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Marketing Insight with Shay Howe: Navigating the Future of ActiveCampaign
186 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we sit down with Shay Howe, Chief Marketing Officer of ActiveCampaign, to delve into the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing.
Shay shares his expert perspective on the future of owned data, the role of email marketing in a world overflowing with information, and ActiveCampaign’s strategic acquisition of Postmark.
Shay explains how the importance of owned data is growing in marketing strategies, allowing businesses to create personalized and efficient experiences for their customers.
Diving into the acquisition of Postmark, Shay sheds light on how this strategic move aligns with ActiveCampaign’s vision and goals.
He explains how Postmark’s strengths in transactional email delivery complement ActiveCampaign’s focus on customer experience automation, resulting in a synergy that promises to redefine industry standards.
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
Using User Data for Business Growth
00:00:08
Speaker
Hey, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. Today, we're diving deep into the world of data-driven marketing with Shay Howe, Chief Marketing Officer with Active Campaign. Shay will shed light on how the company has harnessed its user data to enhance its offerings. And as big data becomes the name of the game, what potential opportunities do brands like Active Campaign have when collaborating with LLMs?
Ethical Data Mining and Platform Challenges
00:00:31
Speaker
In an age where data is gold, how do companies ensure they're ethically mining and using it? And we'll dive into the realm of owned channels as brands grapple with ever-changing algorithms on platforms like Meta and LinkedIn. How does one keep up? And lastly, we'll go behind the scenes into Active Campaign's capital raising journey, their acquisition of Postmark, and the individual lessons that Shae has picked
Unique Datasets and AI in Marketing
00:00:51
Speaker
up along the way. Thank you for having me, Mark. It's a pleasure to be here. Why don't we start with a big picture question?
00:00:58
Speaker
How do you view the evolving landscape of unique datasets as a competitive advantage, especially with the rise of platforms like Reddit and Quora? As marketers, we've been obsessed with data for the last decade, and I feel in some sense the pendulum is swinging back to brand, but data still plays a huge role, and especially the data that a company can control and leverage.
00:01:23
Speaker
What's your take on this landscape and the way that active campaign is leveraging its data?
AI's Role in Enhancing Data Value
00:01:29
Speaker
Data sets are becoming just a large competitive advantage for businesses. And one of the things driving this is, I think, very specifically in the Reddit and Quora side is that artificial intelligence end. But also you ask like, why is that important? What is the sense of artificial intelligence and where does it go? But it's the data behind that really drives
00:01:48
Speaker
AI, right? And the more data a company has, the more unique that data is, the better they can train models. And that models then develop into ways to change your broader experience, to be more personalized at deeper levels. So in the marketing landscape, how do you actually get messaging that is far tighter to a specific audience, but be it at scale, right? Where you don't have to do all of that by hand in different ways. I think
00:02:10
Speaker
Reddit, Quora, just obviously tremendous examples of businesses that have collected unique data, be it user-generated content in so many ways, that you could train a model to go learn a lot about the human population through that data. And in some ways, that's why they're starting to protect it, right, and limiting their APIs. But I think
00:02:30
Speaker
The data you have, incredibly valuable at a very high level, not all data being equal though, what is more accurate, timely, relevant, what is more diverse is going to be more valuable than what is it. And to businesses, there's a number of ways to put that data into play that make things more personal, more valuable holistically.
Active Campaign's AI Integration Strategy
00:02:47
Speaker
When you look at the impact of AI and generative AI on a company like active campaign, how much of an impact has that made in a short period of time? The reality is AI has been around for a long time. ChatGBT has been with us for less than a year. A lot of this has already been ingrained in how do companies operate, but there seems to be velocity now. There seems to be a sense of FOMO for a lot of companies. If they don't embrace AI, they're going to be
00:03:15
Speaker
left behind. What has been the active campaign approach to AI and how has that changed in the last year?
Predictive Features in Active Campaign
00:03:22
Speaker
I appreciate you saying that AI is not new, right? It feels like the floodgates opened close to a year ago when you had OpenAI release chat GPT. But for us, our journey in AI started years ago, right? And we've always had a decent number of customers. Obviously, as we've scaled, that's grown. And today we have roughly 185,000 customers. So just a tremendous amount of data. And
00:03:46
Speaker
For years, we've built out features, even predating generative AI around what would be win probability. From the CRM, you have folks taking actions, you can monitor their different behaviors or intent. We can start to predict, hey, do we think that's going to convert into a customer for you? So we've had a sense of win probability. We've had predictive sending, right? So I think a lot of.
00:04:05
Speaker
email mark companies have had some form of sending optimization. For us, we've done it in an automation. So it's a little bit different in the sense of, hey, it's not going to say you have half a million people you want to email. When's the best time to send that email? It's more on a one-to-one level to say, hey, someone took an action that started this automation. And as they're progressing through it, when's the best time to send mark an email? Like down to you, very specifically, your action. So we've had some predictive sending there.
00:04:33
Speaker
And that spurred out what we even built out in predictive content. As a business owner, you could write five different versions of an email. And then we have an engine that would say, hey, we think this is the best email to send to Mark. And maybe we're sending it to you because the tone of it is more passive versus formal, or it's shorter versus longer. And you just play with those different odds and ends of it that allow you to get down to deeper levels of personalization.
00:04:57
Speaker
That's all been there, right? Like we've been doing that for a number of years in the way of kind of generative AI, we've certainly done what seemingly most folks have done that. Hey, let's add the ability to let us write and build
Generative AI and Automation
00:05:10
Speaker
some of the emails for you. Right. And you can basically type in what you want your email to say, we'll help generate that. We even have tools. I think where we've taken a little bit further in that, not only do we generate it, we've taken that chat interface into active campaign to where you can talk to it and say,
00:05:24
Speaker
OK, that's good, but change the length of that, or switch the tone up to be a little more formal, or can you simplify the language here? So you can actually iterate even on the messaging through our generative AI side. And then even more recently, we've built out and we're testing with a subset of an audience the ability to just go into a text box and describe the automation you want. So you could say, hey, when someone visits my pricing page and they don't purchase within three days, I'm going to send them an email.
00:05:53
Speaker
asking them if they have any questions. They don't open or click that email. I want to send them another email a day later. You just describe that. And we say, great. And we will go out and build that automation for you. You obviously have the control to go in and tweak it, adjust it, right? You could change the copy or some of the segmentation to it, but literally just saying, tell us what you want. And we're going to help just implement that for you. And that
00:06:15
Speaker
Playing around with that will really change things, honestly. It will take a lot of the arm muscle we have to do to put in building all of this that if a computer can start to do that, the mind goes into a lot of different places of what else he could be doing. The possibilities are endless. One thing that I've run into when companies are embracing AI and their
Efficiency vs. Creativity in AI Usage
00:06:36
Speaker
allowing their customers to take advantage of it. Obviously from the company side of things, they see AI as a tremendous competitive advantage. They see it as a other way that they can help their customers be more efficient, more productive, more successful. And that's all good. And the value prop sounds good, but when it comes to the user and you have actual end users that have been
00:07:02
Speaker
creating content manually or inputting or manipulating data manually. And all of a sudden the company's saying, you don't have to do that anymore. The robots behind the scenes will do it all for you. We'll write that copy. We'll write those blog posts. We'll manipulate those metatex for SEO. And there's a bit of a, like a mini war going on between old world and new world. New world's going to win eventually. But as a marketer, how do you balance having control over the process and being the editor in chief?
00:07:33
Speaker
with the reality that AI is such a powerful efficiency tool, but you can't fight it. You just have to embrace it. What's that balancing act like right now? Yeah. Right now is a good qualifier because it's changing, right? Like in it by day. I think the way we look at it is both in our own marketing as well as in our platform, quite honestly, is
00:07:56
Speaker
use it to get started, use it as the advantage of jumping off point. Don't relinquish all control and power to the system, right? Like in a way, check its work, go through it, make sure it makes sense. These large language models are not perfect by any stretch of the means. Tremendous ideas will come from them, but you cannot just default into just accepting and running with or blindly letting it go rogue and not paying any attention to it. We do that in our own work, but also in the platform. It's one where
00:08:26
Speaker
We'll use AI to go implement things, but we'll leave it in an edible state to say, you are welcome to review, change, modify, make this your own in any way you want. We just want to get you started. We want to give you some, the firepower it provides, but by no means do we want to lock you out of also having your own control over it. The other consideration aside from.
Ethical Data Usage and AI Bias
00:08:50
Speaker
the fact that the world is changing and how people do their jobs is going to change is the reality that there are ethical concerns about leveraging data and taking people's data and manipulating it in ways that are obviously good for the company, maybe not so good for the end consumer. And with AI and the fact that these large language models are pulling in all kinds of data, do you think about that? Is it an issue that's at the table when you guys are looking at how are you going to use AI? Where are you going to take it?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yep, it's not new. I think AI is shining a light on it. For the longest time, people have had concerns or thoughts around privacy security, right? What data do you want from me? How is it stored? Is it necessary that you need that? So just an understanding of respecting the privacy of your customers and your users broadly, collecting the data that's truly necessary for your business purposes, and then
00:09:43
Speaker
Make sure that's stored safely. It's encrypted. It's in the right data center in the right origin so that you know your compliance in the laws. That is just being transparent about it. Here's the data we need and why and what we're going to do with it. And you would even see that quite often in
00:10:00
Speaker
You're connecting an integration and you're doing some form of OAuth and it's, Hey, log in with your Gmail account and here's what's going to happen. You're going to give access to your name, your email, and here's why that company wants that or how they're going to use it. So it's just being honest about that being transparent. And then I think in the.
00:10:15
Speaker
As we think about general AI or the large language models, the next thing you have to start to think about is the bias. This is the idea of, hey, how could these large language models have a bias? And if they don't have truly diverse data sets, can it start to misrepresent your company, your values, your beliefs? How could that go into some sideways ends that you got to be careful about? So I think there's just a
00:10:39
Speaker
The privacy security side has been there. Transparency side has been there. I think there's a new area of bias we have to be a little more careful about. Yeah, bias is interesting because when chat GPT launched in November, a lot of people saw it as the ultimate truth.
Prioritizing Owned Channels
00:10:54
Speaker
The machine that just generated the truth. A lot of us bought into that and there was a lot of enthusiasm that it would eliminate a lot of work. And for that matter, it would have a huge impact on Google. What we've realized over the last 10 months is that chat GPT is
00:11:09
Speaker
full of mistakes and errors and biases and prejudices. Some of the data sets, as you say, are incomplete. Some of them have been added inaccurately. It is a minefield these days. If you make it through, it's great, but you can also blow up along the way. So I guess as a marketer, you need to be very careful in terms of how much you lean into it. It can speak with such competence. Sometimes you're like, maybe it is right. So yeah, you do have to be careful.
00:11:37
Speaker
15 years, I've spent the last three years pounding away on LinkedIn and being very proud of all the content that I've created. But the reality is that I don't own that platform. It's not my blog. It's not my newsletter. It sits on LinkedIn servers and thankfully they let me access it on a regular basis and I can download it if I want to. I think there's going to be a growing focus on owned channels versus rented channels or leased channels. I'm just curious about how you define owned channels and
00:12:07
Speaker
And why do you think they're becoming more crucial in today's digital age? Two parts of that question, how I would define an own channel would be the marketing channel that you own, that you control being one of the key pieces of that. So think of things like your website, your blog, your email list, maybe a subscriber list for SMS, etc. Those are channels you have direct access to. The unknown channels become
00:12:30
Speaker
LinkedIn, social search engines. I would venture to guess, I don't know this, if you're willing to share, I love it, but through LinkedIn, you've seen a drop in impressions in the last year. Because I have heard that story time and time again, where there is an algorithm update, and folks who are seeing 100,000 impressions on their post a week are now down to about a tenth of that. Does that resonate?
00:12:53
Speaker
Oh yeah, absolutely. And one of the reasons that I jumped on LinkedIn three years ago is I would do something fast and furious and I'd get 3000 views. And it was like, Oh my God, this is nirvana. You're talking about a guy who had a blog that if I was lucky, I would get 200 views a day. And this was like the Superbowl or winning the lottery. But we all know as creators that the algorithm changes.
00:13:15
Speaker
And that we just have to follow the whims of the algorithm. Some days we're hot and some days we're not. Google or Facebook or LinkedIn, they don't tell us what's going on. There's no, they're not opening the kimono and telling us what's happening. And it does beg the question in terms of when you look at the fact that algorithms are always changing.
00:13:35
Speaker
and the rules of engagement change, how does ActiveCampaign advise its clients on how to diversify their channels? They don't fall victim to the fact that one day the algorithm loves them and the next they fall
Diversifying Channel Dependency
00:13:49
Speaker
out of favor. What's the ActiveCampaign approach to making sure that you're doing the right thing by your clients?
00:13:55
Speaker
All these topics are to coalesce, which is fun that we truly recommend folks build out own channels. Have an email subscriber list where you do your marketing to it, have a website, have a blog, be in a position where you're building direct relationships with your customers in a way where you can control the message and you can collect the data from them directly. That helps you improve all of your other messaging and broader marketing campaigns. But at the same time, also recognize there are other channels out there and
00:14:21
Speaker
There are advantages, very much like you said, and LinkedIn being one of the first movers over there to drive that. It's one of the fun things about marketing that's going to evolve and change. You're probably going to have to continually chase that. But when we talk to folks and how we guide them would be, consider where your target audience sits. Where are they starting to spend their time? What platforms do they use? And how could you best go reach them on those? And then we tell folks,
00:14:43
Speaker
build diversity in those, build a true mix of channels, and even do that across paid and organic, because those could vary in terms of how you might reach folks. And do it in a way where you're not over relying on one in case the whims of that channel change, be it an algorithm or the cost of it just spikes, have diversity there.
00:14:59
Speaker
And then test, experiment, do that frequently because the algorithms, things behind that are continually to change. If you're doing that tracking results, you'll start to understand what's working, what's not working, and you can follow a bit of the wave there and just keep your eyes peeled for where that kind of target audience could be migrating to. So it's a body of work. It'll keep us employed for a long time, but it's being open, flexible. One of the things that you pointed out is that
00:15:24
Speaker
a lot of people fell in love with LinkedIn and became their platform. It became their only platform because they believed that if they took their time and energy and devoted it all to LinkedIn,
00:15:37
Speaker
and abandoned their blogs and didn't do a newsletter and had a basic website that LinkedIn was going to be the engine that was going to power their business forward. And for a year and a half, that was the case, but not so much anymore. When you look at the landscape, let me back up here. So a lot of people, so one day they woke up and realized that LinkedIn was
00:15:54
Speaker
just like any other company it was about profit not about creators and they realize that they have diversified their efforts so a lot of them that i've seen in my network have have jumped on twitter however you want to play there they're exploring tiktok there's other places where they realize that diversification like an investment portfolio is a good idea when you look at the marketing landscape
00:16:16
Speaker
What platforms are attracting your attentions? Are there things that are lying low beneath the surface? Or it could be things like Reddit, which a lot of marketers are afraid of, or Quora, which a lot of marketers don't really understand. How do you look at the landscape and is there anything that has potential or anything that you're particularly curious about these days? That's a good question.
00:16:39
Speaker
in a weird sense. I think there's a lot of interesting things happening in Reddit and Quora. I think a lot of folks for the longest time saw Reddit more as the meme culture. But I think there's a maturity happening there. Honestly, like a lot of the folks that were growing in Reddit have also just
00:16:55
Speaker
drone up and aged as a population, right? I'm seeing a little bit of that audience change. Quora I've always thought has been really interesting and untapped. Uh, it's literally like a true sound audience there. And I think there are just a bunch of different communities out there that are organizing through Slack channels or meetup groups. And they're somewhat off the beaten path or in private threads, but you can find those groups and in them.
00:17:23
Speaker
You can't go in with promotion or infomercial type work. It is truly, go be a member, provide value, give them what is actionable, practical, implementable ideas, feedback. And in that you can start to weave your narrative, but that's 10% of what you do probably in that community. And I'm seeing that be really interesting right now. Without disclosing too much about the active campaign marketing playbook,
Online Community Engagement
00:17:48
Speaker
are there
00:17:48
Speaker
Communities where you're experimenting, for example, are you participating in Reddit? Are you or your marketing team members on Slack channels? Give me a little flavor in terms of that, that part of the marketing mix.
00:18:02
Speaker
Easiest way to think about it would be almost by vertical. Folks that are in e-commerce. There are very specific e-commerce communities where business owners or be it just e-commerce owners are talking about different strategies or the way they're operating. Those are both in Slack. Those are also in the actual marketplaces or communities of the core platforms they use. Shopify has its own forms, go get involved there. And you could take that and slice that basically across every vertical.
00:18:29
Speaker
SAS businesses is another one. Professional services would be a different end of that. Online educators or folks doing coursework, different community, they all have their own kind of core areas of gathering, be it across what is most predominantly we see in Slack and or a form of sorts. Jumping into those and then even in real life, finding the meetup groups where they might be gathering as well and helping get involved there. It's mixed, but I think by vertical is one of the easiest ways we've been able to look at it and segment that.
00:18:59
Speaker
Interesting. Whenever I talk to marketing leaders or entrepreneurs that
Strategic Fundraising and Capital Raising
00:19:05
Speaker
lead companies or work for companies that have raised a lot of venture capital. It's fascinating because from the outside looking in, it sounds fantastic. It's like you win the lottery, you pop a bunch of champagne, it's victory. But the reality I suspect is having never done it is quite different. What was it like you've been active as active campaign for six years, you've been there during some very serious fundraising activity. Can you talk about some of the
00:19:34
Speaker
more interesting things or some of the key considerations that went into active campaigns decision to raise funds. And what's your advice to entrepreneurs who are raising a small amount of money and those that see a lot of traction and all of a sudden there's an opportunity to raise a lot of money, like more money they could ever imagine. What's your advice to, what's the active campaign journey been like from the inside and provide some advice from that experience to other entrepreneurs? Yeah.
00:20:04
Speaker
Fundraising is simultaneously one of the hardest things I think you could ever do and also one of the funnest things you could ever do. And I can break that down and walk through what I mean by that in the sense that one is it becomes a full-time job, just fundraising, like the meeting with different investors, the networking side of it, doing the pitches, doing diligence with them, follow up, et cetera.
00:20:31
Speaker
that becomes more than a full-time job, and yet the pressure is real in that you're in a tense moment of you cannot let growth of the business slow down on that either. So not only did you have a full-time job, now you have another one on top of it, the pressure of that can mount quickly. That is really difficult.
00:20:47
Speaker
The other side of it, though, is you get to meet a ton of incredible people who ask you very intelligent questions and make you think about your business in ways you probably have never thought about. The learning that comes from that, as well as the bonding across your team of just, like, how do we come together and solve some of this? Tremendous. There's a lot of love for that. What's been unique about ActiveCampaign is that we've raised three different rounds of funding. All of those have been strategic. And since we've been in a very good position in all of those rounds and that
00:21:17
Speaker
We didn't need the money. It wasn't a, hey, we're the balance sheets looking grim. We need to get some cash on hand to make it through the next year. And we've done things that I've never seen before, but I'm very proud of. And that the first round of funding, we raised $20 million, doing about 20 million in annual recurring revenue. And that usually doesn't happen. Usually someone's raising 20 million by doing 2 million in revenue. And they're using that 20 million to drive the next grow.
00:21:44
Speaker
Same thing in our second round of funding. We raised $100 million, doing roughly $100 million in revenue. And in those scenarios, it was number one where we needed the money, but it was about, hey, how do we bring some strategic partners into the business that can help us go through this journey with us, can be there, provide guidance, answer questions, make connections for us. And by doing it that way, we also have never had to give up control of the business either. Like we've been able to stay at the helm of our own business and drive that.
00:22:14
Speaker
And that would be one of the things I would say to folks in that do your best not to raise money when you need it. Try and do it in the scenarios where you think there's a strategic advantage to doing that.
00:22:23
Speaker
and also build your business for the long term. If you're going to try and optimize to put quick wins on the board and show quick growth or revenue, most investors are smart enough to probably see through that in some scenarios. And you could create a tremendous amount of headwinds for your company by doing that as well. Whether you're using promotions or discounts to try and generate new business, that's going to turn into potentially increased churn or less retention later. Be careful about that.
00:22:47
Speaker
The other side I would say is pick the right investors. It's not about who's going to give you the most money or who has the strongest brand reputation and market. Really take a close look at the profile of those investors. Have they done things in your industry? Do they have a mix of folks who've been historically operators in a business like yours, as well as coming more from the investment side of it? Can they help you through different ends of that?
00:23:14
Speaker
What services do they offer to their portfolio of companies? Do they have someone who helps you on the marketing side? Could they help you with someone on the talent acquisition pieces? So really dig into that. Like it's not solely about the money or the valuation they're going to give you, or frankly, that it's some brand name and market. It's tricky. It's fun, but it is a roller coaster, no doubt. You mentioned the fact that raising venture capital is a full-time job and that it can be extremely distracting. What's your advice?
00:23:45
Speaker
in terms of making sure that you balance
00:23:48
Speaker
focus on raising venture capital, the reality that you still got to run the business is you can't be running around talking to VCs and doing presentations where you can do that all the time. But at the same time, you got to make sure that the business is humming along, that it continues to grow and scale and drive efficiencies and do all the good things that it needs to do so that you can continue to keep investors excited. How do you do that? How do you make sure that the ship is sailing, but
00:24:16
Speaker
while you're off doing what you need to do on the financing side. One of the keys is just continually to build relationships with investors even when you're not fundraising.
00:24:25
Speaker
So building that into just the body of work you do every day and that I'm going to spend some time talking to different investors, sharing updates on our company, asking them questions about what they're seeing in their own portfolio. And that way, when the moment comes that you want to turn it on, you've done most of the groundwork. You probably have a good sense of strategically who are the folks you'd like to get some investments from. They probably know enough about you that first call where you're like, I'm serious about this.
00:24:51
Speaker
It's not a cursory call. It's, all right, let's talk about that. Here's what that would look like on our side. And here's how we'd want to run a process here. And here's what we'd ask from you. That sort of went so much than just saying, Hey, I think we might want to fundraise next quarter. Let's start to go meet investors. There's a dating that happens. And I would say just build that into the standard way you run your business. If you're ever looking at the idea of raising capital at some point, that would save you a tremendous amount of time. What are the advantages of
00:25:20
Speaker
a business growing and doing well and raising capital is that it puts you in a position to make strategic acquisitions.
Acquisition of Postmark: Benefits and Integration
00:25:26
Speaker
Last year, the acquisition of Postmark was a big deal for Active Campaign. I'd like your insight into what drove the decision to purchase Postmark and how has it benefited both brands? When you're looking at acquisitions, you want it to be a win. The worst acquisitions are the ones where you acquire a company and it disappears into the empire. The best ones are
00:25:49
Speaker
when it's a one plus one equals three proposition, the company that acquires the target does well, the company that's acquired thrives and does things that it never imagined. Talk to me about the Postmark deal and the impact that it's made on both businesses. The Postmark one is that it's very near and dear to me. It's an acquisition. I got to lead a spearhead, both in the ideation as well as into onboarding them into active campaigns. I have a tremendous amount of love for Postmark.
00:26:16
Speaker
If you go back in time, say up to 2021, one of the major reasons we might lose a deal or opportunity was that we did not have transactional email inside of our core email marketing automation platform.
00:26:29
Speaker
And transaction emails, just for folks, is that it's an email where it's based off of a trigger. You made a purchase, so you got a receipt, or you booked an appointment, so you get the confirmation of it. So things that are, you're intending that email to come to you, you've done something to trigger it. So we set out to, how do we solve that gap for our customers?
00:26:46
Speaker
I think as any kind of core team thinks about it is, do we build this? Do we buy this? Do we partner with someone to solve this? And I previously worked with Postmark, a different company. I used it to run the transactional email for our application. And I just told the team, I said, hey, there's one company that I think would be incredible to either partner with or potentially acquire.
00:27:07
Speaker
And it is the largest market share of any non-public, non-previously acquired transactional email platform. So let me see if I can get ahold of them and have some conversations. So we reached out to the Postmart team and over a series of a couple of months just discussing, could we integrate? What would that look like? We all agreed that an acquisition would probably be the best bet.
00:27:26
Speaker
in one where it addresses a gap inside the ActiveCampaign platform. But also, ActiveCampaign is a situation in a place where we could address some gaps in the Postmark platform. And for their audience, a lot of folks had asked, hey, can we get a WYSIWYG editor? What is what you get editor for emails? All the emails we can send are just via API. Can we get an actual designer in here?
00:27:46
Speaker
And vice versa, all the emails being sent by an API have to be triggered and initiated by an API. Is there a way to get an integration or an automation canvas that allow you to set up your own triggers in a way that doesn't require an engineer? So we thought there's just tremendous advantage by bringing these two platforms together and.
00:28:04
Speaker
closing the acquisition last year, we set out to integrate those platforms we have. So you can design an email on ActiveCampaign and have it sent through the postmark infrastructure. It's been tremendous just to have that product and market where ActiveCampaign is able to grow and monetize a slightly different product. And we're able to basically cross sell postmark into our base. At the same time, we've been able to add a number of features into the postmark base, but then take things that a larger organization like ActiveCampaign has and apply them into postmark. For example, postmark
00:28:32
Speaker
Bootstrap has never had a sales team. We've been able to hire some sales folks just dedicated to Postmark and truly accelerate its growth. It was growing well before we've been able to drive that up. And it's just been a kind of a win across the board for both of the teams. It must be exciting to be on the inside and actually lead an acquisition as opposed to watch it happen. I like to end podcasts with a rapid fire round, quick questions and answers. So are you ready to for the rapid fire round? And I'm not putting you on the spot, but this should be fine. Should be fairly easy. But here we go. Okay.
00:29:01
Speaker
One word to describe active campaign? Active. It's our natural state. It's in the name, but it's also, honestly, it's what our customers expect us to be. We're actively listening, we're actively improving our product, actively answering their questions, actively helping them grow and achieve their objectives. So it's active. Good word from a senior marketer to describe marketing. The biggest marketing challenge facing CMOs in 2023.
00:29:25
Speaker
I think it's staying ahead of that curve of what are the right channels that are evolving? How do I build my own channels? How do I build personalization into those? How do I creatively stand out in the different channels? That is forever the game and the challenge. And I think it's more rapidly changing, I'd say in the last year than I've probably seen the last 10. So I think that's a core challenge. Your biggest marketing challenge or goal for 2023?
00:29:50
Speaker
building new channels to drive income and revenue. We have a beautiful business, a ton of organic growth, be it word of mouth referrals and search. How do we go expand more organic channels in the business? How do we develop more of those paid channels for ourselves? Some of the challenges others have would say we are sitting on ourselves. A marketing book that you would recommend as a must read.
00:30:12
Speaker
Ooh, I always ask people go deeper. Do you want a copywriting book, an SEO book, product marketing, leadership book? But I'd say if I had to pick one, it would be obviously awesome by April Dunford messaging across any channel. Absolutely critical in April as a pro. So yeah, obviously awesome. A brand that you admire other than the active campaign. Let's go on running shoes. I don't even run, but the product is incredible.
00:30:39
Speaker
And I look at a lot of consumer brands, honestly, because I think they do some things just generally ahead of where the B2B side is going to be going. But they have such an incredibly clean, high quality product. You can feel that in all their marketing. The language relates to you. The visuals give you a very clear understanding of what to expect. The way they tie that together, I think, has been done incredibly well. A marketer that you see as a role model or a North Star? I don't have a good answer for the single person. I think more in the sense of
00:31:08
Speaker
folks and diversity of folks. I'm always looking for multiple examples of folks, but I'd say I'm not afraid to study the old school marketers. And a lot of that train of thought has not been lost or left. So your Ogilvy's, your outreach, Jack Trout's, even the Peter Drucker on the leadership side, like so much of that is still relevant in court of what we're doing today. The top tool in your marketing toolbox other than active campaign and post-market.
00:31:34
Speaker
It would be Looker. Honestly, it's our BI tool, and that's combining all of our analytics data, all the customer data, all the platform data. I'm in it every single day, multiple times a day, understanding our performance and how to set some strategies on top of it. It'd be Looker with the G Suite being a close runner-up. And the final question, this is a goodie, the future of email marketing.
00:31:54
Speaker
So alive and well. We've talked a little bit about so many updates happening across other channels, be it algorithms changing, prices shifting on paid channels, having own channels is incredibly important. And I think one of the most important ones you can have is email.
00:32:09
Speaker
and using email to be of value. So don't be the infotainment or general info. That's all going to get commoditized when you think about the world of AI, but truly building thought leadership, providing generally valuable information that's non-promotional out there. Your audience is going to be a true way to grow. Final question, where can people learn more about active campaign? That's pretty obvious. And where can they learn about you?
00:32:34
Speaker
Active Campaigns is activecampaign.com. Do the best place. Sign up for a free trial. Check it out. And for myself, it'd be LinkedIn. It'd be Shay Howell on LinkedIn. And yeah, if you do give Active Campaign a try, please reach out. Let me know what you think about it, how it went, would love any thoughts or feedback. So yeah, please don't be shy about reaching out.
00:32:51
Speaker
This has been a great conversation. Thanks for the opportunity to share some insights and talk about the future of email marketing and lots of other things. And thanks to everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, rate it, and subscribe by Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. And if you're a B2B or SaaS company looking for more sales and leads that's struggling to do marketing that makes an impact, we should talk. Reach out by email mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.