A Conversation with Kate Barrett of eFocus Marketing
The irrepressible Kate Barrett zoomed in from the UK to share her experience and insights on email marketing. We covered email, strategy, loyalty, the perils and joys of clients, and some good-hearted arm-wrestling about AMP for Email. "For me, it's really that understanding of _why_ you're sending that email." Kate helps a wide range of client as she leads eFocus Marketing’s work on the leading edge of email marketing.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, hosted the future of email marketing. And I'm delighted to have I think is the first transatlantic guest, Kate Barrett, the founder and director of E focus marketing. Kate, welcome, and good afternoon where you are.
Kate Barrett
Thank you so much. It's early for you, Matt. But it's later in the day for me so I'm honored to be your first transatlantic guests.
Matthew Dunn
Awesome. Hey, Phil, people in a little bit on on on your company, and and your customers? For starters.
Kate Barrett
Absolutely. So I'm the founder of E focus marketing. And we are a specialist email marketing agency helping brands to use email more intelligently. A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called intelligence, email marketing isn't dead, the way you're using it is and in all honesty, that kind of encompasses our ethos in the business as well. And it's really getting people to think about how they best serve their customers in order to meet their objectives, but putting the customer at the heart of everything. So we've been going since 2013. And I'm lucky enough to have worked with some amazing brands in my career generally, and certainly With the business as well over the last few years, so yeah, big brands over my time from Marks and Spencer, Nissan, Addy, das all the way through to entrepreneurs getting started and everyone in between those challenges.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that always strikes me about when I get a chance to talk with someone at an email marketing agency is one of the one of the big initial lifts in in in the specialty that you've got, is getting people to understand that just because they send email doesn't mean they're experts that email
Kate Barrett
is a lot harder than just hitting the send button.
Matthew Dunn
It is but but you know, okay, I'll play dumb. Why?
Kate Barrett
Good question. You know, for me, it's really that understanding of why you're sending that email. So many people send emails out because they think they should, just to get something out there. And in all honesty, if it's not interesting and relevant and valuable, it's more damaging just to send anything out there, because you're putting people off, and when they open an email that's not relevant from you, that can impact what you're doing in the future. So you've got to understand what are your business objectives? What are the needs of your audience? And how do you put that together to send right message right person, right time, it's so important to do the planning and not just send for the sake of it,
Matthew Dunn
understand why you're sending understand why I had I was, I was on a zoom call with one of your countrymen del della quist. And he made a comment that just really struck me, he said, You know, he said that there were there are times that he recognizes that a particular message, it's it, the intent is not necessarily to get someone to jump up off the couch, your desk chair and do x right now it's to, it's to continue the relationship to to to stay in their mind and, and realize that in the future, that message actually was part of why they did get off the couch or above the desk chair and act at any comments on that.
Kate Barrett
I totally agree. And that's unusual with with Dallas comments loved Ella. Yeah, I honestly, I do agree. And it comes back to knowing your why there's gonna be some emails that you just want people to read something that you want them to take action on. But there's also that holistic impacts across your marketing, you know, I was dealing with, I had a student on one of my courses, I teach her a few different courses. And they were from a pizza chain in the UK. And they have shops on the high streets or restaurants on the high street, but they also do deliveries. And certainly, they can't track that direct impact of email through to a purchase in their store most of the time, because of the online offline issue there. So for them, what they saw is when they did pull back on email, because that was the instruction that they were given, they saw an impact on the sales installed, they saw sales go down. And it just proves that even if you can't directly attribute a sale through to something, you've got to have a look at that overall impact. And this is the problem with attribution models nowadays, you know, most people, certainly clients I deal with come to me and they're using last click attribution. It's the easiest to do. Yeah, we can all link it, what is it that push that final action through to the purchase? Yeah. And that's great. And it tells you what that final piece was that push them over the line, but it doesn't tell you that they saw a PPC ad, or they saw a Facebook ad, or they saw three emails, or they you know, they saw all of these things, banner advertising, you know, too bad advertising, on the trains and things out on the subway, all of these things have an impact. And we've got to get better in terms of our data and our technology, attributing across different marketing channels. But it's so hard to do. And there's so many different ways to do it.
Matthew Dunn
It is hard in and it seems to me that that we we as the recipient, we as the you know, people with inboxes that are maybe a little overloaded. We're hitting a stage where we want it to get a bit harder. And I'm taking a sideways jump here to talk about to talk about privacy data control, third party cookies, that whole that whole shift that we're we're started we're putting on the brakes, I'd argue on Sure. Just keep everything about me. And I'll say yes. to everything that says Can I drop a drop in ID on your machine? And isn't that gonna make that job? For starters, even more challenging that, that correlation job?
Kate Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. You know, the fact that we need permissions for a lot of these things, I think firstly is good big Because it means that those people we are sending to are engaged with that they want it they've said yes or no underlying best practice of get someone to say yes that they want whatever that is that you're tracking or sending no more, or what have you. But it makes it harder for us as marketers to then have those permissions to be able to do those things, which is what we know that consumers want. But because it's so bogged down in the legality, and you know how many consumers or end users are going to want to read a legal statement or anything like that they're not. So again, as marketers, we've got to, you know, if you're an email marketer, and you're not part of that conversation about how does that display on the website, you know, have a look at it, try and get involved in that conversation, add your expertise to it, because what we're doing is selling those people on the idea that they need this piece of technology to get the personalization that they want. And we know people want it we know people engage with with personalized content. And certainly from where all of the trends are going. You know, if we think about interactive email, and amp, it's all about making an experience for people. And the more personalized, you can make it to speak to somebody, then the better all of these things are gonna hit.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Right. And it's the question you the question you ask at the top of that long legal document the way the way you frame, this privacy personalization on boundary, you're going to get the answered, you're going to get the answer. But based on the on the way you frame that question, because you're right, we all want more relevant, which, which inherently means more time effective, right? Like, oh, you sent me info about fishing, and not about fashion. Why? Cuz you know, I could really can't even spell fashion, but I like, right, so automatically conserve my time. Interest bar goes up. So if you said, would you would you be okay with me recognizing your leisure activities? Sure. But then if you say, on how do you feel about privacy? Oh, absolutely. And privacy and data control? and all that other stuff is like, well, which is which of those do one there, fella?
Kate Barrett
Yeah, Kelly's gonna make that together?
Matthew Dunn
Yes, we do.
Kate Barrett
We've got to find that way to merge this. And what I think is really interesting, whether we're talking about this and getting somebody to sign up or say, yes, you can track me or whether we're talking about how we connect with our audience in our emails, we've got to think about all of those psychological aspects of how people work. Yeah. So you know, one really interesting study that I saw, and I'll send you the information about it later, Max. And maybe we can link to it, but it's about breaking people from their default, when they're going through a process when they're going through a signup form, their default is to do nothing. So if you offer them a checkbox that is non checked, you've probably seen this one before. And that, then their natural reaction is to do nothing with that and just carry on with the process that they're doing. So if you offer a yes, no option where they have to do something, they have to break their default, they can still choose No. But they have to break the default. actually think about it, you can see your conversions to opt in increase. So again, just these small tweaks to really think about what is that process somebody is going through? What are they trying to do at the moment, if we're stopping them from doing that? How do we make it as easy and beneficial for them as possible to take the action that we want them to take? That's what we've got to break it down to? So think about your audience? What do they want? What do they need? And how can you best present that to them? Because your words really make a difference. Wow.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And you and and, and you continue to earn that on, you know, that often, that permission. This is one of things that always strikes me about email, in contrast to a lot of other digital channels, like it's a pretty pure play. If If you start sending me drivel, there's a point where I'm going to go unsubscribe, and
Kate Barrett
just stop engaging
Matthew Dunn
or, or stop engaging in air are set up a boza filter that, you know, auto auto ship to trash or whatever waste, you know, waste your time and effort as well. But you really do have to keep earning that spot in the in the inbox if you're running an email marketing program. Yeah,
Kate Barrett
absolutely. And again, this is where it comes back to your strategy. And it comes back to knowing why you're sending a message which links down into your segmentation strategy, you know, is this a message that actually needs to go to a wider audience? Or is there something you can go niche, you know, not everything has to go national, everything has to go to the wider audience. It depends on your objective. So you've got to understand all of these points to be able to connect it together and then speak to the right people with your messaging.
Matthew Dunn
So I would I would guess that one of the things That one of the things that your clients end up understanding about the value prop that that a focus and your team bring to the table is is tackling that complicated, ongoing equation and getting the you know, the feedback loop of what we did last week affects what we're going to do in that decision about sin not send today segment this group, you know, or not tomorrow. Yes,
Kate Barrett
absolutely. So, yeah, we offer the full range of anything email marketing related, so strategy and helping you work out what that plan is, and you're why implementing it for you, I'm getting those emails out in your ESP, or actually helping to train your team on some of these key best practices and getting them up today. So, you know, we kind of see that process throughout. And it's really important to us to help businesses understand that and bring our knowledge and our passion for email, to their knowledge and their passion for their customers, and help them find that right. middle point. And I think, you know, in all of these conversations, we are your I am certainly I know you are email through Twitter, you know, it's it's my absolute passion. But we also have to recognize that again, thinking about the customer, the end user, they're not just seeing email, they're seeing every other piece of marketing that's going out there speaking to the customer services teams, they're going in store to buy something, and all of those touch points have to start working together. And if they're not currently working together again, that's something that that you guys can do is think about, you know, what are the social team doing? How can email link in and support that? How can social help email? We've got to connect these channels together? and use them at the times for that person? Right mics? makes most sense for that touch
Matthew Dunn
point? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's good. You sounds like you've got customers that you've worked with for a fairly long haul as well, because you wouldn't be able to say that without some real experience in, you know, in the, in the lifecycle of program.
Kate Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. So we have clients that we work with on a one off project basis, if someone needs help on something, but we have a lovely range of clients that we work with on a retainer basis, and help them work through that strategy as they go. So as new things come up, how do we adjust to that? Because you can't just have a set strategy that doesn't react to going on, you know, it's not real life. Yeah. So you've got to have that reactive. But if we can plan the basics plan, what's that messaging gonna be? How is it going to change based on engagement based on our personas or our segments? So yeah, planning all of that out and actually helping them implement, it gives you a lot of thought process around that life cycle. And one thing that I've certainly seen is that whenever I get a client to do an exercise of plotting what they have now, so focusing in on email, in this case, and plotting what have they got now that goes around each of the five key stages of the lifecycle, so acquisition, consideration, purchase and loyalty, purchase loyalty, and then reactivation coming around. And what you'll find is that there will be a cluster usually, of emails that are usually in the consideration stage, or in the loyalty stage, you know, a lot of customers aren't even collecting emails before the purchase process to allow them that first stage so if you can identify that you can start to drill in as to where you can create a much better experience for your audience.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, and and the right one for the stage as well. Exactly. Blast blast me with blast me with fake personalization on on, you know, email number one, I may go hang on a second, right. But if I've been a customer forever and ever, I hate I'm probably guilty of beating this store to death but there's a there's a retailer here in the US that I have bought a lot of stuff from these guys will say their name, but a lot of stuff from these guys over well over a decade, on their, their their place to get outdoor gear and clothing on at a great source and and less less expensive than the Rei is of the world. So I really am a loyal customer. And and they've got a they've got a could be great email program because they send stuff on a steady clip, you know, it's always a sale. So you get used to the I'm going to wait for that. But I was struck by I've been buying from you guys for a decade. And you still treat me like I'm I'm one of zillion in the list. Like there's absolutely no recognition. They know they know a ton about what I do and don't like from those purchases. None of that's in the email and I'm just like, what are wasted
Kate Barrett
You know, I'm so glad You brought this up, because, you know, putting a strategy together is a challenge for a lot of marketers, but what is a massive challenge is data, there are so many issues within that, whether it's in different places, and you can't get to it, or if it's not accurate data, or you just don't have it. So, you know, my one of my kind of core phrases that I always say to my clients is, you can't do anything with your email marketing, if you don't have data. And that starts with obviously getting getting an opt in getting an email address and being able to send to somebody, but it's about understanding them, it's about understanding that there are different types of data that you can pull together to create a picture now whether or not you have a data analyst team, or you have artificial intelligence during your all for you. And it's you know, all to the extreme, or if it's just you, sitting at your desk, trying to figure out what the next best trigger is or what the next best personalization is, for an upcoming campaign. If you don't understand your data, you can't drive your strategy forward, there is no strategy in my mind, if you don't have data to use, there's only a certain level you can get to. So you've got to think about, you know, data that you asked for so known data, behavioral data, purchase data, contextual data, you know, what device are they opening on, that can help the person what the tactics are, and how you, you know, run that out cultural data for different places around the world, and what works around the world, for example. So if you can't pull bits of this together, you're not going to be able to advance your strategy. So again, if you're struggling with strategy, go back to your data, love it, understand it, know where it is, and know the power that it can do for you. Because that alone will pop out so many ideas.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Yeah. And, and, and it forces you to forces you to realize just how much your marketing email in this case is, is is a child of the whole, right, you're not getting, you're not gonna get all of that data about, about all of those, all those folks, just from what you're doing in your in your email platform, whatever the platform may be. I'm curious, because you mentioned it, and because we just, we just finished some, some work in our toolbox for ESPN, we just added effect. I don't think I've talked about this before, cool. We just added a tool to that toolbox that goes inside the email editor that does a seemingly simple thing, it actually allows an email marketer to target creative based on the language preference of the recipient. And they don't have to know in advance. Nice, because the email client actually sends the data of language preference, you can say, you know, here's my, here's my hero image for the for the French market. Here's my hero image for, you know, my Spanish speaking market. And I don't know, I don't have to know where they are. And I don't have to know that language in advance. So here's where I'm going with that, aside from, you know, sneaking in a we've been working as well. Um, there's a lot of there's a lot of implicit data in the world that's, that's available. And this kind of part can be part and parcel of what you're doing strategically, reactions, comments,
Kate Barrett
you've got to understand it. Or if you don't have that view of what you might want to be able to pull in, you can't figure out whether or not that might already exist somewhere, you know, again, I see a lot of clients who go, right, so we want this piece of data, we want to know if they're renovating their kitchen, let's say and what they forget is that, yes, you can ask that and there is absolutely please for asking those types of questions. But you can look at their behavior on the website, you can check out what they're opening and clicking on in their emails, you can you know that there's a lot of ways that you can find that data to pull it into your campaigns without it being that first thing that you thought of so brainstorm it, find where the data is, and then you can use it to much better use like being able to change that content dynamically using I'm guessing contextual data based on where they're they're opening the email,
Matthew Dunn
it's actually it's actually a little known but there's actually language preference that's sent in in a content request header. It's not even location based. And that's even better even more more more more more precise because just because just because I'm sitting in the US doesn't mean I speak English worth a damn right I mean, obviously we're separated by common language. You being Britain. On we've touched on content a little bit and I always like talking about that because one of my one of my aims in in bringing a variety of guests on here is to is to help businesses understand just how dynamic the leading edge of email is. And just what a range of possibilities there are, despite the fact that it's been around for a long time. You mentioned amp and not everybody may be familiar with amp Can Can you expand on that and educate him a little bit?
Kate Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. So it's effectively bringing interactive experiences into your email design. So I saw a great example from McDonald's. Now, I don't know if they were using amp, because amp is specifically something that was created by Google to begin with, and kind of their, their testing platform where anyone can pick it up. And it's kind of an open source platform. So I know a lot of other providers have picked that up now. And hopefully, it will become more widespread with them supporting it. But it's creating as many website experiences. So the McDonald's example was a carousel that you could flick through in the email. So like you would on a website, but in email, to different images of the toys that were in there, their Happy Meal boxes at the time. So it mainly you have that much more information in a much shorter space, within your email added to the experience, it helped me to understand what was part of that collection that they had. So they used it in a way that helped my experience to deliver that information that I needed to know. And it was a great example of it. But you know, am can be used for completing forms and your email, I believe that there are some tests going on with actually purchasing directly from the email, it really allows you to bring it to life. So you can deliver more within the email without necessarily having to click through which is actually opposite of what we've always done. We've always said, right, we've got to get them as a shop window, and then click through for more information. This is turning that on its head a little bit is technology using design to let them navigate within the email as well.
Matthew Dunn
It is and quick sidebar. I mean, amp is not an email Standard amp is a Google Gmail standard. And when Microsoft jumped off the AMP bandwagon a month ago, I think that put a bullet in between and size is an email standard. So I my frank expectation is as high risk of amp dying on for technical reasons, I'd be fine with that, for improvement of the medium reasons, I'd like to see an interactive standard to enable that kind of stuff that works on any email client come along. But leave that aside, despite the fact that was multiple sentences. Your your colleague, and I'm gonna guess, friend Miss Kath Pay on was I was I was in a conversation or listening to her talk about amp, I think one of one of the webinars that her company does. And she said, Well, I'm not sure I'm such a fan. Because on if you're in the middle of an interactive message, you know, the next message is a click away, and the inbox full of messages is right there, where if I get you to my site, then all of the marketing instrumentation and metrics gathering and like all of the set of controls that I've worked my buns off to have on my website are there. And I'm not competing with your email, muscle memory of next message. Next message next message like we've got a we've got a funny boundary condition to play with as as email becomes richer, that how much how much can we get someone to do in a message? Yeah, yeah, fighting that very real challenge of Oh, man, I gotta, you know, get another 180 of these suckers to to get so before my next cup of coffee. Any any reactions?
Kate Barrett
Yeah. Do you know what there's a few things there. So in terms of why may not take off, I think, yeah, the pullback by Microsoft is really interesting, but also is the third mimetype. So in order to actually get to send out in your ESP has to support HTML, text, and M and there aren't many during that, right, there are some, but you know, it's another adoption ladder, right? Um, in terms of the benefits of it. So you can do interactive email without using M. So just by using your HTML, cleverly, you can put in some of these options like carousels and things like that. You can actually code them into your emails using your normal email code. So that's brilliant. For me, it comes down to a can What is your objective? What do you want someone to do? And my kind of pushback on what you said would be if somebody takes the action that you want them to take in your email, rather than going through onto your website, if they've taken the same action then surely that's a good thing. Now, obviously, we need to see, as we started to use these 10 pieces of technology, we've got to see is that the case? Or does it break the journey too much? And again, this is where I come back to what's your objective? Because if you're using a piece of interactive email design, for no reason, other than its calling function, you want to use email. Yeah, it's probably not going to help you. You know, if you're using an interactive function that, again, doesn't aligned what you want somebody to do or what you want to achieve. It's not gonna help you. But if it's something like the McDonald's example, where it was that quick carousel flip, where I could see what these toys were, yeah, that was perfect. Yeah, all of these things are to enhance your message. And when you know what the right message is, for that part of your audience, or your audience as a whole, depending on how you're segmenting, then you can use interactive to support that. And I think that's the key, you know, any design technique, anything that you're doing should be supporting what you want someone to do in your key message. And that's, I think, where the difference will come?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, no, that, that that's actually that's a really good distinction, like we may, we may find that there's a lot of just this is just currently me, we may find that there's a natural sort of boundary, like, I'll do things that are one or two clicks, you know, in the email window, right, but fill in a form maybe maybe too much? I don't know yet. We don't know yet. But it'll be
Kate Barrett
the trust as well, right? We'll trust filling in a form in an email. So again, it comes back to psychology, it comes back to what are people willing to do? And we don't have the data on? Yes. Oh, yeah. I certainly haven't, you know, kind of seeing that kind of analysis of the interactivity. Yes. I think that's gonna be really interesting as we move forward.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And, and with, you know, with the installed base of email, which is just like it's unimaginably large, there's billions and billions and billions, literally billions of devices, billions of clients getting billions of messages, like there's a, there's a huge opportunity to, to do those experiments and learn and start figuring out, you know, what, what, what's acceptable, what's not, and I'm gonna guess, you bet you've been in this space a lot longer than I have, I'm gonna guess that the look and feel of emails, the acceptable level of personalization, the kind of content that works has shifted over time. And he
Kate Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. As Yeah, as anything does. You know, I think certainly in the beginning, it was, how do you know this information about me? This is creepy. And we're losing that more. Now. There is obviously a caveat to that there is always a way it can be creepy. There's always a way you can take it too far. If we don't think about the people behind it. That's when it gets creepy, you know, saying, Hey, I saw you visited our store at 1002. Last Tuesday, here's a picture of you coming in. That's creepy because people don't want to be followed. But if you say, Hey, we saw you visited our store last week, we hope you had you know, a great trip if there was anything else you needed. You know, you come at it from a we're following up with you. Does that kind of make sense? In terms of the the difference there? So I think that's important.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, and and and I we are consumers are getting more consumers as a funny word using
Kate Barrett
expected.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And we're we're all becoming more digitally sophisticated, particularly in the last year. Because we've all made this massive, you know, we realized we live online to crater extended, maybe we ever expected on I was I was on a zoom discussion on an Alan from cell up, made an interesting comment, we're talking about creepy. And and I said, Well, they give an example of creepy, you know, bit of my, my, my company does real time content. I said, Alan, I can put, I can put an image in an email that shows the street view of where the recipient is. And he went, Oh, and then he paused. And he said, there's a really smart thing he said, but you know, if like, if that was on the package notification of where's my package that might be useful? Because I might say, Oh, wait a minute. That's going to the office. I wanted, Tom right context. It Yeah, exactly. And, you know, geolocation context, human context, Jeju and purpose. Yeah, right. In
Kate Barrett
fact, what's your objective? How does this help in this situation? That's exactly it. And, you know, in terms of those, those changes, we expect it now. So particularly with new data laws, and if somebody is saying, yes, you can have this information, they expect you to use it to make their life easier or better. You know, the way that people are interacting now is changing. We're using we're using mobiles for much more than we were 10 years ago, I don't even know what the time frame is for my balls now. But yeah, apps, if you think about the way that apps are designed now, you know, email is a fantastic tool. You know, it's the underpinning of everything you do in your strategy. But if we don't think about how we can better serve our customers, personalization design, we're going to get lost in all of the new technology that comes out. Eventually, it will take a long time to fake emails not dying, it's not going anywhere. It's the way that you're using it and the people's expectations and how, if you're going to a website or an app, you can find something so quickly. That's what we're doing with the interactive element. For example, we're bringing some of that in so that we're not just a flat message on the screen, because that's not where technology's going. So step by step, personalization, understanding our audience getting that right message to them using some of these design tricks to help them navigate information. It's the changing the way that people want to interact with things. And that's what we're, we're starting to do. So yeah, it is an exciting time. And I think, yeah, like I said, emails, not dying is not dying anytime soon, it's getting more and more powerful, particularly over the last year, you know, a lot of people have kind of realized that it's almost like a second coming, I guess, for a lot of people, but we always knew that it was the backbone of everything.
Matthew Dunn
Well, and for I agree, I agree with you as well, I'm a fan. But I have pointed this out more than once. Yeah, email, doesn't have an 800 pound, gorilla. Controlling the channel, you look at, you look at social, you look at search, I mean, really what happened to the web, I would argue, you've got, you've got monopolies in a lot of those in a lot of those places. And there isn't a monopoly, sitting at the gateway saying, you know, pay the toll. But to cross over the bridge, in email, that's we've got an incredible wide ecosystem of companies that, that make email, do what you want it to do. as a marketer, I mean, the number of DSPs that you've probably worked with in your careers, it's got to be something else, right. And new ones all the time, and advances and healthy competition between them, but there's not one, there's not one company sort of Park they're going, you know, sorry, we own the inbox. Like I love the fact that nobody owns the inbox
Kate Barrett
to some extent, and I do you agree with you in terms of the sending when it comes to the receiving? Yes, no, so much. You know, we've got here you've got the dominant big boys, right, you've got Microsoft, you've got Gmail, and you've got OAuth now in terms of, you know, the the combination of them and what they say and do goings, and this is the issue, right? They've all got their algorithms behind them as to what they'll let in if they suddenly go, you know what, let's do this. I'm gonna do a healthy disagree
Matthew Dunn
with you on that, because and I pay a lot of attention to this space, because of what we do technologically. Is the the the sort of big gorilla on the inbox side looks like looks like Google with Gmail, for example. But you know what the number one client is for Gmail access. It's not Gmail, I feiern. Bengo controls and who controls the technical standards of that email? app? Apple does, but the funny thing is there were out of Google proprietary standards like amp, and we're back down to common IETF standards, email standards, apples, you know, Apple says, Well, we can only talk to you like an email client, which which kind of saves our bacon from monopolistic gatekeeper behavior on on the inbox. And because I've been worried that that might happen. And frankly, I was a little concerned, I underlying technical reasons why the gap is actually weakly constructed. But leave that aside, I was concerned as it started, sort of popping up and like, wow, Gmail is, is a big inbox provider. Heck, I use I use a G Suite inbox myself, right. If this sticks, I don't want to see a level of monopolistic control on the inbox that we see on the website. But the fact that the actual end, delivery is is still fragmented and still in the consumers control. I can say, I want to use Apple's client on my iPhone, or I actually use a paid email client, believe it or not, I pay for an email client is an email. I know I know, right? I use an email client called superhuman that specifically only works with G Suite and Gmail as a back end, yeah. But I asked him the question is I was as I was onboarding on the thing, I asked him the question about app support. And I got this funny, blank look from from the very nice, very well informed, young lady who was doing the onboarding. She didn't know what it is. She said, I'll follow up, I'll get back to you. When she got back to me, she said, No, that's interesting. I'm actually paying for an even higher end, Google specific front end client, but they're like, and by the way side, by the reason I pay for the the clients called superhuman I'm going to give them I'm going to give them the pitch here. I didn't think I would pay for an email client, because why would you pay for an email client? I've been at inbox zero for five months. I haven't been at inbox zero in the 30 years, I've been using email
Kate Barrett
I just not giving you your emails, or how are you zero?
Matthew Dunn
know that what, uh, what superhuman did and I was really, I was blown away. I did it as an experiment. I'm like, yeah, no way. They're gonna give me inbox zero. And the, the user interface has more, has more to do with what what the gaming experience is like. And then then the outlook and inbox experience sorting, filing, unsubscribing setting to, you know, pop back up next week, those are all keystrokes. And they're all lightning fast. So when I see through my inbox in the morning, it's like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, those are all gone. The bar got a whole lot higher. For relevance. It's going to make me pause and actually read a message. Because I can reflex response say, I'm done with that. on a on a, like, a two second scan. If that. Yeah, have a message like and that makes the job for you harder, I would argue.
Kate Barrett
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I'm what it means is that from that first point of the relationship, you've got to be delivering value as much as you can. Because if they open your first couple of emails and go, No, this isn't for me. You might have lost them even quicker than than we do now. Sir, especially with those fast movements. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we got to use our data got in our customers got to know our strategy.
Matthew Dunn
Well, and and this made this my hobbyhorse, but I'd be curious, your reaction, I think emails got to grow the heck up in terms of the level of visual communication as well. Because if I've got two seconds on a message, you can get 600 times as much information to me with a visual, and I will never get through reading. Because we've crossed Yes.
Kate Barrett
Yes. Yeah, there's I think, you know, again, there's the the left brain, right brain, right. Some people respond better to visual, some people respond better to wording and facts. And I think
Matthew Dunn
that we think that's true in terms of process. That's true. That's true in terms of preference. But in terms of processing, we're actually all visual, first, because of how the brain is wired.
Kate Barrett
Yeah. And again, until we have that point where all images are turned on an email, even when we've got no internet signal, those images can be downloaded on our mobiles, because the trouble is, if you're in either of those situations, and your images are off, you've then lost your your key message. So in terms of the functionality, we still have to think about that a lot.
Matthew Dunn
I'm sorry, I didn't buy I don't buy. I don't buy the argument for two reasons. One, as a data driven marketer, if you can tell me the data about images about bandwidth available are internet off. We're just talking hypothetically into Yeah, we're busting our butts to 5g wire the world how long do we think this is actually going to be a problem? I get internet on.
Kate Barrett
Exactly. That's that's exactly my point. Yeah, until we get there with that increased technology, we still have those issues in terms of rendering and when those emails get to people you're not there yet. No, no 100% not all the amount of times I pick up my phone and I've got bad internet connection and it takes so long for the it's like the old dial up with the image is coming down sometimes it can be really bad. Wow. Certainly in rural areas, and there are you know, whole swathes of the UK that have really bad internet signal.
Matthew Dunn
So crappy bandwidth.
Kate Barrett
is everywhere. We've got a long way to go. Yeah. Before that, you kind of challenges I think but we're working we're working towards it. And it's it's finding that balance right?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah, we're we are we are we are getting there and I and I do think emails going along for the ride, if you will, but yeah, you know, you look at the rise of, you know, the rise of bandwidth on a you know, megabit per person, granted rural and you and I live in the sticks it took forever to get high speed out here. But, you know, that that that keeps going up, we're at the point of talking about Internet access as a fundamental human. Right. Like, which I'm a fan of, but but it means more and more, we're going to be working on the assumption that our, our, our digital channel, to those customers that we're trying to think through strategically is capable of rich, you know, amp interactive, smart, you know, multi mic, and and email was architected, when none of that would none of that was true when when the pipe was tiny. And we're still doing fairly modest things. To my mind, we're still doing fairly modest things with with email compared to what you see done with with apps with websites. I, and maybe that's a benefit to the channel, maybe it's a maybe it's a challenge. I think there's a I think there's an opportunity to make email richer and more interesting. I don't know whether we'll advance whether we're really advanced the standards, the common standards of email much again, I yeah, I just don't know. Like,
Kate Barrett
it takes a lot to push that rock up the hill, I think
Matthew Dunn
we're dealing with close to 20 year old standards now. Like you and I are working on a 20 year old standards. Common common ground, we don't you know what, we're still doing new stuff with this. So it's okay, maybe we don't need to change that very much. Yeah. Yeah.
Kate Barrett
It just takes a while. But step by step. Yeah. You know, if you just think back over the last five years, the importance of data and the technology, we have to look at that data will come on so much. Yeah, I think Yeah, we're gonna see that continuing.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And and we're gonna and we're gonna start to we'll have to even more earn, earn that data and the rights to that data as as well on? Yeah, yeah, it's good. We're not we're not done yet. Kids.
Kate Barrett
Yeah, exactly.
Matthew Dunn
Let's, let's get slightly off the email. thing for a second, although it's important context. So you're, you know, you're in the UK I'm in. I'm in the US. And we're still we're still in pandemic mode. And when you and I are talking at this point in time, tell me about things there. Right now.
Kate Barrett
Yeah. So we're, we're still in lockdown. We're slowly starting to come out of it. We've got a few dates in the UK that we're working towards, I think the first kind of slight opening up is the end of March. So we've still got a few weeks ago at this point when we're recording. So yeah, it's, it's famous for everyone, right? You're just living day by day and, and getting on with things. But for me, you know, I know, so many people have struggled during this pandemic. And it's been, you know, such an awful time for people with jobs and things like that. And certainly, as I said, at the beginning, I think email has come into its own. You know, for me, it's been a really busy time helping people, a lot of new people, your new customers that are new to email that want to get started and new businesses that have got funding over the last year, still, you know, things are still happening. And people know that they've got to have that digital one to one communication and emails, the best way to do that, and then supported by all of their other marketing. Yeah, so yeah, it's been, it's been busy, um, but it's good. So good to be able to help those businesses, you know, navigate the waters at the moment and get something in place that helps people as well, on the on the end of it.
Matthew Dunn
I was wondering, when, when we, when we started into, you know, the various lock downs and, you know, grappling with something that we'd never none of us had gone through, and no, you know, no nation had really gone through in living memory, whether whether email would sort of pop on beat because it doesn't have gatekeepers, because it cost effectiveness is more in your control. And because in the long run that you end up with you as a business end up with the relationship asset. As you build that list, and it looks like it looks like email has grown in the last year is it does has it in your experience?
Kate Barrett
Yeah, I'd say so. Um, yeah, like I said, new companies coming through going bright, we've got to get their strategy in place for when we launch our new website when we you know, launch the business, you know, those kind of companies but also bigger companies realizing how on we've got a massive gap here and we weren't able to communicate with our customers directly at the beginning. And I think the biggest thing is when you when you were talking about changes in behavior and things earlier, loyalty, loyalty has had been something that I feel it's been disrupted massively within the lockdowns and the pandemic because I just think that certainly at the beginning, there were so many logistical issues and particularly when you think about agile products and getting things to you, there was so many challenges at the beginning, that people had to go to other providers for what they needed. You know, for example, for my side, I shopped with a particular supermarket here in the UK, I do every week, it's just one of those things that you do. And I couldn't get a delivery slot with them. So I had to book him with another supermarket provider. Now, for me, what I found was the experience with the new provider wasn't as good as my current provider. So that was, that was great for them. But how many people are switching and going, Oh, hang on a minute. Yeah, this is, you know, this the same price and maybe a cheaper price. Or maybe it's more expensive, but actually the service that you're getting, and the understanding and the communication, the customer services is better. So people have been able to dig into more choices, and it's pushed them outside of their comfort zone, I think it's gonna be really interesting to see how this settles post pandemic. You know, I know that the way that we work has changed forever, you know, it's gonna be a lot more remote working. I think that, you know, people have cottoned on to that now that it can work. It's been that proving ground but for loyalty. Yeah, well, people go back to their originals, will they stay with new ones? Will they be more open to try new companies? Because they've had that experience, and hopefully had a good experience? This time? I think there's gonna be a shift there again. It'll be interesting when we come out of this to see what happens.
Matthew Dunn
And it's exposed. Yeah, I mean, you just, you just keyed something really smart right there, which is that we sort of see the whole picture of a business, particularly the whole picture of a business's command of their own data and systems and on interactions with us in in more stark relief than we maybe did before. But my my, my wife's a chef, and she's a big grocery fan. She loves to produce section, right. And this small, local organic Co Op, where she was a staunch loyalist turned on a dime, on a dime, when when the pandemic busted out, I was so impressed with him. They're like, Oh, we need to do curbside delivery. On an online ordering. Okay, bam, and less than a month later. That was that was in place, it was like, wow, because if they hadn't, they'd have been toast. But but they did it. And, and Meanwhile, the, you know, the chain owned by Amazon that's in town, grocery chain, did not did not get that much business, from our household because the little locals were like, Oh, we got to adapt. Bam, we'll adapt. And they could back it with you know, she'd say, Oh, wait, this is you know, this is the wrong rutabaga, or whatever. And she'd call Oh, look, human being Oh, hi, Claire. And, and, and didn't miss a beat, which, which is remarkable. And I know, not every business was able to do that. But I suspect the ones that are going to flourish coming coming out of this one are not going back. And to realize that you've got to adapt restaurants. definitely gonna be feeling this pain. Do you have any comments on restaurant business? Oh,
Kate Barrett
yeah. I mean, that was that was massive, you know, I love that some of them were coming out with your here's how to make our food, here's a recipe for you, you know, keep you coming back in. Because I know, certainly I've had, you know, some delivery boxes and things. I had one last week for my husband's birthday from a lovely restaurant in the area. And it was gorgeous, and the food was lovely. But I still miss the ambience and the experience of going out. But they kept me interested. And they kept me there. And I think, for me again, around loyalty. If you've got new customers since the pandemic started, how are you going to hold on to them? when everything goes back to normal? When all the high streets open? Again, you know, when all the stores open again? How are you going to make sure people still come to you. So you've got a part to play in keeping that loyalty and keeping them with you as a business as well. So yeah, definitely think about some strategies around loyalty.
Matthew Dunn
Would it be fair to say that there are some businesses that have earned managed figured out how to how to earn even more loyalty during this face? Yeah.
Kate Barrett
I mean, that the example that you gave there, you know, the, that's kind of going above and beyond, right. I mean, that's, that's the kind of service that only a small local shop can provide. But the fact that they turned around so quickly on the technology, which is going to be something that they're not experts in that they've had to do very quickly, you know, they're gonna make you feel special. And now they've done that through an offline means and Have you know that picking up the phone to them or whatever that is, but we can do some of that within email as well. For example, you know, how can you take the questions that you know, your customer services team are commonly asked or your sales team or commonly asked? How do you put that into your emails deliver that information to somebody when they need it, rather than them having to ask, so we can pick out all of these things that we cherish about services that we value about services that we think, Wow, they've gone above and beyond here? How can we adapt that into online to give a similar experience? And that's I find really interesting,
Matthew Dunn
similar and in there, there are aspects of the online experience that can be even better is not quite the right word. A more informed on, you know, back to back to my wife or users sorry, baby gavel for a minute. Yeah, she should have been a gold star customer at the co op because we've been loyalist for 20 years, and she'd go there almost every day on, but I'm not sure they ever had command of the data about what she bought, how often she was there, etc. You know, could they Yeah, was their real motive to do it. No, you know, now that now that they've got a year's worth of online orders, almost implicitly, yeah, they've got the data why cuz she sat there and clicked gonna buy this and six of those and 20 days in a look show Gino she gets this every week? Oh, wow, that's a lot of coffee for a household of two, right? They know stuff about us, in a data sense. Now, that may not have been accessible in a, you know, live checkout grocery situation and turning that into a feedback loop of informing their marketing to us their communications with us is, is accessible in a way it wasn't in the, in the old walkthrough the line randomly scenario.
Kate Barrett
Exactly. I think it's really interesting how, you know, if I look at the UK and kind of history of how people are, and you look at the history of a shop, for example, you know, it started off? Yeah, 150 years ago, really personalized, you know, they were doing everything for you in the shop, you couldn't help yourself all of that. And we've come through that evolution to the point where we've gone, so unfazed to things, you know, with these big chains and things like that, that actually, I think people are craving that little bit more personality. And I do you know what, even big businesses can do this, again, to some extent. So there's a big company in the UK called Marks and Spencer, and they have a loyalty card. So they're collecting data on you whenever you shop, in store or online, to getting all of this together. And what they did was, they sent me an email that was, you know, welcome to your local store, you know, for the Bromley store, which is near me had a picture of the manager in it, introducing who the manager of that store was, it had introductions to different departments and the teams in the different departments. So although it's a big, you know, a multi million pound business, they managed to bring that into life a little bit more, that's really difficult to do. But again, I just think it's how can we take what people want, they want an experience, they want to feel that they're special, they want to feel that they're heard, they want to feel they're in control. So all of these things, how would you do that in real life? Think about that. And think about how you can take that inspiration to actually put it online and deliver that as well.
Matthew Dunn
That's good advice. That is good advice. Right there. And that's it. That's that's connecting you back to the manager. That's brilliant, right? Because, guys, it's the you know, it's the people they're not not just the physical location and stuff like that. That's it's gonna gonna going to matter to you. Wow, yeah. Yeah. All sorts of you know, not normal isn't going to be normal isn't. It's gonna be new.
Kate Barrett
And we have to adapt. And we have to, yeah, just again, watch our data. What are our customers telling us with their behavior? What are they doing? How can we adjust what we're sending out? So yeah, it's gonna be interesting.
Matthew Dunn
As always be interesting. Well, look at this Kate I managed to I managed to tie you up for almost an entire hour we got chatting it's it's awesome. Hey, let's let's finish if you don't mind finish with a speed round. You ready?
Kate Barrett
Oh, God. Okay, cool. I'm happy with it.
Matthew Dunn
It's easy. Dogs cats both or neither. Huh. Awesome. Name a favorite place.
Kate Barrett
Hiva castle down in Kent near me.
Gorgeous.
Matthew Dunn
you spell it?
Kate Barrett
Eva Causeway, H e v e r e VA car. So it's a you heard of it, Henry the Eighth And one of his wives amberlynn. It's her childhood home and it's lovely.
Matthew Dunn
That's wonderful. I'm going to look that up the minute we hang up. Last one favorite book or author. And I know you wrote your own, so we'll put that in the category. But aside, yeah.
Kate Barrett
Can I say that one? author? Um, oh, gosh, you put me on the spot. Okay. Instead of favorite book author. What I'm going to do is the book that's on my desk that I'm going to read next. How's that? Yeah. So this one is called glow for now. It's about getting lots of noes to get you to a yes. That's what I'm reading right now. Getting psychology right.
Matthew Dunn
Now, who's the author?
Kate Barrett
The author is Richard Fenton and Andrea. Whoops.
Matthew Dunn
I'm jotting that down. Thank you. That's great. It's actually a great title.
Kate Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. So it's only a thin book. I haven't read it yet. But it's anything so it should be interesting. There we go.
Matthew Dunn
We'll have to let you have to let me let me know what you think of it when you get done with it. Well, definitely. Once again, my guest this morning has been Kate Barrett, he focused marketing. Kate, thank you so much for the time and it was such a pleasure to spend it with you.
Kate Barrett
Thank you for having me on.
Matthew Dunn
I really appreciate it. Have a fantastic day. I'm going to hit stop on the recording. Thank you all for listening.