A Conversation with Daniel Monte of The Snow Agency
Sometimes the field finds the person, which seems to be the case for Daniel Monte of The Snow Agency. After learning email marketing in-depth, Daniel jumped into his dream job leading & growing email marketing for a leading agency. We talk about music, email, SMS, innovation, real-time, brands, clients and the rush of making something work.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And my guest today from the opposite side of the country is Daniel Monti, head of SMS and email marketing at the snow agency. Danny, welcome. Well, hello, thank you. Well, again, thank you for giving me this opportunity. super glad to be here. Yeah. So fill people in a little bit just to orient them. And a lot of times just people listening on a podcast, sometimes they're watching our smiling faces on video, but fill us in a little bit on the snow agency just for context.
Daniel Monte
Yes, sir. So there's no agencies, a full service digital marketing agency, working with brands of all sizes and spectrum, from its infant size to brands that are generating over a million a month in revenue? And yeah, I mean, we offer the whole nine, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, we also have our own creative studio, and of course, email and SMS marketing. So yeah, an email that says SMS is your beat. But I'm delighted to hear about the studio as well, because that means you've got some reach to effect,
Matthew Dunn
the creative and email that not every place has.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so it's like super amazing. Honestly, the creative studio is relatively new. And yeah, it's it's an in house solution, where we're basically working with clients, one stop shop, where we provide them with assets, you know, we have our own, you know, photo studio, so everything goes out, we have videography, also have some nice, amazing shots, too. So shout out to Angel who's like, spearheading that. But yeah, our clients are like, super, super happy with the shots that they've been receiving so far. Oh, yeah. Fact, remind
Matthew Dunn
me when we're when we're done talking with this. We stopped recording on part of a panel discussion on Friday about video and email. And I'll just, I'll fill you in on when it is in case you're interested in attending. Because there's a whole there's a whole lot of opportunity there that almost nobody taps Yeah, how long for you aboard at this no agency.
Daniel Monte
So um, I've been with the company for about a year now. So um, my one? Yeah, so it Oh, my gosh, that was so interesting. So, um, the crazy thing is, you know, I currently have about seven years of email marketing experience. And they got me at a time where I wasn't really happy at my employer at that time, right? It was so much yellow tape, I came in with the mindset that I'm just going to go ahead and shake, shake things up, right. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at that job. And, you know, it was just really miserable. I wanted to do more. I wanted to innovate more, right. And so I remember being miserable, like, and sad. And you know, just really frustrated one weekend. And you know, I saved the house. One Sunday morning, and like, the next day, I received like a DM on LinkedIn, from Daniel snow. I'm like, What is this? So I read it, you know, he's telling me about this amazing opportunity to spearhead the email marketing department at this new agency. I'm like, Okay, that sounds that sounds interesting. So we had a phone conversation that led to another phone conversation, and without us even getting on video, you know, he went ahead and gave me an offer. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, we just really connected and so yeah, like it was, it's been honestly the most challenging, but exciting year. So I obviously there was no processes in place for email marketing. They gave me the free rein to create it as I saw fit. And so I'm literally like, creating and building a helicopter, as I'm flying it, you know, working with clients building out processes, hiring, making sure that the team is properly trained, while also scaling brands. So we started at zero and now we're at the point where we have over 30 13 million in revenue generated so our clients are happy. We're happy Dan and john, the founders are extremely happy. So yeah, no complaints here.
Unknown Speaker
I love it.
Unknown Speaker
I love it. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
All of that in a year, how long till you actually physically met someone from their life?
Daniel Monte
Oh, my gosh, it was actually like maybe two, three months after the fact. So yeah. The offer I think may like around May 12. I started working may 19. And then I saw Dan and john in July, July, I actually was like, hey, that, you know, how's it going?
Matthew Dunn
Who'd ever thought that that'd be kind of the, you know, at least part of the new reality, right?
Daniel Monte
Yeah. Yeah. And it was such you know, if you think about it's like, while you're building a team during the pandemic, like what the hell did I just get myself into?
Matthew Dunn
So, you know, you're walking in starting this department sounds like almost from scratch, what was already in place for their platforms, tools, databases, like, like, how much was done, have to undo?
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so the only things that were pretty much in place was, you know, our existing accounts. So obviously This new agency had a lot of accounts on the Facebook side and you know, on the Google side of things, so we really tried to ramp up, I got myself in a position while I was doing a lot of client facing speaking to potential clients on the email side, getting them opted in. And honestly, it wasn't me going in with a sales pitch, but just providing them with an overview of email marketing, you know, the importance of you know, why it's needed, especially on the retention side of things, right. Um, a lot of times brands spend a lot of money bringing people to the site, but not really, you know, working on channels that capture exactly, exactly so. So yeah, it was it. I mean, it, it came with some challenges, obviously, things aren't easy, but you know, I just really tried to connect with the clients and work really hard to get them to the point where they're at 20% plus of store revenue for email marketing, and then ramp them up as well on the SMS side.
Unknown Speaker
Wow.
Matthew Dunn
Now, some agencies try and stay technology agnostic. Others are like, you know, we're really good at x. I just had a nice conversation this morning with with Jen from Philly. And they're, they're almost all top to bottom, a HubSpot shop. Where do you guys sit on that?
Daniel Monte
So we do clay vo and intensive? So we have it? Yeah, exactly. We're cleveo Platinum partners. And we're also like elite partners for attended to. Okay. Okay.
Matthew Dunn
So you do you do have, you do have tools that you really know how to take out drive?
Daniel Monte
Exactly, exactly. I think clay vo was just amazing. For one, it gives us the reports that we need is really efficient, really easy to use. And honestly, it's like the best DSP I've, so I've come Alright, so I have about like, again, seven years, but like, I've tested about 50 DSPs. In the past, just because of my background, at that time, I had a lot of experience on the affiliate marketing side, obviously, you know what, that what comes with that right, really aggressive tactics and learning how to really get yourself outside of the spam folder. So that in itself, you know, unfortunately, you know, I had to get to the point where I was testing out different DSPs and working with different account managers. Now I'm on the other side of things. And I learned a lot, you know, from the aggressive side, learning the importance of like, IP reputation and just maintaining the best practices so that you can maintain the longevity of these brands reputation, so that's amazing too. But yet clay vo was just very relatively easy to use, and I loved it, the people over there, they definitely tried to set every account up for success. So that's dope. On the intensive side, I love attentive as well. There's a lot of innovative features that they have in place, not just for SMS marketing, but really trying to generate more leads. Even if you had email built into clay vo so i g swipe ups, right. That's that's an amazing feat that a lot of our clients love. So if clients have more than 10,000 followers on Instagram, working, you can coordinate with the tensive to have like an ID swipe up available through the story. They swipe up, they get to sign up, in addition to that text and join and yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of great beats man landing pages as well, etc.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, wow. Wow. You dashpass to him, but when you're talking about the affiliate world, and I'm not not talking affiliate marketing, but it sounded like a Star Wars script for webmin is like Luke, come here on the dark side.
Daniel Monte
Oh my gosh. Alright, so alright, so I'll give you a background. So I initially, I give you I haven't even the host stories, right, so you can get the gist of it. So like, I like I, I studied marketing, I went to school for marketing, because I wanted to learn how to promote myself as a rapper at the time. I was like, Listen, music is it, this is what I'm going to do. And so I ended up studying marketing, I ended up loving marketing, you know, in the process, I'm like, wow, this is something I can really do after this is this is where my heart is now. So right after graduation, I simultaneously interned at like a record label and also like an online radio station. And I didn't know anything about email at the time. I mean, I was doing like some small lessons on MailChimp, you know, for a radio personality. But that was it. You know, that alone actually helped me land an opportunity for an affiliate marketing agency in Brooklyn. And, you know, I started out as a digital marketing coordinator, which is really an email marketing coordinator for that role. And I learned a lot so I would say that well, yeah, it's like super aggressive, it's like fast paced. Again, I was able to learn a lot of best practices, because of the things that was happening in the process right spamming and having a poor domain reputation. And then try to like code your way reverse engineer your way back into the inbox, which is always exciting, but like I really learned a lot about email marketing and really loved it. You know, because of it. I loved the way you were able we were able to test a B test and see the results right then in there. It's not something you actually have to wait, you know, 20 days or a month or two months to actually get the reward. So it honestly was like a game me right? Every day. I'm looking to see how much money I was able to able to get rate. Every day I'm looking at the list and from my AB test, I'm segment saying I'm building out journeys. And yeah, it was super, super exciting. And like, I really worked my ass off that first year got an opportunity as a manager that next year, and I did that for about five years, and then after that, I'm like, I gotta try something else, I think I want to be on the, on the positive side on the green side. Now, you know, so
Matthew Dunn
it's not, it's not an easy relationship between the more aggressive, less aggressive side, how's that for a spectrum? On then I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give you a really funny analogy. History of technology is one of my, like one of my domains. And if you look at the history of technology, there are at least two groups that tend to exploit a new technology, particularly one that's media of some sort. One is magicians, and the other is pornographers. And whatever. However, pornography is defined at that point in time in that culture, right? But they're really cutting edge. Like you want to learn web development. go spend your time on porno sites, I hear I don't do it, but like they're really good on and you look at the early adoption of the web, who is pushing the boundaries on handling photos, membership, sign up, credit cards, etc? Yeah, that industry, and if the more aggressive end of email marketing, there's, there may be a lot to knock about it. But there's, there's also a hell of a lot to learn, which clearly, you got a chance to do.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, honestly, like, by the time I was ready to move on, I felt like there was nothing I couldn't do. You know, I was literally building out copies, building out email templates from scratch, again, really reverse engineering the way Gmail works and going around their rules to inbox. And I'm talking about I had to really report how to do a report every day, right to the CEO of the company, trying to really explain if revenue dropped, why did it drop, right. And if I had a great day, how I was able to do that, so I can help others, right, help the other manager. So you know, eventually, I just got tired of it. I wanted to do more. You know, I wanted to innovate more. So I wanted to be more so on the e commerce side. So before I decided to really like change things up, I was really freelancing. So I freelance for like a firearm agency who had like this shop online. So it's a black diamond. And then I also worked for a nonprofit organization, focusing on drug abuse, right. And so I was literally wearing different ads, right, like I went from affiliate side to really try to make sure I increase the number of tickets sold for Black Diamond by arm and training, and then also really trying to up the ante with the drug abuse, email marketing strategy, being as informative as possible. And really, you know, tap into the brand voice, and I was able to see a lot of positive results, you know, the flows average 30 to 50%. open rate, the clients were really happy. Yeah, yeah. It's, it was amazing. It was amazing. And I didn't know what I would do. So I came in humble, not too sure. Like how this is going to go. And once I seen that, I'm like, all right now I think I want to try, you know, working for a big company if possible. So yeah, I ended up Yeah, so like, Yeah, go ahead.
Matthew Dunn
I wanna I want to talk email innovation, but there's one thing you said that I don't want to let slip on the music side of your life still live till active?
Daniel Monte
Oh, no. So I don't I don't rap anymore. But I am a music. Musical. Yeah. All types of music. Yeah, no.
Matthew Dunn
I'll never lose that. I spent 20 plus years with no active. You know, I was a listener, but no active music. Yeah. You'll come back. You'll come back. There'll be a point where you're like, ah, I want to do this again. Doesn't mean I have to make a living at it. I just want to do it again. Yeah, honestly, I feel like I'm getting. Like, that's it. But yeah, let's see. It's an oddly tough time and maybe a great time for reinvention for music, businesses and musicians themselves. I mean, pandemics taken a hell of a whack out of live performances, but people are certainly hungry to get back and actually engage and hear things live and be at an event not just listening to the recording of an event. We'll have to, let's see what we make of that.
Daniel Monte
Right. Yeah, there's nothing like it. There's nothing like I can't wait. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. So innovation. You mentioned you mentioned more of a hunger and an appetite to innovate more, what are some of the things that you wanted to do? What are some of the things you still want to do?
Daniel Monte
So some things that we're actually working on is really implementing QR codes in the post purchase journey, really trying to tap into providing value to subscribers, right. So essentially, you know, when customers buy something, right, do they have the How to manual right? And so when they receive a product scanning a QR code and receiving a how to manual through the through a landing page that we constantly built, as well as video, right, providing additional information, again, bringing value, but also making sure that the ideation aspect is still there. In addition to that, another thing that that we're working on is really trying to gamify the user experience, right finding ways to make email marketing even more enjoyable than than what it already is. And then also do it through a way of SMS marketing to so one great thing that we innovated, like, maybe two months ago was having this Easter egg hunt where one of my one of my team members literally worked on this campaign and shout out to herself and Megan, and it was really like, hey, they received an email and in the emails like, hey, buying an Easter egg on the on the brand's website, and if you find it, you unlock a gift, a promotion. And so that that ended up doing really well, we ended up seeing a lift in revenue. So that yeah, that's something that we really just have posted up on the side, like, you know, we framed it essentially, virtually framed it. But yeah, it's so just doing more of that, right, providing long term value to subscribers, really making people happy to receive emails or SMS messages. In addition to that, we also worked on playlists, right? There's no, there's there's no game, there's no end game for that. It's not like we did it to generate a lot of revenue. But the thing is, we're already successful with the strategy that we have. So why not just focus again, on gamifying, and just making overall more more pleasurable experience. So we build playlists, for brands, we work with them, and we get them to the point where we literally knock out some songs. So I guess when you asked me, you know, am I still like in tact? With the music side? Maybe I am. Maybe I am. But yeah, yeah, it's just it's just amazing. You know, you give it as a thank you, the subscribers, listen to the playlist. They love it that now the brand is top of mind. And it's now to the point where a lot of our clients are really, really, you know, asking for more of that. That's
Matthew Dunn
why I Spotify Apple Music like playlist in what form? Exactly, exactly. So we,
Daniel Monte
yeah, yeah. And it's, and we send it to them via email and SMS like, yeah, and the thing is, it's not only us just working on email ads, but we really worked with the client to build out these playlists, playlists, right? To make it brand. Exactly, yeah,
Matthew Dunn
you know, I have never heard of someone doing that. That's freaking brilliant. Thank you, thank you in like in the delivery mechanism, like in an email message, that are brand Brand X that I've been hearing from here's a playlist for you do D work with your design team to build like to build a graphic, essentially, the album cover
Daniel Monte
for the whole 9am? Yeah, we do the whole nine, we work on email, we work on the cover art as well. Yeah, we also, were literally in the Spotify into Apple accounts just to make sure that everything is up and running.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Right. So that's the experience itself work. So So it's, it's curation? As a formula. Correct? How much do you have to know? is a broad question. It's gonna be hard to answer. How, how do you get in the head of its brand meets customer, right? You mean? sent send me a playlist. It's all stuff I hate not good for the brand. send me stuff that I love. It's, you know, it's a great relationship builder. How do you make that bridge out of music?
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so we try to really study the brand. And so that's through market research, we actually have our own market research team that literally takes on the brand and builds out personas, and then we'll coordinate with the clients, and then we will crush the music when the music is sent. We will align it with the market research. And that's a very good question. I mean, the thing is, sometimes clients especially wonder at the infant stages of their brand, they technically tried to, like tell you what's not good for the customers when it's really something that they're not interested. Right. So you know, you really have to try to filter through that. Yeah, and then just work with them. Like, listen, I think we should try it. You know, my motto is simple. Let's a be tested if we fail fucking right. That's literally
Matthew Dunn
Well, it's what I mean, it's one of the virtues of that virtue is the, you know, emails, especially the virtues of digital is that you've got that feedback loop, you can be data driven about those decisions.
Daniel Monte
Exactly. And it's all about pivoting right? When something you got to react real fast. And so that's what we do. And I think that's what also makes us really great.
Matthew Dunn
One of one of the things that's intrigued me watching the watching the shift of more and more marketing and advertising to digital channels, cuz I'm older than you are. I couldn't sell Okay, so Matthew is the measurability is so different. In the days of television and radio, it was a sampling job, mostly Nielsen, and you were making big multi zillion dollar bets, and then months later finding out if they worked or not. And now we've got these instant feedback loops, even at a very small scale that can enable you to do things much more, much more quickly, much more smartly. But it shifted marketing much of much more into a science, kind of discipline hypothesis, thesis test, split tests, not just creative, and this will set the world on fire. Oops, sorry, give me my money anyway.
Daniel Monte
Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is amazing. We have months of like, data just backed up in our in our drive, you know, looking at reports on what campaigns performed well, what didn't, to what segment as well. But yeah, everything is live and in real time. And I think that's what makes it beautiful. When we present proposals to clients, we literally have hard stats to back everything up. Right. And I think now, you know, with everything, it gives us the opportunity to really personalize and customize the journey, which is what we want, right? subscribers shouldn't be receiving every type of email, right? If they're interested in product A, then we need to give them product and we need to provide them with as much information as possible about a product and how to use it, you know, not sending product B and expecting them to open it. So it but in turn, we actually build out a you know, a long term relationship and we increase their their lifespan, right. So that's the goal here.
Matthew Dunn
Now, jump to the SMS side for a second, because I've had a couple of guests on this on this podcast, who are specifically working in more in text and SMS, Kenneth Burke, from text requests was was on fairly, fairly early, when I hit when I reached out to him and said, Hey, you want to be a guest? And come chat on podcast? He said, but I'm in texting, not email. And I said, Yeah, no, guys, pretty tight. Yeah. Think about it, what's your perspective broadly on text and email, the boundary between the two.
Daniel Monte
So so a pain point that I have is like, when people tell me that, you know, email is better than SMS or SMS is better than email, they need to collaborate, it needs to be a cohesive experience, right. And so through dual orchestration, you have to make sure that we're providing subscribers with what they want, right. So like, maybe you're dealing with a subscriber that's not interested in receiving emails, but they're more prone to open an SMS message and read it right 98% of people that have SMS, that are subscribed, open and view these text messages, right, at least that's what the report says. So you, when you have something like that backing you love, I think you you know, you're onto something big, right. But not all subscribers prefer that. So like, it's about giving them what they want, especially when you're creating these big journeys. So like when you're working on the abandoned cart, right, so if you're working on an abandoned cart flow, and someone is never opening their emails, then you should have a trigger to where you're sending them text messages, not emails. In addition to that, I think it can really echo each other very nicely. Especially when you're working on a very big campaign for the brand. I just think it goes down to really trying to personalize, again, personalize the experience, because SMS marketing is very intimate. So you can't really follow the same approach as you would for an email as you would for an SMS, you have to really tap tap into the psyche and make it very exciting to read. It shouldn't just be a bland generic text message. It should be it should be filled with personality, and witty, and really again, just trying to provide values.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, and and I would, and authentic as well, I would think, which is not easy. Yes. Authenticity is huge. Yes. I mean, see you. Yeah, I use LinkedIn as a proxy. Sometimes in my head, as I've watched, particularly in the pandemic, watch the traffic on LinkedIn, go like this. And it's so damn obvious when a LinkedIn request pops up. And it's just bullshit.
Daniel Monte
Well, yes, it's like, Hey, dude, like, he's like this, this, you just paste it in? I don't feel interested in adding you.
Matthew Dunn
Right? And the friends don't dump everything on the front step and expect me to open the door, man. What are you doing? You're doing? And I would think in text, because because it's such a, it's such a high priority. interrupt, right? The thing goes, Bing, I'm gonna look at it. So if you get me to look at the Bing, and it's baloney. You know, delete, blacklist, opt out, you know, whatever you want to call it. Like, I don't really have time for that crap.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, now you're dealing with a high opt out rate. How do you explain that to your clients? Right? Yeah, yeah. And if you're working with like a very good platform, again, you should be set up for success. Right? You should want to segment hyper segment as much as possible based on activity that's given to you through integrations with Shopify, right if their e commerce. So yeah, I mean, there's no reason for anyone to drop the ball there. But I can definitely see why it may be easy to overlook and fumble and have a high opt out
Matthew Dunn
rate. Well, it's a it's a big coordination job. I mean, those those two platforms play a role. Typically totally together. Are you guys knitting yourself? They do.
Daniel Monte
Yeah. So yeah, they do they do. We're honestly, it's the same department. So like my team, when I assign my team to a brand, or you know, they're working on X, Y, and Z, if that brand has opted in for email and SMS, then that one person is working on it, because we want to make sure that exactly the copy is the same, right? We want to make sure that when they receive an email, and they receive an SMS, it's like the same type of feel, and excitement that they get, especially again, when we're doing like these big projects, we want to make sure that it's like, collaborated successfully. Right. So that's, that's, that's the goal.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. What I should have asked at the beginning for context, but what are there any consistencies about the industries or personalities or whatever? Like, what kind of clients does no agency tend to work with? Who do you like? Are you all over the map? Are you focused in a few particular niches? What?
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so we're honestly all over the map. There's, you know, we're open to be working with anyone, any brand, honestly, like our main priority is to just to a really scale the brand, and really set the client up for success, right. relights trainers, right, sometimes are going to tell you things you don't want to hear, but it's to make sure that you're set up for success. Yeah, so that that's the approach. Okay.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, well, then that means you get to learn a good bit about those niches and industries and companies in the course of handling their campaigns.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, yeah. And that's what's exciting. You know, I'm speaking for myself, I really care about my track record, I care about how many brands that we have that are super successful. So when there's a brand in a new industry that I haven't even worked on, before, I'm itching, I'm trying to see how this is going to work, I really want to make sure that it's successful. We're doing our due diligence, we're doing our market research, we're connecting with the client, we're doing our weekly check ins, just really trying to set them up for success. And we're AV testing like every freaking week, so yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Well, yeah, they work they have a longer conversation about testing probably, probably offline. What's, uh, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but anything jump out at you it? Wow, I tried that. And it just fell on its face. And I learned a lot from it.
Daniel Monte
Oh, that's a tough one. I'm trying to think right now. There was a roadmap that we built. And I don't want to speak too soon, because we're not giving up yet. So. But there's this like email campaign, which really was a journey. So basically finding out what the client what the customer wants by following a map. Right. So it's a long email. We did. And it's like, several different destinations. And each destination would take people to a different product page, right, or a different landing page, depending on what we wanted to do. And it did not do well at all. Like it's just not. Right. Yeah. So in terms of by not doing well, I'm referring to the convergence, right, the conversion it was it was negative for lift, right. And so yeah, I mean, but that's honestly, we're not giving up, right? There's a lot of brands in our portfolio, and honestly, it's just a matter of, hey, why didn't it perform? Well, let's try something different, right? Let's change the aesthetics, right. Let's change the type of offerings we have in the roadmap, let's try it on a different brand or in a different industry. And let's keep on trying it until we just exhausted our resources and nothing else is working. So that's the approach. Yeah. Okay.
Matthew Dunn
Good. Good. Anya, and, and it's funny, you can end up with an orthodoxy in your head, right? You know, emails have to look like this to be like, says, Oh, right. Right.
Daniel Monte
Find out. Exactly like marketing is so subjective, right. Everyone has their own opinion. And so I use that to my own advantage. Obviously, we know what works, but doing what works every single time following the curriculum is just kind of boring. Sometimes, you know, you gotta like really push the envelope. And that's what we try to do as much as possible. That's literally like our priority this this quarter. Like, go crazy, try different things, see what works, see what doesn't, and learn from it, and then incorporate it in our practices.
Matthew Dunn
Nice, nice. And, and to have the, you know, to have the latitude and the authority to go ahead and experiment trying to expand the box. It's a great thing. That's it's a great thing about sounds like the agency, you wouldn't be doing that. Yeah. You know, yeah, you just repeat yourself over and over.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, like good leadership comes from the top down. So you know, one of the one of the things that drawn me to this new agency was Dan and john telling me during like the interview process that listen, we want to give someone the keys and really innovate and really try to push the agency forward. And I took that to heart and you know, ran with it. And you know, the thing too, is that you bring up authenticity that's very true. And you also have to be you know, you have to communicate a lot and also be transparent. If something fails, don't hide the failure like Just be very upfront with it and explain why it failed. There's always an explanation of something right? So just you know, just that, that that upfront communication is really what keeps allowing me to actually have that reign of innovation. Nice. Nice.
Matthew Dunn
Wow, I it's always delightful. Here's someone sort of clearly got the reins and running in the in the gig, they got a lot more fun than I can. Yeah,
Daniel Monte
like, I'm going crazy. I'm actually meeting with the client on Monday to talk about QR codes in person, right? So it's like this fun project can't talk about that too much, right? Not yet until it goes live. So okay, I'll follow up with you. We have to talk
Matthew Dunn
about blood tests and QR codes and a whole bunch of other stuff. But we can we can do that offline. Cuz I'm not doing this for campaign genius commercials. One of the one of the domain, just because you've got an expert opinion and an expert's eye on this. Have you tracked the announcement from Apple, I think two days ago about how they want to handle pixels.
Daniel Monte
Yes. So my belief is that eventually they will implement some type of feedback loop, we're actually able to know who opens an email. But it's not like my thing is we're probably going to have to push the agenda of using Gmail, right? The Gmail that because that's going to provide us with the information that we need. Apple is really big on, you know, engagement. And but we don't know who if we don't know who opens How the hell are we supposed to actually provide subscribers with information they want? Right? So I'm just I'm hoping that they will later down the line implement something like that. But literally, I'm like, trying to do research on the sides to have a backup plan ready to go, you know?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I think I think folks who take doing email will seriously, are justifiably a little concerned about what what, what feels like a big old blanket over every pixel is bad.
Daniel Monte
Exactly, exactly. You know, we're not doing massive sends to everyone promoting every single thing, we're literally we take it as our I take it as an art, you know, this is my paint house, this is how I'm doing this. And, um, you know, in order for me to build that and paint that beautiful Canvas, I need data, like I need data, so Well, yeah, no,
Matthew Dunn
no feedback, love No. feedback loop, no growth, right. Like, we can't send the more relevant, as you said,
Daniel Monte
your blinds sending that, you know, and we don't want that.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, we might risk kind of pushing us all backwards in terms of in terms of practice. The other thing is, I mean, this is this is, you know, particularly technical slant on it, but all Apple would really accomplish with that is to rob me of when and where, but not who if I wanted, if I want to track specific down to the recipient, pixel, you know, pixel data, I can find a way to get that there. You know, every email automatically flagged is open because apples reading the pixels. I don't see who gains anything out of that. But yeah, yeah. Well, this is back to our conversation about affiliate marketers, right. They'll have to start grappling with that out on the aggressive edge and they're probably some lessons trickling back from their set dump place dump place to tee up a Cold War seems to me Yeah, yeah. Huh. bothersome. Wow, what a good one. action packed conversation man. I love your team. How big what how do you how do you divide that up? You miss ownership of an account, which makes a ton of sense. What else structurally does that look like?
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so we have the whole nine. So in my team, I have managers, coordinators, copywriters, coders And so yeah, so it's it's awesome we have I want to make sure that someone can just specialize in their role right there when I was doing copy I wasn't the best at it. So you know let's just have copywriters that can knock out the best copy ever. Right? So that's the goal. And so yeah, typically the way it works is you know, we get aside you know, well, I assigned the brands to the to the managers and then from there they're they're assigning what coordinators have what brand and we have the copywriters on board. We have the developers and designers too. So when the email is beautifully designed and approved, the developer is going ahead and coding that anatomy it's a great deal. Okay, so yeah, then we QA everything Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Do you just clay the native editor for the for the design work?
Daniel Monte
No, we actually use Photoshop and then from there take it onto Dreamweaver coded to Dreamweaver
Matthew Dunn
What are you doing Dreamweaver? Interesting. I'm it's been a It's been a while. I kind of keep track of the editor. space but I have to take a look at what Dreamweaver got specifically, email HTML, not web HTML. Correct. Yeah, I've got the Creative Suite. There's, there's more apps and you can even name that. Yeah. Surprising. Yeah, I mean, good surprise. And you know, you're paying the monthly Vig. So you might as well use the tools, but every one of them is show cotton pickin deep, then that getting really conversant with many tools of the Creative Suite. Right.
Daniel Monte
And then you mentioned Why just let my developers just have at it, you know, yeah, step away from that process.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, that was like you said about copywriting. Right. Yeah. You know, being okay, as a coder is probably not, you don't want that person doing the coding. Right? Have any whole bunch of broken links and stuff broken? Like stuff? Yeah. Do you have anyone whose job is the is the data side of it a data scientist or anything like that?
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so we actually have a department assistant that assists with that. But in terms of who's doing it, the managers are going in looking at the the overall performances, and that's really, you know, per request, right? One of my managers, Megan really wanted to start analyzing it, and she wanted to own that right for me, so go ahead, have at it, right. That's also something that I'm working on too. I just feel like when you don't, and this is just speaking based on my experience in the past, not someone I worked with, but what I've like was exposed to when you have a data analyst, the managers or anyone else that's really supposed to be included in tune with the performance takes a step back and chooses not to review it as much right so when you're in practice yourself, when you're on the field, you're looking at it, you know, what's going on. And I want to make sure that you know, when we're communicating with our clients, these managers and everyone else that's in tune with the campaign performance knows every single thing about these campaigns, right, it's very important to be able to know it and then articulate it to our clients. And you know, that's something that they really love doing too.
Matthew Dunn
that's a that's a healthy way to look at it Yeah. And and and it means that they're going to get smarter about exactly you know, campaigns in the customer as well as how to handle the data for the next campaign the next customer.
Daniel Monte
Exactly. My goal is to literally build my team up and make them a master right, make them greater than me so like, in order for you to do that you got to be the one looking at the stats baby You know, looking at the stats and getting more confident and then taking your learnings and incorporating it for those next brands or that a strategy that's similar to the one that you read in the past.
Matthew Dunn
You can't manage what you don't measure someone said once. Wow, what what is actually one of my favorite conversations. This is awesome,
Daniel Monte
dude, I was nervous. I was shitting bricks. I was like, I don't know what questions are gonna be asked. I'm just gonna go in I'm gonna wing it. I'm not gonna look at no deck. No, you know, just look bucket right let's let's
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, just have fun with it. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
well, listen, listen and listen and learn now I just, it sounds like you've really got a you've built a department that center. cookin on all cylinders. On in those channels. Email email gets a little bit it's you know, it's old it's tired I'm like bullshit bullshit bullshit. hurts my soul When I hear that Yeah. You need us yeah, and and it's it's the one that you're you're not paying the gatekeeper or the troll underneath the bridge. to us. That's actually maybe my favorite thing about emails like there's no gatekeeper. It's not here Mark Zuckerberg take a piece of this or here Google take a page that links you and the recipient.
Daniel Monte
Exactly one on one conversations if need be, you own it, you own less you can take it anywhere you want. Right? We love clay vo but if for whatever reason, Clay vo just shut down tomorrow, we can take that list and export it somewhere else, you know, and have a new strategy for that, you know? Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. Which makes that, you know, makes that such an asset. And I think, you know, I mean, obviously, you've got the carrier's getting paid to carry the message, but SMS has some of the same characteristics. Although it's a I don't know if it's ever gonna mature. Because it's such a fractured set of platforms texting. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's a pity. I don't know if you tracked when when Google was trying to push a richer standard RS RCS they were trying to sell the carriers on a what essentially looked like looked and smelled like Apple messages for everything else. And it just fizzled they didn't make it they didn't get it through and I mean working with carriers never never for the faint of heart but if Google couldn't push that went through I don't think we'll we'll see a unified rich messaging platform come out of SMS slash MMS anytime soon, just not going to happen.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, so what's what how do you see how do you see like it being in rich like if you can have a year away? What would be like The ideal like MMS SMS experience. Um,
Matthew Dunn
you can do it if you really know what you're doing. And if you're in the address book, and those are fairly critical, huge roadblocks to what I'm about to say, but my, my working thesis for all digital channels is that they, they all seek media over time. And it's not an anti copy, anti written language stance in any sense. It's just that now that we've got the capability on a web page, for example, to do literally anything and everything from written copy in, in a great looking font to video that you can full screen to animation to like, keep going through the list of being shoveled all of that through that rectangle called a web browser. Okay. Email, email is lagging, and it's starting to catch up. And part of the reason we launched campaign genius is like, God, dang it, email could be a lot richer and more visual than it is. Let's enable that let's build a toolset for that. So we're, you know, I think we'll see email become more visual. There are some there are some architectural reasons why email won't be a first class media platform. I think there's solutions to that. But I think they're going to take a very long time to evolve. Because there's no Compute Engine in email, I'll send you that paper, if you're interested. It's an email is dumb, at a technical level. So there's some constraints of what we'll do through email. It's benefited us it's kept it from becoming, it's kept it from becoming the kind of cesspool that the web browser with third party cookies became because of the scripting engine? To answer your question after that preface on if, if you've got someone in your address book on an iPhone to use an iPhone or Android, iPhone, iPhone, me too, if you've got someone in your address book, so that, you know, essentially, Apple said, okay, they trust this guy, that's effectively how it works in in messages. If I send you a web page, if I copy a link in YouTube, and stick it in messages and send it to you, you can play the video right inside the messenger, I'm sure you've done that. It's like it's a media experience. It's not just a short little bits of copy, experience. But you can't do that, at a large scale that's literally constrained down to, he's in my address books. So we'll give him the preview of the YouTube page. If I texted you that message out of the blue, you didn't know who I was, and I wasn't in your address book, you'd get the little link. And then if you want to go to the browser and view it, that's up to you, but you don't get that full media experience inside the messenger client right now on I understand the reason not to do it. The reason to require that addressbook level of trust and permission. But it does mean that messaging messaging is is really constrained from becoming a richer media experience, which I think is the arc it'll follow. He's if you look at every every digital channel, that's the arc they've fallen.
Daniel Monte
Yeah. And so that's also one of the reasons why we asked our subscribers to save us, save us and add us to their phone book.
Unknown Speaker
Perfect. Yeah, we
Daniel Monte
got in our journey. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Do you send visuals in text right now?
Daniel Monte
We do. Yeah. So yeah, so it's, it's it's dope. But yeah, that's part of our welcome series. Like right after they sign up. You know, I said next message. That's the next SMS after that is just asking them to add us to their phone books.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. Yeah. capability. Yeah. And and, and yeah, we both understand why. It makes sense. But it's also a funny ask, it may actually be the saving saving grace of texting is like, you really are giving the user a, an even greater level of control. I can email you a picture. I can't text you one without permission so to speak.
Daniel Monte
Yeah, yeah. Video, the video aspect is like the main drive behind that, you know, wanting to Yeah, so. Yeah, but um, you know, I think, you know, SMS you know, especially when you're dealing with the right platform, I mean, they're always finding ways to implement and there's some things I can't say because I'm in the beta phase. I'm beta testing some things but um, yeah, I don't know I don't know I would debate you if I if I can say certain things but I'll hold back.
Matthew Dunn
We are to have we need to have a not on the camera call. I'm totally game about richer media and things you can do in email, things you can do in texting because I totally geek out on this stuff. Well, what a pleasure You made my day, man.
Daniel Monte
You made mine. This is like my first podcast. So like super excited. Cool. Well,
Matthew Dunn
let's wrap up recording and so we stopped recording so the end of the recording will be that My guest was Daniel Monti, head of email and SMS at the snow agency. Daniel, thank you so much for the conversation.
Daniel Monte
Thank you, Matthew. I really appreciate it.