How would it feel to face a room full of Green Berets and tell them their writing needs some work? Grace sheds quite a bit of light on that, as she's done it repeatedly! This conversation wanders as much or more as the average email thread, but at heart it's a couple of people who value and care about the power of language comparing notes on the challenges of using language effectively and well in now-mostly-digital channels. Super-fun, super-smart, super-interesting guest. Don't miss this one.

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Want a little glimpse of the future? About halfway into this conversation, Renards Skutels describes it - AI, marketing and commerce working seamlessly together - in an app, not in email. Email isn't going away, but it's less and less the first-habit communication channel. WhatsApp is surging, Apple is RCS-ing. What are marketers going to do? This one will make you think.!

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If you're growing a midsize business, and need to focus your team's time on the business rather than social media...give Wendy Pace a call. Wendy had the courage to be a guest on The Future Of Email when she's not really a big fan of email!

Pace Setting Media handles social media for companies; they're immersed in helping clients learn who their customers really are, and how to reach them (cost-effectively) on a wide range of social-media platforms — including email :-)

AI comes up a lot in the conversation, with divergent opinions on the probable outcomes. Will AI make credible, compelling video content — or more drivel? Will copy and writing get better? Wendy's clearly paying close attention to the space.

It's been said that email is the original social media. This conversation tends to suggest that opposite, at least in terms of social media as it operates circa 2024. The heavy hand of algorithms and filters in the social media space don't apply (at least, not as much) in the inbox. From Wendy's perspective, that's bad — too much email. From Matthew's perspective, that leaves the person in control albeit with an additional workload.

If you're starting to think that you're under-utilizing social media and/or email to grow your business...give this conversation a listen!

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If The Future Of Email were 'Friends', this episode should be titled "The One Where They Talk About Music A Lot". Guest Cloé Luv is a serial entrepreneur with considerable experience in (among many things) the business of music. Cloé is also a CEO, influencer, brand expert, success coach and Forbes Coaches Council member.

If you're looking for "email marketing tips", this may not be the best Future Of Email episode.If you want to hear two people with passion and expertise for both business and music explore the current and future state of that field together...this is definitely the conversation for you!

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" Don't fall in love with the paycheck, fall in love with the client." That's one of the bits of sage advice from Sam Saifi, founder of Revenue Labz. Sam shares his journey into email by way of copywriting in this email-and-marketing focused conversation. If your company is in the DTC space...this is a great conversation for you!

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When’s the last time you just picked up the phone and called someone — no calendar appointment, no text-first? If that thought makes you kinda jumpy…you need to listen to this conversation with Mischa Zvegintzov. Does email come up in the conversation? Absolutely! Even though he’s completely conversant with social media channels, Mischa is 100% keen on the value of the you-own-it relationships in an email list.

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Anna Levitin of Powtoon is the 2nd guest to Zoom in from a bomb shelter! Anna is the super-active email face of the super-cool company Powtoon, a visual communication platform with a customer base of over 40 million users, spanning many languages and cultures.

If your company has "a user base", and email is one of the main channels for connecting with them, you'll find this a terrific and useful conversation — one of the two best bomb-shelter conversations on The Future Of Email so far.

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Like most people “in email”, Melanie Balke, the CEO and founder of agency The Email Marketers, found her niche in email along the way. For Melanie, good email marketing comes down to being a "good sender" - providing value to subscribers, building community, having a strategy, thoughtful segmentation and targeting.Want an invigorating look at best practices? Check out this conversation!

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An email MTA – Message Transfer Agent — does some of the same jobs as an airport. At scale, a busy MTA could be juggling a million email messages — each with quirks and delays just like passengers. KumoMTA is a new open-source MTA that handles this incredible job. Two of the KumoMTA founders, Tom Mairs and Mike Hillyer, joined host Matthew Dunn for a Future Of Email conversation about MTAs, open-source, founding companies, creating niches, finding traction, the virtues of Rust and scriptability, and much much more!

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If you booked a lift ticket to go skiing for the first time ever, would you rather get an email pitching you on buying a ski condo, or one with helpful tips about where to park, the best route to walk with an armful of skis and gear, and a coupon for $5 off a bowl of chili? Karen Talavera might point out that the strategic helpful email will bring far more condo sales in the long run. Karen is the principal at Synchronicity Marketing (and a ski instructor!); she helps companies across the spectrum with strategy-first marketing. With over 20 years of deep experience in email, Karen has learned how to harness technology changes for business impact. This is a fun, casual look inside strategic thinking for your email marketing program. Don't miss it!

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Email is a conversational channel. Dumb statement of the obvious? This conversation with Tyler “Sully” Sullivan, founder of BombTech Golf, might make you think about that in a different way. Email was/is perhaps the best digital channel for that, but the principle is what counts.

This is a super-engaging and inspiring conversation for marketers and entrepreneurs alike. Pull the pin and check it out!

Sully’s New Hangout: EcomGrowers.com

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The people that make conferences work are like ducks — calm on top, paddling like heck underneath to keep the momentum up. Kristen Haines, CEO of Mailcon, is in the business of creating events that provide opportunities for meaningful conversations. If you attended Mailcon last year, don’t expect next year to be identical. With Kristen Haines at the helm, expect some authentic and fun surprises. Planning to go to a conference this year? This conversation will make you appreciate those calm, poised folks who are paddling like heck to make it a great experience.

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Larry Kim is a man on a mission. Not content with bootstrapping and ultimately selling Wordstream, he’s swinging for the fences again with Customers.ai. Most of the conventional B2B marketing channels are badly broken, as Larry shares. Cold outbound is dismal; inbound/content is awful; paid ad rates keep climbing. With Customers.ai, Larry’s moon-shot is what he calls “intent-driven outbound marketing.” Check out Customers.ai and this conversation.

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You’re caught in a tug-of-war between AI and human knowledge. On one side, the colossal email inbox providers fighting to keep billions of inboxes at least partially free of spam, scams and junk. On the other side, every legit playing-by-the-rules brand using the last un-gated digital channel to talk with their customers and prospects, enlisting the help of human and AI experts to get their messages in front of customers.

The tug-of-war is called ‘deliverability’, and this in-depth conversation with expert Nicolas Toper gives a glimpse of the mess on that digital battlefield.

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Email is only for people over a certain age, right? Wrong! Both of the email whiz kids from CodeCrew are younger than email itself, but they make a convincing case for the business value of the channel. Alex Malone and Andrei Marin (aka Dr. Drei) and their email marketing agency team at CodeCrew have hit an average of 1,300% ROI across a huge range of clients. Think email is old? Dead? Uninteresting? Stodgy? Have a little fun, and check out this conversation with the CodeCrew.

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

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Missing the big wave versus catching it can be a matter of inches and an extra push to make or break the ride of a lifetime. Shortwave co-founder Jacob Wenger may not be a surfer, but he and his colleagues look to have caught the big wave after years of hard paddling. The wave in this case is the "AI moment" embodied in the ChatGPT buzz; Shortwave's particular ride is putting AI to work on that tough, tough problem called email.

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News flash: your email team is overworked. Not because they're not really good at the jobs involved (they are), but because email marketing is NOT "hit send." Every email that lands in an inbox is a complicated digital artifact. Creating millions of those a month ain't easy! If you're involved in email marketing, and are feeling that burn, this conversation will give you some ideas for moving forward and making the job (and results) better.

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Guest Adeola Sole — fan of all things email — Zoomed in from London to join host Matthew Dunn for this conversation about email, CRM, AI, and being nice to Siri (or not). Adeola is a super-visible figure in the UK/US email marketing industry, speaking, moderating and consulting on email strategy. This is a great conversation for marketers working across national or generational boundaries!

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