A Conversation with Andrew Kordek of iPost

"The best question I've ever asked anybody in this industry is what does success look like in your email program? Why should someone say yes and sign up?" Wisdom from one of the most experienced email marketers out there, Andrew Kordek of iPost.

There's an unmistakable charm to a genuine enthusiast. The person who loves something wholeheartedy — not just because it happens to be their line of work — has a pull-you-in magnetism that makes you think "Wow...there's a lot more to this than I thought!".

That's Andrew and email.

Andrew has seen email from just about every side, including founding one of the best-known email marketing agencies, and now to working "vendor side" with a terrific new ESP, iPost. There's even a rumor that his license plate says something about email!

This conversation with host Matthew Dunn is all about the email space — what makes it interesting, how it's evolved, how it might evolve going forward. They delve deep on the impact of a well-run email program on businesses, and the challenges of building them.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn hosted the future of email my guest today. I'd have to say a legendary figure in email, Andrew Kordek. Now of I post formerly of any number of other companies related to young male. Andrew. Nice to talk to you again, Mr.

[00:00:25] Andrew Kordek: Dunn, it's always a pleasure to chat with you.

[00:00:27] I don't know if I would call legendary status. I'm a student of this craft. I learn new stuff every day. But thank you for that woman. Well,

[00:00:36] Matthew Dunn: actually one of your, one of your LinkedIn the fan base, God's called you a force of nature. Oh my gosh. Yeah, there you go. There you go. First orient people. I post, I mean, I know I post a bit, you know, I post a lot, but some of the folks listening or watching may not be familiar with that.

[00:00:56] Andrew Kordek: Yeah. So I joined, I post in August of 2020. I actually sold and you know, wanting to retire from this industry that 21 I with trendline, but Cameron keen approached me and I'd met Cameron the CEO years prior. He's like, What are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. And so they gave me a demo.

[00:01:18] And you know, I seen all of the different ESPs out there. I know a lot of, a lot of them and. Amazingly impressed for somebody that I didn't know too much about. Right. And so you know, one of the reasons I came here was about the platform in itself, right? Relational data, the ability to do just about any one of the tier ones and what they do, all the well-known ESPs out there.

[00:01:45] And we've now, we've now. Put our niche in, right. We feel as if we can really own the market around associations and franchise and casinos and publishing things of that nature because of the way we do some clients I would say is we can do everything. A lot of the big boys and girls can do. It's just that we don't, nobody knows a lot about us, but once they see it, once they see the power of the platform I in fact showed my colleague an old colleague of mine and like he did a look, play around with it and said, wow, this is pretty powerful stuff.

[00:02:18] So I post is ESP, right? Like 400 other ESPs out there. And we do, I think we do a fantastic job, just like a lot of the USP's do fantastic jobs. I think the differences experience and just the niche that we play in

[00:02:34] Matthew Dunn: well, and. I'm going to tag onto the comment inside baseball. Our company campaign genius works with has a good fortune to work with IPOs.

[00:02:44] So I know the platform may be better than a lot of people. Much more current in terms of architecture and thinking. And that, that to me is a big deal. Wicked fast, that's a big deal as well, like seriously

[00:03:00] Andrew Kordek: uprising. Right? And that's why I always say, you know what? This is our, this is sort of our new.

[00:03:06] We don't want 3000 customers. We don't want 23,000 pastors. We're looking for about 350. We got about 160 right now that can really utilize the platform in itself. And I think that's what makes a difference because once you sort of reached that 300. There was a souffle, right. That happens. Right. We have an account manager for everybody.

[00:03:28] We have the ability to have quick turns from a support based issue. I think the issue too is is that everybody that works here has got at least 10 years of experience in digital and or email marketing. So we're not. With somebody that has never pushed buttons or worked client side, we're done, we get it, we understand it.

[00:03:48] And it's a two-way street. We only, you know, we look at it that people come to us and assess our system. We want to assess them to, we, we have a recorded. For certain types of customers like that, they come to us just like they have requirements for us. And so it has to be the true partnership. And I tell the term partnership is like, love everyone uses it, but we really want to be partners with somebody and really work with their, their prototype.

[00:04:15] That's one of the big reasons why I came here. And I told these guys, I'm like, this is my last hurrah, right? Like this is it. Right. I, I, I love email and I love what these guys do. And I'm honored. I'm honored to represent

[00:04:30] Matthew Dunn: them. Wow. Nice. I I'm curious because. The, the journey for you. I mean, you, you included a founding, one of the bigger agencies in email marketing, trendline, and, and, and to jump from trendline when you left there, I think you used the word retired.

[00:04:45] I'm not sure you're loud, but you jumped from trendline after X span of months to vendor side to the evil vendor side. How has that been different than you expected better? Worse? Like.

[00:04:58] Andrew Kordek: Yeah, I've learned stuff from the vendor side, but I took for granted on the agency and even on the client side. Right.

[00:05:06] So remember I used to help run email at Sears and Kmart Groupon and quest software. So I've been agents, I've been agency side and running trendline client side, that those companies, and I took for granted a lot with some of these vendors. Right. Like how hard could it be to partition a new IP, right. That ties it all the backend stuff that goes along with running a really well run email service provider.

[00:05:32] So there's been a pretty good learning curve. Am I an expert at it? No, not at all, but at least I have the ability now to explain it to a client to say, it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is. Right. I mean, you know it, right. I mean, email's not easy. It takes practice and, you know, whatever, but yeah, huge, huge learning curve.

[00:05:55] Matthew Dunn: Well, and one of the things that I've learned is I started to learn the email space for the second or third time. I don't know. There are, as you said, a lot of, a lot of companies there, there are hundreds of companies who say they're an ESP or an email platform of some sort, and then probably tens of thousands that also send email on top of that.

[00:06:17] And, and one it's not easy to do too. It's not easy to get noticed in a space that's. Crowded. That's one of the challenges for let's be fair, a smaller, a newer venue. Doesn't matter if it's the best thing since sliced cheese. It's actually hard to get above the noise in a space that's been around for 20 years and still has hundreds of participants in the ring.

[00:06:46] Andrew Kordek: Right? Absolutely. And I think you need, I always looked at, and I used to say, I used to say this, even when I was agency and client side, every ESP said. They do. They suck at many different things, right? You just need to find out which one sucks the least for your business. Can you grow with them? Are there things, you know, that, that they do that maybe some other people don't do as.

[00:07:13] Right. I mean, let's be honest, everybody in the world, every ESP sender email is going to say the great buzzwords, right? We're cutting edge, or we're fast, or we've got AI or whatever. Nobody can exist without that today. Right. With all the buzzwords that everybody puts in. But when rubber hits the road, right, when you've got people standing across from you, whether on a zoom or whatever, and they understand the business, that to me is a differentiator.

[00:07:42] Right. If you're one of 3000 other people that are trying to get help with deliverability, so to speak, that's the differentiator. And that's where I think smaller ESPs with really advanced capabilities can really succeed because they can be the ankle biters and still do extremely, extremely well. And I make new to, I make no bones about it, right?

[00:08:04] Like, you know, Okay. Every USP still does it when they do, even for certain parts of I post that's not, if that sucks, the thing is, is that we're not for everybody and not everybody is for us. You just need to kind of figure out how well can I push this system and do I have the right people? Yeah.

[00:08:21] Matthew Dunn: Right, right.

[00:08:22] Well, that's it. You have, you have learned a lot. Totally. There's nothing left to learn. Right. There's so much left for. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. And, and it's not like it's just. Field, even though nominally it's, you know, it's email has changed that, man. Hang on a second.

[00:08:42] Andrew Kordek: Yeah, no, I totally disagree. That emails stay in the tents.

[00:08:47] There's tons of stuff that's happening out there.

[00:08:50] Matthew Dunn: Well, he, even if there weren't, we agree, things are changing. Yeah. That the people reading the new message and the other end of that are, are, are living through a an astonishing in RND. Period of change and how they're going to, you know, interact, receive, et cetera.

[00:09:09] Like that's going to alter what, what worked last year, two years ago, 10 years ago, stuck going to be read the same way. Any more. I always ask.

[00:09:16] Andrew Kordek: I always tell everybody that, you know, email what it was five, 10 years ago serves the purpose. The question is, is, has anyone talks about scaling or changing their business or their messaging or their site or how they interact with customer?

[00:09:31] The real question is what's, what's the innovation that's happening on the email side. Innovation outside and third party platforms, but what's the innovation that's happening inside. How are you changing for those? For those times, are you still doing the same thing you. Two years ago. And if it's still working great, but guess what, it's still working, but that doesn't mean that you can't improve upon that.

[00:09:55] And, and so I always say don't get stuck in the ways of what you've always done. Always be pushing to learn new things, whether you're trying stuff for the first time. Well, you're changing the way the email program or the email gets out the door. I call it eliminating the distractions, right. And focusing on the core.

[00:10:13] And that's a hard thing to do because in large scale organizations and even the most nimble ones they're like, well, gosh, I've always been told I need to do. Right now, or this or that. And it's not about the establishment that we've all had this discussion for years in this industry about best practices is not the establishment and following of best practices.

[00:10:35] It's the establishment of best practices for you guys. Right. And it's it, it ultimately boils down to how do you mean you, the organization want to do your email? That's what it boils down to. How do you want to do your email program? Not like your competitors.

[00:10:55] Matthew Dunn: What do you want to do your email? Yeah, I, I, I'm curious.

[00:10:59] We're going to go off topic. Of course, guaranteed. I noted about three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, and I was really surprised to see that a large enterprise. ESP email service service provider had bought a newsletter company and I was like, that's fascinating. Why did they do that? I mean, I've got my conjectures about why, but it was fascinating to be that that happened.

[00:11:31] Any react.

[00:11:34] Andrew Kordek: It's all about customers and data, right? What do they have? They must have something on them from a data perspective, right. In order to target new services and products, it's a PR it's a product play. What do they, what do they look to hope to gain from that, what did Intuit have to gain from the purchase of MailChip?

[00:11:53] Right. Wow. Lots of stuff. It's a forward-looking vision. The question is, is when you gamble and buy a company, that's sort of outside your wheel house, you have to make sure that you keep the management in place at the, at the PR the purchased organization so that they can integrate with whatever products are, however you want.

[00:12:13] Do your do your integration or do your your purchase out three, four years. Cause it's gonna take some time to do that. So there's, there's gotta be some sort of methodology behind that. You know, it the question is, can make, can they execute on it the right way without sort of fumbling the ball

[00:12:32] Matthew Dunn: and I, and that, that has historically traditional.

[00:12:36] Super challenging, probably more unsuccessful than successful to, you know, to get what everyone wanted out of an acquisition. What, one of the things that had my ears perk up about that particular lateral acquisition was was the content, the potential client. Play there because I've got, there's a few newsletters, email newsletters that I subscribe to read regularly.

[00:13:03] We've seen the rise of sub stack at all. Like get another reinvention on, on email as a, as a channel. I thought, wow. Nah, if I actually started getting stuff that interested me, rather than sell, sell, sell, that'd be a different relationship. Even if the org behind it was someone that I may bought stuff.

[00:13:23] Andrew Kordek: Right. Yeah. It is going to be interesting to see how that's going to play out. Especially when they really integrate the two companies. What's the message going to come out? What are they going to be known as now? That's the fun stuff though. And let's hope let's hope we're successful, right? Let's really hope for success.

[00:13:42] Success happens, right? When, when you're able to kind of deliver to your shareholders or your stock, you know, or who, even your customers, that that value is, they're going to get better as a result of that. And I hope that their customer succeed as a result, ultimately.

[00:14:01] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And otherwise it's just a musical chairs game changing ESPs.

[00:14:06] And if you're doing the same thing, that's not necessary. If you keep doing the same thing, just by changing platforms, you're not necessarily going to get different results. Totally.

[00:14:15] Andrew Kordek: You have to be humble doing it too. Right. You have to be humble and you can't come out and raise, start raising prices.

[00:14:20] 60 days after anatomy, we know it's coming, right. Because someone has to pay for something. Right. But like make it a positive spin. Yeah.

[00:14:30] Matthew Dunn: One of the things that, one of the things that perpetually I, that I like about the email space, but it also intrigues me is, is that to a great extent, the. The monopolies from other spaces or really central players in the email space in at least on the email marketing out the door side of things.

[00:14:52] I mean, Google obvious footprint on the, on the inbox, apple obvious footprint on the inbox as well, especially in the last six months, but on the, on the, you know, the tool set side, not, not much of a presence.

[00:15:08] Andrew Kordek: Not at all. And what's really interesting is a lot of people look at the toolset side has a chat box.

[00:15:18] In some cases, we need to try X. We need to try why we need to try, but they, what they look like. Right. And they see these different tool sets or they see the influence of apple has now on the inbox. How does that affect the tool set that I'm using and how do I know whether or not I'm getting my return on investment?

[00:15:36] It's a, it's a crazy sort of. Right. That everyone kind of gets through. And, and at that point, I may say, let's take let's, let's stop for just a second. And let's take a step back and say, what are you using that you like most, or feel like you're getting the highest ROI and how does that influence? Not just your tool set, not just whether or not you get into your inbox.

[00:15:57] And if it's a confirmed opener, you know, all this kind of stuff that we've been talking about MPP, and what is it, what is it? What is it? And how does it. The person on the other end, that's subscriber in itself. And we tend to lose sight of all of that. And maybe call me a feel good type of guy fluffy, you know, like to have all of that, but it really is all about the subscriber, right?

[00:16:17] I mean, true yet. And we tend to sometimes overlook that and view them as a segment or a number or you know, a high value person or a loyalty member. And we need to kind of, we need to, we need to look beyond.

[00:16:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think I'm curious your reaction to this. I think one of the, one of the things changing email now is the increased privacy related pressures on print.

[00:16:50] Primarily I think on other digital channels, IE email is getting a drug drug into the. But I don't think is necessarily the poster child for privacy infringement. Yeah,

[00:17:05] Andrew Kordek: completely right. And I used to run an email 1 0 1 course. And I used to kind of go over what CAN-SPAM actually meant and why they put it out.

[00:17:13] And then you start talking about privacy and permissions. Now my son who's 20. Probably has a different opinion about privacy and permissions than I would. Right. But what's, what's interesting. What's interesting in the way I, the way I see privacy and permissions going is bring it on. Right. I think it's a great thing because it's about time, you know, for those of us who are based in the us we really don't know how incredible.

[00:17:41] Construct constrained, right? GDPR is and how well it protects the consumer. Whereas I gave this, I gave a I gave a webcast or an in-person thing. And we said in the U S we care about our privacy. That was several years ago. And now all this privacy stuff is coming down. Right. I was like, oh yeah, I don't want this.

[00:18:01] That's creepy. You know, Facebook does this, or these guys do that or whatever. And now everyone's starting to realize. Well, it's, it can get, it can get pretty, pretty intense. I hope that marketers today don't look at the privacy laws that are coming out or have come out, or the ways that apple that are doing things as a hindrance.

[00:18:21] I view it as something that I think is extremely positive for our industry, as well as something that we, and we've always adapted. Right. As marketers, we just need to move on. And I, I, I, I said, I, I, I did a blog post earlier this year about what are the trends for 2022? One of them was please stop talking about NPP, right?

[00:18:43] Like we talk about MPP ad nauseum. I've read so much. But we need to kind of move on from that. Right. I get it. You've heard it. We just need to find new ways. And I think that's where we as marketers, I use the term echolalia. We as marketers have echolalia, especially email markers, like I'll talk about the same stuff over and over and grind it in the ground.

[00:19:06] Even five years ago, we were talking about stuff and privacy is here and we can't just keep grinding every, everything. And I love it. I think it's great.

[00:19:16] Matthew Dunn: Well, I think the email space is actually abs absent a absent actors. You don't want at the table. Right? Pretty darn well self-regulated from a, even from a privacy respect, a subscriber perspective, it's a very strong aspect of the culture and email life I found in the last few.

[00:19:39] Andrew Kordek: I think it's great because if you take part in the community and what I mean by that, there's plenty of outlets to take part. You know, that there's a lot of passionate people out there wanting to do the right thing. And again, that one bad apple can, can, can scholar, but does anybody stand up at at a meeting or whatever and say, I'm an email.

[00:19:59] Right because, you know, there's not a lot of us in there. Like I code emails or I'm a life cycle marketer or whatever. Partly because of the sentiment that people have, right. Oh, you're that person that sends me four emails a day or sends me five emails a week and it's the same stuff over and over again.

[00:20:16] So. But I do find that the communities that I've participated in, in the last 15, or, you know, almost 18 years now, they're extremely rewarding. There was an education and an are passionate people that want to do the right thing. And and then there's old dogs like me. I'm not going to put you in that category.

[00:20:36] I has no dog. I'll put myself in that category. Right. We're trying to, we're trying to shift with the, with, with the, with the, you know, the newer school marketers that are out there are these great personally.

[00:20:48] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's stimulating. If nothing else. It's nice to see. It's nice to see some rebalancing as, as, as social media, for example, which is just a broad label to hang on a lot of different channels.

[00:21:00] But as, as social media has stabilized matured somewhat. It's not just a flavor of the month. It's not going away, but it also doesn't solve all problems. It seems like there's a bit more of a mature what's the right way to do the right thing for the customer, including what channel to do things on or not to do things on our discussion and email kind of kept its head down for, for a decade or so.

[00:21:28] Like, nah, we're still actually bringing in home the bacon. Thank you very much. And, and now it's like, oh, I guess you guys were bringing home the bacon. Yeah, we, we were, we were doing that while everyone was chasing the shiny toys. I

[00:21:41] Andrew Kordek: actually have a really great analogy when someone asks me why, why I like email, where I love email.

[00:21:47] I said, do you watch, do you watch American football? Everyone's like, well, gamma and I kind of have an understanding. I said, when was the last time you saw an offensive lineman? When the super bowl MVP, which is. Email was the offensive line for the marketing department, without it, without a strong offensive line, you can't do the sexy stuff that quarterback can't pass to the wider, you know, the whole nine yards and emails sort of like those ugly 375 pound guys that are moving, moving everybody.

[00:22:18] Right. They don't care about a lot of credit, right. You're never going to see them up on the stand or being interviewed as the MVP, but they just silently move along and without a strong email for them, nothing else can, nothing else can do. And everyone's like, okay, now I kind of, I kind of get it. And I said, I don't, I love being the source of.

[00:22:35] Sweaty guy that moves the pack. Right. It's good. We, we don't have to get a lot of fanfare. And if you subscribe to that you know, when we start talking about how social plays into all of this, that's where a good playbook happens, right? That's where you need to make sure that everybody's moving in the same direct.

[00:22:55] Together, not separately in separate departments that sit across from one another or take part in quarterly meetings, but together they have to be coordinated in, in, in, in what they do. I also have a an analogy for my European friends if I had to pull out, but that's okay. Right. I don't know that.

[00:23:12] I don't know that. I don't know your audience too well. European or American.

[00:23:17] Matthew Dunn: I was like, and I'm nearly sports illiterate. So I'm not qualified to say this, but I've got to guess that most other countries look at American football go. I have no. Yeah, yeah, totally,

[00:23:29] Andrew Kordek: totally. Right. I watched, I watched, I watched European football.

[00:23:34] I watch rugby. I watched a lot of. Sort of thing and there is, there is some very good similarities between it, but yeah, I, I hear what you're

[00:23:43] Matthew Dunn: saying. That's like very large men in armor. Okay. Check.

[00:23:49] Andrew Kordek: I've got a question for you, cause I'm really curious about. You know, you've been in this business for a long time and you seen a lot of the transformation sort of happen.

[00:23:59] Is there any particular area that you're seeing that is causing you to kind of either hold your head? We're kind of go, oh man, this is awesome. Right? This sort of fundamental shift. Is there anything in particular that you're seeing in the market?

[00:24:16] Matthew Dunn: Turn the tables on me. You stinker. Of course I

[00:24:18] Andrew Kordek: had, you know, I had

[00:24:21] Matthew Dunn: right.

[00:24:23] This is very half baked because I'm trying to bake it. Cause I got to get up on stage and talk about it in a month or so here on email continues to play a democratic small D democratic. Role that I, that I don't see. I don't see any other digital channel carrying to the same degree. And I think that's actually, I think it's important that, that there's there's, there's still this sort of common ground.

[00:24:59] No one owns it relatively level playing. That, that individual, that companies, that governments, whatever can, can sort of jump in on and use. And it, it, it makes me a little bit flipped to go, woof, we take that for granted. Don't we, we really take that for granted and we've gotten away with that, but the digital sphere writ large is, is, is changing constantly.

[00:25:27] We're we're starting to see, we're starting to see balkanization. I mean, w we're we're sitting here having this conversation you know, late April 20, 22 at this point Russia's got a separate internet. We thought we had, we thought we just had one for a while. There we haven't had just one for awhile, but we are starting to see some, some splintering.

[00:25:49] So can we keep that, can we keep that common playing field? Intact do, should we, should we be trying to take concrete action to make sure it stays intact? If we don't, I I'd worry that, you know, the wrong thing here, the wrong thing there. And we wake up and go, oh man, we can't do what anymore. I thought we could always do that.

[00:26:12] Andrew Kordek: Right. Yeah. It's such a great point because I think that for as long as I've been in this business, I've sort of seen the engine just be put on autopilot. Right. And that's scary. It works, but we also have to think about to the industry in itself. There are not a lot of people. And I use the word a lot and I'm basing this off of absolutely no data other than what I see that stay in our industry.

[00:26:44] And I use the word our as an email industry for 20 plus years. There's it. There's, there's probably. Quite a few people that I know of that have been around for a really long time, but I don't see email as email, I think is a stepping stone to sexier stuff in the marketing channels. Right. And so you kind of cut your teeth on that and then you move on and then there's this whole reeducation thing that sort of has to happen.

[00:27:10] And when I look at the slack channels, I feel like we're having that same conversation. That's great. And because I think new people, new faces bring new blood into all of this, but I also think that there's a reeducation process. Right. Like, and, and that in itself, old dogs like me be like, gosh, shouldn't you already know this, like to me and I, and I try to curb that back.

[00:27:35] Right. And, and, but. But I try to learn from it and know how they're operating around lifecycle or, or deliverability or, or whatever. And I think that's what I'm seeing the trend is that, you know, there's this. There's this precipice that people get to an email, the pressure to get it done out the door, produce revenue, and it's a lot of stress and they'd rather just move on to something that's less tactical because they don't have time for the strategic and then move somewhere else.

[00:28:06] Right.

[00:28:08] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and if you know, if it's a career ladder thing is, as you said, strongly agree, you know, stepping stone on, on an up or whatever you call it in, in marketing as a broader field, perhaps, but, but not necessarily staying focused in email. I I'm curious your reaction to this it's it struck me the other day as I was grappling with some of this stuff that there's kind of.

[00:28:34] A Guild in a medieval sense. There's kind of a Guild quality to the email space, right? Like young apprentices, all dogs. And it's not like you can pick up the book or go to a college course and say, I want to learn how to do this. Well, you, if you're lucky, you get to apprentice somewhere and start learning the thing and hopefully you stay in it.

[00:28:58] And I think we've got a problem of a lot of people churning. Yup early, but it still does have kind of a, kind of a guilt quality to me. Any reactions?

[00:29:11] Andrew Kordek: Well, so first of all, I've given a lot of lectures at colleges and universities from the undergrad to graduate level. Right. And I walk into a room and I start talking about email and I can kind of see the proverbial aisles.

[00:29:24] Like we had this module, right. Right. It's all about life cycle and they kind of weave it in to CRM and they kind of do, you know, sort of, you know, whatever. But when you really get into it, when you get into the nitty gritties, like I said, moving to the vendor side, learning a lot, there's a lot of intricacies to do it well to do it right.

[00:29:46] And to consistently improve. On it. And that's where I think somebody with 5, 10, 15 years of practical experience, right. Walking in the door and explaining how things operate. It is a distinct, is a distinct advantage. I've read just about every email book written. Right. And they're all fantastic. But what we have to understand and realize is that some of these people read this stuff and take it to heart.

[00:30:15] Like it's the only thing I should do as opposed to wanting to learn more about what the world is and what their brand stands for. Like the best question I've ever asked anybody in this industry is what does success look like in your email program? Tell me what it's like, why do you, why should someone say.

[00:30:38] Answer me those questions in the way that you can insert it in your brand versus the standard marketing. But I want to sell you stuff or I want to give you discounts, but I want to do that. I want to look, I want to elevate the, the, the topic of email marketing to less tactical and more strategic about how we can forge the brand.

[00:31:00] In a new way, because you have such a large audience and such a good way to do it in an email. And so the one I look at it and like you said, a Guild, right? We have to nurture, we have to, we have to feel like the people that have been in this industry a while, w it's a two way apprenticeship. Right. I need to learn what your thinking versus what, the way I'm thinking.

[00:31:24] And not to say that either one of us is right or wrong, it's we need to understand the, the goal of the brand. How do you want to do email and what does success look like? And when those things align, then the program incrementally gets, it gets better, but it's not a, Hey, we're going to have it done a.

[00:31:44] Right. Let's move on. And, and, and go for it. There's always that, there's always something that gets, that gets in the way. Because we live in this fast world that we feel we can turn messaging on its head with a right turn and we're all good. That's just not how it, it's just not how it works. Right.

[00:32:02] And so I think, I think I like, I, I love, I love this industry. I love the participation. I love what people do. But I also think that we sometimes me included go about it the wrong way. We need to, we need to take a step back before we do anything else and do something that's fun or do something that is the bright, shiny object under to incorporate it in order to improve our email program short term.

[00:32:30] Right.

[00:32:31] Matthew Dunn: Right. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of wisdom there. I accompany. That has the, that makes the investment to build the kind of sound strategically focused email program that you described that would have one heck of an engine for their business.

[00:32:56] Andrew Kordek: Well, I remember this was, this is like 15, 20 years ago.

[00:33:00] And there were enough, there were reporters interviewing the CEO of at and T. And they were asking him a bunch of questions in a young, probably reporter smart ass, asked the question and they said, have you ever called your customer service? Kind of looked dumbfounded, like I'm going to see. Right.

[00:33:19] And he's like, well, no, I haven't. And they said, it's an absolute train wreck, right? Like it's, it's you treat me like a bad customer. Right. And I have to enter in through all these prompts. And the, the first thing I tell everybody is when was the last time you saw. For your email program, right? What's the process.

[00:33:39] How much information did you have to get? Did y'all like it? Did you understand it? Do you know what you're going to get? Did you educate them? Like, it's great to say, do you want $20 off your first order or do you want to receive emails and then take them to some long, huge preference center? Right. You're asking them to marry you on the first date.

[00:34:00] Right? It's like, there's, there's so much that's involved right at the start. That's the first place I tell brands or advise brands, tell them, advise them to say start from the beginning. And it starts with your sign up

[00:34:13] Matthew Dunn: process. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like that. It's it's like every, everyone working in an email, you know, jot this down.

[00:34:21] First thing you should do is sign your mother up for your email program. Cause that'll keep. That'll keep you acting considering. Or

[00:34:30] Andrew Kordek: sit behind your mom and watch her and see if she gets it, because I'll tell you what I, I call I, you know, I used to sit with a family task, right? Have somebody that's near and dear to you.

[00:34:43] Right? Sign up. I watch my wife and watch people. I'm one of these guys love when I used to travel, lost, watch people interact on their phone. And I watch my watch, my wife one time interact with her email. I'm like, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just deleting everything. Well, why are you deleting? Cause I'm sick and tired of reading the same stuff.

[00:35:03] Right? And so if you watch people interact, that's the best type of that's the best type of education that you can focus groups help. Right. If you can't tell somebody why they should sign up for their email program in a cohesive sentence of what they're going to get and educating them around it, you need to rethink what you're doing at the beginning to, to get that, to get that subscriber.

[00:35:32] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And I would extend, I agree. And I would extend that and say, and if in a week or a month or something, it's not clear to them why they shouldn't unsubscribe. Right. Same, same problem sets. Right, right. Oh, my

[00:35:49] Andrew Kordek: I'm going to give him credit. My colleague, Alex will. When we started talking about like re-engaging people or ring back or wherever we want to call it in this industry, right.

[00:35:58] He said, I see too many programs that do the same thing to try to win you back. He goes, you can't wake up people the same way you put them to sleep. And, and I, I, that, that quote sticks with me my, for the last years that he said that it's so true. And he's, his is one of his email addresses is rip van Winkle.

[00:36:21] I won't give the actual email address, but you know, it's so it's so true. Just like you, you can't expect that, you know, you don't, they won't know anything about you, right. When they sign up, it, it, it's a, it's a philosophical discussion. And I know some people will probably listen to this podcast and roll their eyes and go this cortex.

[00:36:41] You know, it's so much different. The clients that I than it was when this guy was on it. And I'd say, well, time out, if you're looking to improve your program and you're looking for ways to improve it, it's not about creating hyper micro, segmented, whatever rights and, you know, creating tons of content for micro segments.

[00:36:59] It starts at the beginning and you have. You have to take a step back, especially if you are the marketer that's under the pressure to, to get the job done. And it's tough. It's a hard thing to do. I get it folks. I

[00:37:11] Matthew Dunn: really do. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It, it, it is a hard thing to do. And, and despite its age, the, the channel and the tool set of the channel.

[00:37:22] Pretty fricking hard to work with no matter what ESPN vendors, et cetera, do, it's like, God, this is convoluted and, and detail oriented. It's so easy to mess up and oops, shouldn't have done that. The deliverability police are going to put you in jail. God want attack.

[00:37:44] Andrew Kordek: I I'm seeing a lot of that. And I followed the deliverability channel a lot and I watched, and I learned, and I listened to a lot of the different things.

[00:37:53] I we've been talking about personalization for 18 years. Yeah, I know. Cause I did a, I did a talk on it on personalization and just how silly it is that we keep talking about the same thing that we did 18 years ago. Because that was an email trend, like in 2006, right. Or 2004, where we were talking about personalization and we're still talking about it today.

[00:38:17] You know, and, and, and so somebody said to me, once it's hard to do email it's even harder to do email. Right. Right. And so I think, I think. Put a list in mine and my Evernote notes. I think I came up with 179 things that email marketers are worried about today, 179 things. But if you are the director of email or email manager or whoever, and you're responsible for that channel, there's a lot of crap you have to think about, right.

[00:38:46] And each one of those little minutia is, can get you into trouble. And then, you know, no one praises the email marketer. Great job on that ROI. Oh my God, the images didn't render. Holy crap. We just send it out to 3 million people. What are you going to do? Email marketer, right? You're like crap, right? Yeah.

[00:39:07] Yeah. It's funny. It's funny, but it's not right. Like I

[00:39:13] Matthew Dunn: hate to be, but it's. Yeah, it's funny, but it's not. Yeah, well, it must be invaluable to. To your colleagues at I post T to have someone on the team who, who is talking from the roll of the sleeves, did it help clients do it for a long time? Like guys, because those of us in the software and vendors side can really get, get up our own squirrel tree, you know, building stuff, the guy using it doesn't care about at all.

[00:39:47] It doesn't move the dial for me.

[00:39:49] Andrew Kordek: Yeah, totally. I mean, you could talk about micro-segmentation to somebody that's, all they want to do is how do I get an email out the door that doesn't take five weeks and how do I build it and how do I report on it? How do I do it? And that's okay. Right. To the advanced email marketers that want to do multivariate testing across a whole bunch of different things.

[00:40:09] And they want to learn, but do you know, they it's, it. There there's such a broad range that we deal with. Even when I was at trendline and now at IPOs, there's a hugely advanced marketers that are doing some really amazing just out of out of the, off the moon, off the charts from a personalization and a segmentation.

[00:40:31] And it's working for them to the person that all they want to do is do it right. Do it sound and make sure that that person at the other end feels as if. They're special. And that's why, that's why I think it's, it's, it's fun. I talk to customers every day and I hear it. I hear so many different things.

[00:40:50] Like I have to put on this hat and then I do it on this side and it's it's, it's, it's fun. It's fun.

[00:40:57] Matthew Dunn: Hey God. Back to the back to the slightly personal side for a sec, you, you said, you said you're now in the empty nest.

[00:41:05] Andrew Kordek: Yeah. So I've got a 20 year old college. Sophomore is looking for a marketing internship.

[00:41:11] He actually had me sign up for one of his email programs, but yeah, so I'm an empty-nester wife of 25 years downsize my house. It, it doesn't get any

[00:41:20] Matthew Dunn: better. Nice. Yeah. FEA fellow fellow empty-nester it's a weird transition. Ah, Yeah. It was like, ah, I miss having rock bands, you know, rehearsing in the house.

[00:41:33] I actually really, really do have whispered. That was fun.

[00:41:38] Andrew Kordek: It does. It's not that fun when it's like one or two o'clock in the morning and they don't have to get up the next day, but you actually do. Or when they're screaming in the basement playing video games and having a good time and it it's great, but.

[00:41:52] I look forward to when he comes back from college to hear about a lot of, a lot of different things, but it's truly, truly in a time went by so fast. Right. Like and, and it's just, and I give remembers the days when I first started my, you know, my co-founded my agency and, you know, The work ethic. And I think it's great when you see a kid, like my son have that work ethic you know these days, but he, he's learned a lot about email.

[00:42:19] I'll tell you that. Right. He's got an appreciation for it. Maybe because of that.

[00:42:24] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Maybe just a bit of an influence there. I do think, and I'm saying this from my own experience, having worked out of a home office for two decades, I do think one of the sort of funny side effects of pandemic work from home shift and all that other stuff, we'll get back to some firsthand modeling that was getting lost at the office.

[00:42:52] My, my sons saw me get my butt down to the office every day. Right. And like they knew where the officer, they also knew that I'd love to have them come down and say hi, but really those stick around cause I'm working. And I don't think that's a bad thing to see first hand instead of. Oh, well, they're gone.

[00:43:11] She, or here they're gone. They're off doing something like that. So I was like, okay, maybe there's some, there's some, some good side effects. There never likes commuting in the first place, but leave that one aside. That's easy. Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:24] Andrew Kordek: I remember the days when I had them on. And he used to come in and play Minecraft when he was in like third grade.

[00:43:30] Right. And take down our internet or slow everything down and you know, and now he knows when dad's on the phone or if you hear back from school and stuff. I think that that generation, right, that people that are in college now, or just shortly that graduated or whatever. I think it's going to be really interesting to see and take the test.

[00:43:49] Are they going to want to go into an office? Probably hybrid part-time my wife just told me about a study that overwhelmingly a lot of the younger generation today. Want the flexibility to go in, whereas gray hairs like me, right. I can take it or leave it. We're fully remote and I love it.

[00:44:07] Matthew Dunn: Well, we, we had our back to the guilting.

[00:44:11] We have. Opportunities to apprentice. It doesn't mean that there's not new stuff to learn, but I learned how to work and get along and get I'll carry my piece of the load and all that other stuff. And I would be concerned to see two biggest span of years. There's not firsthand. Why is my phone going nuts?

[00:44:31] What'd you stop?

[00:44:34] Andrew Kordek: Maybe it's an email emergency,

[00:44:40] Matthew Dunn: but no, I hope, I hope they get that, that, that firsthand opportunity and get to work with you know, a range of people. Cause you never can tell, who's going to teach you the most valuable lesson you got to learn, and you may not realize it until. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. You know, I think the same, I extend the analogy to education and then back again, like my, my last one out out of college took a gap year high to COVID.

[00:45:07] Cause he said, this is like, this isn't this isn't the experience that, you know, that I want to finish on and great decision. Right. But he was right. Yeah, all the motivation and all socialization that makes a lesson stick or makes you want to work extra hard on a paper or whatever the heck that is very first.

[00:45:26] Andrew Kordek: And my son was a freshman in college during the COVID height. And so he didn't go on campus and I kind of felt like he coasted through that year. He did really well, but hardly anybody was on campus. And so there was that bit of a gap. And now that he's been on this campus for the year that he's been on.

[00:45:45] It's a whole new level, right. For them. And he's getting that college, that experience of dealing with people as opposed to just a zoom, but like, like,

[00:45:53] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah, yeah. It's yeah, no substitute for that one. Really? Isn't yeah, there, there really

[00:46:00] Andrew Kordek: isn't and it's a, it's a, it's a great thing, but it's great when he calls or when he sends me pass, he's like, Hey dad, go here and sign up for email, sign up.

[00:46:10] You know, like I saw it. You'd never asked

[00:46:16] you knows

[00:46:16] Matthew Dunn: it. Right. He knows it. That's awesome. Hey, last question. Before I start tying up your day, are you going to yourself live to any conferences or industry?

[00:46:27] Andrew Kordek: You know, not right now. Actually I'm speaking, actually, I'm speaking in November at guru. And but I'm not going right now, actively going out just yet part of it as I think that I always kind of have this love, hate relationship with conferences and events.

[00:46:44] You know, and you know, they're fun to see their funded take part in. Certainly I post will have a presence at them. But again, we're niche. We just came back from the. And IGA, which was the national Indian gaming association in Anaheim. Right. Since we're into the casino areas, we had a presence at the gaming that the Indian gaming show, which was amazing.

[00:47:07] Right. And we went to GTB last year. So I guess I'm gonna change my answer. Yes. But very sparingly. Right.

[00:47:15] Matthew Dunn: Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm first one. Yeah. A couple of years, June for me, and I am looking forward to it in terms of seeing, you know, seeing friends and colleagues. Sure. Yeah. But that's really the motive

[00:47:32] Andrew Kordek: I hear you.

[00:47:33] Cause you know what, the best conversations are never at the conference after the conference. Everyone's had a few cocktails and then everyone starts to, to banter back and forth. It's great. Some of the best conversations I've ever had had done outside of that conference.

[00:47:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I buy it. Well, Andrew, I so appreciate you making the time and us getting to getting a chance to connect and converse a little bit, at least in

[00:47:59] Andrew Kordek: public.

[00:48:00] It's been my pleasure. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I truly appreciate it. And we'll keep, we'll definitely keep keep soldiering on. This is a, this is a great

[00:48:09] Matthew Dunn: industry. Keep soldiering on. Well, my guest has been Andrew Cordic vice president of customer engagement at I post. If you're curious about I post go visit, I post.com.

[00:48:19] Thanks to Andrew.

[00:48:21] Andrew Kordek: Thank you.

[00:48:22]