A Conversation with Samantha Iodice
Samantha Iodice is a member of the Forbes Communications Council, and a recognized expert in Customer Experience, Email, and Content Strategy.
She shared her insights on strategy, marketing, email and careers in a wide-ranging conversation. We agree that email is cool because it isn't cool, and that email marketers don't get the credit they deserve!
Samantha is a charter member of Women of Email, a member and contributor for Only Influencers, and a Women of MarTech member and mentor. If you manage people, Samantha's comments about the value of an influential boss will be an inspiration.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Hello, everybody, and welcome. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email Marketing. And I'm delighted to have as my guest today, Samantha Iodice. I'll give the blurb into stood up her LinkedIn profile. I'm going to talk about herself first leader and expert email. I knew that she extra strategy consultant, Forbes communication council member. And I happen to know quite an excellent speaker and writer on Samantha and I've been on a few group zoom calls. But this is our first opportunity to talk one to one at any length, isn't it?
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, it is. It's really nice. I can't believe we haven't in all these years.
Matthew Dunn
Strange. Well, it's it's also a year of what my brother calls blurs day. He's like, time has slipped in very strange ways. Yeah. You know, we're here in March, and we're at the definite one year anniversary period of this. This man,
Samantha Iodice
I don't even know how to march. Wait, if I think it's like last week was January, so I'm really confused.
Matthew Dunn
It's a blur. Stay thing. Yeah. And all that other stuff, as well. So we want to talk about email a bunch. But I'd love to have you share a bit about how you how you ended up in in email and some of the things that you've done in email as a field email marketing?
Samantha Iodice
Sure, yeah. So um, I started late in the game. Well, just in my career in general. So it's one of those I got, I got my degree as an adult. So as a grown grown woman in her 30s, when I finally got my undergraduate degree, and that was at the encouragement of my boss, a Discover card, who was still my, one of my favorite people in the whole world, nice way model my own management style after because she, she's effective while still caring about the people that work for her, which is pretty cool. And so I finished my degree working for her as her assistant. And then I moved into the marketing department, but it was direct mail. Okay, I started in there, and this was like, gosh, oh, seven ish or something. So then, eventually, I that see there was the economic downturn and like, Oh, wait, when it started in a way or whatever. So when that started happening, we started focusing on digital as a company, which many companies were doing at that time. And we did some testing and all that stuff. Well, through this testing, I met the whole email team. And then they needed someone and they came and said, Hey, we want you to be on the email team. And I said, Okay, why not? So I did. So I joined the email team, and, you know, never looked back. It was kind of like, Okay, this is it. This is what I'm doing. And I just really, I loved all the things about just digital in general, I think was exciting for me, because it it's always evolving. But email itself was kind of, you know, we say this all the time, which I don't think we need to come up with a better phrase than redheaded stepchild. But we've always been the bottom rung of the digital channels.
Matthew Dunn
I couldn't agree more I want to I want to I want to come back and talk to that. But I do want to ask a question and not not not to put you on the spot question but how did it How did it feel to take that step over into, you know, digital, as you said, but but a field with its own set of technical knowledge required quirements coming coming from direct mail, which, which is a great background for this, but How'd that feel?
Samantha Iodice
Well, I think it was like anything else, it didn't feel unusual to me, it just was I have to learn some new stuff.
Matthew Dunn
Right? attitude.
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, well, and you know, as someone who waited a long time to finish that degree and actually start my career in marketing, I think, part of that time before, that made me extremely flexible and adaptable, because I was trying new jobs or, you know, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and all of these things. So I did lots of different things. So it's constantly learning things. So that part didn't seem so weird. For me.
Matthew Dunn
That's the ability to learn is that's not the outcome of a good education certificates are not sheepskins are not, I don't know what is. So, you know, kudos to you for making that adaptation. Let's go back to that. Bottom, bottom rung in the ladder, which is a more correct way to say it. But yeah, I agree. The more I learned about email as a field, the more the more I go. Why is this? Email Marketing is like, I have it stuck in the closet. What's up? Any thoughts?
Samantha Iodice
I like the stuck in the closet. That's a good, that's a good one. Um, I think it's just misunderstood. It's one of those things that's not there's a lot of nuances in email that you don't have just in looking at website tracking, you know, how the websites doing, just looking at, you know, a simple little report, and you can have an understanding of it. So I think the other channels tend to be a little more cut and dry. And a little clearer, although you'd think the ambiguity of social media would have adjusted the outlook for email a little bit more, because I think that's the most ambiguous but you
did ship it. And why
Matthew Dunn
how did social media get kind of sexual and sexy and sizzling and email good?
Samantha Iodice
Because it was hot, hot, hot. Email was never hot, hot, hot.
Matthew Dunn
No, it wasn't.
Samantha Iodice
Even when it was born. It was just kind of like, people were taking it and adapting it and doing things with it making money. But it was never hide. It was never sexy. It was never the cooling thing. Because it just was it existed. Yeah. So I yeah, I almost feel like you know, we have to have a flashy, like coming out party for our email saying, hey, we've been here a long, but let's show you what we got. And I feel like we do that, like every company I've ever been in, I've had to have that out that rollout of this is everything that's going to happen through them. Right.
Matthew Dunn
Right.
Samantha Iodice
But yeah, I think it's, it's just a misunderstood category. And you have to have specialized people to do it.
Matthew Dunn
I be curious reaction to this. Um, um, I mean, I'm in the middle of the struggle of writing a book on it, you know, campaign genius, our company puts real time content in email. And as we've started to make connections and learn, learn the space, I've come to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that there's a mental model around email that tends to limit what people think it can do. And I think it may have something to do, at least in part, with the word itself. You know, if you say mail, you think packages on envelopes, send something once you've sent it, you're done. Email, if you look at the iconography, the visuals around email, you have tons of like, tons of flying envelopes, but there's still like, why is it that why is it that we've got this sort of boxed in view, and that may have something to do with the bottom rung of the ladder stuck stuck in the closet as well, like sort of everyone thinks they know how it works? Because they used to send on envelopes? Or because they have email on their desktop. And and the truth a good bit more complex than that.
Samantha Iodice
A lot more complex. Yeah, a lot more. Yeah. I think it's interesting that you brought that up, because I do think there is an there's a pervasive image problem. And I've always had that, no matter how hard and how much we talk about it. Until executives I think, really start to listen and understand. They're not going to see the differences in the nuances. Yeah, um, but yeah, I mean, so much more can be done with email. And I think if you can break through that preconceived notion, then you have the ability to all sorts of things, but getting that buy in and getting getting through that noise is a little bit difficult. Yeah. And I, I'm probably not getting that as much power as it should have, because it's really difficult. And I've had, I know, I've had a lot of trouble selling in, let's do that. You said real time email. I mean, trying to get people to do that. For some reason. I don't know why that's so difficult. It should be like a no brainer. It's a no brainer to me. It's a quick sell. Yay, works if you use it right. And why wouldn't we invest in that?
Matthew Dunn
Right, right? I wouldn't try it. Yeah, I don't know. And I certainly I certainly don't want to rat hole on that, just because I'll talk now way too much. But flexing like
Samantha Iodice
it is, it is hard.
Matthew Dunn
So hard. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, broaden the scope from, you know, from real time, which is just, you know, it's one aspect of email can do stuff you didn't think it could do, you start looking at the, you know, the fairly rich toolset available to an email marketer now, and I would imagine, one of your challenges in the strategy role has been getting companies to understand one how valuable and effective it is, but to how rich it can be if they get their arms around their own data and knowledge of their customers, instead of just treating everybody as the same?
Samantha Iodice
Yes. Yeah, you know, you kind of hit the nail on the head there. Because I think part of it is, you know, how long we'll be talking about data. You know, the big data revolution, big data was, what, seven years ago was the big key word. And still people are talking about it and don't understand it, and digital transformation, only what a handful of companies have truly digitally transformed. And, you know, maybe a handful of really big ones have done it. But are they really integrated in that? So you might digitally transform, but are you really integrating your marketing? Are you really looking across your different channels and seeing the big picture, I think that's the hard part for a lot of just just reaching what you can accomplish and explaining to them what you can accomplish if you did these things. So for me, that's the biggest challenge. But I try to always take it back to the data and grounded in that, like, okay, you're sending these emails out, but you don't even know who you're sending to, you know, there's this whole category of people that probably hate what you're putting in here. For some reason, they say subscribe, because either they love your brand, or something else, but you could be getting more out of them if you just respond to their needs. So
Matthew Dunn
I watched, I watched a video, I still remember running across it, it ran across a video on LinkedIn, probably four or five years ago, and it was a it was a vice president from a pretty sure it was from GE General Electric. Talking about digital twins, his subject matter It was we have a digital twin, believe it or not, aircraft engines, we like we have all of the instrumentation and all of the data coming out of this engine in a digital twin of this engine so that we know something's gonna go wrong. before it actually goes wrong, it's expensive to wait for it to break. Right? Don't like airplanes falling out of the sky. So this digital twin thing is started popping back up, I've noticed in in marketing press and it occurred to me love your reaction, this, if you think about email marketing, you know, you know, you know how you should do it, since you really want a digital twin of each customer.
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, basically,
Matthew Dunn
as much as we can know about them with their permission, as much as we can keep track of to be more personal, more relevant, you know, to continue to build a relationship and connection with them and not to treat them as as as all the same, the better.
Samantha Iodice
Yes, yeah. And I think I yeah, I mean, this digital twin concept is fairly interesting to me, and I want to learn more about that,
Matthew Dunn
oh, I promise, I will find that I will find a thank you video, cuz because I watched him like, that's really just a great concept. And then it kind of wasn't a buzzword disappeared. And in the last maybe month, I've noticed it popping back up. And that's a that's a way of looking at you. It's a way of taking that nebulous thing called data and marketing data and big data. And making it a lot crisper is like what are we really trying to do, we're trying to actually know, know our customer, but in a detailed and structured sense. So that that knowledge informs our conversation. It's no different than a person person relationship, you know, what we're talking about? Alright, what we what we what we know about each other, but I've never met a customer. I've never met a campaign genius customer for sure. That didn't go, gee, our data is not entirely where we need it to be. And that's going to make those
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, I would say that 98% of why is it so tight once you think the big giant ones are going to have like their their act together but new?
Matthew Dunn
No, no, no. How
Samantha Iodice
come like another division has a whole bunch of data, but they won't share it.
Right? Right.
Samantha Iodice
Crazy stuff that goes on? Well. Why don't
you know?
Samantha Iodice
I think part of it is people get really possessive. So when you're dealing with larger companies, and they're everything segregated, they don't they're doing their own channels on their own. They don't have to integrate their data in any way, because it's already, it was set up that way it was set up to not be shared, right? Which is ridiculous. But it's a lack of forethought by a lot of IoT people, I think. But at the end of the day, I'm, the possessiveness is really not helping them and working in their favor, but they think it is because they continue to see better results. But no one really actually thinks, well, how much better could it be? If I actually worked with, you know, the email team on this project? Or, you know, the social team? Or what if we all got together and went in cahoots and said, What if we actually have this integrated test and see what happens? Yeah, um, it's interesting to me that more people aren't more curious. Because I feel like I'm probably every job I've ever had, since they entered email, ever. The first thing I'm doing is when I'm making friends with my other channels, I'm making friends with my analysts and data scientists. I'm smart. Yeah, right. I know, I may make a lot of cookies. ingratiate myself, however I need to buy, but really, I'm trying to get people to be open to ideas and thoughts. And to think about, okay, you know, I have this idea with this client. Let's do you know, do you want to do this with me? Because I think it could be really powerful. And, you know, once you make friends, and you're not fighting people, sometimes they say, yes, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I have to keep working up that ladder, and getting people to say, yes, but I think that's this, what I do all the time is because I want people to do these other things. Because I think that's where the richest wins are going to be.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, to be to be to be a little fair about, you know, the silos and segmentation that are so frequently on an internal challenge. Vendors don't necessarily help with that. We're all guilty. And I put, you know, we as a vendor in that scenario, we're all guilty of building silos in order to try to make the cotton pickin thing, work. extra effort, like, Oh, this, these two things were not designed to share with each other. So getting them to share, which is better, is like, oh, man, this is hard, or it's detailed, or, you know, you said first, and he said, First underscore name, and we've got to reconcile those and all those seemingly little trivial things just make such a friction load. Do what you'd like to have seamless on. So it's a daunting challenge. I have to say, I, I look at um, I look at companies that how do I say this? Do it Do a ton of effective email? I'm sort of natively and I'm a little envious I, one, I end up thinking of Amazon. Yeah. Right. Like, doesn't seem like there's silos there. They, they darn well know my purchase habits. And they're very effective. Right at at communicating.
Samantha Iodice
But at the beginning, they were kind of a train wreck. But they were also pioneers, though. So I mean, they're the first email I remember them trying to even recommend something to me, really, and they were bizarrely bad at the beginning. You know, like, I remember, I maybe, let's say, let's say up I don't know, a pillow, but they recommended I get a screwdriver.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. Yeah.
Samantha Iodice
I have never bought a tool from you. Why would you say do that? But that was at the beginning. And now they're actually showing me things like, Oh, hey,
Matthew Dunn
write that. Right. Right. It's
Samantha Iodice
really powerful. But yeah, I agree with you. Like they actually have it together.
Matthew Dunn
They write they seem to make those seem to make those pieces work together. Now, I don't know the the internal workings of it. But you can read enough about the company to say, Yeah, because they're so customer driven. Yes. That if someone said, well, that's, you know, this is my salary. You can have it, it would be like, I don't think so. Right. It's better for the customer conversation over we're going to do it kind of Yeah. And and they and they did build themselves from scratch. I don't think Amazon bought the Amazon website from a vendor, I think they built it, right. like they've done their own bootstrap up of all those systems to the point where they are selling, you know, selling everybody else in the form of AWS.
Samantha Iodice
Exactly.
Matthew Dunn
luxury. They also did. I've tracked the attract the rise of AWS pretty closely like thinking in terms of not not duplicating the wheel on was a fairly key direction for Amazon. I'm gonna guess there's a system that everyone uses for The emails you get from Amazon, as opposed to many, many different vendors in many, many different installations have many, many different email systems.
Samantha Iodice
I would hope so. Because that would that would fit their business model.
Yeah, yeah.
Samantha Iodice
Wait, you know, it's like you never know, because I'm constantly shocked and surprised at how many companies in their different divisions have completely different platforms and products, right? That's true. It's just it seems like a giant waste of money to me. If people just collaborated. I mean, boom, lets everyone get what we need. And one thing because that's not impossible, there's not really any choices.
Well, yeah,
Samantha Iodice
I mean, at the end of the day, yeah. A big company can have like five different USBs Oh, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, yeah. Well, I work for the CIO had for a few years previous stage of my life. And and it's got to be a nightmare. Now compared to then, because you're your procurement, your procurement department is called your MasterCard, right? It's like, oh, a cloud system that does blah, blah, blah. On the company's behalf you like, oh, we'll end up with 30 sp, we'll end up with like, five accounts at the same one. And we just didn't know that rod and end up with a talk about a siloed mess. But aren't they aren't the email platforms also a bit guilty of? They're pretty silo II and listy and s IV about their data? I don't find them the most flexible systems I've ever been around.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, my gosh, no, not at all. I don't I agree with you. 100%. And, you know, some of them are really good at selling their product. No, yeah, yeah. But they're selling, they're selling the piece of the product. They're not actually selling like, you know, there's some large names, which will remain nameless, that you know, there's no support, you haven't zero support, like, you have to go to a separate entity, we get support. Which that's crazy to me like that. It works. But is it going to keep working? That's what I'm curious about, you know, will that continue to work? I just I don't see that happening, at least for me. Like, it just seems completely illogical? Like, why do I want to work with someone I have to work pay someone else? If we have a problem? Wave just is ridiculous to me. But yeah, they're I mean, a lot of them have these, right. A lot of these have, you know, they're really good at selling their package, but then, you know, then they're hands off, then they're done. They sold their thing. They made their sale, they hit their mark off. But now you need to figure it out and figure out what you're doing with it. And it's this behemoth of a beast that most companies don't need these giant, beastly espys. I mean, unless you're like Pepsi and GE, you know, then you need something that can tackle a whole bunch of stuff. But that's only if it's actually integrated. Yeah. So if you think about that, if they still probably have four or five different DSPs floating around in the air, but they are they have like four or five, the giants and maybe a couple mid ones. Yeah. And what sense does that make,
Matthew Dunn
I saw a, I saw a Reddit post, actually, I clipped it and sent it to Ryan failing, who knows a mutual friend of yours as well on the guy in the Reddit post, and I couldn't make it up. He said, here's how my company which is fairly sizable, does email marketing, people scattered all over the all around the company will copy and paste out of Excel into the BCC line on Outlook. That's how we do email marketing.
Samantha Iodice
It's scary,
Matthew Dunn
right?
Samantha Iodice
That's one of the scariest ones I've ever heard.
Matthew Dunn
But and it was a straight face. You know, he's like, this is this seems dumb. This is how are we doing? Well, how do you even start in the conversation that says you guys are missing? So much of an opportunity that is? Oh, well,
Samantha Iodice
Oh, wow.
Matthew Dunn
But that's, you know, back to that back to the sort of mental model of email. I. The fact that that even happens, tells you that one of the problems is that since everyone sends email, they're an email expert.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, of course not. Well, there's that too. Yeah. And I remember it has not been that long since I have been asked why can't we have an outlook template? like, Well, okay, you really can't send mass email from your outlook. Yeah, it just doesn't work. Well. You can't track it. You can't find it. You can't, you know, sort anything. look awful.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Oh, all of that stuff. But it it seems like well, since it what's How do I say this? Since it comes into my outlook? You must work the other way around as well. seems like a reasonable assumption.
I'm sure.
Matthew Dunn
I do. I had developer on our team. As we were working up demos, and I said, Hey, I'm gonna give you a chance guy with a legit dev background. I said, Okay, I'm gonna give you a chance to to learn email HTML, and he was like, you know, Piece of cake. I'm a real software developer. Oh, man was his tail between his legs. Oh, god, this is complicated. This is hard. You know, can we maybe just get one template? That looks good. I said, welcome to our customers world, man. This is tricky stuff to work with.
Samantha Iodice
Exactly. Yeah. And there's this one position I had, not that long ago, at a fairly large vendor ESP. Okay. And it was actually a great job. Because I learned a lot. And my VP though, he had a very specific approach, especially with developers. And that was probably the most robust developer team I've ever worked with an email nice, because he, he insisted, one that they be trained in email, everyone got the same training. And they had a very rigid, you know, these are do's and don'ts. And we have to follow those because we everything needs to render properly and all of this stuff. And this is just at the dawn of mobile responsive. So you know, yeah, so lots of things were changing and evolving, but they did it as a unit. So it wasn't just like one person, one person doesn't go row by one person does figure it out, shares it with everyone, and they all figure it out together, like to refine it, and then boom, they had this process. And you know, we always had a list of where we guarantee everything will render. I've never worked anywhere else. They have that. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
It was really impressive. It's a real, it's a real asset to
Samantha Iodice
huge asset. And, you know, it was just great. Because when I learned a whole lot, I nerd it out on that stuff. I mean, I am not a developer, I never will be. But I knew enough to be dangerous. I understood how it worked. I could go into Dreamweaver and like do spelling checks and stuff. But that was it. That was it. A few code changes, but not much like little minor things. Well, um, but you learn a lot from people like that, because they're extremely detailed. And in that space, which is really interesting to me.
Matthew Dunn
I know some some of the some of the audience that this podcast reaches, are there more in this small to medium business, end of the scale, even even, you know, entrepreneurs with startups on. And while email is an incredibly effective channel, and their email list is ultimately one of their biggest assets. I also suspect that there's a lot of, gee, I don't even know how to start teeing up effective email marketing program, if you're talking to someone like that, you know, over a cup of coffee or something, not what some of the things you advise them? How do they tackle this beast?
Samantha Iodice
I think Well, there's there's obviously variables with every company and type, and all of that. So let's just in general, chances are, they're not communicating regularly with their consumers. So they need to. So the first thing is, what are they always sending? Is it really relevant? And then are they welcoming people when they sign up to subscribe? Are they thanking them for subscribing? Are they you know, nurturing them and telling them what their product can do for them after they've made a purchase? Are they sharing information, or, hey, we just had an upgrade to this, you know, let's say a software, there's a new upgrade. Because you've already purchased this, we're giving you a special offer. Here you go. You know, everything from saying hi, through keeping them happy customer, is what you're looking to do. But you start off with that. Hi. You know, I think the easiest place for people to start off with is saying hello, welcoming them, and then taking it from there. Because you can add on to that conversation. We have to start at the beginning and let them know that you care that they are want to talk to you
Matthew Dunn
that such and such that that that Hello that welcome that thank you for signing up thing is such an easy one to not get to. And yet it sets the tenor of everything to follow, doesn't it?
Samantha Iodice
It really is. Yeah. So it kind of sets up the entire relationship. And it gets you connected with people.
Matthew Dunn
But I've got a I've got a Gmail account that that's the deliberate it's not a spam bucket. It's like the subscribe to anything and everything because you can always and it's a bit of an education to sign up with that address. I mean, some sizable companies where I've gone and done the opt in and provided the name and all that other stuff. And sometimes it's crickets like days later I'll hear back, which baffles me. And frequently it's very generic. You asked for my name, you didn't use it. You know where I was when I signed up, you didn't use that like all the all of these things that that in theory could be part of that. And then sometimes the there's not even a sense of brand voice. It's just sort of text only. Thank you for ascribing.
Samantha Iodice
Yes, super generic notification type email, when I mean notification emails and transactional is really don't have to be that generic anymore either. Um, you know, even your password reset email could be interesting. Could be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Take a moment to continue your brand and be interesting. be funny, you know, what people do on 404 pages is one of my favorite things. I love getting a really good error.
Yeah, I've
Samantha Iodice
had, I've had I've seen like, stormtroopers up, we missed, you know. You know, it's like beeker. And granted, that's not everyone's brand voice. But there's always even if you're still being pretty lightened professional or whatever, you can still have a moment to show your brand, you know, have another brand impression, really at the end of the day, because every opportunity is an opportunity for an impression.
Matthew Dunn
I had had the opportunity yesterday to have Glen Edley on as a guest, I don't know if you know, Glen, he's actually like, a very, very long time around the only influences list, but he's in New Zealand, so he doesn't get out as much. But he said, he runs a he runs an email marketing agency called spike. And he was talking about a technique that he uses with particularly with his clients who are in small business, he has them set up a BCC account kind of like that, you know, junk email bucket I was talking I was talking about, he said, Every time you answer a customer question, BCC it here. And when he gets them to do that, by the end of a month, or two months or whatever, when they're starting to put together the newsletter, they don't realize how much content they had already created, in the right voice. Helpful, specific, all that other stuff. That's already done. Yeah, literally copy and paste out of your bccs. And you've already got a ton of relevant content.
Samantha Iodice
Exactly. Now, that's actually a great idea. I didn't think of it that way. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good one. It's one of those simple things that you know, boom, you just have to think of it. And there you go.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah, that's really myself like, God, I should have be.
Quick, quick,
Matthew Dunn
quick. Fail. Maybe it's still there? I don't know. But but the one of things that Glen and I talked about was, you know how natural and easy it is to fire off an answer to someone in an email back to them, especially when it's one to one, and to be authentic and articulate and all that other stuff. And it feels a bit effortless. Feels like talking. But you sit down to write the newsletter. Going to vapor lock, right, like Yeah, for sure. Right? Like our English teachers looking over our shoulder or something like that.
Samantha Iodice
That was my easiest class. So you know, yeah. That doesn't bother me. But I understand it bothers you
Matthew Dunn
do a lot of writing now yourself. Right? You
Samantha Iodice
Yeah. Okay. Well, I do some reading. I'm reading some, like guides and, you know, basically supplement information for vendors to give to their consumers in different verticals. So I'm doing something now for like, city government, which is a strange little sector that you don't necessarily think of unless you're actually serving in that sector. And they have some interesting nuances to it. Yeah, yeah. So it's actually kind of fun. I'm learning things that I didn't know.
Matthew Dunn
all bad. Yeah. And, and a very different, very different sense of the sort of customer relationship. I would imagine. I've worked with some of the local government, folks here and there. I'm uniformly impressed with them. Like they're very mission. They're very mission driven. Like they're doing that because they want to be doing it.
Samantha Iodice
Exactly.
Matthew Dunn
So one. Yeah. It's a wonderful thing. Wow, what a great sector to work in. Has that been along? Is that Been a while?
Samantha Iodice
No, actually, that's just started. Is it? Yes. Yeah. Yes, I am doing two different sectors. And yeah, it's fine. I enjoy it. I like just writing. I like writing and just in general. Yeah. So I've done some, whether it just be email copywriting or blog posts or whatever, I love doing those things. It's something I've just always enjoyed. Yeah, writing is one of those things for me.
Matthew Dunn
So there's, there's there's there's something that's not going to go away, right, the value of clarity the value of well thought through. It's a, there's such a flood of makeshift content. Now that I value the good stuff. Even more. Have you had those annoying people who get in touch and say they want to do your content for you? screen and smack them. Thanks for the nice offer. What makes you think you have the slightest freaking idea about what I might talk about?
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, especially because you didn't even like refer to my actual business you refer to me as the, you know, your business, Forbes counsel like this. I'm a business. Remember, right. I get that all the time. Really. People are not reading, like, read my profile, you'll pretty much quickly understand if you write it. Yeah. Yeah, people are interesting to me. Well,
Matthew Dunn
let me said the average email is read for 11 seconds, and I ran the math and that means for your average 200 word per minute reader, that's 33 words of an email they get, they get to 33. That's not very many. It sounds a lot like average email,
Samantha Iodice
the subject line and preheader is so vitally important. True.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. True. True. I got an opportunity to listen to to a session this morning. Skip Fedora was moderating, but then a couple of copywriters. Oh, yeah, you
Samantha Iodice
missed it. But yeah, it
Matthew Dunn
was it was good. It was good session was fun to fun to listen to sort of compare, compare. compare notes coming at that problem. And they did touch on the subject line jet. Janet said she, she said, she learned a lot from Mad Men, believe it or not, she said, Go to the grind of sitting down and writing 25 different subject lines. And you'll end up with better subject lines. By the time you've done that really hard grind. Yeah, you just said I'll put one or two of them out there. And let him go. Are you do you must have to do some of that kind of crafting?
Samantha Iodice
I do. And when it comes to subject lines, I probably don't do that many. But I do do a whole bunch. Because after you do a couple because the first one is like you stumble through it. And then you get thrown out and you're like, Okay, that's a little bit better. And it's really like you're partly improving on the ones you already did. So you're kind of just refining them as you go down until you get to something you're like, Okay, that's, that's the one. But now I need another one. So I need to take a different angle. So I go down another list. But yeah, it's completely true. Because I think it's just the nature of it, at least for me. I'm someone who continually as I'm writing something I'm always refining as I'm going. So I'll get to a point and I'll be like, I'll start reading it over. And then I refine and then I start moving forward, and then I read it over again. So that's kind of just a natural habit. For me. It's a good one. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, it's a good one. It's given. There's not
Samantha Iodice
a lot of things for madmen though.
Matthew Dunn
It's great. Great. Great show. The deep the detail work. The historical detail work in that show. Me? My doors, man. It's like the right. cigarettes and it is
Samantha Iodice
everything.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, there. Yeah. Yeah, we could probably we could probably film geek out. Yes. Now what's what's next on the horizon for you?
Samantha Iodice
Well, I, I've actually been offered a full time position that I start next week. So yeah, after I actually started, I'll put it out there. What it is, are you staying? I'll be doing a strategic consulting with a vendor. Okay. And that's going to be exciting. It's a new, it's, well, it's email is always a part of everything that I do. But I would say the customer experience is really where the main focus is. Okay. And of course, as you well know, emails, huge part of that customer experience, especially if you're doing right, so, but this particular vendor is more in a mobile space. So that'll be fun for me. I'm very excited to play in mobile more and to integrate that more into the customer experience.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. As these cotton pickin, you know, yeah, go everywhere with us. It's really hard to remember what it was like, like,
Samantha Iodice
aims for them and everything. I know, I thought about that, actually. Not that long ago. Um, I was rewatching some series, and it was like, just when cell phones were starting to be a thing, and they're big and huge. And they had to pull the antenna out and everything. And like, that was a really long time ago, wasn't it? I'm like, No, wait, it wasn't really that long ago. Long ago. No, exactly. But it feels like it because it doesn't feel like we've ever not had these except when you reflect back to your childhood. Like my nieces don't know anything about not having
Matthew Dunn
digital natives, right? Yes. Mobile natives may even be the way to say it now because that that, that that was a very different step function than digital. I mean, I'm old enough to have done both of those change waves and the mobile one. Just it's, you know, it's pervasive is ubiquitous. You get a Swiss Army knife in your pocket that can do. I saw someone wants to compile the list of the functions that a smartphone replaces, and it's just you know, it's jaw dropping is a photo album, it's a map, it's a this it's like, on and on and on and on and on, like 1000s and 1000s of dollars to replace it with, you know, other means
Samantha Iodice
before you think about it in that construct, when they ask for it, you know, $1,000 for this little tiny device, it starts to make a little more sense. It doesn't mean I want to pay when I have to pay for it, but
Matthew Dunn
it's better. You know, it's like, it's the most expensive computer you've got in some ways, and it's also the one you it's also the cheapest in terms of how much you use it and how much you depend on and stuff like
Samantha Iodice
Exactly.
Matthew Dunn
When you get somewhere and you don't have any connectivity realize, what what a part of life it's because what do you mean, I can't look on a map.
Samantha Iodice
I have to see it.
Matthew Dunn
All right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, hang on a second. Google is like, no, we're in the middle of the wilderness. It doesn't work.
Samantha Iodice
We need to put some towers in the forest.
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
I did a trip last summer with my with my sons. We were 110 miles a wilderness middle of nowhere. No human beings for four days. Wow. Oh, yeah. No sales. No, nothing. Right. And it was refreshing. Yeah, I put my phone in a plastic bag in the backpack. And I took it out almost two weeks later. Wow. And it's been a lot of years. Since I haven't, you know, touched a keyboard in the course of, I don't know, every five minutes or something. Right?
Samantha Iodice
Wife, it's our job.
Matthew Dunn
It's her job. And so like, that's Yeah, that's fair. But um, you know, it's Yeah,
Samantha Iodice
it's like when you can get away?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, nice. Well, it's back to back to your, you know, back to the writing process, you were talking about that, that job of write it and refine it, you know, rethink it. You know, like, that's really not about the device in the world of information at your fingertips. It's about your own thought process. You may use a digital tool to do that. But the hard work is going on in, you know, in between your ears, isn't it? Right?
Samantha Iodice
Yeah. Great. Is there? Are there AI technologies that can do those things for you?
Matthew Dunn
What do you think? Um, what's your take on subject line done by AI? Good, bad, ugly.
Samantha Iodice
I think it's an interesting, I think what it can do, I think usually, though, you're plugging in something people did. So it starts with people. And then AI is just taking it and refining it. So from that perspective, it could be interesting. You know, there's been some compelling test results. So I'm intrigued by it. I haven't gotten to play with it with a client though. And that's ultimately that's where I that's the Proving Ground, right is being able to play with it with a client.
Matthew Dunn
And with no human beings eventually opening on and responding. Yeah,
Samantha Iodice
exactly.
Matthew Dunn
I fired a Grammarly, which is that add on that checks your grammar as you type? Oh, okay. I'll experiment with this. I think it lasted two and a half minutes portfolio sort of noise. Would you get out of my way? I know it's a typo. I'm trying to get stuff written down here. Oh, that's crap grammar. Shut up. I'll get back to it.
Samantha Iodice
I noticed even the new update for Microsoft Word. It last six months. Yeah, it's highlighting and dotting and way more and I had to keep telling him to stop doing it. Yeah, the red.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Talking about your English teacher looking over your shoulder, right.
Samantha Iodice
Like, I don't tell me the spelling. That's all I care about. Everything else I'll deal with.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I've actually gone back you know, when I'm when I'm writing there are times I go, believe it or not, I use I use my, the the software development environment that i do that i code in. I've taken to writing in that because the keystrokes are muscle memory. And because it's so flippin simple.
Samantha Iodice
Write
Matthew Dunn
plain text is like, Don't get distracted with fonts. And don't worry about the grammar underline and stuff like that. Like, just write all out. dummy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Miss too much multitasking. Not? Not necessarily a good thing. So you said next week for your Yes. Next week for you and and mobile. Now. Have you worked in mobile before?
Samantha Iodice
Well, I've done mobile, with clients and things like that, but I haven't worked inside of it. Okay, we're for a particular mobile company yet. So this is that's exciting to me.
That's a
Matthew Dunn
it's similar, but it's also quite different. I mean, you get a message on our little friends here and to get attention. Oh, yeah. Like really fast. That's as we would as we would.
Samantha Iodice
That's part of what my excitement is people pay a lot of attention to the messages and SMS all of it
Matthew Dunn
playing with dynamite though right if you get about one misstep? Yes, before someone goes, right gone. bozo filter, you know, No, do not call me etc, etc. Do
Samantha Iodice
you think it's probably going to be harsher and faster? So yeah, the thoughtful consideration how you're writing things and what you need to be sending is even more important. Email. They'll forgive a little bit.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Cuz you can get because it's got much more of I'll get to it later. And the the sort of notification habit is is different. I mean, there was a time when we used to pay attention when our email went Bing. And now you
Samantha Iodice
have everything turned off.
Matthew Dunn
Right, got outlook alerts, it would pop up when you got a message. Oh, that's just an evil thought.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, I know. It's horrible. Well, you can still do it. You can have it on. They just defaulted off now. Because people don't what do you get?
Matthew Dunn
Well, how would you like it would literally be like constant.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, yeah. Well, even my Gmail wants to like notify. I'm like, No,
Matthew Dunn
no, no, yeah.
Samantha Iodice
The only notifications I get from Gmail is for my calendar. They'll give me that, that 10 minute warning or whatever.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Which is, which I do. Like, are you? Are you a slave of the Are you a slave of the calendar? Like I am? Yes. Yeah. And and I have to, I find it freeing, I have to say, because trying to keep track of I need to do this at this time. Especially when it involves other people be like, I screw it up.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, yeah. Right. So you have to give me the 10 minute Head Start so I can finish whatever I'm doing. Yeah, actually, like refocus. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
I had I had opted in for this way to any offense, Callie, I'd opted in for another event that was gonna overlap with a copywriter event. And I, I was trolling for where's the meeting link? And it literally because it wasn't delivered, here wasn't on a platter in front of me. I skipped the conference. Because they didn't make it easy enough for me to get there. Oh, yeah. probably my fault. Maybe not hadn't gotten to the fifth cup of coffee or something. But it's a mark of how much you have to kind of feed everybody. Now, that's
Samantha Iodice
my favorite things about Gmail is if an invite hits there, it's on my calendar, whether I've accepted or not until I do something with it. Yeah. And that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Why more? People don't do it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's real simple to add the which calendar function in this inside that email? Yep. So it's a little tiny things like that, that are actually huge, big things. because like you said, Do you miss that? Yeah, you know, you have two things booked at the same time, if the decision was super easy for you to make, because you couldn't get to the other one.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And you get to the point where somebody said, what's going to happen today? I don't know. Google knows. But I thought I show up when I'm supposed to be there. Right. When when the machine tells me to. I am waiting, I am waiting for AI, which we've touched on briefly. I'm waiting for someone to say the real opportunity AI is cleaning up your flippin inbox. Although I don't know if machines are smart enough to do that yet.
Samantha Iodice
I think Well, they've tried to do that. Yeah. And it just hasn't flown. You know, I cash what was that one? I remember, a couple years ago, there was some tool that came out. And it was it was intended to help like clear the clutter. If it wasn't an important email that basically would refile it for you. Yeah. So it was kind of taking the Gmail tabs to a different height. Yeah. But I don't want people starting for myself. They don't know what's important for me from the onset. They set up to see my behavior for a while, right. Yeah. So I remember playing with it with like, my testing inbox. Because then they weren't going to mess anything up. Yeah. But I just I didn't. I want to be able to see all the things. Yeah, yeah. That's when you missed something
Matthew Dunn
trusting that something important didn't get
Samantha Iodice
huge. A lot of trust.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, that's a lot. that's a that's a lot of trust. And then as soon as you have to start watching the watcher, its value proposition. Gone, right like
Samantha Iodice
that. What was the one last year that started where you had to pay a subscription they gave you like 30 days free. And Hello, we're something
Matthew Dunn
a while there's hay.com, which is making Hay hay. Hay is one and hay is they're taking an interesting you know, they're taking an interesting stance on email that the hay guy did an article a couple of weeks ago about the the evils of the of the of the email tracking pixel on and I went to the website for hay and they had Google, Facebook, etc. all over the website. I'm like, wait a minute. I thought you said tracking was evil, and you're doing it on your website, but somehow it's not okay in email. Not that that's the reason for pixels and stuff. But I actually use a paid email client, which is still I'm still a little shocked by this. There's a client called superhuman I had read about it. Okay. Really? Okay, I'll give it I'll give it 30 days give it a shot had had a pet with one of the one of the developers, he's like, yeah, no way. Because they said, we'll get you to inbox zero. And I'm not an inbox zero kind of guy. And I've been at inbox zero for four months straight. Because of this email client, and I pay the
Samantha Iodice
really,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, I call me call me a surprise believer because like, and, and the key is, it's, it's, it's more like game design, then software UI design, things like deleting filing, scheduled to go later are single keystroke lightning fast. I tend to I get to the inbox and it's back down to whatever, four or five things I'm going to grapple with in the morning, by the time I'm at the desk, because I just have, but for an email marketer who's working their tail off to get my attention and to get me to read their message, one, that subject line better be good. Really, really good to the content better, really better be arresting, or I'm going to go like that. And it's going to be gone in about a half a second. I'll be on to the next to mean big big being being gone. It's been it's been an interesting experience. I may be missing things in my email. But I'm also a lot less overloaded. Yeah, by the 1000 Plus or whatever.
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, right. Before, every now and like every I don't know, let's say, maybe once a year, maybe every two years, I get the bug that I need to like, go into my Gmail and clear it out. Yeah. Yeah. And I do. And, you know, it's like, if I'm just at one page, that's why the max of 50 or however you haven't said, Yeah, 30 maybe. I'm super happy. Like that's, that's exciting to me, because I do like I love Inbox Zero. But I haven't been in a long time.
I hadn't been 20. Just never whew,
Samantha Iodice
yeah, it gets to be too much. But that's also my it's my storage place. until it's done. It doesn't leave the inbox, which is also why it's and stay there. It takes a while to get to
Matthew Dunn
something I remember reading once the humans are humans are not hierarchical organizers by nature's were actually monocline groupers. I don't know why that stuck in my head. It sounds like. What that means is if you look at most people's desk, yeah, there are single stacks in the stacks have meaning. And I'm looking over your shoulder.
Samantha Iodice
Well, that's not mine. That's what you can't see. I have one stack of a lot of different things.
Okay.
Samantha Iodice
The stack itself has no unique meaning. It's just the stack of stuff that I eventually at some point I have to look at.
Matthew Dunn
But it sounds like your inbox. Basically. Yes. Yeah. Okay, interesting. I think it's one of the where I was going with that
Samantha Iodice
process is kind of it can be all over the place. I'm in the middle of like, there'll be sticky notes all over the place. And my notes are in one spot right next to me. But my desk is fairly neat at the moment because they just moved a month ago. Okay, but it won't be for much longer. I tend to have a chaotic works.
Matthew Dunn
I don't do need desk. I'm with you. They're like a bad,
Samantha Iodice
way more sense to me if it's too neat. I'm like, Where is everything? Like?
Matthew Dunn
I saw someone wants with one browser tab open. I don't like I don't know what that is, man.
Samantha Iodice
I think he's 25.
Matthew Dunn
Yes.
Samantha Iodice
Yeah, now that I when I accidentally open up a new tab, you know, when he clicks for something to open up in in a while in a new tab. But you you click for a new opening. Yeah, but we're made. I can't think of the word jabby I wonder. Yeah, you know, but when you see that one town like that, that looks weird. Yeah. It's just so
Matthew Dunn
clean and sparkly and lonesome and God filled in oil and other stuff. And then the The Reluctant reboots I do with the browser. It goes like hey, do you want me to restore? And I'm like, oh, sorry, buddy. Yeah.
Samantha Iodice
Oh my gosh, so many. I know. I know. Yeah. And then when I'm doing research, which I've been doing, it's even more like I had to clear out last night, a section of the tabs that were like just my personal stuff that I would need to go back to read or whatever and I just had to kind of go through it and file it. So that way I didn't lose it. Just to do my research because the the tabs were getting too small for me to find stuff. That's how many tabs I had.
Matthew Dunn
With the N N N do if you're in marketing work with tag, you know, Digital's kind of your bread and butter in some way. It's not avoidable anymore. Now, the SAS is, you know, SAS thing is worked, you know, yay, wonderful, etc. But it's like, I gotta have this one. And I have to have that one. And I'm an openness, man is like, I met, you know, you know, whatever 2530. And I just got started. It's like a muscle memory of Oh, yeah, that one's over there. And this one's over here. But there's still a certain point where I'm just like, with that, I had a call earlier with someone and I was literally kind of digging through browser instances trying to find the call, because I knew they were back there. I could hear them.
Samantha Iodice
That's hilarious. I keep one page open dollars in all my tabs are at the top of it. Because that, that I yeah, that I have trouble with when I have too many things open in general. So like, I've got PowerPoint open and good Excel, open up that word open. I've got zoom open, I have my Chrome open. I have, you know, slack and messenger and all that stuff. But if it's not minimized if too many things are actually on my screen, that's when I have a problem.
Matthew Dunn
Well, I took in fashion the doc and I'm a Mac user, a hardcore Mac user and the dock at the bottom of the Mac I had to I had to change how the dock works because putting all the apps in the dock was was ridiculous so I changed it were only running apps are in the dock and I still in the dock all the way across. Yeah, human not supposed to Yeah. Oh, well. He says multitasking doesn't work. Hey, we're going to wrap up with the speed round if your game Oh, yes, your speed round frame. And I was gonna ask about inbox zero but we talked about that already. So say hey, go. Dogs cats both or neither.
Samantha Iodice
Both but lean dogs.
Matthew Dunn
Like that. I like to name a favorite place. Oh.
Samantha Iodice
favorite place Ireland. Norway in particular.
Okay,
Matthew Dunn
the money shot here name a favorite book or author? I've gotten some great tips off in this question. Oh.
Samantha Iodice
Okay. I never will go business book on you because I never have one of those. It will always be literature and my probably all time favorite is To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh, is also a fantastic
Matthew Dunn
film. Oh, you're so you're so right. Oh. I remember that. I remember the first time reading that book. And it's like,
Oh, it's so good.
Samantha Iodice
Right. So powerful.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Cough man that deserves a reread, doesn't it? Dang.
Samantha Iodice
Oh, yeah. I've read it like four times, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's been a few years since I rewrote it. So probably do it again. Since you
Matthew Dunn
did did you read the sequel? Yeah. Cool. Wait, I didn't want it to be published. And then after you're near the end of her life, Harper Lee's life he
Samantha Iodice
died like months after it was released.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Released in it's like, I thought if she waited all those years, maybe she wasn't. Didn't think of it as it you know,
Samantha Iodice
it's uh, I didn't read it yet. And because I'm reticent to read it like I'm worried about reading I don't want to ruin anything
Matthew Dunn
right? No, no, no, it was perfect.
Samantha Iodice
I think I bought it and I'm like, I don't know if I can open this.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I'm with you. I Mockingbird was like, You didn't need to add to that. You take away I don't need to like boom, done. Good. She wrote she wrote one book and that was the book. Yay. bread
Samantha Iodice
winner winning JD Salinger. He wrote a few but still pretty obscure.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Right. Right. Wow. Very bad Miss math. I love Well, listen. What a pleasure. It's been great. Yeah, I like I lead. I asked him for half an hour we let a whole hour slip by cuz
that's always a good thing.
Matthew Dunn
That's Yeah, it's always a good thing. Well, best of luck on on your, on your next venture. And how about this? How about we talk about mobile after you've got some time under your belt there. I would love to hear your impression of that world once you once you sort of get in and swim in it for a bit.
Samantha Iodice
Now that sounds great. I love it.
Matthew Dunn
Okay, once again, my guest today, the wonderful Samantha Yoda che. Thank you, Samantha and we'll do this again in a few months.
Samantha Iodice
Sounds good.