A Conversation with Christopher Marriott, CEO of Email Connect
The Future of Email hosted Christopher Marriott, CEO of Email Connect, for a wide-ranging conversation about email. We covered ESPs, CDPs, and RFPs....real-time content, strategy, technology...pandemic, post-demic, music, keyboards and all things email.
Also, check out the terrific 'Email Geeks Drinking Coffee' channel for more insights from Chris and his guests..
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And I'm delighted finally to have as my guest today, Chris Marriott, who is the president and founder of Email Connect, Chris, welcome. It's so nice to get you live in one to one on this conversation.
Christopher Marriott
It's great to be here. And thank you for your patience with my postponement of this. So it is great to finally be here.
Matthew Dunn
You know, is it easier or harder, you know, pandemic, everyone working from whatever, to arrange stuff like this? It seems like logistics are harder than they used to be when everyone was in our office.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, I don't know. You know that. I mean, I think the biggest change for me has been My willingness to use video calls now and really,
Matthew Dunn
I still before
Christopher Marriott
Oh, I never did. I absolutely had never done a video I hated Skype. I know my company I for my company we used I can't even remember. But But you know, a file sharing web
Matthew Dunn
sharing Yeah, stuff like Yeah,
Christopher Marriott
but but without the didn't have any video capabilities but you know, a month into the pandemic and everyone working from home. You know, I dropped that account got a zoom account. And yeah, and now I'm very confident now It almost feels weird. And I know this is the future of email, not the future of video conferencing. Now. It almost feels weird to have just a phone conversation somebody
Matthew Dunn
interesting I was I was I was chatting with my, my, my sister. And she said, You know what, I still prefer phone calls. And I and I said, I actually I get that there's a there's distractions. And maybe that's if you know, someone that well, I'm, I meant to say though and and especially for people who are listening who don't, who don't get to watch this hand wave and make faces and stuff like that. I've had the privilege of seeing Chris live a few times at conferences, and while he's great on video, there's there's definitely, it's definitely a live thing. That's fantastic as well. Do you miss that?
Christopher Marriott
I do. I do. I that is, you know, because I've done some virtual conference presentations over the years, past years, you know, and got it. It's gonna be a couple coming up. But I mean, it's it's a cliche, but that doesn't mean it's not true. You connect with your audience, whether you're playing music, or whether you're speaking. Yeah, and you feed off that energy. And you just can't, you know, speaking to 100 disconnected people that are out. You know, it just, it just doesn't Yeah, I do miss it. That's one thing I will be most happy to get back to.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, get back to when you go back. And we'll get to we'll get to email one of these one of these names. But when you do you think you'll keep doing more video conferencing than you did before?
Christopher Marriott
Oh, yeah, I will never. I mean, one of the things I like about it is as I move my hands around on the video, there's nothing on my head. There's nothing in my hand. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so, you know, you know, I hold the phone now just seems very onerous. And even putting in an earpiece, you know, anytime somebody calls, and I'm scrambling to get the ear, either the Bluetooth in or the landline in, you know, half the time people have hung up before I do that. And and, you know, before I get that in and get everything set up, so that no, I think, I think, you know, video conferencing, is it for me at least is here for, for good. And again, I think it's a good thing I think people have gotten used to it. And, you know, it is nice to see who you're talking to. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yes, yes. Yeah. And again, you know, the EQ, the EQ definitely has a has has a whole bunch of additional stuff to work with when you see someone's face gestures expression and and stuff like that. The thing that I've noticed about phone calls is probably true before, it's more true now that video conferencing is so prevalent is when someone calls I'm with you holding it up to my ear just seems exhausting. By end up pacing around when I'm on the phone, because they don't have that, you know, I don't have that engagement channel of the face to face that they were getting on zoom and things like that.
Christopher Marriott
That's a great observation because because I'm sort of the same I when I went on the sell off, put the cell in my pocket and walk around right and you're right, you can't do that when you're on a video column. that lets you have a camera crew behind
Matthew Dunn
which which you know, back to the back to can't wait to get back on stage. I have to say the thing that I that irks me about video conferencing it's fine I've got my button on Herman Miller chair I'm all comfortable but it doesn't have the same energy as when you're standing on stage with a live audience and he I pace on stage but yeah, the the engagement is definitely different is sort of more focused in frontal and stuff like that. The shared physical reference in the room and stuff like that. Anyway, anyway, I'm sure you're rocking videoconference for I didn't mention it. I should have mentioned it upfront but Chris and his partner Paul have a fantastic and log mining podcast called email geeks drinking coffee, who's your latest guest on that by the way?
Christopher Marriott
Next week we have Tim Watson Oh terrific. touring the UK and we had Smith. I'm going to pronounce your last name correct.
Matthew Dunn
Samantha D che this I've got Samantha coming on in a week or two. Yay.
Christopher Marriott
There you go. I mean, she's she's a great guest and season. We and I love the love the pretense of seasons but they're less this season. In Season Five, we've been focusing on we kind of went back to our roots, because as you said, it's email geeks, it's actually email geeks at home drinking, monitoring, we have to change that eventually. But when everybody's back at work, but you know, we, early on in the, you know, you know, very quickly got a little bored of timeout email every week. And, and so we branched out and started to, you know, we talked to authors and, and people who created shows on Netflix and CEOs, and love that, and then we felt though, you know, this season, we said, we need to kind of return to our roots, because there is a particularly because there's not a, there's not a archive of email, historical knowledge. I mean, you and I have been in the business a while around the business a while, at least I have. And, you know, there's, there's such turnover, particularly on the brand side of people who are doing email marketing, that there's a whole, there's a whole bunch of, you know, knowledge about where we came from, as an industry. Yeah, that is retiring or, or, or moving on. And so we really, we call this season the founders series, nice. Because we really, and we sort of set to center ourselves, if, you know, we're not going to talk to anybody who hasn't been in email marketing, since before 2010. Because we wanted to get people's perspective on what's changed. And so at least we have, you know, in a small way, some archive of people, you know, we have Lauren McDonald, who's not even in email any longer. Right, and, but, you know, who, again, you know, who's one of the guys that have been around for ever? And, you know, so, you know, we feel good that we've been capturing some of those stories and, and perspectives on an industry that, you know, people who are just getting into it today, or who have gotten into in the past five years, even Hmm, you know, you have no idea of from what humble roots this industry rose?
Matthew Dunn
Well, you gave me the perfect, perfect segue there to ask about your path into email, in email marketing as an industry.
Christopher Marriott
That's an interesting story. And, you know, I always joke, you know, I, if anyone had ever told me that that's what I'm known for, at this point in my career. Yeah. I don't know whether I would cringe or just said, That's impossible. But I got into digital marketing very, very early in the 90s. And coming out of traditional advertising. And so I was addicted, you know, and it was doing website development and, and online advertising. And they ended up going to this company, that that had what it's called dynamic marketing environment was his product. And it was email two landing pages. Okay. What sort of the product, but they didn't think of that it wasn't until I left there and went to my next company, which was digital impact, that I realized it had been an ESP, but it wasn't calling itself an ESP, it was fine. It's, if and so they never went anywhere. I mean, that they, you know, they had a really big client in IBM, but none of us really knew how to, it was incredibly hard to sell. Because right email two landing page two dynamic marketing environment, you know, hadn't been sent over ESP, I think it would have been a tremendously successful company, because the technology was good. And it was, it was an on premise solution, which is why IBM loved it.
Matthew Dunn
I am Premier, let's, let's pick on that for a second, before we go, go continue to the chronology of your career, because because you said email plus landing page. And what strikes me is that we're still grappling with the interface between those two things now. Right? Like, that's, that's the key handoff point. It's what you want the traffic to do most of the time, etc, etc. And they're still mostly separate things. Your ESP, your marketing, cloud, your martec, whatever. One solution, your landing pages, website management, all that stuff. And another solution. You got this weird gulf between the two of them comments?
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, no, they This is interesting. And when you think back then I mean, we are talking in 2000, you know, 2000 2001 2002, you know, you have plaintext emails, so right. Yeah. You weren't there. They weren't pretty pictures weren't anything it was it looked like any other email, business email. Yeah. So until you got into a landing page, you don't really have the option to have any sizzle in it. And, and, and to your point, I mean, that was how another thing it didn't even occur to us that the email should do the selling and what occurred to us was the email should do the driving to the landing page selling Yeah, and yeah. You know, those funny and we, one of our clients was MasterCard. And, ya know, we have some very big again, IBM used that email platform well into the 2000s. Because again, They wanted, they wanted something on premise. And we built them an instance of it on premise. And, and it wasn't until they bought silverpop. Right here, kids at home, here's here's some history, they bought silver property around 2010. It wasn't until then that they actually allowed divisions to send email from, you know, from our software as a service solution. Wow, they were still I think, probably cranking out a lot of it on that thing we set up around 2002 2003. But, so MasterCard was one of our competitors. And so I mean, was one of our clients, somebody else, there was this company called Digital impact. I wasn't quite sure what they did any more than I was sure what we did at my company. But, so, so I'm looking at it. So I see an opportunity at a company cuz my brother agency guy started from advertising and I see an ad, or posting for a job to run the New York office of digital impact they have, we're expanding it. And they wanted and they were looking for sort of an agency mindset that, you know, they wanted people that, you know, with a service oriented approach that we're comfortable with creative comfortable with. So I said, that sounds really good. Oh, and that's a company that's been at MasterCard. That's been that's been taking business from us. Sounds like a good opportunity. So that's really that's the first time I actually took a job, right? No, he said, I'm doing email marketing. And okay. And and you know, then axiom bottom five months later,
Matthew Dunn
oh, that's how you that's how you landed. I knew you were an axiom. I wasn't sure what the path was to axiom. Okay.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, that was the first wave of consolidations mean that all the msps were buying espys you know, yeah, that was the time when, when Cheetah was bought by experience, Bigfoot was bought by epsilon heggs even bought somebody. Merkel bought somebody, Oh, wow. And axiom bought digital impact and infogroup. But yes, smell. And suddenly, all the top psps of the time, we're now part of these huge global companies, you know, database companies that no one ever heard of, outside of the industry, but right.
Hmm.
Matthew Dunn
Interesting. And an axiom that gets to be that's a big scale operation leads to what it was when you were there, for sure.
Christopher Marriott
Oh, I loved it. I loved working for Charles Morgan. I, I mean, I had some of the best years of my career were working working at axiom and I got some unbelievably great opportunities. And, you know, eventually, I, you know, I built their global agency services team, I helped them make acquisitions in Australia. For the email team, when I traveled the globe on their behalf, built out our office in Singapore, expanded into Poland for campaign production. So it was a great learning experience, it was a fantastic company back in the day, and, you know, some of the best people that and many of them are in the diaspora is, you know, many of the people that work with me and for me back then, yeah, are, are not an axiom, because unfortunately, they're there, they, they are out of email business now. But are still playing major roles in the email industry, at various companies around the globe. And so, you know, again, I have a lot of good memories about my time there.
Matthew Dunn
One of the things, one of these, it always strikes me about email, you know, emails in industry, which we're talking about is that everyone outside China, everyone uses their email, but the whole, the whole infrastructure and ecosystem of companies and services and providers involved in getting something, you know, in my inbox on a regular basis, it's just, it's, it's, it's like, it's landscape. If you don't do this for a living, it's like, yeah, it must be a machine somewhere doing that, and no idea how vast it is, and how complicated it is. Wow. And you got a chance to see that kind of around the world as you were saying it axiom.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah. And you're right. I mean, you know, the core companies, and then the, in the, in the environment, you know, the companies that are in the same space, do another things. I mean, email, you know, you know, I started saying this, about God, you know, that's when you realize how old you are. I started saying this about 12 years ago. That, that, you know, from my perspective, again, having been in the digital industry since the earliest days, I mean, you know, I built You know, when I when I worked for thinking new ideas back in the day run by Adam curry, among who was a guest on our podcast. The other day kids at home, Adam curry used to be an MTV vj. Yes, it is now what the pod father he's guy who invented podcasting, we wouldn't be here. Adam curry actually was the guy who really came up with the podcast concept. And the name pod even came from the the iPod that was the the the Apple device, so Get a little bit of podcasting history. Anyway, you know, when I was thinking ideas, we actually, you know, we were building the first websites, brands, like Heinz ever had, were Avon ever had. Yeah. And I mean, that's how far back, you know, I go. And what I really saw happening was an identified it's sort of like 2008 2009 was that, up until that time, a company's sort of digital universe revolved around its website. And, and everything sort of went to support the website, and, and that way, but I really thought that there was a shift around 2008 2009, where suddenly, actually, the email program became the center of the digital universe for companies. And the website just being one of the things one of the that supported email marketing, it was where you went, when you hit it, when you clicked on a link on an email, it was providing data back to the email or the ESP, to make you know, it's for, for making, uh, you know, custom emails, it was a source of massive data. And, and, you know, I still believe that, that, that email is, is the center of the digital universe for a lot of organizations, and or at least for the ones that are most successful that recognize that. Okay, it doesn't mean you can't have an email program without a website. But nor can you have a website, really, without an email program. If you think about it, any, you can't do that any longer. So, you know, we could argue all day, whether I was whether I was, you know, right or wrong about what's the center of the universe, but the importance of email, you know, to to digital marketing into marketing in general, Kant has consistently been underestimated, but can't agree really shouldn't be and can't be because
Matthew Dunn
it's the pillar, well, at least at least partial validation of your thesis. And it's really interesting. I didn't, I didn't realize the shift was that relatively late in 2008 2009, as you said, but if you're if you've got a company that's looking to acquire another company, the value put on their website, is a shadow of the value put on their email list. Usually, yeah,
Christopher Marriott
that's a great observation. I'm going to steal that. Yeah. Like gets great.
Matthew Dunn
Your written websites come and go. Because they're not they're not people, customers, prospects, relationships, it's just, you know, it's pages in technology, and evaluate email really is that, you know, is that relationship recognition did a mutual history that you're building up within a permission, right? I mean, and the big deal your
Christopher Marriott
email list is a is an asset that that towers over anything else, you've got your digital quiver? I mean, as you said, website, nobody's buying a company because they got a good looking website,
Matthew Dunn
the first thing you could do is throw it away as a matter of fact,
Christopher Marriott
exactly.
Matthew Dunn
Because you're gonna have to rebrand it to rebrand in a way and pages don't fit, and we don't talk about it that way and change the terms. Exactly. And I think that the number of times I've ridden company websites with you know, it's like, doesn't look the same. A website is a process. It's not a product on because there's never a good point.
Christopher Marriott
Right. It's sort of never ends. I mean, yeah, what's
Matthew Dunn
what's your put up a website? It's a work in progress. The jobs never done. Yeah, yeah. Completely never done. Now you've got a particular breadth in terms of view on this because in addition to being sort of inside the inside the base that axiom then you move on into the to the research space, correct after that,
Christopher Marriott
yeah. What about that a bit, David Daniels had been again historical here. He'd been really one of the first email analysts in in in you know, he had started at Jupiter, again, was way back Jupiter. I mean, I remember when the reports were delivered on paper, yes. And I three ring binders with Jupiter reports for God's sake. And, and David had been one of the early animals at Jupiter. And then they got bought by forester and he became sort of their email analyst guy, and you know, was the guy and and knew more about the landscape than anybody around by far. And axiom my boss there, Tim soother was put in a series of client events. And they had me as the inside guy giving this presentation to clients on my views of digital marketing. And, and they brought in David as the as sort of the outside speaker and and everyone knew David Daniels. So you know, he was he was a draw to clients that didn't know Chris maryada axiom. And so David and I got to know each other over several events. And so when I left axiom around 2011, I approached David and said, and he by that had started he left Forster and started a company called the relevancy group, which was a real boutique consultancy You analysts, but he worked with all the vendors, he was still working. There was there's probably not a vendor that of any any, you know, size that wasn't a client to his, you know, we like from A to Z, what do we say from from Adobe to zeta theta, and everybody in between, right? And, and I went to them and i and i said, i, because this idea been brewing in my mind, because I'd seen email, I'd seen the RFP process have steadily evolve, I was at axiom when the early days, it was like, you know, we're doing an RFP, because we think we're paying too much, and we hate our vendor. And and, you know, so my response was, you'll love my team, and I'll cut your cost. And that's how you win business. And over time, though, that that selection process became a little bit more complex, then can you cut my costs? And do you have a better team and the platform's became more complex, and the decision making process became harder and for brands to keep up with you again, you had new players coming in, like exact target and, and responses. So the market, the vendor landscape was expanding. And I just saw clients begin to really, it became impossible for them to sort of make an objective decision about which ESP to pick they were, it was luck, if they got the right one, just because they didn't have the tools to evaluate. Right. So I went to Dave and said, Listen, you know, you know more about platforms and than anybody on the planet. You know, right now, your business is really on the vendor side, you know, I think there's an opportunity here to create another side of your business, where we go to the, you know, where we offer brands, the opportunity to hire us, to help them run their RFPs a vendor selection consultancy, and, you know, help them we'll you know, give them the tools, I said, but we don't want to be forced or told who to pick, we want to be relevancy group that gives them the tools and the advice and the process so that they can come to the conclusion as to who would be the best partner for them.
Matthew Dunn
So in In contrast, let's say to a forester gardeners is trying to make an absolute determination of who goes in the upper right, and who goes in the middle, your job there is to say, like, Who's the upper right for your particular business and circumstances and program?
Christopher Marriott
Exactly, exactly that that's exactly right. I mean, we did. You know, we did our relevancy ring for a couple years where we were in kind of doing that, you got to do that, then we realize that we, you know, relevancy ranking, that was our Magic Quadrant. But we realize exactly that, that that there really isn't a best vendor There, there. If there's a best vendor for you, as for you ran, yeah. And then our process was designed to get to that point, and nice. And once we stopped in trying to stack rank the vendors ourselves, yeah, that that process really could blossom. Because, you know, if you bring in a forester i know i think works on some RFP processes. But if you hire a forester to give you advice in vendor selection, they have to recommend somebody who finished in their in their top category or otherwise, otherwise, there's the legitimising their entire process. So yeah, nobody with Forrester, you know, they're going to it, they're going to tell you to pick one of the top six, well, maybe one of the top six isn't the right one for you, but that's what you're going to be limited to. And maybe
Matthew Dunn
maybe there's a new guy who hasn't had time or frankly, the budget to get into the top six, which is not an expensive proposition especially Exactly. Exactly right. We could
Christopher Marriott
do a whole half hour on that, but
Matthew Dunn
don't get me wrong. I love Gartner's reports, although they don't cover the email space from what they never
Christopher Marriott
know, you know, back in the day, it was it was like Forrester was for marketers. Cmo and Gartner was the CTO. Yeah. And I still think that that's true to a large degree. Yeah, I
Matthew Dunn
think so. I think so as well. And I do. I do learn from I do learn from foresters, coverage in the, you know, email marketing sector when I get a chance to read it. So, so still value there. So it sounds like,
Christopher Marriott
go ahead. I don't mean to interrupt abruptly. But I mean, here's here's karma or Timing is everything. Or while Dave and I are discussing this, and he thinks it's a good idea, and we're talking about the logistics. He gets an email from Ryan Deutsch at Sears holdings, who says, we're going to do an RFP. Well, anybody who can assist us in it. Wow. And I knew Ryan very well, as well. Ryan and I were friends though. He didn't know that. I was talking to David about this. And it was like, Yeah, not only do we have a client, but it's Sears Kmart lands and all in one. We're doing a massive RFP. And that's what we kicked off the business. Oh, wow.
Matthew Dunn
Nice way to start, huh?
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, I mean, yeah, but it was. I mean, that's it. Timing, just you know, sometimes you just shake your head and go, how does it work out just so cleanly?
Matthew Dunn
Now, I mean RFP, that's it, that's a very particular kind of consultative expertise can use. I mean, what you what you've got, I think if he was the king of RFPs, to be blunt in this phase,
Christopher Marriott
yeah, like it's a niche, it's a niche. All right?
Matthew Dunn
Well, because you have to have you have to have knowledge, and the ability to learn on both sides of that equation, don't you?
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, we have to know, you have to know the vendors. Mm hmm. You know, inside and out. And, you know, fortunately, over the years, even when David and I split the company, on very good terms, um, you know, by then I had gotten to know the vendors as well. And I think, David, you know, for getting me into the vendor world, I wouldn't have my business today. Without David Daniels, you know, we're having worked with him over about five years of time, four years of time. Nice. But you also have to know how to run an RFP, right? I mean, you have to know, what are the steps that you need to take? How do you go from eight to four to two to one? Yeah, you also have to know how to negotiate a good deal, you have to know what you know, what what, you know, and that was one of the things when we started this, I never, you know, I thought the the the the benefit was, hey, RFPs are a lot of work. And sometimes you make the wrong decision. Let us come in, we'll we'll do you know, we have project managers, I'll run it for you. And we'll manage the you know, the, the, you know, the blocking and tackling of it will bring expertise, and we'll help you give you the tools to make sure that you make a very informed decision. But we also realized, or I realized, after, you know, a couple of years that we had seen probably more pricing information. Oh, right, then then a procurement person at any major brand sees in a career over here, you know, for email marketing, that we really had a bet, because we were there until the very bitter end, we not only got the pitch pricing, but we got the deal pricing, right. Yeah. And I realized them that, that, you know, we could guarantee brands the best possible pricing? Because not only did we know where the bottom was in terms of cost pricing? Yeah, the vendors knew we knew that. Yeah. So there was no, you don't have to do the dance. You know what? Yeah, and so over time, I really found that, you know, that the, the know you're getting the best price possible, when you work with us, was became a very part compelling part of our pitch. I mean, I have 10 years of data, we have we track I mean, I have an Excel guru, and we and we've just tracked all these different, you know, services costs, CPM cost, migration cost. Yeah. And it's really an interesting, you know, look at how pricing has evolved, both in terms of where it's decreased. But, but where vendors have gotten, you know, kg, you know, they you know, how they dealt with declining CPM is by adding new class that didn't exist before. Hmm,
Matthew Dunn
right. Right. And you said on a on a call, I think a couple of weeks ago that I happen to be on that, that straight CPM pricing is not necessarily the deciding factor these days.
Christopher Marriott
No, I mean, pricing, I think pricing in general why, you know, it is not a huge determining factor, most of the espys will kind of be in the same, at least in our RFPs. Because, again, I think they know, we know pricing. So, you know, we don't even look for price until we get to the Final Four, I tell our clients, Okay, interesting. Well, we're not going to do a cut down based solely on price, let's let's do the first cut down based on who best fits your requirements, you know, then we'll look at price. Okay. And, and so we look at price to when we get to the Final Four. And, you know, I think I said on the call, I mean, there hasn't been a single RFP we've managed where pricing was the driving factor. And of course, it's important, and we get, of course, we get our clients good pricing. But, you know, I have to hand it to our clients, they've they've most, you know, they've all made the decision based on what platform best met their needs, and trusted us to get them the pricing that that that they deserve. Right. And, you know, what, you know, it hasn't been successful. I'm not aware of any of our clients having moved platforms since now, going back, you know, eight, nine years, there still is one that changed platforms. And and I think that was because, you know, the typical new people came in and wanted to look around, but yeah, I was talking to a vendor president today. And we were talking about and I won't name about it, but he said, you might want to reach out to retailer XYZ. Because I hear they're doing an RFP and I said, Well Did they just do whatever And he said, Yeah, but three years ago, but apparently it didn't stick. And, you know, and he said to me, he said, you know, what you need to do is reach out to him and say, you're going to pick them the vendor for the next 10 years, not for the for, you know, not someone who's going to be, you know, for one contract cycle. And he, you know, and that was, you know, I said, Yeah, that's a, that's a great pitch, thank you. Really good, I thought about it. It's true. Again, our clients don't, don't regret their decision, because it's been an incredibly thoughtful process that they've done, all the way through to the fight in the sandbox. And, and, and so, you know, they really know they're picking the right partner. And, and again, they, in our cases, we've been lucky that they all have been very happy with their choices,
Matthew Dunn
you must have to force their force their hands, at least in many cases, to to actually be crisp about their, their own needs and requirements, not just vendor comparisons.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, well, and, you know, part of what we do is, you know, I say, we're not order takers, you know, we don't just go in and say, What do you want? Right? Because, again, I don't expect the brands to know, what they don't know. And, and, and, you know, what's changed in the marketplace? And what new features and functionality are available to them? So, you know, we try to tease out of them, you know, what if, what, if you could do this, what if you could do that, and brands, I mean, brands see the value in that, and then the way our process works without going into, into boring detail, is, you know, we'll, we'll set up the requirements, our RFPs are very simple Excel spreadsheet, requirements, lists and use cases, you know, they're not, you know, you know, colorful brochures, or, and we don't want colorful brochures from the vendors, either we say, No, you, anything you attach to this, we're not going to look at our clients are going to look at, but you know, we'll get those requirements, documents back, you know, 250 350. And then we lay each vendor response side by side, but the requirement and, you know, eight vendor responses side by side while and and our clients and we go through and score each and every requirement each and every vendor response and is a backbreaking Yes, isn't painful and tedious. Yes. But it's the only way you can compare vendors, and objective, because, you know, so many times they'll read one response. And then you'll read another vendors response. And even if it's, even if the RFP is written, well, you don't remember what that vendor said, compared to this vendor. Our process forces you to look at each and every vendor answer to each and every vendor requirement and score them not only how well they meet the requirement, but how well they do it against the other vendors. Right,
Matthew Dunn
right. So you really do end up comparing everyone on the same terms, which is no mean feat.
Christopher Marriott
And we'd Same thing with our pricing. I mean, we learned early on, when we we were driven crazy. By You know, when we ask vendors for pricing, they don't have different pricing shapes, and formats. And it was very, you know, opaque. Yeah, trying to figure out what what they cost, we said, you know, screw this, we, we created our own, you know, we call it the common pricing template, and we have every possible thing that we've seen vendors charge for well, and we say, put your pricing in here. And and, and then we lay those side by side by side. And you know, roll them up over three, or what it would look like over three years, two years, one year. And, and you know, vendors can toggle the number of FTF T dS they ftts ft ease they think they might need, because you know, we got we just say what are your hourly rates. I don't want to know how many hours you think the client needs, because nobody can know that at this point in pricing. Just tell me what your hourly rates are? For sure. And we'll toggle? Yeah, and we'll toggle the email volume. Right. But, you know, so our clients again, get a very good snapshot of them side by side. And you're really no excuse me, you know, they again, they can tell who's the most expensive who's the least expensive? And, you know, and we do that mainly at that point, even just to say if somebody so expensive that we ought to just drop out of the competition. Yeah. That's never happened. Usually it's the other way around. Somebody so cheap that we go Oh, are they trying to buy share?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, you got Yeah, you gotta watch that.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah. So on.
Matthew Dunn
Common pricing matrix, like, yeah, you said, sinus, a sinus infection. It's no fun on that. That's got to evolve as well. And wondering if you can talk to how you've seen how you've seen the space change in the period of time you've been, you've been doing this, like, what's what's been new, and what do you think? What do you think it's coming, that marketers are going to care about in terms of pricing or in terms of features and functionality, features functionality, doing the job?
Christopher Marriott
Well, you know, it's really interesting. I just did I did as you know, I did some research with the only influencers Oregon And, you know, it reaffirmed what I know, which is brands care about, you know, what it's like to use the platform itself. You know, they care about how easy it is how intuitive it is. But, you know, they, they don't want easy, they don't want cheap and cheerful. They want complex but easy. They want to be able to do, you know, complex reporting, and business analytics, and segmentation. But they want it to be easy to do. And, and and i don't blame them. I, of course, it might be easy to do. So there's a there's been a disconnect. And then there continues to be because vendors often tend to talk over the heads of the decision makers. Yeah. At the ESB is they, they, they tend to say the things that the CMO and CEO might might might be interested in. But they're not involved in any sort of ESP vendor selection process at any sort of enterprise company, they're not even near it. Right. And the things that matter to so the things that matter again to to the the day to day people who are making the decision. Again, there's no you know, all the all the things that vendors got really excited about what I you know, the example I always like to use is, you know, retargeting display retargeting of email openers, you know, we'll drop a cookie. And then when we show up on the web, we'll give a display ad vendors were so excited about that i brands couldn't have cared less about that. Because in their minds, if somebody opens an email, and I want to retarget them, I'll be targeted with another email, why would I take my budget? Put it into display advertising? That's another team. Yeah. And, you know, that's just one example of how vendors, again, overshoot their target. And so your question was, what do I see coming down the road? I see, you know, you know, improvements in, in, you know, one of the things one of the other evolutions I've seen in the course of working RFPs is, you know, 10 years ago, nine years ago, 10 years ago, we were talking to the email team, and the mobile team was a different team, and the social team was was a different team. Okay, and, and now, once the apps became a big thing, the mobile teams were like, SMS, Nope, that's too boring. Here's your email team, you guys need to do out, you know, you take care of that. Yeah. And so what I've seen is, is that email marketers, and we still, I brands still think of them as DSPs, I still think of them as DSPs. Vendors run from that label for reasons I don't quite understand. Other than they want to talk over the email people, even though it's still email. But what I've seen is the email teams have become, you know, really the masters of all sort of outbound communication, one, one communications or one to many communication. So they're doing email, they're doing SMS, they're doing push to mobile. And so what what what they're looking for these days, are making that, you know, they'd like all those things to be native in the platform. You know, if they can avoid having a third party integration for some of that, yeah, they like that. You want one interface to set up campaigns and want one interface for reporting. And again, these are bread, butter things, but they're not available on every platform, and they're things that
Matthew Dunn
brands want. Interesting. And and I'm assuming that, that they'd like that to be coherent, when it comes down to this customer, this customer, you should know, what you've sent me and what you've sent, Chris. Right. In terms of communication, don't give me you know, 50 different buckets to try to figure that out. So that I can continue to be more effective at that communication.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, I mean, yeah, and yeah, they, again, they want to write they want to meet, they want it easy to do the right message to the right person at the right time. And that's a cliche, but but that's, that's what they're looking for. They're not saying, you know, I'm not hearing a lot of Gosh, if we could only do this thing that no ESP can do. They're not saying that they're there. It's, it's making them more effective at what they know they shouldn't be doing and need to be doing it. Are those DSPs that deliver that are the DSPs that are winning these days? Oh, interesting. Okay,
Matthew Dunn
okay. So it's, it's, its ease of use, but not just in the surface sense. It's in a prolonged No, I'm gonna live with this. I'm gonna live with this set of capabilities and tools to do my job over over X number of years. So it's really got to fit that as well as possible.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, I want a future proof. You know, what an ESP the future? Yeah. So part of that it means so that the cool stuff that does come up down the road, I know my ESP is going to be investing and and have make that available, and that I'm not on a platform where that's been stopped three years ago when they got acquired by this company. We won't mention any names we will mention any names. No, no, no, we won't mention any names, but well We can mention one name, which is bronto. Because Yeah, I was gonna
Matthew Dunn
ask you about that. Yeah,
Christopher Marriott
we got clients on bronto that this week learned, and I don't know when this is going to air, but this week, being the first week of March, learn that Oracle is going to sunset the platform in a year, in a year. And, you know, they either have to migrate to an Oracle's enterprise platform and Broncos mid market or lower mid market. And so they have the choice, you know, Oracle said, you can either migrate to our enterprise platform responses, or or guess we'll
Matthew Dunn
have to go elsewhere or get elsewhere. Yeah.
Christopher Marriott
You know, that's a direct result. I mean, you know, bronto, sort of came along with the ROB brown got bought by NetSuite back in couldn't tell you what year but and and Oracle acquired NetSuite and brownfields sort of came along for the ride. And what happened is that Broncos investment stop that day. Yeah. And that was four or five years ago when that acquisition was made. And, you know, unfortunately, now the bronto customers are learning, you know, what happens? Often, not every time often when a platform gets acquired. And
Matthew Dunn
quite if it's acquired by a big company with a whole lot of other irons in the fire, those other irons being more profitable, they're likely to ignore it.
Christopher Marriott
No, that's a great point. I mean, right, that the bronto revenue stream had to be almost imperceptible to Oracle, Oracle, you know, to the management, Oracle and the CFO. I mean, you know, whether that whether that's there or disappeared tomorrow, you know, it's not something that's going to, you know, be hugely noticeable to the company and certainly isn't going to panic Wall Street. Because it just isn't enough revenue for a company like Oracle. Yeah, yeah, care
Matthew Dunn
that much about, and, you know, cost of keeping alive anybody by by contrast, and you touched on on this when you mentioned Laura McDonald earlier, but by contrast, you you've seen acquisitions where it either it doesn't work, or it looks like it'll be better on its own again, so IBM had acquired silverpop, and then turned around and about a decade later, correct. And said, you're out on your own is acoustic by sia.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, great. And, you know, you have you have silverpop clients where literally, you know, have have had, where silverpop, they were with silverpop, then with IBM, now that with acoustic and and, you know, okay, I don't want to single anybody out. So I won't, but I will say, and this is something that I've, I've written about extensively. And and so it's not new news to people who does one or two people read what I, what goes on what I post online, is that none of these acquisitions and mergers ever have really, the customers benefit behind it, they they're not done, and the customers rarely do end up benefit the people, whoever's on the platform, they really benefit from these acquisitions. And oftentimes, it's the exact opposite things get worse for them. And, and so, you know, you have to you have to look at it and say, Well, why are these companies doing this? Well, there's, you know, and it all comes down to the fact that martex really hot. And your point, there's a there's a boatload, you know, a boatload of money. You know, a former boss of mine, at one point said, you know, Chris, you really ought to get into ad tech. Now, he will email martec. I'm glad I didn't lad, you. Did. You know who you are. If you're listening, you know who you are. You got to agree. I was right. Because I didn't agree with you then. And, you know, there's martec is hugely for some reason we've discussed like you said, your list is an asset. You know, it's permission based marketing. Yeah, ad tech was completely dependent. On violating What are becoming the new privacy law norms. And yeah, ad tech, the entire ad tech industry is is on the verge of collapse and Google this week, again, not sure when this is airing first week of March announced that, you know, when when they stopped doing third party cookies, they're not replacing it with anything else that would basically they're not gonna they don't want any any of that type of targeting done throughout their ecosystem.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Which I actually did. I don't know if you've read it yet. I did a ridiculous long post for for Oh II on the blog about, about apples shift away from the idfa identifier, or sorry, the requirement for apps to ask permission and then about Google's impending change in terms of cookie handling. And what really strikes me about that, and then we're getting way the heck out of off email, but I'll bring you back yackin Google can afford to do that. Small ad, small ad network x is their host, you shut down the third party cookies on on Chrome and then They just they just lost their ability to be accurate. Google's got so darn much data, that they think their announcements, they think they'll be able to be accurate enough to be better, without violating that, that that sense of privacy and that one to one thing that the third party cookies enabled, right? Is his his email, his email and permission going to rise in value in the face of these changes in the ad tech space?
Christopher Marriott
I think in perceived value, I mean, I don't think and maybe we'll get more budget. I mean, it should, but I mean, it's, it's, it's so valuable. Now, there is a lot of headroom for email to to go up. In terms of in terms of, of the value it's delivering to brands, you know, that that do it well. But I you know, in reality, your question was sort of sort of, you know, will will money go from AD tech to CRM and and Absolutely, absolutely. And, and I think brands will chase, and I think brands should be chasing? You know, I said this well, you know, I wrote this, I don't know, a year or two ago, but I said, you know, email subscribers have a funny way of becoming customers. ranch. drivers. Yeah, yeah, ranch should be chasing email subscribers, because now you have permission to market to them. And they're gonna buy stuff. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And they're gonna, and they're gonna stick around, even if they don't buy stuff this month. You continue to be interesting, relevant, and stay in touch with them that you know what, hey, three months from now? Yeah, I did want to and you're the guy think of that that slot in their head is very, very, very hard to earn. Yeah, yeah. And and one of the few ways One of the best ways to earn is probably email. I'm just curious what your reaction is, though, because it does strike me as I've as I've talked to lots and lots of folks in the email space, that the value and valuation of an email list and email programs up here. And at the same time, it always seems like the guys doing that work, are overworked, under gunned under budgeted on low status. Like, it's, it's a funny conundrum, to me, that, that they seem like the guy shoveling coal down in the Titanic, they're certainly not up on the deck. Comment?
Christopher Marriott
I think it depends on the company. I mean, you know, we've worked with a lot of major brands, and the email team is is, you know, respected and has a big a lot of influence the organization, and those are the ones that are successful with email, you know, I think the problem that brands more is, you know, emails, marketing is a stepping stone up the marketing ladder in an organization. And so people, you know, we tend and on the vendor side to, to, you know, I mean, we've been around for a long time, and we know what's going on. And we know, you know, what, what, you know, the ABCs of email marketing, I think the challenge is that brands are constantly recycling those people. And that's part of the reason why, and that may be, you know, something that brands need to rethink and say, you know, it, maybe it's not a stepping stone, but it's a it's an end goal, you know, yeah, you know, everybody wants to everybody wants to produce TV commercials, everybody wants to do that, you know, that kind of stuff. But what's bringing in the bacon, it might be the email marketing. So yeah, you know, maybe some brands need to do rethink, at least, you know, how they cycle people so quickly through their email marketing?
Matthew Dunn
Well, it's also and I think it's part of the nature of the the complexity of the skill set required, but email marketing is not, engineering is not board certified surgery is not it's it's very nebulous as a job and career track in terms of what you need to know, and what you need to be able to do. People fall backwards into it, they learn it. And then as you said, many of them move on. Certainly, certainly a sector that suffers from too much gray hair, and not enough youth. But it's also where do I go from here? Because it's really clear track. If you don't want to be pounding out, you know, hitting the send button, so to speak, at 11 o'clock at night, where do you go from here? And the answer seems to be exit don't do it anymore. All too often. move up
Christopher Marriott
the ladder to towards perceived as more higher value marketing.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right.
Christopher Marriott
And, and, you know, yeah, and I think that, you know, and but I think he said something, right, I mean, I still think email marketing, the lack of respect that gets his his results, and as you say, a lot of people falling backward into it. I mean, I don't know how many people graduate from college. Say, I want to be an email mark. Yeah, you know, I just, you know, there are probably some god bless you and you're welcome. We want you in the industry, particularly if you want to be an email mark. But yeah, a lot of people just sort of end up there because it's the job they got. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And it's also it's also a job with a mix of requirement for a mix of communication skills, organization skills and technical skills that aren't necessarily it's not necessarily an easy mix to find your people. Right? Have it may end up in the job. But it's tough to go and head hunt for someone who's got that that diversity, I think, of skill sets and mindsets.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, one of the things that made x my axion team so strong, and it was a great, great team. And in fact, when seda bought axiom impact team, that was, you know, the remnants of my team. And so some of those people are still are now helping zeta and are still rock stars. But what what I found very early on was, you know, we hired people right out of school, that was a days where it was still in full service where brands didn't really use the tools they sent over the assets. Okay, and the ESP PS, program them, cut them up, put them into the platform did did all the targeting. Yeah. And we had two roles, one role. That was very technical, they had to know HTML. Yeah. And another role that was more technical than I was even, which had to be able to at least use is highly complex tool, and able to, you know, do the segmentation and the targeting, and the pulling the reports and that sort of thing. The people who came up from that, the people that came up through our organization into the higher level client service roles. were, were on average, way stronger than people we would hire in from outside who hadn't grown up with a tool. And part of the reason is, you know, to your point, I mean, they knew what tools could do, they knew what possibilities were. And, and they'd learned enough about email marketing that they could also advise clients, because as you moved up in my service organization, you weren't using the tool anymore. But you know, the smart ones were still using the tool they could pull, they could do a segmentation in a in a pinch or
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. One and they understood how it was done. Doing it, which is a that's a very big deal. Yeah, you if you're managing a set of folks, you say do x and you don't know how X has ever done it, you're not gonna make the right ask all the time.
Christopher Marriott
You know, and it's it. I hadn't thought of this before. But you know, part of what the industry now is missing is the tools have gotten supply for as I've gotten so self service. But the people that I used to hire at axiom to work the tool that became great client service and email strategist as they moved up. They don't exist at the vendor side anymore, because vendor vendors aren't hiring people to run the tools on behalf of their clients. The people that used to come work at axiom are now going to work at brands instead, they're using the tools and as you and I've been saying, for the last few minutes
Matthew Dunn
feels like they're only
Christopher Marriott
doing it for a couple of years now. Their loss. Yeah, another loss email marketing. And you know, that's probably too bad. That is too bad.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, it man it Yeah, but it also it also is what it is, it is what it is. Hey, you know, it'll, that that may be one of the things that takes a shift as as we revisit the adtech martech privacy balance over the next couple of years. If you can get someone who's fantastic at managing that incredible asset that we talked about early on your email list. You want to keep them back you want to keep them doing that if you can reward them promote them whatever it takes to keep them doing that. I'm watching the clock because I've already monopolized almost double the amount of time I asked you to provide but do you mind doing a speed round with me? Because Sure, I think I may have stolen this from you from from from you guys. Might have because
Christopher Marriott
we have what we call the lightning round lightning round right?
Matthew Dunn
It's different Okay, here you go. Dogs cats both or neither.
Christopher Marriott
Dogs. Oh, there you go. Okay,
Matthew Dunn
Naima name a favorite place.
Christopher Marriott
Fairhope Alabama
Matthew Dunn
Alabama never been there. Okay lunch with any real person living or dead who
Christopher Marriott
I know it's a speed round I gotta go. Oh my gosh. You
Matthew Dunn
someone more interesting than that.
I couldn't I mean, I
Christopher Marriott
I mean, I guess.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, dead guy who for lunch?
Christopher Marriott
Winston Churchill.
Matthew Dunn
Ooh, like that choice. Like
Christopher Marriott
do you like to imbibe so it would be it would be a you know boozy lunch, which we do, you know,
Matthew Dunn
the bios of him. Wow. Like he was quite fascinating guy. Not the nicest man in the world at all times. But Holy mackerel. What an eloquent command of the language my word.
Christopher Marriott
And, you know, he, I mean, you know, he was he. He saw what was coming both with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union Miss He did. Yeah, yeah. Better than anybody else. And years and years ahead. Yeah. People if the people have listened to him, you know, sooner sooner rather than later, we could have maybe avoided a lot of pain. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Hey, parting question. And then we'll continue to after I hang up on everybody here. I understand. You're a musician.
Christopher Marriott
Yeah, but I haven't I yeah, I am, I was a music major, in fact, in college, and history, double major. And, you know, played in bands, you know, weekend bar bands, you know, almost my entire post college life up until, unfortunately, well, not Unfortunately, when I got remarried. 10 years ago, moved to Chicago, I broke up my last band. And I haven't gotten a new one together here in Chicago. And I probably don't have the time anymore. And frankly, as I was telling somebody recently, the I you know, if I were in a band, or if I were to start a band now, I want to be a band that started playing at seven and ended at 10. Setting up at 10 at night, yeah, wait until one. And then take it because I'm the keyboard player. I'm a keyboard player. And I had three people. I mean, it was it was exhausted after playing for three hours and then having to tear out down all the equipment. So but yes, I have a piano player and I still love it. I still play but just not in a band.
Matthew Dunn
There you go. Well, thanks. I was glad to add that one at the end. I'm going to wrap this up. My guest wants to begin, once again has been Chris Marriott, president and founder of email Connect, Chris, thanks so much for making the time fascinating conversation.
Christopher Marriott
I really enjoyed that. Thanks a lot of time