A Conversation with Nely & Andrew Bonar of EmailExpert

With over 35 years combined experience in the email world, power couple Nely & Andrew Bonar connect marketers and vendors worldwide with their business EmailExpert.

Host Matthew Dunn sat down with the couple to talk email, global business and more. Email Expert was caught on the 'jagged edge' of the start of the COVID pandemic. The InboxExpo live conference was all set for March 2020. Nely and Andrew made the brave and far-sighted call to switch to a virtual event on 1 weeks' notice. (As an attendee: it was still a FANTASTIC event!)

Inbox Expo is returning as a hybrid live+virtual event in Dec 2021. Visit InboxExpo.com for details.

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the Future of Email Marketing and my guests, guests, plural, Andrew Bonar, and Nely Bonar of email expert. I'm so happy to finally get the two of you on screen talking to me from Spain. If I'm not mistaken. Yes, absolutely. Welcome. Um, you guys collectively together run run a global enterprise called email expert orient people tell people a bit about email expert.

[00:00:39] We were asked to come up with a description a couple of days ago. Um, I suppose we're a community, if that 5,000 or so, you know, that's members either as a spring membership, either through one of the professional groups. So we have some niche professional groups on places like LinkedIn and also on our own internal slack channels.

[00:01:03] Um, so that cross, you know, the engineers, the designers, the developers, the market says and same as yeah, there's about 5,004 up across all of the groups. Um, why did he might expect, stop, honestly, handle the hot we went? Um, I wasn't trying to yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the Diana email or anything, or, or try and yeah, it was, it wasn't for purely altruistic reasons.

[00:01:27] It was trying to establish my position in the space some 15 or years ago. I'm trying to share some of my knowledge, give myself a platform to try and find clients work partnerships. The associates novice. And it went really, really well for me. And I ended up being put by smart focus and campaign one or another as a result of that or over that was a big driver for it.

[00:01:53] Um, and then he came along and said, well, you know, you've built the platform and you're not really using it as much as we could. And we could allow others to do exactly what you've done, or it should be a launch pad for other people to be able to establish this space and give other people a platform and a voice.

[00:02:11] Um, and so yeah, we do that through community events. We do email me ups. We do the actual in-person conferences and the hybrid events. Yeah. And also. Through trying to publish yeah, occasionally we do market reports and do some research run some surveys through Google and other third parties and stuff and trying to pull that information together.

[00:02:34] And yeah, w we'll do that kind of work with other ESPs and other people in the space. Um, but yeah, really enjoying it. And it's been three years with Nely in charge pushing me to still be the voice, but then he's been in charge of yeah, we've done some amazing things. So 13 years stagnating under my leadership and two years of just doing a mental amount of things and, and really you know, to another level.

[00:03:05] And I have to say yeah, I've got the spin on the Nelly's leadership and, you know, yeah. Right. This isn't what she wants. Um, it has a lot of drive and it's like, yeah, now's not the time to rest standard. Let's get on and do w we, we, we need to talk about you know, reinvention of the conference, business, post a pandemic.

[00:03:25] But before we do that, I did wanna, I did want to hit that hit the personal side of a little bit between the two of you, something like eight languages you speak. I mean, Nelly, you're like five or six languages yourself. Right? We speak mostly English. Um, every day I speak three languages. I speak Spanish now, English everyday.

[00:03:50] We speak presenter and work and Russian, because my family is

[00:04:01] yeah, I speak Russian, Spanish and English. And now that we. Having this conference in, well, now I speak in Spanish. Yeah. Wow. Well, and then Andrew air Arabic on top of that for you. Yeah, well many yeah, as soon as basically 45, the three languages, she's perfectly happy to have pretty much any kind of conversation in.

[00:04:24] Um, but I also know that she'll I have to pick up conversation in German and Dutch and Turkish and

[00:04:35] um, crucify Arabic badly. Um, but I will follow the conversation Spanish. I struggle. I've not picked up as quickly as maybe has some mostly English my French lost. Um, but yeah, English and I'm a little bit nervous. Um, I I've, I'm guilty of being like way too many Americans. You know, English and not much else.

[00:05:01] Well, British people tend to speak English and foul. Um, those are the two languages and I listen music as a second language, but that's about it. So my family are all, multi-lingual not nearly what you guys are, but I'm, I'm the, I'm the laggard. So I just, I have a lot of respect for it. It must be such an enable enabler for the global business YouTube run.

[00:05:25] It helps certainly helps having nearly 70 helped us open up markets that I couldn't have from Yeah, I don't, I'm not, I don't find that language is easy. So I know Arab because that was my first language until I was like five or six and then interesting. Um, and until we need to sort out the English, because you can't speak it and then get into remedial class, probably when I was about 10, because my English was so forth.

[00:05:58] Yeah. Spanish really has come. If we'd chosen to live in Barcelona or anywhere else, I probably would have gotten away with being here five years without speaking Spanish. But we live in a nice little medieval town, which is quite rural. Um, and yet you don't want to find very many people would speak English.

[00:06:16] So you'd better learn to speak Spanish pretty quick, smart, at least enough to find your way around with otherwise you can be a little bit lonely and you had moved to said medieval rural town just shortly before everything started getting locked down. Yeah. Yeah. So we were probably there for about 10 months a year, just in time to start making friends stop being implied.

[00:06:45] So Spanish people at least in my experience are a little rested, invited into their homes. Initially,

[00:06:57] once I start coming in, you know, you're in, and we're just at that point where we're being invited to people's houses and being invited to the, the back garden and, you know, come to the, you know, with us for the weekend and stuff. And then we went into lockdown and we're just now trying to re-establish those relationships Spanish has suffered, obviously, because we're having those personal conversations.

[00:07:19] Yeah. Yeah, it's been really, it's been really fun. It was it wasn't the worst place to be locked down. So, you know, because you know, you had the two kilometer restriction or what have you, and we're right by the mountain site within two kilometers, we're actually in what was considered not municipal space, I suppose.

[00:07:40] So therefore you were allowed to wander a little bit more Adams. We're able to do like walks up the mountain and just get some fresh air. There was actually a time period of time when I didn't left house at all and it was very like, it was very sad. And recently I visited my family in Russia and I realized that.

[00:08:09] How in buttoned is specialized and beans people. So yeah, that's, that's love dance is pretty hard and heavy on people that, yeah, it's a it's. I mean, it was almost, I almost a double locked down in some sense for you guys, having just landed there. My my family, my family, the kids, my wife and I moved to the south of France in 2010, for six months in a small medieval village.

[00:08:41] So I've got at least a little feel for, for what that must've been like. So like you make lifelong friends, but you're not going to make them over. It tends to be the pace of things, right? Yeah. And you had an add, add language, a mutual language challenges on top of that. And it gets even more complicated, but no, no, nothing, nothing like nothing like actually being there.

[00:09:05] Um, we need to check it out. We stayed with the house failure. Um, and I told him I love this and I think we're going to be settling here for quite some time. And he just like knocked it off. Um, I think it took him probably about 18 months from start taking seriously. And now he sees us post rock downs, sit down and buying you drinks.

[00:09:25] I can't believe it. You were actually serious when you said you fell in love with the place and we're like, yeah. And he's like, they only took you a week. It was like, how long does it take for you to feel something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, take that, take that and segue to, to, to a bit of a business conversation because we're, we're in this, I think of it as a marvelous.

[00:09:45] Where you can do something like I sleep, don't go to a medieval village and live there and run a global enterprise. And you know, the two of you are doing it. Wow. Right. Yeah. Um, probably wouldn't have been everything's changing. Um, and I think we can use this opportunity for when I don't like the phrase middle back.

[00:10:07] Um, a lot of the hype that's around it, but, you know, as individuals, we can seize opportunities and then try and make the best of our horrible situation. That, and the fact that it's all positive can come from this. I mean, I've already seen it. That's what events and you know, the, the, the normalization of family He walks in during the presentation.

[00:10:33] you know destroying the idea. Everyone loves it. Nobody's judging and saying, oh, how, how know that speakers in the professional, because they have a child in their life. Um, and I, I think I'd like to see that spillover it's into real world events. I think we're ready for some real change. So the event that we have coming up in December, we said, group, please bring your wife, your wife, your husband, your partner, your significant other, whoever it is, it's a safe space.

[00:11:01] And by all means, you know, if you want to bring family as well and younger ones, or there's, some people were talking about bringing, we were 18 year olds or what have you. So there's going to be lots of extracurricular activities where everything's going to be for everyone. Um, but certainly everyone's welcome.

[00:11:18] And people are just so used to working with the family family around the idea of, you know, oh, I'm going to go away for a week and enjoy this amazing conference and this amazing location and leave my family behind they left. Um, you, that it's been working so well at home anyway. Um, you know, and, and would you, you, would you be able to subsidize it?

[00:11:38] Would you be able to, and I was like, absolutely. I mean, you know, coming in and sitting in that. Keynote presentations, but we've got an expo space. We've got a breakout area, we've got all of the, you know, the extracurricular stuff. And again, they're absolutely welcome to come along and let's see how we can do things differently.

[00:11:54] And, you know, people want to make connections at these events. And you know what I have making a connection you know, your partner is, is found something in common with somebody else's partner playing with each other, or what have you. Then that's, what's going to make some real lifelong relationships.

[00:12:11] And the professional staff will come on it as well. So we're excited to experiment in the space. And I think because of everything that's happening, we can get away with running a few of these little experiments and see what works and what people yeah. Really take to, well, I mean, it's a bit of a, it's, it's a bit inside baseball that, to talk about this, but you know, both of you a long time in the email industry and I'm, I'm newer to this space, but I have to say it's, it's the most collegiate.

[00:12:43] Well, many tech industries that I've worked in far and away, the most collegial, inviting some mutually supportive and so on. And if that's a model for, as you said, the personalization of business giddy up. Great. What a, what a, what a terrific change. The, the cold impersonal get on a plane, you know, fly someplace, spend days flying someplace for one hour meeting.

[00:13:07] I'm glad that's gone. The complete disconnect is you said about, oh, I'll go meet these people and work with them for years. And they don't know if I have a wife or kids or, you know, or a dog or whatever else, like, could we, could we could we reinvent this? And I think we'll all benefit much more.

[00:13:24] Relationship-based the regional atmospheric email meaning being. So warm and supportive of each other and open to experiment and ideas. I think it would, I wouldn't try and run this experiment if I wasn't doing a FinTech conference, let's say, but I certainly think, you know, if it works in email and that spreads to the other events, you know, so many wonderful events and email, and I'm sure lots from are coming back next year.

[00:13:52] If more of them start taking this on board. And I think, you know, if it works, then other industries will stop looking at no, I'm good. I'm going back. I'm, I'm, I'm running the real backwards a little bit, but as I recall, you guys had a conference scheduled that got stomped on by pandemic lockdown by a matter of just a month or two, is that correct?

[00:14:16] A week a week. That's right. And you, and I remember I was, I said relatively new to the industry, but I had signed. W four for the virtual side of the conference. Cause I, there was no way for me to, to, to travel at the time. Um, and then all of a sudden snap, the whole thing is virtual and you guys pulled it off and that was, I was just going gun.

[00:14:38] That was the impressive cause. And it was a great event.

[00:14:45] Yeah, it was, we were incredibly lucky, as you said, we would really plan to do a hybrid. Ready, set that up. Um, admittedly, we had south the idea of hybrid being a physical stage 25 speakers on that stage and during camp. A fair bit to do over four days. Um, but we can't take credit for that. I mean, there was 30 maybe 40 speakers, we know 80.

[00:15:11] Okay. Including panelists. So there was 80 people. Um, and I think 78, maybe 77 of them tyrants that. Okay. So what do we need to do? We need to test our webcams. We need to do these technical tests in the next 24 hours. Um, and everyone pulled out all the stops. Um, you know, turned around, said what we were expecting to travel and now we're not traveling.

[00:15:31] So instead of flying, when we do these tech tests with you, try and make this work and yeah, with the help of the platform Shannon had to hop in and everything really, really well. Um, and we were really yeah, really surprised at how, how well it went because yeah, we were. In a state off I would say shock.

[00:15:52] So the contracts we signed, the contracts paid the invoices. Um, we had invested everything in it. Um, You know, three days before the event officially hadn't been declared a pandemic in the UK. Um, Nely was the one who turned around and said, sell speakers not to come. I don't care if the UK is declaring a pandemic or not five or six other countries have.

[00:16:18] Um, and at this point I don't want to be responsible for a a average spot, a hotspot for I mean, I don't even know what you're talking about at this point, then what are you talking about? Us being a COVID out breaking she's more, more on 80 people from around

[00:16:39] how they work stressful. It, so it's very stressful because he done you take responsibilities and you also try to follow so many news. So many niggas try to understand what is right thing to do. But when we talk now, it's Organizing hybrid event and it's it is different, I think because it's fast.

[00:17:05] And we got vaccinated if I don't know, it's very, I think it's all up to person. Right? So if you, if you, oh, I lost my

[00:17:27] but there's an appetite. There's an appetite for coming in person. I mean, the first, the first sort of re-emerging event you guys did in Miami, if I recall, right. Um, like 6, 5, 6 months. Yeah, you had it. You had a, you had a ton of people go, Hey, hop on a plane to Miami. Right. Because it's so many people are now friends and colleagues were there and we couldn't go because of restrictions.

[00:17:56] It's all open. So be helped. Yeah. Now we hope it will be in Valencia. Yeah. Bless, bless, bless. Um, the, probably immigration in the United States that basically said I'm organizing a conference in the U S is not an essential reason to travel to the U S this whole thing could be done remotely. Couldn't it?

[00:18:15] So that's how we have to do it. Um, and we definitely wanted to brand our own hometown where we were going to be on top of absolutely everything, which is where we spoke to. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's relatively easy for people who aren't in the conference business to forget that it is a business, but I have a friend who's.

[00:18:38] It was a big wheel in the meeting industry as he called it. And he told me once one out of three people on a plane, this is probably 5, 6, 8 years ago. He said, one out of three people on an airplane are on their way to, or from a conference kind of event. He's like, this is actually a really big business when you start adding it up.

[00:18:59] And when you look at the role conferences and events play in, in businesses and industries, it's, it's, it's the linchpin of so many things. And so to have. Change on a dime. And then now to be re-inventing it, as, as the two of you are doing for the niches you work in it's a, it's a big deal. That's a really big deal.

[00:19:21] Yeah. We're trying the smell without a serious amount of her anxiety and stress things. What we, what we didn't know. Um, so now, I mean, it's only been, you know, there was the whole imposter syndrome for a good 12 months. It's only in the last few months where I could say no, I'm an event organizer and actually have conversations with other professionals for our event, faking this.

[00:19:46] I do this. Um, and I can share stuff in the dark and that's valuable to me. And I've been here since then years.Well, okay. So, you know no longer fail. There's the, yeah. The imposter syndrome happening. Um, but we're still new to it. I'm still learning every single event. We learn something new. Um, we thought Valencia was public for a million reasons and then found out a few key cities actually don't have direct flights note to self and feature check out the direct flights.

[00:20:14] Um, it's just little things like that that obviously can only be gained as a result of having the events and made mistakes and all the rest of it. Um, so yeah, it's, it's it's challenging, but, but really really enjoy the one thing I'd say that we didn't have when we joined. And now we're reading like industry papers and industry research and all the rest of it is the event organizers or conference organizers.

[00:20:39] Um, Right. The stress levels of different careers is actually just sitting below paramedic and some search engine stuff. Firefighters is definitely above us. Police are above us, especially

[00:20:59] the stress. Um, so yeah, I mean, we'd, we, we take it in our stride, I think on the most part generally done snaffle melt down and I think that's probably one of the keys to it. Um, and just being, yeah, just being prepared for. Almost everything's been going wrong at every moment in time, not showing that you're scared.

[00:21:20] And then, okay, we've got a plan B and a plan C for this. Let's just, just grin and bear it and roll with it. The show us the one. But yeah, I love it. It really feels like, you know, it's entertainment, it's art, it's creativity and also community to what we think. Um, so it's kind of feels like it makes you so one of our skills now, these skills, my skills, background and history and as long as people are enjoying it, we'll, we'll keep doing it as long as people keep supporting us because every event, every event that we put on can bankrupt us quite a bit to me.

[00:21:56] And Yeah, it's it's I think with with, with people support that we're like, okay, we pulled it off yet again. Now let's do another one and try and make it better and even more engaging. Yeah. Well, kudos, kudos to you. That is a, it's a high wire act and I'm not surprised to hear you say that th the, the stress meter is pegged because, you know, at the end of the day, you're really, you're really working with a collection of people and all of our vagaries and idiosyncrasies, and stupidities about decisions.

[00:22:30] You've got to, you've got to coordinate and pull it off. Anyway. I, yeah. And sometimes, sometimes. Get it right. Identity as much as I would like. So there's so much that for example, speakers, they bring so much. Um, and I really liked to spend more time with every single speaker and let them know, you know, absolutely how much I appreciate what.

[00:22:53] What they've done, what they've given with the pool to the conference, more than like a quick post on LinkedIn or Twitter, but when you're dealing with 130 speakers and there's only two of us is really hard. Um, so I'm really grateful for those speakers and panelists. Um, yeah, when I ping them on LinkedIn and realize how the last time I spoke to you was you're on stage in five minutes and I haven't spoken to you since, and now I'm reaching out again saying that.

[00:23:19] Would you like to be speaking? Uh yeah, always humbled by the fact that they're even willing to reply. Um, nevermind. Yeah. I can imagine myself 15 years ago, thinking a little bit, as you say, in Spain, tulip, and I would have been offended if some of the organizers hadn't. Being super lovely to me afterwards.

[00:23:43] And yeah, really, really bothered me up. And I'm so glad that, you know, people aren't as, as I was 15 years ago and I'm a much more humble. Um, but yeah, it feels like a 3d jigsaw puzzle all the time or cashflow or speakers or okay. We can't have these two speakers because they're going to clash. I don't want to say nothing to her or him.

[00:24:07] Um, I absolutely want them on stage, but had we do this and do it diplomatically. Um, and, and yeah, there's a fair bit of privacy cause we love all of us because we appreciate all of them. Um, but we also understand that there are yes, sometimes this conflicting interests and things through those. Right?

[00:24:28] Yup. Now that the, the experience that helps you make the 3d jigsaw puzzle work, I, I have to guess that that's mostly. In your two heads. That's a very hard thing to capture systematically. We, we hired three people last time to help us with stuff. Um, I mean more than three people, but three people specifically with, okay, let's try and like organize the speakers and the delegates and get information out.

[00:24:58] Um, they couldn't, and it wasn't their fault. I mean, they got paid for the work that they did. Um, but. Get it, when I went ahead and time for them to actually do anything and they want to take right now, we understand how you work next time, maybe we can be productive and maybe you could share this piece of information much earlier.

[00:25:18] And I didn't really think it was important. Um, that would have been really helpful and we could have done X, Y, and Zed. Right. Okay. What was you wanted them to do was take it because everything's in my head. Like we can't do the tech tests until, you know, Steve is a great that he's available for this access and then there's other people that haven't done it.

[00:25:37] Um, and you can't, I mean, we aren't the most we don't have a template, so we're not one of the big conference organizers that have done this for 20 years. So we don't have a template, but we work to we don't have any okay. Let's check boxes. We, we, we have an overall plan that is constantly in flux and constantly changing.

[00:25:58] Um, but we're not maybe as organized as people have been doing this for 30 years. So sympathy for those that go through this learning with us, I think the output something a little bit different and, and people you have to delegates like it. And I think it's just a bit different. It's just a bit different.

[00:26:19] It's not, I would hazard a guess that that the fact that you didn't have everything template it out will turn out to be an enormous advantage in this reinvention period. Because the template though, everyone was using three or four years ago, I happened to have a really, really close friend who, who had built a conference business.

[00:26:41] He had. About nine months before the pandemic hit. So like woo good for you. But watching him refine the model and, and, and how sort of notebook driven and process driven it all was, I thought that would have been tear it up and throw it away, honestly. And you don't have a tear it up and throw it away.Well, problem.

[00:27:01] You've got an opportunity to start systematizing what's between your ears and you know, adjust to the new times, right? We're not hybrid events. See if you agree with me hybrid events, aren't going to go away. Um, this is going to be people, you know, people are asking, people are prepared to pay for them.

[00:27:22] Um, I think. We didn't have hybrid defense earlier. Cause conference organizer was really worried that, well, no, one's going to, how to the event to take them, watch online through them. Um, and I definitely don't think it's true today. I think there are people that want to be there in person and turning around and saying, you can view it online.

[00:27:42] And there's, you know, some virtual networking opportunities and stuff. It's not going to be enough to satisfy the person that wants to be there. Um, and then there are others that cannot make it that once make it. And I think it's the right thing to do. It allows for you to provide more accessibility and not necessarily in terms of you knowWell, the audio or video accessible to people from disadvantaged backgrounds from other places.

[00:28:10] I mean, it's, it's all well and good organizing a conference in Atlanta, and I've invited people from east and west coast that those people in Europe would also really value from, from hearing from these people. Um, it's not right to our speakers that I think to limit the potential audience for the message that they want to deliver and says, you know, this isn't for broadcasting live.

[00:28:33] This is you know, this is my Tina got, I need to protect for the next six months because I'm delivering in a few other places. Um, then I feel our job is to try and get there. Presentation seen as widely as possible, but that that's, you know, our quid pro quo in this whole thing is, is making sure that we can get you as wide an audience as possible.

[00:28:55] And hybrid is a big part of that. Um, and people just expect it there. There's um, yeah, we're still, we're still finding, finding our way. You know, there's been a few interesting events doing some work fun stuff, different things. So, you know, we had the eventual, 3d wilds. Um, one of the vendors did another vendor did a great conference where there was a lot of green screen usage and stuff.

[00:29:24] So people are experimenting with the medium and coming up with different things in Cintas and see where that will go we're was keen to see, like how do we actually mesh more and truly make it hybrid? Um, so it brought some ideas for this event in Valencia. So we're hoping that we can take the hybrid.

[00:29:44] You know, the next level, we're going to be encouraging the delegates to have the app on their phone and be using it and interacting with them in the chat room in texts, we'll be broadcasting the chat room, the virtual chat room to the main stage so everyone can see everything that's being said.

[00:29:58] Speakers can see questions that are being posed by the virtual speakers. And then we're going to have we're going to be encouraging a networking session. Would it be. Awesome. I'm going to be using the iPads or what have you to be networking with people up there so that you actually have this hybrid experience, not just a we're alive and we're full customer online, and you guys online can also have, you know, your networking and, and you folks can meet with each other and do everything and watch everything.

[00:30:26] But you're kind of like separate you're you're this class B citizen. We want it to be making the experience hybrid for the people who are there as well, as opposed to it's a normal conference. And there are other people watching it from afar, and those are two completely separate groups, right? Because all of that informal connecting relationship, building knowledge, sharing, all that, all, all of the stuff that happens around the edges.

[00:30:54] That's actually the heart of a good conference. It's hard to pick up and make portable very hard. Yeah. So the I mean the, the five minutes or the four minute speed dating speed networking that we have would work with the people in person I'm really keen to just 20 minutes, we're going to be doing a speed dating.

[00:31:17] You might be matched with someone that's in the room. You might be matched with somebody that's

[00:31:23] a hundred people in the room and over a thousand people online your, a little bit silly to not try and take the opportunity of meeting those other people that are there online. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's going to be a wild time. So let's focus in on, on the upcoming event in box expo. It's happening.

[00:31:43] December 14th through the 16th and Valencia is a networking and orientation data or people coming from all over the world. So Japan, north America and Europe coming. So some of those people will want some help with phone cards, internet connections. How do I get to here near my, have you there's a few people that aren't using it as their winter, summer sun vacation.

[00:32:08] So they're coming out more than a few days, so they'll want help, but there'll be the networking reception VIP dinners and they're in Kenya in the afternoon. So lots of opportunity to get to know each other and get some networking done before the plenaries and the keynotes and the panels.

[00:32:30] Um, because. Yeah, people are really keen to, to get that done. And as much as they want to take away learning lessons from the presentations, they're also really keen to tap elbows and and start communicating with people again. And we'd like them to have that opportunity day one, before you even go into the session, it's like, get to know people, get to know the people that are there.

[00:32:54] Um, it should make it easier. What we've found at other conferences that we've attended day one, people, maybe aren't asking questions day two of the conference. There are some questions cause they've made contacts now and they're feeling a little bit more comfortable and confident. Interesting, confident before we even start.

[00:33:11] So, you know, you don't have to worry about putting up your hand. No, one's going to judge you. Um, everything's cool. Um, and then yeah, the, the format of the events, we've got two physical spaces, we've got the presentation, the life stage. Um, and then the second, second space that we're calling for one of the better ones that work the expo area.

[00:33:31] And it's not really an experience it's a coworking space because it's going to be lots of execs that need to catch up on their work. Um, so that's available all day upstairs. Um, and there's working group areas of people that are, there's going to be some really DT engineering type conversations happening.

[00:33:49] Yeah. And there's not presentation as such. It's just going to be more of an interactive thing. We need a whiteboard, we need a flip chart. We need to be able to work through some ideas. Interesting. And a lot of 'em over the 15th and 16th in the afternoon. And the name of the lots are extracurricular activities.

[00:34:07] Whether that's. Shopping seeing something cultural going. One of the art shows, there's a few really good art shows that are on. Um, and there's also on the 16th. The expert has pointed out. So the lens X to this couple of thousand Spanish high-tech startups, and we're going to do it like that. For those that are interested hire a couple of translators and a bus, take them down there for a couple of hours, like look around and see that some people are keen to just come through invokes expo in their head.

[00:34:42] Um, you know, a handful of cards and really good contacts and others are like, you know, it's getting the justification to come out from north America. I really need to come back with at least a hundred, 150 business cards do that. We can take you to the expo. There's 2000 people there. I can't guarantee the quality, whether you're talking Moffitt, but if you're in card collecting and we decided we can help facilitate that, but it should be interesting.

[00:35:08] It should be fun. Um, but it's Spanish language, so yeah. Translators will help. We'll let you know, there'll be lots of people in the stands that can speak English. Um, so yeah, w. Um, try and create a events as not just a conference, you know, minimum eight to 10 hours off keynotes and panels of the two days, six to eight hours of optional, you know breakout working groups or small panels panel meetings.

[00:35:40] There'll be breakfast seminars very niche. So depending on what your niche is, whether you're interested in email design or not if you're not interested in email design, maybe not worth your time, spending an hour with someone talking about how to do crazy wild, interactive things using just CSS.

[00:35:58] We really want to have. Multiple tracks running alongside each other, because the other thing is you know, one of the few events where you will find you know, senior people from big MBP, big mailbox providers, you know, you'll find engineers and others from management, common cost from Yahoo, from AOL, from, from a whole bunch of these providers, you will find them there, but you will also find CMOs head of CVP Eric's DRM from big brand sites.

[00:36:30] You generally tend to find at least four or five people from pretty much every email marketing vendor that you know there and present. And it's one of the few places, wherever it feels comfortable. Um, everyone knows, you know, you need to be respectful understanding that you may have an issue with this will work because of the volume of mail we're sending and maybe the quality of it, or what have you.

[00:36:53] I mean, you can have that discussion, but in a respectful way and vice versa and people fail when it's really safe. I think we're comfortable doing that. Um, we haven't had to shut down chat rooms or. Well, you know, bit, anyone out, we, we have taken people into private. It's not really how we like to, we're not really into how we like to conduct conversations here at inbox expo.

[00:37:16] Um, but everyone's been really, really receptive to that. And I think yeah, just being respectful of having those conversations is, is way back then people just being mad at each other for months without ever actually telling him, Hey, this is what the problem is. We weren't even doing that. We might be able to fix that.

[00:37:33] Um, and it's a lot easier to do it when you're, face-to-face even virtually on zoom. And you're actually having to look someone in the eye. Who's willing to say that this is what we got the issue with. Um, or, or this is what we think we should change. And some of those conversations do happen in the chat rooms and, you know, prefab really start building that out of out of relationship instead of out of uh, whatever agenda on email is, is, I mean, it's old enough pervasive technology and so many.

[00:38:03] So many nations you're inherently international, any any attendees from any attendees from your nation of origin deli, any Russian participation inbox, expert, and spring condition. I brought some Russian background from Russia.Well, some companies, sorry, I just get nervous. And then yes. So, yeah, and I, I do like all I like community and I liked that it's a lot of different people and they all together and they can talk and come up with something very, some solution and half with discussion.

[00:38:52] And it's. So far what I've been following I've been doing email expert blog. We have events section there, and yes, I've been looking for how, how, how that voice is gets. And unfortunately, it's it doesn't and I was random myself. Do people, for example, from physics stand, do they use emails? They have the same, like, can we find some speakers from that?

[00:39:24] And I was trying to find like, from some countries where you don't. I dunno where you don't usually hear, might wonder what they do, what they use, how doing business, because there is also money. There's also people. So yeah, they are our listeners as well. And you did a good job. I mean, you grew up you know, soldiers and a couple of other agencies like burger king and L'Oreal and I was in Russia.

[00:39:55] I also got a, we have one of our speaker. Um, he is actually. Working other projects when I used to, when we used to live in Australia and yeah, we've got the remember up and he's like, he's not email user. He doesn't like use them all in his Rob from British, no, from that outrageous network. And he's really brilliant.

[00:40:22] So he's a digital marketer who doesn't believe in email doesn't believe email works in the middle east. Um, and so that was a really good conversation where, you know, very respectful and just turning around and saying, email's dead though. Isn't it? And I think it was summer and a couple of hours, it's not dead.

[00:40:42] And by the end of it, he was like, okay, somebody can give us a call and let's talk about where email might fit into our radio network and how we do things in future. But yeah, he came on with a definite email's dead and there was no place for it in radio. By the end of the conversation. Well, maybe.

[00:41:01] Okay.

[00:41:05] You're looking for, to

[00:41:11] come in person. He's got great energy and yeah. And then he sets yes, sometimes inviting people from other regions might mean that they're not necessarily as hot on email as others, but definitely an interesting perspective and one with hearing and it's good to have debate. That's what I miss.

[00:41:32] Um, that's what I really miss at the events. And we want to see more of is more debate. So there was, I mean, going back 10 years ago, there was a lot of basic, you know, conferences. I think maybe some of them got a little bit too hairy or something, and organizers have moved away from debate and we have very nice panels where, you know, we make sure that people are aligned.

[00:41:50] Is it everybody agrees? Yeah. I would like to say it's boring. It's boring. Um, you know, friendly professional but disagreement, there's no reason why we can't. Yeah, because zoom is predictable. Like you have specific type how you in the zone and if it goes some you're like, oh, and then when in person you actually can have a conversation and laugh, and then it's kind of not like, and it'll be easiest to have disagreements with person than it is maybe.

[00:42:29] Um, well, or that one of the, one of the roles that zoom Google me to set, or one of the roles that video connecting over video has, has sort of popped up and filled during, during this readjustment and reinvention period of the pandemic. Is is a very agenda driven channel, right? Oh, Hey, let's, let's schedule a zoom call.

[00:42:56] Why? Because we're going to discuss this, this and this. Like, there's this agenda on the things. It's kind of what you're saying. And like, it's not, let's get on a zoom call. We have no idea what we're going to talk about. That rarely, rarely happens. So you don't end up with those, you know, those opportunities for mutual learning via contention and disagreement or agreement or whatever.

[00:43:19] It's always God, we've got to get through, you know, the agenda I'm on this call for this reason. You're on the call for that reason. Hopefully we'll get to there. You know, like I, I'm not saying that's bad, but it's not the same thing as that, as that opportunity to sorta knock against each other. And it's, it's hard to, it's hard to make this change.

[00:43:38] Do that job. I have noticed that the, that some of the informal conversations that happen repetitively, and I'm thinking specifically of of the only influencers Thursday call that Jean Jennings host in the email industry. Like there are enough people who are on there often enough where it turns into casual conversation, which has a whole richness, that agenda conversation doesn't have.

[00:44:03] So if you can bring, it sounds like you're really trying to engineer bringing that to inbox expo, which is wonderful. Over-engineering yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. Not an easy challenge either, but wonderful, nonetheless. Um, yeah. Wow. Good for you. We talked about email a bunch, but you're starting to connect the inbox to messaging and other forms a bit as well.

[00:44:28] I mean, we had a long talk when, when it came to naming and box X-bar, we had probably five, six other great names potential on the table. We went with inbox because you know, email is not dead and it's never dying. Um, but we do see the people responsible for it. Email becoming more and more increasingly responsible for the other messaging channels, whether it's mess bots or other things.

[00:44:58] And a lot of the. Security aspects. The engineering aspects will be similar after that. So yeah, in boxed and explode, we'll be evolving into a messaging and messaging conference. You have family with Emad at the heart of it, but come next year, we would not be averse to someone talking about how SMS and email worked together.

[00:45:20] Um, you know, omni-channel and the other opportunities are but for us in boxing, for me think post poster maybe never got published a book deleted shortly after it was published. Um, the call so much Rutgers at the time. I think I, you know, I said email isn't necessarily this pop three SMTP thing that we think about a mini email for me, email is any electronic message that I'm receiving as an email and.

[00:45:53] Um, yeah, it's an electronic mail message. Some are behind walled gardens. Some, you know, you have to be in WhatsApp to get these messages where you have to be on Facebook to get these messages, or, you know, we've got the one full, fantastic email, which is open and ubiquitous and everyone can use it and it's not all.

[00:46:10] Um, but there are also valid reasons for using those messaging systems in both gardens. Um, you know, and I think pretty much everyone pools that, you know, messenger inbox, their inbox. Yeah. Cool. Is anything different? Um, and so, yeah, so I really think messaging in general and an email one was be a big driver behind that.

[00:46:36] Um, and you know, there's other things happening in email that I haven't even got my head around. Um, but there are, you know, as the IOT, the internet of things starts becoming more and more of a reality emails being used an awful lot there. Um, no humans involved messages, you know, machines to machines, but you know, they using email or something very, very similar to, to pass those messages backwards and forwards.

[00:47:00] And yeah, all of those things are things I think we'd like to see in box expert embrace as time goes on. Yeah. Nice. I, I don't, I don't know if it'd be possible or not, and maybe not this go round, but at one of your future conferences uh, a conversation about privacy a conversation about the differences in how.

[00:47:25] Tackling privacy questions in, in different areas, different nation states and so on would, that would be a great hammers in tongues. Not everybody agrees conversation to tee up because it's, it's becoming a driver of a lot of things, a lot of changes. And I'm thinking obviously at the moment of apples to apples move that has forced change on, on the technology side of the industry, but we wouldn't, shouldn't let the, the larger digital monopolies make decisions carte blanche.

[00:48:02] Right. I, and I've had this conversation, I think I've ever had any influences or maybe one of you has paged meets ups. Um, but you know, I. Before apple is what they did. Um, and when hey.com came out and said, you know what we're doing? I said, it's awful. I was, we didn't address this. We kept saying it doesn't matter.

[00:48:29] And I'll rush it. It matters to people because you know, ask your mom if she knows that you can tell when someone opened. So somebody read the message. Now I didn't, I got to my spam because you know, that, that goes back to the person that sent you the spam. Hell no, I didn't know that. And definitely didn't want that to happen.

[00:48:49] We need to be able to be more transparent with the users about what we're doing with the data and the information and everything else. And, you know, and even then people were like, EA Andrew, bah, you know, it's, it's really, it's not nefarious. It's not a nefarious. I'm like, okay. So let's explain it. Um, and, and give you a good reason why you're doing it.

[00:49:09] But in most instances, I know we're collecting a bunch of data that we never use. Um, and that's kind of nefarious because it's, it's it's an attack that science, you know, there's a potential for somebody else to, to get that info. Um, and yeah, why do we store data that we don't need to have another conversation?

[00:49:28] I think with, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but I just, it's becoming unexpectedly, perhaps it's becoming the friction point for policy decisions. Like we're, we're saying, okay. 20 odd years of let's wire the world together and make it all digital. Okay. Hang on. Some things have gone too far. Now we need to start defining some boundaries and controls because because we need some shape to the world that we can, that we can manage and, and, and live in and feel like we've got some control over.

[00:50:07] Right. My, you know, my mom, my wife does, does not want to hear, I know when you open an email that bothers them.

[00:50:17] Rightly so.

[00:50:22] I remember working at big enterprise, we'll get an email and I'm the head of support there turned around and said, you know, why, why you never stressed? I mean, it was a huge enterprise walk across a lightning stretch. You go up to 40 people running support for a global enterprise. Everyone's always complaining that he has that campaigns not going out or stock codes, this or that.

[00:50:43] And you always just seem right there just by resent and then how'd you achieve it? And he's like, well, you know what I did before this? I was like, no, he was over. I was the head of the call center for. Um, emergency medical insurance. And then I was having calls with people. No, your child is not covered and we can't pay for this operation.

[00:51:05] And he's like, and that was life and death decisions. This is email the same thing. And so, yeah, there's no way I'm ever going to allow myself to feel the kind of emotion or stress or things that I dealt with when dealing with life or death decisions. There is no one dying because of email. And I remember, and that was shortly before Eric springing.

[00:51:24] As spring came up and we remember one of the one of the clients was like an NGO and they just like wrote as a, could you scrub absolutely everything. Um, every subscriber, every bit detail you have Rhapsody, everything were Rady scared that somebody might reach our systems, games. Yours is life and death.

[00:51:45] And it was like me, we're back to life and death scenarios. Are we dealing with email the assets and the same with the events? You know, Nelly's always like you, this is people's lives. This is how this is. So we try and be a little bit respectful and Capitol about how we do things and what we do and, and yeah.

[00:52:05] Realizing that maybe it isn't there is quite a serious, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite, quite, you know, as, as we move, as we move more and are more and more of our lives on. More and more of our lives are online. Right. So that's, that's vulnerable, that's risky, that's valuable. That's something we should protect and care about and all of those things.

[00:52:32] Yeah. Yeah. It's we're not done with this yet. Are we the, so reinvention moment, I'm going to be a big public conversation and tracking and yeah, whether it's zero party data at first. Um, and I don't know going to that, but I think, yeah, that's another discussion that would be good to have him. Um, you know, what is the difference?

[00:52:55] Is there a difference? Um, yeah, there's um, a lot of people sitting on the zero party data side of things and other people that right. Um, it would be good to have that chat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and to help frankly, that, to help people discuss these issues, how do I say this nicely? How people actually discuss these issues substantively rather than just showing off their knowledge of labels.

[00:53:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's lots of plus doing, yeah. Just wanting to yeah. Position yourself in a certain space. It doesn't add anything to the conversation and it doesn't help anyone. Um, and I think, you know, sometimes or certainly wiped to me sometimes just being humble and going back, I'm not a hundred percent sure.

[00:53:47] I don't know if this is the right way, but this is the way I think about things. This is the way I would approach it. Yeah. Well, there's like five different ways to crack this nut. And mine is the only one that has, you know, won me lots of business over the years and, and not, you know, being blinkered.

[00:54:01] Right. That is one way that we can do this and do it right. Well, actually I need to find out more about what your concerns are and what's driving your business and what, you know, what's the most important thing to you because yeah, I can't come to this bridge. You know, here's an on the fly notion for a future panel.

[00:54:22] It just occurred to me because, because of, because you, because you come from a, because you come from multiple countries, sort of Nelly nations are handling privacy and technical and digital issues differently enough where that in itself. And it's hard to keep track of, but, you know, having someone who's firmly on the side of here's how we're doing things in the EU, here's how we're doing things in the U S here's what we're doing things in Russia, because they're not the same.

[00:54:51] And the differences are becoming bigger and bigger. We're sort of fracturing into internets, plural, which is a big deal for the industries that, that, that we work in. And, and man, it'd be, it'd be fun to hear people defend or attack the different ways we're going about this. I mean, I hate to say it almost wants.

[00:55:12]Well, talking from the point of view of, of China, where it's much more draconian and state driven, but you know what paid big, got a point of view and a billion and a half people. Yeah, I, I would be interested. It would be interesting to also, you know, similar thing would be you know, the perceptions of what is good mail what's permission-based mail what's spam kinda as a perfect example is a great example of that.

[00:55:43] So, you know, one of the largest Wells, Roger suites, there's lots of gaps. So China to meet with three of the postmasters that there and you know, this is a huge reset. I, everyone knows everyone uses everyone spends money with them every month. Um, and, you know, ask anyone in. Or they spam us, they'll ask and be like, Nope, I stopped.

[00:56:03] They sent me suggestions all the rest of it and got one of the best email walking programs we've ever known. And you know, that, that some of the stuff that they do with abandoned carts is just amazing. I'm asked that same question too that, you know, the Chinese postmasters and what I, well, as big as Spanish, we know, and you come to that and they're like, well, we're not even customers and you send emails and you're like, whoa, we're doing not custom.

[00:56:27] Perfect client, Rebecca, what do you mean north customers? We don't send an email to anyone. Who's not customer. They buy one soft. You that counts as a customer. Um, yes, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. They had a need for something and they do this three times. Now the customer, the faces was just like, we've never looked at it like that.

[00:56:49] So those cultural differences would be really interesting. How can we take away from that? And I'll hold on a minute. Maybe we do not need to think about actually they're a casual purchaser and this person is actually a client. This person is a fan. Um, and I don't know how many, I mean, I know more sophisticated marketers are doing it.

[00:57:08] Um, but suddenly that was probably the first time, this massive retail. That's how I ran my actually let's start segmenting our customers and our customers. Um, and yet we need to be a lot more aggressive in Southeast Asia than we are in north America, because it's like three members, much bigger range in north America.

[00:57:29] Um, but yeah, again, you know, just turning around and showing his laptop language. That is my inbox for today. It doesn't look like your inbox. I've got 28 messages. Why a five. That would be, if you know the local brands, aren't sending everything on Weechat and only sending out once a month and use that to buy email, then you're going to of stick out like a sore thumb if you sending out every two or three days.

[00:57:55] Um, and the response has been, remember you, why are they hearing me? Um, and oh yeah, I did X, Y and Z X a month ago. I completely forgot. Um, I really don't consider myself a customer. I just so happen to have so yeah, I think th the, the. Try and really hot. I say trying really hard. I think it just naturally happens.

[00:58:18] You know, I'm not, I'm British, no foreign. Um, my hospital, I was born overseas and then he, again I was seasoned, so we've got quite an international network. We connect with people regardless of their background. So we tend to have quite diverse speakers, the panels and people Not necessarily by design.

[00:58:40] Um, so you know, where we need to, where we do hold ourselves in check is where we, you know, if we can think people, if we're comping speakers, any kind of benefits and stuff, then I held it, hold on a minute. Let's make sure that, you know, we're offering as many women. This opportunity is we are men. Let's make sure we're making, offering this opportunity to as many people that are new or what have you opened.

[00:59:00] This is Brian's backgrounds as we had lots of the others. Um, that's also a lot harder. I mean, I can offer free entry to somebody from north America at a senior position. And that's enough for them to go. Yeah, I'll pick up all the rest of the expenses. Um, but to be able to make that same offer to somebody.

[00:59:19] No in a, in a smaller location region, Romania, Hungary, Hungary, or what have you actually, you know, there's no way I could ever afford to pay for the tickets. Um, this point, maybe we need to look at this person finding an extra three or 400 euros to make this happen. Um, so that's why we, you know, try and put a bit of effort into into making sure it's diverse.

[00:59:44] Um, but as far as, you know, reaching out to speakers and stuff, we reached out to them for support let's say, and what they bring to the table. Um, if we suddenly look at the page and go, eh, what's happened here, we've just got eight white places. Um, eight white, old men sat on the page.Well, actually we need to go back and chase up.

[01:00:04] Um, you know, some of the others yeah, this is.Well, it's a different conversation for another time, I think. Um, yeah, it's sometimes it's hard to get the people that you really want to speak because they're moms, they're busy, they're running their careers, they're doing all of this stuff. And then asking them to take five days out to come to a conference.

[01:00:27] Are you completely out by running? Yes, I'm running a business enterprise and I'm also running the family enterprise equal amounts of time. And I don't say men aren't doing that. The Roman the are, but there's a lot more men that I turn around and go, oh yeah, I'll leave the family at home. I'm ready to go without thinking about it.

[01:00:50] Um, and it's not every month, but almost every woman I've ever spoken to Sandra and I'll need to go back and work out how this fits in with everything else that I've got on. Um, but yeah, just in privileged positions that can just go.

[01:01:12] Now welcome. We will be waiting for y'all. We will be streaming online, hopefully. Yeah. And that's another thing. I mean, if you literally, if you, I mean, we are priced to try and break, even, like I said, we just don't want to go bankrupt. But if you got four to come, if you can't afford to make it in passing the you know, couldn't afford the ticket or you want to join virtually, but you know, 60 bucks is too much.

[01:01:41] Um, as much as we think that's a really, really fair and reasonable price is too much for some people. And we accept that nobody is going to be talking to you, come, come in. Cause we call it for that is that's that that's a wonderful approach. And I'm looking at the clock, I've tied up an hour and a quarter for you guys.

[01:02:02] That's a, that's actually a wonderful, wonderful note to wrap up on I'm I'm looking forward to this. Um, I'm looking forward to this event and, and I'm, I'm so impressed that you're pulling it off as I think you said this morning, like last, last opportunity for a conference in 2021, you're going to pull it off in 2020.

[01:02:22] Yeah. Yeah, what's up. What's the what? Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, Nely. Thank you so much for your presentation. I really, really love it. And you were amazing most welcome. Most welcome. Yeah. Sub subjects that you're interested in are easy to talk about, right? That's it. Well, let's wrap on that and then we'll turn this into video and hopefully help more people know about inbox expo and the other things that that, that you guys pulled together.

[01:02:56] I think you're going to be very successful with this. I really do. It's uh, it's really impressive to watch radio. Cool. Well, my guests today have been Andrew Bonar, Nely Bonar on email expert in inbox expo.

[01:03:12]