A Conversation with Jeanne Jennings of EmailOpShop & OnlyInfluencers
Industry and thought leader Jeanne Jennings sat down with me for a long, informed conversation about all things email. In addition to keeping EmailOpShop clients on the leading edge, Jeanne is the manager and steward of OnlyInfluencers.com, the leading email community. She also produces the annual Email Innovation Summit conference — this year, cyberspace, next year, Vegas!
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. My guest today from Washington DC, if I'm not mistaken, where you're sitting is, is my respected colleague and friend, Jeanne Jennings. I'm going to rattle off some some brief bio will make her introduce herself, but but Jeanne runs the email optimization shop. She is also the sort of beloved steward of the only influencers email marketing community, and she still finds time to set up the email Innovation Summit and teach at Georgetown. Jean, welcome. I'm so glad you could make it.
Jeanne Jennings
Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. Matthew. It's always nice to chat with you
Matthew Dunn
fun and games right now. Jean, you started an email quite a while back so did I so we get to we get to chat about that a little Pete. Why don't you orient people first introduce yourself because I just did the LinkedIn summary.
Jeanne Jennings
No, he did a beautiful job. So yeah, just Jeanne Jennings. I am an email marketing strategist with my own boutique consulting firm email optimization shop that you mentioned. And just I'm so excited to be general manager of only influencers which I took over when Bill McCloskey, the founder, retired in the end of 2019. And it's a pleasure during the email Innovation Summit, which is a wise annual conference. And then yeah, I teach one class a year at Georgetown University in the graduate program that this is actually final project week. So yeah, so with lots lots and lots of calls to ask questions and go over things, and they start tonight. So yeah, it's just a pleasure to be here. You know, I've been, gosh, I've been working in online ever since I got out of school. And I started focusing on email about 21 years ago, I've always done email, but I've done other stuff, too. So it's just a really fun ride. I just really I love email, you know, through all the years when people were like, well, email is dead. What are you doing now? And I'm like, really, really love email, love talking email? And yeah, it's just, it's just awesome to be here.
Matthew Dunn
So just for curiosity sake, you got grad students at Georgetown? To what what, what, what are the parameters of the project, final project you throw out? And how do you help someone start to learn such a complex space?
Jeanne Jennings
So it's really fun to actually teach digital marketing? Okay, in graduate school, so we do we basically do one or more channels a week, classes to two and a half hours once a week, which is a lot of time.
Jeanne Jennings
Nice. Well,
Jeanne Jennings
um, but yeah, so their final project, actually, I think it's kind of fun. They're broken into groups of four, and they choose a brand. And they basically do what I do as a consultant they took take a look at their digital marketing, and they identify what they're doing right. And they identify what could be done better or what they're not doing, and making conditions for improvement. So I have one group is doing spindrift, which is a flavored water company, another group doing Airbnb. So it's always really interesting. And it's really fun to see them applying what we've learned in class projects. So and they know they know that they know that although, although I love all the channels, they know that email is my favorite. So they always make sure that there's that somebody does email. But yeah, it's it's really cool.
Matthew Dunn
And and it's got to be a kind of a charge for you to talk with someone who's at student stage, regardless of what age they're at, because they're going to bring a different perspective. They better say I want to learn this field, but they also have knowledge in their heads, right? I mean, yeah, well live there.
Jeanne Jennings
It's really cool. Because you know, it's a graduate school. And it's part time. So we have a lot of people that are working in digital marketing right now. And so in previous years, I had a woman who was working in online PR. So when it was the time to talk online PR in the class, I was like, hey, talk to us up. Yeah. So that's really fun. So some of them have experienced, some of them have no experience with marketing at all. They just thought this looks like an interesting elective, because it's an elective class. So we have all a whole mix. One thing that's really I think, this is, I guess, my fourth year teaching, one thing that I do is I bring in a guest speaker for the last 45 minutes of the class, someone who works in the industry. And that is one thing that's been a really, I like it, because it gives them that feet on the ground view that I can't necessarily give them for anything but email. Students love it that's doing it's their favorite part. And, you know, we make a big deal out of networking. I don't know about you. But one thing I always tell young people, or anyone actually, who bothers to ask me is I think one of the best things you can do for your career is network with people because you never know, when you're going to need that person's help are going to want that person's advice. And, you know, one thing I say to my students is we have 15 classes. So the last one is the final pre those, but I brought in 14 different industry professionals to speak to them this year. Wow. All of those people, every class has has an industry person come in and all those people are really good at what they do. Whether it's content marketing, or email marketing, I brought in Samantha Iota che who's brilliant.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, she was actually a guest. Yeah, she's,
Jeanne Jennings
she's wonderful. I have a woman from Google who comes in to talk to us about sem, which is I mean, to be able to talk to someone from Google.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
So you know, my big thing there, as I said, you know, you have a chance to get connected on LinkedIn with 14 people who are at the top of their game in these various digital marketing industries. And you should do that. And the ones who have done it, it's funny, as people say to me, and I was so nervous at first, but I reached out and they linked to me, and then I asked them a question. And then they answered, and I'm like, of course, they answered. You know, that's the other thing. It's been great to kind of open their minds to, you know, how do you do this thing, you network? And and you, you know, and then, you know, they always say, but I don't have anything to offer that person. And I say you'd be surprised what you have to offer that person. Yeah. Yeah. I'm
Matthew Dunn
really glad to hear you encourage that. And I have to say, to get a, you know, get a connection request and a conversation on LinkedIn. from someone who's trying to learn the field, as opposed to someone who's about to dump their sales pitch on me be like, Oh, can I can I help you please? Because I'm so excited. I'm so tired of the pitches on LinkedIn that are so obvious most of the time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, PJ, you know, be genuine. That That in itself is a big offer. Right?
Jeanne Jennings
It is. And, you know, I love you know, I love this industry. And I love sharing my knowledge. And I like helping people. I think that I only got where I was from people who helped me people who mentored me, and, and so I'm always happy to pay that forward. And I think all of us, all of us should do that. So yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I have I have, I have sons who are millennials, my boys are both in their 20s. And it's been interesting talking with them. And I'm tracking back to students for a second here because they said, am I wrong? Or are millennials not nearly as digital savvy, as those of us older than millennials think they are? And they actually said, Oh, yeah, most most of our peers are like, if it works, they're fine. And if it stops working, they're baffled, because they're used to such a mature consumerized set of things now, where you don't get under the hood or don't have to, and find out how it works that it you know, it's it's a it's a bit like, Oh, my gosh, she popped the hood. And there's an engine under there. Yeah, there any reactions like that with your students with some of the stuff you're acquainting them with?
Jeanne Jennings
Um, I think it's really interesting. Um, you know, I think kind of, you know, it's funny, because one of the early classes is about web design. And we go through, you know, Nielsen and Norman and heuristics and, and it's, it's awesome to see the light bulbs go off, because I'm just and what I say to them, as you know, we're going to walk through, I said, You guys are so savvy, you can tell me what's good. And what's bad about a website and a user experience. And you've got that down? Yes. I'm going to give you the terminology to explain it to someone and sound really smart. Oh, good. I don't like the way that that menu is, it's because oh, it doesn't, you know, it's not this. And, and so that's really fun. But yeah, it's a lot of fun seeing the light bulbs go off, see helping them understand things that they sort of know, inherently, but they don't know why. Yeah. To give them the terminology, and the explanation behind it is fine. And then, you know, they teach me things. I mean, I remember when I had them doing like mock ups, and they're like, can we use Canva for this? And I'm like, really? Sure. And then after class, I'm like, Canva Oh, it's always fun. They always teach me things. It was actually, um, we were talking about clubhouse and when the early classes when clubhouse was so hot. Yeah, I know, it came up as a topic. And I mentioned that I wasn't on there yet. But I was like, desperately seeking an invite. When I turn up after class, I get a note from one of my students. Hey, Professor Jean, I got an invite. You want one? Yes. So he actually was the person who got me on clubhouse.
Matthew Dunn
And you got me on clubhouse? Yep. Right, we had that we'll check back to that, that project somewhere in the course of this conversation, but I like I like sticking with the students just because it's a it's, it's, it's such a great lens into this, you know, complicated see that we're swimming in, it strikes me that I'm sure someone else has recognized this, but we have to be a generation with the most not refined, the most broadly informed design sense in the history of the world, right? How much stuff do we look at and take in, that someone sweated over sometimes more, sometimes less to make look a particular way do a particular thing like, wow, we look at a lot of stuff. And and we end up with this incredible sensitivity about good bad works, doesn't work and don't always have vocabulary, which sounds like what you're what you're teaching them, but you know, 2030 years ago, maybe someone who's a designer for a living had that, but the rest of us are all like, you know, newspapers and, and books and not that much by comparison.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, I mean, even you know, I remember when I was focused on email was was right around 2000 when I started focusing, and I was head of email product development at Reed Elsevier, well read business information, which was our every Elsevier and we were the largest b2b publisher in the country. And, um, you know, I started working in online. Alright, I'm going to out myself, I started working online in 1989 for compuserve. But in 2000, we were trying to do things like build subscriber preferences pages, and we were trying to build things like you know, signing in for a paid site and, and the stuff that that that was up there was really based off of print the print world, like if you wanted a newsletter, you had to give us like the answer to 50 controlled certain questions. Well, and so you know, we got rid of that stuff. But, but even back then, you know, even though that was Of late in the game because it was I'd already been working in that for 10 years, you know, we we had people that were going out and researching what other people were doing. So I remember something we were putting together, I don't know whether it was a preference center or sign up. But there was a woman who worked for me who's a good friend of mine now, which is cool. But um, she went out and looked at all of the places that were doing these, you know, login processes and stuff. And I'll never forget, like her updates and Muse like hysterical, she'd be like, so this week, I'm looking at the adult entertainment industry. And it was it was like Maxim magazine and stuff. It's a little racy for the time, but I'm like, we actually based I think it was like our signup online off what maximum was doing, because she looked at all the different industries and all the different ways people were doing this and decided, Okay, this is the best one the fit for us. And we just stole the process. And, and so, you know, back then we were looking at everything and learning from each other. And it's hard to explain to people nowadays, they don't quite get it. Because, you know, no one had done this stuff before. Yeah, like, it was a model for what an email was supposed to look like. So yeah, when we were designing emails, you know, and I was, you know, I, I mean, email design really didn't come along until we had the World Wide Web. So like, 9596. Yeah, sending plain text before then. But, you know, we were all trying to figure it out. And, and like we did, but, but it's funny to try to explain to people, you know, if you've never seen an email, how would you design an email?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, it's a really good way of looking at it. And my recollection, early days, early days of email use on people tended to write email, like, they would, like, put out a written memo. And obviously, we've steered, you know, way, way away from that, why, cuz it's, you know, it's a different medium, it's different form. It's got its own rhythms and affordances and stuff like that. So even at the level of, of wordsmithing, and copywriting, we had to start evolving. What's this thing for? And oh, it's not the same as what we named it for, you know, email is not paper mail. Right.
Jeanne Jennings
Now. It's interesting, though, because so my first job was with compuserve. pure, pure online. Sure, you know, and on the business services side, so like, I was dealing with American College of Physicians, a big nonprofit, marryat was a client that was supported out of our office. And then, you know, I went into the publishing world. And she wasn't gonna say, but I'm sorry, hang on. I'll get it. See, I'm getting old. I can't even remember this stuff.
Jeanne Jennings
It's completely gone.
Matthew Dunn
Yes. Okay. We're just talking about, you know, that whole that whole discovery and invention process, right. Nobody knew what a good login was like. Yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
So when I, when I went to the publishing world, they needed someone who knew online, I helped Congressional Quarterly launch their first website. But I couldn't get a 100% online job with any publishing company, because no one had enough. Because this is 1994.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Right.
Jeanne Jennings
Right. So I took the job and like, half my job or more was old fashioned direct mail. Um, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me, because I had never learned that. So by learning online, direct mail and doing the website and then doing their first email newsletter, I started to realize that while not everything I learned about direct mail is directly applicable because there were a lot of people who were direct mail heavy and applying all of that to email and that was a disaster. I could cherry pick and the good bit was applicable and one of the things that I took from that experience that I still leverage today is scientific method for a be split testing. Yeah, yeah. And you know, the things you're testing are sometimes the same sometimes different. It's got it you've got to you've got a version for email. But that's, I think, what surprises me today, I'm so thankful now for that experience, because it's it's really made my business in my career. I meet so many people who want to go into online marketing and they've never studied, you know, the basics of direct mail response. And while not all of its applicable, a lot of it really is and it can make your email program a lot better. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And I was hoping we'd end up talking about that a bit because candid compliment I have I've learned a ton as we've interacted and there's a there's a one of your clients that we are working on something together and I've learned a ton listening to you focus in on measures and particularly the measures that make the business difference for an email program because it's easy to it's easy to just measure what's easy, but that doesn't necessarily move the dial that you're trying to move.
Jeanne Jennings
Well first of all, I'm blushing you're very sweet because you're super smart on this stuff. So you're learning anything that is that is shocking to me and
Matthew Dunn
Rp. I learned that from Jeanne Jenny's revenue. Holy crap that is so clear.
Jeanne Jennings
I am oh my gosh, I am an RP freak. Yeah. Yeah. My clients know if they're giving me results. So we sent this email in the open rate was and I'm like, just just start with the RP. Yeah. And if we need to talk the other stuff we will, but just just talking with the RP was,
Matthew Dunn
right, yeah. Cuz you're you're sort of carrying the thing all the way through to the, you know, to the business measure that ultimately they're gonna care about as well.
Jeanne Jennings
Right? I don't know, I don't know, if we said what RP is, okay. Everyone at home, do you know what RP is? Okay, it's 123, there's your chance to say what you think it is. Alright, it's revenue per email. And it is probably my very favorite email marketing metric. And it's really easy, because you just take the amount of revenue the campaign brought in, and you divide it by the number of emails that you sent. And that's your Rp. And if that number is super small, which it might be, if you don't have a high ticket item, you can actually do RPM E, which is revenue per 1000 emails, you just take that number of emails you sent, you divide it by 1000. You do the same calculation, but it's a great apples to apples. A lot of times, we will have like, we know what the average RP for the entire program is. And then we'll know what the average p for each particular campaign is. Because most of my clients are sending, you know, more than one email, God bless anyone who's still doing one email at a time anymore. That's a, that's not a great way to do it. So look, and see, you know, which which of them have a higher and a lower and then do a lot of ad split testing, and then do a lot of rolling out the findings to other campaigns that we're doing. But yeah, you know, opens and clicks are nice, but revenue per email conversion rate, things that are business metrics were what really matter, the, the open rates of the click through rates are really just diagnostic. If your RP isn't where you want it, you can go back and say, Well, how is it different from a campaign that has a good RP and then figure out whether your problem is in the opens or the clicks or where they're clicking which link they're clicking on? It's amazing. When you dig in the things you can learn about how people are interacting with the email. And then what I do is try to spin up a test to go against it. that'll change that interaction, to something that'll drive more revenue, because that's most of what the campaigns that's what it's about.
Matthew Dunn
Interesting. Have you ever have you ever taken that? Taking that RP measure and had had coherent enough data to apply it on a longer life cycle? So you end up with something like revenue per subscriber kind of measure?
Jeanne Jennings
Oh, yeah, well, we do that all the time, the value of the value of an email address. So you basically take take the overall revenue from your campaign over the course of a month or a year or a quarter, you divide it by the average number of people on your list, because you know, people are always coming on and going off. So I just take the average number across, you know, whatever. And you can get the value of an email subscriber. And that's a really, that's a really an annual annual value of emails.
Jeanne Jennings
Okay, yeah, that's
Jeanne Jennings
really, that's really important number because if especially if you're doing some paid acquisition efforts, you know how much you can or should pay scribe are on your list. And then it's also really easy to figure out how long a subscriber stays on your list historically, right? You know, or even better, how long they're active because a lot of people they go inactive before they unsubscribe, yep. Yeah. So that, you know, I, I know, the average subscriber is active for a year and a half, I know that the average revenue per year, I know that each subscriber, you know, generates on average $20 a year. So that means that subscribers probably on average, worth about 30 bucks to me, numbers out there. So I want to make sure if I'm doing acquisition, where I'm paying acquisition, I don't want to pay more than $30 for a subscriber, because then your water so whether it's, you know, incident, you're not paying for subscribers, but maybe you're paying for display advertising to drive people to sign up, or you're, you know, so So yeah, so that's also a very important number. I'm not a big fan, I had someone who was trying to convince me again, about the value of lifetime value, lifetime value of an email subscriber. And I'm like, Yeah, I kind of get that. But it's hard to really say, you know what, I mean, I prefer to look at it a year. And I don't know, but a lot of that stuff that comes into play so much of so much of the email metrics that matter, have nothing to do with opens or clicks.
Matthew Dunn
Well, so many of the metrics that that matter, especially when you start putting in a business framework, like YouTube, aren't going to be found in the email system. Yeah, email systems don't tell you books about revenue, right? If you're not connecting it up and tracking it through to the cash register, whatever that might be. It's It's It's hard to measure. Oh, yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
Well, that and you know, even a lot of ESP is even though you can connect it to pull in revenue. They don't do an RP calculation, which is insane to me, because they have all the data Yeah. Be the one that does, which is going away. bronto bronto, actually, in their reports has a column for RP which is beautiful now I, for that particular client, I use RPM me because the numbers are so low and you get a better read if you elevate it. But, um, but that's, that's Yeah, that platform I maybe some of the others do now, but a lot of platforms. Yeah, they don't give you that which is just insane to me.
Matthew Dunn
Well, I mean, in, in slight defense of the site defense of the email platforms which I love to throw rocks at, they're already measuring so much, right, and trying to keep trying to keep what they do perform it and you know, performant and usable, which are not necessarily the same thing. And it's like, every, every new metric you add in there is is multiplying complexity not adding. And it's, it's it's not, it's not a trivial lift I, I wouldn't trade jobs for them. Thanks very much. But if it doesn't help you do the bottom line business part of it, in the long run, it's not necessarily the most effective tool for the business.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah. And that's it. I think, you know, there's this perception that, yeah, there's this perception that the easy metrics like opens or clicks, that they're what really matter an email. Hmm. The other thing that we have a problem with, and we're actually launching, selling through a wire to try to help with it is not all platforms define the metrics the same way. You can, a lot of people don't understand the metrics they're looking at.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Right.
Jeanne Jennings
Um, click rate. So click rate isn't actually defined metric. But a lot of platforms have something they call click rate. And it could be traditional click through rate. It could be click to open rate. It could be total clicks divided by the number of emails sent, which is not really a click through rate click through rate is unique. Yeah, yeah. Um, so you know, there is a platform that I won't name, I have a client on it. And they have this click rate. And it's a it's a click to open rate is what the calculation is when you when you back it out. So they're forever giving me these all on our click rate on this campaign was really good. It was 45%. And the open rate was 30. And I'm like, so that's impossible. Yeah. Yeah, so that's what we're, it's really exciting. So Ada bar lot from operations ally, who I think you know, is heading the committee. It's called the Oh II metrics project. And we have actually, she and Luke glasner, for glasner Consulting, and Lauren Meyer, who's with socket labs, and I'm on the committee, we have gone through and identified all of the key email marketing metrics, we've actually written up little vignettes about how you calculate them, what they're good for how you use them. Each write up also includes links to third party articles that talk about using these metrics and how to use them better videos with people in the industry like Lauren MacDonald, and other folks who are who are metrics, gurus, and this should all launch knock on wood in June, but it's going to be a free resource for anyone to go use to help them understand the email marketing metrics that they're looking at. And we continue to add to it. The the original iteration is really talking about how you use them, it's just sort of what they are, then phase is prescriptive, to teach you how to use them better, and what in what instances to use them. So we're really excited about that. I think that a lot of newbies to the industry prop sometimes have trouble understanding what the difference is, yeah, and how to use them. And it does include diagnostic, the opens in the clicks, as well as business, the conversions and the revenue. And, and so we're really excited about that, because we want to kind of help people who are new to the industry or people who are in the industry a while and still maybe a little confused about some things. Mm hmm. So many brand people email is one of the things that they have on their plate, and they just really don't have the time to go as deep as you and I do. And so this is sort of be kind of a quick study cheat sheet for them.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And and bring some consistency across vendors, which is not a that's not a trivial thing to do. I think frequently, I think frequently, amateur professional, we're into prisoners of our tools. To an extent we don't realize, you know, if I started using, you know, x system for a job, and it defines a ratio in a particular way, I'll think that's the way the ratio is defined.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, yep. Yeah. It is. And you know, it's hard because I've had people like, like, debate me about click through rate and then No, no click through rate is clicks over opens. And I'm like, that's to click to open rate. And it's funny because they'll, like challenge you. And it's really bad, right? Because you and I've been here a while. I'm like, so let me explain this to you. We could track clicks in the 90s. We couldn't track opens until the 2000s. That's Oh, I know. Yeah, that click through rate is clicks over sent, because we couldn't at that point when we develop that metric we couldn't track opens yet. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. That Yeah, that that depends on the same mechanism that makes real time content work. Right. USPS almost universally measure opens with a pixel or some other mechanism that's doing a SAML for back via HTTP. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting on since you touched on why I did want to, I do want to spend some time talking about it in in part to promote a community that I think is incredibly valuable as well. But someone's listening who doesn't know only influences you here's here's the elevator pitch from Gene genex.
Jeanne Jennings
Only influencers is the original community of email industry professionals. We were founded about 12 years ago, by Bill McCloskey. Before that it actually existed, but it was kind of under the radar was just a bunch of us. We called it the old timers list. is a bunch of us who had been in the industry a long time. And, um, you know, we would, you know, we would ask each other questions about things we would kind of, you know, shoot the SH it about things. But then bill kind of formalized it, and it's open to anyone, which I think is really important. So it's just the community, it's a people who love email. So we definitely are there to support people with their email programs. I think that our place in the community, I think we really help people network and we help people with their careers. So it's not so much about, well, I'm, you know, I have to send an email today, and I'm having trouble with my code, can somebody look at it, it's not really like that. It's more like, Hey, this is ESP just bought this, you know, small company to do that, how do we think this is going to impact the industry? Right? And it's a lot of, you know, you know, hey, was launched, and they're really, you know, anti tracking pixel? And is this gonna impact the industry. So, we had a great discussion, we do live discussions once a week on zoom during pandemic, we have a discussion list on email where anyone can post. But like, last week's live discussion, I thought was really interesting. Lauren McDonald, who many of you might know from his time in the industry, he's with Evie adoption now. wrote this great blog post for a lie about countdown timers. And it's the the blog is open to everyone. And then we had him on the chat. And we talked about countdown timers for like 45 minutes. And, you know, it's funny because it's, it's been there a while countdown timers aren't new. But his article was really great, because it talks about different ways you could use them, like I loved his like, you can count up like, it's been 30 days since you did this, and you need to do it again. And so it's just really a lot of, it's just a great industry, we've always helped each other and we have great discussions. And, and it's really neat. I mean, though, that you know, this industry has always had a history of helping each other I mean, competitors working together for the common good. And I think oh II kind of helps facilitate that and drive it. We have a Diversity Committee that we started last summer in the wake of all the BLM stuff that happened. And we were able to spin up a survey to try to figure out how diverse the email industry actually is. And we developed a special report on that. And we actually set ourselves a goal, we want the email industry to be as diverse as the population as a whole by January 2024. So we've been doing webinars toward that, we will do another survey this year to see if we've, if we have you know, better the diversity since last year. So you know, we do a lot like I said, I think a lot of us there to give back for the industry. We want to network, we want to have fun, and we do we learn it and it's great. You know, those those Thursday discussions are kind of amazing, because, you know, Chad white LED one, he's like a member of ours, and he's like well known in the industry. So you know, it's a chance to talk to these people who are who are writing these things and doing these cool things with email and and get ideas. And I don't know, I just find it to be I was a member from the very beginning and always loved it. So it was quite an honor to take over for Bill. But if you're in if you're in the email industry, and you're interested, feel free to reach out to me, I'm on LinkedIn, you can find me always happy to invite you as a guest to our Thursday discussion. And it's only $200 a year to join or $20 a month so I always recommend people just kind of give it a try. See if you like it. Yeah, totally
Matthew Dunn
give it give it a try. And I have to everything Jeanne said is absolutely is absolutely true and and not just patter on Chris. Chris Donald at inbox army was super kind and helpful when this this guy from a startup with a wild idea of me got in contact out of the blue and he spent an hour and a half on the phone with me. And the tail end of the call. He said the one thing the top thing I'd recommend you do is join only influencers. He said that and he was right. Hey, Chris. Yeah, I got to get him on next. He was right. It's been a great place to connect. You know, it's strikes me as you're talking about the industry on your emails, a funny niche because it's so universal. And at the same time, it's so specialized. And I know most email marketing teams are not big. And I've got this mental picture of, you know, poor, hardworking, isolated one or two person, team just trying to figure it out thinking they're by themselves, like you're not, you're gonna, you can actually help people and be helped by people who are doing the same thing at bigger scale, smaller scale, but they have the same, they're grappling with the same challenges, fundamentally, that you are right.
Jeanne Jennings
But there's nobody else who understands within the organization or, you know, heaven forbid, I mean, I'm divorced, I was married to a lawyer. So you might talk to someone who doesn't understand about email marketing challenges. Guide, it just didn't, yeah, yeah, you know, I do a lot of speaking. And I do a lot of training. And one of the things I always say, when I train is, you know, introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you, this is when we were in person free COVID business cards, because there are going to be days when you want to talk to somebody who understands email. And these are people are going to be your go twos, especially if you're a one person team, because instead of trying to explain to your spouse about open rates, and click through rates, and RPM, just just just get the card of the person next to you and, and and call them and but it is it can be very isolating many email marketing departments are very small. And you know, oftentimes, I mean, I meet people all the time, who were like, Well, I was part of the web team. And then they moved me over to email, and I don't know what I'm doing and right. And that's another way that oh, I can help. You know, and whether you're a member or not, I mean, reading the newsletter, reading the blogs, we're a little advanced, I mean, we're not sort of the basics of how you do it. But if you're looking to do it successfully, yeah, we are the place to go. And you know, we're working on things. The other thing that we're going to be launching is a career boost program for people who are new to the industry. Not not so much to, I guess it's not so much learning the basics of email, but more to help them, you know, network and learn how to, you know, that that fine thing that we all had to learn how do you get across the achievements that you're having without making it sound like you're bragging? And do things like that? But, um, but yeah, it sounds it's really exciting. I think that, you know, again, loved Oh, I when I was a member being asked to step up and manage it has been a great way to utilize in a different way, the context I've made and the information I have. That's really fun.
Matthew Dunn
Yay. Well, and and taking over it or taking over the stewardship of a community that's been in place for over a decade. It's done, it's not necessarily easy, it'd be pretty easy to bobble that ball. And, you know, I gotta say you did fantastic Jobs was like, in fact, there's new stuff happening. I'm delighted to hear about the the metrics and measurement project, for example, because that, like, if any collection of people should be able to pull that together, and it'll, it'll benefit, it'll benefit other members and and the industry at large. It's funny, we say industry and you think, man, that industry reaches into nooks and crannies is just about every other industry, if you think about it.
Jeanne Jennings
Oh, yeah, no, I mean, everywhere. And that's a good thing about oh, I mean, we have, you know, people who are one people, email teams from small companies, we have people who are with big, big brains, and they've got a team of a dozen or more people and their members, we have people who are on the vendor side, we have consultants, I often often people we're working on that with the name, often people say to me, like, I'll meet people and say, you know, you should join. And they'll say, Well, you know, I wasn't sure if I really reached the level yet.
Matthew Dunn
Big an influencer.
Jeanne Jennings
And I say, you know, we're working on that with a name. We just have been the email industry. So yeah, but yeah, it's really emails everywhere. And the more we help each other, and everyone's happy to help each other, the better off we'll all be.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, absolutely. I'm taking taking the email as a takeoff point on I thought it might be might be interesting to get your perspective, especially from, from the subject matter you're working with, with your Georgetown students about emails changing fit into the broad spectrum of digital channels, you know, the social media channels, the web channels, and seems to me that landscape is is shifting in a way that it hasn't shifted, as it grew up, almost a sign of maturation, that we're now asking about things like privacy and data control. Thoughts on it?
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, I mean, um, you know, so much is happening in the in the privacy and data realm in the last couple of years. And as a consumer, I think it's a good thing. You know, I think if we all think about ourselves, or you know, a lot of times I think about like my parents, you know, especially my mom, and, you know, we wouldn't want them to be misled, we wouldn't want their data to be misused, we wouldn't want any of that stuff to happen. So. So I think it's a good thing, but it is definitely changing the landscape. I mean, there's been a big to do about, you know, third party cookies going away. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about in class was programmatic, which is not much display, and a lot of other advertising is sold now, and programmatic is all based on knowing you know who that person who's landing on that web page is in an instant. So there can be a real time auction to serve them an ad, a lot of that is going to go away.
Jeanne Jennings
Yep. Yep.
Jeanne Jennings
You know, when who people are, but I think that really, it just really positions email to be even more important in the digital landscape. Because email, if you're doing opt in email, which we all should be doing opt in email, you have a relationship with that person, and you should be able to not only get reported data from them, so what their name is, what sorts of interests they have. But with email relationship, you can get observed data, because you can see the things that they click on, you can see which email, you know, with which emails they open. And that gives you the data that you need to better, you know, segment and target content so that it's more relevant to people. And if third party cookies really do go away, and if there's really not a great replacement for them, which some people are trying to float them. But I don't know how well it's going to work on email is going to be kind of the last channel where you can really successfully do that. And so it really makes you know, the importance of having you know, an email program, it makes it even more more important. I talked to a potential prospect today. They're actually a boutique agency in New York, and they have a nonprofit client. And over the last nine months, they've built them a database of 400,000 email addresses. Wow, client, his client did not have an email program previously, and the agency was like, You have got to, yeah, an email program. Now. They're struggling with it. And that's a lot of growth in a nine month period. Yeah. But, but yeah, I think it's become pretty clear from you know, from you know, what was it 1012 years ago? I mean, I remember, I had family members who said to me, you know, Jean, it's so great that you got this consultancy, but I think email is going to be dead in like six months, like, what are you going to do then? And I'd have to say, I don't think it's I don't think it's going to be dead. But from email being, you know, quote, dead to I think now it's going to be, you know, the, the channel, because, you know, the other thing that email has is, you know, we've been the highest channel in terms of ROI for years now. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm done. Well, you know, it's
Matthew Dunn
done better.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
There's also a, there's also a structural difference between email and most other digital channels. And this is where email has has stayed the same to its benefit. There, there are no monopolies in email. closest one might be, you know, Google's command of the inbox. But even there, I can take a standard email from any of the hundreds of email platforms I could sign up for. And I could send mail to my sub Gmail using subscriber who said, Yes, I want to hear from you. And they'll get it. Right. So I don't actually have to ask Google for permission to email my customer, they gave me the permission and Google kind of has to stay the heck, Gmail has to stay the heck out of the way and do the job of delivering, you know, delivering the message to them.
Jeanne Jennings
And you know, that's really different than other digital marketing channels. I mean, we talk about that a lot in my class, because, you know, social media, you don't own those people that are following your page. platform owns them. And if they decide to leave that platform, you have no way to get in touch with them again. And you know, I talked about it doesn't work so well anymore, because nobody else remembers my space. But I do. know, everybody, everybody mass exodus, I my space. Yeah, the people who had connections there couldn't get in touch with them. Yep. And, you know, a lot of bands run my space, and that's how they would promote their gigs and on so, you know, that's the thing about email you actually have that relationship with, with the prospect. That also that also there's a great responsibility there.
Jeanne Jennings
Yes, there's
Jeanne Jennings
an ability there is if you're gonna abuse that relationship by sending a bunch of irrelevant email or bombarding them with with with with emails, they're gonna, you know, worst case scenario, just stop opening and go dark on, you know, probably be that they're going to unsubscribe, and you know, they don't want to get them anymore. But you know, that's another thing that people don't think people think about with email. There's a huge responsibility there. And I see, you know, I'm seeing right now, clients who so imagine this right? Imagine your direct mail Reliant. Imagine you're a cataloger. And you send catalogs to people's offices to get them to buy stuff your business to business. And imagine now the pandemic comes, and nobody's in their offices anymore. And you don't have home addresses, you're sending catalogs to offices where people are not. I've got you know, more than one client who you know, at that point wisely shifted to email because whether they're working from home, or they're working from their office, or they're working from the beach, you can still get your email. And so dramatic shift into email. And the problem a couple of them are having now is they went heavy into email and at work, so they went heavier in the email. And at this point, we're seeing declining revenue per email figures, because they're bombarding the list. open rates and clicks are going. And so it's that it's that too much of a good thing. Right, it works. So we'll do more, we'll do more will do more killing now you're killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And, and, and this is where we start stepping into the, you know, the, the, the relationship between content and frequency, I may have said, I want to hear from you. But I don't want to hear from you every day on, I'm happy to hear from you. It's more interesting and more relevant to me, I still want to hear from you every day. Right? And, and, and it's, it's, it's kind of tough to move those dials around. So you're helping bring them you know, help them bring them along the learning curve, of managing that successfully for the long term sounds like
Jeanne Jennings
exactly and think about it, you have some people on your list, you might want to hear from you daily, but other people want to hear from you weekly or monthly. So you've got to have different mechanisms and let them they need to help define that relationship.
Matthew Dunn
I got an A I got on a list I forget where because you never do remember, but some some young lady with with good advice about copywriting. And I don't know if I'd signed up to read an article or something like that, you know, one of the many ways you end up on a list. And then I started ignoring the messages from our because I was busy with other stuff and so on. And I cut a message that basically said, hey, you're not opening my messages. I'm gonna go ahead and drop you, unless you stick your hand up and say, keep me around. And I think I let her drop me but I thought it was a courteous use of the knowledge that she had at her fingertips. No, I'm not opening I'm so why should she keep sending comments?
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, this is one of those conundrums. This is one of those, one of those discussions after a few drinks at the bar after a conference that gets a little heated. Um, yeah, so I mean, there's yellow would say keeper. Yeah. And I mean, there's so many angles on it. So you know, one of the angles that I think of is I actually I work with, with my clients on a lot of reengagement campaigns. But I never recommend that we tell someone, we're going to drop them. Okay. Think about that. If you think about emails, in terms of relationships, I mean, think about it like that, you know, you're not responding to my texts. Matthew, Matthew, you're not calling me back. If you don't call me back right now, and we're starting times on my test. I'm gonna break up with you.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. About a kicks girlfriend or whatever.
Jeanne Jennings
Well, basically, you know, and I'm sorry, you're probably married to oppression of us. I apologize. But, um, but imagine like, like, that's the last thing you would do, right? If you don't start answering me on I'm gonna, I'm gonna drop you. Well, that person's already obviously checked out. You know? Um, so so that's the first day I never threatened to drop people because you know, you want them on your list. I mean, what I tend to do in that situation and again, this kind of goes along with Dell is don't don't just stop sending. I decrease the frequency. Because for instance, Hasbro was my first big brand client, God bless them back when I started my consultancy, and you know, we had a bunch of people on the list who were inactive they really hadn't opened or clicked in I think it was a year and you know, but when i when i first suggested that we just stopped mailing them there was a big uproar from the team because their bonuses based on the size of their email list, so that just wasn't going to fly.
Jeanne Jennings
Oh, interesting.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah. Which is terrible way to do a bonus poster boy. But in a way it was smart because so I sat down with them we start talking about it. So if you're in the toy industry, you know that your big seasons at least back then were pre Christmas, pre Easter pre summer. So I said okay, so we can't we can't just get them off the list. So I hear you you want your bonuses I can I can relate to that. Let's just mail these in inactive. Let's just mail them at a minimal frequency during those peak times pre Christmas, pre Easter pre summer. And if they if they respond during one of those times that they open, or I think it was if they click, we'll move them back into the regular mail frequency. But if we don't, we're still mailing them. you'll still get your bonus. We're still gonna see if they're gonna hear from Guess what, we're just gonna do it at the time when they're most likely to respond. Okay. And so that's what I tend to do a lot. Now with that, you know, you don't just stop mailing them, you know, I had one client where they were on a daily email cycles or daily deals site, if you didn't open for a month, like if you didn't open at all, or click in the month of April, we would knock you down to one email in May. And then one email in June and then let's say we sent you that one email in July and you clicked on something, well, then we put you back into the daily, okay, but, but that's a way to kind of gear it. And so you always want to think about that. And it also depends on the life cycle. I mean, I don't know about you, I don't buy a car every month.
Jeanne Jennings
Right? Right.
Jeanne Jennings
buy a car every year. So the other thing to think about is like what really is my sales cycle? Yeah. And I may not open emails from car companies in years that I'm not thinking of buying a car, but when I'm thinking of buying a car, I'm probably opening them on a regular basis because I'm trying to make decisions and learn more. Right? There's There's so much to it. And you know, I think Dell is great dela tends to simplify things when he presents them just don't stop mailing and right The truth is somewhere in between.
Matthew Dunn
and, and the truth is probably infinite one to one spectrum. But pragmatically, you end up making bucket and segment and group decisions as best you can as fast as you can be, because there's only so much time to slice it down and try and act on it. Hmm, that's interesting. I had a related example, I had a company whose I think we'd use their Help Desk platform for campaign genius at one point, but didn't really like it. And I never bothered to turn it off. Because I think I'd bought a lifetime deal or something like that. And I actually got kind of a nasty gram from them that said, you know, you're not using the account, you haven't logged in, and then they wrap themselves in a green flag and, you know, saving your data costs, electricity, so we're going to delete it if we don't, if you don't log back in and Timex I'm like, I'm not a lifetime fan of that tactic. But Okey doke. See you guys later. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They should have they should have zip file that and mailed it to me is what they should have done. I mean,
Jeanne Jennings
how hard would that would have been? Yeah. Yeah. And and I mean, storage is not that expensive anymore. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
No, it's not. And it's the Yeah, yeah, it was, it wasn't a storage cost. I mean, it put it on, put it on a, you know, AWS glacier. And it's like, it's, it's close to free, because it's probably on a tape somewhere. But anyway, anyway, and then we do need to think about, we do need think about the cost of all the electrons that we move around so freely, but you know, what, if if everything I get an email, we're coming in paper mail, it'd be a lot worse for the planet. Definitely hands down.
Jeanne Jennings
Oh, yeah, no question.
Matthew Dunn
We touched on it briefly. But I did want to talk a little bit, at least in the abstract about the project that you and I've been jointly on from, from two different points of view, trying to trying to find out about what moves the dial as far as as personalization and presentation and emails for the for the particular joint customer. It's kind of a, it's it's harder than harder than I thought it would be. Right?
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, no, this this is a funny one. And we have to make sure we don't mention any names. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but, you know, in general, conventional wisdom, and in my experience, personalization boosts response. Yeah. So um, my client said, we decided we wanted to try personalization. And I said, well, campaign genius. I know Matthew, and they, they connect easily with your ESP. So had a call, you guys were great. Set up a test worked like a charm. I can't remember the exact number. But it was a significant lift in revenue per year. The
Matthew Dunn
first one was like 80%. It was huge. So we were like,
Jeanne Jennings
no brainer, we're off and rolling. Yeah, the second one. personalization actually loses the non personalized version wins. So, um, yeah. So you know, I think that, again, some of the angles here. You know, the first is that execution really matters does. And so the idea that, and this is something I think everyone's looking for the quick fix, right? So people like, well, we'll just personalize this email, and it'll do better. But if you don't really pay attention to the execution of it, it may not you know, and so that's, I think the first thing that this has kind of taught me and then it's not, what's that big joke, email is easy. e mails, not easy. And so you really have to kind of pay attention to all these different aspects and So, so yeah, I mean, that's a fascinating project, because we've really been spending a lot of time. And it's funny because I'm trying to kind of say this. I wasn't really, I was sort of, I had, I was focused on a larger project within the organization. So I kind of made the introduction, and then I kind of step back. Fine. But, um, but then, you know, looking at the results, and then trying to work with the team there to debrief on why it may not have worked, and, and you're realizing there's all these things that that that really influenced whether it's going to work. And again, I wasn't really helping with creating the emails because I was focused. I was here. So then when we did, like, Oh, that's what it looked like.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
And it's these things that to you. And I seem like second nature. But we're so deep in it, these other people who are awesome, super smart, but emails only a part of what they do. It's not second nature to them, because they haven't been doing it intensely. So I think that's really what happens with email. I hear it all the time. People say to me, Well, again, you know, I came to one of your, this is the best. I had a couple people who bought me dinner after a conference years and years ago, and they picked my brain over dinner, it got to the point where it was painful, but I was trying to give them as much help as I could. And I saw them at the same conference the following year. And I said, Hey, how you doing? email program? I sent them a proposal at the end of dinner and they said, No, thanks. We got enough information for you at dinner. We're good. Okay, oh, it's a nice dinner.
Matthew Dunn
It was a nice dinner.
Jeanne Jennings
good meal. Yeah, daily grill, not high end. But you know, next time, I would probably push for high end. But um, if I knew they were gonna buy, but they said, you know, we're really glad that we didn't hire you because we implemented all of your ideas, and none of them worked. Like what? Well, like you said, create a newsletter and that just that tanked. And I'm like, well, like, what was the content of the newsletter? And they're like, Well, why does that matter? You said create a newsletter, we create a newsletter, and I'm like, but so I'm trying to explain how well the content is actually what it's all about. And, and so I think that's, that's the other problem with with email, right? someone's like, Oh, well, they said, create a trigger program, trigger programs work better than ad hoc sense. So we created a trigger program. We had this email that was a dog when we sent it on our own. So we made it a trigger. And it's a dog, I don't understand. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Well, and one of the Not, not small nuances, there is, um, was a couple of one, we tend to think we tend to think where we're testing category, when we're actually testing this specific instance, right, like personalization example, that you and I both know what we're talking about here. So like, this particular treatment had this effect, it is not an indictment, or, or validation of the category of personalization, or of using blue instead of yellow. It's like, in this one instance, if nothing else changed, and it had this impact. That's all we really tested. Right. Right. And so you have to start thinking a good bit more broadly. Second, second one. And I think I think this is, I think this is a place where there's a lot to experiment and learn and develop yet in the world of, of email on there. As far as I've been able to find including the question on why there aren't particularly good models of the the psychological landscape of personalization, you know, we throw the term around, but tell me what the heck it actually means. Tell me what's high and low in personalization? Is it the size of the pixels? Is it the choice of a name versus a company like, it's it's pretty darn nebulous for being such a common buzzword, and I don't think we've done it methodically enough to really kind of know what we're doing yet. So yeah, good, fun stuff to try still. But it's gonna be it's gonna be working. It's gonna require the kind of rigor and methodology that you've been talking about, like we we can't just go dough did work didn't work.
Jeanne Jennings
You know, we had we did, I had a client for the holidays. And we did a bunch of ad split testing. And it was, I love that like, that was a joy. We got a bunch of learnings Yeah. And that we're applying the learning to their campaigns. But you know, every once in a while we'll back test something. We had a situation we had a one of the marketing managers and we were working on an email from her and she wanted she was adding that we had found out that the sweet spot for the number of products to include product blocks to have in an email was somewhere between I'm trying to think what it was like four, six, yeah. And she was adamant that she wanted 12. And we were like, no, look at the test results. We've tested this, it doesn't work. I want 12. And we so we compromised. We did I think we did our version that had six product blocks. And we did a version for her that had nine and we Ace A B split test them against each other. Because we didn't have another a lot of data around nine, but we had data around 1112 that that didn't work. Yeah. And, and even nine, nine, like never beat like for six. Yeah, well, sure enough, there's a completely different product line. Nine beats six, I'll be darned. So of course, you know, so kudos to her. She was right. Yeah. And so the next time we're gonna, we're gonna test 12. And we, but we think it has to do with again, this was a different audience holiday holiday goes to everyone. This was a very specific segment of the audience, it was a very specific type of product. In this product, there's a lot of variation, okay. Hence, for instance, like if you're doing like drink, where there's not a whole lot of variation in glasses. But this particular product category, there's actually a lot of variation, a lot more choice and a lot of differentiation. So we think that that might be why that more products helped. But that's the only thing we do with our testing, we try to figure out why it worked. Because if you can figure out why it worked, you can understand which situations to apply which learnings to Yeah, no, we're definitely fine tuning that. But yeah, even when you learn something, I mean, you should always test it with a new audience, and you should back test it, you know, six months or a year out? You know, because things do kind of get, sometimes things will work, and then they'll stop working. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. And the landscape landscape is shifting your relationship with the people at the other end of that send button. Yeah, you know,
Jeanne Jennings
you know, things that seem things that grab attention. If everyone starts doing them, they don't like for a while, Rose, a really big deal to put your first name in the in the subject line. Yeah, yeah. And then a lot of spammers started doing it. I don't know about you, but I rarely see my name in subject lines anymore. And every once in a while we test it, and it'll work or it won't, but the thing was like that is it might work the first time but then if you're doing it, you know, every week, after a couple of weeks, it the lift kind of falls off.
Matthew Dunn
It's just psychologically fatiguing on the recipient in because like, it's, it's, you know, it's a boy boy who cried wolf, but boy who cried dear first name in this case, because it's like, stop shouting my name, because I'm not gonna listen, when you use it after a while. It's the fun? No, it's obviously just, you know, fake a word.
Jeanne Jennings
It just fakes. And you know, if you have their name in the subject line that gets them to open two or three times, then nothing in the email is relevant. Yeah. Yeah, they'll just stop opening, it doesn't matter that your that their name is in the subject line. So yeah, that's the thing about testing. It's, it's really fun. But you've got to test all the time. And, you know, you can't necessarily if you read a case study where something worked, you should test it, but you can't necessarily guarantee it's going to work for you,
Matthew Dunn
right? Your industry, your subscribers, your product, your specific.
Jeanne Jennings
And again, the execution is is huge. Yeah. You know, if you're trying to personalize with a company logo, and you know, there's a case study where it's this big, and then you do it when it's that
Matthew Dunn
big. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
It may not have you know, your results may very
Matthew Dunn
well and yeah, or back to the personalization thing, we may eventually find out that, you know, if you do something eye catching, like a logo or someone's picture, and you don't change the rest of the design, it's gonna backfire. Right? Or if you get my name, and it's got a typo in it, which I've seen. I know it's gonna backfire. Why cuz I'm like, wait a minute, Can you spell the name right? and delete, right? I'm done. I'm done with you.
Jeanne Jennings
Clean data is really important.
Jeanne Jennings
And not easy.
Jeanne Jennings
I have I have yet to have a client who said, Oh, yeah, my data is really good. It's all clean. I have had many clients when I talk about personalizing, even with something simple, like first name, they go. No, we don't have first names for everyone. And, you know, which is an easy fix. You just use a slug. We call them slugs, a default, a generic term. Um, you know, the other situation I've had happen, which usually cracks me up is, is they're like, Well, you know, what, if somebody made their username, like, you know, you do head, and then I'm calling them dear due to head. And I'm like, Well, if they use that as their username, or their first name on them, I said, if I'm walking around at a conference, and my badge says due to head, Jennings, and you say, hey, doodoo head like, that's not your fault. That's my bad. Yeah. But you do need to be careful. I had a client years and years ago, it actually. Anyway, when we went into their data, we found there was an extra field that we didn't know about, and someone was putting comments in. And I think, you know, whether it was customer service, something somewhere, but the comments were overwhelmingly negative. So it was they were using it to denote problem clients. Yeah. But that's another thing you have to be really careful of because Cuz, you know, I mean, fields can get mixed up, man. Yeah, they sure can.
Matthew Dunn
They sure can a
Jeanne Jennings
column D and but I remember we found that we were sort of horrified. And then we were reading the comments and we're just like, oh man, like, um, I think we found it because there was a preference center that we were putting fields in so people could update their fields. That's how we discovered it. And if we weren't as careful as we were about looking at the records, and understanding because the field has some generic name to it, you never would have guessed that it was, you know, we theoretically could have been showing people preference centers where there was a field that said something like, I don't remember what it said, but in it, like this customers a total,
Matthew Dunn
right, right, right. Yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
No, you don't, you don't need that stuff like that, that shouldn't be in a database.
Matthew Dunn
Should be well, you get you get even more, you know, innocent, but ultimately, sloppy errors, like I've worked with companies that didn't really bother to keep the company name of their b2b customers, you know, they use shorthand or internal jargon or whatever else, and then you go, Wow, this would have been an asset if you bothered with it in the first place, but now it's a mess. And I'm not sure if there's even a way to clean it up. So you what, what happened was you actually really lost a bunch of value by not paying attention to taking it seriously. You didn't
Jeanne Jennings
put it in right in the first place. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And didn't say you got to put it in there. Right. Why? Cuz it because it matters? And yeah, I mean, the projects projects have foundered on, on stuff like that. And to be fair, we're all replicating this, this private data gathering data management, exercise in different ways. And, you know, it's kind of like what you were saying about metrics, you know, give giving some definition and some rigor so that someone doesn't have to reinvent that wheel may ultimately be doing a much bigger favor to them than the you know, then it looks like Yeah, why there's other standards for for capitalization and not shortening company names, or do you get to just wing it? And if the answer is wing it, you shoot yourself in the foot without realizing it? Oh, yeah. No. First place.
Jeanne Jennings
If you're asking people what their title is, don't give them a blank field. Give them a drop down menu.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Great.
Jeanne Jennings
Marketing, the D er, of MKT G, I could be, you know, director, comma marketing, I could be marketing director, great. Other thing that I had with a client, which was sort of fun was, they said, Oh, yeah, we know the ages of all the customers of a bunch of customers, our database, because we asked them when they when they signed up, how old their, their, their children were. And I said, That's awesome. And then we went to the data. And it was like, 1210, six. And I said, Okay. We know what year they gave us this data about how their children were, like, know why. And like, well, because it was three years ago, then that 12 year old child is now 15.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
So then we had this big exercise to try to pull the dates that they that they filled that particular field in Yeah. So that we could
Matthew Dunn
recalculate?
Jeanne Jennings
So again, you know, you when you think for like that, you're like, don't ask them how well their child has asked them what your their child was born. Yeah, yeah, you'll always know how old their
Matthew Dunn
child is. Well, there's, if there's a realm for magical thinking. In the digital space, it's the word database, like, you know, I've worked with business people across a wide range of stuff, and they sort of Oh, the database will do it. I'm like, you don't get it right. If like you, you can't actually make it do magic. There are real hard limits to this stuff. If you put 10 in there. And it's x number of years later, I don't know how old they are anymore. It's not a database problem. It's oops, we didn't think this through problem.
Jeanne Jennings
Well, and just the whole idea, and I'm not a technical person, so I had to learn all this too. But the idea of the unique identifier, what is the unique identifier in the domain?
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
Why the heck does that matter? Oh, yeah. Like you have people who have more than one email address, might there be more than one person using the same email address? Because most email databases when it started, the unique identifier was email address. Yeah. And of course, you know, what I've learned through the years is it's better to have a unique identifier that's like a number that we make up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so yeah, there's all sorts of things like that, that you and I think of all the time and then I talked to clients and they just think I'm crazy that I'm worried about the details. But the devil is really in the details on this kind of stuff.
Matthew Dunn
That's in a nutshell, that's an extraordinary especially ID stuff is an extraordinarily important one to sweat early on. There's a there's a project I'm a big fan of called what three words? What three words calm and you guys Check it out what they did was they assigned an ID to every square meter of the planet surface. So my office has a unique ID in what three words, the thing, they the thing that they did that I have literally stolen, is they they did the study to find out how to make it memorable and found that three short words, x dash y dash, whatever, are actually a great memory mechanism for this sort of human usability. So they named every square meter of the planet with three words. Oh, that's their ID scheme.
Jeanne Jennings
Okay,
Matthew Dunn
I've actually I, we stole that and use that in the in the tool set in a system designed for campaign genius, because I said, if someone wants to say, you know, hey, we need that real time content template for the blah, blah, blah. And it's some flipping gender random, good that they can't say, then they can't actually communicate it person to person easily. Yeah. And the chance for inaccuracy is high. But if they say, Oh, yeah, it's the one that's got, you know, monkey in the name. Oh, yeah, that one. So I need to say, and we were after that human usability without compromising, having having a clear, unique ID scheme, as well. And it's funny, it's actually paid off. Like, any number of times. I'm like, Man, I'm glad we did. Right, right. Cuz I, I Oh, yeah. The one with a dog in it. Yeah. Okay, that one? That kind of thing. Yeah.
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah. And it's so cool. Man,
Matthew Dunn
I gotta sweat those details. Like you said, you got to sweat those details. Early on, even even if they sort of think through the whole problem set, like, okay, people are going to be using this in that case. That was that was my argument. It's like, if this is more memorable, that that's a real winner. Like, I know computers can, can can I know computer can match your long ID strings, but I can't keep track of the stupid days. Nor do I want to write that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. miles to go.
Jeanne Jennings
This campaign genius. You mean, it's been it's been so nice to work with you with my one client who's using it? And, you know, it's fun. There's so many fun tools out there. And as a consultant, you know, I've got to find a business need for them. Yeah, more to get the chance to play with them. So I'm definitely looking forward to to working with you on campaign genius and with our existing client and hopefully with more clients kind of kind of playing with it. Because you know, that that's it, it's it's fun, but it's got to be fun that has a business payoff, business payoff to it. So yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And it's like, Yeah, no, my miles to go further to sleep. Well, we should probably wrap it up since I said, hey, let's spend half an hour now went ahead and tied you up for like, an hour. What's your what's your parting word? What's your parting? Thought? For someone who says, Well, I, you know, email is that actually that? Should I consider that as a career track? Like, you must have had this with your students? What do you say to them?
Jeanne Jennings
Yeah, you know, email, email is a great place to work because the people in the industry are friendly. It's a high ROI channel. So if you're looking for job security, email is going to be around and it's there. You know, the other thing is if you get into email and you learn how to do email, well it actually is a great launching plan to do had to do other things. So you know, even if you get into the email world and you end up moving on after a couple years, you will meet a lot of nice friends you'll be of people who are there to help you especially if you join a lie. And it's just it's it's a lot of fun, you'll learn a lot of things and it's you can you can really take it anywhere because the things you learn in email aren't going to aren't going to leave you and they're still going to be useful in other channels so yeah, funny I have students in my class who say every I've one of them is She's so funny every time we have clashes now that's my favorite channel then we do another clashes Oh no, no that's good. I want you to love it but yeah, definitely consider it look into Oh II but it can be a great career and and it's it's not going away anytime soon.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, go No, no, we'll Well, we'll be around probably talking about email for many, many years to come. Well, my my guest today and thank you so much for the time has been gene Jenny. It's always
Jeanne Jennings
so nice to talk to you, Matthew
Matthew Dunn
Let Yeah, likewise, you can find Jeanne on on at OnlyInfluencers.com You could probably find her on LinkedIn and you can also go to EmailOpShop.com Thanks, Jeanne.
Jeanne Jennings
Thanks so much, Matthew. Take care of be safe stay well.