Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Your Emails Don’t Suck—Your System Does
51 Plays2 months ago
🎙️Is email dead? Not even close. In this final pour of Season 1, Brian and Brendan sit down with Pierce Ujjainwala, co-founder of Knak, to unravel the persistent myths and modern complexities of email marketing in 2025.
Pierce breaks down why emails aren’t the problem—it's the bloated systems and legacy workflows slowing marketers down. From HTML headaches and rendering nightmares to the overengineering trap enterprises fall into, we dig into why even today, marketers still struggle to send a decent email. And yeah—we talk AI, creative copy, and why good subject lines are worth their weight in gold.
The conversation flows naturally in part because it's hosted in Knak's own speakeasy, with its own beer, and in part because Pierce, Brendan and Brian like to have a good time. If you’ve ever had to fight a template to get a campaign out the door, this one’s for you.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:26
Speaker
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody, and welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing Pint. I'm Brian O'Grady. He's still Brendan Ziolo. Say hi, Brendan. So far. Hi, everyone.
00:00:37
Speaker
And we have a pretty cool guest to introduce you to today. This fellow sitting beside me Mr. Pierce Uginwala. And we go back. Pierce and I, a long time, back to the days of working together at Cognos.
00:00:50
Speaker
I think that's where we crossed paths first. Yeah, yeah, back in the day. Back in the day. Since then, Pierce has gone from strength to strength. I think you kicked off your own Marketo consultancy first. Didn't you do that?
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, i started, that was my first business 12 years ago, Revenue Pulse, and then started NAC in 2015. ah Exactly. And that's where we're sitting today is at NAC.
00:01:15
Speaker
And i mean, we wanted to interview you regardless because, well, we've got some questions for you, Pierce. Let's be honest. There's some things we need to learn. um But another reason we wanted to talk to Pierce is because NAC comes with its own speakeasy.
00:01:29
Speaker
And that's not always true. um Secret room here. ah Yeah. yeah he's He's not lying. It's actually got a secret door and everything. So that's pretty cool and makes a great environment for B2B marketing clients.
00:01:41
Speaker
ah i've got I've got to go through so our audience knows some of the things you've pulled off in since the time we met. Let's just take a look here. What have you been up to? So you launched Revenue Pulse.
00:01:53
Speaker
ah You've launched Knack. You've got a bunch of Fortune 100 clients. ah You win awards. Lots of awards. ah Four-time Marketo champion, right? Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
a revy finalist and perhaps most important to me uh you're an ottawa senators fan just like us yes yes and that's important yeah it's new criteria for the podcast you got to have a speakeasier pub and a sense fan it should make oh and drink beer it should make a small audience this could be this could be last episode so in that case pierce i have to ask you the same question we ask every one of the guests on b2b marketing pint which is what are you drinking today Today, I've got 2024 vintage of this Knack beer, actually, that we made ah for our on-site last year.
00:02:45
Speaker
They've got their own branded beer. We do. All right. This criteria is getting long for our guests. shout out to Need a Beer, who made this for us. Need a Beer. um For the record, that's ah that's in Ottawa, which is the hometown for a couple of you. I'm not far away.
00:03:01
Speaker
And Knack is based in Ottawa. Yeah. Need a beer, with a but not with a silent K like Knack. No, N-I-T-A. i We met the owner. He's a great guy. Fantastic. Do I open this now? It's your speakeasy. We couldn't tell you one way or another. can't wait anymore.
00:03:16
Speaker
Brendan, what are drinking? It's Friday afternoon. Well, I'm ah once again ah representing the non-drinkers among us. So I've got a sober carpenter. Might be a repeat beer again. um But, you know, really good, nice, tasty one. And this is an IPA for anyone who wants ah ah good a good beer but doesn't want the alcohol.
00:03:35
Speaker
which apparently isn't either of you. Fair enough. Fair enough. And I, of course, am going with something people probably recognize, tried, tested, and true, but I think it's the first time it's been featured on B2B Marketing Pint.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's a hiney. I'm ah really starting to question your beer choice these last two or three episodes, I must say. That's true. We had a big diversion from micro to macro the last couple of episodes. He went PBR in Canadian the last two episodes. Ooh, PBR. It was rough.
00:04:01
Speaker
But there were reasons. There were reasons. You're University Nights with that one. It's making comeback. And that's a different episode, I think. It appears just University Nights with PBR. Yeah.
00:04:14
Speaker
That's different rating. Let's record that It's different rating for that one. ah So before we start mixing it up, because we're going to get into email marketing, which is... email and landing pages, which is your specialty here at NACC, we should probably say ah cheers and thanks for joining us. Cheers. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
00:04:31
Speaker
We'll try to get any of the technology wet. Cheers.
00:04:36
Speaker
All right. So now that our audience, both audience members have suffered through that fantastic introduction, we're going to dive into the meat of the episode. We're going to start tossing you hardball questions. It's going to be worse than 60 minutes.
00:04:48
Speaker
We're goingnna see if we can make you sweat here on camera. I am kidding. So with that in mind, there's so many things I want to ask. We've got to start somewhere. We've got to start somewhere. Okay.
00:05:02
Speaker
You started when you went as an entrepreneur with Marketo. And that was Revenue Policy, original consultancy. That led, you'll correct me where i go wrong, directly to Knack a few years later.
00:05:17
Speaker
And that's for the enterprise and and apparently changing how marketers are handling both email and landing pages. So that strikes me as something that is is a strange thing to be able to build a landing or build a business around in 2025.
00:05:32
Speaker
So there's got to be some significant issue that you're you spotted or figured needed solving because we're sitting a speakeasy owned by Knack. Apparently you were right. But what is this pain point that the enterprise is experiencing that even after years and years of email and landing pages, you were able to help address?
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, so when we started working together when I was, you know, it was my first job at a university, um my role was to put together emails and landing pages in the marketing department. remember, you were good at it. And, you know, I went to business school. I wasn't a developer. Yeah.
00:06:11
Speaker
it blew my mind that really you needed to know how to code HTML emails to do your job. And that that was in 2017. Fast forward to today, actually, surprisingly, not much has changed.
00:06:27
Speaker
And that's that's really why Knack exists. like For marketers to do their jobs, they still need to know how to code unless they're using a product like Knack.
00:06:42
Speaker
I can't argue with that. No. i've I've had several experiences like that that would speak speak to that issue. But on the surface of it, it seems pretty easy. Yeah, I think one of the other main challenges is that ah email development is notoriously hard. there There isn't standards like there is on the web.
00:07:05
Speaker
So Gmail renders something differently than Outlook, than Yahoo, than whatever you want. Lotus Notes. the And nobody wants their... Throw it back to the IBM days. Shout out to Lotus Notes users, both of you.
00:07:23
Speaker
But yeah, it it's it's something that takes a long time to get good at. And so as a result, I think not a lot of people focus on email development. And again, that's that's a niche that we really focus on.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a surprise because it seems like something that is easier should have been solved, but clearly it wasn't. So kudos for spotting it and going for it. But and I think if you look at the marketing automation platforms, like they do a lot of stuff, right? like Creation is just one part of it. And when you do a lot, then it's hard to focus on any one thing. And for us, that's all we focus on is that creation layer. And I think that's why we able to do it better than than a lot of other people.
00:08:16
Speaker
I can't argue with that because I've seen some of the output from your software, and I'm i'm not going argue with that. It it looks pretty good. Over you, B. So I almost feel weird asking this question right now after Pierce just you know told us email marketing and setting up emails hasn't been solved yet. So i'm going to take it the other opposite direction and ask you about AI because it's a marketing podcast. yeah and And we can't go through one without the question, and now we're going with it as question two. Yeah.
00:08:44
Speaker
You know, AI like everywhere. That's all we hear about today. But, you know, from where you sit, both as, you know, entrepreneur, CEO of a company and then CEO of a marketing, email marketing company, ah what do you see as some of the best uses of AI right now? And then have some fun. And what are some of the dumbest uses of AI right now?
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, AI is everywhere. We are we we say AI stands for all in here at NAC because we are fully all in on it from from our product and and just also how we're working every day. like Everyone's using AI to help them be better at their jobs.
00:09:26
Speaker
um we We started working on incorporating AI into into our product like a year and a half ago. And I think it was like, okay, let's start small, like little things like alt text, right? So alt text is...
00:09:45
Speaker
Something that allows, if you're blind and you can't see emails, this would tell those people like what is in an image, but it's in text. So that that was one of the first things that we did. And AI is obviously great at analyzing an image and putting it in And so that saved marketers a lot of time.
00:10:09
Speaker
Subject line creation, preview text, shortening, um copy. Obviously, we're all doing that. You know, I do that with chat GPT all the time. But to do it in context as you're building an email out and not have to like go to different windows.
00:10:31
Speaker
And for the AI to just have all that context really accelerates a lot. um And then some of the like the more the bigger ones that I'm seeing, like translations, obviously, localization is huge.
00:10:48
Speaker
You don't need to send copy to like an agency and wait two weeks to get something back. you can do 50 different language translations in, you know, a matter of seconds and have new emails generated. So so we're doing that.
00:11:08
Speaker
I think too, like design to code is is getting a lot easier with AI. So going from design to code, and then I think, and this this had has been our vision for a long time, but putting in a prompt and adding your brief and just having the entire campaign get generated off of that that's sort of where we're going and we will have that very soon okay is there anything not necessarily tied to knack or even to email are there any ai uses that you're seeing like that you just kind of shake your head out like why are they doing this with ai or i mean yeah or is it just everything is fair game and you'll learn as you do
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think we're very much in like an experiment phase right now with a i and hopefully everybody is. um i think that the things that can that I shake my head at is people who think that like the whole thing is going to get automated and like that we're there already. like if that That's what makes me cringe when people are like, oh yeah, we're going to just have a i run our whole email campaigns and like it's going to personalize everything and we we don't even have to have a human in the loop that's just going to go out that to me it's almost like I'd rather see people experiment and try things out and fail but it it's more the the idea that you can just set it and forget it like personally I don't
00:12:55
Speaker
I don't think we're there yet. And I think that that's the kind of thing that can get people in trouble. And I'm sure we've all received our fair share of those emails, LinkedIn messages, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Hi, first name. It's yeah other name here.
00:13:11
Speaker
I hear you. I can attest to the fact that ah NAC does appear to be all in on AI because I have ah a fond memory, full transparency. We worked together a few years ago. SearchWarrant and NAC worked together a few years ago.
00:13:25
Speaker
And I have a ah vivid memory of when we were working on some video together and we sent some script ideas into our team. And I thought to myself, for full admission here, I thought, well, that'll keep them busy for a while. I can go pay attention on something to something else.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I was wrong because 24 hours later, i got three or four scripts back in my inbox and they were all serviceable. I thought, okay, well, they turned it around that quickly. it not going to be that good.
00:13:49
Speaker
They were all good enough. And I thought to myself, something has changed because in the time I've been doing this, I had never had client turn around four or five scripts in 24 hours and then be decent. And then ah then the light bulb went off for me. I'm like, ah, okay, this is AI at work with Pierce's team.
00:14:06
Speaker
And I confirmed that with your team. And they're like, oh, yeah, we use that all the time. So I can remember as one of my earliest examples of a client leaning in and using it right away. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's my here's my follow-up.
00:14:18
Speaker
I'm moving away from the AI. I'm gonna keep picking on email because I'm still a bit incredulous. And the reason I say that is because it's 2025. I think I sent or saw my first emails around 1991. This is not a new technology.
00:14:32
Speaker
um Some companies claim they don't use it anymore, that they're they're living on places like Slack or or what have you. So how come you can still build ah viable business 2025 around email?
00:14:47
Speaker
Is it, is it like there's generations of people who say they don't use it anymore. My kids don't check their email, even if, you know, say universities or colleges are trying to communicate with them that way. They don't check their email. Is it generational?
00:14:59
Speaker
Is email going away? How come you're able to build a business in 2025 around this arguably old technology? Yeah, I think as the long as email has been around, people have said it's going to die.
00:15:13
Speaker
Email dies like every year, apparently. um But it never does. like And I think that's because it's it's an open network. Anyone can get on it.
00:15:26
Speaker
um It's embedded into so many things that we do. You know, you book a flight, you're getting your tickets through email, you reserve a hotel, you're getting it there. like um I've read studies where it says Gen Z's.
00:15:45
Speaker
90% of Gen Z's are still checking email every day. And it's probably because... They need to get their concert tickets. They need to get whatever they're doing on there.
00:15:57
Speaker
So my kids are outliers, I think, in that case. They might be part of that 10%. That's not the only way they're outliers. It's true. That's a whole other episode. I think like we use Slack here, and a lot of communication happens there, but anything externally, anything with her prospects or customers, it's all happening through email. So I think...
00:16:21
Speaker
As, you know, as social media got bigger, people are on Instagram, on TikTok. The challenge for marketers there is you don't own, you don't own those channels, right? Like you're at the mercy of an algorithm or paying to get to your audience. And even then it's not guaranteed that you're going to.
00:16:45
Speaker
And they can take your audience away at any time too if they don't like what you're doing. Whereas email is something that you own as ah as a business, as a marketer, and it's free to communicate to your audience as much or as little as you want. you know so And then I would say, too, with AI, with hyper-personalization, you can...
00:17:13
Speaker
do things on a one-to-one scale that um are very difficult or impossible to do otherwise. Fair enough. And reports of email's death in 2025 are premature. It's still rocking. 24, and 23, and 22.
00:17:32
Speaker
yeah Well, I can attest it appears to be working for NAC because ah we people are are bigger and growing every time I come in here. So you're doing something right in that regard. Yeah, I mean, we see it every day, like the biggest companies in the world are investing into this channel.
00:17:50
Speaker
um And I think, you know, they do a lot of data and research and I think they see what I see, which is um it's it's a way to connect with everybody in a very personalized way that is very cost-effective.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, fair enough. and I'm going throw it to you in a second, Brendan, but just occurred to me too that one of the advantages of email is when you open an email, you've actually got that moment in time of that person's attention. Sure, they might and might click delete right away.
00:18:21
Speaker
They might not. But it's to me, social more ephemeral. that That feed, that's a tougher thing to do to get people to stop and and interact meaningfully there. I think email gives you a moment in time, and that's a real opportunity.
00:18:33
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to stay on the email theme, but kind of go back a wee bit. So there was a time when, you know, copywriters would, you know, make thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions to, you know, get their ads recognized, get their postcards in the mail.
00:18:56
Speaker
That's how far back I'm going. um Direct mail. And like they were looking for improvements from like 1% to 2% or to that type of stuff. I mean, email has gone kind of similar growing pains, that type of thing. I don't think quite at that, you know, where you were paying people that much to be email copywriters.
00:19:16
Speaker
But, you know, I'd love to hear your take on, you know, what make good emails, what makes them stand out, what makes people open them when they come into your inbox. it's not an auto delete. So it's not an auto-delete and so we're not paying copyright. Well, wait a minute. Maybe we do want to pay copywriters million bucks.
00:19:33
Speaker
We do. Well, I do think copy is still super important and and for sure people are spending a lot on email copywriters. But yeah, i could I've done like talks for hours on this subject. I think maybe just to summarize things like,
00:19:53
Speaker
Email is a great channel where you can always measure and see how you're doing, right? And like basically within a day or two, you're going to know how your email went. And so...
00:20:07
Speaker
It's all about testing and iterating and trying things and improving on each one. um I think that there's a few things that I always recommend people do. So, like, you you want to make it interesting thing for people. i say people don't spend enough time on their subject line and their preview text.
00:20:33
Speaker
Because that is those are your tools to get your email opened, right? And that's half the battle, is getting it opened. ah But usually, that's like an afterthought for people. They spend, you know, tons of time the email, making it look great, you know, doing the great copy and images and everything, but then they're like, oh yes, I need a subject line, I need, like,
00:21:02
Speaker
You really need to put a lot of time into that and and put it in in a way to make it like compelling or interesting or hey, to get the answer to the question you ask in your subject line, they're going to need to open, right?
00:21:18
Speaker
Give them a reason to open it. And I think that even starts from the very beginning. Like, when you for your first email that you send out, your setting you're establishing a relationship with that recipient. Like, is that are you going to just send them some boring first email, in which case they're going to think, hey, this person probably always sends me boring garbage?
00:21:45
Speaker
Or is that first one going to, like... elicit ah a conversation, a two-way conversation with them or teach them something interesting or show them something really interesting.
00:22:00
Speaker
um I think we all have those senders in our inbox that we just ignore by default. And there's others that you're like, hey, these guys always do like make it worth it for me to open. One, uh,
00:22:16
Speaker
One sender that I got, it was like a like a went like a ski clothing company, but at the bottom of the email, they always had like a GIF that was hilarious.
00:22:29
Speaker
And I would always open them just to see, because they they they consistently did that, and they drove behavior. like the end scene at the end of the Marvel movies. are Yeah, and you want to know what it is. Yeah.
00:22:44
Speaker
So yeah, so I think it's like you you need to, from the beginning, establish with your audience that these are emails that you're going to want to open then and look at. And there's something either informative or visually appealing or funny.
00:23:02
Speaker
you know You have to pick what lane you want to go in and then just stick to that. Yeah, there's there's more to it than meets the eye on the surface of it. Yeah, like I said, I have i have this like whole cheetah framework that I give people that's kind of like, hey, if you do these things, you will get better results in your emails.
00:23:25
Speaker
But it's like adding adding animations, making it entertaining. Like, way too many B2B companies, in my opinion, just make like boring the most boring thing. Like, nobody...
00:23:39
Speaker
Like your your grandmother wouldn't want even read it for you if you asked. So I think you want to, we're all marketing to humans that it needs to be interesting and and don't just fill it with like corporate jargon, you know?
00:23:59
Speaker
Humans who occasionally like to have a beer together. There you go. Yeah, this this podcast is a good example. We hope. We'll see how it turns out. Yeah, that's the plan. That's the plan.
00:24:10
Speaker
Okay, um so you touched on alluded to it there. You alluded to it earlier. There's there's creativity in this exercise of making a great email. you know you've got to have It's got to be well-written.
00:24:21
Speaker
It's got to be well-designed. It's got to have all these artistic components. But you're dealing with enterprise clients. Yeah. That design, all that creativity sits on top of tons and tons of operational complexity.
00:24:34
Speaker
there's There's the marketing automation system. There's the lists we're using. There's the privacy. There's the timing with other campaigns. I don't need to tell you your business, but my point is there's a science and an art and and merging it all into one successful email has a lot of moving parts.
00:24:54
Speaker
where are companies falling down with that right now? Is it one place or the other? Is it consistent or has everybody come up with a brand new mistake each time? Yeah, I think um a lot of companies...
00:25:09
Speaker
end up spending a lot of time on the technical side, especially the big ones, right? Like they've architected this whole system, modules and templates and technology and process, right?
00:25:27
Speaker
um Around... The coding problem. So like the coding problem is in the middle. and And these companies have architected all this stuff around to try and avoid the problem that their marketers are going to have to code to get things out. So they do all these things.
00:25:48
Speaker
that really strip away the creativity altogether. Because to be creative in the status quo legacy system would mean the marketers need to code.
00:26:01
Speaker
Right, your good idea doesn't fit the template, so you can have your good Yeah, so exactly. So people create these templates, which are super boring. I've seen those. They all look the same, but they they make it easy to get a lot of emails out, to get a lot of content out. Is it is it like the best email that you could make? No, but ah it's on brand, and it like checks a lot of the boxes out.
00:26:28
Speaker
And so, yeah, typically when we get involved with companies, they're really over-rotated on the technical side. ah Like, with good intentions, they started with good intentions to solve the problem.
00:26:44
Speaker
the coding problem. But what it's meant is like layers of technical and process leave it so that it takes like weeks or months to get a single email out. And they're very underwhelming from a creative side of things because that's also harder to control the brand as you open up historically the creativity.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes a 100-year-old brand and somebody's new good idea don't go together. Yeah, and that and honestly, like that's sad to me because I think a lot of people get into marketing to be creative. then I did.
00:27:27
Speaker
And the technical part of it has meant that you know they they kind of get stuck and the creativity gets lost. So that that's one of the main reasons that gets me excited about Knack is that we can...
00:27:41
Speaker
bring that back and our customers tell us like, oh, it's so nice that i can I can move quickly again and I can do what I actually wanted to do and stay on brand at the same time.
00:27:55
Speaker
that That's the trifecta, I think. Fair enough. And then I think that's the first use of the word trifecta in B2B marketing. We'll have to look back, but I think you're right. I could help you with that, looking back. Yeah, fair enough.
00:28:11
Speaker
So I think it's very... interesting and helpful that, you know, you're still reminding us and our audience that, you know, creativity still matters, you know, the human still matters back to your AI answer and stuff. Like there's a lot of elements that, yeah, people tend to get bogged down in either the, all of the data, all of the the code, all of the the infrastructure, especially when we talk about like automation and AI and the tech stack and stuff, they start there and that drives the strategy, right? When it's like, no, it should support it.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that like I definitely use AI to help me with creativity at times, but I but i am cognizant that i like I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose my creative muscle.
00:29:00
Speaker
um And my hypothesis is that even when ai gets better and better, that humans are going to be the best at connecting with other humans.
00:29:13
Speaker
yeah that's that's how we're thinking of the future. It's how do we help the marketers, the humans get more creative not to like replace the creativity with AI? Good.
00:29:28
Speaker
um So I'm going to shift gears or direction here a bit because obviously you're passionate about email marketing, but I know you're also a passionate entrepreneur as well. um So definitely want to kind of pick your brain on that.
00:29:41
Speaker
um You know, you've built, scaled, grown two companies now. You've worked with a lot of clients. um You know, if you could travel back in time, so let's put in the time travel machine here, um what would you do differently?
00:29:57
Speaker
And then what would you double down on in kind of your entrepreneurial journey more than just the email marketing side of things? Yeah, I think, um like, part of what I think made me a good entrepreneur is that I just, I like to, like, solve problems, yeah get stuff done.
00:30:17
Speaker
And that doesn't always translate well as you grow a company. Like, you need to get better at delegating, and you you can't do everything. um So it took me a long time to learn that, like,
00:30:33
Speaker
you have To go fast, you actually have to like slow down and help not give other people the answers. You have to help them find the answers on their own, or you're going to be doing it forever.
00:30:48
Speaker
um That wasn't, like, very intuitive to me, and I always just want to go as fast as possible. So, like, that that's some advice. I think, too, like, we bootstrapped the company for five years.
00:31:03
Speaker
um Knowing what I know now, I probably would have raised money. earlier because it's just like bootstrapping is like extra hard mode like um it's it's slower it's harder i heard someone say it's like plowing the road with your face a okay which i i would agree with that that's basically what it is it's a it's a lot easier not not
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just you can go quicker and it isn't as hard if you raise money bit early. ah Eliminate the money barrier as quickly as possible. Yeah. you want to get on to.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah I thought he was going to plow ah the road with like a shovel or something. but you just took it to another level and right to the face just your face yeah yeah pain that's hard it's very hard painful too yeah can see that i do like uh period it's something you said that i can't remember the last guest or one of the recent ones was just that conversation about you know being passionate about the problem right a lot of people are like it's all about the solution it's all about what you're doing but you know there's a lot of people out there that's like no you've got to understand the problem you got to be passionate about solving problems and stuff so was
00:32:23
Speaker
Another common theme in our episode with our different guests reinforcing that message. I actually said that on a panel with like three other CEOs was like, yeah, I'm really passionate about the problem and and none of them agreed with me. okay so But for me, ah I do need that like connection with the problem where I'm just not as as interested. Yeah.
00:32:51
Speaker
I worked for like a like a security company that did email classification software and like great company. They did super well. But I just, I couldn't relate to that because I never worked in the military or in the government where that is probably really important, but just not have having the context to it. I like to attach myself to being there and I still feel I'm building the product that like I wish I had back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, with our setup today, I'm not sure if we're running long or short to be honest. This type of stuff. But I think we should probably wrap it up. I think Pierce has many email problems to solve here. That's true. We don't want to keep him too long. But I think we need to ask him our final question. And there's a chance that after our audience leaves and the and the camera is off, we might just...
00:33:49
Speaker
Spend a lot of time solving problems in the speakeasy next week. Okay, are you ready for the the big final question? Drum roll. Oh, I have one today. Nice. Sound effects. If B2B marketing behind has its addition, this is it.
00:34:04
Speaker
Everyone who's been in the hot seat where you are gets asked, in what you do, in email in particular, What's the biggest myth that you wish you could squash? And this might be your opportunity to do it today.
00:34:17
Speaker
That almost every engagement you go into, someone raises a subjection or raises this thing that you never stop hearing. You wish you never had to hear again. yeah What's the biggest myth around email marketing? and needs to die It's your speaking. Yeah.
00:34:32
Speaker
But other guests, if you don't have a speakeasy, one answer. Only one. Only one. All right. So, yeah, two, because they're both equal. If these could go away, it'd be great. But the first myth is that it's... The myth is people think you can put videos in email.
00:34:54
Speaker
gar that That's what people ask us. Can we put a video in the email? And, like, I think I've had to tell people no, like, thousands of times. It's possible.
00:35:09
Speaker
And it's not, like, a knack thing or any. It's just email does not support videos. And I think for a good reason. Nobody wants to open an email and have, you know, remember the internet back in, like, early dating myself in, like, the 90s?
00:35:26
Speaker
Like, you would get on there and there'd be some music playing. And you'd have to try and figure out how to shut it off. And blinking text. We're big on blinking text. I'm so glad we moved away from that. and And that, I think, is a good feature that email doesn't have that. Because that would be annoying. Because people could put cat videos in emails, that would change the business overnight. you can put animated GIFs, but you can't put video. And the other one, and we get this still all the time, but if you forward...
00:35:59
Speaker
an HTML email, yes it is going to look broken. And there's nothing you can do about that, really. like There's very little you can do about how an HTML email looks once it gets forwarded. And again, it's not like this is just a problem with email. That's how the medium operates.
00:36:24
Speaker
Don't try and solve it. It's not worth the time. But it would be cool if we could forward cat videos in emails. In emails. And they stayed looking the way. That might actually work. We might get yeah we might get kicked out of the speech.
00:36:38
Speaker
So apologies in advance, Pierce. You've just provided a secret code for anybody who wants to make it directly to your inbox. They just need to use the subject line. Video now works in email. We know Pierce will look at it. i'm Sorry. Forward for this email.
00:36:52
Speaker
And from there, hate to do it, but we have to stop talking. Again? Again. They tell us that a lot, actually. So I want to say a big thank you to you, Pierce. Yeah, thank you, guys. then It was a lot of fun.
00:37:06
Speaker
You've shared your speakeasy. You've shared your time. And people can't see him. But behind the cameras is a guy named Michael Hodgson. And he's kicking ass and taking names because he made the speakeasy look and sound good today, which I don't think any of us would have been able to do. No.
00:37:20
Speaker
Thank you, Michael. So shout out behind the camera. And that is that a wrap? Well, I think it is. And Pierce, hopefully see you at a Sens game soon. I'll keep my eyes and ears open for that. And we've got one coming up as well. Absolutely. Go Sens, go.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, baby. It's a new season. All right. Cheers. Yeah, thanks, guys.