A Conversation with Chad S. White of Oracle

Chad S. White is rightly regarded as an expert in the email marketing space. With 3 books and over 3,000 posts on email marketing, he's earned it! Chad is Head of Research at Oracle Marketing Consulting; his prior positions include influential roles at Litmus, Salesforce and Responsys, in addition to columnist and writing engagements in numerous publications.

As this fascinating and incredibly wide-ranging conversation shows, he's also deeply thoughtful about the broader context in which marketing and email exist. Filmed a few days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chad and host Matthew Dunn had a hard time staying away from the geopolitics and cyberpolitics wrapped around email.

Chad's insights into the long-term impact of Apple's MPP are fantastic, and his prognosis about how brands and companies will have to adapt are well worth the listen. His understanding of the current "martech mess" will make listeners chuckle — and think. This is an action-packed hour of conversation that will just fly by.

NOTE: both speakers show up starting at @5:00

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. Early morning on the Pacific Northwest. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn hosted the future of email marketing and my guests demand. I've been wanting to talk to about this topic for a long stretch. Now is Chad S White author and head of research at Oracle marketing consulting.

[00:00:27] Chad - so glad to finally get to talk to you about this. Oh

[00:00:30] Chad S. White: excited. Uh, good morning to

[00:00:32] Matthew Dunn: you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I did look up your LinkedIn bio, even though we've been acquainted for a while, but I didn't realize you were at Texas a and M Aggie, but I decided we could go ahead and have the conversation anyway, hook 'em horns.

[00:00:45] Chad S. White: All right. Thank you for forgiving me. I think it's, I think with that said, um, it is worth pointing out that both my mom and my dad went to UT that's where they met and fell in love. So we have a, um, yeah, we have blonde hair. Yeah. Yeah. So it used to be that the rivalry was not so intense. They used to be.

[00:01:07] You said there was a time when it was somewhat amicable and then there was a time when it was insane. And I feel like now it's not really that insane and not in the same sports leagues anymore. So it's, I feel like it's way cooling down. Right. But yes, I'm a product of both sides of the Texas fracture,

[00:01:28] Matthew Dunn: both, but by both phenomenal institutions, like I have to say Texas, Texas higher ed, uh, is really, really something.

[00:01:37] Um, and just keeps going on this pole up trajectory. Um, yay. For oil money, I guess. So Chad, you have written three books and well over 3000 posts about email. Is it fair to say this is kind of your subject area?

[00:01:54] Chad S. White: It does seem like I've staked it out. Doesn't it? You know, uh, as I'm sure, you know, from looking at my LinkedIn bio, I'm a journalist by training.

[00:02:03] So I feel like writing is, is in my blood and I like explaining things. So like thinking about new ways, new angles to look at things and sort of break it down and try to organize it and, you know, have like sort of the step-by-step. Yeah, I, I really love you on marketing cause it's supplies, all the things that my journalistic brain needs, which is mainly constant change, which, um, I feel like, you know, marketing really delivers in spades.

[00:02:35] Some sometimes, maybe too much, then a lot of change the last couple of years, we could deal with a little less change. But, um, yeah, but honestly, like that's the thing that fuels me. Um, you know, it's, there's never a dull moment in the world of email marketing. There's always a new development, so you're really

[00:02:53] Matthew Dunn: getting to go, I mean, continue journalism in the, in the fundamental sense in, in, in what you're doing now.

[00:02:59] That's awesome. I remember you and I talked about apple MPP, which we'll get to early on. And I remember one of the things that you said that I thought was like, ah, that's so cool. You said I'm not thinking about the impact. Now I'm thinking about the impact 1224 months from now, you know, for, for our customers, which I thought was a much more.

[00:03:21] Uh, w w a much more useful framework on what's this particular change going to do, then what's it going to do tomorrow? Because tomorrow, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll we won't know, honestly.

[00:03:33] Chad S. White: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really easy to fall into that, right. Where you start to kind of triage the moment. And I think, I mean, it's not just in, but all kinds of other things we often think like, Hey, what is this doing right now?

[00:03:46] And I think that, I think you can see that and our reaction to like the rise of smartphones, um, where we were very slow to adopt mobile friendly email design. It took in my mind way too long. And part of it was like, oh, well, right now only like, you know, 2% or 3% of emails are opened on mobile. So like, we don't need to worry.

[00:04:07] It's still a big deal. It's no big deal, but you know, like that change. I also remember. No, I'm back at the turn of the millennium. I was, I was covering retail at that point and there was all this stuff about, oh, online retail. It's like 1% of the market, like, uh, you know, it's not a big deal. And there were people speculating like, oh, well what happens if it goes to 3%?

[00:04:33] What will that do? And like, and here we are now, it's like, you know, a huge part of the economy. And we can see by looking at countries like China, that there's way more like headway that can be made. Um, and so I think it always pays to like, appreciate the moment, but then think, all right, well, what is this going to look like?

[00:04:53] Yeah. 12, 24 months into the future. Because a lot of times it takes a bit of doin to get ready for that 12 months, 24 months into the future. And. That's certainly what we try to do with our clients here at Oracle marketing consulting is, is obviously, you know, deal with the moment, but then, you know, try to create a roadmap and a plan for how you're going to deal with things, you know, 12 months, 24 months in the future.

[00:05:18] Because a lot of times that takes a lot of trial and error to kind of get there. And if you don't take the time now to start that trial and error process, and if you start that you know, much, much later, but now you've just sort of delayed getting in sync with what's going on.

[00:05:34] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Don't just adapt to, did it.

[00:05:36] Today's change. What, um, are there any common threads to the things that you find yourself and your colleagues having to steer clients through over a year or two year span, things that they don't have in place that really for now and for a couple of years from now, they ought to that, that you helped them do.

[00:05:57] Chad S. White: Yeah. So, and I feel like the last two years have been really tough. Uh, I, I'm definitely a planner by nature. I love to plan like a year of content again, like they have that, that long road map. So you can really, uh, plan to like weave things together and have like a cohesive narrative. And for the bigger projects, make sure you do them right.

[00:06:16] You know, it's hard to spin up a big project and, you know, a few weeks or a couple of months, uh, it takes time. But the last few years have been really challenging because we keep getting thrown like major curve balls that have been so disruptive that you kind of have to kind of scrap everything you're doing, you know, that happened at the beginning of the pandemic.

[00:06:38] Um, you know, that, that was not like the things that happen in 2020 or not the things that everyone was planning on focusing on, but everything got thrown into upheaval and all of a sudden the, the plans had to change. So, you know, in some ways it's. Yeah, we got to see this interplay of like, you know, being nimble, you know, versus making plans.

[00:07:02] And you do need both. I hope people don't get turned off of the idea of like long-term planning, but, you know, I think one of the things, when I think about like, you know, the future of email, one of the things that I can't help, but think about it is just how much disruption we've had recently. And, you know, I, I I'm, I'm a realist, uh, you know, who wants to be an optimist?

[00:07:25] I'm definitely not a pessimist. Um, but it does seem like there's just a lot of challenges, you know, waiting just in the future. I mean, if you look at what's going on, you know, right now we've got. Yeah, Russia invading Ukraine. You have China clearly watching what's happening there because they, at some point probably are going to invade Taiwan to take that back.

[00:07:51] I think they were watching very carefully. So depending on how that goes, you know, we could see China making a move on Taiwan this year, perhaps. Um, that's not great. You know, we've seen everybody scrambling to like, uh, rejigger their supply chains to not have, you know, doing business in, in right. That's going to be a thousand times more difficult.

[00:08:15] Uh, if China becomes the next pariah that you're not allowed to do business with, um, I mean, this is obviously a huge risk that we've embedded in our system because we seem to be very comfortable doing business with autocrats. When, you know, they give us good terms on manufacturing or what have you, but now we're in a predicament, um, which obviously China will try to exploit.

[00:08:41] I think also, you know, here in the U S political tensions are going to rise once again, you know, going into the fall into the midterms. Yeah, I think it's unavoidable. We have systemic structural problems to our democracy that nobody seems to want to fix. Um, so that's just going to become a new, uh, area of pain.

[00:09:03] Uh, social tension is going to be rising soon. You know, either Roe V. Wade is going to get gutted or completely overturned. That's gonna set women's rights. Like women's bodily autonomy rights back. Yeah, 50 years, that's not going to be great for anybody. Um, and then, you know, the pandemic, which then, you know, really mired in for a long time.

[00:09:26] I think we're going to have a kind of quiet period here this summer. But my prediction is, is that, you know, by the fall, probably back to school time, you know, and then certainly going into the winter, we'll see it, you know, crop up again, you know, cause immunity only lasts so long. I mean, any from getting COVID is not that durable.

[00:09:47] It lasts only like four to six months. I mean, I know people who've gotten COVID three times.

[00:09:54] Matthew Dunn: Wow. Just like talking to a few folks. Who've got it twice. Um, a lot to unpack there, but I want to go back to the, sort of the top of it. Um, because in, in, in following E uh, email, as a thread through all of this, one of the.

[00:10:11] One of the things that I'm not sure it's as well understood about email as well as other. Commonly used digital channels, is it nobody's really in charge of email. You know, it's a set of standards, um, that anybody in theory at least can, can seize on right. To involve themselves in. And there's not a defacto monopoly or duopoly parked, um, at least at the top end of, of that pipeline.

[00:10:45] And one of the reasons why that it takes, I think one of the reasons is that why as a channel, it takes time to adapt. Like you said to, to mobile or more, more recently to MPP is, is because there isn't a mythical them. Who's saying, okay, now we'll do X to respond to change. It's like, it's a bunch of different companies.

[00:11:07] It's a bunch of different organizations figuring it out in different ways and eventually. You look in the rear view mirror, it's like, oh, I guess we all decided to do blah, blah, blah. In relation to that change, that's now the standard practice or something like that. Agreed.

[00:11:23] Chad S. White: Yeah, absolutely. And I actually, I think that's one of the things that's a strength for email marketing is that it does have this like sort of decentralized ownership structure, you know, when you see that certainly on sort of the ESP side of the house, but you also see it, you know, with the inbox writers and mailbox providers, although certainly you could argue that we've got a bit of a bit of concentration when apple can like, almost single-handedly rewrite like some key rules of the game.

[00:11:50] Yeah. That tells you that it's, there's quite a bit of concentration going on. Um, it's certainly more concentrated than it has been in the past. Uh, so yeah, I think that's like a real strength. Uh, it keeps, you know, it keeps the costs down. Um, I think. It keeps change also similar to a minimum, if you think about all the changes that you know, that Gmail has put in place over the years are like experimented with, um, you know, uh, it, it takes every, it takes multiple parties to agree to something in order for a com you know, the status quo.

[00:12:26] And so I think that's, that's good. But, yeah, so I didn't want to bring up all of that sort of social turmoil just to, just to bomb everybody out. Uh, the reason why I brought it up is that I think it is having a pretty significant effect on email marketing and how we operate. Um, so for instance, like absolutely getting a crash course in crisis messaging and crisis response, um, you know, emails then like the channel that's been used to communicate these kinds of disruptions to customers.

[00:13:00] And also like I'm hard pressed to think of another period of time where email marketing campaigns have. Paused more often than over the last two years. It just incredibly, I have to, I think you have to go back really to nine 11 to think about a time when there was like wholesale pausing of campaigns.

[00:13:19] And now we had, um, you know, a lot during, uh, some of the more serious black lives matter protest during the uncertainty following the 20, 20 election during the January 6th insurrection. You know, I think now during the invasion of Ukraine, some brands have also pod, like I'm really hard pressed to think of a time when crisis messaging and management has been such a key part of email marketing.

[00:13:44] And I think that's all really good because, you know, we don't operate in a bubble. We need to be aligned with what's going on in the world and with our consumers. So that's a, certainly a big, big thing, but I think it also reinforces this. And this need for nimbleness. Um, and we've seen that, I think, early in the pandemic and like really kind of like a clutch and impressive way.

[00:14:06] Like that was like a major curve ball and brands I thought did like a really masterful job. Readjusting their plans know scrapping what they were planning on doing, and then asking themselves like really deep questions about all right, what's going on with my customers now, what are they thinking about?

[00:14:26] What do they care about? What do they value and how does my messaging need to change to get in line with them? And that's obviously the kinds of questions should be asking. Like every single day of your email marketing life, but there was this moment when you knew things were changing in a significant way.

[00:14:43] And I thought brands just did a heck of a job adjusting to that, but it's now kind of baked into the system a little bit. Like we're having to engineer things to be that nimble because we were scrambling. But now, you know, things like modular, EMR architecture, leaning into personalization, leaning in to AI where it makes sense, you know, STO and a bunch of other things that helps you get really nimble.

[00:15:10] And you mentioned amp before. I think amp is going to be one of the casualties of all of this chaos. Um, I feel like it's just coasting and it's not coasting at a very fast speed, but like, I don't feel like there are any wins pushing amp at this point, which makes me really sad, uh, because. I love the idea of internet subscribers, being able to do more in the inbox, because there's a very clear barrier between emails and apps and websites.

[00:15:45] There's friction there. Yeah. And interactivity and amp lower that friction. So it makes me super sad that that, that this is happening. Um, but it, it does seem to be happening. Like this seems to be one of the casualties of all of the, you know, unsettled activity. Um, you know, it just seems to be,

[00:16:10] Matthew Dunn: yeah. And I mean, w we could probably rabbit hole on amp for a long time.

[00:16:14] My I'm on record is my opinion is that it's technologically architecturally the wrong approach. So from, from that somewhat narrow and admittedly Kiki lens, I'm actually glad. That, that particular approach to interactivity isn't going to make the curve. The sad part is, is, does that mean we'll never see, I can do things in my inbox and that's like, that's a slightly different conversation.

[00:16:40] Let's, let's go back to the adapting to change thing though. Um, and I'm just curious, cause you've got a, you've got a, a broader, broader lens on what companies are doing right now in early days, pandemic, we had a lot of surprisingly good. As you said, response from brands with how they shifted what they were doing in their email channel.

[00:17:00] Um, I have not seen a whole lot of bandwagon hopping on of Ukraine by brands in my inbox. Admittedly, it's only been about five days and I'm actually glad to see that because if, if it were done distastefully, it pissed me off and I'd done subscribing.

[00:17:19] Chad S. White: It's it's a tricky thing because yeah. I mean, you know, here in the U S I mean, people are just objectively more divided than we've probably ever been and, and often not for terribly rational reasons.

[00:17:38] Um, yeah, so it's, it's hard. It's, it's, it makes it very difficult to navigate. So, yeah, I think a lot of the reaction you're seeing right now is sort of more behind the scenes, um, and you know, more and sort of like the PR realm rather than in the marketing and marketing room. Right. You know, so like, you know, so Oracle, we just stopped doing business in Russia as of yesterday, which is in my mind.

[00:18:02] Fantastic. Um, but you know, not everybody is, you know, concerned about Russia attacking Ukraine, and some people seem to. For whatever reason, it's a great savvy thing to do. Uh, so it's a tricky thing. And I think that this is, I think this is one of the things that is very tricky for brands right now is that, um, social values just becoming really, really important in, in many ways.

[00:18:33] Um, like you see with Spotify consumers, aren't letting brands stay neutral. They're forcing them to pick a side. And at the same time, like they also consumers won't let brands like stay silent. It puts brands in this position where before they used to like, do everything possible, like to, if they were engaged in any kind of way to be, you know, to be so behind the scenes and in this day and age, like it's too easy to ferret them out and it forces them to be on the record, which in some ways is good.

[00:19:09] Um, you know, it makes them accountable for their actions. Uh, but at the same time, there's like, you know, a little bit of a lose lose in, in some of this proposition. But for some, some brands are very happily embracing this, uh, this world that we live in and like are very happy to pick a side. Um, and other brands would rather like, not.

[00:19:32] Make these choices that I think they're still operating a little bit in this, um, you know, this 1980s mentality where like, we're not going to pick a side, but I don't think that's going to work

[00:19:42] Matthew Dunn: out for side story, but we actually had that conversation at campaign genius. As we, as we started getting some customers in the political email marketing space.

[00:19:57] And I said, bye guys, there's, there's a side I picked and I'm not doing business with the other side period and it's private companies. So it didn't like it tough bananas. Right. Um, and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with the cost of doing business that way. Granted at a, at a, at a modest scale. I think one of the factors in that, uh, that increased visibility though, is that.

[00:20:21] There are, let's call them consumers, but put them, put them up at the peak of the power curve that you always get. There are consumers with one heck of a loud voice when Neil young says, Hey Spotify, I'm not okay with that being on the same channel as my music. I mean, I can, my music, if you don't yank that, that's not just a consumer talking, although he is a consumer as well, right?

[00:20:47] It's, it's a very high visibility. Um, because we've, we've, we've handed out some megaphones to some folks, individuals, some individuals have surprisingly big megaphones just because of the power curve structure of exposure on social media. And in part that's one of the things that can hold brands accountable for some reason.

[00:21:06] Um, I'm not, uh, she's not my choice of music, but Taylor swift comes to mind is someone who's got a megaphone for other causes, not just to amplify her.

[00:21:16] Chad S. White: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, there's been a, you know, in the, in the business realm, there's been a lot of conversations about, um, you know, who, who do you pay attention to?

[00:21:28] Um, do you pay attention to shareholders? Do you pay attention to employees? You pay attention to stakeholders? Do we have any, any, uh, you know, commitment at all to society? Or are we just trying to maximize the amount of money that comes in the door? Right. Shareholder value. And it, I think there's a huge conversation going on right now.

[00:21:54] I mean, my perspective is that it seems like the social contract side of things is winning that. You know, to, to, to check a competitor, but sales, Salesforce, I think, has been very vocal and saying, Hey look, uh, you know, we're not just a company, you know, we're, we're also employees. And we operate, you know, in San Francisco and in America and we want to make these places better.

[00:22:25] Um, and you know, for instance, when they were, uh, you know, when they were operating exact target and there was all this stuff going on in Indiana that they thought was unfavorable to their employees, they offered to move their employees. Other states, you know, they, they pulled events from that state to apply pressure.

[00:22:44] Now I feel like, um, I feel like that's, that's where everybody's kind of being forced to go. And again, uh, companies like Salesforce, uh, like seem to be equally embracing that role and, and other companies not so equally, but I, I do feel like that. That's where we are. I mean, here in America, I think part of it is that they're filling a void, right?

[00:23:06] Like our government doesn't function properly right now. Uh, it, it can't do very many things because of how it is structured. And I think companies and influencers are, are, are rallying to fill that huge power vacuum that currently exists

[00:23:29] Matthew Dunn: well. And there's also, there's also a degree to which, because, because, uh, the, the change wave of digital has run out in front of legislation and rules, which always happens in history, right?

[00:23:41] The companies that really succeeded there have reached and actions that they can take that call them closet governmental, if you want, but, but they've got the capability to do that. And I think when you combine, let's call it the influence or. With the company, you see some change there, just like that.

[00:24:02] You mentioned Salesforce right. Much that emanates from Benioff, for sure. But back to earlier, we mentioned MPP the apple deciding to change how they handle email. You can draw a straight, thick black line to Tim Cook's own stance on privacy and say it's very consistent, right? It was from that perspective.

[00:24:22] It actually, wasn't surprising when apple said we're going to do X they're like, no, I wish they hadn't in some ways, but that, that kind of fits everything else they've done. Doesn't it?

[00:24:33] Chad S. White: I like the pivot away from the political. Now it'd be nice. Let's let's, let's leave that conversation. Um, but I think that's a, that's a great segue, right?

[00:24:41] Power vacuum, right? Like privacy is one of these areas that the U S government has been. Really, really glacial on addressing. And now like that gap is just, it's just enormous. You know, I've been on the record of saying that CAN-SPAM is really bad and it's bad for businesses because it, it sets all the wrong expectations for how even marketers should behave all the wrong expectations.

[00:25:08] Um, and, but yet there it is. It's that's that it hasn't been changed. We've been talking about changing it forever and granted obviously lots of big problems, other things that can be addressed, but, you know, I'm a firm believer that we can, you know, chew gum and walk at the same time. You can do little things while also tackling big things.

[00:25:33] Um, but I think again, power vacuum. And so there's definitely been a lot of chatter about how apple. You know, they saw a need, it wasn't being addressed. And so they stepped in and they use their power to improve privacy in a way that the government just simply has not been able to kind of catch up, um, to what's going on.

[00:25:56] And that to a certain degree does make sense. I've also been on the record as being, you know, you know, understanding why apple did what they did and liking some aspects of it, but then feeling very aggrieved about other aspects of it, mainly all the fake opens. I think that that is the, that is the thing for me that makes MPP incredibly troublesome.

[00:26:22] And, and it's because it directly impacts how email marketers stay aligned with their subscribers, with their customers. So on the deliverability front, it's like an

[00:26:34] Matthew Dunn: asterisk in here. So Chad and I don't play inside baseball too much. And the brief version of what he just said in a it's a layman's term is that apple decided that, um, from a, from a data perspective, opening every image in email, including including pixels and other things was a solution to privacy.

[00:26:55] What that means for email marketers is a flood of, as Chad said, false opens where it looks like, oh, look, everyone with an iPhone, found my subject line interesting and opened my email. So we're flying blind in a way that we haven't been for 20 years.

[00:27:11] Chad S. White: Yeah. Yeah. I think that the key thing here is that somewhere in the neighborhood of like 13, 14 years ago, g-mail was really the pioneer of what we call engagement based spam filtering.

[00:27:23] Prior to that, you could have great deliverability if you've sent emails and people didn't click the report spam button. And so marketers figured this out and they started to game it. So they would bulk up their lists with all these inactive subscribers, people who would, you know, you could send to and they wouldn't complain and they didn't do anything else.

[00:27:42] They didn't open, they didn't click, they didn't buy anything, but they wouldn't complain because that was, that was the rule. The rule was, you just needed a low complaint rate. So they would massively expand their lists and, and keep mailing and use, you know, a huge denominator, uh, to, to crush that, uh, complaint rate down.

[00:28:04] And so g-mail came along and said, no, no, no, I see what you're doing. You need to send an email that not only people, you know, tolerate, but actually engage with. And so they started tracking a variety of metrics. It does indicate, Hey, like our users actually enjoy getting your emails. Um, and that is the crux of the problem with MPP is that opens as flawed as they are, have been the number one and largely only way that we have been, you know, trying to determine who is an engaged subscriber.

[00:28:41] So now it is thrown that entire definition into kind of complete chaos, really. And we're starting to kind of see the ramifications of this move by apple. You know, we had validity over the holiday season. I put out a warning that they're seeing, you know, uh, increased deliverability issues. And in particular, the thing, it was really interesting that they said is that they saw more senders hitting recycled spam traps and recycled spam traps are, uh, email accounts that have been left dormant, abandoned by users and at a certain point, which is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of two years, those accounts get turned off, you know, by the yahoos and Gmails of the world.

[00:29:27] And then a little while later, they get turned back on and they're a spam trap. And so at that point, if you are sending to that email address, it's a sign of really poor list hygiene that you're emailing folks who haven't responded to. And what in many cases is like three years. And so the fact that people were hitting more recycled spam traps means that they were taking their, their look back window for engagement and they were making it just a Norris to get, to get recycled spam, more recycled spam traps.

[00:30:00] Like you've got to have a huge look back window of like three years. So they were going to heap some of these brands to hit those. Um, that's the kind of problems we're going to start to have because you know, a lot of brands use like a 12 month. Look back when they'll say, Hey, anybody who's opened an email in the last 12 months.

[00:30:18] They're, they're safe to email. But now with, with MPP, like you're not seeing those real opens anymore. And that windows you're like, oh wait, oh yeah. Now let's look back 18 months instead. Oh, great. Yeah, we, now we picked up more visibility because of when MPP started. But that you can't keep doing that. You can't do that forever.

[00:30:39] I mean, I think we largely made it through the holiday season doing stuff like that. And, but next week, holiday season, for example, now it's coming due. And, um, you know, I hear through the grapevine that Spamhaus all of a sudden has become very active in a way that they haven't been in a while. And they haven't said that it's because of the PP, but it seems incredibly suspicious to me that all of a sudden spam house is, you know, you know, is cracking down.

[00:31:14] So I think, I think this. It's going to be bad. This fall is going to be bad. You know, brands I hope are actively looking to crack this new formula. And unfortunately the new formula is, is tough. It's really tough because in my mind it means you've got to look at activity beyond email clicks. You've got to look at activity and other channels, and then you have to kind of figure out, all right, what's the appropriate look back window for, you know, a recent purchase in terms of that, being a proxy for email engagement, what's the lookback window for web activity or for an account log in or for app activity.

[00:31:56] That is the analog. That is the proxy for. Engagement and it, and it's,

[00:32:02] Matthew Dunn: it's, it's, it's a substitute, it's a proxy, but it's not the same thing for many kinds of businesses. And this is one of the problems sets, right. If you're, if you're e-commerce top to bottom and you can go, oh, I sent Chad an email and Chad clicked and Chad bought a widget go.

[00:32:19] Okay, cool. Um, if you're a publisher and you just would like to have Chad reading the thing you sent him. Oh, your feedback loop

[00:32:29] Chad S. White: is dead. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely certain brands are going to have way more difficulty with this than other ones. Yeah. If you're a, if you're a high velocity, low cost retailer where you're selling things that people buy like very routinely.

[00:32:45] Yeah. Say target, uh, or Walmart. Yeah. You're probably not going to have the same level of trouble is if you know, you're another brand that has a much longer replacement cycle and people don't buy as often, or like you said, you're a media company where a lot of the value is just in reading the content of the email, but it's definitely, this is the trick is that it is going to vary by industry.

[00:33:11] It's going to vary by your business model, you know, and it's going to vary by your like your individual company and your audience. And that's the thing that's going to be super hard about this because before we essentially all played by the same rules, which was, you need to have. Opens from individual subscribers.

[00:33:31] And now all these different companies is going to have to find their own formula, you know, before it was just like, oh, wait, opens over what period of time. So it was only how large is the window, which would change based on your frequency and the engagement of your subscribers. So there weren't that many variables, it was actually a pretty tight formula, um, which I think is why it was so successful, right.

[00:33:55] Because it's a clear in my mind, is that awesome, awesome win for all the mailbox providers, because they had clear rules that we played by and it was awesome for consumers because we sent the disengaged, you know, subscribers, less email. And that's the thing that makes me super worried right now is because like that clear system, you know, has had, you know, Two of the legs cut off the chair, and now we're balancing the two remaining legs.

[00:34:25] It is highly unstable. Um, and we've got to find a way to like, at least stick one more leg under that chair to make it, uh, to make it that sort of a wobbly tripod. Like we've got to do something, uh, and it's tricky. Now, one of the things that I've heard a little bit I've pushed back on is that, you know, people have said like, you know, Hey, w why would we look at this?

[00:34:46] Like, you know, um, this omni-channel behavior to determine what's going on in the email channel. Uh, you know, why would we use that as a proxy? And, and I I've been stressing that, you know, opens themselves had been a proxy, like opens are a marketer invention. They are a proxy for reeds, which we cannot see.

[00:35:09] And depending on who you listen to, they're not a very good proxy. Um, but they have been an incredibly effective proxy. So maybe accuracy, not that great, doesn't matter. Useful. Very, very useful. Yes. Great indicator. Even if the accuracy has been questionable, it doesn't really matter, but it, but like that's the new realm that we're in is that we have to find.

[00:35:33] You know, new proxies to fill the void that's been caused by MPP. Um, you know, that's the part that's not great. Everything else about MPP I think is, is more or less fine in my mind. Yeah. Proxying IP locations. That's fine. Location is a highly sensitive thing. Oh, I'm also like hard pressed to think of any case where marketers or anybody has used any, you know, tracking pixel information in any kind of malicious way.

[00:36:04] So I feel like we're a little bit getting tarred by what's happening in digital and the digital ad realm permission-based channel. Unlike anyway, maybe the

[00:36:16] Matthew Dunn: message with the pixel in it, right? You said, send me this message. And I happened to put a pixel or more interesting image. Oh, what's wrong with the w yeah.

[00:36:24] Contrast with Facebook,

[00:36:26] Chad S. White: but people have argued like, okay, well, is the awareness of that clear? Like when people sign up for email, are they aware, aware that there's a tracking pixel in there? And obviously no, most, most people are not really aware of that. Certainly at that level of detail, I think, I think the, they do know we are tracking them and there are very clear feelings about that.

[00:36:49] Some people don't don't like that, but other people very much like it and want us to use that information to serve them better. So there's like a, there's like a contract there. Um, but, um, but you know, is there a great awareness of that? I don't know that it's anywhere near sort of universal. Um, but one of the things I've heard is that, you know, I, you know, I heard someone say, well, you know, when you send direct mail, you don't know when people open that.

[00:37:17] And you know, my response to that. This isn't direct mail. This is email that's like saying like, well, you know, cars shouldn't be able to drive faster than horses because, you know, we used to get around on horses and, you know, then now we're going to set like a ceiling based on the last generation of some communication channel or transportation method.

[00:37:40] Like, yeah, that just seems kind of nonsensical to me. And again, I can't think of any cases where this information has been used in any sort of malicious way. Um, you know, most subscribers expect us to pay attention to whether or not they're engaging with our messages. Really angry when we dislike endlessly email them, which is what we're more likely to do now, which is what we're now way more likely to do, you know?

[00:38:09] And they also don't like it when like the content, you know, isn't reflective of their interests and opens have been useful for that too. So, yeah. I feel like we're at a little bit of like a lose lose here because you know, we, we really have the deck stacked against us. Yeah. Um, yeah. Do you think, do you

[00:38:26] Matthew Dunn: think that, and let's pick on apple since we can.

[00:38:30] Chad S. White: Do you think apple, uh,

[00:38:33] Matthew Dunn: had a lot of awareness of this? I'll call it a side impact of the, of the decision, about how they were going to handle images and pixels in any.

[00:38:46] Chad S. White: So like from like a backend server perspective for them like that server, or just like the ramifications of what just the Ram

[00:38:53] Matthew Dunn: ramifications, not on, I, I think they had their apple consumers and apples brands to be blunt front of mind in deciding to do this cause technologically very complex signal.

[00:39:06] Excuse me. Thing. Email marketing seems like roadkill.

[00:39:13] Chad S. White: Yeah. I don't know that they were thinking an awful lot about marketers. For instance, I don't know if they really care about marketers. Yeah. I think one of the fundamental differences between say apple and Gmail, like this is why I'll be super surprised if Gmail ever follows Apple's leave here because, because Google, Google is about advertisers businesses.

[00:39:38] Yeah. They're here, they're an ad company and a data company. Um, and again, they pioneered engagement based filtering. So by following in Apple's footsteps, they would essentially, you know, a glittery. 1314 years of innovation and spam filtering, which in my mind, Gmail is still the gold standard in spam filtering.

[00:39:57] Like they've eradicated spam so hard that consumers have essentially reimagined the definition of spam. Like it used to be like, I remember what spam used to be. It was stuff that you didn't ask for that was dangerous and horrible. And now it's like, oh, now spam is, you know, when I get email from that brand, I signed up to get, receive email from, and I don't like it anymore.

[00:40:23] Like that's what Gmail has done to spam. They have fundamentally change the definition of the word because they are so great at blocking spam and blocking stuff that their users aren't engaging with anymore. And so I find it really difficult to imagine them walking away from it. But from Apple's point of view, they're, they're a consumer driven company.

[00:40:46] I think this is. Great for their brand and their brand image. It also has been very good for their advertising business. Um, and also super horrible for a lot of the other things that they're doing in a private space. They've been super horrible for a lot of their competitors and pseudo competitors. I mean, I keep thinking about all the times that Facebook has been like dragged in front of Congress to answer for its activities.

[00:41:15] Yeah. W clearly we should have been lobbying apple and Google because it seems like apple and Google are going to just crush Facebook. You know, they've already. Hundreds of billions of dollars in market value, along with snap and other brands in the social media sphere. So that I think is also like really interesting is like the amount of power that apple wields, not just, you know, in the marketing sphere, but outside of that, and some of these, these privacy activities are really a lot of, I left they're flexing super hard right now.

[00:41:54] Super hard.

[00:41:55] Matthew Dunn: There, there it's, it's one of the, if not the most brilliant brand pivots I've ever seen at a really, really macro scale, right? Like who's the privacy company, honey, who's the privacy company come on. They, they, they like, they, they get to wear that mantle. You read the terms of service. That you sign up for it.

[00:42:19] It's like, oh, excuse me. You, you want to, you want to track this and this and this and this. Well, yeah, but you're apple, we're apple. You can trust us. Right? Not all those other guys trust

[00:42:32] Chad S. White: us. There's definitely a little bit of talking out of both sides of their mouth. Cause yeah. Cause they want it's it's funny to watch how they phrase permissions for apps to track your activity and then how they phrase their permissions for how they track your activity.

[00:42:50] It is that the contrast is stark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeremy,

[00:42:56] Matthew Dunn: you alluded to it. The, the app privacy protection. That is so kneecapped, uh, Facebook, you know, personally, I'm like, oh gee, that's got to hurt. Um, but that's just my perspective. Facebook never managed to. Down to the metal relationship with, with their customers that were apple and arguably Google half, right?

[00:43:20] Like you've got either an apple or a Google OSTP in your pocket, most hours of the waking day right now. And that's not going to go away anytime soon. And that is one heck of a locus of control. And now we're seeing that, you know, that battle work

[00:43:36] Chad S. White: it's. Yeah, no. It's um, yeah, you look back at like browser wars and all that stuff are definitely like in the, like the O wards now, like the platform is the control.

[00:43:48] I think it's also interesting to see how this all plays out as both sides of the aisle here in the U S become more concerned about monopolies and monopolistic power. Yeah. I think that it took us actually, one of the, maybe one of the very few things that both sides seem to agree on for very different reasons, but they seem to agree on is that there's an over concentration of power.

[00:44:11] I think if you look back. Yeah, to what is it like the 1910s and twenties when like standard oil and all those guys got broken up? Um, I mean, shoot, like we broke up 18 T for less reasons. They weren't, I don't think they were as powerful as, uh, as alphabet and frankly am Amazon too. Like we have some incredibly powerful companies now, or is

[00:44:37] Matthew Dunn: powerful, at least in the states, the, that the at and T um, you know, ridiculously overlapped relationship with the government had like, like uncle Sam could go, Hey, my belt do this, not that, but knock that other thing off.

[00:44:55] And they'd actually listen, because it was a monopoly by permission to a great extent for 60 odd years. Right. Whereas apple, Google to go to where we are now, but they don't answer really. And this is the crux of the monopolies. Should they don't really ask. Directly too much of anybody at the moment, which is kind of, and you have the power vacuum as you, as you talked about earlier on power vacuum in terms of effective governance.

[00:45:20] So you've got the quasi governance, you know, moves by, by incredibly influential digital companies. I, I'm curious about your perspective and we're, you know, we tread on dangerous ground, but Hey, we get to do that on balance. I would much rather have the, the market and fumbling with the government, uh, trying to figure out the right solution or the workable solution for these issues of privacy and agency.

[00:45:48] Then what I see in, let's say China, where you don't get an option and there's one set of folks in control. And if you don't like it, you still don't get.

[00:45:59] Chad S. White: So is your question. Am I pro autocracy or, well, no. It's like, or would you rather,

[00:46:09] Matthew Dunn: would you rather, would you rather, we had super strong federally set policy about these privacy issues and not the sort of marketplace mess of apple doing one thing and Google doing another thing?

[00:46:22] Chad S. White: Uh, I, I, you know, again, I feel like you've waded into very deep political for, from my point of view. I'm very much a fan of regulated capitalism. And right now there's not a whole lot of regulating going on. And I think that's sort of the core problem. You know, uh, you know, Elizabeth Warren now just like uttering, her name will cause some people to break out in hives, but, um, you know, her whole thing is that she's, she's a capitalist.

[00:46:56] Um, but you can't have capitalism if it's not regulated, because then it becomes something else. And I think that that's like what we're, you know, people are arguing about like, okay, how much. How much has capitalism breaking down because it's unregulated. And I think you see a lot of small businesses, especially in the tech sphere that would argue that like there, that the capitalist market is not functioning properly because of the big players.

[00:47:26] Um, and so, yeah, uh, I, I'm a fan of regulated capitalism because I feel like that's what actually maximizes things. That's what maximizes opportunities, maximizes innovation. There's no question that like the big four, uh, you know, mega tech companies, like they stop innovation, they squash it up because they see it as a threat.

[00:47:48] So I like innovation.

[00:47:50] Matthew Dunn: I do. Yeah, it did it did. Oh, let's go. Let's go back to email for a second. Cause we didn't wait easy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's interesting to me and this'll be emailing and the sort of, uh, capital political sphere combined. It's interesting to me. How much the battle ground for how email is going to work right now and what's changing and how we can adapt to it is mobile centric.

[00:48:16] While you've got a ton of people, including the two of us sitting here talking via desktops, handling their email on their desktop and Microsoft doing really, really well from a capitalist perspective and managing to duck a lot of the monopoly rocks that are being thrown and, and, and somehow this other, you know, this other device that we use for a lot of other things, which is a key email conduit as well.

[00:48:42] It seems to be a little bit out of the fray at the moment.

[00:48:46] Chad S. White: Um, yeah, I mean, well, you know, Microsoft, you know, in the nineties, they had their brush with, uh, with monopoly, um, language, you know, the EU, which probably, you know, the EU was what, uh, Was what came down on Microsoft in the nineties. And frankly, the EU is what's coming down on apple and, uh, an alphabet now, like, you know, the EU seems to still function, um, and is able to police these things in a way that America.

[00:49:21] Seemed to be able to find times.

[00:49:24] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I think the lobbying structure is different among other things, but right. Yeah.

[00:49:29] Chad S. White: But I think, I think we can look to the EU as sort of they're, they're the, they're the leading edge of these innovations, you know, GDPR was way ahead of us. And you know, now we have CCPA, which is the sort of like, you know, a default GPR for the U S and we're creeping towards having to have something that is very similar to GDPR, just because so many states are passing their own thing.

[00:49:54] Right. And, and both sides of the house agree that once, um, too many states have conflicting regulations, That's one of the things that, uh, that Congress, both sides of the aisle can agree, requires their attention when things get honorous, you know, and it's difficult to comply. That is actually one of the very few things that seems to motivate Congress to actually do anything

[00:50:20] Matthew Dunn: yeah.

[00:50:20] In the business. Fair that's fair observation. One of the, one of the, one of the real victims in this mix, I mean, much of the stuff that we've touched on in the last 45 minutes has been that eat is harder and more expensive to be effective at email marketing because of this turbulence. I mean, the kind of coherence of data flow, uh, in, in your description of how are we going to potentially replace this, the signal, the feedback from open it's like a lot of companies don't have their.

[00:50:53] So in order that they can go, oh, we sent him this, he clicked over here. So yes. Keep emailing him. And that's an expensive hobby. Getting, getting things that tightly knit that is not an easy thing to pull

[00:51:07] Chad S. White: off. Yeah, no, that's totally true. You know, when I, when I think about sort of future changes, I also think about things like CDPs, uh, consumer data platforms, where you need to get all of your data sort of in one place, um, and also cleaned up, which is one of the things that CDPs does, is it unifies all the kind of conflicting data.

[00:51:28] So you get like that single version of the truth that frankly we've been talking about forever. I remember when I was at exact target, like 2013, we were talking about, oh, that's 360 degree view of subscribers and customers. Um, you know, now all these years later, we're finally at a point where that can as a realistic attainable goal.

[00:51:49] So I think CDPs will be kind of clutch to. Being able to work out a lot of this stuff because you're right. The data is all over the place and it's not always clean. So getting into one place and getting it clean is a major, major thing. I think one of the things that, you know, aren't getting has going forward is that for a very long time, we've been able to do a pretty crummy job of your marketing and still generate a pretty good, pretty good profit.

[00:52:16] Um, so yes. Is the bar being raised? Is it becoming, you know, more expensive? I think it is. Um, in, in many ways though, it's encouraging us to do a lot of things that we should have been doing frankly, a long time ago. Um, and I think, you know, in line with that, I think we should not be confused by costs and return.

[00:52:40] I think one of the things that has plagued our industry forever has been this focus on how much things cost and you see that. Even in how ESPs express their prices. We express express our prices, uh, as though we're selling ad space. So it's like a S a CPM, which is insane. It's insane that we still use that pricing model.

[00:53:04] You know, as if it's a volume game, it's not, it's an intelligence game. And there's been efforts by many brands to try to change the way that we price out your marketing. But the CPM modeling everyone, like what they'll do is they'll like, they'll adjust it down to a CPM. So we'll say like, oh, I hear you charging for like this data storage and this and that.

[00:53:26] But to compare apples to apples when you're evaluating multiple ESPs, that all gets like rolled up into a CPM, which is a horrible, horrible way to think about email marketing. But, but again, my point is, is that are things going to get more expensive? Yes. But the ROI. It's still very, very much well and like, and super healthy for email marketing.

[00:53:50] So I hope that, you know, as we enter this new age where things are more complex, that people keep their eye on the ball, which is returns, you know, email marketing is an investment. Relationships are an investment and you need to focus on what are the returns you're getting out of that. Not how much you're outlaying upfront, because I think there are going to be elevated costs.

[00:54:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I, I I'll drag this into the market cause I agree with him and you're saying, well, put on, I suspect one of the reasons, one of the 12 billion reasons that Intuit plucked down, the money they they did to buy MailChimp is because they see a longer term opportunity to have this, to help the small business, have that house in order.

[00:54:36] Right. Like, there's my accountant, have my phone number and address. Correct. You bet your bippy they do. They actually have to write, they have to have that data straight. Okay. If they were keeping track of their, you know, email as well. Okay. Maybe you can bolt it onto that, that same thing. Like I wonder if there's not a surprisingly Uber CDP move a foot with that

[00:54:58] Chad S. White: purchase.

[00:54:59] Um, yeah, I mean, there's in my mind has been a very clear trend in the ESP marketplace towards a best of suite approach about creating an ecosystem. And I feel that certainly once you get up until like the mid market, um, like standalone systems make less and less sense, um, that you need, you need an ecosystem.

[00:55:23] You need a ESP that is. Natively integrated into other channels and other systems, you know, I I'm biased. I will admit my bias, uh, is one of the reasons I'm very happy here at Oracle because this is the mentality that we have and we tightly integrate all the things that we do. And that allows for that, like that real-time flow is a, we live in a real-time omni-channel world.

[00:55:49] And if you don't have real-time flows across multiple channels, you are at a disadvantage because consumers expect us to be able to operate that way. So yeah, again, admitting fully my, my biases, but, um, it seems to me also that that's what everybody is doing. And, you know, you mentioned MailChimp. I think that like they have been, even before this part of an ecosystem, you know, they, they have, you know, commerce operations, like it's so clear to me that yeah.

[00:56:19] In, in a world where like that MarTech technology map is now at like 8,000 companies, 8,000 companies incredible that the complexity has become too great. Now I remember covering technology in the early two thousands, and there would be the, you know, the single provider versus like, you know, the, um, the best of breed discussion.

[00:56:41] And it was a joke. It was a joke then, because the best of breed always won because frankly, you didn't ha you didn't need that many vendors. And, you know, the single provider, like it wasn't good. It wasn't good. You didn't really have the, it wasn't a real choice, but you know, the consequence now of like 15, 20 years of choosing best of breed over and over again, as more and more, um, you know, new technologies come into the state.

[00:57:13] Now we've got like just this Frankenstein's monster of a MarTech stack, and we've got all of these different vendors, uh, that we have to have relations with all of these different contracts. We have to negotiate all these different API APIs. We have to stay on top of and manage. So anytime one little thing changes and this ecosystem shakes up everything.

[00:57:34] So, you know, in my mind, and looking at what's going on in the marketplace, it seems just crystal clear where this is all headed, which is towards more ecosystems and way fewer, you know, best of breed, uh, vendors

[00:57:50] Matthew Dunn: terms here. So you get to play like you get your Twillio, your message bird like the, the cause best to breed too much breeding is essentially what you just said.

[00:58:00] Chad S. White: Agreed. Um, just a lot, a lot of

[00:58:03] Matthew Dunn: complexity and a level of a level of technical execution. That's really flipping expanse. To keep running. Like that's

[00:58:14] Chad S. White: just hard. The management is, is no joke. It's so, you know, so like sometimes, like I actually, I heard someone sort of like knocking on some of the bigger vendors because they, you know, like invest too much in integration instead of like product features.

[00:58:31] And like that's part of the product is the integration. And if your vendor is not investing in integration, Guests who is, yeah, you are, you're paying for that. You're paying for it either way. Um, you know, if I'm a business, I'd rather that my vendor pay for the integration rather than me, because if they're paying for it, it's controlled and they've mitigated the risk.

[00:58:58] Whereas if they hand that off to me now, the risk isn't mitigated and I have the costs. So, you know, again, when you think about like, if you're a retailer, what's your business, your business is retail. So you should be retailing and not, you know, becoming a technology company. Um, you know, if you're a travel company focused on being a travel company and you know, tech is important, but I reject this idea completely.

[00:59:25] Like every company is a tech company. I think that's. Utter nonsense. That's how like tech companies get you to make bad decisions about how complicated you're becoming? Um, no, I think we're now at that stage where, you know, a retailers, a retailer, and a travel company to travel company, you know,

[00:59:44] Matthew Dunn: well, we're, we're, we're, we're getting there.

[00:59:46] And the S the S the signal that we've started really starting to get there is that that 8,000 on the big MarTech graphic will actually start dropping at the, at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, every major company in the, in the, in the U S or the world had a VP of electricity. Now, none of them do why?

[01:00:03] Because you just buy it. Right. And now you've got CIO, CTO, C I S O at travel companies. And eventually it'd be like, now, when the travel business, why do we have someone who's like, main thing is, is not travel, right? Other stuff,

[01:00:24] Chad S. White: Yeah, no, I look forward to the day where, you know, like, I think some people, some, some brands have thought that like their competitive advantage comes from some of that technology and I, you know, which sometimes it does for sure.

[01:00:38] Sometimes it does, but I'm, I'm hopeful that we're getting back to, you know, where the competitive advantage comes from is operations and like how you actually do your core business rather than, you know, how you try to innovate on the technology layer. Um, again, I think we're, I think we're pivoting, I think, um, you know, again, uh, best of suite hasn't really been, you know, like prior to say five years ago, it was not really a viable choice, but I think that the marketplace has changed and changed for a reason, you know, V the 8,000, you know, vendors and like all the complexity.

[01:01:16] So I think best suite is a response to this growing. You know, fracturing of the marketplace. Um, so, you know, again, I, I, it it's clear like every deal that you see happening right now is that you see this, you know, every company is trying to build an ecosystem and add layers and add connections, um, so that you can get closer to this real time.

[01:01:39] Omni-channel, you know, cross departmental organization, which is again, we're consumers are right, which is they're the ones driving everything, consumer expectations, drive, everything we are catching up. And this is how we're catching up. It's by this reorganization of the marketplace.

[01:01:56] Matthew Dunn: Wow. Yeah, it's going to be a fun ride, isn't it?

[01:01:59] Chad S. White: Oh, for sure. No doubt

[01:02:02] Matthew Dunn: any, uh, since I tied up way over an hour of your time already, any, uh, any parting thoughts about like, just put the, put the clock, maybe 12 months out, what is. Big things that you expect to see either positive adaptation or you get more upset that we're going to have to grapple with an email marketing.

[01:02:23] Oh gosh.

[01:02:24] Chad S. White: I, I, I hope, I hope that the rest of the year is smooth as glass. I don't think that's going to happen. I think there's going to be more challenges and a bit more upheaval. Um, I think we're going to stay in the same mode that we've kind of been in for the last two years. It's like being really nimble and focusing on the basics.

[01:02:42] Um, I think that's very much where we're going to be. I long for us to get past some of this. You know, again, things like amp, I feel like it's like truly suffered and maybe perhaps terminally because of this, but I'd love for us to get back to focusing, you know, a bit more on like the real future and not managing, you know, sort of like the moment or, you know, or the, you know, the latest crisis, um, you know, and getting more to like long-term roadmap stuff, which I think is more omni-channel I think is more AI.

[01:03:14] I think there's like tons of upside there. Um, and certainly we're making some progress, but I think we'd be making way more if things were running a little bit. Yeah. If we weren't fighting as many fires, I think we'd be talking a lot more about AI and now than we are right now,

[01:03:32] Matthew Dunn: it's a good point. It's like all the, all the, uh, organizational energy and budget and so on that that's really going to playing whack-a-mole with data.

[01:03:42] Right. What do you mean that's not an open whack, right? Like when you are there, prefetching wax. There's a whole bunch of smart people tying up a whole bunch of time, trying to figure out the mess instead of going God, we could do something really cool that our customers would love.

[01:03:58] Chad S. White: Yeah. All the, all the energy that we're spending on NPP right now is just to get back to where we were pre MPP.

[01:04:06] So, which is going to be a tall order in and of itself. But yeah, that's one of the frustrating things. Like how much time. Yeah. Is the average organization going to lose, trying to mitigate the damage caused by MPP? I think it's going to be just a lot and that energy absolutely could be spent elsewhere making the customer and the subscriber relationship better, you know, automation, segmentation, personalization.

[01:04:36] All these things, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, be the right channel. That is where a lot of our energy has been spent, you know, and making great experiences. And that's not what we're doing right now with NPP is it's diverting a lot of attention. So I think that's, again, some of it is good.

[01:04:55] You know, it's causing us to look further down the funnel it's causing us to reevaluate attribution, causing us to focus more on omni-channel. So it's not all bad. Um, but, but I do think there is a lot of action in the NPP space. That's just, how do we mitigate this risk? And it's not improving anything for our subscribers, really at all, which is unfortunate.

[01:05:18] It's not wasted energy, but it's not improving things. We're not moving forward. Got it.

[01:05:25] Matthew Dunn: Well, Chad, I knew this would be fine, but it's even more fun than I thought it would be wonderful to, to get, to get, to hear your thoughts on things and email.

[01:05:33] Chad S. White: Thanks. No, this has been fun. I know we tried it on a lot of sensitive topics.

[01:05:39] I had everyone who takes it in stride and the way that it's meant. And it'll be,

[01:05:47] Matthew Dunn: it's a, it's a moment in time, a particularly fraught moment in time. And B the fact that, you know, the fact that Ukraine is still standing, as we, as we sit here is, is not something that you can actually just ignore. And, you know, there's going to be a point where this is archived and that state, the state of that state will be very different.

[01:06:05] Um, and I'd like, I'd like to see it be different than the trend line at the moment. Well, I'll hit the I'll hit the stop record. My guest has been Chad S white author and great guy and head of research at Oracle marketing consulting. Thanks, Chad.

[01:06:22] Chad S. White: Thanks for having me

[01:06:23]