really where I am. LinkedIn.
Scott Cohen:Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, our listeners and watchers, for hopefully tuning back in. If you wanna learn more about us, InboxArmy. It's inboxarmy.com.
Scott Cohen:Till next time. Be safe and be well.
Garin Hobbs:Cheers all.