A Conversation with Jen Capstraw of Women In Email

Women of Email is a dream turned reality — a professional network for women working in email marketing. Jen Capstraw, one of the co-founders, joined host Matthew Dunn for a deeply informed conversation about email.

As a former journalist, professional marketer/speaker as well as non-profit founder, Jen has a deep affection for the email space: "No strangers in the room", or words to that effect, as she says! As this conversation took place in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, global events did hijack some of the conversation time — but true to the world of email, there are some terrific email companies there and Jen speaks of them.

She also shares some fascinating observations and hunches about the opportunities for neurodiverse people in the email space; email is at once highly structured and quite chaotic, which not just anyone can handle.

Women of Email, along with the Email Geeks (Slack) community, have pioneered compensation transparency, now requiring compensation figures with job postings. This lead to a deep discussion about the evolving workforce — talent, education, and the changing levers of "labor" and companies.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email marketing. And this is like the, this is like the podcast buddies, uh, uh, conversation because gen cap, straw of, uh, many parts of email, including women of email, but also host of a podcast herself is my guest today. Welcome Jen.

[00:00:28] Thank you. Talk to your dad. Hey, we finally, we finally get to connect. You are a, a sort of long it's, you're a storied figure, an email you're one of the co-founders of women of email, right?

[00:00:39] Jen Capstraw: That's right. Founded in 2016. But I sent my first campaign in 2002. So celebrating 20 years of email this year,

[00:00:50] Matthew Dunn: and a background in journalism before that, I think he told me as we were chatting beforehand.

[00:00:55] Jen Capstraw: Yeah. I started in radio and TV. So I spent about five years doing that. Did not like TV, really enjoyed radio. So podcasting is fun for me. Um, and I did a little bit of everything. I was a cohost of a morning show on a a hundred thousand watt station in the Savannah market. I was the assistant news director for a seven station radio group.

[00:01:17] Uh, I did traffic reports. I did weather reports. I did commercials. I did, uh, live remotes. They would just send me to places to do live commercials and try to draw people to wherever I was. So usually that was hanging out at a beach bar in Tybee island. Come hang out with me, have a crank and hang out with

[00:01:41] Matthew Dunn: the, on the radio.

[00:01:42] So it's a very interesting perspective to have having journalism then. Email, what, what's your, what's your take on your form of profession? What's the state of journalism.

[00:01:59] Yeah, MI,

[00:02:02] Jen Capstraw: I'm not sure a lot of journalism exists anymore. Um, you know, back in the nineties, I don't remember having any awareness of bias in media, like, like very obvious leaning, left, leaning, right. More conservative, more progressive. It wasn't something that was on my radar whatsoever. And, um, a few years after I got out of the biz, my then spouse turned on Fox news and it was just on for a few minutes.

[00:02:34] And I was like, is it legal for them to say that on TV? Like, what is this, what is this? And I feel like the conservative media has kind of created the more liberal meetup meetings. Right. There was like, uh, the counteracting force. Like, I don't remember CNN being super biased in the nineties and the early odds, but we definitely see that very liberal bend now.

[00:03:01] And it just is kind of a counterpoint to conservative media. It seems.

[00:03:06] Matthew Dunn: And, and, and, and you did something at some, illogically very interesting there, we were talking about journalism and then we're talking about media and they're not the same thing, but they'd be, they become very inseparable, right? Yeah.

[00:03:22] Yeah. Because, and I, and I agree with you. I mean, I think of Walden, you are no am, uh, yeah, we, we, weren't talking about bias in the media was there probably, but it was kind of like one big square bias. Like there used to be one big square telephone com. And now fractured and, uh, you really got to check your sources and wait, who do I listen to?

[00:03:48] And, uh, if you don't, if you don't share the same media as someone you're literally not talking from the same from any sort of shared worldview and it makes it fricking tough, doesn't it?

[00:03:58] Jen Capstraw: Yeah. Um, and you know, I can't remember ever trying to infuse a personal point of view into anything that I did when I was a journalist.

[00:04:08] Like here's the information. I, it didn't even occur to me to be anything but objective. Right. And, uh, but I guess people were still kind of gullible back then. My news director came in one day and he had a letter from his grandchild's daycare that said that, uh, there was a flesh eating virus on bananas going around.

[00:04:33] And so you're no longer permitted to drop off the kids with. Uh, snacks. And he gives me this letter and he's like, oh, this is a big deal. You need to do a story about the flesh eating bacteria on bananas. And I'm like, dude, if, if bananas were going to kill us, do you think they'd be in the grocery store?

[00:04:55] That's not how this works, man. Like, how are you going to news? So quality journalism. Anyway, I think I Snopes existed back then. I think I found an article on Snopes that this was just kind of a. Barley conspiracy theories that need a debunking, but it was circulating in, in like a paper form. If it's a literally being printed out and handed out to parents and grandparents,

[00:05:27] Matthew Dunn: uh, you know, we w we always had the capacity to pass bologna along, but we didn't have the reach with said baloney that we do now, the planetary reach by, uh, my, my, my wife.

[00:05:40] Um, my wife is a journalist originally as well. Um, In marketing and arts marketing, but so she made that sort of same, you know, no, you're not going to be a hard-boiled reporter with a cigar between your teeth, honey, because that just doesn't work that way anymore. But she's got a sense of the, uh, you know, of, of the, the, the notion of journalistic standards that were, were sort of front and center when she was learning her trade.

[00:06:06] And we'll, we'll, we'll end up on that topic frequently, as we look at this really fractured landscape for information and knowledge and fact, and alternative fact, I choke, as I say that and all of that kind of stuff, and it's, it's more complicated. And as you and I are speaking now, day after international women's day, um, we're seeing this play out live in Russia, where, what the S what the people inside that country know of what's happening in Ukraine, we would say is probably not that factual.

[00:06:43] Jen Capstraw: Well, their internet is getting cutting cut off. Right? Like first it was some social media being shut down in Russia. And now they're going to be isolated from access to the full internet. Yes, that's terrifying.

[00:06:58] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's and that's when we were talking about this 25 or so year span where both of us have been around things like email and where we did have sort of a planetary network for a stretch.

[00:07:11] And now we don't and Russia is going to be the most visible exit from that. Yeah. Tariff. Why is it terrifying? Yeah.

[00:07:19] Jen Capstraw: Because when you don't have access to information, what, what can you possibly believe? How do you know what the truth is? Wait, is Russia about to become North Korea? Is it going to become that isolated?

[00:07:33] Um, and is it, is it going to be forever? Is it going to be a short-term thing? Are there must be some awareness. There's got to be a contingent of folks. Like I've definitely heard that there are people who are protesting the war. Um, so there, there is definitely a demographic that has some awareness of the, what we would consider facts about what's happening over there.

[00:07:58] So what's, what is the response going to be? Will there be revolution? I don't know, but what a moment in history?

[00:08:06] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, it's a strange sensation. I thought we were at past this and obviously we're not, and I mean, you can, you can pin it on, you know, the one guy, the one guy kicking all of it off, but at the same time, there's a pretty big dynamics at play that make it, you know, make it possible.

[00:08:24] And, and, uh, and our limiting, our limiting the response, um, from countries outside of Ukraine right now. True, true, odd story. I was in a con you, you must know Jordi van Ryn. Of course, of course, Jordy contacted me yesterday. He's doing a bunch of terrific outreach based in Amsterdam doing a bunch of terrific outreach to try and help, particularly the email companies that are in.

[00:08:53] Which there are quite a few of, but I was chatting with Jordy and he was rattling through some of that. He said Stripe. And I said, oh yeah, I've been meaning to talk with them. I'm going to be great to do an integration between campaign genius and your editor. And he said, oh, okay, I'll connect you with Dimitria.

[00:09:06] And I'm like I said, because they're based in the Ukraine and he's like, oh yeah. They're like shipping code is the shells fall. And literally two hours after you. And I finished talking, I'm going to be on a call with Dmitri, from Ukraine to talk about integration, which makes me just kind of go, wow, they're continuing to work in the middle of.

[00:09:27] Jen Capstraw: Wow. Wild. Yeah. I know. Um, a couple months ago you interviewed April Mullen. I know she's been in touch with him and, you know, she's been pretty worried about him. He he's someone who is very known in the industry and it is very scary that one of our own is going through this. But I guess, um, it's good that it's sort of business as usual at the same time.

[00:09:51] Glad that, you know, he hasn't had to shut down or anything, but safety is

[00:09:57] Matthew Dunn: concerning. Hey, he hasn't, hasn't had to shut down. Jordy said, look, the best thing we can do for them in some senses is to try to keep doing business and keep revenue flowing. It's like all people, wonderful people who are booking Airbnbs in Ukraine with no intent of staying there.

[00:10:13] But to me true, who I've not met yet, um, has another business east Sputnik's dot R U that's pretty much blown up. Right? Let's see Russian customers. Yeah. Not so much. Anymore Sputnik, maybe not the best brand, uh, on the world market right now. So I'm sure he's trying to figure out where to take the assets customer base from that, in this, in this blown up world landscape in this quick reef restructuring that we're trying to pull off,

[00:10:47] Jen Capstraw: he is a scrappy savvy businessman.

[00:10:50] So I know that he'll figure it out. Yeah,

[00:10:53] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like, he represents, he represents the way his country is conducting themselves scrappy savvy. We're 14 days in and they are by no means done yet. And like, yay, go, you know, go Ukraine. We're on your side. Right? So let's, let's start this back to email.

[00:11:13] I'll give you a, I'll give you an off ramp and then we'll get there. Here's the off ramp I read the other day that some country, I want to say Lithuania, but that's not as big as my state. Maybe it was Lithuania where there's a signif. Uh, Russian ex-pat population are launched a project to try and make, I believe the target was 40 million phone calls to friends and relatives in Russia, Russian speakers, talking to Russian speakers to say, yeah, what you're hearing on the news is not the truth.

[00:11:43] Here's, what's actually happening. They're trying to do it by telephone, which I thought was interesting. What's the role for email in this changing the information landscape between nations? I

[00:11:55] Jen Capstraw: wish I knew. I mean, if the internet is shut down, our messages going to reach Russia, I don't know if email's going to be an open channel for us.

[00:12:10] I'm sure it's been used extensively. You know right now. Um, I also, when I did hear that, you know, Facebook and Twitter access was becoming limited, um, I did hear that WhatsApp is wide open still. So that is still, uh, an option for communication and

[00:12:28] Matthew Dunn: telegrams hard to stop

[00:12:31] Jen Capstraw: telegrams. Do they exist

[00:12:34] Matthew Dunn: telegram the platform?

[00:12:36] I'm not familiar with that platform. Yeah, Telco's fascinating. Telegram is functionally somewhat like WhatsApp. It's a private messaging platform, but the two brothers behind it are Russian. They built what's what became sort of the Facebook of Russia. And I forget the name of the platform, but they basically got sideways with the oligarchs.

[00:12:58] Their platform started to get, it was taken away from them. And they said the heck with you guys left the country and founded telegram, which is this quite secure. Messaging platform in theory, end to end encrypted. And it has the capability to do things like let's make a room for 200,000 people on this particular topic.

[00:13:20] And it's, it's very instrumental in what's happening right now. Is it blocked in Russia? I don't know, but from what I'd read technologically, it's hard to block. Um, so yeah, mess other messaging channels, including email, maybe playing a role in information flow in and out of that country, but we don't really know.

[00:13:39] Do we know?

[00:13:41] Jen Capstraw: And I've been wondering, um, you know, are people going to be turning to like some kind of satellite connections? Uh, are they going to be able to get their hands on the equipment to like tap into that? I don't know. I just, I feel like the people will figure it out or they're gonna find the work around.

[00:13:59] People that are smart. People are survivors and

[00:14:03] Matthew Dunn: yeah,

[00:14:03] Jen Capstraw: I just can't imagine this is permanent. You know, if, if this happened 20 years ago, it would be a different situation, but it's happening now in this information age and cutting off information. It's not going to go over too well with a lot of people. I can't imagine

[00:14:21] Matthew Dunn: put an asterisk beside your monitor that says watch for the S at the end, when we start seeing internets show up more and more, we'll have we'll have hit a new time because there are, there are Internet's plural right now.

[00:14:37] If you look at information flow in China versus not, if you look at information flow in North Korea versus not like some of the same protocols, but. The S not the same, you know, meshed network that all of these mini services, right on top of Russia's been prepping for close to a decade to be able to cut themselves off.

[00:15:00] They've gone so far as to try to have their own DNS servers. And if they can pull that off that's, that's like, you know, that's taking the rug out from under structurally. I don't build that. They're all the way there yet, but to trying to get there, and they're trying to get there fast now.

[00:15:15] Jen Capstraw: Well, it's undermining their economy.

[00:15:17] So, I mean, if you, there are a lot of rich people in Russia right there when you're rich people start moving, losing money that

[00:15:30] Matthew Dunn: no, it's not going to go over too well, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the ruble tried crash of the ruble. Um, I wonder if that nation here we are geopolitics, right? The gunny ended up like agrarian 19th century economy for the most.

[00:15:47] Um, and the lifeline at the moment is there petroleum exports. And if we get ticked enough, will we cut that up? Widen just what yesterday said, that's it us cause that, and we're not the biggest buyer by a long shot because there's oceans in the way and stuff like that. But that's the beginning of a movement.

[00:16:05] If, if the EU can wean itself off, then that economic lifeline,

[00:16:11] Jen Capstraw: the tech industry in Russia, it exists. Like there are ESPs in Russia. We've got members of women of email in Russia and we, we can't, you know, just cutting them off from the world and destroying their businesses is it's not going to go over. I just, I can't imagine that this is, I, it feels like this is a road bump.

[00:16:33] This is not a permanent thing.

[00:16:37] Matthew Dunn: I sincerely hope that your instinct is right. Really. Cause it an island economy just doesn't seem like a great equation right now. I mean, you mentioned North Korea, that's, that's probably the best current example of it. They don't really trade that much. They don't really, you know, import export, even information flow, not so much right.

[00:16:58] Is, and you have people more or less starving to death they're on a frequent basis. It would be a shame to see such a large, innovative, successful nation is Russia end up in that same state at the same time. I don't think they should get to do what they're doing and continue to play on the field with every, all the other kids,

[00:17:22] Jen Capstraw: world police have agreed with you

[00:17:26] Matthew Dunn: quickly, right?

[00:17:27] Astonishingly quickly like, wow, that was a fast response. God, that's probably good. And we've not done that before either. We've not actually cut accounts and I'm waiting for some yachts to start sinking. You know,

[00:17:46] Jen Capstraw: it, this, the world has changed. You know, you can't be a shameless capitalist anymore. There's an obligation that comes with power and leadership, and we're seeing that exercised right. There are. Companies that are taking losses to be a part of stopping this war, stopping this attack, right. They're pulling out of Russia and that costs them money right then and there they're choosing to do the right thing.

[00:18:17] So it's, um, the, where we are technologically in the world, combined with this, this trend toward, um, greater empathy and greater, greater understanding of people who are different than us. All of this is like combining together into this moment in time. And that's what makes, gives me a hope that this just doesn't, I don't think that people are going to just roll over and accept this situation because they are used to being connected to the world.

[00:18:47] And this is an unacceptable change,

[00:18:51] Matthew Dunn: right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and we've not tried to go back from that connectedness until this moment, right. We're not seeing a large number of people. Or at least those nominally in charge of a large number of people say, no, no, no, no, well, let's, let's cut the card. We'll be fine.

[00:19:09] And, and I'm, I've got to think it'd be very, very hard to say goodbye to if you're inside, if you're inside a country getting cut off, how do you say goodbye to that global reach for knowledge, relationships, information exchange that you had for probably most of your life. Right? Relatively young, relatively young populous there, like seeing that go away seems like an amazing date.

[00:19:33] Stand for it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:37] Jen Capstraw: I knew we were going to go down this path. I would have, would have brushed up on the news. I've just got like, what little bit of information I get from my NPR podcast.

[00:19:48] Matthew Dunn: Well, well, you know, you, your ex journalists, right? Like where we're simultaneously so much more informed, it's so much less knowledgeable than we were.

[00:19:58] It seems like right. You know, For four or five monitors staring at me. Right. Do I really know what's going on? I don't know. Right. I don't know. Cause cause the amount of information on just one topic is overwhelming by itself. Right. Keeping up with one industry email. So it can be almost overwhelming.

[00:20:19] Women of email has members in Russia. You said? Yes. Yeah. You can shoot six, 6,000 I think.

[00:20:26] Jen Capstraw: Is that correct? Yeah. Over 6,000. And last time I checked, I think it was 66 countries.

[00:20:32] Matthew Dunn: It's really something. Congratulations. I know that doesn't just happen. Right? Took work. Took vision to cooperation. A lot of work, right?

[00:20:41] 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit entity. Yes. Yes. Oh, cool. Cool. And do you, you're on a, I know you're on a board or something like that. Like do you have an active day to day? Um,

[00:20:54] Jen Capstraw: well, the organization is a hundred percent volunteer run. And, um, so the board is a working board. Everybody is contributing in some way. And, um, most of the board members are sponsoring some kind of a program.

[00:21:10] You know, that we've got one person who sponsors the, uh, speakers bureau and does most of the speaker matching and the person who's sponsoring, um, career programming, um, and another person sponsoring social events and meetups. So everyone kind of has a little area of responsibility. Nobody gets paid, they don't have much money.

[00:21:31] And, um, I'm I guess, basically operations. Um, I'm pretty busy, so yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:42] Matthew Dunn: Well, let's, let's pick an, a women and emails will get off geopolitics released the minute. Uh, it took him an email. I I'm I'm from Colorado. Originally, Colorado was the first state about a year ago to add the requirement that job postings have salary at the bottom Washington, where I live now is actually looking at doing the same thing.

[00:22:01] And I saw you just announced like yesterday international women's day that women have emails headed the same direction, right? Comp compensation has to be part of a job description if it's going to be shared via, via your organization. Is that correct?

[00:22:15] Jen Capstraw: Exactly. We started encouraging that transparency a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago.

[00:22:21] Um, we get contacted by a lot of hiring managers and recruiters who want us to share their job posts with our community. And, and we do that and we do that free of charge. And during a meeting one week, um, Kristin bond, one of the other co-founders said, well, why don't we just start asking them? Comp information.

[00:22:43] Let's make it mandatory. If you're asking the board to share your post, then the board member that they're dealing with, or if they're filling out the form, that's on our website, it's mandatory. We're just, we're not going to share it. If you don't tell us. And we instituted that policy, we got a little bit of pushback here and there, but most of the time companies were pretty cool about it.

[00:23:05] Recruiters were pretty cool about it. And then we started really encouraging it on within the community. So when a member was to post an opportunity, there was no obligation for them to do it, but we started normalizing it and normalizing the idea of asking what is the compensation. And I used positive reinforcement to continue to encourage the activity.

[00:23:29] So for a number of years, every single time someone posted a job and it included salary. I replied. Thank you for posting salary. Thank you for posting salary. Thank you for posting salary and doing that a gazillion times over several years, it worked, people started doing it all the time, and then if it wasn't posted, then members would ask, well, do you know the salary?

[00:23:53] What's the compensation. They started asking point blank. Yeah. And so then our friends who are the administrators of the email geeks, slack community. Yeah. They heard that we were doing this and they were not seeing a lot of folks sharing compensation. And so they made an announcement a few months ago that compensation was going to become mandatory because of what we were doing.

[00:24:17] And, um, they had a 30 day grace period. And then after that 30 day period, they would just delete any posts that did not include comp and. We were like, well, we have not actually made this mandatory, but they thought we did, which made it easy for them to say, Hey, we're following women of females lead. And then it made it really easy for us to go, well, we're going to go all in on this too, because Hey, email geeks is different.

[00:24:45] So it was actually a

[00:24:46] Matthew Dunn: little bit of a, and

[00:24:49] Jen Capstraw: we've been talking about it for a while. And international women's day seemed like an appropriate time to make that announcement. The theme this year was what was the hashtag break? The bias. Yes. Yes. That's

[00:25:05] Matthew Dunn: crossing my arms if you listening.

[00:25:07] Jen Capstraw: Exactly. So hashtag break the bias and, you know, bias is often the reason that women are not getting top dollar offers and, uh, opportunities to, um, to ascend into leadership positions from whatever role they're currently in.

[00:25:27] And, uh, so yeah, we were like, this is a good time to say we're going to do something. We're going to continue to bring more transparency to, to what is competitive in our industry. And since we started a few years ago, really encouraging that transparency, I don't know how many folks have said to me. I have been able to, um, double my salary, increase it by 50% by two, a hundred percent.

[00:25:54] And a couple of people told me that they have tripled their salary. And at first that feels very like heartwarming and rewarding that these people are making so much more money, but it also lets you know, they were grossly, grossly underpaid in way to be able to triple their compensation. So we know, we know that we have, we've definitely led the charge on this.

[00:26:20] We've definitely created change. Um, litmus does a survey each year, uh, women in email, I think it's what it's called. And we, we did a lot of, uh, social media announcements about this new posting policy yesterday. And there's a link to the Littmann the last litmus survey that, um, quantified what the wage gap is.

[00:26:41] And since women have email was organized, the survey results are showing a shrinking wage gap, which is incredible. And we do want to take some credit for that, but the wage gap does still exist. Um, 94 cents on the dollar in email, specifically, there could be a survey bias there because folks who are most likely to fill out that survey tend to be embedded in email communities and have access to more information, have access to more, um, From the community.

[00:27:16] And those folks are probably going to be most likely to get top dollar, to really negotiate effectively and folks who maybe are not so aware of those communities and those resources might still be suffering. So the, the wage gap that is being quantified currently is probably a little bit biased by people who are very active in communities, because they're the ones who are going to be aware of these surveys because they're promoted pretty widely there.

[00:27:40] But, um, it does appear that the wage gap is shrinking, but the explanation, the primary explanation for it appears to be women are not ascending beyond the manager level at the same rates that men are. So when you ascended to more senior leadership, obviously you're going to make more money and it's just, there's not equal representation of men and women beyond the manager point.

[00:28:05] Right.

[00:28:05] Matthew Dunn: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I get to pick on her again because she's my favorite person in the world, but my, my, my. Birthday international women's day. So I always know when international women's day is because her birthday was yesterday. Um, she was, she w she was in an MBA program. She did an MBA at a women's only MBA program at Simmons college.

[00:28:28] It doesn't, it doesn't really exist in that, in that form, um, anymore. So she was, you know, she was clued in tuned in early on, relatively speaking lifespan, uh, to wait a minute, this is like, this is cockamamie and, and, and, and has been sort of helped me tune into the fact that structurally we're S we're S we're still, we have a level of the playing field all the way up through the proverbial glass ceiling, which I think is what you're saying.

[00:28:58] I think I could be wrong, but demographics is destiny. I think if you look at higher ed enrollment patterns alone, that that's going to continue to change because the supply. Of educated men is getting pretty fricking tiny proportionately, you know, it's, you know, it's three to it's like two and a half or three to one on a lot of campuses now.

[00:29:23] Jen Capstraw: No, it was that predominantly female. I knew that there were more women completing their degrees than men, but I don't really know the stats on that

[00:29:30] Matthew Dunn: average college campus is a two to one ratio right now. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I got, I've got two sons, one just the second one, just finishing college. So I'm sort of current on the college enrollment stats.

[00:29:43] It's like, wow. Like really quite a big, like almost tectonic shift there and just run it forward. Just like how many, how many, uh, sorry. Uh, I'll I'll put my higher ed bias out here. How many folks who can't even get through college to expect to see in the C level seat? Not that many of them, right. Bill gates is an exception.

[00:30:04] Sorry. Uh, so from that perspective, the supply of women in the workforce with. Thinking skills, education, communication skills they get from education is actually going to outpace. And hopefully that's going to be part of the factor that makes this level out.

[00:30:23] Jen Capstraw: But that also means there are more women saddled with education debt, and I'm hearing more and more folks say in the industry, do you need a college degree to do email?

[00:30:34] You really don't nobody's teaching it. It's not something you can learn and then move into a job. Like nobody, nobody is like, oh, my ambition is to be an email marketing strategist or developer, or

[00:30:47] Matthew Dunn: you couldn't study you couldn't gender. DaVinci's a post the other day. Like she couldn't, you couldn't study it.

[00:30:51] If you wanted to, most places, it's not a program you see? Yeah. But that's a, that's a very topic specific thing to ask for. You don't have a background in email. I don't have a background in email and here we are working, right. Nobody has an accurate background in. But did, did the things I learned or the badge that says has the stubbornness to complete degree factor into being able to do what I do.

[00:31:18] Absolutely.

[00:31:20] Jen Capstraw: I don't know. I, I would say that everything that I have learned that has contributed to my success in the email industry was after college.

[00:31:34] But I had a natural savvy for, for like problem solving and never taking no for an answer. And email is a puzzle email. You have to work within such bizarre constraints and things that you can't control. It's difficult to do, and that's not for everyone, but those of us who love this industry, we're, we're drawn to that.

[00:31:58] And when you walk into an email event, there's no strangers in that room, everyone, there's, there's a little bit of a like-mindedness despite our diverse, diverse backgrounds and so forth. But, um, yeah, you're among friends. Like I was just at last month and yeah, it's, it's old friends and new friends and you're, you're never with strangers.

[00:32:20] It's a beautiful community, like very supportive and very like-minded. So. I don't know if there's any reason that we're, we should even continue to see job specs, even mention an undergraduate degree,

[00:32:37] Matthew Dunn: but you just narrowed down a whole bunch from a broad observation on my part. That's a supply of educated women in the workforce.

[00:32:46] Not just email is going to be a lot bigger. So we, if we rabbit hole on higher ed, good, bad dying or not, we'll never end up back on an email. I'd rather stay on email, but being an interesting one to discuss over a beer. Cause it really is. It really is, uh, an incredible shift right now that we're grappling with 66% of software developers are saying.

[00:33:10] No cop side degree,

[00:33:12] Jen Capstraw: I made a, um, a meme. Cause I try to do that sometime so that I can be

[00:33:21] there. There's this image of a dog with his own leash in his mouth. He's walking himself and it's pinned at the top of my Twitter right now. And the caption I put on it was, you know, learning, email marketing, nobody teaches you email

[00:33:39] Matthew Dunn: mark, email marketing. Yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. It's a, it's a, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a Guild, right?

[00:33:46] I mean, as, as I've started to learn the space in the last few years and started to meet people and it's a bit of a, I won all the personal connections, which you talked about, um, no strangers in the room and, and many of them seem to have, you know, gotten in, gotten hooked, started learning from so-and-so moved on to another job at stayed in touch with so-and-so and, and eventually.

[00:34:09] They're they're in and they're gonna probably not gonna go somewhere else. Cause most other industries are, are rude, nasty by comparison and not as fascinating. Right?

[00:34:20] Jen Capstraw: Well, I've got some theories about the people in our industry. Like we all fell in, nobody made the conscious choice to transition their career in this direction.

[00:34:31] And I feel like we're just, um, we're a group of misfits who didn't really fit in anywhere else. Uh, we had some kind of problem solving savvy. We're probably already in marketing in some capacity and we kind of got tossed the scraps. We didn't get tossed like the sexy channel, like, oh no, it's not social.

[00:34:53] It's uh, you know, it's not content emails, a necessary evil. Someone's got to do it. So we're going to toss it to you and that kind of person who discovers it's so much more. It once you really dig in, it can be the most complex channel, the highest ROI channel. It can be deeply rewarding if you are into continuous

[00:35:20] Matthew Dunn: appeal,

[00:35:21] Jen Capstraw: struggle, perfect.

[00:35:23] Which you know, will never be perfect. Um, and so I think that's part of the reason we all, there are no strangers in our communities because we're all a little bit. Different from the mainstream to start with. And that's how we all fell in here together. I also have a theory that there are a lot of neurodivergent folks in our industry.

[00:35:46] Yeah. I, and the more I speak out about it, the more people are going, oh yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. I got in late, late in life diagnosis that explained everything about my entire life. Uh, every success, every failure. And, um, I interviewed. Maybe a dozen people last year, private interviews in preparation for a presentation that I did at the EIQ conference about I called it, uh, emails, secret, super brains.

[00:36:18] And I think there is a disproportionately high percentage of folks who are on the autism spectrum, ADHD, dyslexic dyspraxic and on my podcast, um, humans of email, our first interview was with, um, Mark Robbins. And we talked about his dyslexia and how that has affected his career in both positive and negative ways.

[00:36:40] And one question that I asked everyone that I interviewed was, you know, if you could be neuro-typical, if you could make this go away, if you could have a brain like the majority of folks in the world, would you, would you take it? Every single person said, no, I like who I am. And, um, and I would never change that.

[00:37:01] I see advantages in this. It's not appropriate to say that this is a super power for everyone, you know, it's, um, it's personal and some people consider it a disability. And for some folks it's clear to see why it's a disability, because all of this stuff comes on a spectrum and it's much more severe for some than others.

[00:37:24] But the folks in our industry who have like agreed to have these conversations with me or speaking out in public, uh, they all do consider it an asset as, as do

[00:37:36] Matthew Dunn: I. That's awesome. Email is simultaneously highly structured in a complete fricking mess. Do you think that's part of the reason for that did a strain that you're calling out about, uh, about neuro-typical or not in the.

[00:37:58] Jen Capstraw: Yeah, I think depending on your flavor of neurodivergence, you're either attracted to the structural pieces of it or the chaotic pieces of it. And I'm on I'm on team chaos. Like I'm great at strategy and, um, conceiving of new solutions to achieve objectives and, and understanding like what tools are at my disposal.

[00:38:22] What could I do with them? What. That has been fun for me. I'm not so hands-on as I used to be. I'm more of an educator now, but, um, yeah, I, I loved just kind of, what can I do? What can I make happen? Like I learned about this solution or that solution, it does this thing. Oh, I bet if I used it to do this or this whatever idea, it would be really successful.

[00:38:48] And that was really fulfilling for me. Um, I'm not, I'm terrible at code. I knew. Barely enough to like pull together a fluid, single column template that I was using for all of my clients back about 12 years ago. Um, which weirdly I had some audiences that were already majority mobile at that point in time, but it's, it's just fun.

[00:39:17] It's fun. It's uh, it's a puzzle. I've said that many times it's, it's, it's something to figure out that other people can't.

[00:39:25] Matthew Dunn: Right. Right. Well that, that's a very, that the neurodiversity observation it's got me, this got me thinking, you know, why, and, uh, and all the opportunities out of it out, out of it. Um, it's like, that may be, that may be the next group after women of email.

[00:39:45] Jen Capstraw: Neurodivergence of email

[00:39:48] Matthew Dunn: or something like that.

[00:39:49] Jen Capstraw: Yeah. I think that most of us drove up.

[00:39:53] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. My, again, my wife, my wife actually works with autistic kids. She's a para-educator. So like she spends her whole day with kids who explicitly at their point of development are like, ma you need some extra help, but in the ma in mainstream classroom, most of the day.

[00:40:09] So she's there to support and, uh, help them along. So a lot of, lot of conversations about the things that they're astonishingly good at and the things that are astonishingly hard for them, and it's not, it's not the same set of affordances that many of the other kids in the class may have. Um, yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:31] In fact, that's, that's fascinating. And, and at the same time, not entirely surprising, it's a pleasant surprise, but it's not true. I surprise for free for me to hear you say that because it's a mess. And at same time it's structured, it's old school and it's, you know, global, global technology, uh, platform.

[00:40:54] And nobody's fricking in charge, which is one of the things I like about it. Email, no one's in charge, right? Social. You can name the handful of companies that are in charge, right? Search web. Okay. We know who we're talking about. Right? Keep ticking down the list of all of the digital channels out there.

[00:41:11] The one that is evaded barbed wire so far, at least to a great extent is email, which is fascinating to me. '

[00:41:19] Jen Capstraw: cause nobody can own it, right? It's a one-to-one relationship and nobody can own that.

[00:41:26] Matthew Dunn: Um, so whether g-mail in this mess,

[00:41:33] they play a pretty big, they have pretty big foot.

[00:41:37] Jen Capstraw: They do, but my observation of the ways that they have responded to email marketing needs through the years signals that they know that Gmail users do want marketing email. And we first saw signs of that in, uh, I think it was 20 12, 20 13

[00:42:00] Matthew Dunn: initial proxy.

[00:42:01] Are you talking about how they were handling images early on or something else?

[00:42:05] Jen Capstraw: The grid view functionality, which never came out of beta, but it was a more visual way to look at the promotions tab. It was more like, uh, cards instead of, you know, just text. Yeah. There were images associated with it and it didn't ever go live.

[00:42:25] I was a part of the beta and I was very curious about it. And it was, it was the first sign that Gmail was conceding. People want marketing mail. And so we're gonna get on board with that. You know, we want to make sure it's, it's good. We don't want people being spammed. Um, and, and now we've got things like Gmail, annotations, you know, there are ways to be highlighted in the inbox.

[00:42:51] So Gmail Gmail knows that there's value for the Gmail user. They are signing up for mailing lists. They want our messages, they want quality messages. They don't want garbage messages. They don't want spam, but, um, g-mail has to play along because we, I have the same agenda and that is to keep those subscribers happy.

[00:43:17] Yeah.

[00:43:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I would also say that despite the size of their footprint is estimated. I've seen estimates as high as 60% of inboxes. Now, 1.7 billion or something like that, like, whoa, big footprint. That many innovations Gmail's brought to the email space, the ones that have stuck and really succeeded have been what I would call a light touch, um, like their, uh, they're their, um, algorithmic and behavior-based, uh, spam detection, which is, is a good thing.

[00:43:53] Like people behave better now because Google does a terrific job of going none. And then nobody wants this stop doing that smack right. Delivered pretty deliberately goes down, but it's fairly invisible to the guy. Who's just looking at his Gmail inbox. It's a light touch. Conversely, contrasting amp for email sidebar.

[00:44:16] Matthew think it's structurally flawed. And I've said, so I'm not sticking. It's not succeeding. 0.4% of people using it.

[00:44:25] Jen Capstraw: I'm going to be experimenting with it pretty soon. Um, humans have email. We chose our email service provider because it supported amp. And it's something we're very curious about. And I've been talking about it for a couple of years and I want to have that hands-on experience.

[00:44:40] Um, but part of the reason it's not sticking is because the level of effort is high and email marketers are already spread thin. And also there are a lot of folks who have a negative sentiment toward Google and they just don't trust them. And they don't want to mess around with amp. They want nothing to do with it.

[00:44:57] So, yeah, it's a challenge. It's, it's an extra mind type. That's more work and are,

[00:45:04] Matthew Dunn: it's also not an email innovation. It's the Gmail innovation. It only is only going to read and register with the people who happen to get it on a Google Gmail, client, someone reading it on their iPhone. It's not going to see it.

[00:45:20] Jen Capstraw: That is true. And in an ideal world, we would have some easy way to have an interactive fallback HTML version in addition to amp. And nobody has figured out how to build that solution and make that easy for email marketers, you have your amp version and you have, you know, your static, HTML, unless you are a wunderkind, you know, interactive developer.

[00:45:45] They're very, very few people who can do interactivity in email. So we don't have great tools yet to take advantage of this. Uh, Gmail was trying to get support from all of the inbox providers. I mean, for a hot minute, Microsoft was on board and now they've pulled out, but we we've got Yahoo mail dot. Are you Russia?

[00:46:10] Russia can email, but I'm gonna get an email to them. I don't know. Um, Yeah, it is kind of sad that like, you know, they, they extended in olive branch and said, let's all work together on this. And not everybody was interested in that. It seemed like a poor move on Microsoft's part, but like, look at outlook.

[00:46:33] Matthew Dunn: You know, I mean, I dunno, I, I worked at Microsoft for most of the nineties, so I had some time inside the belly of the beast, which is a very different beast. Now I'm delighted to say I left. Cause it was big mean and stupid. Um, but that embrace and extend that very careful game about whose standards are gonna stick.

[00:46:57] The monopolists have to play that with a very, with a very long view. And Microsoft, Microsoft actually never said we support amp. They said we're taking a little. Like you read, you read the language, it was, we're taking a look, which means we're going to stay involved until we've decided whether it fits our long game.

[00:47:19] And then it said it didn't fit the long game and he yanked out of it. And you know, what does it matter? Even if they had with apple building their brand around privacy, now they will never turn the amp switch on, on an iOS device. So this is effectively toast.

[00:47:36] Jen Capstraw: That's it? You're done with it.

[00:47:38] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. It's toast.

[00:47:40] And, but go back to the more interesting route there is interactivity in email, um, you know, the sacred cup, the holy grail. Uh, good thing. Do we want that?

[00:47:51] Jen Capstraw: Yes, we'd love that. It's just too difficult to do. Amp was going to make it easier. I mean

[00:48:00] Matthew Dunn: structuring the clock, but yeah, no, I mean, it was, it was your step in that direction.

[00:48:05] Jen Capstraw: I can experiment with amp because there are tools that are available that are going to make it possible for me to experiment with amp. I can't experiment with interactivity in any meaningful way because I don't have the coding expertise and I'm never going. It's

[00:48:21] Matthew Dunn: not even, it's not even a question of coding expertise, Jen, it's actually, it's a really simple thing.

[00:48:26] Email is D U M B. There is no language. There is no scripting in email. So the reason to interactivity is hard is because you need logic and intelligence and data handling. None of those things are present. Email is D U M B dumb because it doesn't allow scripting. The app was an attempt to introduce a very, very constrained, uh, sub sub sub set of Java.

[00:48:50] Scripting and let it run inside Gmail. That's actually my beef with it was the sub sub subset things. Like I don't need another fricking language, especially when with artificial constraints, but the reason interactivity doesn't work in emails because we've kept it dumb. The reason your inbox doesn't spy on you in the way people think it does is because it's dumb.

[00:49:13] And I, I mean, in a technical sense, it's

[00:49:16] Jen Capstraw: Alex is worse. Spying on us more a few years ago. You

[00:49:20] Matthew Dunn: literally, you literally get, you literally get you have, but you literally get one signal and it's an accident through because of the HTTP versus the HTTP protocol. You literally get a yes, no signal. Like it's literally the one bullying binary.

[00:49:34] You get open to didn't open and that's, that's it. You open a web browser. There are 27 JavaScripts on average sending a lot of data, a lot of other places when you open a web. Well

[00:49:48] Jen Capstraw: for a while, there were like inbox organizers that were spying on people for the purpose of spying on them and collecting data.

[00:49:57] And, um, people were like, Ooh, you know, free app. Let me sign up for this. And I remember like warning people in my network who were not in digital marketing, like don't install those apps. Don't use those apps. They're screen grabbing your personal email. This is a privacy issue. There's a security issue.

[00:50:17] Just don't do it. And multiple people said to me, well, I've got nothing to hide. And I'm like, well, I do. I mean, my whole life is in my personal email. You know, correspondence with friends and family and doctors and all of my purchase history, all of this data. This is very private data that I don't want in anyone else's hands.

[00:50:42] What do you mean you have nothing to hide?

[00:50:44] Matthew Dunn: And at the same time, 1.7 billion people have G have Google handling their email. And as you said, seriously, as you said, a lot of them are, are, there's a strain of, I'm not so sure about Google analytics, et cetera, such a fantastic email client. That's pretty tempting.

[00:51:01] Right. Um, I think worrying about whether or not Google is reading my receipts is a misunderstanding of, of where they're going to get value out of it. They're going to give value at a pattern level and a target level, not as sort of specific data set level, but, um, but we do have a ton of people trusting.

[00:51:23] It's not just an email clients like the whole buckets there. Right? All of those bits are sitting up in Google's cloud.

[00:51:32] Jen Capstraw: I mean, just think about everything that's on. Our phone is also in a cloud.

[00:51:38] I had a nightmare once years ago. That, uh, I was consulting for the government and we were, uh, capturing data from citizens there. All of their behavioral signals online, and we were creating, uh, like algorithms to detect propensity, to want to revolt against the government. And so people were being segmented by, you know, high propensity to revolt versus, you know, people who were just gonna go along with whatever rules are imposed on them, authoritarian contingent, and, you know, some extra levels of in between this.

[00:52:27] And I realized that my behavioral signals were. Tip off the government that I fell into that high propensity to revolt and that I needed to start, uh, doing various behaviors to change my score. And so then I would be reclassified into a different segment to show a lower risk to the government. And I think that this would be an incredible episode of black mirror.

[00:53:02] Matthew Dunn: It would, it's also a day in the life of your average citizen of China. I mean, honest to God, what you just described social scoring. It's like, that's how it works. Like, you know, I'm an American, I'm like, Ooh, bad don't want that. Right. But honestly, that's. In some places I'm disappointed, but it's normal in some places.

[00:53:24] And we'd be like, we didn't realize we were building the pan up the con dead way. Shit.

[00:53:30] Jen Capstraw: I think also like I was working for a ginormous tech company at the time, and I'm not feeling great about, you know, what happens in a place like that. Yeah. Like, uh, I guess I probably shouldn't get into detail about what I mean by that, but like, you know, capitalism rules and, uh, you know, I was doing projects that I didn't necessarily want any involvement with and, and just didn't feel good about.

[00:54:01] And the, some of the things that are done for the sake of doing business and turning a profit, um, I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to shameless. Just do whatever to get paid. I want to feel good about the work I do. And so I, it was a very conscious decision to move away from the ginormous tech company and go then to start ups and then to strike out on my own.

[00:54:28] Matthew Dunn: And we S we're seeing some employee activism. It's, it's sort of, it, it hooks into the conversation we were having about, about visibility of compensation. I think like we're seeing people not, not across the board, but people who say I work here, but I'm not okay with that behavior. And, and it's, in some cases, it seems like it's, it's steering change.

[00:54:53] In other cases, you have people fired as well. So like, I don't know where it's going to go, where it's going to trend. I do think in this, I'm going to go and say post pandemic that we're starting to head into wait, um, I, I do think talent's going to have a much bigger lever because yeah. Yeah. Which is great, which is great, but it means that that, you know, the ethics, the backbone of the talent is going to matter.

[00:55:27] And there's no guarantee that because someone's good at something, uh, that they're necessarily going to make good decisions on, uh, on that front. You know what I mean?

[00:55:37] Jen Capstraw: Right. And we're seeing now, like DEI leaders, you know, becoming important roles and in many companies. I've seen a lot of folks who they kind of burn the bridge down on their way out the door, because something has happened that they find ethically or morally repugnant.

[00:56:01] And, and they let the world know as they're exiting. There's no fear of that. Haunting them and their future opportunities. You know, can accompany come after you for doing something like that? I mean, only if you're making it up, probably they can try to buy your silence. Um, which is what usually happens.

[00:56:23] There's so much that goes on behind closed doors that, you know, someone says, Hey, this I've got an issue here. Well, let's make you an offer and you need to quietly go

[00:56:34] Matthew Dunn: away and stay quiet when you go away.

[00:56:37] Jen Capstraw: Right. Because you can't get paid if you don't blast it out to the world, but it sure can feel good about it.

[00:56:45] And it could very much lead to a more lucrative opportunity. If a company is looking for someone like you, um, and you've, you know, made a big to-do and you want to go someplace where you feel more valued, it's the world is changing and yeah. Power is shifting to the employees

[00:57:01] Matthew Dunn: for now. I, I, I agree. And I, and I, and I hope that that's out there some semblance of a, of a permanent shift to this.

[00:57:11] Uh, you know, lived, lived, you know, lived as long as I have in the country, I was born in, it does seem like the middle-class kind of gotten the crap kicked out of it for a few decades. And I'd like to see some shift back away from that. And I do think, I do think corporations it's easy to demonize corporations.

[00:57:30] I own one, right. Corporations have done a lot of stuff that I wish they, I wish there were more guardrails for them. And this, this, this shift to talent people having some leverage in the negotiation is, is a good one for me, at least. Well,

[00:57:47] Jen Capstraw: it would be impossible to attract and retain quality talent if.

[00:57:52] Adjust to these new norms and expectations. And it's pretty simple to treat people with respect, to pay them what they're worth and to give them the resources they need to do their job and to build a team that each person is bringing something unique to the table. That's diverse teams are a business benefit.

[00:58:18] They have better problem-solving capacity. They generate more revenue. If you have a culture in which people are comfortable speaking up, and you're being very conscious about bringing together very different people to work together towards solving problems.

[00:58:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. There's, what's the company. There's a company.

[00:58:38] God, I want to say it's AutoCAD. I could be completely wrong, but there's a company who specifically hires neurodiverse because they've realized they're going to get, they're gonna get sued. And different and better results by having a deliberate spread. Like it's literally, we would love to have someone who doesn't think like the other six people who are already on the team.

[00:59:04] Yay. But, you know, would you please join our crew?

[00:59:07] Jen Capstraw: Uh, I'm not aware of anyone who's being really proactive in that, but, um, I can definitely vouch that, that, that divergent thinker is gonna come up with some interesting ideas. Not all of which are good, but they can, you know, some of which are good, but it can like inspire, um, then the rest of the team to go, oh, well, I hadn't thought about it that way.

[00:59:30] What about this? What about this? And then collectively continue to refine it. So, yeah, there's a lot of value in having that neurodivergent, um, person on the team, but you cannot ask people about that. Hey, by the way, are you ADHD? Like, no, that's not on the job application, right? Um, there, most people will not disclose it.

[00:59:53] They, because there can be repercussions, um, Th there there's a lot of bias that keeps neurodivergent people from getting job opportunities because, uh, maybe they don't behave the way that you would expect. And so there's like a little bit of bias. This person doesn't seem like a culture fit. They seem a little strange.

[01:00:15] That was a problem for me professionally, especially early in my career. Yeah. It was never a culture fit. I was first runner up for all of these opportunities and I just ended up in the crappiest job that where I barely made any money, but where I, I did finally have some freedom to, um, create and think and fill gaps and, and just conceive of new ideas and make things happen.

[01:00:42] But I wasn't getting paid Jack for it. Right. You know, and, and that that's sucked there. There's um, yeah, there's a huge hiring bias against folks who are neurodivergent and then once they're in place, they, there can be other obstacles. You know, for instance, I can not do an expense report to save my life.

[01:01:02] It is just this barrier. I can't do it is so hard. And I have lost thousands of dollars personally, as a result. And you know, when I ask for help, what do I get? No, just do it right. Or there are some consequences. If you do it late, then you're going to be taxed on the money that you get. And, you know, there's, it's asking for an accommodation, you can be rejected.

[01:01:36] Do you disclose that you are different in that? What you are asking for is genuinely in accommodation, like there's risk involved. So it's, it's a very complex. Situation. I actually recently was introduced to, um, an HR and recruiting expert who is really getting into the whole, uh, how do you recruit and retain neurodiverse folks?

[01:02:01] And I'm going to be a part of a couple of podcasts that she has coming up because DEI is such a hot topic right now, but this is the piece that nobody's talking about yet.

[01:02:14] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. So many opportunities there too.

[01:02:20] I hadn't thought of expensive, but I mean, I've missed many of them, but it's because I fricking despise this. Like I just like, oh, I just don't want to, I just don't want to

[01:02:30] Jen Capstraw: hate them. You might be one of us.

[01:02:34] Matthew Dunn: Oh yeah. I don't. I liked it. I liked the neurodiverse term cause they do think it's one hell of a, of an interesting end dimensional rainbow and people I know with call it a neuro-diverse they're particularly good at this.

[01:02:51] I'm like, that's just cool. I'm not good at that, but that's a really cool that they're good at that. I had my, I had, I had an aunt, my only, my only, uh, whatever that structural family relationship is, my mom's sister was, um, she, she would be called severely retarded, like special Olympics. But she kicked everyone's acid at jigsaw puzzle.

[01:03:13] It was amazing. She just go boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

[01:03:18] Jen Capstraw: Holy crap.

[01:03:20] Matthew Dunn: That's

[01:03:20] Jen Capstraw: cool. There's actually some stats that, um, folks who are entrepreneurial have like a 30% higher chance of being neurodivergent.

[01:03:33] Matthew Dunn: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, in some ways not surprising right. For that. Yeah. Not surprising. I know a fair number, quite a fair number of entrepreneurs.

[01:03:45] Yeah. And, and they don't tend to be the ones who sat comfortably and got A's that's for damn sure.

[01:03:53] Jen Capstraw: And, and there's something that they saw an opportunity. They didn't like the way something was going in the world and they decided to strike out on their own because they had a different way of looking at it and.

[01:04:05] Yeah,

[01:04:06] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. Why is everybody doing it that way? It makes more sense to me to do it this way, all the way. Do it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Which we should, uh, a courage and celebrate and all that other stuff. Well, I knew I'd be guilty of tying up more than an hour of your time, even though we hadn't talked before, because it was like, yeah, we have a really good time, but maybe let a wrap this one up and make it an episode.

[01:04:27] So we've got a shot at someone actually listening to the whole thing. What do you think?

[01:04:31] Jen Capstraw: Hey, if the conversation is interesting, then folks will listen all the

[01:04:36] Matthew Dunn: way through that's. Yeah. That's that's that's true. And we did, we did end up talking about email a bit. So we did, we did the job. Um, don't go away, but I'm going to hit the end of the record button.

[01:04:48] All right. If someone's interested and in women of email, where should they go? Look, you know, cause I'm never going to join. Just got to tell you, but if someone else is interested, where do they go hunt down? Membership details.

[01:05:01] Jen Capstraw: Uh, well, there's two things you want to do, first of all, you want to join our Facebook group.

[01:05:06] Okay. And, uh, there's just a couple of screening questions to confirm that you are eligible to join our community. Um, And because it is a curated community. We don't just accept anyone who clicks the join button. So look for the Facebook group. And then if you go to women of email.org, there's an application there it's absolutely free to join.

[01:05:28] We do ask for a lot of details so that you can be in our database and that will make you eligible for our programs like our speakers bureau and our scholarship program. Um, we'll be firing our mentoring program back up at some point and, um, uh, different programming and events and so forth. So, um, yeah, complete the application at women, female.org.

[01:05:53] And then everybody is a part of the Facebook community. And that's, that's what we're best known for is this very uplifting and supportive community. And I think we've got, we're approaching, approaching 8,000 in the Facebook community, and we've got over 6,000 who are official members and in our database.

[01:06:17] Well, I can tell you that, uh, the symbolism of the goat has evolved with time. The origin story is something that we only share face to face. At industry events and we don't share it with non-members, but the origin story is actually not so interesting anymore. With time, the goat has come to symbolize upward dissension against all odds.

[01:06:47] So goats are claiming, say, I've

[01:06:51] Matthew Dunn: met some goats, they're going to get where they want to go. Aren't they

[01:06:54] Jen Capstraw: sending there? They're climbing trees, they're climbing other farm animals. They are always looking for a high point to get to. And sometimes it's a, it's a bit mind blowing, you know, have you seen the goats who can like sheer cliffs?

[01:07:10] It just looks like a wall and they are climbing it. And so, yeah, there are extra obstacles for women to ascend in their careers and the goats have, have become a symbol of that.

[01:07:22] Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice. Well, I'll hit stop. Thank you. Jen cap, strap women of email, my guest for this.

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