A New Conversation About ESPs and CDPs With Chris Marriott of Email Connect
Acronyms are a strange phenomenon. We take a phrase that means something, and instead of creating a new word, we use the initials. Knowing the acronyms in a given subject area is a hurdle. Then you start using them. Then you start assuming that anyone you speak to also knows them. Try searching -your- favorite acronym — I'll bet there are multiple definitions in complete different industries.
At the same time, acronyms are incredibly valuable. Acronyms that define market sectors become powerful mental categories; dominance or ranking within a category is everything. So...what happens when acronyms collide? That's really the backdrop of this acronym-packed conversation about the email space with subject-area expert Chris Marriott.
Chris was the first expert in the space to (correctly) identify the overlaps (many) and differences (few) new category/acronym "CDP" — Customer Data Platform — and the older one "ESP" — Email Service Provider. His taxonomy from a couple of years ago was so good, the largest analyst in tech picked it up. (Bad Dobby! Copyrights!) Now he's projecting that the two will essentially merge.
Chris bats around the definitions, differences and some of the likely developments in the space with host Matthew Dunn. It involves some side-trips through history of this particular niche — acquisitions, consolidation, new developments — and some judicious guesses about who's next.
If you deal with "martech" (marketing technology, a portmanteau rather than an acronym, thankfully), this conversation should get you thinking!
TRANSCRIPT
A Conversation With
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[00:00:00]
Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email with my first. And I'm delighted to say this. Repeat guest, Chris Marriott, CEO of email connect, and, uh, well known expert in the email vendor and technology space, Chris. Yay. We get to do this again. I
Chris Marriott: did not know I was the first repeat.
So, uh,
Matthew Dunn: you're the first repeat. Well, and, and for those of you listening, Chris and I have had a chance to, to actually meet live oh, novel idea. Um, and some in depth conversations at a recent conference, like we need to, we need to have this conversation kind of in public. Yeah. I think was the impulse, um, email connect in.
You guys are the go-to experts for, for RFPs, for, for companies who are, are changing horses. Yes. Yeah.
Chris Marriott: In the MarTech space. And, and it started [00:01:00] our, our, our, our focus started, you know, when we started the company, uh, 10, 11 years ago was really on ESP mm-hmm of the ESP platform, but mm-hmm as you and I have been talking about more recently.
Uh, we, you know, with the, with the emergence of CDPs, uh, or at least that label, I think they, yeah, yeah. They were called DPS before that. Um, but with the emergence of CDPs and, and how they be, how they've begun to take on the characteristics of ESP and vice versa. Yeah. We have. Uh, also are, are operating in the CDP space and, and helping brands in those selections as well.
Matthew Dunn: Okay. Okay. Oh, that, yeah, that makes sense. So, um, so you had that wonderful presentation at that recent conference that, uh, both of us attended and you, you oh, laid out the evolution and, and the, uh, oh look, we were two years or you we're two years ahead of major analysts, but, um, I was [00:02:00] thinking about this last night fact that I had a chance to talk with you about this again, and, and wanted to try framing the initial part of the discussion with this question.
It seemed to me one way of looking at the E P as we know at the email, uh, email platform, is it, we, we thought it was, we thought it was for sending email and now it turns out, uh, it may be more fundamentally for manag. And understanding our customer relationships, customer history, customer data, any reaction to.
AB
Chris Marriott: absolutely. Um, you, you, the P platform in some ways is like the evolution of the cell phone. When, when cell phones first started, they were, you know, for making phone calls. Yeah. And now in, in the era of smartphones, yeah. That's like an afterthought. If somebody calls you, you're almost say, are you kidding me, texting me or something else.
So, and I, I, and I think [00:03:00] with, with ESP platforms, your point, um, absolutely the sending of email is still the critical core function of it. But to your. It it to, to really be competitive today. It needs to have taken on the characteristics of a lot of other things that at one time or another weren't considered
Matthew Dunn: essential in which weren't considered essential.
And I'm, I'm seasoned on your point. Some of the biggest DSPs don't actually send the email anymore. Well,
Chris Marriott: well, right, right. I mean, if, if, if you're gonna say the actual sending is done by an MTA, right, right, right. Then you you're right. All a lot of the new NextGen platforms and what, what the, uh, customer data Institute, uh, calls deployment, CDPs.
and we'll get to what, what are those um, we'll all use all use what we call and David Daniels is the first person I heard coin this phrase, MTAs in the cloud. Right. And right. Yeah. [00:04:00] Where, where, and, and, and what the difference is there folks is that historically let's call 'em legacy. ESP had their own MTAs as part of their spending infrastructure.
So they had their platform and the MTAs, and they were all in one place and they were, you know, they bought the MTAs from the MTA sellers, but those MTA sellers, oh, low and behold suddenly offered those same MTA services cloud based. So your point, Matthew, suddenly you have really a key differentiator of, of between NextGen platforms and, and legacy platforms in my mind.
Is that difference when you, when you talk about, well, Who's using MTAs in the cloud, cordial, Braze, Iterable, Clavio, lean core, you know, all of these. You know, what are considered some of the next gen platforms mm-hmm are, are, are doing exactly that. And you know, to the point where you, you have to say, well, [00:05:00] is anybody, I mean, is that, is that the way the industry's going?
And I, and, and I think it might be, but, but, but, and, and I'm, I'm gonna Zig a little, I can. Because the reason, you know, I reached out to you last week and said, we have to have this call. Yeah, yeah. Now, or do this podcast now is also because you pointed out, uh, what, what Twilio is doing in, in assembling their stack and Twilio folks has, uh, is own send grid, which is the, the leading and by leading, I mean, largest, or actually, I don't know, spark post or sang or second.
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Spark, post Sanger. Tell you a big, good battle.
Chris Marriott: yeah, good battle. But, but. And what, what, what, what you pointed out to me that, that had been sort of nagging in the back of my mind, but when you laid it out, you know, you ha you have the biggest or second biggest empty in the cloud. Taking steps that are gonna put them in [00:06:00] competition with a lot of the people who are using MSTs in the cloud.
It, you know,
Matthew Dunn: you and one of those steps because you, you and I both know it and we forget, we know it. One of those steps is that same company, Twilio bought one of the bigger CDPs in the market segment. Yep.
Chris Marriott: Exactly. So now, so now they, and they already had leading mobile, uh, products. Yeah. And yeah. And now they have, uh, the CDP platform which can do perform the segmentation list, building data, storing that you expect.
And now they have. so, you know, as you, you and I said, right before we went live here, that in my business, I've never looked at in the RFPs we run and, and we mainly work with big, big, big centers, big volume centers. Oh yeah. Uh, um, you know, with, we work with the 1-800-FLOWERS and the American airlines bed bath and beyond.
So big, sophisticated. [00:07:00] And it would've been inconceivable to me at any point up until now to think that Twilio or SendGrid or any part of that company would be somebody maybe look at in an RFP with one of these, one of these large complex send. But when you see what they're, they've assembled now, , you know, as I said, just for, you know, I think there's going to come a day sooner rather than later, where they're gonna be Twilio will be able to compete for the, at the, at those enterprise deals because, because they've basically become, they they've become an.
A ESP full service, not full, I mean, a full on ESP, not just separate components. Yeah. And, and that, I think that's a fascinating development and, and it gets also to, you know, that collision between CDPs and ESPs and how CDPs, you know, they, they can bolt that into their infrastructure. Yeah. Under. Sang grid.
Yeah. [00:08:00] Yeah. And with the, and with the mobile capabilities, as you pointed out, which is
Matthew Dunn: where they started. Right, right. Yeah.
Chris Marriott: Yeah. Say that looks a, an awful lot, like an enterprise ESP wouldn't
Matthew Dunn: and, and one of the logical sidebars of this is, is, um, message bird who, a spark post, what not quite a year ago, if they haven't, if they haven't built or acquired a big CDP.
That seems like a logical thing to watch for on the basis of this conversation. Um, Jim, Jim, uh, Jim Barksdale was co-founder of Netscape along with mark Andreeson and I, he, he probably gets credited with a quote that someone else also said, but he said there's only two ways to make money in business. One is bundling and the other is unbundling.
Um, . And really we were talking, we're talking through all this list of capabilities involved in this, this thing called email and email marketing. First gen DSPs had [00:09:00] presented it as a bundle, right? Here's the things you need. We've got all of them. And then the MTA started peeling out the, the sending of mail function and companies like B partner of ours have terrific email editors.
So the, the design side of it, uh, okay. We'll peel that out. And, and, and, you know, ESPs who are left as a bundle are starting. maybe look legacy doesn't mean they are, but maybe they look that way because you can, you think you can buy all the pieces off the shelf and then stitch 'em together yourself. You th I think you made a comment about that.
Like the, the sort of we'll we'll put all those pieces together. It is always gonna be the it guys thinking it's that it's that easy, right. And it's not actually gonna be that. Um, so the notion of a, a company rebundling those capabilities, which I think where we're going with the Twilio conversation yeah.
Is interesting. [00:10:00]
Chris Marriott: I, I, I, I think it's the only way to go because, but, and I think you make a great point. You have these, you know, email editors. And, and, and you have orchestration platforms yep. That are separate, that you have the MTAs in the cloud. And ESP are sitting there looking around and saying, , you know, what is our core?
What do, what, what do we need to do? What do we do? And that's the CDPs part. And that's where the CDPs then are coming in and saying, you know what, Hey, you know, we, we can, we can do that when push comes to shove. So I think the ESPs are, are looking around to your point and. no, no, no, no, no. We, we, we need to, we, we, it all in one place is better and I, and I firmly, I firmly believe that's true because integration, even if it's out the box, you know?
Yeah, yeah. You know you, because the other thing we saw is to speaking about bundling together, taxi for email.
Matthew Dunn: Right, right, right, right. That was [00:11:00] spark post. Right, right. Leading, well, yeah. Leading edge. Arguably leading edge editor design tool. Yep. Built by originally by an agency LA's agency item on this podcast, um, got bought by spark post and about the a day later spark post acquired by message bird.
So message bird has the design piece and the big MTA.
Chris Marriott: All they're missing. Right. All they're missing. All they missing is, is the CDP. So I bet you're right. If we knew who that C which CDP was, maybe we could get in there and . Yeah, really? Yeah. But when there's a billion CDPs, who knows which way they're gonna go, but
Matthew Dunn: yeah.
Which, which intrigues me, like the label's not that old and all of a sudden you can't even list the companies in the categories. Man they're
Chris Marriott: fast at that. yeah. And I think if, you know, for those at home, the CDP, every, every single analyst has different labels and categories of them. And, you know, Gartner has smart hubs.[00:12:00]
Uh, Forrester has this and that. I think CDP Institute has the best categorization. They have four categories yeah. Of them. And so if you really wanna, if you, if you wanna learn. About CDPs and the differences between them. Mm-hmm , that's a good place. David Ravin is CDP Institute. I have, I have a ton of respect for, you'll be an interesting guy to get on your program if you have.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's a great idea.
Chris Marriott: Um, but yeah. And in fact, interesting you say, I just last week, uh, set up a conversation between an enterprise E P and, and another email editor, um, because I've been telling ESP for years, Brands are looking for these capabilities in the platform, you know, and, and, and a lot of the platforms still have the ha ha have built pretty good wizzywig editors, but what, but what they don't have and that these, what, what, uh, the like be free and, and, uh, stencil and taxi free mail [00:13:00] had were the collaborative tools.
Yeah. So that you didn't have to send things back and forth people. It was like a Google docs for email content. Yeah. And. It makes that much faster, much easier, and those are still lacking in enterprise platform. So I was, you know, my, my message to the ESP was talk to these guys, look at 'em. Yeah. And think long and hard if they, if they wanna be acquired to acquire them.
Because again, I think, I think ultimately innovation in the ESP space starts with third parties and eventually. Ends up either the platforms leading platforms, buy 'em and bring 'em in, right. Or they build it themselves. And so there's a life span of these third party innovations where they either gotta get bought or the ESP are gonna go.
Matthew Dunn: We don't need bundling bun. Yeah. Bundling unbundling. Um, I should, I should do a quick call out for the guys at chameleon out of Hungary. Also, also a really good design. [00:14:00] Tool for email. And, and I love the fact that there's like, there's some real, there's some competition and innovation, even at what looks like it should be an easy thing.
It's not designing and designing an email and things like you, you mentioned it. The, the Google docs style, simultaneous editing. You have me going for a second there thinking about Microsoft and office. Earlier generation technologically, but that was a bundling thing. Word, Excel and PowerPoint were not exactly a bundle at one point in time.
And then let's put some duct tape around them, add outlook and, and make a whole, a whole lot of money off it. And then long comes along, comes Google docs, arguably still not a competitor to word in my humble opinion, but as well, that simultaneous editing thing is a big. It's like really big deal. Like, wow.
I might use Google docs because we can all, [00:15:00] you know, mess with sentences and stuff at that same time. Holy. Wow. How man? That's cool. Right? Yeah. And then I'm sure I'm, I'm sure word in the cloud has that now. Um, yeah, so, um, So do you think the C D P label will get subsumed? Like, what are these guys gonna, what are these new bundlers?
Let's, let's use Twilio as a strong man. Like, what are they gonna, are they gonna have to call themselves something to say, Bring your marketing here. We'll run it all.
Chris Marriott: And well, if you look, I don't think there's there. Aren't too many ESP that actually use that label to describe themselves anymore. Fair point, which I think is silly because brands call ESPs and, and there's almost a stigma of those.
So, you know, I there're ESPs and . Yeah, but I don't care what they, what they think they wanna be. Um, well, okay. Let, let, let's go back. You referenced two years ago when I was at, when we, I spoke at the email innovation summit and then followed it up with a, uh, uh, [00:16:00] article in, in, uh, only influencers where I, I, and I think I was the first to notice this collision course and yeah, I, I said that already, there's a lot of overlap.
CDPs and ESP and, uh, in what they do. And again, this is two years ago and that brands and people looking at these platforms need to be aware of this because it should inform how they go about acquiring one or the other, or both based again on, on, on requirements. They don't end up over Mar teching. And when that happens and when you have your data team with the CDP and your marketing team with the ESP and both platforms can do some of the same things you get into crazy, you know, disagreements over who get, who, who gets to do the segmentation, who gets to do the list.
Right. Um, there's a danger there. Fast forward, two years, Gar Gartner group. You didn't mention em, I'm gonna mention 'em Gartner group, you know, Gartner group. [00:17:00] Uh, interestingly enough, identified the same trend. Even more interesting used the exact same ven diagram that I created for my article and presentation.
Mm-hmm Gardner shame on you too many. Um, but any, and, and, and been there two years too late because now the, those platforms have collided.
Matthew Dunn: The, the circles are
going
Chris Marriott: like this, right? Yeah. They're and, and where there are ESP and CDPs. that in my mind are barely distinguishable from one another. And, and that's where, to your point, whether we call 'em CDPs or CDPs in the future, that's the future.
And, and when you look at, and when, you know, going back to CDP Institute and their four categories of, of CDPs, the highest level is what they call deployment CDPs. and, and that would be like blue shift and data and [00:18:00] OME up. And interestingly enough, they use MTS in the cloud, but they, they send campaigns.
They don't just send triggered to a E P to send a campaign. They literally send the campaign. So they do all of the data management and, and, and, uh, identity resolution mm-hmm and, and trigger that, that low base level CDPs do, but they don't need an ESP. And, and what, and, and what, when I first realized that this, I mean, it even caught me by surprise that, that the person had already happened and, and we were already seeing the aftershock was.
I was advising a very well known, uh, retailer in, in their RFP. I wasn't, I was advising, they hadn't hired my company. I liked the guy and I, and, and I just, you know, even if they're not gonna pay me, I like seeing what their thought process. I like seeing what they're doing. Yeah. But folks, that doesn't mean I'm gonna do free RFPs, [00:19:00] but.
Anyway. So, and he was looking at some of these NextGen platforms that we all well known and he ended up, uh, picking blue shift. And I, and I kept saying, you're outta your mind, but you're insane. I use nicer words, but you know, they're a CDP. And he said, you know what? They look like. They can do it the best.
So then I looked at blue shift, much more closely, talked to them. And I'm and I said, I, if they wanted to call themselves an E P yeah, they'd be a good one. They could . Yeah. So then, so. You look at blue shift and you look at Simon data and I'm not endorsing anybody here. I, I wanna make that clear, but they they're good examples.
If you look at those two and you compare 'em to a very E C DPSS, uh, E P cordial mm-hmm , which was built on a very flexible data platform and, and, and, [00:20:00] you know, CDP Institute has them on their, uh, they're low, I mean, interest. Half the people on the planet think of cordial as a CD, but you look at cordial or exon, uh, which was acquired by bloom reach a year ago.
They're real, you know, you look, you know, cordial, exon blue shift, Simon data. They're two sides of the same coin. They're on a continuum, meaning blue shift assignment data. And others like them are Excel at the CDP side of that much more than they Excel at the deployment. And. Cordial and exon Excel at the deployment much more than they Excel at the data management, but they're all, but they're, but all four of them are doing all of it.
Right. That's what I see. You know, whether that's where I see at, at the mid-market they BEC they, they are one. And to your point, what, what do we call 'em? I like E S CDP. [00:21:00] Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Uh, but where did the. I've got thoughts about it, but I'm I want, I want yours. Cause you really know this space. Where did the, the generation that called themselves marketing cloud fit in and match up against this, uh, you know, bundle unbundled collision that we're talking about.
Chris Marriott: Yeah. Good question. I mean the marketing clouds, they, they all sort of emerged in early second decade, 2011, 2012. Where, you know, you had companies like Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, um, and Salesforce. Yeah. IBM was in there too. They had their cloud. Yeah. Uh, they bought silver pop and, and where, what they were trying to do was bundle, offer cloud based across your entire marketing.
Stack. So it was like, we're gonna add email to customer service, to, to, uh, CRM, to, to whatever. And that, that was their bundle. [00:22:00] What, what, what is happening today? When we, when you and I are talking about bundling it's in my mind, it's, it's the bundling. Of things and you were very eloquently said that, you know, there's, there's this pulling apart, uh, happening in some areas, but the bundling is sort of in response to.
That's not necessarily a good thing. So I, the bundling that ESP are doing today are functionality that brands expect or want yeah. In what they call an E P. And so there they're two D very different trends and the original bundling trend. I think, you know, there's a changing of the guard that I'm seeing and the, and that old marketing cloud model.
Uh, is, has lost some scheme and, you know, at, at the CSU level there they're, you know, it's seen as advantageous. Yeah. They're often not deciding who an E P or a CDP is at the practitioner level. [00:23:00] Yeah. That the clouds don't have that don't add value, but the bundled E P has value. So when we say, you know, what is getting pulled back in 10 years ago?
Hmm. You know, marketing automation existed as a separate platform, if you really wanted to get good triggers and, and, and transactional emails and automated, you had to have a different platform you had, you had to. Yeah. And you had your marketing, uh, what map? Marketing automation platform. Yeah. And you had, and you potentially had to have.
You know, somebody doing your, your, uh, um, real time or adaptive content mm-hmm at open and you had somebody doing your send time optimization. Third party. And, and you had a, and you had somebody doing your mobile, all these things and, and what we've seen even though, and, and you're right. There's, there's, you know, there's one trend of, of, of ripping these things apart.
Yeah. The stronger trend is [00:24:00] bringing them together. And, and when brands, brands, preference by far today is, and they don't want good enough. They want really good. But they want, you know, marketing automation, promotional multi-channel good email editor, you know,
Matthew Dunn: all in one platform, all in one, all in one platform.
Well, I, I suspect I would have to really get under the hood and, and, and violate NDAs to get there. But I suspect that one of the issues is this. Let's call let's call Twilio an example of the sort of leading edge of, of, of rebundle capabilities. Cuz it looks like they're headed there. The what the glue that's gonna hold.
Those pieces together is a, is a much, much more, um, N 20, 20, 20, 22, uh, view of making 'em talk to each other via APIs. Yep. Not, not actual hard bolted, same [00:25:00] code base integration. You look at the earlier generation. I, I think I would bet a lot of the marketing clouds. If we looked under the hood, like the code base is like this, it's not a zillion APIs talking to each other.
And as a result of that earlier architecture, their feature progress, their ability to respond to market taste and so on. Like they just can't move as fast. When I talk to customers who are on older gen marketing clouds, they don't tend to be super happy. They're like, ah, we're stuck with this thing and it can't do this and it can't do that.
And we're, you know, it's like two years down the line before they'll add a button and, uh, yeah. Okay. Makes
Chris Marriott: sense. No. You're absolutely right. I, I you're absolutely right. The leg, the, not all of the older legacy, not all. there are some so, and I know you're not applying that. I mean, there, there are some that have done a real good job.
Well, and, and, you know, let's, let's, you know, Adobe launched journey, optimizer, brand new platform built from the ground up, Zada launched, uh, Zada marketing ZMP Zada marketing platform, [00:26:00] uh, net core. So there are, yeah, yeah. There are ESP that are, that are considered legacy by a lot of email market. But that they're not, our new technology and, and, and, and, you know, and, and by the way, all three of those have CDPs inside.
So, right. You know, they're, they're, they're while they're the CDP may not be the, the core of the way it is in a, in a cordial or a, or a blue shift, it's there it's adjacent. And to your. The APIs are firing back and forth. So yeah. Yeah. You're getting every, you're getting the same or the same benefit of that CDP, uh, capability.
Matthew Dunn: I want no one's ever gonna be able to do it, but if, if you had a, if you had a chart of all of the, you know, RFPs, or you may be able to chart of all the RFPs and buying process resulting in decisions resulting in who's big in the market, sometimes there's. Well, who's actually making, who's [00:27:00] making, driving the purchase decision.
Is it the, is it the tech and data guys? Is it the marketing guys? Because their, their view on what's good and what's required can be quite different, uh, yeah. Based on how they, you know, how they're sort of slicing the world up.
Chris Marriott: Yeah. And that's, that's what I see. EV every RFP we've run the last two years, every.
There's been at the same time. And that's the marketing team at the same time elsewhere in the organization, the it and or data team are doing. I, I, I, I kick you not. And which gets back to the danger of yeah. You know, but everyone wants their own platform. Yeah. And that's when you, when, and, and that's what I think is driving.
When you look at the CDP landscape, and again, going back to the four different types of CDPs, um, uh, automation, CDP, uh, analytics, CDP, I can't remember all their names and, and, and again, the, the highest degree of evolution, the deployment CDP. But when you look [00:28:00] at those and, and you talk to the, the, the vendors that are in the different categories, they will very clearly say what, what emerges from that?
The two lower categories or the two, you know, least function categories are, are, are the laundry list of it and data. And so they tend to get bought by it and data. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Higher level ones that look more like ESP. Yeah. Are our, the, the convers, the guys that work for these CDPs say our conversations tend to be when they're successful.
It's cuz we're talking to the marketing people because if we're talking to the data and it people they're looking at these platforms over here and, and we know we don't have a chance and. Again, I think that's another driver from, for mark. If I'm an email marketer, mm-hmm , I, I probably would prefer that data and it doesn't have their own platform to, to, to supply me with [00:29:00] a lot of what I need.
Yeah. I'd rather have those capabilities. And I think that that's part of the attraction and part of the, the impetus driving this let's. At platforms that do it all. And, and, and again, I, I see that that's where it's going. It's starting in the mid-market. Um, just because the, the, particularly for the, for the deployment CDPs, you know, they don't have the scale of, of sending that that right.
Again, when you use MTS in the cloud, they can scale up pretty quickly. But, um, but that's, again, another impetus that I, that I see mm-hmm, driving. Let's let's let's bundle even that in because yeah. Again, from where I sit, it makes no, it makes no sense not to. Right, right, right, right. It's logical. And, um, you know, here, here, here's an interesting sort of bundling thing.[00:30:00]
Um, little, not CDP, but, but I've been, I've been working with and helping, uh, a leading, um, mobile, uh, player. And they've determined that, you know, they're losing business to bundle. They, their clients are saying you're great. Possibly the best, but you're a one trick pony, right? And we'd like to bundle, we're sorry.
We like to bundle. And, and they, so they've realized that as they stand alone, they're gonna be less successful than if they oh, interesting going up. If they create a bundle themselves and. And I think, and I, I think they're right. I, I, I think those, those standalone, you know, you know, those standalone platforms a again are good at the start cuz they're the innovators mm-hmm but over time, the, the there's other [00:31:00] platforms that get good enough in that capability.
Yeah. Maybe never as good as a standalone, but good enough. That brands say, ah, it's good enough.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And it's sort of like the, the, the standalone, you know, is like a, a company that says we, we are marketing for the text channel lonely, you know, you could argue there's sort of, and this is, this is a typical thing in the evolution of technologies, like early on the label on a.
Tends to be the tech later on, as it matures, the label tends to be like the function or the value it provides. Like, do you know what kind of CPU is in your computer? I don't anymore, but at one point it was always Intel inside and now you're like, I don't care. I wanna CPU, in fact, my CPU is in the cloud now, so I really don't know
Chris Marriott: right, right.
I don't, I don't know. And I don't care. Right. I
Matthew Dunn: don't. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, are there any wild card. Players, particularly, particularly big. Cause we're, you know, we're in an age of some digital monopolies. Arguably, are there [00:32:00] anybody, are there any, is there anybody that you think might show up at this party?
Chris Marriott: You know, it's, it's interesting. I, I, I think I, I. I think the era, you know, we went through two waves of consolidations of, of leading ESP. We had the, the 2005, 2004 had the, the marketing services providers buying all the leading independent ESP. Um, Axiom got into the game. Epsilon, got in the game, experi got in the game, buying Cheeta mail mm-hmm and.
Out from under that emerged new, independent ESPs that were seen as more innovative and, and more fleet of foot and exact target and responses. And then the marketing cloud referred the marketing cloud guys got in the game, they bought up all the, all those years, those guys . But then the market was looking around and saying, well, where are the independent guys?
Well, now we have the next gen platforms we've named several of them.
Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't see [00:33:00] an industry out there that there would be sort of the, the run on the independence. Like they. In those other two waves of consolidation, even though it was like, like, like, like a stamped, the one somebody, you know, one of your competitors bought an ES P okay. I gotta get in the game.
Yeah. I gotta get in the game.
Matthew Dunn: Interesting.
Chris Marriott: I don't, I don't see a, a, a category of business now where, where somebody could come in and say, I'm gonna buy one of these next gen and I'm gonna start to stampede. So yeah, I, I don't, you know, last big one we saw was SAP. Uh, acquiring a, a MARSIS, uh, a little over a year ago.
And you know, there was no that, that, that didn't kick off a stampede, um, at the time. And I thought, well, again, the only one Microsoft has not, I was gonna,
Matthew Dunn: I was gonna ask you about that. Yes.
Chris Marriott: I think, Hmm. If I'm Microsoft, I'm not, I'm not sure what my advantage [00:34:00] would be to buying an P at this point. Yeah.
You know, they've got, they, they they've got the cloud, the data cloud data. I mean, you know, they're very integrated into what's going on in the industry, a Azure and, and other things. So they're a player in there and I don't think they need an E S P I, I think be more agnostic for them BEC because brands are, would, would look at that and they would.
After they bought the ESP brands would, would no matter what E P it was. Yeah, no, it was, it was the hottest ESP right now on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. And Microsoft bought it. Brands would be going, eh, you know what? Yeah. It's, it's now Microsoft. It's not vendor a and well,
Matthew Dunn: it's, it's like, it's it. It's, it's akin to, it's akin to companies, uh, backing away froms.
because of the Amazon retail part of it. Right,
Chris Marriott: right, right. Because it it's wait. [00:35:00] They're competitor. We're, we're,
Matthew Dunn: we're, we're paying, we're paying our competitor. We're putting our infrastructure
Chris Marriott: on our competitor. which is a great way. You've just come full circle, uh, uh, masterful way to say. what will happen if Twilio does become an E P are all of the, the next gen ESP that are using them as an MTA.
Yeah. Gonna say, wait a minute. Yeah. We're now competing against you and we're paying you. And so, I mean, that's, you know what, that will be interesting because I, I, I don't know if I were one of those NextGen P I, yeah. Potentially go looking for an MTA in the cloud. Yeah. That wasn't affiliated
Matthew Dunn: with them.
Well, Twilio and Twilio made their bones. As you know, I'm gonna geek out here for a second, but Twilio made their bones in fame as, as the equivalent of an MTA for. For, for calls and texting for the telephone, they, they, they made the SS seven layer, the [00:36:00] telephone system of the world into an API. It was, it was, it was flipping brilliant.
Most ESP who say they've got a texting story will probably have done at least gen one via Twilio. And now what you're saying is they'll be going, ah, hang on a minute. Maybe not. Yeah. Right. Maybe not. Um, yeah. And, and, and the cost, if, if a Twilio. Um, wonderful company. But if Twilio is maintaining both this new gen, uh, E S C DP and the raw component API piece is to sell to the other competitors in that space.
One of one of those two, either the APIs or, or the consolidated platform is, is, is gotta be playing second fiddle at some
Chris Marriott: point. Exactly. And there's gotta be a lot of friction between them. Yeah. Yeah. And that, so that'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Um, yeah.
Matthew Dunn: I mean, mic Microsoft had that same battle earlier much earlier generation or several generations ago, technologically, but Microsoft had that [00:37:00] battle with the win 32 APIs on the desktop.
Do we keep some of these secrets, so only word and Excel can use them metaphorically speaking or are do, should we go, you know what? This is everything it does. And if you can write a better word processor on windows, then kick our butt, like good on you. Congratulations. We'll still sell windows. right.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and the players that we didn't discuss and it it's natural, but it's interesting as well. Like we didn't touch on Google. right. We didn't touch on apple, who I still think is a funny wildcard in this mix with, uh, with a weird leverage point that they've got and the philosophy about privacy that they've got.
I don't see them showing up in that ES CDP market. Uh, but I think everyone will have to grapple with them in that market. . Yeah.
Chris Marriott: Well, well, the chart you showed, and this is a whole nother episode, but the chart you showed at that same conference, um, [00:38:00] was massively eye opening to, I think everybody there about the unique role of apple, it opened my eyes.
I was like,
Matthew Dunn: yeah, they're in a weird spot. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Marriott: yeah. I mean, okay. They're not, no, they're. I mean, forget that they're different mailboxes. They're, they're, they're at very different points in the email process. Yeah. Yeah. Apples can really be a choke point to the degree they want.
Matthew Dunn: They really can. I had, uh, I, I long, you know, long time, like close to 50 year close friends, uh, visiting, uh, on this, this weekend.
And we were sitting there in the morning with coffee and, you know, everyone's doing what they do, news, et cetera, on their mobile device. And I said, Hey, Hey, Hey, Frank. is Gmail. Is your Gmail address the main address? He said, well, no, I use that for, eh, and, and this is a retired guy. Okay. It's like, I use Gmail, but not that much.
I use iCloud for hotels and stuff like that. And I said, ah, what, like, what do you [00:39:00] actually use on your phone to read your email? He said, well, you know, like the apple client and his wife, almost the same thing. And, and I said, this is interesting. Two retired people, both of whom really don't want to have tech and stuff in their life.
Very much. And like seven email addresses between them all coming through their apple client.
Chris Marriott: Yeah. So it's right, right. So
Matthew Dunn: mm-hmm, that's yeah. exactly. Well, we should, we should wrap this up, but man, this is gonna be fascinating to watch and it's it's this happen seems like it's happening now. Would you.
Yeah, we,
Chris Marriott: it, it it's. Yeah, it it's, you know, I, I, I always go back when, when, when we're, I mean, there's so much happening, so interesting. And, and I, I, I think back at points like this in, in conversations like this to an old boss of mine who, who was brilliant and a great boss, and in 20 10, 20 11, he said, you know, Chris, the future's Mar.
I mean the future is ad tech, not MarTech. [00:40:00] Interesting. He was pretty wrong. And, uh, I'm glad I didn't. One of it was one of the few times, but I didn't make the. Yeah, I, and, and yeah, this we're living through this right now. It's gonna be fascinating developments. There's gonna be churn. There's gonna be acquisitions.
There's gonna be companies that blow up. Um, but there's gonna be tons of confusion. there already is. Uh, but coming out the other side, we're gonna have platforms ES CDPs, which I, I think you and I now have blessed that you've used this a couple times. I like that E CDPs, cuz E the ESP is the, is, is the foundational element there.
But, um, I think we're gonna come out with a new, new series of platforms that are gonna make the practitioner's life easier and are. Hopefully provide a better experience to, uh, user experience, to the people who are receiving emails or, or loyalty programs, or we didn't even get into the next step is customer experience platforms.
Yes, [00:41:00] yes, yes. They're coming. They're coming and you know what bloom, so bloom reach when they bought exon, I was like, Ugh, Frankenstein, Frankenstein, bloom reach. If you're listening, I apologize that I've come to see I'm publicly apologized and I was wrong. To criticize that acquisition. I think it was brilliant.
And, and I know one of the reasons I think it's brilliant is I think CX is gonna become a bigger part of, of CD ES CDPs world. I agree. Totally agree. And a big part of that is because of the first party data that CX platforms generate. In by the tonnage by the, to tonnage. Yeah. And we both know zero and first party data, whether it's loyalty program, whether it's CX platforms or whether it's data, clouds are becoming critical competitive pieces
Matthew Dunn: in this.
So, so we just identified what we'll talk about in conversation. Number three, Chris. Okay. I like it. cool. Well, in the recording, my guest today, which has been wonderful, Chris Marriott, president of Email Connect
Chris, thanks so much for making the. Thanks for
Chris Marriott: having me again. I always enjoy these conversations.