A Conversation with Nicholas Einstein of Cheetah Digital
Nicholas Einstein has seen email marketing from all sides — marketer, industry analyst and technology vendor. His insights into the dynamics of the martech market in this wide-ranging conversation are particularly valuable. As the Senior Director of Product Marketing for Cheetah Digital, Nicholas is helping guide a leading platform to new heights. It was a great opportunity to “get neighborly” as well, since Nicholas and Matthew are both in Northwest Washington.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Hello, everybody. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And my guest today, I'm delighted to say is Nicholas iron Stein, product marketing guru of all things new at Cheetah and guy with an incredible amount of experience in the digital marketing space. Nicholas, welcome. So glad to get you here.
Nicholas Einstein
Thank you, Matthew. Real pleasure. Real pleasure to be with you today.
Matthew Dunn
And you're you're you're talking from new new space for you on pandemic move right?
Nicholas Einstein
Indeed, indeed, move moved from the city out to the country now doing the island living
Matthew Dunn
either living in the Pacific Northwest. Nothing better. We share that bias on just to orient people off the top would you would you fill in for folks a little bit? Roll company and and we'll delve into your history a bit because I got some notes on you, man. Okay, so I know where you're coming from.
Nicholas Einstein
I love it. I love it. Yeah. So So I currently run Product Marketing for Cheetah messaging and cheat experiences, as well as our engagement data platform, which is kind of the the center of it all. Yeah, but have been doing that for about the past year plus, but but again, have a history. I covered Gita Previous to that and was a practitioner back in the day as well.
Matthew Dunn
That's right. What, what what what Nicholas is touching on there is like, he's got over 15 years experience in the digital marketing space. I want to take you way, way back in your career, because they noticed from your LinkedIn profile that you you spent some of your early digital marketing days at real networks.
Nicholas Einstein
I did I did back in the day. Really, where I, I didn't cut my teeth on email. But I really took some big strides there. That was a great program. For those of you I mean, you likely had a real clear, Matthew, on your, on your desktop. Yeah. Listening may not have but but we had a really, really big program, you know, upwards of 35 million people on our lists, and in a pretty active user base. So that was, yeah,
Matthew Dunn
I find I had overlapped. I mean, didn't work with him. He was in a whole different tier but but Rob Glaser was at Microsoft when I was at Microsoft in the 90s. And he was such a visible figure, just because he's Rob Glazer, that we go pay attention to where he went afterwards. And now I look like he was only 20 years early. I mean, aside from that, just bang on target. Right.
Nicholas Einstein
And I will tell you, he was he was passionate about the email program to really you could not I mean, I got I got calls about about a real super pass message not being targeted appropriately to the right audience. I mean, really, he was he was in the, in the weeds, as many of those kind of I think, highly successful.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Well, it's, that's what it takes. I just I you know, again, I credit him with having seen that media, in a much richer sense would really make the shift on the network. And I just don't think the network was there yet.
Nicholas Einstein
Oh, no. Yeah. No, it wasn't. It was. Yeah, it was. Interesting times, buddy, but at the end, they're still around now too. I mean, I think there.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. A variety of 3d things they do and do I recall, right? He rescued bowling.
Nicholas Einstein
He did you know, he did the PBA. And in fact, I don't know if you're aware but our building our headquarters down in Seattle, right off of Elliot. Yeah, they're right on the waterfront. Had a bowling alley in the basement.
Matthew Dunn
No kidding.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, go
Matthew Dunn
right. Yeah. I I see your foosball table and I'm gonna raise you a whole bunch pal.
Nicholas Einstein
We improved our tables to, I've got Yeah. It was kind of it was Yeah, but but the bowling lanes
Matthew Dunn
bowling lanes like that's it. That's a space and an acoustics commitment. Yeah, there we go. It's kind of the acoustics of where you were talking about your room acoustics, you got a bit of a bully thing. Go, I
Nicholas Einstein
think I got a very flat floor here too. You could
Matthew Dunn
put a lamp put a line in there. Well, let me let me take you guys who are listening forward a little bit in with roles in multiple companies, since real networks, on frequently covering email as well as other digital marketing channels. Most immediately prior to Cheetah digital, you spent a good number of years where I read a bunch of your stuff at the relevancy group, can you could you tell people what you did there? But
Nicholas Einstein
Indeed, indeed that would those were great years, we at the relevancy group did did research and advisory services across kind of digital marketing. My partner that was David Daniels, who has it has a rich and deep history in the space. And so we worked with, as he used to like to say everyone from Adobe through zeta on helping them with market requirements and understanding what to build where to allocate resources, some some talks about roadmap and that sort of stuff. And in also worked with buyers of enterprise marketing technology. I believe you had on last week, Chris marryat, who was just comment,
Matthew Dunn
he had to bail. He got stuck in a drive in a snowstorm. But he's calming Paris Marriott. Yeah,
Nicholas Einstein
yeah. friend he got dumped on here. I know. But but we also work with buyers of enterprise marketing technology to kind of help them figure out their requirements and their, their needs, and ultimately, the best vendors to help support them. So we worked on a lot of great projects, produce buyers guides, as well. It's really good research. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, it was a great time, I was a chief research officer and, and working with a lot of great big, big vendors, big programs, and a lot of great data flowing in, you know, at least quarterly to kind of analyze and have fun with. So I did
Matthew Dunn
want to ask you about that because it pertains to Rola Cheetah as well. But but maybe even even more of a flood in that CRL role at the relevancy group, like, How on earth? Do you try to stay on top of such a broad and dynamic sector?
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, it is. It is always tough, obviously, through a lot of hard work, it's probably the right answer. So at the relevancy group, we went to out to market at least quarterly, just survey executive marketers and ask them about their, their challenges and their requirements and their budgets and their, the opportunities, they were focused on their priorities. And, and so we got that data flowing in and at least quarterly, from from a big panel. And, and ensured the real trick, there is ensuring that you got diversity, you have the right audience there, you've got, you know, people in all the relevant business verticals, and you have, you know, people at the enterprise level as well as mid market, so, so ensuring that you have the right audience to kind of surveys is critical. There. But But yeah, we used to get the data, at least quarterly and then, again, work with the vendors on, you know, interpreting it, analyzing it, producing white papers, and in the like,
Matthew Dunn
and, and, you know, white papers in Easy, easy level throw away, but there's a ton of thought that goes into taking those big inputs and synthesizing and saying, Wait a minute, you know, this is happening, and maybe that's going to happen as well.
Nicholas Einstein
No, that's right. That's right. And oftentimes, you know, we started hypothesis driven research, you know, right, working with a vendor, we say, okay, you know, advanced personalization techniques, you know, are important, we know this to be true, that's our hypothesis is let's ask a bunch of questions to quantify that and, and figure out, you know, and dig a little deeper, and the specific tactics, the requirements, the budgets, the opportunities, challenges, whatever. And so, oftentimes, we go to a project, go to a project with that, and then and then, you know, dig deeper in, you know, the data often, you know, tell an interesting story. You know,
Matthew Dunn
tell ya tell you where it's gonna go. What's the what's the contrast between what you were doing in that role and what some of the sort of big levels In the research space, and I'm automatically thinking Forrester and Gartner. Like you're more focused, right?
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, we're very more focused. Certainly I think I am. I work with Forrester and Gartner too and have you know, for much of my career and have a lot of have a lot of respect for what they're doing. I think at the relevancy group, David Daniels came out of Forrester. So I think a lot of the methodology was, was was similar. I think we were very focused on well at first email, and then kind of cross channel digital marketing, so Nope, nothing beyond that really cross channel digital marketing, in creating ESP cdp's, that sort of thing. And then we also had an approach where there were there were multiple senior analysts working on every project. So we kind of ensured we had a real diversity of opinion on all of our stuff, which we took pride in. But I would say a similar similar methodology as those guys. In many respects.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. It's it I've had like you I've hit Gartner and Forrester at various, various points in various jobs. And it's incredibly informative to read their stuff, but it's always funny looking at it from the outside, like, wow, like a How do they keep up? Same question I had for you be Wait a minute, they got this completely wrong, which is, you know, maybe it didn't happen.
Nicholas Einstein
I think it happens, it happens. And sometimes, when, and again, you know, when David and I were together, there was we and there was usually a third senior analysts on any project, there was often a diversity of opinion in some in some, some discussion back and
Matthew Dunn
a heated discussion ensued. Right.
Nicholas Einstein
And I think sometimes in some projects, with with any other potential firms, you know, there is there is less diversity of opinion, there's kind of one person driving the show. And so there you know, I know from working in the in the space and one time there are vendors oftentimes who feel like the results of those don't accurately, you know, reflect
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I like the notion of multiple senior analysts, though, because there are, particularly for niches, let's call email a niche for a second, it seems sometimes seems like there's one person making the call on behalf of a enormous organization and like, maybe they get it right. And maybe it'd be nice if they argued with someone like you got to know it. I'll
Nicholas Einstein
tell you, I think I think very highly of a lot of the folks at both those firms right now who are making those decisions. You know,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, Shara van Buskirk. I've read a bunch of her stuff.
Nicholas Einstein
She's She's tremendous. Yeah, we tremendous we, I'm very proud to be a cheetah digital as a leader and her last are,
Matthew Dunn
you are nice segue, I was gonna take a step back there, I was gonna say, give me a bit the contrast from your research guy talking to many to get into deep dive and help influence where, you know, incredibly successful platform is headed at you today. Yeah, no, it's,
Nicholas Einstein
it's great. It's very, it's very interesting. And, again, you know, we did a little bit of it at, you know, in my previous role and cheated digital and in previous to that experience, marketing, we're clients at the relevancy group. And so, I had a, I had some deep insight into into the, the people and process and technology at cita, long before I joined, which was one of the reasons obviously, you did joined. And, and so, but it, it has been a lot of fun, taking that next level, getting that next layer deeper, in not only kind of identifying the market requirements, but in the, you know, the voice of the consumer, but then taking that, you know, to the product teams and actually executing across across them and taking product to market. So, so, it has been I think, in many ways, kind of a natural, natural progression we kind of was doing the work before, again, creating content, you know, influencing the product roadmap, but but you know, now getting in the weeds that that a little deeper. Yeah, it's been it's been a lot of fun.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, any anything particularly surprising, like I didn't know this was going to be easy or difficult in that in that jump over to being really part of that whole team.
Nicholas Einstein
You know, it's very interesting. You know, we used to run buyers guides, at the relevancy group, you know, and I used to think it was really difficult when we got you know, 810 vendors responding to the spreadsheet And I had to, you know, analyze those data and make sense. But on the flip side, when you're filling out just one of those sheets, it is even even more time consuming and, and labor intensive. And because, you know, you need to do the research to get the correct data, you need to include the right stakeholders internally, you need to then articulate the value prop in you know, 1000 characters or whatever, you know, we used to put limits on the on the cells when people are responding. Yeah, certainly. And the other firms, Gartner, Forrester, etc, do that, do that too. And so you really want to stay within those guides. And, and it's hard work because you're trying to articulate all the value that you're delivering, but keeping it in, in a, you know, 1000 characters per response. So, so I think that that was a I thought the volume from an analyst perspective was was going to be worse than then the filling it out, but it's certainly
Matthew Dunn
certain reading is hard. So is writing in other words, right. And yeah, yeah. And you've got you probably have some multiple stakeholders weighing in, because it's incredibly important work for for a vendor to get themselves represented right. accurately.
Nicholas Einstein
Yep. No, it is. It is. Yeah, for sure. critically important, critically important. And yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Well, I mean, that the you alluded to it, but you know, cheetahs outstanding placement on, on, on, foresters wave, is that right? It's the wave. Yeah. It had to be work to get yourself understood well enough to have someone go, Oh, these guys are really like these guys are nailing it.
Nicholas Einstein
It always is. It always is. And you know, they're they, you know, yep, always is a lot of hard work a lot of hard work on on the vendor side. And then customer references need to line up, right? You mean, you need to have a great customer references, and you obviously need to have a compelling demo. And I mean, there's a
Matthew Dunn
ton of work a ton of work. So we're guilty of doing a little bit of inside baseball right off the bat and talking in this sort of vendor side of the world. If we have and I'm sure we do. We've got people in the audience who are enterprise marketers who want to they want to use the machinery to do their job. It's they're not as interested in in the mechanics conversations, like, what do you see on the horizon? Or what do you what what's Cheetah doing that you can talk about? That's got you excited? What's like, what's coming down the pipe for for digital marketing and an email specifically, that that's compelling?
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah. So I think there's so much compelling. I mean, and I know, you've been doing this for a while now, I think it's more exciting now than ever. We've got a lot of compelling stuff happening across our customer engagement suite, obviously, across channels, so, so kind of cross channel nature of email and the programs being able to kind of execute customer journeys, wherever that customer is, whether it be email or on their phone, in their mobile app, or wherever, right, which is, I think, a big piece of what what I'm most excited about. And what I have been kind of in the past several years at the relevancy group to is just data accessibility, the ability to have data at your fingertips, and then use it, leverage it to delight customers and drive your business which I'll tell you real networks. You know, I had a big list. And every time I wanted to send a campaign, I wrote a note to my DBA, who had to do some SQL. Yeah, get me an audience. And then we tested it, and we execute campaign. Yeah. And now we can use machine learning to run to leverage all your customer data. If it's if it's, you know, Nathan, and Fertitta natively integrated in the customer engagement suite. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, execute sophisticated cross channel messaging, in real time. high volume, low latency. Yeah. All the personalization. And yeah, so it's, you know, that is suddenly really exciting, right? I mean, batching and blasting a campaign upsell, you know, that took a week to drive the audience is,
Matthew Dunn
is now you can essentially automated to set your fingertips real time, right.
Nicholas Einstein
It's, it's, it is a whole new world out there with with having just all the customer data available. So so we're super excited about that. And then I think there's a big move right now in in the space towards just transparent. You know, value exchange marketing. People understand they're opting into email programs. They want to ensure they're getting the value back And we are big proponents at Cheeta in zero party data, which which is a term that Forrester coined and I like it, but it's but it's data that's that is given by, by individuals full consent with with full intention kind of for personalization purposes either. Many people think of kind of preference centers as zero party data, but but we have a whole product at Cheetah Cheetah experiences, which is built in the customer engagement suite where people can can easily launch customer experiences to generate zero party data to be leveraged allow personalization, so not inferred data, not, you know, not response data that you've observed. And you've kind of made but actual preference intent data that you've asked consumers about and they've given to you, because they want
Matthew Dunn
rioter Wow, wow. And I had not, thank you. I had not heard the zero party. Zero party data. phrase. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Nicholas Einstein
that, you know, I'm, I'm, I like it, you know, zero first, second. Third. Yeah, it's,
yeah,
Nicholas Einstein
it's a forced return. But but is is, you know, critically important. I think email marketers have known this for a long time, we've often driven people to preference centers, ask them what they want. But it's hard for enterprises to do at scale. And,
Matthew Dunn
you know, it was Yeah, I was gonna ask you, because, you know, it, being able to talk about it, being part of a platform, like, Cheetah digital is one thing, but you've lived the pain of, oh, man, everything's a SQL query. And it's, it's harder to get enthused when things take full bloody ever, and it's, they really stopped having any flow. Right. It's like, everything's a technical obstacle.
Nicholas Einstein
Well, no, right. And I think, you know, in the old days, email was very siloed, too, right. It was, it was, you know, we had a campaign calendar and other, there's other things happening, you know, at real networks, it was in player messaging, too. And we were, we weren't lined up, I think, now we're seeing a lot more at the enterprise level, even, you know, groups that are more customer centric, and they're looking, you know, beyond, you know, at a cross channel model versus just being as siloed I think there's some work to do there still, but
Matthew Dunn
the customer is called the customer engagement platform is that the the
Nicholas Einstein
customer engagement suite in the engagement suite.
Matthew Dunn
So I'm just curious for for, you know, for VP of Marketing, good sized enterprises, cmo good sized enterprise to, to take full advantage of that and and, and gain that fluency of conversation relationship with customers, stuff, fairly big commitment in terms of all of the data points that need to be talking to and touching your platform.
Nicholas Einstein
Always is in for I think, for any, any sophisticated marketer, they got a lot of, they got a lot of data coming in, they need to make best use of it, I think, for customers of Cheetah customers, the engagement data platform, they can house all their bringing all their customer data from across, you know, across the enterprise, and then execute that we have built it on the engagement data platform, again, cheat experiences, we just hit on Cheetah messaging, which is, you know, our kind of what we've been known for in the past, as well as Cheetah loyalty, which is a full featured worldwide.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
Nicholas Einstein
And so so, you know, big data, infrastructure, you know, high high throughput, low latency, and then the ability natively integrated to all those systems where that those data can kind of get activated and, and, you know, serve customers kind of across their, their customer lifecycle. It's, yeah, it's, yeah, big stuff.
Matthew Dunn
That's cool stuff, though. Um, obviously, the, you know, rise and stability of, of cloud platforms must play a must play a role here.
Nicholas Einstein
Once you've been here, sure. No, right. And we you know, Cheetah started out as Cheetah male and then went through Experian and spun out from Experian to then reform as as Cheetah digital. And we love to think of ourselves as a really good alternative to the kind of cloud providers that many which are not 100% kind of market are focused, right, right have to allocate resources across the board to And there are also a lot of cool point solutions out there right now, too, right and a lot of exciting tech happening point solutions. And so we we feel like we are really well positioned. Many in many cases, those point solutions aren't ready or best suited to serve the needs of the advanced, big, sophisticated enterprise. With with maybe they have some of the technology but but in many cases, not the people in process. And, you know, we feel like we do got that people process technology that's, that's kind of very well suited in a differentiated in a marketplace that does include some some great, obviously, some great cloud players and some cool,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, yeah, this image
Nicholas Einstein
providers,
Matthew Dunn
you've got the technical and marketing background, and I do as well, to, to watch things kind of stair step forward, like, you know, tech will run out ahead, marketers will take advantage of it, and then that'll that'll happen again, you know, how does the CMO keep from having their head explode, and being just overwhelmed these days? You know, what,
Nicholas Einstein
I don't think they don't, you know, right, I think their heads explode routinely. And, and, and I think, you know, it's, it's, it's a common, you know, tenant that, like the CEOs, tenure is the lowest is the shortest in the C suite. You know, there I think, I think there's a lot to make to make sense of, and and, you know, in many cases, vendors don't don't do them any service. You know, I wrote the first buyer's guide on cdp's, that the relevancy group right now tell you, if you're trying to, you know, yes. What's the CDP and what's a CDP do? And what and what do I need from a CDP from from my programs? You know, that's,
Matthew Dunn
that's, what was your answer, then? What's your answer? No.
Nicholas Einstein
I got I just it
Matthew Dunn
depends. It depends. It goes, yeah.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah. No, but but I do think, you know, we have a very compelling solution that cheated digital, that is much more than a CDP, but only kind of gives marketers what they need from it from a data perspective, oftentimes, CPS in in many cases can be difficult to implement, and not necessarily as marketer friendly as they try to.
Matthew Dunn
I mean, they're a heck of a theory is my read on it?
Nicholas Einstein
Oh, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, it's a bit of a left, right.
Nicholas Einstein
Having your I mean, the Golden Record, and having all your data in one place and in, you know, readily accessible to all channels and all things is is
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, weekly with a query that doesn't take 48 hours to execute to find out your name.
Nicholas Einstein
That's exactly right.
Matthew Dunn
What did you make of Twilio bought a CDP platform a month or two ago.
Nicholas Einstein
They did. They did great one too. Yeah. Yeah. And they and they got sendgrid. You know, they're
Matthew Dunn
That's right.
Nicholas Einstein
They're tools. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting company, for sure. It really it is. And,
Matthew Dunn
you know, I know Twilio. As a developer. I've known Twilio for quite a while. It's like, Oh, you need to make this thing make phone calls or send a message. Yeah, just just Twilio. Like, it's just too hard to do it any other way. But
Nicholas Einstein
it's funny, I had a good friend who was in the legal department was I think, Assistant General Counsel at Twilio, who then left to join segment, and then came back and was welcomed back with open arms, I'm sure but but um, yeah, it's and that's really, you know, we're gonna see a lot more of that. I think so too. In the space.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I think so. I think so as well. And and I think the challenge for I think the challenge for a lot of the ESP is a lot of the email platforms out there is is is to keep up with the new required level of fluency, fluidity, comprehensiveness, I, the it's a SQL query, you can get your answer next week. I don't say that cuts anymore.
Nicholas Einstein
No, don't cut it anymore. But but you know it and that was a long time ago for sure. But But you know, we've taken baby steps and in the data requirements have gone up exponentially, right. Like I you know, what I used to have need was was you know, was name email and for some some affinity something something a few different things. Yeah. Now, you know, the data coming in is all the real time data from where they are on the website, all the you know, some of our customers are enormous enterprises with with big real time data flowing in and so yeah, the ability to to kind of handle that manage it, and then yeah, make sense of that to execute Effective campaigns? Yeah, you know,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. And it's not. It's not just that the the sort of date data dimension space is is expanding, which obviously is, it's the, it's the timeliness of that. Like, if you know what I did a month ago, I don't really care.
Nicholas Einstein
No, no. Right. Well, and we haven't even talked about the consumer expectation, which is, you know, if crazy, right? They Right. Right. Yeah, the full real time experience is, is, you know, table stakes, they fully expect that. I mean, it's, which,
Matthew Dunn
I just, I'm just just curious, it's just occurred to me. Because we're both in the Northwest. So we've got had an armchair seat to the rise of Amazon. And I'm gonna guess that like me, you're probably at least an occasional amazon customer, sir.
Yeah, just the case. All the time. Right. Right now?
Matthew Dunn
What what's your what's your read on there? You know, how good is their game, their marketing game?
Nicholas Einstein
So good, so good. And we actually covered you know, the Amazon email service. And wow, in pinpoint is now I think, got kind of, I forget what it used to be called. But then it got rolled under their, I believe it's called their pinpoint solution, which is kind of enables small, medium sized businesses to kind of do a lot of the personalization really, that Amazon does, right? It kind of exposes some of that stuff. So I think their game is so strong. I mean, so strong, and and i will tell you, my, you know, a year ago, a year and a half ago, when I was at the relevancy group, we would, you know, on the list of people to watch. And I think it was David Daniels who put them on a list was was Amazon because they have some tremendous technology in their arsenal. And obviously, it's put to great use. Internally, right.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's hard to argue with, it's hard to argue with that level of success on but but the it strikes me that the was a to no team bigger than two pizzas, right? The the pizza, things like that, keeping the teams relatively, relatively small to execute quickly. It's got to be daunting if you're in the the email and customer communications part of Amazon because you got inputs from so many places. Come on.
Nicholas Einstein
I can only imagine.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. It's like, the way it changed. Seattle. I know you just you left Seattle after a good number of years. There's like,
Nicholas Einstein
only 26 miles I think right now.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's still a bit of a difference. I did want to ask, I'm not sure what fits in I wanted to ask where, where text and messaging fit in cheetahs world right now.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, so so cross channel, a big piece, SMS, obviously, in app messaging, natively integrated to through with the help of partners to critical and also built into we just came to market with a personalization solution that includes a journey builder, journey designer, Titan product, where you can kind of visually map out journeys, certainly across all channels, you know, SMS in app as well, which is, you know, increasingly important, right? I mean, kids consumers now are interacting with us, sir, you know, across channels.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, the Omni thing is come is become real hasn't
Nicholas Einstein
it's fully real, right. And you know, that we need to be able to acknowledge that and then use those data to react so so. Yeah, obviously, increasing income increasing importance for retailers, airlines, hotels, you know, everybody
Matthew Dunn
I yeah, yeah, everybody, it's, it's gonna be interesting. And I'm gonna guess it's gonna keep evolving faster. What what what consumers preferences look like in terms of what various ways they want to be talked to you? I'm picky. I'm picky about who I'd let text message me because I always look when I get the darn thing.
Nicholas Einstein
Oh, yeah. Well, you and which is why you better don't be delivering value if you're going to texting someone, right. Yeah. If you're gonna be, and if you're gonna be interrupting them with a with a Yeah, in that match, or whatever. Yeah. Put puts the onus on us as marketers to be much better and, you know, use our data more effectively to do that sort of thing.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Back to the marketer for just a second and it relates to this barrage. Have channels, that the degree of data sophistication that a marketer has to have just seems like a geometrically expanding bubble like you could get away with not really knowing that, then let the DBA help you 20 years ago, but Well, you can't play that game anymore. Can
Nicholas Einstein
you can't you can't? Well, then again, we hit on before there's just more data coming in than ever before, you know, at that. Yeah, literally, you know, we only have there was, we only had a few things at our disposal. And so making use of them was relatively easy. Now, you get enterprise marketers have much more data than they can effectively manage? Yeah. And and, yeah, and so making sense of it, normalizing it, hygiene, you know, making sure that it's good data, right, is more important than ever before. And so marketers need to be much better about data. You know, it's Yeah. And so I think that marketers have had, you know, their data, comfort level in their in their has gone up, because I think they need to know, yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
you had to Yeah. The last last guest that I add on for a conversation was with from AWeber, which is a whole, like a whole different conversation to have about the many, many small businesses, they help end, the level of sophistication that, you know, a guy running a podcast or something, brings to using that platform is one thing, but they have to go up that curve, as well. And I guess from a web, we're saying that, in some ways, they they have to do the job of helping them learn the ropes of digital marketing to learn what's meaningful data Learn, learn some of the ethics and permissions that you have to take seriously, if you're going to succeed at it. And then at the scale, you guys are working with your customers? Oh, wow.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, no. Right. Well, and so in, yeah, our customers often have big regulatory requirements, they need a knee. We have a lot, oftentimes, you know, it is probably less of a kind of an education. Yeah. And more of a, you know, ensuring that that we have the, the flexibility and, again, people process technology to support it. Which which, yeah,
Matthew Dunn
right. Right.
Nicholas Einstein
differentiator for us for sure.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, yeah, I would think so. And and I haven't dug into the API docs, but I'm going to guessing, I'm going to guess that that's a critical piece of your story that as as, as a big company says, you're going to become part of our nervous system, we need to be able to, we really need to be able to integrate the organism, you've got an answer to that.
Nicholas Einstein
No doubt, no doubt in. Yep. I invite you to, I'd invite everyone on the podcast to because we have them fully available for everyone on our CS Help Center. So so we can Yeah. Which which we did over the past year. I think they, you know, we used to kind of provide them on, on request, but but to the public. Yeah, make mega public says yeah, it's, I have to say, I love under the covers. My hat's
Matthew Dunn
off to you. Because if my team is we've been building our platform, which depends on technical knowledge from vsps. What we're building solutions that work with them. The ones that have basic documentation behind a behind a locked wall, just I want to bang my head on.
Nicholas Einstein
I know, but you can, I can understand it too. Because you know, you're right. When you're writing that documentation, you're thinking, you know, these are this is our stuff. But you realize, yeah, the power isn't sharing it and ensuring that Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, it's, I mean, it's a bit that it's a bit that, you know, the power of open source. And I know, we're not talking about open source software, but, you know, do I open source my documentation, in the sense at least anybody can read it. Scary? Because it looks like you're giving away a lot. Empowering because people, the people who didn't expect to use it, they show up at the door saying, Yeah, we're ready to work with you. Right.
Nicholas Einstein
Well, that's right. Well, what in for us and I know as an as a former analyst, analyst want to go there and check stuff out and prospects too, right. If you're a prospect you want to get you know, and so making that stuff available, I think good stuff. Yeah, and we try to do that with it with everything released no slouch. Nice. Nice. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
And that's it. That's that's a it is not necessarily visible part, but a big that's a big burden for a company to take on, like just keeping up with your own documentation. Oh, yo, yo,
Nicholas Einstein
yo, yo, you're talking to the product marketing guy. The Right,
Matthew Dunn
right. You're incredibly time consuming and you're chasing developers who hate read documentation. Like, we need to know how this works because somebody else is going to use it right? It's
Nicholas Einstein
not what you know. Challenge. Well, Matthew.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, you know what I forgot to do? I shouldn't apologize. I'll just say we'll do it now you game to do a quick speed round.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
speedrun okay cats dogs both or neither? Both. Man after my own heart coffee or tea. Oh, coffee. Yeah. Northwest and local
Nicholas Einstein
to coffee from Whidbey Island
Matthew Dunn
die. There you go. Yeah, yeah, we get lucky we get okay. So, name a favorite book or author?
Nicholas Einstein
Oh, geez. I'm gonna think I'll go Hemingway. Just really, the I mean, I was Philip Roth. fl process
Matthew Dunn
was bachelor's degree Kenyon College. So gonna have the lit background. So nice. Having I
Nicholas Einstein
just was reading Hemingway. I just moved on to the country. Fishing came up.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And you're a golfer as well, as I recall. Right.
Nicholas Einstein
I do. I am a golfer. I love the
Matthew Dunn
logo, fly fishing as well.
Nicholas Einstein
I do. I do have a
Matthew Dunn
whole conversation about that. That's not podcast material.
Nicholas Einstein
It was heavyweight Nick Adams stories. And I will tell you there's some great. Yeah, yeah. But you we have Let's fall
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, definitely. What was it his fan Idaho way Hemingway was, like, where he ended up settling was upper part of Idaho, if I recall, right.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
that's where Mariel is the grand gap. Okay, yeah. Talk about fly fishing. There we go. Up righto. Last one, so we wrap it up, and I don't tie up your whole day on, like, you sort of open everyone's head a little bit about the the data opportunities, you know, practically speaking for enterprise scale marketers on what's the best way for them to, to keep up and and, you know, be more effective at the job they're trying to do?
Nicholas Einstein
That's a good question, you know, I got to stay focused is maybe maybe one, we see, I used to see, at the enterprise level, relevancy Group, a lot of resource allocation in areas that maybe weren't as focused as we could, like, you know, I think real time personalization, advanced personalization is an area where people need to maintain focus. And then I think, you know, breaking down the silos I hit on earlier, you know, I think we're beginning to work better across at the, at the enterprise marketing department level, we begin to kind of get better about bridging, bridging the gaps and bridging the silos, but you know, we still see it, and I think, you know, breaking down the walls, the data silos, the helps serve the customer, for sure,
Matthew Dunn
I would think I would think that, you know, enterprise that adopts Cheetah digital, is going to have to get over the email, you know, the email guys are over here to do one thing. And, you know, the app messaging guys over here do a completely different thing, because now all of a sudden, they're sharing the same pool.
Nicholas Einstein
Oh, no, right. No, right. But no, they got it. They gotta be they gotta be swimming together. In ideally synchronized Yeah, I mean, yeah, with within snowflakes and other things. But yeah, they need to be honest, Matthew, right, the customer demands that they are because if they're not perfectly synced, the, you know, yeah, not gonna be achieving the business objective, because consumers demand it out. Right. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
You know, for better for better or worse. As a consumer, I don't care if it's hard, right. I really, I expect you to know that I just bought this spent x and asked you that question.
Nicholas Einstein
Especially if I just bought an airline ticket, and or, or a hotel reservation or something, where, where I need, you know, the messaging and the data and to be 100% integrated, and hit me at the right moment at the right time. Yeah. And I expect it right. If it does, then it's a it's a horror show.
Matthew Dunn
Well, and, you know, back to back to the Amazon conversation for a second. Like, they may have set that bar high. But but tough, right? That's the bar of like, Well, of course, you know what I bought, like, duh, right? So don't send me a message selling me a trip on the week that I just booked a trip. That's a good way to lose my business.
Nicholas Einstein
No, right. No, right. No, no, exactly. And if my flight changed, I better know about it right now. via a channel that I that I want that I prefer, you know.
Yeah. Key points. Yeah.
Nicholas Einstein
So it's Yeah, the demands have gone through the roof and They have the vendors need to obviously step up to the step up to the challenge.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And the mark and marketers it to be to be fair to the marketers. So when when they're talking about marketing budgets, it's not like we want to keep doing exactly what we were doing. We just want to have bigger budget to play with. It's like, you know, our jobs getting harder.
Nicholas Einstein
Jobs getting harder jobs getting harder.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, for sure. And I get a change. Well, judge you but it's also get more interesting, right?
Nicholas Einstein
It almost certainly. And and let me tell you, you know, just I think the victory is that much sweeter in that, you know, the percentage of revenue being driven through some of these email programs today is orders of magnitude greater than it used to be. And big brands are driving big hunks of revenue. And at the relevancy group, we've published stats around 20%, I think was maybe 2018. was the last time we post that set, but but in that number, I'll tell you is is valid and potentially, you know, has grown since then, I think big programs are driving a big piece of their business through through email. Well, it's,
Matthew Dunn
you know, that's a that's a set of relationships. That doesn't have someone else in the middle. Yep. Is that if you've tracked that controversy, facebook, facebook, google and the Australian Government, going head to head but Facebook accidentally wiped out? Oh, yes. And pages. Like, oh, I guess we didn't know those. I guess you guys own those.
Nicholas Einstein
I guess you own them. Right. Ouch.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, Dan, I'm sorry. No, thanks.
Nicholas Einstein
No, right. No, right. No, there's a and that's, that's, that's a big, you know, a big public story. A big story. Brands for years have dealt with that. Oh, sure.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Nicholas Einstein
Yeah. Any walled garden of sorts, you know, any of them any
Matthew Dunn
walled garden, right, which, which, for better or worse, email, messaging, you know, this, this stuff that Cheetah Digital's covering, like, that's you're facilitating those rich, direct relationships. That's, that's a cool, cool space to play. And, yeah, well, cool. Well, thanks so much. I'm delighted you made the time to come aboard. It's a great conference. Actually. Pleasure.
Nicholas Einstein
pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. It was it really was a pleasure.
Matthew Dunn
Cool. And I will, I will send you the we'll send you the video when we're done. And hopefully it's useful. In the future. My guest once again. Nicholas ion Stein, from Cheetah digital. Thanks, Nick.
Nicholas Einstein
Thank you.