A Conversation With Kath Pay of Holistic Email Marketing

Some business books are dashed off to burnish credentials, as if “thought leadership” is a matter of page count. Others — the ones to read, learn from, and read again — distill hard-won, genuine expertise in a field that the author genuinely cares about. Kath Pay is the latter kind, and her book (and company) Holistic Email Marketing is most definitely one to read and learn from. She’s also a terrific podcast guest, as you’ll see in this episode of The Future Of Email.

In the book, Kath characterizes email marketing with 3 legs — marketing principles, technology and creativity. All three come up in this master-class conversation about email marketing. As a strong proponent of principles — like “lead with strategy” and “email is the push channel” — Kath has a way of effortlessly knocking complex problems into solvable form.

Among the interesting side-trips in this conversation is Kath’s observation about the budget priorities of businesses. Kudos to her for saying what so many marketers think — companies will spend tons of money on technology, without enough investment in staff + training + time + creativity to really use it.

The great news from this conversation — hopefully not a spoiler — is that a new edition of Holistic Email Marketing is looking likely. Get a sneak peek at some of the author’s thinking about that, and the future of email, in this fun conversation.

TRANSCRIPT

Matthew Dunn: Good morning, not morning where my guest is. My guest today, and honestly, I'm not making this up. I said someday I want to get Kath Pay on the podcast. If it, if I can sustain it and make it good enough to invite Kath Pay, then I'll know that if I kind of hit a benchmark. Yay. Welcome Kath Pay.

Kath Pay: Well, thank you very, very

Matthew Dunn: much for having me on.

I'm gonna break the tradition, which is usually tell everybody about yourself cuz I get to talk about you instead. Ha. Kathy's the c e o founder and c e o of holistic email, which has gotta be one of the best known email marketing agencies out there. Also, international best-selling author title right here.

Come on camera. Yes. Holistic email marketing. And, uh, a heck of a book. I've got, I've got bookmarks in there for us to talk about. So watch out. Ooh. How long has the [00:01:00] book been out now?

Kath Pay: It's been out for two years. It's been out long enough that I'm talking about doing a second

Matthew Dunn: edition. A second edition. Okay.

I think that's actually a good idea. Yeah. Just been released. Wait, you don't, so as an author Yes. As an author, you go, uh, oh, I, I left that on the cutting room floor. Or These things have changed, or both.

Kath Pay: Change. I'll tell you what the, the, the difference between then and now is there's so many new things that, that have, that have happened.

Mm-hmm. Name two or three. Oh, okay. Um, Oh, you put me on the spot, haven't you? Okay, so, um, AI using copywriting and G P T and all of that, right? So I'm probably, I'm sure you've been speaking to a lot of people about that, but that has the, if, if the right person embraces it, it has the ability to, uh, I'm not gonna say revolutionize or.

Or anything like [00:02:00] that, but certainly assist them a lot. But it's about, again, with everything that we're doing, try to be strategic and trying to use it wisely and make sure that you understand its weaknesses as well as its strengths. Right. Um, so, so that, that's one. But then there's, um, N P P has come out since the book was launched as well.

Yeah. Yep.

Matthew Dunn: We can talk about that one a bit.

Kath Pay: Oh, yes. You're, you're a little bit in the know about that one.

Matthew Dunn: Um, it's, we, we don't wanna do inside baseball Kath reference. There is apples change in terms of how they handle, uh, email op. The measurement of email opens in terms of, uh, in terms of pixels and images, which threw a big old monkey wrench in measures that have been around for 20 years.

Yeah. Yeah, it's

Kath Pay: a big picture. So, yeah. I mean there's lots of, you know, like little introductions or, or not so much even introductions, but bi BI is now being [00:03:00] taken quite seriously. Yeah, right. It's, it's picking up speed and things like this. So all of these things need to be addressed, need to be integrated within the book.

And, um, you know, and like I said, not only are the consumers have changed, But the marketers are changing as well. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, we're picking up on, okay, so more marketers are now doing this, lesser doing that. And, you know, I think that also needs to be, uh, changed because then you can start to see the tra, you know, trajectory or the, the way that it's going.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Just changes in, changes in practices, techniques, things that work. Things that don't work. Yeah. Yeah. That, yeah, that makes sense. I, I, I'm curious because, I mean, in addition to juggling running holistic, um, without, without necessarily be sitting, sitting in the office with everybody at Holistic, um, speaking, Uh, writing and a few other things.

How do you carve out the [00:04:00] time to work on a, let's say a book, revision it?

Kath Pay: Again, welcome to my life and the thing, it's not easy. It's not easy at all. Like at the moment I'm actually, um, doing a, an updated version of a best practice guide for a different, uh, entity as well. Um, so, and I found last year, oh, last year when I did the book, I was doing both of them simultaneously.

That was really difficult. So this time I'm at least doing one, finishing that project and then starting on the other. Right? Yeah. So I, I've learned, I found out I'm not actually Wonder Woman or the Marvel one, the one that can create time. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you, do you, do you, uh, write at set times, revise at set times, go, go when the go, when the inspiration strikes?

Like what, what's the process feel like?

Kath Pay: Yeah, so the way that I work, I'm very sporadic [00:05:00] in so many ways and, and I think that's why I really, really love to try and get people into some sort of systems and stuff, because I'm not that way inclined. I'm very good at organizing them. But when it comes to me naturally doing things, I don't know.

I say, you know, if I were to say, okay, writing for two hours, yeah, um, it won't happen. It just won't happen. However, when I'm wandering around and I'm doing the laundry or something, I'll just go, oh, Right. Okay. And then I'll find myself there and I'll be stuck for two

Matthew Dunn: hours or something. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, so inspiration strikes.

Uh, do you, do you carry a notebook and a pen around? Uh, no.

Kath Pay: I just do lots of WhatsApp voice messages to myself. I've got two phones. Yeah. One of my British one, so they're just swap.

Matthew Dunn: I like that actually, probably more, probably more likely to, uh, probably more likely to. Capture context, right? Because you can just Yes, yes, yes.

Kath Pay: Yeah. Yeah. So I literally [00:06:00] can say I talk to myself.

Matthew Dunn: Mm-hmm. It's okay. It's okay. My, my, my wife says she talks to the produce and I've seen her do it, so, um, oh, you're a nice tomato. Um, okay. Interesting cuz. Professional writers will say, Nope, you gotta sit down and write and, and bang it out. And I'm not saying not, not, you're not a professional, but you have other professions as well.

Um, and I get that, but that's, uh, that's a tough fit in this fractured time.

Kath Pay: Yes. Now editing is different cause they're two different processes. Mm-hmm. Creative. And I can't force to create it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I am best to go with the, when it, when it happens, right? Yeah, yeah. Get all excited. And then that's when all of my, you know, um, oh, that anecdote or that story or that case study, everything will come then, right?

Yeah. Editing is different. I can sit down and I [00:07:00] can say, okay, I've gotta edit that. Yeah. You know, um, cutting, improving, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Replace that case study with another one. I, I can do that. And, and so I'm, I'm pretty good at that. Um, but I also have an editor as well, of course. Right. Um, uh, which really, really helps because that's when I'll thrash through and say, oh, let's try and reduce this sort of, am I repeating myself a couple more times than I should be?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. So, and I assume you're right at the keyboard. Is that accurate? You assume what? Sorry. You're right. With a keyboard, not a pen. Oh yeah. Keyboard. Yeah. I'm the same way. I know there were people who used to write with pens. I don't understand how they did it, but, oh God.

Kath Pay: I will, I will start things three times.

Often what I'll do is I just put the points down. Mm-hmm. Cause they're in my mind and I have to get them down. Yeah. Right. Then I start to work with [00:08:00] them and, and then I flip everything around. I mean, I love it. You just remove that paragraph, stick it up there and flip them around, and then do this, and, oh, that one fits there.

How can you do that with pen and paper? I mean, you know, would just be this total scribbled mess, but no working with, you know, just word or something. It it,

Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. Which is, here's a, here's a, here's a little conversational pivot point for us. One of the, one of the many concerns I've got about the face and name we finally put on AI oh chat.

G p t is that writing isn't just about writing, it's about thinking. Yes. And like, oh, Timmy's going to tell chat g p t to write his essay. Well, well, Timmy's, Timmy needs a whack in the back of the head and uh, he's not gonna think. But interestingly enough, I actually put this, I can't remember what, what it came up with, but I went to [00:09:00] chat g p t the other day and I said, Hey, could you write an essay assignment for a high schooler that couldn't be answered by you?

And I was hoping it would blow steam and, and, you know, expire or something like that. Because, because that fundamental point, which, you know, you talk about in your own writing process, like you don't know what you're gonna say. Right. You know, boom, boom, boom, get it down. Oh wow, that connects with this.

Move the paragraph up here, start putting some structure to it. All of those things are not gonna come popping out of a machine based on a two line prompt.

Kath Pay: No, no, no. And that, and that's what it's all about, isn't it? It's about getting the prompts right, and it's about developing and, and getting in deeper and deeper, and getting that guidance happening, which means that you can't be an amateur in the first place.

You have to know about the topic. You have to be able to guide an input, and then of course, edit as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, and just by the buy, I won't be writing the Revis gt. [00:10:00]

Matthew Dunn: I've assumed as much and delighted to hear it. Well, I, it wouldn't, it wouldn't, I mean, even if you, even if someone said, here's a zillion dollars, do it.

I'm gonna guess you'd go, no. Right. I, because Yeah,

Kath Pay: but the, the funny thing is right. I think so. I, I put in, um, when it first came out, I went, okay, what is holistic? Keep on marketing. Okay. And it comes out, and it came out, I actually published an article, I think last week. Talking about this, and it came out with an awesome definition, like, seriously.

And I'm going, man, uh, this is better than I actually have been able to explain it, right? Be. And the reason is, is it's gone through all of my articles, my gazillions of articles about, compiled them all together. Got a really nice, concise summary of it. But it's using my phraseology, it's using my words. So, uh, all I'm thinking about is if I use chat g p t, there's just [00:11:00] gonna be going through all of my, cause I've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles, right?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kath Pay: Probably would. In fact, actually, maybe I could do that. Maybe I could say articles by cafe, just source those ones. But no, it's, you know, and a lot of what I talk about is also contrary to a lot of the best practice. Yeah. For. Not best practice, but practice out out there as well. Yeah. So, um, yeah, there's, there's no way that that's been for me personally,

Matthew Dunn: it's, it's a bit, and especially in the example you just gave, uh, one of the many things that intrigues me about how this, uh, you know, how this Sputnik moment of chat g p t is, is sitting with people intellectually and emotionally.

It's a good bit looking in the mirror. And sometimes not locking what we see and sometimes going, oh, that's amazing, right? You just, you just recounted something that's kind [00:12:00] of amazing, right? Really a lot of your own stuff synthesized and rel eloquently fed back to you. You liked what it had to say, but you get contrasting examples.

Someone will, someone will relatively easy get, you know, get an AI of some sort. To spit out things that are not the best side of humankind. You go, well, you know, the data set it was trained on, it came from somewhere.

Kath Pay: Absolutely. And, and, and, and that's it. That, that's the whole thing too, is that, you know, certainly being a thought leader.

Right. Or being regardless, a thought leader. Hence why I've written a book. Yeah. I can't be using other people's content. The whole idea of the thought leader is that you are generating and creating your own content, your own thoughts, your own angles, your own, you know, um, rationalizations, everything like this, your own evidence.

Yeah. So, you know, uh, that kind of thing. But like I said, [00:13:00] Can for me to, to write to, to put together a little paragraph or something as an intro for a newsletter.

Matthew Dunn: Awesome. Sure, sure. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there's a, there is a, there is a tension there that I, and I dunno where it's going to go. I really don't.

Um, I, I agree with you about the role of a thought leader. I mean, it's sidebar. Do you get those annoying emails where people say, Hey, we'll, we'll, we'll take care of writing stuff, writing content for you and I, right? I just wanna smack 'em like, no. Yeah. You, you would have no, I, you'd have no idea what I have to say.

And I don't want generic problem from, you know, like someone that I just outsourced to put filler on a website. How, how annoying is that? Yet we're gonna see people producing a whole heck of a lot of filler. With, with the aid of, uh, you know, like new algorithms, machines and theis and stuff. On the other hand, you, you, you look at some of the, [00:14:00] um, unexpected surprises popping out because the data sets crammed into ais are so vast and cut across so many fields.

There's an example in the book by, uh, Kissinger and um, Eric Schmidt about. An an AI synthesizing a new and effective drug, like doing honest to God science, going this compound would probably be effective on that. And it was. And no one had ever come up? No. No human researchers had come up with it. It did.

The cross-reference and scientific principles job of saying this will probably have an effect on that condition. Like and my. Can't be patented, can't be copyrighted, came out of a machine at the same time. Pretty useful, pretty valuable. Oh, this is gonna get interesting, isn't it? Yeah,

Kath Pay: I think, I think that, uh, there, there's a lot of interesting things gonna be happening, [00:15:00] so, you know.

Yeah. Um, but then also I think it's the same with, um, you know, during the elections and covid and everything, those, that false information, everything. Yeah. I think. That that's a big risk. I'm sure you've read all the articles where people have said, oh yeah, it wrote a really good article, and then it cited some fictional sources, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Making s h rt up as it goes a lot. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I think we just as, as you read, as as users, as everything when it comes to article and information, we have to. Understand that, you know, not every article out there is gonna be absolutely accurate. Right. That way. Doing it for those beyond copywriting tasks, those calculations.

Yeah. That, that does. Cause that's putting, well, as you know, uh, as long as you're well trained in it, that's putting a lot of, um, ability in. Uh, a [00:16:00] person's hands who wouldn't normally be able to necessarily do those

Matthew Dunn: calculations. Yeah, they that, yeah, that, that's true. And, and to the extent that, um, to the extent that it's a, a, a tool for the mind, Steve's jobs famous, you know, uh, wheels for the mind sort of approach.

You know, does it, can we use it to make, enable ourselves to do more? Great. Is it a substitute for us doing more? Hang on a second. No, I don't think, I don't think so, right? I don't think so. I, I wanna backtrack a second to the thought leader thing, cuz, uh, I, I'm, I'm not gonna anno myself a thought leader, uh, but to the extent that I try to be, to the extent that you, that you clearly are, I, I think it takes an active, go ahead and think, right?

Go have an go ahead and have an opinion about something in your field, even if it's not what everybody else says. Yes. What do you think?

Kath Pay: Yeah. And, and, and, and, and that is scary. And you [00:17:00] need to have, um, confidence. Mm-hmm. Um, and past history to be able to almost defy a lot of the community. Mm-hmm. Um, but of course you have to make sure that you are supporting everything.

Everything's evidenced. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Back it up.

Kath Pay: And I always will. I've got my tight close friends who aren't all yes people, right? Um, some are

Matthew Dunn: not many of 'em,

Kath Pay: you know, and I'll say, okay, give, gimme your thoughts, gimme your feedback. You know, here's pick holes in it because I don't wanna go out there. And say that this is the case, or this should be, or let's have a think about doing this or, you know, is this past practice that we have been doing, is that now totally irrelevant because of these changes.

Yeah. Um, and so, you know, you, you go and get that happening as well and that [00:18:00] always helps. So, I mean, I will never, ever suggest anything or propose anything without having done, you know, Get all the data, get all the evidence. Have you worked with my clients interview? Cause most of the stuff that I come up with is from working with clients.

I'll bet.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, I'll bet.

Kath Pay: I'll find this particular situation. I'll just go, oh, okay, well that's impacted by this and all the rest of it. Yeah. And then start doing it that way. Yeah. I've, I've got quite a few. I used to be the chief. Trainer for Econsultancy, i d m, digital donor, you name it, like 10 different agencies or you know, publishers.

Um, and a lot of my colleagues in these, you know, training colleagues, they were just trainers. That's all they did. They educated, which was great, and they were fantastic at Right. But their content was sta their content because they didn't actually own that content. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

That was. [00:19:00] Someone else's case study. Yeah. That was something that they read in an article and they're very good at delivering, they're very good at training and everything, but they didn't have that, um, that real life things are changing, evolving. You know, every time I did any of courses I'm updating, even though it's the same content, I'm updating the deck all the way through.

Yeah. There's there's new facts and figures. There's new everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I think thought leaders, yes. You can't just, there's a lot of people out there who call themselves thought leaders. Yeah. Whom very aware. I just called myself one. But, um, there are a lot of people out there for the themselves thought leaders, and they're really, and I'm gonna sound really horrible here, and I've just said it so I'm gonna say it, but they're just regurgitated.

Do

Matthew Dunn: you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And that, [00:20:00] that looping it back, that's one of the risks I see with the facile tool, tool set, language tool set of ai. It's like, Hey, write me an article. Cool. Copy paste. Ooh, look, I'm a thought leader. Uh, no. You didn't do any thinking. I mean, yes, you had to engineer the prompt.

But if a prompt was that difficult, it would end up being book length. Then you might as well publish a prompt, right? Uh, getting, getting, getting a clever, uh, thing to spit out something that looks like you worked hard. Uh, may seem like it's cheap, but I just don't find, I don't think it's gonna actually work in the long run.

You know, the folks. And we could, we could talk about people that we know in common who, who really are, like, they're electrifying, they're interesting. You don't know what they're gonna come up with. You think about what they said, right? They helped you get smarter at your particular, uh, practice and discipline.

That's a thought leader, [00:21:00] right? Yes. Yes.

Kath Pay: Yes. And they're not always liked either, by the way. They're

Matthew Dunn: not what? They're not always liked. Yeah. Oh yeah. You're absolutely right. Yeah.

Kath Pay: So, you know, they're, they're bringing in ideas and, and that goes against everyone's previous thinking and habits and concepts of how things should be in reality.

And so it's basically calling them and saying, actually what you're doing is wrong and, and people hate being wrong. So it, it, it can be a bit of a challenge that way, but then over time, once they actually take it on board and they change and everything, then they, you know, they're fully understand. But sometimes it can be a bit of a, a,

Matthew Dunn: yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, it's easy to think of, uh, marketing or business or email marketing or something like that sort of cooked, done. Everybody knows how it works. Mm, I don't think so. I think we're still reinventing this as the machine machinery and the culture continue their own evolution. Yeah. [00:22:00]

Kath Pay: You know, and I have my, my hypothesis on that cause I've done a lot of things.

Um, and what, what I think it's all about is that email marketing is really hard. Okay. It's actually hard and. And it's complex. So if you go around and have a look at all the agencies, so not specifically email agencies, but just web or digital agencies, you'll see that they will offer every other channel email if they do offer email, if they're outsourcing it to a consultant because email is hot, right?

And so, Because it is hard, we latch onto those silver bullets, those things that are being tried and proven and tested and [00:23:00] over the years by, you know, but without actually supporting the evidence or anything. Or it could be it did work 10, 12 years ago. That's totally relevant for the here and the now. Um, and so I think that's why we tend to do it rather than sort of, You know, each of us looking at our individual needs, our objectives, our programs, our audiences, our, you know, KPIs that we're gonna be, you know, measured on everything like this and coming up with something that's really, really unique, still abiding by the basic principles of email marketing.

And there are many, we, no, I don't think we really talk about that enough. I prefer to talk about principles rather than best practices. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because principles are generally applicable. And configurable to all types of businesses. Best practices sometimes only apply to cert as well,

Matthew Dunn: right?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a good distinction. I like that distinction. Why? Why is it so hard?[00:24:00]

Kath Pay: Because, um, because of those things, right? So for one email isn't owned by a entity, so Facebook, right, right, right. So therefore it's a lot more flexible. There's a lot more that can go, right. There's a lot more that can go wrong. There's a lot more everything's happening. Um, it also means that, you know, all of our databases, all of our products, everything is different.

So we're all going to have very, very different strategies. Mm-hmm. Whereas you can go and read up on the web, you can say, this is the Facebook strategy, if you're this, if you are there, if you're, you know, that kinda stuff. So it's, it can be a little bit more formalized with other channels maybe. Um, Seo. So I used to be an seo, um, consultant, well expert back in 1998.

Things have changed a little bit, but still the basic principles are there. And so I was [00:25:00] able to pick up really quickly. I'm, I'm not saying I'm at the, you know, amazing level, but, but they still. Fundamentally work, even though like Ulta Vista is no longer in existence, Google's a big one there. Right? That didn't exist back then.

So, um, there, there's, I, I think that's what it is. There's e email. I don't know, there's just too many variables. Just so many. Very,

Matthew Dunn: yeah, it's a good summary. And, and may I agree with you about the, the, you know, no owner, no owner equals no one imposing, uh, structure and rules of the game,

Kath Pay: which is why we wanna do it.

We, we are so self imposing, aren't we? With, with, yes. And, and you know, like yesterday I'm looking at a forum and, and someone said, um, you know, I wanna go, my CEO wants me to increase frequency. Right. We're already sending X amount per week and everything, [00:26:00] and I wanna prove to him that it's, um, that it's a bad decision to do.

Yeah. And then when I went to her and I sort of just spilled it out and I said, listen, She was talking about should I just do a report on certain subscribes? And I said, you know, so I went into the whole thing about, you know, when you're just looking at increasing frequency and only measuring campaign, um, you know, activity, yes, you're gonna find out the, the results are worse because that's how email is if you increase it, people are still only gonna open one in every four emails.

Right. But it just means they're gonna be opening one in four emails more regularly. Right more frequently than they would if you have less. Um, and so they're still gonna be unsubscribing and everything, but cuz you're doing it more often, you're actually heightening that up. But then you need to get the value of an email address and start applying that right benchmark that.

Then when you're going to do that, you'll have a control of the current sense. You'll have a, your, your test of the, of the new [00:27:00] frequency and then leave it running for a while, you.

Um, campaigns and all the rest of it and, uh, you know, and then look at the value of the email address. Look at the revenue, look at the metrics. You will look at the unsubscribe rate, but also use open rate, click rate, all that kind of stuff. You have to start. Really thinking about it. Everyone just gravitates to what is kind of obvious without sitting down and taking the time.

What looks to be obvious, what looks to be obvious. Yeah. And really delving into it, having everything impacts. And I get so caught up in this topic, kind remember why we started. Why was I telling you that story?

Matthew Dunn: Well, it was, it was about what, you know, why is, I think I asked you why email is hard and you just touched on a bunch of reasons.

Yes.

Kath Pay: Yes. And and often that is the case. Often it is the obvious thing. So, okay. [00:28:00] Another example, right? Um, testing open rates. That's your success metric is you're gonna be using an open rate cause you're testing a subject line. Yeah. Okay. Everyone goes, well, subject lines impact open rates. So we'll be testing that.

But I can tell you I've done this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Plus also there's this other little lovely, um, sort of, um, uh, task guide I send everyone to go and do. And it shows you and proves to you that actually if you're going to be testing an open, uh, uh, a subject line and you're using the open metric to be designating whether it's success or not, you're probably optimizing for the wrong result because, you know, so.

This is the little lips test that you do, right? Go and get the top 10 campaigns with high openers, top 10 with click rates top 10 based on [00:29:00] conversion. Yeah. Now go and see what's the crossover.

Matthew Dunn: Right? Right. And, and the best open, not, not necessarily the best result. Right.

Kath Pay: Yeah. So that's why. Right. But it's obvious when you think about it, it's logical for you to be using the open rate, but logic isn't necessarily applicable.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Plus, plus minus that new variable that you mentioned already, uh, apple and mpp Exactly. Making, making hash of that particular, uh, measure. It's still possible, but um, Delve down just one more level there. I'll, uh, I'll throw out a thesis for you to kick around. Um, what I see in conversation, not necessarily in practice, cuz I'm not at their desk, but it feels to me, and this is email marketing and probably other marketing disciplines, MarTech in general.

[00:30:00] That people are, they frequently end up sort of, uh, with the myopia imprisonment of the tool set they're using. You know, the E S P tells me this, so this is what I'll act on. Is it a, is it the right set of measures? Is it an adequate set of measures? Is it actually connected to everything else in your business?

No, no, no. But it kind of becomes, God, that's all I've got to work with, and that's where I spend all day. So that's what I, that's what I make decisions on. Yeah.

Kath Pay: You know what, and, and yes, this is so true and a lot of what you said was actually legacy, and it used to happen, but it doesn't happen as much now.

Still does happen, certainly with the smaller companies who would just say, um, yeah, they're, they're just using, you know, a MailChimp and active campaign, but they haven't got it actually synced to any particular database. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just standalones and they don't always record, you know, maybe they don't even have a connected to Google Analytics, so they don't have the, the conversions even.

They're just looking at the open rates and the click. Uh, and that's very much how [00:31:00] it used to be. It's less like that now. Good. But when we go back to how it used to be, and a lot of email marketing is based on how it used to be. How it used to be is that, um, The ESPs, like you can't go and get a marketing degree, uh, an email marketing degree.

Right, right. There's, there's no such thing as that. I used to teach the digital marketing, um, uh, degree, the email marketing portion of it. So it is, does live in that as a, as you know, as a little nod, right. But, um, you can't go and do that. So there's nothing that's incredibly comprehensive, which is what we do.

That, that can can give you that. Therefore, we are left learning from either trainers like myself or um, articles on the web or most likely your E S P. Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. You are trained by them now. And kudos to the [00:32:00] esp. So you know, they just went, well, we've got a great system. We want them to use it.

We need to train them to use it. And that's what they're doing. They're training you to use their system. Right. And the marketing elements within that's necessary to be able to use their system. Yeah. They're not teaching you marketing, they're not really teaching you email marketing at all, because they're not necessarily email marketers.

They're technology providers. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where a lot of the. You know, so-called practices and everything are coming. And therefore they are also very, very technology led rather than marketing led. And when you think about how we as email marketers got into email marketing, we all somehow fumbled our way here.

It kind of like, you know, we, we landed here by accident. We woke up the day, said I wanna be an email marketer. Right? Well, some of the new, new younger ones might, but certainly not me. Um, And so you kind of don't therefore have that [00:33:00] training. Like if you go and, and I do this all this time anecdotally, um, survey, you know, my, my students and my clients and, and, and in presentations.

And you go and ask them, you know, how did they get it? Yes. They go in there accidentally. Who out of view is actually got a marketing degree and we're talking probably maybe 10%. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So therefore the majority of email marketers are not email marketers, as in, they're not marketers, they're email technologists or email campaign managers.

And I'm not saying this to do write them or to, to reduce them to anything. No. Okay. Okay. But what I, and I've written quite a lot of articles on this too, it's bring marketing back to email marketing and that's what I've been on a mission to actually help as much as possible to teach that strategy side of things.

Mm-hmm. So that they understand how everything all fits in, that you haven't got little individual [00:34:00] campaigns that don't connect to anything, and then you putting all your customers this disconnected journey. You actually, everything is tight. Everything is there for a purpose. It's all there to deliver an enhanced, you know, customer experience to your audience and to help them to achieve their objective.

That's what, whereas most of us are just going, oh, oh, I read somewhere I should have this program. Okay.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, it's funny, my, I I, I agree with, I agree with all the stuff that you just sort of summarized about the field. As a, as a technologist, myself, a developer, and so on. I f I'm frequently kind of scratching my head about how relatively non-technical, non-technically skilled the people in, in, in that complex job of email marketing tend to be.

Um, because. Prisoner of [00:35:00] the tools, again, be because the e s P hides a lot of what's going on or don't, doesn't let you put your hands and fingers on it and do it or you don't have time, which is probably the case right there. But I'll get people going, ah, that's too technical. I'm like, oh my God. Right. How do you get your job done?

If you think that's technical, you got, you know, you know, there's nothing. So they're caught in between. It feels like a perpetually immature field in a funny way.

Kath Pay: It's so advanced in so many ways. It really, really is. And, and let's, you know, let's give it kudos to, to the, the innate nature of ema. It's the first channel.

Okay. So that's incredibly powerful, and we should understand that we should be using it differently to how many of us are used. Yeah. Can't even acknowledge that. Okay. So, so that's, that is a bit of an issue. Mm-hmm. I do, I do. Um, And yeah, we just, we just need to understand that email is an incredibly valuable [00:36:00] channel that needs to be, well, we need to do as best as we can to actually understand how to resonate best with our audience.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that isn't always able to be taught through a technology provider. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and, and like I said, I'm not, I'm not. Writing out anyone. I think, you know, technology providers do a great job. Yeah. They are advanced in so many ways, but then in so many other ways, it's like, um, I do talk publicly about the AB testing tools.

Yeah. With psps, they're totally, yeah. And not only are they inadequate, they actually reteach, uh, you know, um, marketers Yeah. How to test. So they're actually testing wrongly and they are optimizing for the wrong results because of that tool has not been out, has not been thought out, has not been advanced enough, [00:37:00] has not got the, the, the, the teaching and everything like that.

It's so, you know, it in some ways it's almost dangerous, right? Um, because if, if they're optimizing for the wrong results based on their use of that tool the other way. It's, it's, I can't tell you how many, um, marketers I've spoken to who have been disillusioned from testing because. They don't start with a hypothesis.

There's no tool in email marketing that says, okay, this is what you do. You have to start with this and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally doing a subject line, different wording, and then, you know, one, one subject line is here and the other one is so similar that they don't get a statistically significant result and then they go away and they go, there was no difference.

Right, right. I'm not going to keep testing cause it's, it doesn't work. Um, and it's not that testing work, it's just that they're doing it wrong, but they don't realize that they're doing it wrong. And, and [00:38:00] this is what bothers me a lot, which is why I spent a lot of my time, time talking about testing

Matthew Dunn: and, and, and educate and, and, you know, leading, leading the thinking on it and educating people on it.

Um, I'd be curious to get your reaction to, to, uh, I just made this hypothesis up on the fly. Um, If email cost more to execute, I wonder if we'd have some improvement in terms of, let's call it rigor, for lack of a better word. Because you could throw someone, you could throw, you know, some, some nice wet behind the ears, 20 something year old in and go run the email program.

And th they probably are gonna contribute to the bottom line. Why? Just nature, nature of the channel.

Kath Pay: Yes. The push channel. Yes. It, it, it, I say that in my book. Yes. [00:39:00] Is its own worst enemy.

Matthew Dunn: Yes.

Kath Pay: A job, right? Yeah. Um, and, and, and again, you're not doing a good job cause you haven't been taught how to do it right?

Sure, sure. Um, so, so that is definitely a problem or one of the problems. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And therefore, you know, like, You're not going to be putting, um, you think about a TV channel, you think about paid, even paid ads. Yeah, yeah. We've got very high paying executives working on those. And these guys know what they're doing and all the rest of it.

And then if, if anyone's gonna be coming up through the ranks, they're gonna be trained, they're gonna be trained really well, and they'll probably have some kind of a, you know, definitely a degree of some sort behind them in marketing or something like this. So yes, email. Is that still regarded as that cheap channel?

Yeah. But one of the things I wanna pull out here, [00:40:00] and as a technologist, you probably realize this too, I find so as a consultant, I find this all the time, and it bothers me, not just for my business sake, but because of how businesses are, businesses will always have time and money and budget. For the technology, but they won't necessarily have it for the smarts to go with it.

Matthew Dunn: Amen. Yeah. Technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Drive me

Kath Pay: crazy. It it, it does, doesn't it? Because Yes, you, you'll get, you'll spend so much. I know so many, um, Um, so much money on the technology, but then it's actually ended up being used for some very basic things. One cause complex to actually, but two, um, because the, the, the strategy isn't in place and therefore, you know, you, you're just achieving something that you [00:41:00] could actually achieve with MailChimp in a very, very, very expensive, um, you know, platform.

Matthew Dunn: So it's, so, it's by way of, uh, metaphor, it's, uh, a, a lot of people. Sort of driving to the playground in supercars. Right. This thing will do all sorts of stuff. You spend a fortune on it and you're going to the grocery store at 30 miles an hour. Exactly,

Kath Pay: yes. And so it, and then they spend, you know what, if they're gonna spend time being trained, they'll spend time being trained on the system.

Yeah. Being trained on strategy. Not

Matthew Dunn: being right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing, the, the, the actual, the actual, uh, thinking, organizational structure, planning work that goes into being effective with the tool set that you've got on at your fingertips.

Kath Pay: And then even when it comes to RFPs, you know, we do our RFPs and the first thing we do before we start [00:42:00] commencing the RFPs, we say we have to do an audit and a strategy.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I knew you, I knew about your audit practice. Yeah.

Kath Pay: If you don't already have that strategy in place, then that's what we need to do. Cuz we need to know where we want to go. Yeah. Before we start looking for the system to take us there. Yeah. But there are so many people who will just do that rfp, just get us a new system, and then we are gonna let the system determine what our strategy is.

It's the wrong way of doing it.

Matthew Dunn: Right. No, agreed. Yeah. Agreed. It's, uh, and, and, and. Us, us. Uh, my CIO friend used to call us the nasty vendors. Us nasty vendors are, are guilty of contributing to that because we'll oversell what our particular widget does.

Kath Pay: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. But, and, and, but I always have a, um, whenever I'm doing it with a client, I will say, listen, we are not meeting with a vendor unless there's your future account manager is gonna be there cause they've told.

The sales guy [00:43:00] accountable. Yeah. Because they know at the end of the day, they're gonna have to deliver it and they'll have an unhappy client or they'll have a happy client. Yeah. So again, it's little things like that, and that's just, you know, from experience in the well experience anyway, that will tell you that that is the case.

It's not just to email marketing, isn't it?

Matthew Dunn: No, it's not just email marketing. Right. It's, it's, uh, it's any practice. Broadly speaking. I've, I've, I've noticed something in the past, call it four to six months, that intrigues me. Um, I see businesses executing extremely well with their, with the email marketing piece of their relationship with me.

I'm saying that as carefully as I can, and it, it's not necessarily done with super expensive, high-end fancy tool set. They, they're clear about strategy and they kind of stick to the knitting, if you will, of the business. That they're in and the relationship, bit of [00:44:00] the relationship that, uh, fits that business in terms of what I buy, buy from them, transact with them, whatever else.

And it, it impresses me when I see that like, dang, you guys are doing a really good job and I know you're banging this out with Clavio, MailChimp, whatever, fill in the blanks. What's Chris Merritt's phrase? Cheap and cheerful systems. But it's working because they're very clear about a, about the long term, what we're gonna do together.

Relationship.

Kath Pay: Yes. And, and, and, and, and that's it. Uh, you've summed that up really, really well. As far as I'm concerned. You know, we, we throw a lot of businesses, throw money at it with the technology, hoping fingers cross that, you know, it's, it's gonna work, but without actually a plan of action. Yeah. Where you can do a lot more, even if you have to do workarounds, um, you can do a lot more with cheaper technology.

Yeah. Yeah. Of just being very strategic with it.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Begin with the end in mind. Know what you [00:45:00] actually wanna do. Um, yeah. And then probably difficult, if rare, difficult, nearly impossible to pick the system to execute the strategy, even though that's the way it should work. Right.

Kath Pay: Well, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Yeah. And

Matthew Dunn: okay, so I don't get to own your whole day, even though it'd be fun. Uh, what's on the horizon you think, for this field? What's the future of email cath pay? The future of

Kath Pay: future of email is, um, we're not going anywhere, that's for sure. Right. Mm-hmm. Technology, uh, you know, we owned personal personalization.

We were the first ones really to be owning personalization, although we, we had the capability and everything, thanks tech. Um, but we still are doing it as well as we could. Um, and as well as we should as far as the consumers are concerned. Right. So [00:46:00] there's still room for improvement and personalization is not going anywhere.

Um, it still is. I regard it. To be an art. So, you know, that's there. But once we start to get, you know, the AI coming into most of the platforms and that, that is happening on a regular basis. Right. You would know. Yeah. So, you know, every now and then, every every couple of weeks you get a new s where we've made it easier for you to do this.

We've got, you know, so, so that is exciting, but still you need to be the strategic marketer guiding it, but, Um, I think we are just going, I, I dunno that there's gonna be anything amazing. I mean, privacy is still a really, really big thing. And I, big deal. Yeah, big deal. Lots more going to happen in that field, right?

We've got and, and everything like this, but. We just have to stay tight. We have to adapt. Same as [00:47:00] we've adapted. And I think that we adapted quite easily to the, um, the mpp, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone first was looking going, the sky is falling up. Right. But now we're still no big deal.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's

Kath Pay: still happening.

Yeah. And we might be using workarounds or we're using different metrics, which are probably more reliable than, than the open made any, um, Yeah. So I'm, I'm looking forward to those kind of things. Well, I'm not necessarily looking forward to the, the, the privacy, the additional privacy cause that always are a bit of a challenge.

Okay. But, um, definitely looking forward to the, um, personalization automation. It is, I can remember for years and years and years, yes. Every year everyone was saying automation's gonna come, you know, next year. Next year will be the year for automation. Next year will be the year for automation. Right. We kept on [00:48:00] doing it cause it got a little pick up, welcome emails, you know, or welcome program event and then, you know, oh great.

So you know, most people have those in place. But I can really see that there's a huge momentum happening for automating as much as possible, because you've got the, you know, lovely timely messages, great offers, all personalized, you don't even need to use AI for this. And you still get that really, really personalized effect.

Um, and oh, they're thinking of being how nice. So that, and, and then, you know, when you look at the, the metrics from them, they're phenomenal. And that's because they are so relevant. Um, so automation is still on its way up. It's not there. It hasn't, it hasn't peaked yet. Um, not at all. I, but I can see good momentum.

Matthew Dunn: That good. So good. Yeah. Interesting.

Kath Pay: Yeah. And, and once you start doing that, then that's adding [00:49:00] even more value to the email channel, which is gonna make then the consumers even more reliant upon it. And therefore, You know, it's, it's all good for Ima

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I had, I had, um, I had a couple Jens from Yahoo Mail, uh, the top guys from Yahoo Mail on for a conversation a couple weeks back and they said what they learned cause they would, they relaunched the Yahoo email client on roughly its 25th anniversary, which I thought was kind of cool.

But they said what our consumers base, our customers told us that e emails where they manage the business of life. Which I thought was, was nicely phrased and felt relatively accurate to me. Um, yes. And as we start putting more and better guardrails, call it per, call it, uh, privacy, um, a around what do I control about myself and what do I not control about myself?

Email actually feels like a more, [00:50:00] much more I stand control of my stuff world. Yes. Then fill in the blank's social media channel or messaging channel or something else, like, ah, I can still tell you to take me off the list and unsubscribe and bozo filled for you. And I, I still feel like I've got, I may not get to all of it.

I may not be in inbox zero ever, but I still feel like the controls are there for me to drive and it's not someone else poking, prudence, shaping it, structuring it.

Kath Pay: Yeah. And the fact that it isn't owned by any particular Yes, agreed. So, you know, um, yeah, we, we've kinda done a full loop now.

Matthew Dunn: Haven't done, yeah.

We have, we have, I do worry a bit as, as, as we do the inevitable fumbling experimentation of, of a new enabler ai. In this case, we're gonna see some crap. We're gonna see some really dumb stuff. For a while, we're gonna see pseudo personalization that [00:51:00] makes you wanna stick your finger down your throat because it's harder than it looks.

But I can't make an anomal without breaking eggs, I guess. No,

Kath Pay: but it, it's this whole thing. Yeah. AI is just a big learning curve. I mean, already is, is onto, you know, um, articles that, uh, look like they've been written and they haven't, you know, been. They're not citing correctly and all. Yeah. Yeah. So all of all of that's already right.

And yes, um, it's gonna be, it's a learning curve. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Strategy will be even more important. So everyone's gonna end up buying. The second edition of your book, I predict,

well, Kath, I knew it would be awesome. This is like a masterclass for email marketers that really wanna be at the top of their game. I think people are gonna enjoy this [00:52:00] conversation. Good.

Kath Pay: Well, I've enjoyed it. Always enjoyed speaking with you.

Matthew Dunn: Cool. Well, we're gonna call it good. Where does someone find Cath pay out in the world?

Kath Pay: Okay. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn mainly. Uh, Twitter, of course, holistic email marketing.com. Um, and I'm cap at holistic email marketing, um, no holistic email.com. Sorry.

Matthew Dunn: And, and if you go to your favorite bookstore, whether online or not, look for the book, holistic Email by Cath Pay. Yes, indeed. We're out

here.