A Conversation With Pierre Lipton of 1440 Media

UPDATED 2/20/23

I was stunned and saddened to learn that Pierre died suddenly, after completing a marathon. We had kept in touch off-and-on via email, and this conversation with him was one of my favorites. He was a brilliant, engaging and thoughtful person, and wise far beyond his years.

I’m going to leave this conversation available in public for now, as I think that honors him. If his family would prefer to have it taken down, we will of course do so.

–Matthew Dunn, CEO, Campaign Genius

Demeaning email as dead is a standard launch technique for new social networks — with the frequent addition of 'nobody under the age of ___ uses email.' So it's a pleasant surprise to hear Forbes 30-under-30 winner Pierre Lipton speak with deep knowledge and enthusiasm about email as a channel.

Pierre is co-founder and COO of 1440, an email newsletter 'covering the biggest stories of the day across industries and geography, all in a 5 minute read.' In just a few short years, 1440 has attracted well over a million daily readers. Pierre's conversation with host Matthew Dunn focuses on journalism as well as email; 1440's distinct business model is a deliberate reboot of data- and fact- based news. Pierre shares some fascinating statistics about the wide range (geographically and politically) of 1440's reader base.

An in-depth conversation with a very thoughtful, informed and modest guy! If you spend considerable time every day trying to make sense of the world by de-biasing sources on your own, go to Join1440.com to get some help.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email marketing my guest today. I hope you're watching, not just listening, but glad if you're listening as well. PR Lipton co-founder COO of 1440 media PR. Welcome.

[00:00:27] Pierre Lipton: So glad to be here. Thanks for having

[00:00:28] Matthew Dunn: me. So Forbes 30 under 30. Congratulations.

[00:00:32] That happened what? A few months back.

[00:00:33] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. And, uh, in December, I appreciate

[00:00:36] Matthew Dunn: that. Did you know that that

[00:00:38] Pierre Lipton: was. No, they, uh, they really hide it from you. They do a good job of, uh, surprising you. So I actually went on a run the morning. I think it was December 1st and went on a run that morning. Uh, got back at seven o'clock check my phone and things were exploding.

[00:00:53] So it was, uh, it's pretty cool.

[00:00:55] Matthew Dunn: That's a pleasant surprise. I got, I got a bed, right?

[00:00:58] Pierre Lipton: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:00:59] Matthew Dunn: Take time. Take, take, take a take, take us through the, the sort of history short history of 1440 media launched when. You hit your 1 million mark a while back. I did read that.

[00:01:12] Pierre Lipton: Awesome. Yeah. So let me think, uh, it, it's crazy.

[00:01:16] Just, just looking back at how quickly things have moved and simultaneously how, how long it feels. Um, so I got to give a hat tip to my co-founders drew and Tim, uh, they, they were kind of the, the, um, the. The masterminds behind the idea. Uh, and I, I, I was very eager to join, but it was, it was definitely not my idea, but oh, four and a half years ago, I think it was in September of 2017.

[00:01:41] Uh, they, they were busy professionals as, as was I, and we were, we were out in the world trying to consider. Trying to just know what's happening. We were going from TMZ for culture news, to ESPN, for sports to wall street journal for business writers, for politics. It was this really like exhausting exercise that we felt the busy person didn't have any time for.

[00:02:03] Uh, and, and just like didn't, we didn't know how people were like fitting that kind of comprehensive news diet into their, into their days. So. That kind of paired with the growing polarization of the news threats to democracy that we felt have two people on opposite sides of the political spectrum were having their opinions informed by their media diets really encouraged us to, to create something that was built for this, this frustrated news consumer.

[00:02:29] So we started writing a daily email newsletter. Uh, it was actually an email thread, like a, a threaded chain. Uh, not even, we didn't even use any tech at the beginning and we sent it to 78 friends and family. Um, just summarizing sports, entertainment and culture science and technology, business, and markets and politics and world affairs and through the kindness of our first readers and early adopters.

[00:02:53] And, uh, and just everyone kind of in between, we were able to grow really quickly maintain really strong engagement rates, improve the product massively because it needed, it needed to improve over time. Uh, and then. We passed a thousand past 5,000, a hundred thousand. And then in September, I believe that this past year of 2021, we hit a million subscribers and we keep growing.

[00:03:14] So we're at one point just shy of 1.4 million as of, as of today. And, uh, really trying to hit that two and then 10 million mark.

[00:03:22] Matthew Dunn: That is the proverbial hockey, hockey stick, uh, that I think investors call it well. I mean, it's terrific. I, I told me this to be a, a sort of a pin you question, but you're in the Forbes 30, under 30, and not, everybody's convinced that people under 30 and email are a natural marriage.

[00:03:42] And here you are in an email based channel. How come?

[00:03:47] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. It's um, Especially, especially today. I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of thinking around the email space as this, this like fairly, fairly archaic, if you will, uh, industry. And I just, I look back at some data and mind you, I think what 82% of stats are made up on the spot, but I think it's 70 to 70 to 75%.

[00:04:09] I want to say it's 72, but don't hold me to that. I want to say 72% of Americans, the first app they open every day is. So you can build your own app. You can be a text-based delivery platform. You can operate through Facebook, but if we're talking about a platform that's tried and true, that's consistent, and that, that delivers to the lion's share of Americans.

[00:04:31] I think email is the place to be

[00:04:34] Matthew Dunn: well, I'm glad to hear that. And I think for obvious reasons, I would agree with you on a bunch of fronts. And, and this does come up. I've had this come up with multiple, uh, guests in the time. I've had the opportunity to talk with people about it. It, it's not a channel. You mentioned Facebook.

[00:04:51] It's not a channel where it's someone else's audience you're paying for or borrowing, or that really can take it away from you. Right. Right. If you lose a subscriber, you lose him because they decided not to get it anymore. Yeah,

[00:05:06] Pierre Lipton: you have this direct line of communication with everyone, which, which has, I mean, it has its, its implications on unsubscribes, but, and, and, and yeah, that, that, that risk of losing communication and it's, I think there, there are still some platform risks.

[00:05:21] Facebook has immense platform risks. To your point. Like if the, if the algorithm decides to turn you off for the XYZ user, you're never going to communicate with them again with. You can, you can get in trouble with certain inboxes, like your, your domain can get in trouble, but if you keep a really strong reputation, which we've tried to do from day one, it's really, it's, it's just an unsubscribe that can stop you from engaging with readers.

[00:05:47] So, yeah.

[00:05:48] Matthew Dunn: Which is engaging with one reader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, it, it, there are a lot of merits and, and, um, we do seem to be. At, uh, at a point in the last couple of years of some rediscovery of the merit, sorry, channel's going off here, you know, the drill, right. And listen to the cycle that I did. Uh, talk to you later on, uh, emails, getting sorta rediscovered slash reinvented.

[00:06:22] Sub stack, uh, morning brew, right? Like there's oh, this is viable. This has a bunch of advantages, as you said about, uh, no one can take it away from you and so on. Like that's that's good. Did, did you think going in 2017 or so, like how meticulous was that versus. I mean, honestly, and I'm not, I mean, this is a compliment.

[00:06:46] One of the merits is the off the shelf tool set is, oh, look, I've got an email client. I can mail 78 people. Right?

[00:06:53] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. So. What I w I don't want to make us sound like we were too, too much driven by altruism, but in a, in a sense, our, our initial goal was just like, how do we, as, as quickly, as efficiently as possible, and with as few barriers to entry, let's be real.

[00:07:11] How do we reach these people? And. Email was, it felt very natural. We didn't have to use MailChimp though. We did. We eventually moved onto MailChimp and then, uh, tried our, tried her hand with a bunch of different ESPs. Um, but we, we started just within our email client and it was incredibly easy. We weren't thinking necessarily about scalability, but I mean, when you hit 1.4 million subscribers, you realize like, wow, scalability is a huge, huge perk of the email.

[00:07:37] Um, it's true.

[00:07:38] Matthew Dunn: That's a really good

[00:07:39] Pierre Lipton: point. Yeah. At the time it was really just like, how do we do this as quickly as possible in a way that isn't going to cost a huge amount of money or just like, make like making an app is so is so difficult and it's getting easier every day, but it's, it's, it's still a, it's quite a task.

[00:07:56] And we, we felt like the first, the easiest way we could get something in front of our friends and our readers that would actually impact and help their lives was via email. And I stand by by that decision.

[00:08:09] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. None. And, and, and you're absolutely right. In a funny way, the story you just told is a great example for, for entrepreneurs out there.

[00:08:18] That's a great example of, of, I hate to use the initials MVP, right? Boom. We wrote it in Gmail client on the desktop and hit sin. You didn't spend a bazillion hours hiring ESPs or building an app or any of that crap. It's like, get it in front of people. Uh, do they, do they like the, do they like the hotdog in the bone or not?

[00:08:42] Pierre Lipton: Exactly. And even. Like even, even the, the step beyond that, like we, we, we started with this, this true, true MVP of, of writing this email. I mean, $0 were spent there. Um, and lots of time kind of fine tuning what it, what this would look like and then scouring the internet for the best links. But, but at its core, $0 were spent.

[00:09:04] And then even like the, in the months that followed, it was really just like, like we, we chose MailChimp as our first as our first ESP. Right. So when we're like it sure that it starts to cost money, but when we're talking about MVPs and how to, how to get in with as few barriers to entry yeah. $12 a month is like, that's like a dreamland for most entrepreneurs.

[00:09:27] So we felt pretty good about that. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:09:29] Matthew Dunn: absolutely. And, you know, install. No, no education curve really like it's been around long enough where I signed up for this email. Okay. We all know how to do that. Right. Um, uh, my, I have two, two sons older. One's probably a little bit younger than you, but not by much.

[00:09:52] And watching them go through the sort of millennial curve from. Email, not part of their lives to that. On-ramp I tend to put a peg on. If someone goes to college route, they're going to get involved in email in, in the application process because every college I know of at least heavily back and forth on email, but it's just tough to, it's tough to stay completely off that channel.

[00:10:18] Unlike many of.

[00:10:20] Pierre Lipton: Yeah, absolutely. And we, um, it's an interesting, I, I, we'd never thought about it or at least I've never thought about it from that college age framework, but it's really like, we don't resonate. We're not a product that resonates massively with anyone under the age of 18. And we initially kind of ascribed that to maybe it's like younger people aren't as interested in the news, which I'm sure there's, there's some truth to that.

[00:10:44] But I think the bigger, the bigger driver there is. Maybe, maybe email isn't necessary until you, until you hit 18. Until if that's your route, you start applying for colleges or you enter the workforce. Once you, once you get to a certain age, there's, there's really, there's no, no way around

[00:11:00] Matthew Dunn: it. Yeah. And you just, you just hit the, you just hit the other bit of it, right?

[00:11:03] If, if it's not the college route, if it's the work route, I would hazard a guess that many, many, if not most job applications. And we need your email address.

[00:11:14] Pierre Lipton: Good point.

[00:11:15] Matthew Dunn: Right. And it's not, it's not a cost to get one. So that's taken, that's taken out of the way as well. And as you said, first client or ubiquitous client available on anything is, is an email client.

[00:11:28] I mean, uh, I, I, the, the first wave of mobile pre smartphone, uh, to now I'm dating myself, um, Blackberry era, right. Email was the killer app. For that first wave of things that did more than voice calls. And I still miss the Blackberry keyboard. I like, I could type fast with two thumbs up on that bad boy.

[00:11:52] Right. Um, but, but it was good. Old, good old email on, yeah. Fascinating. Let's let's switch gears and talk a bit about the, you know, the fundamental, fundamental journalistic aims of 1400. Cause that's a very important and a very not simple target to shoot at.

[00:12:11] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. And I, um, I'll kind of preface all of this by saying that I'm lucky enough to have an incredibly talented co-founder and editor in chief.

[00:12:19] Uh, his name is his name is drew. Uh, he's got a PhD in material science and. Roughly a decade working on Capitol hill, uh, his job was actually to try and translate scientific documents, core members of the house so they could understand what was happening in the science world in plain English. So it's just this incredible, incredible role that was the core to it was distilling complex topics into, into English than anyone could understand.

[00:12:47] What, what he does basically. And we, we now have an editorial team to support him. Uh, but, but what he and his team do on a daily basis is take this, this ever changing, ever evolving and like incredibly noisy news landscape and decide what are the most important stories across verticals. And what's most impactful to the average person.

[00:13:08] We lean heavily, heavily on facts and data and. We as we're incredibly biased people, everyone's biased, but our goal is to remove any editorial, any, any charge language, and just tell people on all sides of the aisle, regardless of your political or apolitical what's happening in the world. And our, what I will say is it sounds, it sounds a little hand-wavy, it's very hard to define the process and, and I don't take part in this process on a daily basis, but our data is really compelling.

[00:13:38] In kind of how that, how that apolitical or unbiased approach manifest itself. So we actually have a third of our audience is Republican. A third is Democrat. A third is independent 10% of the audience as far left 10% of the audience as far. Right. So we see this incredible data that I can't think of another news source that has 10% on the far left and 10% on the far.

[00:14:01] Right. And that it very closely mirrors, pew data for political affiliation. Yeah. And, uh, it's just, it's kinda how the, how the cookie crumbled with our, with our editorial approach and how we're, how we're talking to our readers on a daily basis. So

[00:14:14] Matthew Dunn: when you mentioned the heavier line says wonderful, by the way, it really is, um, uh, kudos to you guys.

[00:14:19] It's very important thing to do. Um, the reliance on data puts a cost burden on what you do in a fact checking isn't free. I know it's fast. But it's not, it's not free. I did plan on that and advance business model wise.

[00:14:40] Pierre Lipton: Well, yeah, I mean, no, no, we did not insure. Uh, but we, we now have a, a, a professional fact checker on our team.

[00:14:49] It's just a role that we have on, on onboard in house. Uh, we also have, um, we have a professional copy editor who comes from. Uh, who comes from the publishing space and she's doing some, some level of fact checking as well every day. And I would also hazard a guess. I could be, I could be wrong here. I I'm worried I might misspeak, but we have.

[00:15:13] We have more eyes on our newsletter before it goes out every day than I think any, any other publisher in this space, it goes through between writers, copy editors, and then writers who are also doing copy editing work and our editor and chief and our content officer. We have like roughly, roughly 10 pairs of eyes on the newsletter every day before we send it.

[00:15:34] And that's that's for every single section day in, day out. And I think that there, there is, there is time burden there's cost burden there. If we were only as good as our product, if we lose trust with our readers, because they don't because we have too many factual inaccuracies or because. I have too many typos, even because typos, typos, degrade trust in some way or another, then we lose the business.

[00:16:01] We lose the product. So I guess was the product loses business. Um, but that's, I mean, we, we really need to prioritize that. Now we, we kind of, as co-founders and early employees, we spent a lot of time on fact checking in the early days, but now we've, we brought on more, more people so that that's always prioritize.

[00:16:19] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, but my, I had a, I had a, I had a long conversation yesterday with a new guest on the show. My new buddy, Jen, Jen Castro. Who's worked in the email space for a long time, but interestingly enough, she had started in journalism and more or less, I don't want to put words in Jim's mouth, but more or less hit the point in the thick of the night.

[00:16:41] Of saying, wait a minute, journalism is doing this really uncomfortable. Like just split and schism. Um, and, and I don't think it matched why she had gone into the field. That was my interpretation of what she had to say. And, and certainly I've, you know, I've seen it live through it as well. And, uh, it, it is a vital mission.

[00:17:02] Um, I'll just bring this in as a point of comparison and then steal some of his stuff is taken up point. There's a newsletter that I pay to subscribe to written by one guy, Ben Thompson newsletters called . Um, like I read it every morning. Like you've been asked something to say that day. I sit down and read.

[00:17:24] It's frequently, very long. He's open about having his own biases and opinions, but he's like writing a really complex book in public and it's fricking awesome to listen to and watch. And the economics work I'm suspecting work really well for him. He's got a pretty good subscriber base. Um, and he's talked at times more than a few times about, you know, sort of his business, email new.

[00:17:49] In contrast with the business model, that was the newspaper. And I, and I I'll I'll paraphrase Ben a little bit. He said, you know, newspapers, when that was a really flourishing form, essentially had a localized monopoly on printing presses. That news, what news became the thing that got printed, but it was an advertising.

[00:18:13] Really driven by that localized monopoly and printing presses and trucks. You don't have that problem now, but arguably the Washington post New York times, bill, you know, pick at wall street journal, whoever you could say, shouldn't have that problem as well. And I don't see anyone doing it exactly what you guys are doing it and why not?

[00:18:33] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. It's I mean, it's an interesting point. I also, um, to, to kind of start sidestep here a little bit, I think, I think the, uh, If I remember correctly, I need to, I need to just, uh, brush up on my facts a little bit more, but if I remember correctly, the, um, if you look at subscriptions for New York times, Washington post wall street journal, I think print subscription.

[00:18:55] Are down for every publisher except for New York times in the past year. So you do see this it's, it's likely not a distribution issue. It's likely likely a shift from, from print to digital. Uh, but you, you do, you are seeing this kind of mass Exodus away from away from print and into digital, um, which is, which is interesting and just an interesting trend.

[00:19:17] Um, kind of speaks to the importance of, of newsletters or maybe in the, in the case of New York times, their app is massively profitable. So, so there, there are different approaches here, but I obviously can speak to the newsletter space a little bit better. Uh, and, and I'm very bullish on emails. Um, but yeah, I, I do think, I do think a lot of folks have, have taken different approaches to this, to this email space to are they.

[00:19:43] Are they highly highly niche products about crypto as an example, or are their newsletters an excellent newsletters in fact about alternative assets and excellent newsletters about what's a good example, uh, kind of how both sides are talking about a single, single political issue three times a week. Uh, just great products out there.

[00:20:03] And when we got into this space, we saw this, this verticalization of the newsletter space, at least, and, and also the new space that. It was very, very fragmented. Everything was. Everything was interested or inch wide mile deep. Everything was going very deep on individual topics. We thought, why is, why is no one up here?

[00:20:22] Why is no one doing the mile wide inch deep approach? When we got in, it was very, it wasn't happening so much. I think, I think folks have come and gone within this, within this mile wide inch deep space. Uh, We were both, we were early entrance, which, which was, which was fortunate for us. But also, I, I think like I can't speak highly enough about the product itself.

[00:20:42] It's, it's something that you can't just decide to build a, build a mile wide inch, deep unbiased newsletter. You have to, you have to come to it with, with expertise and with excellent product. And that's what our, that's what our editorial team. And specifically our editor in chief brings to the table.

[00:20:59] Matthew Dunn: Um, I'm actually, I'm stoked because ha having you on the schedule and of course, trying to learn a bit about you.

[00:21:06] It's like, why did I not know about this excited doesn't immediately, right? Cause honestly, I've been looking for mile wide inch deep fact-based because it just teased me off. I'm your ideal customer. T's me off to go cherry pick all over the place and then try and stick a bias filter on, on all of them and sort out some, some actual nuggets of truth.

[00:21:33] It's it's a very difficult job to do and asking millions of people to do it themselves. It's a big lift. Yeah. And it's a big lift.

[00:21:41] Pierre Lipton: There are plenty of plenty of news junkies out there and, and, and that's, that's awesome. Like, like people who are really, really invested in what's happening world, we're not gonna, we're not going to win with those people that they will, they will do the exercise where they're kind of going, going down into every vertical and really, really learning about it.

[00:21:57] There's nothing, nothing wrong with that mindset. But I think for the average American, it's just not a sustainable exercise. Yeah.

[00:22:04] Matthew Dunn: It's interesting. You've said, you've said a couple of times to American. It sounds like for the moment, at least that's the specific aim scope of the business. Yeah,

[00:22:14] Pierre Lipton: it is. Yeah.

[00:22:15] So, so we have, I think 98.5. In that ballpark of our readers are US-based. Um, we do have some Canadian readers, uh, Brazilian German, UK pops up a lot in our inner analytics, but the lion's share is American. I think it's probably because we cover covered a lot, but that's close to our hearts. So we'll talk a lot about U S politics.

[00:22:37] We'll talk a lot about U S scientific discoveries and culture moments. And we do, we do the international, but the, the, the focus is. Is really what's, what's impactful to the average

[00:22:48] Matthew Dunn: American right. To, yeah. To this country. And that also lets you narrow it down and, and for now at least do English, I assume probably not other languages yet.

[00:22:58] Yeah, not yet. Not yet. That's got its own. Uh, it's got its own set of set of challenges. I'm sure. At the same time. We're at an interesting moment to have this discussion, because if we had this conversation a month ago, I'd have said, well, the interesting thing about email is the vehicle is it's, it's almost global.

[00:23:20] I mean, to a great extent. Email's not used much in China, but. Could a month ago send an email to most other countries. Now we're living in this instant, where if you had someone in Russia reading your newsletter, they probably don't have access right now, or they maybe don't have access. And we don't really know.

[00:23:39] Pierre Lipton: That's a, it's a good point. I think a lot of the upside, I should say of us focusing on this U S audience is where we're intimately familiar with the legislation, the goings on just the general state of affairs status quo in the us. I mean, even, even like looking, looking at GDPR in Europe, it's, uh, we we're, we're totally GDPR compliant.

[00:24:02] It's not the hardest thing in the world. But it does add a layer of, of, of complexity to anything we do. So if we had a huge portion of our audience in Europe, we we'd be concerned that any, any big legislative changes could, could impact our

[00:24:15] Matthew Dunn: business. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's not complex to do, but it adds a little bit of cost information.

[00:24:22] And it also adds an element of risk. Yeah. Right. That if you mess up, he like, there's a fellow I've had as a guest on this, a friend of mine, Dennis Damon is one of the, he's one of the better known email privacy space guys. And he always kind of shakes his head about just how complex it is to get. Yeah. So by staying focused, uh, where we've got, you know, we're starting to, we're starting to get some laws, the CCPA passing in California, like we're, we're starting to say, Hmm.

[00:24:53] Maybe we need to be a little beyond canned spam in the U S but we're not there. And I suspect you'll be fine for whatever we do.

[00:25:02] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. Yeah. And, and our goal is always just to be, to be compliant to the, to the most, the most rigorous level of possible with any California legislation that becomes in our eyes, American legislation.

[00:25:15] So it's a. That part is straightforward enough for us that we'll just, we make the change. And, and we, we, we know that change is happening. It's national news. When we start layering in like, oh, we have to make this like such and such tweak for Europe and such and such tweak for China. And then one for one for Southern Africa and one for south America just becomes immensely complicated.

[00:25:37] Yeah. Yeah. It

[00:25:37] Matthew Dunn: really, it really does. And, and we're still. We still don't know who owns that token. The email address I would argue. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a funny little beast because you look at, you, look at the language, you get somebody to talk about. And there's personal. Possessives all over the place.

[00:26:00] My inbox, my email, I get my email and my device edited dah, dah, dah. Okay. And I gave you permission to communicate with me. So my email becomes a proxy for my, my person at the same time. You've got that. You've now got my email address in, in, in inner records. At 1440. Cause I said, yes, you can. So now we've got this shared, shared possession of the thing and you get to use it to send me stuff and we're still batting Bush to God.

[00:26:28] We're still trying to figure out the boundaries of that puppy. And I don't think we're anywhere near done, figuring out the best approach, right. Approach for different countries, for different people and so on.

[00:26:39] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. I mean, it has to be. Such complicated legislation to write or even think about. I don't envy the people that are tasked.

[00:26:49] What I will say, kind of in, in, in favor of our strategy, towards, towards someone who we want to respect, who, who, who has given us access to their inbox and whatever, whatever level of ownership where like, we, we think is the proper level of ownership. But we, um, we, we actually, we have like very advanced filtering functions in our daily send to make sure that we're only, we're only emailing people who love us.

[00:27:15] Basically. We think that there, there are so many. So many ways you can, you can make the life worse of someone if you spam them all the time and you also make the life worth, make life worse for you as a business person, if people are marking spam on your newsletter, unsubscribing all the time, or, or if they're, if they stop opening and then they teach there, they teach their inbox.

[00:27:36] They teach Gmail that you're not a reputable center. So we actually, we make sure that after someone stops opening for 30 days, we stopped sending. It's what's allowed us to maintain an open rate that exceeds 50% every day. It's what has allowed us to have a click through rate that's in the 20 to 25% range every day.

[00:27:54] We just, we know that that people's inboxes are, are, are precious. It's like to this entire conversation, everyone just about everyone has. Yeah, it's a super important medium. And I think there's nothing worse than opening your inbox, opening your inbox for a day and seeing like layers upon layers of spam.

[00:28:12] So we want to be cognizant

[00:28:14] Matthew Dunn: of that. So you opened the door to the, to a technical side topic that I thought we might end up kicking around a little bit, which is that Apple's move with male privacy protection has to have thrown a monkey wrench in that measure.

[00:28:27] Pierre Lipton: We, we think it's yeah. I mean, high-level absolutely, we think it's a.

[00:28:33] We think it's an interesting play for the industry and I could talk about it for hours. So I'll, I'll, I'll spare you on kind of my, my tinfoil hat. But the, uh, at a, at a high level it's, I mean, it's inflating open rates across the space. Um, yeah, just, just for, for listeners to quickly recap, uh, anyone who opts into apple mail privacy automatically registered as an open every day that you send an email to them at a, at a high level.

[00:29:00] Um, so we've seen this kind of inflate, open rates across the space, make it more difficult to track kind of who's opening or who isn't. Uh, we were lucky enough that our open rate with. Open rate was 52% before, uh, apple mail privacy launched. And now it's 57%, 58% on a given day on a given day. So we were able to, we have tools as well, that kind of isolate the, the, the, um, penetration of apple, apple mail privacy within our list.

[00:29:29] And it's, it's very small for now. Um, but it's, it makes tracking more difficult. Yeah. I think the entire space is going to move to clicks as a point of record. Just how many, how many people are clicking on your. Because then you can actually, you can't, you can't forge a click, basically. You can, you can afford to an open.

[00:29:46] Matthew Dunn: True. Let, let, let me, let me put two pieces on, on, on, on that conversational, uh, table though. One, the goal you'd mentioned earlier of the 30 days never opens, becomes arguably. Almost impossible to measure for those MPP opted in folks, which is, uh, those, those of us in the email space. And I'll put myself there as well, or like apple.

[00:30:12] Do you know, you actually are going to degrade the email experience with this move. Leave, leave that one. Um, leave that one aside for a second. Let me see if I can recover the, the second thought I had, ah, clicks. Yeah. I just did a talk about clicks this morning with a bunch of folks, uh, in the email space.

[00:30:33] The core of 1440, the core value I should say I can get without clicking. Is that fair?

[00:30:43] Pierre Lipton: That's absolutely fair. Yeah. Okay.

[00:30:45] Matthew Dunn: Okay. So, and, and I love that because that puts you in, that puts your business in the. Uh, as, as folks in the email and email marketing space, especially have been grappling with oh, opens and clicks, just opens, just got changed.

[00:30:59] Thanks, apple, nice curve ball. Um, there's a tendency to think in terms of click driven businesses like e-commerce and I've been one of those who's always sticks up my hand says, hang on a second. There are businesses where the thing in the inbox is. The product or the service and me reading it is the engagement and the, you know, the business equation that we're after.

[00:31:25] I'll usually bring up Stratechery as my example, because I've been reading it for, for a good, long stretch, but, you know, clicks are up, there are proxy, but the, the numbers are so much smaller and you I'm assuming you don't want to you and I'll use the word intentionally. You don't want to introduce clickbait just to have that.

[00:31:46] Pierre Lipton: Yeah, I absolutely totally totally agree. Um, it's it is, it introduces a lot of slippery slopes and I won't, I won't pull on your first thread too hard, but I will say I completely agree. We, we worry. And, and, uh, uh, a theory that I have is 2022 will be the year. That Americans and people in general get much more frustrated by spam in their inboxes because your average marketing manager at a big e-comm company, isn't going to have that open segmentation that they once did.

[00:32:16] So I totally agree with you, but I won't pull too hard on that thread. Um, We are. We're seeing that as iOS are, as, as apple, apple, uh, apple mail privacy begins to penetrate more and more. We're moving to clicks as our point of record. And it's a much smaller portion, but it is 25% of our daily opens. We have a daily, daily level of communication with our readers.

[00:32:42] So you find that over time. Um, I think we might have to move to a 90 day window instead of a 30 day. Yeah, I might have to extend that, extend that, um, that time period a little longer, but we didn't see that the slippage we're going to have with people who have. Who are opening, but never clicking over, say a 90 day window is incredibly small.

[00:33:03] It's like, maybe you will lose 1%, which is still, still big numbers. We still, we don't like to lose whatever that is 14,000 people. And that's not, that's not fun, but it's, it's much less dire than if we were losing a hundred thousand

[00:33:17] Matthew Dunn: people. Yeah. Um, there's a, there's a tech company called litmus. You probably familiar with 'em, um, in the email space and.

[00:33:25] I've been on their list for a long time, read a lot of their content. They sent out an email to the litmus list in circa January, and they took the bold move of saying, click on this if you want to keep hearing from us. Um, and I love that. And that's the kind of thing that you guys could, could really viably do.

[00:33:44] Like we don't know if you're opening up. You know, click the big red button. We, cause we'd like to know that you want to keep getting this. And I doubt, I doubt that you'd lose anybody marketers and I suspect even more, uh, bad actor type spammers would never put a button like that in their content. Never.

[00:34:04] Yeah. So, so you've got, you've got some, you've got some places to go, but it does change. It does change that flow a little bit, that, that, that friction free. We'll just keep an eye on it and try and do the best thing, uh, that was available for 20 odd years. Uh, that's now become, there are rumors. Uh, there are rumors unconfirmed at this point, there are rumors.

[00:34:25] Google getting more aggressive about prefetching with their image proxy, which would have somewhat the same effect. So I don't think we're done with this, um, the shift yet either. So yeah. You

[00:34:36] Pierre Lipton: know, I, I suspect yeah. Gmail, Yahoo. Yeah. I totally agree. I don't think. Um, I think, I think clicks have legs. I think maybe, maybe even they will be removed as the, as the point of record after, after another iteration of, of, uh, of privacy measures.

[00:34:57] But I, I, I see that as more difficult to accomplish, so I I'm comfortable making that shift to clicks. And then just seeing, seeing what happens, rolling with the

[00:35:07] Matthew Dunn: punches. Well, and, and, and, and back to the root of this conversation about, you know, email as a, as a sort of a first. Uh, one to one channel, you know, I said, you could, I said you could email me.

[00:35:20] I agree that clicks are maybe the next thing up for a real privacy looks. They actually did a, I wrote a blog post for only influence. Just to shake everyone's tree a little bit, honestly, I said, okay, I'll give you some live technical examples of a click resulting, not in your browser opening, but in a cloud-based browser with no PII, opening clicks could clicks in the sense that an e-com guy means them could very well change dramatically, but first party, email relationship.

[00:35:54] We've got a, we've got a mechanism to handle that, right? If I attack. Customer, you know, anonymous customer ID, even if it's an, even if it's a, you know, a private, private session browser, I'll still know it was you that clicked. Yeah. So yeah, we've got, we've got some places to go requires very tight data, uh, hygiene, data maintenance, data control.

[00:36:18] Like you got to have your house in order to do that. Which your skills, no. Meaning.

[00:36:23] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. I mean, we're, we're also, we're grateful for all some tools that can kind of figure that out for us, that we, that we trust, frankly, it all comes down to trust for us. So yeah, we, we see that the data is sufficiently reliable, uh, to, to a high enough level that, uh, our, our, the tool of choice for us are our email sending platforms campaign.

[00:36:44] And they're able to, they're able to, to help us with

[00:36:47] Matthew Dunn: that, with that. Um, wow. I'm delighted. I'm delighted to hear that. I I've read a lot of their material as well. That's a terrific company. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. She didn't they're handling that kind of scale. That's that is exceptionally good. Um, in the, in the daily.

[00:37:06] And I assume that that's the main thing right now is the daily news from 1440, right? Meaning is conveyed with the word. Fair fair summary. So

[00:37:17] Pierre Lipton: I could, could you repeat the question?

[00:37:18] Matthew Dunn: Meaning is conveyed with words

[00:37:20] Pierre Lipton: on the, in, in the content of the, of the daily. Yes. Yes. Sorry. No, no visuals yet. Uh, not yet.

[00:37:28] We've talked, we toyed with it. I should say, I should say not currently, actually. So we toyed with it in early iterations when we were MVP and the product. I have theories for why this might be the case, but we saw lower open rates and lower click through rates over time when we included visuals versus when may, when we removed them.

[00:37:45] I think part of it is higher HTML load to a certain extent. So we were missing spam or we were maybe being put in spam or promotions at a slightly higher rate with some inboxes. Uh, but another piece of it, I think. We try to, we try to convey all meaning with words, and it's a very, it's a self-contained newsletter.

[00:38:04] You can go out and learn more, which is why we have such a high click through rate as well. But you can, I very rarely as a consumer of 1440, I very rarely click on anything because I read the newsletter and I get everything I need to know. And then I'm off on my day,

[00:38:18] Matthew Dunn: right. Where I was driving with that apart from being a visual communication.

[00:38:22] Um, and email's not necessarily the best vehicle for that. I think we'd probably agree, um, with a data centric business you hit, uh, I would argue quite quickly, you hit a boundary about the data itself. Like you have to simplify and arguably you have to interpret to take complex data set and put it in English.

[00:38:49] Pierre Lipton: Yes. Yeah.

[00:38:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and, and if someone, you know, the read more link, they have the table, the chart, the pivot table, or whatever the heck it is, go there, you know, go, go there. If you want to consume that by, by contrast, just, just, just for, just for fun, intellectual fun. Um, you look at the discipline. I would, I would argue probably the best in the business.

[00:39:13] The discipline, the New York times is evolved. In visual journalism and data journalism, and it's exceptional. And there are times that I learn and understand things from the work they've done to put data in visual form that I couldn't have gotten, no matter how well-written, um, out, out of language emails are crap vehicle for that.

[00:39:38] Um, like for a lot, for a lot of reasons, it could, could be better, but it's not, it's not what it's wired for.

[00:39:45] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. And some are really good at it. Even, even though I do agree, email's not the ideal, ideal, medium for that, but yeah, some, some do an exceptional job. There's a, there's a newsletter that I know it's called charter.

[00:39:57] That, that does just excels in graphs. It's it's all data is. And it's so much fun. Like, I it's like, I it's like candy. Like I, I. And they, they Excel at visual communication, uh, in the, in the email format. So th there are, there are places out there that can do it. I think it, it comes back to a certain extent to our reason, our reason to be is not to.

[00:40:24] And there are times when a visual, when like an excellent infograph could further understanding on complex topics. But our general reason to be is not to provide data visualization or greater, greater visual context on, on certain events or certain things happening in the world. It's more to give this like high level.

[00:40:43] And we do like to lean on facts and data and data is, is a great way of consuming data. Like not, not everyone loves like a good old fashioned Excel spreadsheet like I do. So it's, uh, it's there there's nuance to it, but I think it's not really our core. It's our core competency is not where as individuals have this incredible skillset, like it's not, it's not who we are.

[00:41:05] So I, um, I think some, some do it really well. New York times is a good example. Charter's another good example, but. It's, I don't think we're going to win there personally. It's too, too, too. Non-native and too, too difficult for us as, as producers of, of 1440.

[00:41:21] Matthew Dunn: It would also, if you, if you, if you try to do much of that, you'd have a cadence challenge of my cadence.

[00:41:29] I mean, today's news may lend itself to. You know, info, visualization tomorrow's news. There may be every, nothing that it's that. So I ended up with this kind of wait a minute. Uh, Ben Thompson, who I mentioned before, I think he's doing less of this. Honestly, he used to have, I thought quite clever, quite informative very soon.

[00:41:50] Graphics that he drew himself pretty sure on an iPad with the paper app, but frequently he'd summarize a complex view of strategy with stick figures and graphs on paper and pop it in his newsletter. And I saved any number of those. I'm like, that's it like that actually tells the story right there, but he's drifted.

[00:42:11] He starts to do a lot more language. I just realized that interesting. Yeah. That and sticking, sticking to your, you know, sticking to your thing is, is a very good move, right. And the temptation to drift and try and become all things to all people I don't think would serve you well, plus, um, we do skim and we do skim and scan.

[00:42:32] So. That, that the language centric, um, summary of the news, you know, meets it, meets us where we are now, I think to a great extent.

[00:42:43] Pierre Lipton: Yeah. Agreed. And, um, I, you make a really interesting point about that cadence and just consistency in general is like, yeah. If we started introducing infographs, we'd have to do so regularly, I think.

[00:42:55] And it's part of your style. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not saying it won't happen. Anything, anything could evolve that way if we do. So it's either gotta be like an every Friday thing or a every Saturday or every other day. Like it needs, needs some level of consistency because something we hear often from our readers is they love how they love, how they know.

[00:43:15] They know where everything in the newsletter is. If they want to skip to. Science and technology because they love the science news. They know exactly how far to go down. Now we introduce every other day and photographs, it just gets, and I I'm like kind of scapegoating infographs here, but anything, anything that doesn't fall every day is you lose that consistency and you lose some readers, I think.

[00:43:37] Yeah.

[00:43:38] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And you pick, you know, you pick your, your picture arrangement. Uh, buckets, so to speak. Um, so that I'm guessing there's always something in the science and tech. There's always something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Um, where, where do you see the business being different? Let's say a year from now.

[00:43:59] More people,

[00:43:59] Pierre Lipton: obviously you stole my first answer. Something, something that I think we've, we've done really well to date is just maintain focus. I think it's really easy to, to chase shiny objects or, or, or try maybe like a science newsletter or a UK edition or, or anything in between. And we've always said, focus on this quarter newsletter.

[00:44:20] If we grow this 5%, the thing gets pretty crazy. Or if we grow at 5% month monthly, let's say. A year from now, I'd love to be at what has enough work out there. I'd love to be at say 2.5 million subscribers, maybe, maybe higher. I'd love to continue this pretty, pretty rapid growth. Um, and then aside from that, that lame answer that I just gave you, uh, we, we'd also, we'd love to, we'd love to kind of explore different, different media types that our readers are actually asking for.

[00:44:51] It's really easy to go to certain things that we think our readers want, but we actually see in the data. When people are engaging with certain content, they love, for example, one of one-on-ones. So if we. Talk about CRISPR and the newsletter. And we say kind of understand what CRISPR is, but not really, we'll actually link to a one-on-one to CRISPR so that our readers can better understand what that, what that topic is referring to.

[00:45:15] So then we aren't just like dropping buzzwords, like, like there's like there's no tomorrow. So we, we have these, we, we link externally to these one-on-ones currently, but we think there's a world where we can create kind of a. An internal, an internal platform where we're sharing and saving and discussing on topics that are really nuanced, that not everyone understands, but everyone's heard of.

[00:45:36] So that's, that's kind of the seismic shift that might happen in the next year or so, but you can rest assured we'll, we'll stay focused on the newsletter, regardless of which kind of shiny objects we do. We do chase that

[00:45:49] Matthew Dunn: is that that's terrific. Catalyzing future possibility. But, uh, the ruthless focus, as you know, the ruthless was focused on doing what you're doing is terrific as well.

[00:46:00] And I suspect with compound interest, pun intended, you're, you're, you've been fair to hit that two and a half million and maybe then some,

[00:46:11] Pierre Lipton: yeah, I hope that's a, that's a conservative guess, but we'll say

[00:46:14] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. It's kind of fun to watch. Yeah. Wow. Cool. Well, we've, we're closing an unwell over 45 minutes, so I think I'll wrap up, but what a, what an enjoyable conversation.

[00:46:27] Congratulations, you guys have really built.

[00:46:30] Pierre Lipton: Yeah, appreciate that. Right, right. Back at you. This is a lot, a lot of fun. Love Janet, that email and a call to talk to an expert like yourself.

[00:46:37] Matthew Dunn: We'll hit wrapping up. Uh, don't don't jump. Don't jump here. I want chat with you afterwards, but my guest has been peer limited Lipton.

[00:46:44] Co-founder COO at 1440 media. Where does someone go? If they're interested? Uh,

[00:46:49] Pierre Lipton: I joined 14 forty.com. Join 1 4, 4 zero.com. And it's a totally free newsletter. We hope you'll join in.

[00:46:57] Matthew Dunn: There you go. We'll endo now.

[00:46:59] Pierre Lipton: Awesome. Thank you.

[00:47:00]