Overview
00:01:04 – Say hello to Mike Auldredge from Customer.io. Hi Mike!.
00:02:45 – BFCM, the superbowl for email
00:03:33 – If you’re reading this and listening, you need to start prepping for BFCM now
00:19:37 – What not to do while prepping for BFCM
[00:00:00] Eric Trinidad: Welcome to Email’s Not Dead. My name is Eric and the gravy to my Turkey with me is always Jonathan.
[00:00:06] Jonathan “JT” Torres: I don’t know if I like that intro as much as I like some of the other ones, but I thank you.
[00:00:11] Eric Trinidad: Yeah, you’re welcome, man. You know, you keep it saucy, you keep it real.
I appreciate you all your days. You know.
[00:00:17] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Thank you for bringing it back around. That was good.
[00:00:19] Eric Trinidad: Yeah.
[00:00:19] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Good save.
[00:00:20] Eric Trinidad: No man. Like you, you just you know, you keep it real. And that’s what we need right now. Some real talk. Because we’re gonna be talking this episode specifically about, I don’t know, the do’s and don’ts of upcoming holiday sends.
So we have a couple special guests with us today. We have Alison Gootee, longtime friend of the podcast Deliverability Advocate Specialist at Mailgun. Welcome back Allison, how are you?
[00:00:46] Alison Gootee: Oh, I’m so glad to be here officially as a real Mailgun employee now. Back on the podcast officially. Ever since I met you guys, I was like, I gotta get in there and now I’m here.
So what a thrill.
[00:00:58] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yeah.
[00:00:58] Eric Trinidad: Right on.
[00:00:59] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: One of us, one of us.
[00:01:04] Eric Trinidad: Well, it’s great to have you. Welcome to the fold. I appreciate you as well. We also have another special guest, Mike Auldredge, the Deliverability Services manager at customer io. Mike, how are you sir?
[00:01:16] Mike Auldredge: Better than I deserve.
[00:01:18] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Mike, your reputation definitely precedes you, man. Like, I think I’ve heard about you.
I’ve heard your tales like way even before we even started talking, so it’s really great to have you on the show, man.
[00:01:33] Mike Auldredge: Well, I assume it was a mixed bag of stuff, but I appreciate you guys letting me on despite all that.
[00:01:41] Eric Trinidad: No, man, I’m excited. I feel like I’ve made a fast friend already, so, I hope this relationship continues.
[00:01:47] Mike Auldredge: 100 dude.
[00:01:48] Alison Gootee: And isn’t that what Zune’s all about?
[00:01:53] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yeah. Yeah but Eric has a special bond with anybody who starts talking about Zunes, so that’s always, always a bonus.
[00:02:00] Eric Trinidad: Oh my gosh. I mean.
[00:02:02] Jonathan “JT” Torres: No, we’re not going off on that tangent.
[00:02:04] Mike Auldredge: It wasn’t working in my dating life, but professionally, I have made some buddies with my, with my Zune love.
[00:02:10] Eric Trinidad: Nice. Yeah, we got a lot of talk about, man, I’m so excited. There’s gonna be so many Slack channels. I gotta introduce you some Reddit threads, like we’re gonna talk.
[00:02:20] Mike Auldredge: The society.
[00:02:22] Eric Trinidad: Well, before we get there, we definitely want to jump into what’s coming up next, you know, holiday season of the year.
Sun’s going down earlier. It’s getting a little bit crispier here in San Antonio, not just because we’re all burnt. But it’s, you know, it’s about that time to talk, start talking about some of this. So, I appreciate y’all coming in and, and laying it down.
[00:02:42] Mike Auldredge: Yeah. Happy to be here.
[00:02:42] Alison Gootee: We are pumped. Yeah. Most wonderful time of the year.
[00:02:45] Mike Auldredge: I know. I always like consider it the the deliverability Super Bowl. You know, it’s kind of like, which I mean is insanely and violently nerdy of me to say, but it really is that it’s the time when all of us are activated and I think it’s that time when we’re really, you know, connecting with marketers on this being a very important time, but having very different scopes of concern sometimes.
[00:03:06] Eric Trinidad: Yeah, no, absolutely. Like what do you think? Like, I don’t know, like just to kind of kick us off in that direction, you know, because it’s that time to start thinking about this really. It’s like this is, I feel like this is the payoff for you doing all the right things through the year, and now you get to really start kind of ramping up and, and getting into it.
Like what, have you seen anything so far, or have you heard any other kind of like rumblings on people getting ready?
[00:03:33] Mike Auldredge: Yeah, you know, it’s something like we talked about before, you know, just how Black Friday, cyber Monday, it’s something that starts earlier and earlier every year. And the one thing I’ve seen has actually been quite positive.
You know, at least from the customer.io side, we’ve seen customers engaging with our deliverability team. Asking about how to prep for it now. And it brought like a tear to my eye because usually, you know, especially historically, you know, in the early days of email, black Friday, cyber Monday is you go to town on your list just unabashedly and then, and then it’s a reputation repair conversation, which is where my team would spend most of their time now.
It seems like there’s a lot more front loading of some of that goodwill and I think a lot of lessons learned in the industry and pretty awesome though, for sure.
[00:04:17] Alison Gootee: I agree. Every year I’m like, oh, we’re gonna start early this year. Right guys? And then there’s like some customer that you work with that has never sent before.
They had no idea this was a big thing. They just thought, I have this new product, I’m gonna blast my whole list. And you’re like, oh, I got to whip out all my emails that I sent my customers last year. Just use that same material over and over again. Because for us, the stuff is evergreen. It’s the same stuff we talk about all the time.
But you know, every year there’s new little email marketers entering the fold and they have no idea what to do. So, as fun as it is to see some of those roosters come home and think, oh my God, I did such a good job prepping. I feel like there is just always new batch of folks that have no idea what’s going on.
And we’re like, start now. And they’re thinking, oh yeah, I’m gonna wait until I’m thinking more about Thanksgiving. We did a webinar just last week about Black Friday, cyber Monday. I’m kind of waiting for those recording links to get hit pretty hard in the upcoming weeks when people are like, oh crap, we moved from August.
And the thing after that is actually September, not more summer, because you know, it’s so hard. You’re like knee deep in the throws of all the heat and the humidity and you’re like, oh my God, this is never gonna end. And then next thing you know, you’re like. Hear the jingle bells on a commercial and you’re like, Ugh.
[00:05:26] Eric Trinidad: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:26] Alison Gootee: It’s that time.
[00:05:29] Eric Trinidad: I dunno. Yeah. Like I know my fam watches like, what is it? Like holidays in July you know, the Hallmark Christmas movies, it’s pretty much like in the background all year round for them. And I’m surprised our mom doesn’t have a Christmas tree up already last year.
You know, she put it up like at the beginning of October, so. We’re getting close. We’re getting close.
[00:05:48] Mike Auldredge: So we’re noticing the holidays are starting to trend back for when they start. So pretty soon it’s just gonna be Christmas all year long. Holiday season, black Friday, cyber monday everyone, just deals all the time.
[00:06:00] Alison Gootee: Yeah. One of my neighbors has those like 12 foot skeletons in their yard that were like such a big deal during the pandemic. They have never left the yard. They like have seasonal outfits and they’re just out there all the time, and so on the one hand it’s so exciting that it’s festive and on the other it’s like is nothing sacred anymore?
I was excited about skeleton season.
And now it’s all year.
[00:06:19] Mike Auldredge: You should open up to that.
Yeah, it’s tough.
[00:06:21] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: My neighbor put hers up in July and she’s had it like, she decorated it for pride. She decorate it now for college football. I’m like, leave it. I told her just leave it up all year.
Like it’s the holiday skeleton.
[00:06:36] Mike Auldredge: We have that in Olympia that is a new lifestyle, so that in addition to loving Zunes, I kind of wanna join that team as well.
[00:06:44] Alison Gootee: Skeleton crew.
[00:06:45] Jonathan “JT” Torres: You should. Yeah. You really should. Yeah. Do it.
[00:06:51] Alison Gootee: I think that’s how the customers are too, is like our customers who are sending the emails, they’re thinking like, oh, well, let’s just keep this fun going all year long. And so they have these season specials all the time. You know, you get these subject lines, they’re like, they get sale of the year, and you’re like, it’s Labor Day.
I know that’s not true. Like, I think it’s gonna be an even bigger one, just around the corner. And so I do think that’s one thing is that every year, as it starts early and earlier. Folks are just getting fatigued all the time because they’re thinking like, I know you always have a deal. There’s another deal.
Especially, I don’t know about how it is in San Antonio, but locally, the economy, you know, we’re hearing a lot from small business owners like, oh, we’re struggling, you know, this is the time we need to keep our small businesses afloat. And I’m like, I’m trying to keep me afloat right now, so I feel for you.
But I do feel like there maybe some backlash with all this constant marketing that we need to kind of get back to the reason for the season. And what makes it special is that it is only a small amount of time, you know, there’s this like window of big excitement and hot deals. And I think it would benefit folks if they tried to make it a little bit like less of a year round affair because all our wallets are getting lighter all the time.
[00:08:01] Mike Auldredge: Yeah. Instead of like, you know, I’ve seen, you know, as we talk about the season like expanding, there’s also I’ve noticed some good things and some bad things. Some of the rough stuff is that I’ve noticed they’ve started doing the blasting a little early, and I use the word blasting, you know, intentionally.
But one thing I’ve seen that’s pretty awesome, and I started seeing this in the last couple of years, is senders starting to hype their deals. So what they’re doing is they’re all the, they do some very carefully targeted, drip campaigns and blast out to their audiences, letting them know like, we’ve got a major deal coming here.
So basically you get this hype train going and then based on the engagement of those emails, you start fine tuning your list for the actual Black Friday, cyber Monday send, and then you really deliver on what you promised. And that part is very important. Getting your base super excited and offering them something really awesome because instead of just using Black Friday, cyber Monday as an opportunity to get the dark, dusty corners of your list and try to hope to engage like target those people who are your biggest fans, and those are where you can really start seeing a lot of those conversions.
So like, yeah, using that fine tuning as you approach it, maybe your list won’t be as big, but I bet your return on investment will be a lot higher.
[00:09:10] Alison Gootee: I love that. Like, I’m a big shopper. There’s like boxes showing up all the time. My mail lady hates me. And like, there’s a couple stores where like at Christmas time they’ll say like, Monday is 20% off of this product.
Tuesday is a bogo, Wednesday is free shipping. And so I could kind of plan for what I wanted to do because I hate when I like talk myself into making the purchase. I spend all the money and then the next day they’re like, Hey, that thing you just bought is on sale and you’re screwed. And you’re like, oh, I don’t feel happy about your brand at all, actually.
And so I think there’s some reluctance of some brands to like kind of spill the beans of what they’re planning. You know, they want to see, like, if I surprise you, will you be excited? And it’s like, yeah, maybe. But what if I’m also excited for longer and actually give you my money because I knew what you’re going to tell me.
And so. I don’t know. I feel like folks kinda like to make a gamble. They don’t wanna spoil the surprise, but like, I’m just trying to spend my money and know where it’s going. I don’t really wanna be surprised about an expense personally.
[00:10:06] Mike Auldredge: Yeah, it’s just like being a singer, a mysterious singer songwriter.
It’s always that balance between delivery and mystique, and you don’t want to go too hard on the mystique because obscurity has no heroes. I find it.
[00:10:17] Eric Trinidad: Well, no, actually. Well, I mean, based on our last conversation, I think that, you know, y’all were looking at attending a couple concerts for folks that you know, didn’t have a lot of following, so, you know, yep.
Maybe there’s some .
[00:10:29] Alison Gootee: Yeah, you gotta get ’em pumped up. You don’t tell the city that you’re gonna be in like, Hey, I’m here right now. You better come, or else I have to quit. Like, no, tell us. I’m not trying to be held hostage because you wanna do a band for your living. I have a real job. Sorry.
[00:10:47] Jonathan “JT” Torres: It cut us deep. It cut us deep.
[00:10:51] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Dang Alison, don’t look at my office.
[00:10:52] Alison Gootee: Sometimes you have to talk about email.
Hey, you’re here. You’re here at your real job too. You get it.
[00:11:01] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yeah. I was just gonna say like it’s also a good way to like drive engagement through all of that too, because if you’re doing something where it’s just like, Hey, this is the thing and it’s just here now, it doesn’t help. And we’re always talking about like, Hey, you gotta do things to plan this out.
Like start building that list, like what Mike was talking about too is that you, you wanna start early, you wanna start curating, you wanna start doing that stuff. And if you can see what those engagement numbers are looking like early, by doing things like that, by showing the plan, getting everybody ready and hyped for it, like that’s gold.
That’s like exactly what we’re telling people to do.
[00:11:32] Mike Auldredge: Yeah, and you know, like, especially like getting as far as like getting ready too, just because you have an inactive segment of your list too, that doesn’t mean like, I’m not sitting here saying don’t email those people. Don’t get them ready for this deal.
I’m just saying don’t do it all on Black Friday. Like right now is a perfect time like to, and you have a massive opportunity to start, you know, re-engaging with those maybe stale recipients or you know, those people that you really might want to convert, bring ’em back to active users or whatever.
So I’d say right now is the time. To safely reengage some of those more dormant parts of your list, you know, make a decision about, you know, 5 to 10% of my daily traffic. I’m gonna commit to sending a very simple, maybe a, a simple offer like one CTA email. And, and I generally like to say, have it be an opt-in email instead of saying like, Hey, you, this is your opportunity to opt out.
Like really send it, you know, come from a good faith place and say, Hey, would you like to opt into marketing communications? Start sending those out. Then you can start throwing them into your campaigns as well. Those ones that you’re using to prep for that big send. You can’t see my hands right now, but I’m doing a diagram that’s like, it would be so much clearer if you could see.
I was doing like this, so good thing we got video.
[00:12:47] Jonathan “JT” Torres: And I definitely don’t want to gloss over a couple of those things. Like, I was gonna ask for the number because I know, like we all kind of have our own, like I know, I like to have always told customers. That 10% is like kind of your magic number or like what you don’t want to go over of like people that haven’t engaged with your traffic that you’re including with the people who have engaged with your traffic.
‘Cause, because it can look bad and when it starts looking bad and you start getting the wrong kind of numbers, then you’re gonna get in into more trouble that than what it was worth. So bring it in slowly. Let that, you know, let that part of the audience, like become part of it and yeah, like opt them in.
I love seeing messages that say like, Hey, haven’t heard from you in a while. Like, we just wanna make sure that you’re still wanting to be part of this. Click on this link. You know, like, let us know. Come back to our opt-in page. Like, I will participate in that when I’m asked because like that’s honest and truthful.
[00:13:36] Mike Auldredge: And you feel respected.
[00:13:38] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yes. Yes. Yeah, very much. I don’t feel like just like I’m just the wallet behind the scenes that they’re trying to stay afloat with. You know? Like it feels like they’re treating me like a person.
[00:13:47] Eric Trinidad: I like the ones where, Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while.
Here’s 10%. Come on back.
[00:13:51] Alison Gootee: Yep.
[00:13:52] Eric Trinidad: You know?
[00:13:53] Mike Auldredge: Yeah. Butter him up a little bit.
[00:13:53] Alison Gootee: You really want me. Talk to my wallet.
[00:13:55] Mike Auldredge: And yeah, the 5 to 10% though I do wanna touch on that too because I always try to be weary about throwing out those hard numbers. Like everyone’s always looking for like, oh, what is a good engagement timeframe?
Or What exact percentage of my list is gonna be like, you know, the safe spot? And I just say, you know, kind of to your point, JT, you know, you start off slowly, maybe start with 1 to 2% and maybe you tick that up a little bit, but let it be a dynamic number. Listen to like your list ’cause every list, every industry
it’s gonna be a little bit different. So if you start noticing, you know, a bit of shaky performance as you’ve like, maybe expanded that audience, maybe, maybe knock it back a little bit. So again, you’ll have some time now to start doing that, to doing that, like fine tuning on pretty much every aspect of this preparation.
So you find your own number basically.
[00:14:41] Alison Gootee: And I just wanted to say, I love the confirm your opt in email also as opposed to the like, please unsubscribe because every email has a chance to unsubscribe. I can do that whenever I want. You’re not doing anything special for me for being like, oh, you can actually opt out of this.
Like, yeah, no, I know. Thank you. I know how this works. So I just feel like that’s more respectful. I also, same thing, you know, a lot of folks are asking like. Should I clean my list for the holidays or what’s the best way to clean my list? And you don’t really need to do that if you’re actively sending, your list should be clean already.
And so you can kind of save that money and that step and do something else that’s gonna actually, you know, move your little Christmas needle there and make the money start rolling in a little bit faster. I definitely agree with the get started now. I know it’s hard to think about that, but it would be so nice to know that by the time the holidays really start and you need to start sending these, like really critical money making emails, you know, your list is in order.
There’s no surprises. You’re not gonna hit a rogue spam trap, you’re not gonna get block listed. You’re not gonna see a huge spike in complaints if you know what you’re dealing with. And. Sorry. Also to the point about the unengaged, I think it’s so hard to put a number on that because everyone is defining these things so differently.
Like one brand’s unengaged might be somebody else’s, like we’ve completely gotten rid of those people already segment, and so I think it’s so hard to tell people. Oh, like toss 5% in, because I have no idea what you’re working with. Is this like elicit your intern found on a disc somewhere? Or, you know, is it actually people who purchased once upon a time, did they confirm opt-in?
And so when folks are thinking about these engagement segments and who they want to like reactivate and who they maybe wanna put on ice permanently, they need to look at not just like. They haven’t engaged in next number of months, but what did that engagement look like before? Did they ever buy, did they ever confirm opt-in?
Did they ever click on things? Because I think a lot of senders see this big huge list and see every single one of those addresses as a potential dollar sign. And I kind of think of op it’s like Wheel of Fortune. Some of them are dollar signs and some are bankrupt. Like some are gonna totally ruin you.
And so you have to be really careful when you spin that wheel, like what’s gonna happen.
[00:16:41] Mike Auldredge: I love that you said like, as far as like different senders having different criteria for what engagement is, and I really wanna drive this one home. ’cause I think this is something that gets lost in the sauce. Like the fact that like, okay, so somebody is engaged when it comes to sending email.
At the end of the day, the inbox providers are the ones who are gonna let the email in or reject it or spam it. So when someone’s engaged, really focus as your starting point. On email engagement. So yeah, engagement in other channels is great and it’s awesome to supplement and fine tune your audience.
But if your engagement criteria is logged in. Or had a page view within the last year or even maybe made a purchase but hasn’t really engaged with your email. Gmail doesn’t know you know, how many custom slippers your customer bought. You really need to start with email engagement. And definitely focus on that as you get to like your final Black Friday Cyber Monday audience, because those people are gonna be the ones that aren’t, you’re not gonna run into those global filtration issues.
So I just say, like all that to say, make email engagement paramount and then use your business data to further supplement that.
[00:17:44] Alison Gootee: Especially if you’re not confirming opt-in, ’cause like I worked with a lot of senders who have apps and so people will have to create an account to use the app and they’ll give like some garbage email address that they never bothered to confirm.
And so they’ll say like, oh, I have this segment of folks who are app users, but they just haven’t engaged with email. And I’m like, ever, or recently? Because if they did once upon a time, maybe they’re still good, but for all you know. Person making a purchase has nothing to do with the email address you have on file for them.
It could be something totally bogus. And so if you’re not bothering to confirm those and all you know is that they have made a purchase, it’d be a really good time to send them a nudge and say like, is this even been your email address? And do you wanna get emails from me here? Mike, you mentioned other channels and I think that’s so important too, because if someone is logging into your app but not opening emails.
Send ’em a message through the app. You don’t have to email them. You’re already getting their attention somewhere else. There’s no need to like risk your reputation just just to say that you did it.
[00:18:39] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. I think that’s a, that’s something huge too that I’ve, I’ve seen a lot. I’m sorry, Mike.
[00:18:44] Mike Auldredge: Oh, no, no. I, I was, I was just agreeing enthusiastically.
Yeah. With my girl Goot.
[00:18:51] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Like, the utilization of the app to say like, Hey, your contact information is wrong. Can you please update it? Or something to that effect, you know, would be huge. ‘Cause I definitely see a lot of senders that don’t send to the correct address. But of course they have engagement on the application.
But if you’re still hammering those bad addresses, that’s still gonna harm your reputation. And, you know, when you wanna do these blasts, you know, they’re not gonna go as great as they could. So.
[00:19:16] Alison Gootee: Yeah. And I see senders make this mistake where they’re like, oh, but you know, they’re engaging, they’re, they’re making purchases, but they’re not engaging.
And I’m like, so what’s the point of the email? They’re already purchasing? Like, that’s the reason you’re sending the email. You can skip that stuff. You’ve got what you want. You’ve got ’em checking out on your website. You’re good to go. You don’t need to really do anything else. It’s working. It’s all working.
[00:19:37] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Right on. We’ve talked a lot about like a lot of great things that we should be doing. Like what are some big don’ts? Like what are some like.
[00:19:45] Alison Gootee: Don’t send email, just give it to us. Just take a break.
[00:19:49] Mike Auldredge: No, but don’t send at the top of the hour. I think there’s a lot of inbox providers that would be so thankful.
Like if that’s all anyone ever did, like, you’re just gonna be kind to those providers that you know have a lot of patience with us and. I think they’d love that.
[00:20:04] Alison Gootee: Yeah. This is one thing that I talk about a lot, so sorry if you have heard me say this a million times already, but I think we need to keep in mind the people we’re sending to are people.
They are people. And I think it’s so easy to think again, like they are dollar signs or they are mailboxes or they are whatever, but at the end of the day, they’re people. And so I think we need to keep in mind that people’s inboxes are going to be very full, not just of your like deals your seven days of Christmas deals, but everyone else is doing the same thing too.
And so whatever you can do to maximize the chances of your mail being noticed and being effective I think is important. So don’t do what everyone else is doing. Don’t send too much. Don’t send too often. Make sure that you know who you’re sending to and don’t just guess. That was some do’s and some don’ts, but.
[00:20:48] Mike Auldredge: This is mostly don’ty. I think.
[00:20:51] Jonathan “JT” Torres: It was on theme.
[00:20:53] Mike Auldredge: I’d say don’t make big infrastructure changes during black friday. So if you’re thinking like, Hey, I might wanna talk to my provider about maybe adding some dedicated ips, or, Hey, maybe now’s the time I might try to send from a dedicated IP and not be on a shared infrastructure anymore.
All decisions that are made at different times for different senders. Now’s the time to start engaging with your points of contact at your sending providers and start. Having those conversations ’cause you know, a warming period is in place. If you wanna spin up a new subdomain. Say you were wanting to split transactional and marketing, you know, if you wanted to start making some of those changes, do that now.
Don’t do that during Black Friday Cyber Monday. And this is a fun one. I saw this not in my organization, but I had, I’d seen somebody in email geeks talking last year about doing a terms of service legally mandated email during the holiday season. Talk to your team. Get a sense of whether that kind of stuff is coming.
‘Cause sometimes you don’t have a choice of when to send that. Try to do that earlier if possible. Or after.
[00:21:51] Alison Gootee: Yeah. Or late, right at the end of the year. For sure. I, that’s another one of those like right channel at the right time. Things like, there are some streaming platforms that I’ve worked for before as email senders and they wanted to send those messages through email and I’m like, but you’re not like people aren’t doing stuff in email with you as a streaming provider. They’re using your app. Just put the notification in the app and so every time I see one of like Hulu or Netflix or someone say like, agree to your terms before you click okay and can watch, I like screenshot it and I send it to a customer like, Hey, see they’re doing it.
Don’t you wanna do what everyone else is doing? You do not have to do this in an email. It’s totally fine to put it right in the app. To Mike’s point, I think that is a really good call out. One, don’t misconstrue what is transactional mail because, for example, a terms of service update may legally be transactional, but do you really wanna send to every single person on your entire mailing list from your transactional IP? Like I think probably not. That mail tends to be like staggered. It tends to be lower volume. And so if you’re gonna send like a blast size outreach on your transactional domain and transactional IP.
The engagement is going to be way different than it was for your receipts and your password resets and stuff. And if you are not letting people unsubscribe because it’s transactional, you may get some spam complaints because they’re like I don’t want this and I don’t care about it, even if you think you need to send it to me.
And so spam complaints on your transactional domain would be really damaging to your reputation, and you might lose out the ability to like actually contact those people with things they do wanna get from you in the future, which could be a little bit of a customer support burden in the future.
Tickets, people saying, where’s my receipt?
[00:23:28] Mike Auldredge: Yeah, don’t sacrifice your nuts and bolts messaging for a marketing send. For sure. And kind of to add to that, I think I have a final, I’d say my final don’t, is don’t not sync up with the rest of, with the rest of your marketing team because, no, I’m so serious.
‘Cause like we’ve had, I’ve known many times Allison, I’m sure, or all of us I’m sure have friended this at some point. You have, you have really, you know, you’ve worked with a, with a, with a marketing lead and you’ve got a plan and everything’s going well, but then there’s another marketing person on their team that goes rogue and just blows it all up.
So I would say from an organizational standpoint, make sure that your, like any strategy that you’ve come up with and that you’re ready to hit the ground running with, make sure your team is in sync on that. And by your team, I mean, anyone who has access to your email sending platform.
[00:24:14] ALL: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:16] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yeah, also you know, and I know it kind of goes in line with what Mike was saying at first, like making changes to your infrastructure and stuff like that, that includes purchasing new services. Like right at the, you know, I’ve been on this side of the house for a little while now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen contracts come across, like, you know, November 1st and it’s like, okay, we have 5 million emails to send out on Black Friday.
Can we get there in time? There’s no way, like if you wanna burn all your reputation in every place, like cool. Like you can, but it’s not, that’s not a good thing. We’re not gonna advise you to do that. So like, start planning now.
[00:24:49] Alison Gootee: Hey, job security.
[00:24:50] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Or, or do it.
[00:24:52] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Help them through that whole thing.
Yeah, go for it. Like, I’ll be here to help you pick up the pieces after. So, but yeah, it’s one of those things that we see it, we see it constantly like, just like, you gotta do it now. And I think that goes into like another piece of the conversation, which is like going along with that. You know, letting all your team know and everything, you know, in that sense of what you’re doing, what the strategy is like, what’s gonna happen, but I like that we’re having this conversation now or getting ready to post the podcast about it. I know internally, you know, we have all our team prepped telling ’em like, Hey, reach out to everybody that you know, does this get them to start planning this now. Like we you know, we have the webinar.
That just went out how, like, and it’s a matter of constantly getting people to do the thing now, but that really is just starting the conversation even. I know. For, you know, for us internally, you know, like, you know, we have our team, right? I have, we have a team of people that are ready to start having that convo, start the planning sessions, start to figure out what’s gonna happen.
And I get it. This podcast isn’t just for people that are our customers, but people that are out there just doing sending, you probably have your own team of people that are doing this internally, so start talking to them now. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, an all 10 point plan perfectly laid out like, but you need to start having those conversations so that you know what’s gonna happen, what you’re gonna start to do, like which things need to start triggering now, and what can be, you know.
What that’s gonna look like at the end of the day, and when it’s all said and done. Because it’s a big deal. And if you’re not having the convos at all, then it’s when it becomes a problem. So start talking about it, start planning. Just, you know, get together with whoever you can, whoever you have available to you on whatever platform you’re sending, or just internally with your team, like it’s you.
You really gotta start doing those mean.
[00:26:29] Mike Auldredge: Yeah. And it doesn’t take a lot. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:26:32] Alison Gootee: No, I was just gonna say it’s either have that conversation now or have a way more contentious one later, so.
[00:26:38] Mike Auldredge: Yeah, a conversation over coffee or a converse or a lamentation over beer, like coffee, that can be nice too.
There’s space for that, you know, holiday season, what have you. But yeah, to the point of like, you know, I’d say too, another part of that too is, you know, having that conversation, maybe you don’t have a really strong plan. I was even gonna point out too, like maybe if you don’t have like a ton of data, maybe you don’t have a ton of resources.
I think one thing for, you know, a lot of, like, you know, Allison, you mentioned like some of the smaller marketers coming in, you know, to the fold or even the regular sized marketers
[00:27:07] Alison Gootee: Yeah, they’re all big marketers. Mike
[00:27:10] Mike Auldredge: It doesn’t take a lot of resources to really improve your outcome. You know, so like maybe you don’t have a ton of, you know, digital strategy and all this business intelligence, if you just focus on, you know, the basics, that’s enough too.
You know? So I wouldn’t say you need to go, like, if you aren’t in a situation where you can do these grand things, you know? Just, you know, just some basic common sense stuff, basic engagement filtering, basic sunset policy, that’s also going to make such a difference too.
[00:27:37] Alison Gootee: I know that, we didn’t talk about this earlier, but it occurs to me now.
A lot of people are probably going to be signing up as new subscribers during the season because there’s gonna be tons of deals. Maybe there’s new brands, maybe you know, you’re getting a gift for someone else. And so I think it’s a really good opportunity to have like super tight list hygiene from the jump.
I know it’s so boring. No one wants to do it. They, again, these email addresses are like little bits of gold and they just need to like polish them and then there’ll be money. But some of them are not gold. They’re turds and you need to just get rid of them. And so I think when you’re getting a new subscriber, always do that. Double opt-in, especially if, you know, we’re in the gift giving season. Like if I love buying, my dad presents from Bush’s beans. He loves beans, so they make all this really good bean clothing. He’s got a bean shirt, bean pants, bean jacket. I got him a bean doormat. I’m running out of stuff honestly.
But I love their emails, but I don’t need to get them all year long. I don’t personally care for beans that much, and so I.
[00:28:32] Mike Auldredge: Excuse me.
[00:28:34] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Oh my God. This merch is amazing.
[00:28:36] Alison Gootee: If someones opting int. You know what I should send them an email and be like, please send me one that says Beans and greetings. That would be really good.
[00:28:44] Eric Trinidad: Beans and greetings. That’s amazing.
[00:28:46] Mike Auldredge: We should turn into like a Bush’s baked bean commercial and I’m for it. Roll that beautiful bean footage.
[00:28:51] Eric Trinidad: Yes.
[00:28:52] Alison Gootee: They have a shirt that says that if you want it we can work together. Bushes. I still love ya.
[00:29:00] Eric Trinidad: Oh man.
[00:29:01] Alison Gootee: He’s got the hat.
[00:29:01] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: The bucket hat.
[00:29:03] Alison Gootee: He’s got the doormat.
[00:29:05] Eric Trinidad: They missed an opportunity called that a beanie. Like really?
Oh, man totally.
[00:29:10] Alison Gootee: He’s got the bean pants.
[00:29:13] Mike Auldredge: Bushes. If you’re watching or listening hook me up.
[00:29:15] Alison Gootee: Dude, I bought the bean shirt as a joke and it’s his favorite shirt.
He wears it all the time and it’s like so photo realistic. It’s really gross.
[00:29:23] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: The speaker. The speaker.
[00:29:24] Eric Trinidad: That sweater is actually pretty dope.
[00:29:26] Mike Auldredge: You know, there’s a huge Black Friday Cyber Monday opportunity here, so, you know, listen up.
[00:29:31] Alison Gootee: Yes, exactly. But anyway, what I was gonna say, if you’re shopping for someone else, maybe that person doesn’t want to get, like, I don’t need to bean updates all the time, but you know, you should give them that opportunity. Do you just want the coupon right now? Do you wanna be on our list all the time? How much email
do you want from us preference center? Something I think we need to give people those opportunities because I don’t know about you, but I have more than one email address. They are not all equally used. Some are used to just sign up for coupons. And so I think you know, if you start with a clean slate from the beginning, then when this comes once a year, you don’t have to think too hard about, you know, which part of my list is viable and what do I wanna send and what do I wanna do.
You just know you’re in good shape and you can just raise your volume whenever. You want. So anyway, data quality is super important. Watch out for those new subscribers. Do double opt in. And, you know, there’s also like a little bit of a cybersecurity angle too. Just make, make sure that you’re not getting like DDoS or something.
Add some bot protection to your signup forms and capcha, something like that. You, you don’t wanna be so excited that you have an influx of subscribers and then find out actually they were diabolical and bad for you.
[00:30:32] Mike Auldredge: Yeah. And dude, Allison, like your profile of your dad as like a bean enthusiast.
Super rad though ’cause like that’s one thing you’re like, every company, you have those customers that are like, you’re evangelists, they are beyond stoked about your product your offering. So the thing is, if you just send it real reckless, like during Black Friday Cyber Monday, your attempts to reach those dormant contacts are gonna be at the expense of
getting those conversions from those people that are your like heavy hitters and the ones who really do, who are going to convert, so don’t sacrifice.
[00:31:03] Alison Gootee: And maybe they waited all year, you know, they’re like, oh, what, what kind of bean goods are you gonna have? And then they don’t even get ’em.
So sad.
[00:31:11] Eric Trinidad: I really want to throw in like an re-engagement campaign for them of like, where have you bean? You know,
[00:31:17] Mike Auldredge: I was thinking, God, Lord of the Rings, if I take one more step, it’ll be the farest away from home I’ve ever bean.
Shout out Sam Wise. I like how he knew exactly where it was too. I like to think you could just paste that line and be like, I can’t do it, man.
[00:31:37] Eric Trinidad: Come too far.
[00:31:39] Mike Auldredge: Need that motivation.
Right on. Well, I think we’re about at time. But I want to say thank you for all your great insights Allison and Mike.
It’s definitely been insightful and I hope.
[00:31:51] Alison Gootee: It’s bean insightful.
[00:31:53] ALL: It’s bean insightful.
[00:31:55] Eric Trinidad: You wanna make sure that our folks out there, if you’re listening, start early. You know, curate your list now. Don’t not talk to everybody that are your stakeholders. Don’t start new services or new sends or legal notifications for terms of service.
But, you know, if folks want to hear more about this or talk to you more directly and, and get some more information. Allison, where can they hit you up at?
You can find me on LinkedIn, Alison Gootie. Follow me for more. I post every week. I’ve got a blog series coming up for Mailgun, so I’m pretty excited about that.
The first one will be not about this. The second one will be about this. And of course you have our webinar recap that you can catch online as well.
Right on. Right on. And Mike, if they wanna reach out to you and get their paws on you, where can they go?
[00:32:40] Mike Auldredge: Ooh, paws. LinkedIn would be great.
Nice little professional network there. Yeah, for customer.io users and for everybody, you know, we’re gonna be doing a series of blog posts you know, webinars, things coming up to get everybody prepped. So all those will be announced and posted on, on my LinkedIn page as well.
[00:32:54] Eric Trinidad: Right on. Right on.
And Thomas, what about us? If they want to hear more about us and all the things that we’ve done and seen, and will be. Where can they go?
[00:33:03] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: I had to close the Bean website so I can get the url.
You can find us over at mailgun.com/resources/podcast and you can also check out our youtube youtube.com/@mailgun and you can watch this episode. You can also watch it on Spotify and Apple Music and a lot of fun stuff as well. And massive thanks to our homies over at customer.io for hanging out with us. It’s always good to have them so.
[00:33:30] Mike Auldredge: Thank you man. Thanks. Great to be here.
[00:33:32] Jonathan “JT” Torres: Yeah. Thanks Mike. Thank you so much.
[00:33:34] Eric Trinidad: Yeah, it it’s really bean a pleasure for sure.
[00:33:41] Mike Auldredge: Oh, throw back to that bean stuff we were talking about. He’s silly goose.
[00:33:45] Eric Trinidad: It’s called a callback. It’s an industry term.
[00:33:48] Mike Auldredge: Whatever. That’s fine. I’m fine.
[00:33:51] Eric Trinidad: Alright. Thanks y’all.
