A Conversation with Meghan Nesta of AWeber
Meghan Nesta
Senior Product Manager at the well-known AWeber, Meghan is passionate and extremely knowledgeable about the world of email and the craft of product design. We talked about email, product management, real-time email, AMP for email, small businesses and the challenges and opportunities of working through the pandemic.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Hi, and welcome to the future of email marketing. I'm Dr. Matthew Dunn. And my guest today is Megan Nesta, senior product manager at AWeber. Megan, thanks so much for making the time to be here. And welcome.
Meghan Nesta
Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here
Matthew Dunn
and tell folks again, where you're calling in from.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, so I am located in suburban Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania. Our team is distributed we're fully remote. So we're all over the country.
Matthew Dunn
And we were talking just a little bit beforehand about what a what a shift this is into remote work and it even when you're an all digital company like Aweber I'm sure there were big adjustments.
Meghan Nesta
Oh, for sure. Yeah, we went from an office environment to the Coronavirus heading to all remote so we've been learning and growing together to figure out the best way to move from those in person. You know, in person culture was a big part of who we who we were. And now it's that figuring out how to work out asynchronously two has been exciting.
Matthew Dunn
And AWeber is I know, AWeber has been an award winning company in terms of workplace and culture. So imagine that right? particularly hard.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, but you know that that's one of the great things about this company is it's such a great team, such a smart team looking for great solutions for us to work together that we've been, there's been a few bumps you work with humans. But overall, it's been a really positive experience humans
Matthew Dunn
in humans in a pie in a pile of technology, right, I recall correctly that the founder of AWeber is still like,
Meghan Nesta
yeah, I'm closer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, AWeber, over 20 years ago, and he is very much a part of our daily interactions and product development and part of reaching out to the community and internally, he's he's hands on for sure. Which is awesome.
Matthew Dunn
I just, I just I love I just love hearing that. Because, you know, companies with the founders still part of it. In my experience, do they do something special?
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, definitely. You can,
Matthew Dunn
how long? How long? Have you been there?
Meghan Nesta
So I've been with AWeber for a little over six years now. Okay, wow, I've had my hands on different parts of the platform from the web team that I'm on right now. So we handle the main AWeber customer experience, too. I've dabbled into the integration side, I've been a part of the mobile app side. So I've kind of had my hands in different parts of the platform, which has been exciting,
Matthew Dunn
give a give, and some some folks won't be seeing the video. So handwave a lot, which I do, but I want to be sensitive to the people who might be listening to the audio as well. But you know, give them a brief how you ended up in, you know, this industry in this role in space?
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, for sure. So I'm a product manager, which some people that's a, it's an evolving role over the past several years, in particular. And so it's my job to really connect, what are the market needs and our customers need to what we develop in terms of solutions and on the AWeber side, so I kind of am a conduit between our users and our development team, and other members of our team to make sure that we're solving the right brake problems, and that we're supporting our users. So for me, I've had kind of a wending way to product management, which if you've talked to any other product managers, it's kind of a common theme. So overall, I've had a technology theme in my career, basically finding ways to leverage technology. So I started right out of school and an administrative role and built a database to organize photographs. Actually, I just kind of, exactly, yes, that's exactly what I did. And so every job that I've had, since then, I've had some way that I pulled in technology, or that was part of my role. So I worked on a database in a real estate, retail real estate company, okay, I trained a computer system. So I've like done different things. And then when this role at AWeber came up, it was like the perfect mesh of all the, the experience that I've had, and I just love that really being the translation layer between what someone wants to do to grow their business and be successful to what we can build in a technology from a technology perspective.
Matthew Dunn
You know, those those who are listening who are who are too young to know what we're talking about. Microsoft Access was, was the gateway drug for a lot of people.
Meghan Nesta
It really was. And you probably have it too. Like, I'll mention that when I'm doing some sort of intro and like half the faces, you're like, I'm sorry, what?
Matthew Dunn
Exactly what that is why I checkered past I worked at Microsoft for 10. Okay, back when access launched, actually, we, we didn't have access when I started there. And then later I was in a role as the CIO at a big company. And access became I called it wacka wacka. Go for every time I turned her, there was an Access database that was somehow critical to some piece of the business. And you know, it wasn't ever designed to scale the way we're using databases now, but pluses and minuses, pluses and minuses, but that that little puppy was really hard to stamp out. But I think it I think it offered a learning curve and tell me what you think. I think it offered a learning curve it like you really got your hands on a relational database. Yeah, it was running there. On You know, on your desktop, but it was legit database.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't so much a like user interface where you kind of like, tell it what you want to do. You had to really understand how a database worked. Yeah, like it together. Yeah. It's really good foundation for Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
I was talking to one of our young developers and blah, blah, blah northwind database. He said, huh? That's awesome. Hey, just for just for context for people. I'm a bit familiar with AWeber because I've got great hair on my temples and stuff, but give people some idea of the the scope and scale and this is a company that's been around for 20 years with all ton of customers, you know, what kind of industries like scale it for people a little bit?
Meghan Nesta
Great question. So AWeber has been around for over 20 years, where email service provider ESP, and we help folks connect with their audiences and grow with them via email. So primarily, we serve small businesses, entrepreneurs, folks who are looking to build a business perhaps on the side side hustles creators, and really try to build tools that are simple to understand that you do not have to be a technology feel like you're comfortable in technology necessarily. And you can build beautiful emails, you can connect with your audience in a powerful way, and really build your business. That said, we do have a more advanced tools, which I'm sure will end up talking about as well. So not only can we grow and scale with your business, we can grow and scale with your technology expertise, and really what you want to accomplish. We have some customers who want to do some really creative things with email, and we can support a lot of that. So that's pretty exciting.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, okay. Gotcha. And and in the small business category, as I said, I'm familiar with AWeber for quite a number of years. But my sense is you span a whole bunch of different industries, not just any particular vertical.
Meghan Nesta
That's right. Yeah. So we have anything from some brick and mortar businesses, which now may have changed a little bit with Coronavirus, but to consultants, whether that be from like anything from a personal trainer to a business consultant, to creator, so people are making a physical good. So we really run the gamut. Real estate agents, really anything that you need to connect with an audience to grow your business,
Matthew Dunn
connect and connect and grow on, we get we get I promise, we got to geek out about email a little bit, because, well, you know, what, we've seen many other digital channels, you know, come and find their own role. You know, Twitter does what Twitter does, you know, Facebook does what Facebook does, emails, the oldest other digital channels. And and in some ways, from my perspective, it's like it's not going away. And it's not static. And it's, you know, the the the ways we're using it really continue to evolve and change. And one of the objectives of the guests in this podcast is to talk about that a little bit. Any top line reactions to that? No,
Meghan Nesta
definitely, I think it's been interesting. So as I said, I've been with AWeber, for a little over six years. And in that time, from when I started, there was a really, there was a shift. So it started with, like, I email and I know how to do that. But what's the social media thing? I don't know how to do that. And now it's a lot of the reverse, which is I am I built my audience and Instagram, how do I leverage email to help that grow? or Why do I even need it? So that's there's definitely been a shift there. And I think email is maybe even more powerful than ever. Because on social media in particular, you don't own that platform. Tomorrow, Instagram could say, we're done. Yeah, they could start charging, they could do anything. And you have lost your audience. Yeah, you don't have that direct. Do you have don't have that direct relationship. And also, you have to depend on the algorithm. So you don't know how your post is going to show up. And it really relies on all kinds of other pieces, whereas an email, that subscriber wants to hear from you. They want to know what's going on with you. And it's gonna go right to their inbox. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this this tags into what you're saying. I don't know if you've been tracking the legislation that's on its way through the pipeline in Australia. News, basically, new news publishers and large social media companies are a bit at loggerheads about their relative roles in revenue. Facebook decided to play a little bit of hardball. And one of the one of the bits of collateral damage last week, I believe, was some of the larger health agencies in Australia ended up with their Facebook page wiped out, right there page, their audience, they probably spent a ton of time, you know, investing in that relationship, and yet they ended up with like, it's gone.
Meghan Nesta
And that's a great example. I mean, it's terrible. But it's, it's the reality of what can happen, right? So being diversified, and especially with email. Another thing that I love about email, obviously, I'm very biased, but it's that it's a conversation, right? You send an email, and there's someone on the other side of the inbox, and you can have, you can have a dialogue, you can reply back. Yeah. And that's really powerful. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
And if and if you're continue that same theme, if you're, if you're not listening to them, if you're, if you're not useful or interesting, or in some way valuable when you show up in the inbox, they can also go they your audience, right can go No, thanks. don't hear me anymore. Right? That's right. You got to earn that relationship on a very long haul. Excellent. Thank you don't get to keep it. That's right. Right. Whereas I'll continue the theme, right? I may say I don't want to hear from company X on Facebook, but I'm not in 100% control of the ads that show up, am I
Meghan Nesta
that's Right. Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Matthew Dunn
There's also an economic structure that's different. And I suspect your I suspect your the longer customers with AWeber, the more appreciate this, they appreciate this that, you know, you build that the list, right, the email list, it really becomes a key asset for your business. One, one that even gets dollar value if you're in the process of being acquired or joining another company, right? Yeah.
Meghan Nesta
And even before that, I mean, we hear stories all the time about how folks may, you know, email their list once a month. And it's largely informational. And they're not even selling anything directly, but they make sales from that email, because they're providing value that their subscribers need. And they want to hear from them like, Oh, yeah, I remember about them. I'm going to purchase this consulting session, I am going to purchase this thing and just by sending an email with no call to action to purchase right now see sales from it.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Right. And and I was I was talking with a friend of mine in the email space della quist, at alchemy works. And he said, thing to keep in mind is, even if they don't read it, you're still reinforcing the fact that you're out there, you care enough to send them a message, they're gonna see your, you know, at least gonna see your name in the, in the front line. That's writing blogs, they may not open this one, but it still matters.
Meghan Nesta
But yeah, especially to your point about unsubscribing or subscribing. A lot of I know I do this in my own email habits. I will maybe not read every single message, but I want to know what's going on. And some every so often, like there's a particular message that piques my interest. There's an author, I follow, and I don't read every one of her posts, but then there's some but I don't want to miss them. Good. So I'm make sure that I stay subscribed.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, good. Good author, good example, you know, people with the ability to self publish, still have to learn themself market, if they write an email is probably they're critical. They're critical. Outreach on Yeah, I had a funny side story, but it's probably too far too far off the beaten path six years in this role? What? What's most different now about email and what your customers do with it from six years ago, when you walked into the company?
Meghan Nesta
Oh, that's a great question. I think there's been a lot of development and personalization, and whether that be through, you know, Salutations, or you know, using names, all the way through to the actual design of the content that's evolved a lot. And it's become a lot easier for folks to do as well. A great example of that is we have a tool called Smart designer, where anybody can put in a URL of the website, and then several different templates will pop up that match the website. So I no longer have to know HTML, hex codes and other things like I can just have a beautifully designed email. So that personalized look and feel to my messaging. So that's it. That's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. And I think another thing is just the technology of email. So one of the cool things that we just released is a RSS feed that's in the message, but you can put in a podcast RSS, and in particular email clients, the podcast will play right in your email client. So for example, like Apple Mail, you'll have you'll see the play button right in there. And there's that interactive element of the email. Yeah. So I think there's progression, both in the personalization and really customizing things as all as well as the interaction.
Matthew Dunn
So you just gave you just gave me the opening days or take it down to a technical level here. Yeah. I'm pretty sure because I do this for a living as well, that what you're exploiting with that podcast, RSS feed is the fact that email, one of the two types of email, you get one of the three, so we'll get into that is HTML. And that HTML continues to change and expand. And now there are media types in HTML and email that didn't exist, you know, right. years ago, right?
Meghan Nesta
That's exactly right. Yeah, there's a couple of things like if you if you're really geeking out know, the technology side, there's html5. So that's one of the the ways that you can do playing, for example, an audio file, the RSS feed in the podcast, yeah. Gmail has amp for email. So you can have an interactive email, you can do really awesome things like have the survey, right. In an email, you can have particular, you can have things expand, and it's almost like you're on a website. It began in websites, but some really cool things in the inbox.
Matthew Dunn
And I'm guessing that you were probably fairly key in this decision. AWeber was one of the early one of the earliest and not many have yet released DSPs to come out with amp support in the editor. Not minutes, right. Yeah, yeah,
Meghan Nesta
that's right. We were very much at the beginning of that. I would love to take credit personally, but that was another team who really did a lot of the development but we were very quick to get in that, especially in the first four small businesses. So a lot of these technologies are primed for people who are really technical, large corporations and for the small business owner can feel like well, like how do I even set myself apart? And we continue to have tools that will help we call solopreneurs people who are wearing all the hats.
Matthew Dunn
Yep, yep. Yep. For those of you who aren't familiar with an AMP for email, amp means accelerated mobile pages. That's a standard that was originally developed by Google to accelerate mobile to accelerate web pages on mobile devices. Google in the past couple of years, has taken some of the same architecture and tried to expand the capability that messages deliver within Gmail and a couple of other clients to do the kind of interactive things that aren't easy. With, with with the existing conventional email message bodies. That's right, what it's been like.
Meghan Nesta
It's been great. It's very exciting. So it's one of those, you know, early adopters are really into it and excited about it. And then we've had fun explaining all the different ways that you can use amp and coming up with creative ways to use it. And you know, once someone sees it, like, Oh, I get this, and then they can implement it.
Matthew Dunn
Any any stories of customers surprising, surprising you with what they did?
Meghan Nesta
That's a great question. I think the one that has that stood out the most to me, it's just I don't know, it may seem like an everyday thing, but having a survey an email, it's just like such a cool thing that like, Oh, I can do this in email. I don't have to be taken to another place. Yeah. It's just really exciting to see. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. And I would, I would guess the numbers. Good. The number of survey respondents go up survey button, man, maybe maybe not, oh, survey, right. My email. That's easy, right,
Meghan Nesta
right. Yeah. And it's one of those things too, as more time passes, and you see it in more ways. The subscriber gets more used to it as well. And they're starting to see and become more comfortable with it. So like, as an example, if you use the Google suite at all, if you use sheets, you can reply to comments, write an email. So more people are becoming familiar with that. So then with that familiar familiarity, it becomes easier adoption for a business owner. Yeah, be able to put that in their messages.
Matthew Dunn
But I've got to confess, and I promise I will send you the ridiculously long, white paper on this. Okay, great. I'm not 100% fan of amp for email, because it's a proprietary standard for basically one email client. I aside from mail that are you in Russia, which not many of your customers send to support for amp for email is Gmail specific, right.
Meghan Nesta
So there are more ISVs that are adopting amp for email and supporting it. I am on the spot. So I can't remember exactly the all the other APS, which I can provide you as well, but they are over time starting to adopt it. So we're seeing it more. You're right. It did start with Gmail. But we're seeing that more and I believe outlook supports it. And
Matthew Dunn
unfortunately, Outlook outlook bailed on it two months ago. Ah, there you go. Which is a big thing. The reason the reason I pick on that one? Yeah. One of the things that intrigues me about email as a marketing channel, I mean, one is the direct relationship that you talked about. But the second one, which I think has a lot of long haul importance is that, to a great extent, email is still built on open published internet standards that any company can write, to add to adapt to within the constraints of the standard. And I always hold back a little bit when I see a vendor bring a proprietary standard to the table, even if it's useful. Sure. Because I what I don't want is five years from now is sort of you could send email, or you can send email, and then two different things, because it's hard enough to keep track of your email, your email designs, any reactions to
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, well, two things. One, I'll correct myself. It wasn't outlook, it was yahoo mail. That's what I was trying to think of. Yeah. And then the other thing is, I think it's an interesting thing, like any technology that comes out, that's new at playing around with it. So particularly email geeks are really into it, and really into trying new things. Yeah. And some things last, and some things don't. But I think it's really interesting to try it out. And diversify, just like you would diversify your marketing mix, trying different things, and not having your entire marketing program on a brand new technology, I think is wise to do. And there's a lot of ways to do that as well.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And it's it, you know, Gmail, I mean, heck, I use G Suite. So I talk out of both sides. Honestly, I use G Suite. There's some things about it, I think are wonderful. Yeah, at the same time, like the official if anyone from Google is listening, and freemail turn it into an IETF standard and I'll stop picking fights with you guys. Promise because I would love the email to be more interactive. I just to be only people on you know on a couple of classes. platforms. And frankly, I don't want the headache for those solopreneurs Wait a minute, I can do this for these guys, but not for those guys. And I'm not quite sure who's who because it could be a G Suite address and you know, like I lose track of it like it's it's complicated enough, though email sounds like a simple thing, it's complicated enough to run your your email marketing program now. Yeah, let's make it even more even more complex. And I
Meghan Nesta
think it's another thing that brings up a point that for people who are email geeks, and really into the email area, like considering who you're sending your email to, not just your subscribers, but the clients that they're reading their email. And so for example, you know, I can share this, you can share a link later the email client market share, Apple iPhone is number one, and Gmail is next with 30% of the share. So you know, like taking that into consideration, too. And maybe you as a just happens to be your market, maybe 50% of your subscribers have Gmail.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Possible. Right?
Meghan Nesta
So that's something to consider as well.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Right. I mean, our my spin on it for the particular things that campaign genius does is there's a whole incredibly ripe realm of real time, content that works on anything that is not very, is not exploited very well, right now, like we're starting to see an amazing, there's multiple companies in this space saying, you know, what, you can do stuff that you never thought you could do an email, and it's already built into all of the email clients that are out there. Yeah, kind of what gets me kind of what gets me up in the morning and thinking, what what can we do next? What can we add next? What amp aside, what other things have changed, or what's on the horizon for AWeber, and AWeber, is customers that has you excited,
Meghan Nesta
um, one of the things is personalization, there's a lot of opportunity, particularly in AWeber, to personalize whether that be like, as I mentioned before, just first name or having whole chunks of content. So you could have, you know, construct one email. And this takes a little bit of programming a little more on the technical side, but you could have one email and have content for prospects content for customers, and just do that on once instead of having separate emails. So there's opportunities like that.
Matthew Dunn
Right, cool.
Meghan Nesta
And then I think what's on horizon, for us that's really exciting is really around the RSS side of things. Some people may have mixed feelings about RSS. However, content creators, specifically podcasters are very familiar with RSS. And you can do great things automatically with that. So you know, having publishing your podcast content, and then let your audience know, you posted a new episode, let them know about your most popular episodes, you know, let them know about give you giveaways, to interact, have behind the scenes information. You know, there's like lots of ways that you can bridge the gap between the way you're posting your content, and then this this intimate back and forth, that email can provide you. So I think there's a lot of opportunity coming there,
Matthew Dunn
right. And implicit in what you just said about RSS. And thank you for mentioning that, by the way, that's this got me thinking about some opportunities already. On that there's, there's a there's a rhythm, to email. And and it can be tough to keep the rhythm of email married to the rhythm of website content. If you're, you know, if you're a podcaster. And you've got new episodes going out all the time, for example, keeping that synchronized with the emails that are going out becomes a work all on its own right. Okay, wait a minute, I've got to go make sure I've got this week's link in the email that's going to go out to people who are keeping track of my podcast, because why? I know they'll read the email, they may not be coming back to the website, I'm trying to keep those two things sort of connected in their experience, or deliver the podcast itself, in the email client, if I'm using AWeber, which is which is terrific and cool. That, that job of of keeping people's attention at the various points of your business, it's a lot more work than you think. And when you start into the job of digital marketing.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah. And I think if you can find tools like AWeber, where you can kind of get that thinking part done automatically. So when you're doing you're going in, no matter what your rhythm of creating content as you're just going in and just like spending a day doing all your podcast episodes, are you doing it like every Monday or whatever it is. tools like Aweber there's other tools out there too. It can fit into that. So you're not like Okay, I'm gonna record. Now I need to think about that other thing I need to do and now I think to think about that other thing, you know, it becomes part of your whole rhythm.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Well, and and and so let's take that the next step is well, I'm one of the one of the crunch factors for for your customer base small to medium sized businesses, I think these days is they don't realize they're going to end up in the manual Systems Integration business. And then at some point, they go wait minute, I've got so many different little pieces of the puzzle. And I'm kind of running back and forth, keeping them spinning all the plates right, keeping them coordinated. Yeah, what I've seen is that an effective email platform and effective ESP, like Aweber starts to take some of that Coordination and Integration burden off of their plate, which is a huge relief.
Meghan Nesta
Definitely. So like, we have tools thing. And we haven't talked about much on automation in terms of sending messages, right. So we have a tool called campaigns, for example, and you can set it up so that someone subscribes to your list, they get an automatic series of, let's say, five emails that introduce you talks about who you are popular content, give some instruction. And that just happens automatically in the background, you've set it up, of course, you want to always make sure that it's current, when you set it up, and then no matter when someone signs up, then they automatically get this content. So there's a lot of power in that too. Because then you take that brain space, and you can put it on your craft. You don't have to put it on the mechanics of running your business. Yeah, McCann, man mechanics, good word on does that that that's drip sequence is another name for that. Right?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. My favorite label in the email space. I don't want to be dripped on Yeah. You have logic and conditional branching and that as well.
Meghan Nesta
So not in the visual editor, but you can set up moving subscribers from one campaign to another set up a little differently, but you can accomplish that goal,
Matthew Dunn
a different read a different way of doing that. Yeah, cuz this guy is, you know, blood 62 things. Maybe he goes to a different branch at some point.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah. And that actually brings up another point of some things that you can do automatically. So pending how someone interacts with your email, whether they open a message or click on a particular link, then you can send them to a whole different host of content. So you can use tagging, for example, yeah, like I have an interest in email marketing, or I have an interest in podcasting. And that'll take me down different paths, and it'll be customized content to what I'm interested in.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Nice. I didn't realize you guys do that. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think AWeber is a tool that I would use primarily, like, add, sorry, guys, at a real computer, not on a smartphone on Is there a smartphone client side of it? Or is it just too many functions to try and wedge it all into that little tiny screen?
Meghan Nesta
So actually, we have a lot of our control panels, what we call it, the customer experience is responsive. So you can do a lot of what you need to on your phone. And it's on all the tools, right? So you have access to all those
Matthew Dunn
things. Nice. Nice. Wow, that's, that's, that's not trivial for, especially for your solopreneur audience. You know, go go go, I really need to send this out there or check
Meghan Nesta
on new subscribers that are coming in and makes it really easy to do so. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that's awesome. Not Not everybody has done it. So congrats for you guys. It's not necessarily an easy thing to have accomplished. It. Yes. I would love to take this in a slightly different direction. And maybe this gets us off email, or maybe it re intersects with email. But you touched on it already. You started this. The job in the discipline of Product Manager, as you said, it's Yeah, it's new. And it's evolved a bunch. Can you talk about that a little bit? And let's, let's see if we can educate people a little bit about product managers?
Meghan Nesta
Sure. So I think the interesting, interesting thing about product management is if you line up 10 product managers and ask them what they do, it's gonna be a variety of different things. It's pretty broad, and it's starting to normalize a little bit. And job titles are kind of telling you that. But in my opinion, a product manager is someone who can speak with the market, speak with individuals, and really get to the heart of what the problem is they're trying to solve. If you're familiar with Clay Christensen, he's a good thinker in this area. He has some great stories about that. But if you ever ever heard about the his milkshake story, I definitely recommend checking out. jobs to be done. That's exactly right. So like the short story is, there were people were buying a lot of milkshakes. Why were they buying milkshakes? Because it's easy to consume in the car. So like, what job were they tried to do? They were trying to eat in the car, like, that's not something you'd see, maybe at face value. So I love doing those sorts of things. It's just like, talking with people like, where are they doing their work? What are they trying to accomplish? Are they trying to sell something? Are they trying to just like, express their thoughts in their art?
Right, like that, right?
Meghan Nesta
And then figuring out how to solve that easily. So another good. So that's like the figuring out the problem, like what are they actually trying to do? And then how can we solve it in an effective way? So if you ever read, read the book, Thinking Fast and Slow? Yes, excellent. So yeah, so the short story there. This is way over simplifying, but one of the key points is it takes a lot of energy to think. And so like where do you want that energy for your users to be put, I rather have them do it and their art in their craft and the thing that they're selling and not on my tool. So how can I be in patterns that they're familiar with? How can I cut down the steps to get there? How can I figure out a quick way for them to accomplish their Cool. So you know, marrying those things together to figure out how to define those features is a is one component of being a product manager. And then I think another really important component is the prioritization. So like, I've got all these really cool things that I can build. Which ones first? What's the most important?
Yeah,
Meghan Nesta
and you know, the business side of things, you know, figuring out the strategy behind that? Or how many people could use it? Or what kind of revenue? Could it drive? Or how long is it going to take, you know, weighing all those factors? And then coming up with a roadmap to figure those things out?
Matthew Dunn
Well, there's the image, there's a big there's a big puzzle on your hands that you touched on, it's easy to miss if you haven't done some product management, like you're not talking about conversations with with five guys, you're talking about conversations with a market base of I think, close to a million and a Weber's case.
Meghan Nesta
And that's a really interesting thing about product management, I think is it can be, you know, like, how do you know when you've talked to enough people? Yeah, like the qualitative side, the quantitative side, right. And so that that is definitely the art side of things. Yeah, it can sound really intimidating. But also, once you get anything, once you get practice with it, I think, I found that it's not tried and true. But you know, you start talking to people and after maybe like five times of hearing the same thing, seven times hear the same thing that you're on to something right, kind of start investigating that more and proving it out.
Matthew Dunn
Right. And so you're, you know, you're in a position to help help the company put the resources to doing what, what, what's going to help the most customers the best way, rather than, you know, gee, I think it's this, so let's do it. Let's do that with no input at all.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And one of the interesting things in my own experience is when I joined AWeber, I was the first product manager, there was another product earlier. And now we have a team of product managers, which has been awesome. Like, that's one of my favorite things. We have a weekly meeting and I, you know, time to geek out on your craft sort of thing. Talking about talking about those prioritizations and having discussions and you know, working together to figure out what's best for our customers this Yeah, really fun.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah, the Christmas story that Megan, Megan just touched on, I think that's Christensen's second book innovators solution. It's not an innovators dilemma, both of which are must reads for anyone listening. But my recollection is it was I think it might have been Burger King that had Christensen's group study the milkshakes. And I think the thing that surprised me if I remember the story correctly, is they discovered that people were hiring milkshakes to do the job of entertaining them as well. Yeah, like, I'm bored on my hour long commute. I am hungry, but I also want something that gives me a little bit of a fun factor as I'm going down the road that fits in a cup.
Meghan Nesta
That's a great point. And and how, at the surface, would you go up to somebody be like, Alright, so is this thing entertaining for you? Yeah, probably not. Yeah, it takes those conversations and that discussion to kind of narrow down and like, Oh, this is really interesting.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. And probably, and a really some real, qualitative, active listening and engagement with the customer base, you can't just get it on a statistics or user interface graph or something like, right. Yeah. Any any stories like that any any surprise product features that have come out into AWeber? From those interactions with customers, those conversations with customers?
Meghan Nesta
Um, so I think one of our, we have a mobile app called curate, and it's the job that it does is it allows you to pull in content from all over web, podcasts, images, things like that, and share it with your audience. So that really came through a lot of research with customers about like, What are you trying to do? What kind of content Do you want to share? Those sorts of things,
Matthew Dunn
is that literally the some of the like the, the practical mechanics of, Oh, this is a great article, I'd love to have that in next week's newsletter. But trying to remember to do that or bookmark it here and then copy it later, and then put it in the email later is too much work.
Meghan Nesta
Right? So like, for example, on your smartphone, if you're familiar with the share function, so you're on a website, you can hit share, and then you can you pull up all these things, places you can share. So in a text message in, you know, depending on what you're looking at your your photos, something like that, well curate ends up there as well. So you can just share the content right into the app, and then craft this email. It's formatted. Yeah, it looks beautiful. Yeah. And it's right in the moment where you are nice,
Matthew Dunn
nice, nicely done. And then it becomes part of your, your, your set of content assets. As you're as you're doing the decision job about what content goes out in this this message.
Meghan Nesta
Yep. And then you just send it right from your device.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, it's a sort of, it's a bit what I use Google Keep for, right? It's like, Oh, that's interesting stash.
Meghan Nesta
Similar, exactly. similar pattern. That's exactly right.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. Okay. Okay, interesting. Hey, you mentioned it. So I want to Ask about it on. We had a guest on last week, Kenneth Burke from text requests down in, down in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And his company is specifically in the text messaging marketing space. Why on an email show, and I said, Well, there's this funny overlap between text and and email. They're not competitors, but there's definitely an edge where you think you might use one or the other or both. Any thoughts about that for for a Weber's platform and customers? Um,
Meghan Nesta
so I think they can definitely be complimentary. I think text messaging has definitely has a place for communication, short messages and preference to write, like, some people prefer a text message over email that, and that's totally fine. For us, we have different we've been working on different modes of communication, for example, we recently launched a Web Push Notification feature, if you're familiar with that. So if in your browser, you can get messages from places that you subscribe, text messaging, specifically, we don't have any, you know, we're not working on anything right now. But we're definitely working on those different modes and figuring out the best mix for our customers of keeping in touch with their audience. Yeah, so I don't think they conflict necessarily, I think it could be part of your whole strategy.
Matthew Dunn
It may it you know, maybe maybe a function of, you know, number of years, different devices, but I'm picky about who I want to get text messages from very, right. Yeah,
Meghan Nesta
I agree. I also have that same approach. I don't, if a company say personnel do,
Matthew Dunn
I'd be like, No, you can email me but right. No, I Why? Because I'm gonna look, right, I'm gonna look right. And and that's a very valuable sort of high level interrupt again, technologically, Dan, myself, you got to be picky about that stuff. There's already too many notifications on the thing.
Meghan Nesta
And to your point, you know, some people like those notifications, and they can do that with email. So if you're sending a broadcast email, then if your subscriber wants it, they'll have that set up on their device, as well. So there's, yeah, user preference baked in there.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, a lot of user preference on has has navigating the changing waters of user preference in the form of privacy been a big factor for you guys in the past couple of years.
Meghan Nesta
I mean, privacy is always something that's really important to us. That's not something that we take lightly. We are definitely a opt in platform. So we're making sure that people are not just, you know, you must have permission from your subscriber to be able to send email, that's really important. And we keep that paramount. So we're always looking at new looking at new laws, such as GDPR, which is probably what you're alluding to over the last couple of years, you know, and I was just gonna say a state's start adopting similar things, we pay attention to that. So that is top on our list and something we take very seriously.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And and you're probably not, you're being modest in terms of the role that that you play for your customers. In my experience, a company like Aweber, has an invaluable to the education job in saying no, you need to have permission. A lot of times, I bet you've got customers who say, I didn't realize I had to have permission.
Meghan Nesta
Definitely, if you
Matthew Dunn
hadn't forced them to do that they might have really, you know, put themselves in jeopardy. But definitely,
Meghan Nesta
we have that throughout our customer experience talking about like why confirmed opt in is really important. People sometimes initially bristle at that, like, Oh, well, somebody signed up, I don't want them to take another step. But it really is confirming that someone wants to hear from you. And it's better for you to you have better open rates, which provides a better relationship with the inbox. So you get a better placement in the inbox. It's all very, you know, it's a, I don't know what the word I'm looking for it is but it's positive all around. That confirmed often goes a long way.
Matthew Dunn
It really does. And, and it sets you off on the track of you know, this is a relationship thing. This is not a cheap buy your way into attention. Because that just That's
Meghan Nesta
exactly right. Doesn't work. That's right. For no person.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and one of the remarkable things about the email space to me is that there's there's an ethic there. The most companies in this space take really seriously like, Yeah, because they know it works. you'll fail. Yes, you could buy a list. Yes, in theory, you could email everybody on the list that you just bought. But guess what bad idea
really bad.
Meghan Nesta
It's not going to be good for your business.
Matthew Dunn
Ultimately, no, it's you know, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I, I appreciate that sort of unsung unsung value that gets brought to the table because I'm guessing you had pushback at times. No, I want to be able to use this list that I just bought off a truck.
Meghan Nesta
Yeah, totally. And that's actually one of the things that I didn't get to mention about AWeber as our amazing customer support. So we have a team of customer solutions, who spend time with folks and talk about that and explain it and say why it's so important. You know, in addition to our published material, our knowledge base and things like that, but we have people who are, who are amazing. I know I'm very partial, but are consultative and really take time with folks and explain best practices and want to see people succeed,
Matthew Dunn
right? So it's not just when someone signs up. It's not just to get a login. It's like they they get access to a whole bunch of domain knowledge.
Meghan Nesta
Absolutely. And there's a team of people 24 seven available to help folks.
Matthew Dunn
Wow, yeah. Do you have customers that you have a substantial amount of customers outside of North America?
Meghan Nesta
We do. Yeah. percentage wise I don't know off the top my head but we definitely have customers all over the world.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Nice because email is our ubiquitous almost everywhere. There's a couple countries where it's where it's less common, but yeah, yeah, not gonna go anywhere anytime soon. Unfortunately, I got it back to back with another with another guest coming, but I want to end if you don't mind on a speed round. Okay, ready? Ready. Okay. cats, dogs both or neither. Oh, looks like it coffee, tea or neither.
Coffee.
Matthew Dunn
Woman after my own heart, my gigantic
Meghan Nesta
mug that's empty. And
Matthew Dunn
I'm in the Pacific Northwest like, okay, don't do anything without coffee. Oh, you got a coffee town as well, if I recall. Right.
Meghan Nesta
We do have some good coffee. Good local coffee. Yeah. A couple years ago, we went to the My family's Pacific Northwest and I enjoyed drinking my coffee through through. You all sorts of
Matthew Dunn
you probably came to it. You probably went to Seattle hopefully got here in the summer.
Yep.
Matthew Dunn
We advertised falsely that it rains here all the time, because we don't want everybody moving here. Last last speed round question. Any my favorite book or author?
Meghan Nesta
I just read. So this is product management, Marty Kagan, a book called inspired. And it's all about product management. And I just have it on my shelf here how to create tech products customers love, highly recommend.
Matthew Dunn
Marty Kagan, what was the title again?
Meghan Nesta
It's called inspired,
Matthew Dunn
inspired. Now get a guest two weeks ago. I think I've got the title. Correct. He's he mentioned a book called wind kale and something compete. And it was also product management. Okay, I will find it and send it to you.
Meghan Nesta
Excellent, great.
Matthew Dunn
Promise, Promise, Promise? Well, unfortunately, we got to wrap up and let Megan Go, go do real work. But my guest again, on the future of email marketing has been Megan Nesta, senior product manager at AWeber. Megan, it was terrific talking with you. And I appreciate
Meghan Nesta
your time. Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Enjoy. Enjoy the rest of the day. And I'll be in touch and we'll send you the video when we get it all edited. All right.
Meghan Nesta
Awesome. Perfect. Thanks so much.