A Conversation With Jay Schwedelson of Outcome Media

Jay Schwedelson was running the halls of direct marketing conferences as a child, as he shared in this conversation. So the quality of his insights into marketing today — remarkably free of digital hype — shouldn't be a surprise.

Jay's "side project" SubjectLine.com has tested over 15 million subject lines; his agency business has helped thousands of customers, and his new Guru conference has already drawn over 5,000 registrants for its very first event.

Jay and host Matthew Dunn hash through the opportunities and challenges of marketing today. A fascinating, fast conversation with a true expert in the space.

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. My guest today. This is gonna be the, this is gonna be the guys who've been around conversation, Jay Schwedelson — founder of SubjectLine, President of Outcome Media, and guy with a whole lot of experience in this media space. Jay.

Jay Schwedelson: Welcome. Thanks for thanks for having me excited to be here.

Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: In our conference business on top of it. So we'll talk about that as well. It's probably impossible to summarize in, in the length of an elevator elevator trip, but the, the work that you do and the people you work with who do things for clients, what's the, what's the focus. What's the common.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah.

So we really call ourselves a media agency now a direct response media agency called outcome media, focusing on [00:01:00] obviously on outcomes. We are in traditional direct response channels, like, like direct mail, but we're also very heavy in the email space. We're heavy in podcast, advertising, digital advertising, you know, paid social things of that nature.

We also have some. Thought leadership stuff, some, some free tools out there, like subject line.com that people use to check their subject lines. And then we just launch this crazy events business we, we can get into, but basically we're a media organization focused on stuff that's measurable.

Matthew Dunn: Gotcha. Media stuff. That's stuff that's measurable. Okay. I like, I like that distinction. You mentioned it and I definitely wanted to talk about it. So maybe we could start there subject line.com. Did I see that you just celebrated subject line number 15 million.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, it's crazy. You know, subject line.com has been an interesting ride for us because I never anticipated having a website that we put out there.

And what happened was this going back 11 to 12 years ago, we're doing a lot of email work for our clients. And invariably, [00:02:00] what do they ask? They say, which is the subject line. And, you know, we've like try to come up with, okay, here's a subject line. Let's go with it. See how it does, you know, and internally we were just, you know, Pulling it out of, you know, making it up as we went along and we like, there's gotta be a better way.

Maybe we can make a tool. So we made this little tool internally where all of our, you know, team members can go in and put a septic line and it aggregated information from all the campaigns we were doing all the time. We were sending it like what was making something open more or less. Was it a word, you know, was it a bracket?

Was it an exclamation point, whatever it was. And we made this tool and it would spit out a very, it was a very simple tool and you know, it was going well for us. I said, you know what, maybe we should let other people do this thing. So I went on go, daddy. I was sitting on my couch one night, 11, 12 years ago, what should we call this thing?

like, They should call it subject line.com. You know, so I went on there and I remember it was like $500 where it was, Ooh, that's expensive for, you know, a URL. I'm like, ah, screw. So we buy this, we buy [00:03:00] subject line.com. We put up the thing and I had no intention that people really start to use this thing.

But low and behold people started checking their subject lines. And we've always, we've added more and more to it. So now you go there, you put your subject on, get you a score, how good or bad it is. And it's very basic, you know we don't pretend to make it some sort of fancy, you know, AI or something, you know, crazy mathematical, whatever we want it basic.

And really it's for the masses to be able to say, okay, am I missing any low hanging fruit that can get my emails to. And it has a bunch of different information, whatever. So yeah, we just checked our 15 million subject line. We're really proud of that. And the thing I'm most proud of is that it's totally free, you know, and that's what we want just to have a tool for the whole planet to use.

And And so that's

Matthew Dunn: been fun that that's quite something. Do you remember what the 15000000th subject line is?

Jay Schwedelson: who's so lame too. Cause somebody asked me that. So he looked it up and you know, the problem is when people go there, they'll check, like they'll put one subject line in, they won't the score.

They like, so they'll check like 10 [00:04:00] more. Yeah. Right. Until they get the score they want. But it's like, it's very, like, it's like join our webinar tomorrow. You know, something very lame, you know, it's not like. Bat man is cool or something, you know, it's very late . So it's

Matthew Dunn: the, the, the, the, the subject line and by subject line, in this case, I'm talking subject line and email as are you.

It's a funny artifact because it's a little thing, but it's huge,

Jay Schwedelson: huge. It's, everything's, it's everything, it's

Matthew Dunn: everything, right? Like if the way email has evolved to work, if, if that, if that's lame, doesn't matter, which put inside the envelope, does it. It's it's

Jay Schwedelson: wild because, you know, well, what were these big brands or what do they do?

They'll come up with the greatest offer or piece of content that they worked forever on. They paid a zillion dollars for it. Then their agency builds is creative. Oh my God. And then it legal approves it and it meets their brand guidelines. And now they're ready to send it out and they're like, oh, what's your subject line?

They're I don't know. You know, and they'll spend three seconds, you know, when, [00:05:00] if they don't get that thing. Right. Who cares? Who cares about all the other stuff you just worked on? It's irrelevant. Yeah. The other thing I love about the subject line is it doesn't matter if you're a small one person company or you're Google or whoever we all get the same real estate.

That's true. Right. We all get the same real estate to try to stand out with. And so it's not like a lot of other media where you could spend a boatload of money and you're the top listing or you're this you're that we get the same chance everybody's equal. And, and I, and I like that opportunity. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I I'm delighted to hear you say that. Cuz we were chatting beforehand. One of, one of the things. One of the things that matters to me about the email space is the. The level playing field, the sort of democratization of, of a digital channel. So many other channels are owned and dominated or have gatekeepers and email.

You've got this still surprisingly level playing field, which the subject line is a, is a critical critical tool. Good.

Jay Schwedelson: Absolutely. Yeah, [00:06:00] yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, from a business perspective, that's why I, I, I leaned into doing email cuz it is decentralized mm-hmm I'm not a huge fan of, you know you know, like for example, Facebook dominates right.

Or Google dominates search. Yeah. It's not really fun in terms of what I do for a living, being an agency guy to play in a space that's dominated by one or two. Providers. That's why email's cool because you need, you need help. You need service providers to kind of wrangle it all together. Cause it's so crazy and complicated.

Matthew Dunn: It is. Yeah, it is crazy and complicated. And maybe that's an artifact of, of no ownership, no gatekeeper, not even no gatekeeper, but like no real big gorillas. Like you can name a couple, but they're actually not that.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, that's right. There's no one dominant force in email. Yeah. And if it is, it won't be the same in five years from now.

you know, so yeah. Yeah. That's, that's actually

Matthew Dunn: true. Well, okay. So, [00:07:00] so that's a little bit about why both of us like hanging around here. I'm intrigued about one little thing. The subject line, you know, that short, you get a few words and maybe you get who it's from to try and influence that all important.

Next step. Have you guys taken the expertise from that and, and done any work in the still reluctant to say this texting.

Jay Schwedelson: yeah, SMS, you know, we, we really don't play in that space. Yeah. Cause it is a space into itself for sure. A lot of people do use a subject line tool for stuff like their blog, post headlines and things of that nature.

Oh, interesting. You know, one of the other big things about subject line that we try to do is undo some of the. Old school myths that are, that are in this industry, which drive me bananas. So you know, when you like, like the reason, for example, people you go to this fan folder or the junk folder.

Yeah. Right. You know, if we were wine 10 years ago, It was all, it was, everything was content. It was the words that you [00:08:00] wrote in your subject line, the characters, capitalizations, the exclamation points that you put in your body copy or the subject line. And, you know, unfortunately, even though technology has changed and the reason the primaries in your filter is cuz lack of engagement, reputation of your IP address or your domain.

There's still this proliferation of. You know, articles and misinformation that you have to avoid, avoid all these words. Here's all the spammy words and the trigger words. And don't say this and don't do this. And when in reality, if you go to your inbox, you'll see every major market or doing all the things that you're supposed to technically avoid because you're gonna have filtered.

But of course you're staring at your inbox and there they are. They're right in your inbox. You're not getting filtered. Right? Right. So one of the things that we try to do is try to dispel some of these myths that are based on legacy information. Part of the problem with the email community is that there's a foundation of information that's old and it just doesn't get updated and shared to the masses in, in my view.[00:09:00]

yeah. That's my soapbox.

Matthew Dunn: Yes . Yeah. Yeah. I, I do think you're right about that. And it, it's not like you can go to industry, body X and say I'd like to be a member and where's the guidebook for email. Right, right. No, doesn't exist.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, well, the industry's a little interesting and I have my own issues with what, what do we call the industry?

Cause I think that there's, there's one of the reasons we're starting the event that we're doing. I think there's two different sides of this industry. There is people that are Uber sophisticated that are parts of these, you know, different groups and go to a handful of these conferences. And it's the same frankly thousand people.

Mm-hmm . Hang out and, you know, we could rattle off the names and they're all gonna be the same thousand people are there. And then you have big user conferences, the Adobe summits and, and, and inbounds of great, great conferences, but their users, their user conferences. And in the middle, you have, you know, there's 25 million businesses in [00:10:00] this country.

All of them are using email. Yeah. All 'em using. And 99% of them are not involved with any of those and the associations the DNA's gone. And the Ana's great. The Ana's not about direct barking. And it costs a thousand bucks to attend one of their things. So these 20 million marketers that don't really know how to get educated, they're lost in the middle and that's, that's hard, you know?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and, and that, that group, I mean, you said it I'll ask you about it, that. Kind rather large group in the middle. Is that at least part of the target audience for your new conference undertaking guru conference? Correct.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. So I'll tell you about what we're doing there. So I really building off the whole idea of subject line, trying to put out free content for the masses.

I, I personally felt frustrated that when the direct marketing association went away, that there's really not something for the average mark. Yeah. The average market who doesn't understand. All the little pieces of deliverability and all the, the average marketer, where can [00:11:00] they go to, to, to learn about, to learn about email and they can't spend all the money to go to the conferences.

They're not part of the thousand people that go to the same, you know, insider, clubby type stuff. And the user conferences are really that I'm like there has to be something else. So we said, you know, we're gonna start up a free conference, a virtual conference, and we're gonna make a two day. And we calling a guru conference and we're making it a hundred percent free, free the whole thing's free and we're lining up major speakers.

And we said, let's see if, and we're talking about deliverability and creative and, and best practices and all this stuff. B2B, B2C. Good for any type of marketer. And let's see if anybody's interested. Mm-hmm I didn't know if they would be right. So we put it out there. We said, this is what we're doing.

And, and it's in November. And to my shock, as I sit here, now we announced this a few months ago. We have, we just passed

Matthew Dunn: 5,000 registrations.

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. You know, and we have a boatload of sponsors. We're inundated with people that, you know, wanna speak and all this, and we are [00:12:00] expecting we're tracked towards 10,000.

Registrants, which is, would put it as the single largest, you know, virtual email marketing. That's ever happened. And so we're not just, now we're not just gonna do this in November. We're planning for 20, 23 different disciplines. We're gonna do one on direct mail podcast, advertise, whatever, and they're all gonna be free.

We're gonna try to just share as much knowledge as we can with, as the marketing industry as possible. And so that's, that's what

Matthew Dunn: we're doing. I'm congratulations. I'm amazed. You had time to talk to me like. That's quite a rocket ship to launch, man.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. We're excited. We're super excited. We really are. And you know, hopefully, you know, I want the average people, people don't realize that there's more people closer to just CCing everybody and hitting send.

Yeah. Than there are the people that are like doing like, you know, dynamic content,

Matthew Dunn: you know, I don't pick on me buddy. Don't pick on me, but yes, you're absolutely right. .

Jay Schwedelson: Right. We gotta help those people. Like, you

Matthew Dunn: know, I agree. I, I mean, [00:13:00] I I've talked with I, what was the conversation maybe a year ago? Like sizable company and the guy actually said to me, I think it was in an email response.

Yeah. Fred keeps the list and hits send in outlook and it was just like, Yep. Right. Still happens, you know, a bazillion people in the BCC equals email marketing and it's true. It like, it's true. That's, that's a viable

Jay Schwedelson: way to go. It's more common than, you know, all the fancy stuff that we hear about, you know the

Matthew Dunn: inside baseball kind of stuff.

Right?

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, exactly. Look, and look. I love it all. I love only influencers and EEC and all this. I love it all. That's not really what's going on on the

Matthew Dunn: planet. Well, and, and, and to, just, to, to recast that and sort of say the same thing over again, with a, nobody dominates it channel that is accessible to any small, medium, large business out there for, for the most part, they're [00:14:00] all just making it up and his pushing the send.

Yeah. A

Jay Schwedelson: hundred percent. And you know, what else is, I think what I see is there's some, some companies have, okay, an email marketing manager or call a CRM manager, whatever it is. Yeah. But the vast majority of companies have a marketing manager. Right. Yeah. And that marketing manager is supposed to be a catchall for everything.

Everything. Good luck to you. I mean, that's just not happening. You have to know search and social and websites and email, whatever. Yeah. So that's why you gotta be, you know, a Jack of all trades and a master of none. And we have to help everyone get a little better at being a good Jack Al

Matthew Dunn: well, that, that just the, just the numbers response to your new conference.

right. Says, holy macro, there's an appetite for appetite, for knowledge. That, that, isn't just another pitch. Yeah, that's

Jay Schwedelson: right. Yeah. Right. And that's what we're trying to do is make sure that we're, there's not like this is not a selling [00:15:00] thing. We're not, I have no look, I don't, how am I gonna make money? If we get enough sponsors, right.

We turn this into, it's gonna be a sponsor driven thing, but it's not where the sponsors are, you know, doing all the sessions and all that different stuff. And I have, no, I don't have an agenda at all. You know, I just think that there's a gap in the marketplace and I just feel like everybody needs to get up to speed on what the hell's going on.

and it changes so much, you know, that's why, that's why this podcast is great. Cause you can hear from lots of different industry people on totally different perspectives. Yeah. I it's,

Matthew Dunn: I've gotta say it's been a, I think, I think our conversation's number, like number 65 or something like that. Wow. Bill Moyers, remember bill

Jay Schwedelson: Moyers journalist.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. From that email. Yeah. Yeah. No

Matthew Dunn: bill Moyers said many, many years ago. It's the privilege of the journalist to be educated in public. Right. I like, that's kind of, that's kind of like, Ooh, I gotta talk to Jay. And he's been in email for quite a stretch and he, he was [00:16:00] DMA at the kitchen table with his parents and I bet he's got a whole bunch of stuff that is gonna be very interesting

Jay Schwedelson: to listen.

Well, I don't know about that, but it is fun to talk about. And it makes me a little sad though, too, because so many, first of all, everybody that I was doing this with is now really the, not there anymore. So many companies have disappeared, which is really sad. And then, you know, everybody's always kind of discovering email.

They think that, or discovering direct marketing to that matter. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they think that. This is new, not, but that's

Matthew Dunn: well, you've got, you've got the background again, a reference that you've got, you've got the background in direct marketing before all the digital stuff. And I find that that's surprisingly true of people.

Who've stick around in the digital marketing space and astonishing number of 'em have a direct market. Background in discipline or, or just a Jones for it, frankly. Yeah. And cause cuz it, a lot of the dynamics are, are the same, right? People are.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. And, and you know, now also I think [00:17:00] with the explosion of direct to consumer you know, almost every, and we, we're about 50% B2B, 50% consumer.

Oh, interesting. But, but you know, when you see brands like, you know, Proctor and gamble actually doing direct to consumer market, you know, they're, they're sending out emails trying to get detergent sold directly one on one from an email that's like, you know, the world has really come a long way, you know, for that to be the case.

And so. It was sad when the direct marketing changed its name, the direct marketing association before it got sold to, and they changed their name to the data and marketing association because they were so embarra. By the word by the phrase, direct marketing. Correct. Interesting. You know, it's like, it was a tainted word.

It means you're junk. It means you're a spamer means you're terrible things. It means you're, you know one 800 or whatever, but, you know, it's all come full circle where okay. Maybe, maybe we should have realized that that is okay. And that is what we're doing. Direct two, whoever marketing.

Matthew Dunn: Well, we've gotta.

You know, we've, we've got, we've got a a set of challenges that [00:18:00] are difficult to address. And lemme see if I can parse this really quickly that, that arc up and over of G direct marketing, embarrassing, wrong associations. I, I, I understand that because the digital commons with not a whole lot of rules did.

Overgrazed arguably still is right. Anybody got every, every message in their inbox read and relevant? No, I didn't think so. Right. B bad actors abusing the direct channel are many. yeah, a hundred percent. And, and, and there's a whole, there are industries and sub industries of, of sort of trying to grapple with that and self, self police that, and, and, you know, keep a, keep a bit of a firewall between legit direct and, and, oh my God, would you leave me alone?

Direct . And, and I don't think that's, I don't think that's gone away. The fact that P and G. can can actually say, you know what, this is gonna work for us. They wouldn't be [00:19:00] doing it if it wasn't work for us and it tells you, mm, okay. There's something there. I mentioned text, and this is an interesting one to parce, cuz it's the, it's the new kid on the block in a way.

And I talked with talk with companies who work in that space and will arm wrestl about email versus text, which is a dumb, dumb thing to arm wrestl over. And everybody has the same reaction at the end of the day. Like I'm gonna be really careful who gets to send stuff to my phone number. Mm-hmm right.

Like, would you, do you want your phone going off all the time? I. Right. Absolutely high priority interrupt. We've kind of accepted and started to build, you know, build or buy tools to help us deal with the fact that our inbox is fairly open and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, all the time. Cuz we, I don't think we can change it.

Like the protocols are set and stuff like that. Yeah. But navigating, navigating through that and staying relevant and getting opened, which is not just the subject line, but who the heck sent it argu. Right. Absolutely. It, it is, it is a [00:20:00] very difficult puzzle for that 25 million small, medium, even large business to jump into and do well because the rule book's hard to find.

a

Jay Schwedelson: hundred percent and the rule book also, there's so many variables. I mean, to point, obviously you have your brand and you have all these other variables at play that, you know, what, what works for this company and this, this offer is not necessarily gonna work for this company, you know, and this offer.

Yeah. And you know, It's almost more teaching about the concept of testing more importantly than whatever it is that is, this is going to work for you. Best practice, whatever or interesting. You know, I like to focus on pitfalls to avoid more than things that are really gonna work well. Mm-hmm because if you could eliminate kind of the stuff you really just shouldn't be doing.

Yeah. Then you have a better chance of it all working. And you know, SMS is a super interesting channel. It's highly responsive. I mean, on a, on a contact first contact basis, certainly more responsive than email. If not the most responsive [00:21:00] channel, I don't know what is above it think is yeah. For pure contact level.

I think the challenges, number one is acquiring data that is compliant. I think that's a massive, massive hurdle. I also think that you know, we're, we're, we will see privacy legislation, federal privacy legislation in the next few years. And I think. We're gonna that SMS channel is gonna be even tighter, agreed to build your list around.

So I think it's, and I don't know that email's gonna face the same challenge with SMS world. So it's a hard channel. It's a great channel. If you can navigate it,

Matthew Dunn: if you can navigate it. Yeah. Yeah, I hope we get that legislation and I hope that email. I hope that email isn't kind of thrown in one stack or another, without any consideration for what its particular dynamics are.

Last time I checked because we have no gorillas, we have no lobbyists.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, right. Well, the lobbyists though, you you're right. We don't have, we have some, I mean, Ana's out there lobbying and [00:22:00] IAB, but really emails. That's not on their radar. Right. In my opinion that the, the lobbyists are gonna come from the big, big companies.

Yes, it is. Right. And and there are companies, I mean, look at a company like like a zoom info, for example, mm-hmm right. Zoom info now is, I dunno what the valuation is like 10 billion, whatever. And essentially. I mean, you could go to zoom info today by download it instantly and then, you know, send to it.

Mm-hmm and they're definitely gonna be focused on making sure that that is still a viable yep. You know, mechanism viable a viable way to whatever, you know? And so I think that the companies are gonna be the ones that really, I, I think, try to lobby this the hardest.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Yeah, long, long ran.

I'm actually working, I'm working on a, on a talk trying to pull some of these threads together because we're at a, we're definitely at a change point. Broadly speaking and us is lagged. We, we, we usually. We the [00:23:00] leader lag and if it's privacy and convenience stuff, we're definitely the laggers, right?

Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Right. EU, well, look at our, look at the political emails. I mean, oh my word. wait, wait until like September, October. Yes. Boxes are gonna be, you ever wanna see. What email will look like, you know three or four years from now, you always just look at political emails now. Cause they are the most aggressive.

Yes. The tactics they use are crazy and the volume is insane. The volumes and you know, it's like, it's like seeing the future, you like, it's always like three or four years ahead of what we're doing now. It's it's unbelievable.

Matthew Dunn: Do you guys. As ever,

Jay Schwedelson: never, we will not, we will not touch it, not with a 10 foot pole.

And I'm down here in Florida too. And Florida's the wild west. Let me wanna get into that. So like, yeah, I wouldn't want anything to do with any of that. And that's, that's crazy.

Matthew Dunn: So I, I have read about some of the volume numbers [00:24:00] and my, my jaws on the table. It's like, how would you not bozo filter?

Someone who's hammering you that hard, you know, 20 plus messages a day from the same. Wow. Like, it's

Jay Schwedelson: just amazing that all the political emails, I don't care what side of the you know, par what party you're involved, but they're equally horrible. Right. And I love how they are immune. They don't, you know, they, they, they don't have to file any loss.

That's the best part, which is why ultimately I don't think that email's going to face the same things as SMS and whatnot. All these politicians wanna be able to pound their lists. I mean, just pound their lists. Yeah. It's just a CRA and I can only imagine good point. What's gonna happen September, October.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. yeah. Yeah. And, and none of us have the attention or checkbook to respond, to respond to each of. Meaningfully. So like the, the basic equation is just baloney right out of the gate.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. [00:25:00] I'm interested to see if it it's a boat anchor on email in general, you know, that you go to your inbox in October.

There's so much crap volume of this nonsense of this noise that it, it, it, it weighs down a little bit on all the rest of our emails that we're sending out because the level of bad stuff that's gonna be filling up your inbox is just gonna be exponential this year.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, but anyway, yeah. We'll wow.

Well, let's not depress

Jay Schwedelson: ourselves. I go there. That's not fun. Wait and guru.

Matthew Dunn: Your, your first conference is November.

Jay Schwedelson: November. Yep. We're doing very excited. Yeah. And we're rolling out, you know we're, we're figuring out different speakers or different stuff. Mm-hmm and we're really also trying to make it a little different than some of these other email events that take place.

I feel like sometimes email events, you have the same crew people. You know, everyone's on a cycle, the same people speak in the same voices, the same ideas. And so , we're gonna try to mix that up a little bit here and see if we can get some, some [00:26:00] excitement going now

Matthew Dunn: you yourself have spoken a good number of times at I wanna say inbound, right?

HubSpot event. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Yep. That's a great one.

Matthew Dunn: I HubSpot intrigues me. Yeah. As, as. as a company, as a how they've executed. Like there are a lot of those 25 million folks who have at least some HubSpot things somewhere in their ecosystem, which is like, it's like getting the keys to a super car and going, Hmm.

I wonder if this thing's fun to drive like God, right.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. Hope's fantastic. HubSpot's a great, great platform and this great community that they've built a great

Matthew Dunn: and a lot of content.

Jay Schwedelson: A lot. Oh yeah. A lot of content and inbound is no joke. I mean agree. Last year was virtual. I think they had 65,000 attendees.

Matthew Dunn: Whoa,

Jay Schwedelson: damn. It's really insane. So this year, yeah, I'll be up in Boston this year and they're doing it virtual and in person simultaneously. It's, it's a massive, [00:27:00] massive. And they look, they do a great job. And these user, I be, I, I call to user conference. It's probably not fair to call her to user conference, cuz they're not sitting there shoving HubSpot down your throat.

They're really not doing that. Yeah. Whereas some of the other user conferences, they are in fact user conferences. I mean, I don't have a problem with, you know, Dreamforce. I don't have a problem with Adobe summit, but they are certainly user conferences. Inbound is more for, for everybody because that's also, HubSpot's kind of vibe, you know, they wanna be for yeah.

For everybody. But you touched on something I think is really important, which is in general, I think one of the, the biggest mistakes that people in the email marketing space that are email marketers do is they onboard platforms. And this is not a HubSpot thing is in general, they onboard, they get sold.

On platforms that have all these bells and whistles and they wind up paying for things that they don't use. 90% of the capabilities of the platforms they're on. Yeah. And then, you know, a year in, they get frustrated, like it's cost too much, or they're frustrated for whatever reason, then they wanna move to another platform.

Yeah, [00:28:00] it's this, it's this ongoing of it's like there, the nomads, like everyone just keeps wanting to no one's ever happy. With who they're with or they're like, it's okay. It's fine. It's very expensive. Nobody ever on board. What's good for them. They're like in some version of denial every time they think they need more,

Matthew Dunn: When they don't, well, you know, I I'll put on a, I'll put on a tech vendor in the space hat, right.

We want our business to grow. So we'll, we'll, we'll I'm crap at it, but we'll put on our sales hat and go, oh, this will, this will actually help you. Right man, that is a highly dependent question. This will help you. If you, you know, know what you're doing, have your data organized you know, follow even a modicum of decent practices, da, da, da.

And if those things aren't true, doesn't matter what functions and features in the platform. Right. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and what you, yeah. Yeah. And

Jay Schwedelson: you need the person too, you know one, the S that we're working on in my business, my media [00:29:00] business is that we're trying to build what we're calling a verified consultant network because what we see is every, if you have a platform.

You need help. You have HubSpot, you have , you have, you know, blue core, you have qua I don't care what you have. Yeah. Yeah. You need help. You need a human being. That's really good at that. And invariably that person is not working at that company. Right. Right. And when you, when you onboard, let's say you bring on Marketo.

Okay, great. I have Marketo. When, when you do a deal, Marketo, they go, okay, you get 20 hours of our consultant list, part of your, you know, instance or. and then after the 20 hours, good luck to you. And that's kind of how all these platforms work. You get allotted certain amount of time, and then everybody's kind of lost in the wilderness.

They don't know how to use their damn systems. Yes. And so we're trying to build up for every single platform. You know what we're calling verified consultants that we know, they say, oh, you're having problem with whatever. Great. We're gonna introduce you to this person because it's [00:30:00] like very rarely do you talk to any company and say, we love our platform.

We have an expert on it internally. Mm-hmm totally under control and we are getting the most out of it. Like I don't think I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. Anything I believe you .

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I believe you some versions, chaos. It is a super, it is a super car problem. Yeah. And if you get someone who's on top of it for your company, Yeah, they're going to

Jay Schwedelson: leave, oh yeah.

A hundred percent or they're gonna cost way too much for you to bring 'em on. Right. And, you know, it's just like, and that's why you don't get out anything outta your platform. Yeah. You know, so it's it's a crazy,

Matthew Dunn: you, you mentioned it. I think it's worth a quick riff the cost cost too much. There is a funny dynamic about, I I'd pick on email in particular here that the, this sorta.

Stepchild, no budget thing about email, like stats over and over say how effective it can be as a [00:31:00] channel. And every email marketer I've ever talked to is like, we don't have enough time. We're too busy. We don't have the resources. Like why is that RIT large? That, that something that's effective basically is always sucking, wind looking for resources.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, yeah, it's a hundred percent true. Meanwhile, there is one stat that's floating around this industry. I would say over the last 15 years, which I totally think is a misleading sta that everybody uses, which it says it was from the DMA ironically, but now it's Pedald by everybody that for every dollar spent on email it's return of $46.

Yes. Okay. Yes. It's the dumbest. Da in the world. First of all, it's a load of garbage. Okay. It's not, it's not right. And it's so old and it's based on like the most small. So now the smallest data set of all time has not been updated in 15 years. But if you go and you Google, like what's the value of an, of every dollar you spend, you'll see it everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. That, yeah, it is. It is, this is that that's sta [00:32:00] in and of itself is email where we take information that is so old and legacy, and we just run around with it. Oh for like ever. And that's it, you know, it's, it's like it's just crazy. It's like sticking emoji in your subject. Like, no, I can't do that.

Everything will fall apart. We're like, no, it's not true. What box? Like relax life will go on. Yeah, so. I look, email is never going to be it's the tortoise and the hair. It's it's people always think it's legacy. People always think that it's it's boring and that it's dying. I mean emails, demise been going on, you know, forever.

Yeah. And then will continue being what was gonna kill email. AOL was gonna kill email. Slack was gonna kill email. Facebook messenger was gonna co email. I can't even count how many people have come out with like all these different types of inboxes that. You know, stop email from getting in or this, that, and every year something is killing email.

But it's the cockroach of, of of marketing. , , it's unfortunate that, you know, we're [00:33:00] both involved with it, but

Matthew Dunn: it is. Oh yeah. It's it, it, it, it, it is, it is fascinating because it's a mess. It is fascinating because it's a cockroach, if you will. And. it's quite robust, right. When all said and done, we're talking about 20 plus year old mechanisms.

Oh yeah. That are working and, and keep growing at a ridiculous scale. What are we up to? 317 billion a day or something like that. It's like, holy macro. That's remarkable. Like, that's really remarkable that it's still working. Yeah. And

Jay Schwedelson: even look like with the apple, with the apple change, iOS 15, I mean, how many said, you know, app email's gonna die?

My favorite part about it was, and I know you guys did a lot of work on this. I actually was on your site when it was all happening. You guys had, like, there was good data on it in terms of open rate impact and all of that. And then every article came out and said, everyone, your open rate is dead. No, one's gonna track open rate.

Right? It's it, it's, it's a dead [00:34:00] metric. Let's all focused on the click. It's all click, blah, blah, blah. Engagement's gonna change. And yeah, probably for like the thousand, most sophisticated email people that's actually happening. But the funny part about the iOS 15 thing is when I talk to everybody, I talk regular markers.

I would say 90% of. Have not heard about the Iowas 15 thing. Yeah. Even as of today, they don't even know it exists. Yeah. Yeah. They don't, they still are looking at their open rate and like they're actually highfiving themselves. Cause they think that it's up, it's gone up. Yeah. And they're doing great. They go, every conversation is our open rate is great.

Our click, the rate's not as good, you know, our click to open's not as good. Yeah. But we're doing great. And they're like, some people are just living in, you know, in the dark, I'm a big believer open. Rate's still really, really, really important. That's a directional metric, not as an absolute metric. Because, you know, you could create your own benchmarks, try to beat it still, even with the whole apple thing.

But it's just funny, like, like we live in this like small bubble. We think that everybody knows everything enough.

Matthew Dunn: Well, I, [00:35:00] I, I don't, I don't have these conversations to like pitch company stuff, but we did a, we did a ton of deep technical work and like we've actually wrestled open rates. Back into statistical accuracy.

I actually thought that I saw that. Yeah, but you know what? No one cares. Yeah. They're like, I know, oh my, my ESP has rates and I know that they're inaccurate, but that's fine. And I'm like, Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: like, no, you're a hundred percent. Right. Cause I actually did. And, and again, you know I, I did see that you guys kind of like cracked the code where, you know, there really wasn't and I'm not just blowing smoke.

Cause I'm talking to you. There wasn't really anybody in the marketplace that came up with solution. Nobody else that I saw at least that kind of cracked the code and you guys, and, and to your massive credit, you guys came up with a real viable seemingly super accurate way to do that.

Unfortunately, I believe what you're saying, which is nobody.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Doesn't matter. Nobody cares. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. They're just like, basically everyone's operating. I just get it out. Just send it [00:36:00] out. Did it go out right? Did anybody complain? Yeah. You know, did we get any orders? That's like. You know, they're just not, you know, they don't care, you know, I have to like, okay,

Matthew Dunn: take all of the, take all of the peak and energy and put it in a ball and throw it the waste basket.

Ah, okay. We actually learned, we learned some really useful stuff and it'll be valuable at, at some point or it'll matter to somebody like if you're a publisher yeah. Where the message itself is the thing. Then then knowing better who like who opened is actually probably relevant to your

Jay Schwedelson: business.

Yeah, no, I think super sophisticated email marketers would benefit massively from your, from your tool. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get, we'll

Matthew Dunn: get there. It's was nothing else that was one heck of a technical one I'm sure. Undertaking like, wow, that was, that was, that was a fun ride. We, we have to have to learn some good stuff.

We did some good stuff, so that's okay. Anyway, anyway How do you juggle the things you juggle? That's a lot of companies on your European profile.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, yeah. You [00:37:00] know, it is. And to your credit, I mean, to your point, it is, it is a juggle. You know, I, I I don't, I, I don't know. I, I love all this stuff I really do.

And you know, now that everybody's virtual, we're about a hundred or so people running around yeah. Between all the different stuff. And we took everybody virtual when the pandemic started. And then I decided to keep virtual, we went, decided to go permanently virtual. Did you, and that's been really helpful cause we able to onboard more people and consultants and stuff like that.

Yeah. So to scale up, that's been, that's been really a benefit for us which I never, I never thought we could have been a virtual company before. Interesting. But that's allowed us to be a little bit more flexible and kind of trying to get stuff done.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. Yeah. In the conference business, the fact that we're right now, keeping it all virtual, it it's, it's a much, it's not easy, but it's much easier lift than if we were trying to do stuff in person live conference because yeah.

Yeah. I mean in person stuff is, is just a different animal.

Matthew Dunn: I just got back from Monday. I was up in, [00:38:00] in, in Canada. I live near Canada. I was up in Canada, in a town called Cologna for the first live conference I've been to, since the curtain went down. And I would guess attendance at that conference was maybe 25% of what they'd hoped for wow.

To their credit. They, they did top tier small conference. Like they had the DJ, the lights, the screens they're like they did, they did it. Right. And it was delightful. To be there and they didn't have a virtual leg to it, which, which was the right decision for that kind of content. But I'm like, Hmm. I think conference businesses to like, to what you're doing have, have an interesting, like three fork road ahead of them.

Do we go live only? Do we go hybrid? Do we go online? Do we go online only? Right. Just like companies are facing that same. Forks, you know, forks in the road, you know, what's

Jay Schwedelson: interesting is that I've never been, you know, we launched this guru event. That's the mothership of guru conference and I I'd [00:39:00] never been in this business.

I never put on a conference before, so I'd never spoken to sponsors before. Yeah. And so now we're having, you know, all these conversations, we got a bunch of sponsors, which is great, but the sponsors actually prefer in person. Yes. They, you. . I mean, they do not, and they, yes, they don't love the virtual thing cuz they don't, they can't sell clothes, do whatever.

So with that, that dynamic was a little in, you know I didn't expect that. Interesting. You know, how, how much they were like, no, we want in person, I went to the first, I went to my first conference. I've been to in a while, a couple weeks ago. It was in There was about a thousand people there. So it was so funny though.

So when you go to the registration desk, they asked you, do you want a green, yellow, or red badge? And I go to them, I go, I don't know what you're talking about. And she goes, well, green badge means you're really shake hands. Yellow means you only want to do elbow. And red means you only wait. And so I'm like, gimme the green, everyone's walking around.

They're like, you know, elbowing or [00:40:00] waving. And it was just like, you know, it was a whole situation. It was wild. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It was, yeah. This woman who comes up to me, she was wearing a red and, you know, look, I'm all for it. I'm very into vaccination, all that stuff, but she was there. She was wearing the red, which means don't go near and she had, you know, ma mask on and the whole.

And she's like can I have your business card? So I go to give my business card. She goes, oh, I don't wanna touch it. I go, okay, what do we do? She goes, well, you just hold it up so I can take a picture of it. And I said to the woman, I go, listen, I love meeting her. I go, but if this is, you know, if you're this like, kind of like worried, which is fine, I go, why are you doing here?

You know? It's like, yeah, yeah. Don't, you know, it's just, you know, it's a crazy world. It's just

Matthew Dunn: a crazy world. Yeah. And we're, we we're fumbling our. Back personally, professionally and so on back to your sponsor thing for a second. It, it is a tough decision. I mean, I'll put on my, put on my tech, you know, vendor hat for a second.

Yeah. I live sponsorships always drove me crazy cuz [00:41:00] if you've got someone who's really good at conference sales and making the rounds and getting the intros, it pays off. Yeah. And if that's not your stick, it's like, oh, how many thousands am I. Flush down the hole of the booth and all that other stuff.

And the virtual conferences like the early attempts at that couple years ago were you know, we did some sponsorships and it was like, ah, that was kind of money flush down the support, the industry help our friends in the conference business hole. And as it's reformulated. man, we gotta be better than just a random sales conversation or the virtual stuff is, is gonna, is I don't know how the business model for that actually works.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. I don't think it's hard. It's hard. We've tried, you know, we've tried really hard to come out with things that can lead to tangible, you know, opportunities. Right. So, I mean, not to, and I'm not trying to promote like conference order, but just ideas that we came out that we're doing. So for example, At the end of every session, when you do a virtual [00:42:00] session, it has you say, it gives you, you, you rate the speaker, you know, is this pretty good?

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. That's what you do it normally in every virtual session. So what we're doing is we're having a sponsor being able to ask, you know, like one or two questions say, are you in the market, you know, for a new platform or do you need help with whatever? Yes, no. Would you like to hear from so and so, and so that question's gonna be, you know, asked at the end of every session to.

You know, everybody attending that session and then the leads are gonna go to that song. We try to create things. You actually get an opportunity rather than just your logo floating around. Yeah. Who cares about that? You know, type of thing, but it is hard, you know, it's a different, it's a different animal.

It's a

Matthew Dunn: different animal. Yeah. And you know, we'll figure it out. It, this is a weird input, but the most useful conference I ever remember going to was on September 10th, 2000.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, that's a, that's a crazy day. Almost

Matthew Dunn: a crazy, well, no, the next day was crazy. Right, right, right. But the conference get this.

The conference [00:43:00] was, I was a CIO at the time big company and the conference was on a cruise ship and it was vendors paid. CIOs folks like me got to go free, but because it was on a cruise ship and they had the sort of scheduled meetings with the vendor and like, you signed up, if you're going, you're gonna sit down with these vendors that you're interested in talking to.

It took a lot of the random who's really good at buttonholing people out of the conversation. And I had these. Awesome. 30 or 45 minute slots to really dig in with the guys who were in the, I don't know, data warehouse or whatever the heck this space was like, we were having surprisingly useful com I don't think we'll use you guys, but I really understand what your stuff does now.

You really understand why we won't use you guys and let's stay in touch. And so on asked to risk being on a British flagged cruise ship on the, the next morning. Okay. Was a freaking strange experience. Yeah. That that's because they made us go into international [00:44:00] waters and be out of contact all day.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, wow.

Yeah. That is

Matthew Dunn: bizarre. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah. My, my nine 11 experience was, was

Jay Schwedelson: distinct, you know for me, I was in the city on the 10th. And on the 11th. Yeah, I was supposed to do an in person class at the world trade center for the direct marketing association, teach them email basics. So email 1 0 1 on the 11th.

And I was in the city. I came in on the 10th and I was supposed to be there on the 11th. And then it was gonna be like, I don't know, like in the afternoon or something and it obvious that was it. It was just the craziest. It was just the weirdest thing. So yeah, that was look, that was just a crazy time in general.

Yeah. I

Matthew Dunn: mean, last, last change event of that magnitude of, of what we're grappling with, you know, post pandemic of like, okay, the rules are different. Yeah, we'll sort 'em out

Jay Schwedelson: yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. And look, email's been a huge, huge thing during the pandemic. Yeah. [00:45:00] For a lot of reasons, because obviously not just communication channel, especially also on the, on the B2B side of marketing.

because you, there were, you know, you couldn't send out direct mail anymore to people. You don't know where they are. Right. You don't know where to find people. And email is one of the channels that, you know, you could find people no matter, no matter where they are. Yeah. So if anything, email went through even more of a Renaissance, I think, during the pandemic then, then even

Matthew Dunn: before.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I think, I think, I think you're right about that. I, I, I think we'll. We will find the new rule book, pull itself together and go, wow. That did work really well, but the practitioner who's doing it is probably so busy continuing to do it. Well,

Jay Schwedelson: you don't have time to write the book a hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's spinning a lot of plates, a hundred percent spending a lot of

Matthew Dunn: plates. Indeed. Well, you're spend, you're spending a lot of plates yourself. Well, I I am looking forward to seeing your conference come to life.

Jay Schwedelson: Yes really am. Yeah. And we'll have [00:46:00] to talk offline about getting you involved, you know?

That would be cool. Yeah, that, that would be cool. It's it's

Matthew Dunn: gonna be fun. One parting question. What, what, if anything, do you think will be different about email in three to five years? the future of email question.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. That's, that's the name of the podcast? Right. I, I do think that I think that eventually this whole idea of, of interactivity of emails will start to take hold.

I think more, you know, this whole idea of amp and, and all this stuff. I know markets are messing with it now. I do think fast forward three to five years, I think email will look more like websites that are being deliver. I think we'll get there. I do think that that we'll get there. And my hope for email is that there's a level of sophistication that the average marketer has that they don't have.

Today that's that's. My hope that there's a proliferation of, of good [00:47:00] information. But if you fast forward, I don't think it's going to be radically different. I mean, if you look back five years ago and to five years to now, it's not, I don't think it's that much different. Yeah, I'd agree. So so I don't think that the form, and I don't think you're gonna lose your front address and your subject line and your free header and your body copy and yeah.

Yeah. I, I just don't see that happening. What do you.

Matthew Dunn: I, I think we've got a lot of work ahead of us to achieve the first part of your vision. And I've got some very strong opinions about how to get there, which I have to take the time to, you know, push and write down and support and stuff like that. But I, I think the technical and standards work to make email more interactive is running into the FA freight train of privacy.

And that it's gonna make it even harder to pull that off. So I suspect it'll look more like today's than yesterday's more like [00:48:00] today's and, and less like what we'd like it to be. If we're, if we've started to move in a, in a richer, more medium, more interactive. Direction, which is kind of my that's my bag.

Yay. Great. I will be there pushing. I hope so, right. I'm not gonna stop pushing. I looked this up to, to fit into the talk I'm doing next week. About all this stuff, you can still get a radio in a Tesla. And why am I talking about. Radio is from the thirties. There's two standards. Your car has an AMFM radio.

So does mine. And you can get an am AFM radio in a Tesla technologies. Don't go away, particularly communication technologies. They kind of Jostle for what's their role and function. And they keep finding a role in function and they don't actually go away. Even when they're that old it's 500 bucks. To get a radio in your Tesla, but you can get a radio in your Tesla.

Yeah,

Jay Schwedelson: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that is email. I mean, the email's not going [00:49:00] anywhere. Not going

Matthew Dunn: anywhere. No,

Jay Schwedelson: totally agree. Unless everybody can collectively always remember every password and they don't need to do a forgot my password button. You know, then email might have a problem, but until everybody can remember every password, I think we're sales.

What

Matthew Dunn: that, I mean, that utility use of email, like that one's fascinating in and of itself. Like, you know, we, we, we create systems and when we were putting the, how does someone sign in, what did we do? Email and password,

Jay Schwedelson: right? Like you got to got, I dunno, right. Social media will kill email, but by the way, you need email to use social, social media.

Matthew Dunn: yeah. That's it. Well, Jay, we could probably go for hours on this, which I would certainly enjoy, but I wanna respect your time. Thanks so much for the conversation today. Yeah,

Jay Schwedelson: this is awesome. Thank you for, including me. It's a pleasure and you know, I'm a big fan of what you're doing, so thank you.

Matthew Dunn: Cool.

My guest has been Jay Schwedelson. Founder of subject line.com and president and CEO. Outcome media. Thanks, Jay. All right. Cool. [00:50:00] Thank you.