A Conversation with Skip Fidura

Skip Fidura is an active and respected email marketing figure, with substantial time on 'both sides of the house', marketing and vendor. He is also a busy fractional CMO, speaker, host, panelist and presenter.

Skip's deep experience in the space made for a delightful conversation about the challenges of email marketing. He is also a long-time figure in the UK Direct Marketing Association, the industry body for email marketing.

He was finally able to shed some light on why there are so many great email marketers in the UK!

TRANSCRIPT

Matthew Dunn 

Good morning. It's Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email Marketing. And my guest early morning here not early morning for him is the famous the noted Skip Fidura, fractional cmo, email expert, all things digital marketing expert, and famous wearer of bow ties. Skip so much for joining Sorry, I

Skip Fidura 

didn't get the I didn't get the word reproof for this, this or I would have had to bow tie on.

Matthew Dunn 

Well, you know, I thought about that. But it's okay, I just all of your pictures, you're meticulous about, about bow tie in there, well start by you can introduce yourself better than I can so and assume that not everybody's seeing us. So tell people a bit about skip.

Skip Fidura 

So actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna riff off the bow tie for a second, because you'll learn a lot more about me than the maybe I want you to know, sort of the bow tie thing. So I do a lot of public speaking. And kind of the way I get into the mood or the moment is I said, Put on a tie. And it you know, it reminds me it's a physical manifestation. But it reminds me that I'm about to be on stage. And it just kind of gets me in the right frame of mind. Yeah. And I was if I'm honest, I was at my College Alumni Weekend. And I was at my fraternity, pig roast. And one of the guys who's younger than me, was walking around selling bow ties. And I'm like, that's pretty cool. That is cool. I bought a bow tie. And I came back and I had an event that week. And I'm like, right, I'm gonna wear the bow tie. Well, but then you only have one, and a bow tie is common enough that you're sort of like, Huh, or uncommon enough that people take note. Yeah. So then very suddenly, they're like, well, what bow ties you gonna wear next week. And, and so suddenly, I'm like, out frantically buying bow ties. And I, you know, I decided and I get a lot of nice regular ties at home, I didn't want to just switch to bow tie. So I came up with this really elaborate, oh, I only wear bow ties when I present on a Wednesday or Thursday. And I even had a hashtag for a while bow tie Thursday. And so that that's probably what you need to know about me. Like how I how I work. The other stuff is, you know, pretty, pretty traditional. been living in the UK for 20 years. been in the industry is actually figuring this out. So that was gonna be one of the questions that you were going to ask. I probably started email 97 or 98. Oh, well, early on, I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I, whenever there's a conversation about open rate tracking, I, I hold my hand up and say that I was part of the reason that open rate is the thing. Really, I'm not. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was working for one of the first companies that was doing that and talking about it. And it's how we sold email to kind of more traditional brands that you know, didn't really get this digital thing yet. And why would I care about email? Oh, well, we can we can track your email from cradle to grave. Right. We know if it was delivered if it was opened, if they clicked on it, what they did with it after that. So yeah, so um,

Matthew Dunn 

now when you when you because your your your college was poly sigh correct?

 

Correct. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn 

How did you go from poly sigh sideways into the the fun world of marketing which is sold everything now when you started I'm sure.

Skip Fidura 

I didn't get into law school, basically, is what happened. And probably well. So, you know, we were talking about we were talking about you were talking about with a with a previous guest about whether the you find the career the career finds you. And I would say that marketing manipulated a large portion of my life to to convince me that that's I needed to be. The first the first step of that was I was applying to law school. And for reasons that nobody can explain, didn't include on any of my applications that I had done a whole year internship at the local district attorney's office in Virginia, it's called the Commonwealth's attorney, but same same function. And that whilst I was there, we'd had just a horrendous case that the other intern and I were pitted internally against the two youngest attorneys as to whether we should, whether there was grounds to prosecute in this in this situation, and many other intern argued that there were not grounds to prosecute prosecute, and we won. So, yeah. But you know, did I put that on my law school application? No, no? Did I self promote myself? Absolutely not. Why would I want to do that? So fast forward a couple years later, now I'm in, I'm getting my MBA. And again, not that interested in marketing. I was not very complimentary to the field of marketing, if I'm, if I'm honest, yeah. And, but somewhat disruptive, I would say my professors would agree in the marketing classes that I was instructed to take. And I was more of an operations kind of person, right? So I ended up after grad school going to work in the call center, or contact center for those of you living in the Bay of retail bank, and got into some really cool analysis about how we can route calls and queue calls. And you know why? Maybe the queue shouldn't be totally democratic. First come first serve, maybe the queue should somewhat be organized based on the, the profitability to us as a business with people in the queue. Getting most profitable customer service quicker. Yeah. And you can do that right in a call center, because nobody can see that we can see the line or the queue. Can't do that in a retail bank can't walk over and go, Oh, Mr. Jones, come with me. You know, cuz everybody behind Mr. Jones is like, wait, what just happened? Yeah. And so but that got me into really proper database analysis, data analysis. I used to write SQL for a living for a while. Yeah, that's, that's how I got into marketing.

Matthew Dunn 

Okay, interesting. It seduced over to the whatever dark side or whatever else. I'm curious because it's, I particularly enjoy talking to people who've who've been in a field any field, but um, you know, email for the, for the subject matter of these conversations, to realize delve into how much stuff was there early? And how much we're still working to sort of realize the full use of it. Right? measurability of email, which you touched on 9798? Oh, we can we can actually see if someone's open the email. Oh, my, that's crazy. And I it's occurred to me for quite some time that one of the big shifts that digital media have brought to business is is a complete change in measurability. Right, television era radio era, you had statistically sampled Nielsen households. And that was your bed now it almost almost by definition, skewed to big and few NBC, CBS, you know, ABC, it's not like anybody and everybody could put something on TV. And if if, if a business could have made a bet to do that, they wouldn't have known if it worked or not, except for the cash register. And digital media have this had not D. They weren't necessarily designed for the purpose. But they have these feedback and data gathering mechanisms that have that have turned out to be integral and to the point where now we're really questioning, are we are we using these in a way we should do? Are people comfortable with how they're using them, and you were there early on, for those conversations in email tuck, talk about that

Skip Fidura 

a bit. What's interesting is so now it's a bit of a history lesson for some people. I apologize if you were there. might bring back some fond memories. But I moved to San Francisco in January of 2000 uber.com. And dock right in the middle of combo. Just a couple of funny.com boom stories that I went to work for an ESP that well, it exists in a different guise now called Digital impact. And I turned up on the first day and I I had no idea what to wear. And I'd come from banking. So I was like, well, we're suit with no tie. And I was sitting in reception, and I think it was the CEO might have been walked by and told me off where it is. Yeah. He's like, it's like, looked at, yeah, you're gonna walk into somebody's office and, and, you know, you just don't look credible. Right wearing a suit. There's a Silicon Valley, you know, in jeans with a dress, you sing everyone see you and again. And then, actually, I wish I'd won the jeans because the next thing that happened was the HR person picked me up, introduced me to my manager, manager said, All right, so first thing this morning, first part of orientation. Get down to the basement. Here's the key to the storeroom. your desk is flat pack. Bring it up, put it together. Yeah, it's gonna go there. kind of thing. Right. So, I mean, this is proper, old school startup mode. Yeah. And then the other thing that made me realize this was about a month, maybe two months later, but made me realize that I was not in Kansas or Virginia anymore, was the guy who sat next to me. lovely guy, just got fed up one morning, made a couple of phone calls, had three job interviews over lunch had a new job by the end of the day. So between getting fed up and packing his box was six hours tops. Why? Wow. And, you know, there was, it was a great time to be in the valley, there was a new launch every every night. I mean, you could go and like it. If you were so inclined. You could drink for free or eat either.

Matthew Dunn 

And it was that ferment period, which it sometimes feels like we're in again. Honestly, it does. Yes. of stupid. Like stupid could get funded.

Skip Fidura 

Yeah, well, stupid could get funded actually. And did and sitting. I'm now feeling really guilty because I'm, I'm sitting in an Aeron chair right now. But that was the thing. Right? Like everybody had a toe? Yeah, heavier on chairs. Yeah, foosball, or the table tennis or whatever. And free sodas in the office. And it was a crazy time. And then it ended. And it ended hard. Yeah. And all the parties that had been launch parties. You know, all sudden, like, when you think about the economy got a downturn in the economy, but you don't think about is Oh, right, like bars and restaurants. They're going to be the first to suffer. And so I remember bars in the valley would have what they were calling pink slip parties. So if you walked in and show that you'd been laid off that week, you got a free drink. Yeah. It was, it was a crazy time. And that's where we get to the measurement piece, because so now instead of trying to sell email marketing to dot coms, who get it because they're trying to do something online anyway. We're now going to traditional retailers, traditional brands, and saying, hey, we've got this new thing called email, and it's gonna be great for you. And they're like, I don't get it. And so we, you know, we had to describe it like, well, it's kind of like direct mail only everything's trackable. And we thought, that would be great. Every marketer Oh, surely wants to know, yeah, if their piece was opened, oops, if the pieces opened, if it was clicked, you know, what happened. And we got a lot of pushback from traditional marketers, because they didn't want to know, they want to know, right, it's suddenly they were on the hook. They were accountable. And so, in the early days, you know, we spent a lot of time like the strategy side of the business spent a lot of time taking the metrics that we had, and kind of explaining how you can put convert those into the metrics that the rest of the business was used to write. Right. So how do you take an email and compare it to your Nielsen numbers for your commercial? Yeah, kind of thing? Yeah.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah. Yeah. And, and my guess, is some of the resistance, some cursory reaction to this, some of the resistance would initially at least be articulated in terms of it. One, I'm not sure I want everybody to know, because we've been getting along and having our budgets based on on guesswork. It's the old Sam Wanamaker, you know, half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half right. And then it was probably an attempt to shoehorn the new measures in the new measures available in into the old metrics, right? We have to take this email stuff and figure out how to make it fit in what looks like a paper on on below. metaphorically speaking, because that's that's how we're used to running things. And if it doesn't fit the operating paradigm for direct mail, right, we can't use it like, this is a different beast guys. Eventually, you will do that, probably.

Skip Fidura 

That That's right. And actually, the it wasn't so much changing the operating paradigm in the marketing department. But it was educating, like the finance department. they'd gotten used to, and we're very comfortable with what's interesting when they went first gigs I had at the bank. I moved out of the call the call center into what we call the customer marketing Information Center. And one of my first jobs was every quarter, I took all of the post campaign analysis that was done across all the marketing. Yeah. And calculated how much money we should have posted in the quarter. And compare that to what we reported to Wall Street. Right. And it was always seven or 8x. Oh, wow. So marketing is claiming the same revenue dollar seven or eight times? Yeah. Fight finance was happy with that they were flying with that. So suddenly, it's like, so that, you know, there's some reluctance on the finance department side to, to say, well, we have this one channel, it's a lot more accurate. Well, yeah. But that means that I've got to now tell my managers and my superiors in the finance organization, that all the stuff we've been reporting previously is wrong. Right. And it is just wrong. So yeah, it was, it was a really interesting time to be to be in that game. Funny thing about the Wanamaker quote you mentioned. So that's probably the most famous quote about attribution. And you can actually attribute that quote to two different people.

Matthew Dunn 

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Skip Fidura 

So that one of the founders of lever brothers over here is supposed to said the same thing. Interesting. Interesting. Now, it turns out neither neither one of them said it. Interesting.

Matthew Dunn 

Well, that's that apocryphal tense. Typical, aside from aside from Mark Twain, who you know, fishing apocryphal witty quote, he actually probably said it, but usually, we want to hang the the quip on on a figure that, that it fits. And he who writes the history books, writes the history. Not Not what actually happened, right. Maybe Richard Laird wasn't that bad a guy, I'm sorry, jumping around on your 20 years in the UK. Born in a far record raised in in Virginia, tell talk to me a bit about the contrast and focus it on marketing, if you'd if you'd like, or life, if not, between UK, US.

Skip Fidura 

I think the biggest thing I noticed straight away. And it's still true to in fact, I know it's true, because I heard somebody say it just a couple of weeks ago. The British are very reserved, and they don't, they don't do self promotion. Well, or really at all. So if you ask a British marketer to compare the British market, you know, marketing in Britain to marketing in the US, and they'll always say, Oh, the US is a couple of years ahead of us. And the reality is, that's not true. In fact, in a lot of cases, it's it's just the opposite. And, you know, one of the benefits of having smaller lists, and, you know, all that, all that all that can bring us economies of scale are lower, but you can be a lot more nimble, and you have to be a lot more efficient to get the same out of that list. So, you know, I think in terms of marketing, that's, that's one sort of myth. I would love to help bust on both sides of the Atlantic. Okay. Other than that, the I think the other big difference is and this may be a London thing, but no, I'm not going to go that far. It's it's, it's a it's a British thing is there's a lot of creativity here. A lot of creativity and and it's it's not normally creativity for creativity sake. It's it's all built around a you know, strategy and with a goal of getting results. And I'm not saying that that doesn't happen in the US. I'm not trying to disparage the US at all. But I think you know, there's less. I see there's less variation. The really good stuff in the US is is comparable to the really good stuff here. But I'd say the really bad stuff in the US is worse. The bad stuff here. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm thinking about like Crazy Eddie. That kind of thing. Right. Okay, that wouldn't that wouldn't work here anyway. So when somebody

Matthew Dunn 

wouldn't fly, we're British, right?

Skip Fidura 

Somebody shouting, I got deals now. Yeah, it's not Yeah,

Matthew Dunn 

yeah. Well, there's a huckster, there's a huckster aspect of American culture that's been there forever. And it certainly finds its way in digital channels, and you get to just look at your inbox ago, really, you sent me that you think I'm gonna respond to that, ah, create and create create the creative creativity broadly as a fields like I believe it's the number one export for, for Britain, I mean, you start toting up what happens in music and film it did it like it's like it. There's, there's, there's a real sea of, as you said, creativity there. And that's a heck of a resource for the disciplines of marketing.

Skip Fidura 

Absolutely, absolutely. And and, yeah, it's if it's not the number one export, it's going to be number two behind financial services. Yeah. But you know, if you think about just the, the amount of film and television that comes out of the UK, but also other things, things that people think are completely American, like, auto racing.

Matthew Dunn 

Right, right.

Skip Fidura 

Right. The number of British engineers in NASCAR is is shocking. Yeah. Right. Because auto racing is a is a big industry here. You know, for the for the whole world. You know, the UK supplies, drivers, engineers, car designers, all that kind of stuff. So it expands out past just, you know, the creativity in the search traditional sense of pictures and stories and stuff like that.

Matthew Dunn 

It's interesting, as a friend of mine, who's a Jaguar, quite a Jaguar enthusiast says, a bumper sticker that says the parts falling off this car of the finest British workmanship.

Skip Fidura 

Yeah, chakra went through a period. Yeah. Actually. Yeah,

 

is it the

Matthew Dunn 

focus, I'm gonna focus on E email a little more narrowly on it struck me as I've started to learn a bit and meet people in the fields that that the UK is hotbed of email marketing, like, half the people I know, if you say Who are the people who really understand this would be going, Oh, UK, US, UK, UK? like really? A lot. Why?

Skip Fidura 

Because you're them? No, I'd love to take credit. But that's even even my ego. Let me get away with that. I think. So first off, you're right. That there is there is a lot of talent, email talent in the UK. And I think it's so email has always been an industry of collaboration. Sure, we all compete. But at the end of the day, we go to conferences, and we hang out. And we talk and we share ideas. And that's kind of the way emails always been. Because Because the UK email industry is smaller. I think there was there was almost a, there's almost a concentration effect there. Okay. So and without naming names, you know, some of the big us email players. That kind of collegial collaboration. ethos was only at the senior levels. Yeah. Once you started to get down into the rank and file, you know, they didn't want to associate with a competitor and they didn't want to do stuff. So, you know, a lot of times we'd have a new ESP come over from the States. We have a really strong email marketing council as part of the DMA ad, you know, always tried to get them involved. You know, it would take sometimes years if ever to get them interested, because they didn't want to be in a room with their competitors.

Matthew Dunn 

Right. Okay. Okay. So a couple, couple, a couple of threads there. It's really interesting to hear. I mean, one, it sounds like you've got, have you read Richard florita Rise of the creative class. He's got two or three books about the creative class thesis, but the gist of it is, when you get a concentration of people in the field who do get along and talk you get and tend to get an explosion of innovation in that field. And though that that proximity Silicon Valley, which you know where you were, had that going on sounds like you've got a, you know, email Valley thing going on in the You okay?

Skip Fidura 

Oh, why did we never think of that? Oh, we could have branded that

Matthew Dunn 

you could have branded the heck out of that. Here we go. We got it. We started it right now, email Valley. Second one. And this is intriguing because then really thought about this before, um, in the in the domain of in the domain of digital, you know, emails kind of the old dogs been around longer. And that the the technical foundations weren't weren't laid down by guys with VC funding looking to make a zillion dollar exit. I mean, this is this is which might quit last last pre range Mustang we've got. We've got a legit set of internet standards not owned by anyone that are still serving the purpose. They were designed for and haven't really been vacuumed, gotten down some proprietary alley by some monopoly somewhere. So many industries digital on in the US, it tends to be the you know, the the race for the race for the exit. Yeah, and and that's why you don't want to be in a room with a competitors, because you might say something that gives away your secret sauce. And you know, where are we gonna be? Which is antithetical to collaboration across the field as a whole. On it sounds like the center of gravity for email kind of shifted across the pond there, and you've got email.

 

Yeah,

Skip Fidura 

I think so. I think part of it was sort of it wasn't us against them, kind of thing. So we, you know, we all felt a bit. Put me even though I worked for an American company, there's still a bit of us against them. In the in the industry. You know, we had an email trade association. Oh, it's got to be 10 years before the US had one. You know, and when Genie formed the EEC, I'm assuming, I think the EC was the first email trade association in the US. And you know, we'd, we'd already gone through our we formed it. And then we realized that, oh, it takes a lot of money to run a trade association, and we sold out to the DMA. And, you know, and one of the proudest moments for me was as part of that transaction, we had to get the DMA to agree to opt in. They didn't want to buy us or they, they wouldn't. They wanted us to switch to opt out. And we're like, no, it's not opt in rock coming.

Matthew Dunn 

Wow. Wow. Yeah. stuck to your principles.

Skip Fidura 

Well, we didn't have much to lose, really, I think when we wound thing up, we had enough money for a big party. And that was about it.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah, you've been that's a nice throwaway comment. But there's a there's a funny, there's a funny, super strong ethics streak in the email space, which I have to say I I really admire and respect that did or that you'd hold on the ground, about opt in versus opt out, when you had nothing to lose, you didn't want to lose the sale, but you still held your ground. Why?

Skip Fidura 

I think like most email marketers, we can see the writing on the wall. And the writing on the wall was just because you can doesn't mean you should. And if we if we continue to just assume that people want to hear what we have to say, it's going to come back to bite us. And lo and behold, even though we stuck to our opt in standard and to be a DMA member, you had to be an opt in, you know, go an opt in route. You know, not everybody did stick to that. And now we've got, you know, umpteen number of privacy regulations or privacy regulations. And, you know, it's, it's, we've created a rod for our own back.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah. And, and you can you can, you can, you can broaden that statement to, like, digital, almost across the board. I mean, the, the morning we're sitting here having this conversation, Apple has flipped the switch on iOS 14.5. And all of a sudden, apps have to get my permission to track me or to track me elsewhere. And it's, you know, you know, huge oh my goodness effects on on digital advertising. Why? Because so many people were were just like, because they can not because they should for 20 years worth of, of data storage and SQL queries about every little minute fact about your life and behavior based on the thing in your pocket or on your desk. And and now we're pushing back a little bit going, Oh, you know what, we didn't actually ask us. Hang on a minute. You didn't ask. Yeah. My

Skip Fidura 

worry about though, is the same, the same kind of thing that we saw with the GDPR implementation. So first off, you know, I'm going to upgrade my phone. And then I don't know how many I don't actually know how many apps I have on my phone. But it's a lot. And, you know, so basically, you're going to upgrade your LS. And then every, every time you go into an app, it's going to ask you, and, you know, for most apps, well, let's say 50% of apps, you're not going into the app to waste time, you know, you're not going into the app, when we get some done. To entertain Yeah, you're going in to get something done. Which means now, I've got this question in front of me, and I'm gonna have to figure out which wording in which way I want to go and at the end of the day, I don't care fine. Yes, whatever, click, you know, yeah. And it's, I have this horrible, you know, feeling that just because of sort of nudge behavior in human human behavior, we're going to end up in a place in six months time that isn't too different to now. But Apple will be able to say but we did everything we could maybe and and the consumers are still angry.

Matthew Dunn 

It'll be interesting to see if the well we will get the stats are doing interesting to find out if behavior about that more explicit opt in that yes, you can, differs across fill in the blanks, you know, nations ages, left handers versus right handers or whatever else i know i don't i don't know but

Skip Fidura 

never segmented on that before. That's

Matthew Dunn 

what cities you wait to get the first decile rise in about seven to 710 percent are lefties.

Skip Fidura 

Anyway, it makes me really, really unique. I'm an avid I'm ambidextrous. Alright.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah. And and then wait, tell me what you do with Which one do you write with? And what do you do with the with the hand you don't write with? Or do you write with both hands?

Skip Fidura 

I have to really think about it to write with my left hands. I wrote my right hand. Okay. I have to really think about it to write with my left hand if I'm not thinking about it, or write backwards.

Matthew Dunn 

Okay, interesting.

Skip Fidura 

So my body just goes alright, you know, you kind of just, that's the way right did the right hand. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, but, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. I drives my wife crazy, cuz she's very right handed. And my daughter is very right handed. So you know, I get like, whenever there anything has to be stirred for a long time in the kitchen. That's my job. Because like when when art get started is switch arms and can keep going. But from a work perspective, it means that I don't have a dominant side of my brain really. So sometimes I can be very creative and I want to be on the whiteboard, drawing pictures and doing it with charts and sometimes I want to be into in a spreadsheet. Mm hmm. And if I've got a day that I need to be on the whiteboard, and my brain is in spreadsheet mode, it Yeah.

Matthew Dunn 

I'm, I'm a I'm what's technically known as a right handed hooker. Um, because I'm, I write with my right hand, but I write like a lefty. The with the hand crook don't really this Yeah, it's bizarre. But I mean, I've got the handwriting of a serial killer according to my sister.

Skip Fidura 

But I sure how she knows that.

Matthew Dunn 

It would she just looked at me Okay. Um, but I do that that awkward monkey grip thing that you see lefties do because you know, poor lefties like my wife have to drag their knuckle across the pencil until it turns silver and so and I've always written in that totally awkward fashion. And I did some some cameras college or something like that. Some tests and like, oh, right handed and right brain dominant boy, are you mixed up? Good. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've got one of my one of my sons is very, very, very on the ambidextrous scale, and he's a drummer. Go figure. Me too. Yeah, you really need go.

Skip Fidura 

And so we're having a family argument about this. My father says, I'm not a drummer, because I haven't played in a long time. And I said, No, no, I'm just a drummer without drums. But the answer drummer was drummer.

Matthew Dunn 

I'm on your side in that argument. Yeah. Because that's not it's not the most social instrument in the sense of, hey, we'll just plug the kid down and go at it no matter where we live.

Skip Fidura 

Yeah. It's like, Yeah, come around a jam. Okay, so that requires a car. Yeah, like Yeah, yeah. an hour of load in and then oh, Yeah,

Matthew Dunn 

yeah, I've been I've been I've been the volunteer roadie for X number of my son's musical activities and those drums are work home man. And you get enough hardware. You can break your back lifting that stuff up.

Skip Fidura 

Yeah, I used to have this like army duffel bag that had all my stands in it. Yeah. And, and it would you know, that was always my big jokes. I'd say somebody Oh, hey, grab that widget. It's like an empty duffel bag. Yeah,

Matthew Dunn 

yeah. It's good. Actually. Funny. We're

Skip Fidura 

younger than Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Dunn 

Fair enough. It's funny how many back to the creative, you know, Creek, sort of creative assets, and perhaps the, you know, the necessity for creative element to, to the communication, in email, live musicians that I've had. A lot of people I've had conversations with, which thus far in this podcast have been, like, you've delved down a little bit like, oh, musician. Yeah. Okay. What do you play? It's a it's a commonality. And I know that software developers too.

Skip Fidura 

I've never thought about it. But But music is that interesting. intersection of creativity, and math

Matthew Dunn 

instruction, you know,

Skip Fidura 

at the end of the day, music is just math. And some people approach it mathematically. And some people approach it. Well, it just sounds good. It's just an innate understanding of of math. Yeah. And, you know, that's what email is, at the end of the day is that intersection of creativity, and, and analysis and math. You know, makes a tiny penny. Yeah. How do I how do I notice in this email to? Well, let's analyze the data at seek and see where it takes us.

Matthew Dunn 

Right. Right. Right. And if you're sent, you know, if you're if you're doing all the analytical stuff, right, but what you're sending is, is, you know, crap. No groove. It's not gonna work. overtime. Interesting. You definitely call

Skip Fidura 

it we call experimental jazz.

Matthew Dunn 

Experimental. Yes. Although, I don't know have you seen soul pictures film? They just one of the eyes. Not seen it yet? I have known yet. Don't miss it. I mean, I'm a Pixar fanboy. At any time, but wow, stupendous. And the music was just like, oh, so good. So good. Yeah,

Skip Fidura 

yeah. Yeah, that's on the list for the weekend. And yeah,

Matthew Dunn 

I've let me let me know. Let me know what you think. Yeah, it's, it's a good one. Um, yeah, we got terms like cadence like email marketing, get terms like cage like there's so there's, there's actually there's probably a musicality, some interesting question for calf pay. Maybe he's like, that whole Caden that whole long term. You know, that whole long term flow of a really effective email marketing program has has a lot of has got a lot of groove to it. It's got a lot of

Skip Fidura 

ideas, and it's got to build at the right time. And it's got to back off at the right time. Yeah. And, you know, it's got to be consistent. Yeah, but not monotonous. Right. There's a lot there's a lot of yeah musicality to, to email and work instead of doing it over. You know, a three and a half minute pop single or an eight minute orchestral piece we're doing it over months, months,

Matthew Dunn 

months, right but yeah, yeah, and you get you know, you don't try and don't try and make everything your hits like the guy who's the guy who's emphasizing every you know, every beats like no, no, no, no, no, no. tune for please.

Skip Fidura 

We need more triangle.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah, more cowbell. More cowbell.

 

Was cowbell wasn't

Matthew Dunn 

it wasn't killed. But yeah, it's gotta be as a cow. But

Skip Fidura 

I thought I nailed that reference. I was so proud of myself.

Matthew Dunn 

I didn't run it running gag there. Hey, shift gears for a second. You've gone from working? In what what? In the end? You've been on the industry side axios Digital if I, if I recall, right. And now you're taking some of the stuff you've learned there and helping customers more directly as a fractional cmo. What's, how's it feel?

Skip Fidura 

It's great. Yeah, it's, it's Yeah, it's great. It is. So one of the things that I sort of tell myself before going to every meeting is in for a while even had a little post it note inside the notebook that said, email is not the answer. But what I've discovered is emails almost always the answer

Matthew Dunn  

How so?

Skip Fidura 

Well, so this is gonna be very b2b focused, because that's primarily where I do most of my work is on is in b2b. But, you know, it's not like I'm going to click on an ad and buy your 250,000 pound consultancy services, right? That that's not the way the world works. Right. So I'm going to, I'm going to click on your ad, because what you're, you're not giving me the 250,000 pound thing you're giving me the eight minute read of, that gives me some information that I can use to make myself better my job. And from there, we build up to that big sale, because we build up for you, okay, what are your pain points? And what do we have that can solve those pain points, and sometimes those things don't match. Right? So and that's fine. We're just, we can just be friends. So we'll just keep lobbing some information over your way. And someday you're gonna switch jobs, and you're gonna come back to us, and it's all gonna be great. So. But all the things we do to get people into that journey, cost a lot of money. At the end of the day, yeah. And once we've got them, if we can use email, that is a very much more cost effective way to keep that conversation going. And because it's not a walled garden, it's within our control. So we have all the data, we have total control of what gets what goes out, when, you know, if stuff doesn't get delivered, we've got visibility into that, and we've got the ability to fix it. We may not have the world with all the fixable, we've got the ability to fix it. So you know, what's what's really funny is, you know, I can't You can't jump straight to email. So email is always the answer, it's probably just not the first answer. Right. So that's, that's the part I've really enjoyed. Is, is, you know, I spent 25 years as a consultant, advising people on how to do their email marketing and marketing automation better. And the problem with and I always do that, or almost exclusively did that either for an agency or for an ESP. And the problem there is, you go in, you do the big project. It's all great. While you're doing the project, everybody's like a big family. Hurrah. We get the project done. It's launched this rolling out great, and then the consultants on to the next gig. And you very rarely get a chance to come back. And you know, see what the labor to work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so because I kept getting jobs. I assumed I knew what I was talking about. But that was a big assumption. So I thought, well, let's see, let's put put your money where your mouth is for free.

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah,

Skip Fidura 

go, go watch, go, go see if you can make it work in any any big.

Matthew Dunn 

What are the bigger, bigger surprises for the year for doing the show night after night, so to speak, for sticking around longer, and saying, oh, now that we're running this for six months, we've you know, here's what we're gonna do to tune in adjust any rule surprises there.

Skip Fidura 

If I'm honest, it's not a surprise. But a sad realization is that with all the best intentions in the world, it's really hard for a lot of marketers to properly to do the stuff we always talk about, you know, to test and learn, to keep testing to always have, you know, have a holdout group and make sure you test in every campaign, and you know, get past that just testing the subject line. Because, you know, the, in the cold, harsh light of day,

 

it's

Skip Fidura 

a lot of stuff to get done. Yeah. And we don't have enough resource and we don't have enough budget, and you know, all the things I knew when I was a consultant. have, you know, just been just been hammered home. So it wasn't a surprise, but it was, I was like, Yeah, I should have expected this. So frustrating. But it is, it is what it is. And you figure out ways to work around it.

Matthew Dunn 

Were will take your metaphor and running with it. But consultants were like this, you know, session player, right? Come in, play that bit. Leave, go on play the next bit. It's not. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do the show, again, for the 19th time in the last couple of months, and you got a man up and you know, yeah, get on the throne and play it again. And that's, it's it is exhausting, and to keep it to keep it fresh, to keep it creative, to keep it engaging to people getting getting your stuff. It's got to be, it's got to be a ton of work. That's kind of Yeah, very different kind of discipline.

Skip Fidura 

It is and I'm gonna defend old rock stars now for a second. So I used to get really frustrated when I would go see, you know, so I had great seats to see elton john. The cap center in DC knows the new cap Center, which is not called the cap center, it was called the MCI center, then I don't know what it's called now. And and we're behind the stage. So it's sort of like sitting like looking over Elton's shoulder. And it's a really cool vantage point, especially for Wow, I come from a bit of a theatre background like yourself from the techie side. So I love to watch the roadies running around before the gig. Yeah, yeah. And but he's using a teleprompter. Yeah. And I'm sitting there thinking, dude, I know the words do Rocket Man. Surely, you know.

Matthew Dunn 

But,

Skip Fidura 

and then fast forward? Oh, 1013 years. And I was working at dotmailer, which is now digital. And I was kind of the evangelist for them. And we had a really aggressive events program. And I did 57 speaking gigs in the first six months of the year. Right. Wow. And what I discovered is, it's not that you don't remember the words. It's that your brain has done it so many times that it goes off on its own little Yeah. to its own little place. I'm with you. And it's not until that it comes back. And it's like, oh, I probably should get engaged here. Yeah, that the wheels come off the bus, like, you know, you can be roughing and going and it's all gone great. And it's because you don't have to think about it anymore. You just know it. So well. It's just like having a conversation with somebody. But then your brain comes back and says, Let's tweak this. Oh, man. Let's not tweak this. Yeah, you're gonna try to tweak it. And I'm gonna forget where I am. And are stuck because I really have no idea where we are. And, and so I had I always had a script on Hmm, with me. Yeah, I knew where I was. made only had to be a couple of words. But it was it was just

Matthew Dunn 

just to anchor you. Right? Yeah, yeah, just keep on the track that this will make for this maker a heck of a father daughter conversation. But next time you're wandering near a bookstore, and I know that's going to be a while but pick up pick up Peter Brooks book, the empty space. And there's a section where Alan I forget his name, the actor talks about playing Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream important, long, long, long run, and how he went about finding, finding new and fresh every night Even though it's the same words. Exactly, exactly what you're talking about, didn't give you that. Give that give that book to your your daughter, and she'll be the cool kid on the block. because nobody's read that book in theater.

Skip Fidura  

Yeah, definitely do that. But I can actually bring this back to, I can actually bring this back to email,

Matthew Dunn 

email. We're on email. Where? Yeah,

Skip Fidura 

because I think a lot of times in it as email marketers, we do sort of the same thing, which is, we create an email program, especially like with automation, and it just starts going, Yeah. And you're, you're, you don't have the bandwidth to monitor it all the time. Right. So what you end up doing is dipping in and out. And I think sometimes those dips in actually cause more problems, then. I mean, it makes you feel good that you're checking in on it and whatever. Yeah. But because you don't have a consistent program of test and learn you don't have a consistent program of optimization. You know, it's sort of a, oh, let's have a look at this. We should refresh the template refresh the template, away we go. Right. Does that work better? Who knows? Yeah, you know, maybe, but definitely, you got a chance to get it wrong.

Matthew Dunn 

Right. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. You know, got it. I've got to get someone on who's who's really lived a long haul, owned program, you know, for our brand for a long time. That'd be a be fascinating to sort of intersect this conversation and say, Okay, how did you how did you get on top of how'd you get on top of doing the show every night? And, and improve it without screwing it up? And without boring yourself to death? And, you know, how do you give you know, you've got this guy in your list? Who's been there for eight years? How do you say something of interest to that to that person? After that long, and not having just gone? Yeah, I saw this already.

Skip Fidura 

Yeah, that's, that's a tough one. I mean, for a musician or for an actor, by and large. You get a new audience overnight. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. And so you don't have to tweak it because they haven't seen it. Yeah. You know, they stroke. Okay, with something like Midsummer Night's Dream they've seen they've seen it, maybe not your version. Yeah. But you know, they know that the work really well. Yeah. Or, um, you know, I've always love to have the opportunity to tap chat with, like Lin Manuel Miranda. Hmm, we are about what what was it like? Having your audience know the words as well as you did because they all listened to the soundtrack before they came to see your show? Yeah, yeah. Right. Because Because then you've also, you know, that's like a rock band problem, where you've got the bullet. I'm expecting you to hit this chord this moment. Yeah. What do you what do you mean decided to throw a riff in there? That's not that's not the album. You can't do that.

 

Email marketers, we

Skip Fidura 

don't have to worry about that. Nobody cares enough about what we're doing that they're like, throwing a new riff. Yeah,

Matthew Dunn 

yeah, it almost almost almost nobody's going back and saying Hang on a second. The header was different six months ago. Why did you mess with it? Skip, I think we could probably go on for at least another hour, preferably with a beer at the end of it. But I got stacked and I have another guest showing up for another conversation about email in like four minutes. I'm gonna wrap up with you. What's that?

Skip Fidura 

I hope I didn't ruin it for you.

Matthew Dunn 

No, this is awesome. This is awesome. It was such a was such a pleasure to talk and wander down the field with you a little bit like getting someone with your experience in this particular game, and learning about it is a privilege.

Skip Fidura 

Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, I the title of the podcast is the future of email marketing. And I gotta tell you, I think future's bright. Yeah, you know, so anybody, you know, anybody who doesn't think that is a bit of a full?

Matthew Dunn 

Yeah, because we're not the you know, the thing that makes it the the person to person thing that's at the heart of it is not going to go away is not going to change. So absolutely not. We'll wrap up my guest, again, has been skipped Fedora, a fractional cmo, wear a bow tie, skip, where does someone look for you if they want to get in touch and learn more or possibly engage you for their company?

Skip Fidura 

You hit me up on Twitter, you can hit me up on LinkedIn or you can go to our website, www dot stiffener that live

Matthew Dunn 

there you go skip prodotta live. Thanks, once again, skip and I'll look forward to talking with you in the future.

Skip Fidura 

Thanks, Matthew.