A Conversation With Chris Donald of InboxArmy

InboxArmy is the company you call to tackle tough email problems. They can attack design, coding, testing, setup, deployment, automations and migrations, on dozens of email platforms.

InboxArmy CEO Chris Donald also happens to be one of the nicest and most generous folks in the email space, says host Matthew Dunn. The two of them caught up "in public" in this conversation about email.

Chris is currently running InboxArmy from Thailand; that little personal fact became a pivot-point to talk about the cultural situation and "fit" of email. (TL/DR: US is more email-centric; Thailand, more app-centric.) Chris shares some of the fascinating differences he's observed, such as: it's not uncommon for someone in Thailand to post their bank account # on social media on their birthday, so people can give them money!

It's an in-depth conversation with an expert who has been deeply involved in email as a marketing channel for over 20 years — don't miss this one!

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With Chris Donal of InboxArmy

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[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good early morning where my guest Chris Donald, is in Thailand. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email. My guest Chris Donald from Inbox Army slash the Inbox Group. Hey Chris, finally we get to do this live welcome. Yeah,

[00:00:24] Chris Donald: yeah, yeah. We, we talk a lot, but we don't get to do something like

[00:00:27] Matthew Dunn: this.

So that's, Yeah. We get, we, we get to do it. We get talk in public Yeha. Yeah. Give people a, a capsule version of, of Inbox, Army and Inbox Group. As it stands now, .

[00:00:40] Chris Donald: Yeah, so Inbox Inbox Group came first. We started that in 2008, and Inbox Army grew out of that when we, we tried so inbox group and worked with a lot of bigger brands and, and some, you know, midsize companies and, and we found that a lot of our marketing was bringing in a lot more sort of upper [00:01:00] small business and a lot of mid-market.

And, you know, we, we turned away a lot of that business and I'm like, you know, Looked at it, we're like 75% of the leads of that . Right. And so, so we, we needed to build a better mouse trap though, to keep cost down, which we, we did. And once we started Inbox Army in 2016 it, it just took off. It kind of got crazy with, you know, targeting that sort of upper small midmark.

We still do a lot of work for brands too. Mm-hmm. And because we were able to lower costs of the production side, we passed that on even to the brands. Right. So it was kind of funny when we would go to some brands and, and say, Hey, we're gonna lower costs, and they were like so that was always interesting.

But you know, we're, we've, we've grown incredibly well you know, did really well through the pandemic years. Wow. You know, we, In 20, In 2020 we grew a hundred percent. [00:02:00]

[00:02:01] Matthew Dunn: Wow. Nice. And then

[00:02:03] Chris Donald: 2021 we grew almost 70, 70, just over 70% . So, so was, It was crazy, but

[00:02:10] Matthew Dunn: crazy. But, but yeah. Good problem to have. What are the what are the essential divisions of the army?

Like key services for, for customers? How do you have it grouped? Grouped and dividend? Yeah.

[00:02:21] Chris Donald: Yeah, So we, most of what we do is we do a huge amount of production work. Okay. Right. So if you think of design, coding, testing, set up, deployments, automations, integrations, migrations, you know, that type of work.

Right. Okay. Okay. We're certainly working with data and we do a fair amount of, of strategy as well. Okay. But you know, our wheelhouse is the production side for sure. Okay. Okay. . We can generally say most companies just a ton of money doing that, right? Just cuz of our cost structure, but

[00:02:54] Matthew Dunn: not cost.

That's cost structure. But, but let's not, let's not throw away [00:03:00] some pat on the back for expertise. One, one of the, one of the tough lessons to get across to people about email, because we all get it every day, , is that it's complicated.

[00:03:12] Chris Donald: It's hard. Right. I love that. Hashtag hashtag email is hard. Right. I love that.

Yeah. Because it is, it's, it is and and we see it every day, right. With the just mistakes and things people do. And especially on the deliverability side or still people buying lists, cuz you know, there's. There's a lot of people who just don't know how to do things right. They don't know how to set up even the foundation of their email, right?

Mm-hmm. You know, they read little blips and blobs and best practices, which I hate because, you know, best practices aren't best practices for everyone, right? They're just not. And there's unfortunately, there's some silly stuff out there too, right? So you. It, it's, it, [00:04:00] it's hard. It's not like people come outta university or something as an email marketer.

They don't. Right. Yeah. You know, the old saying is, email marketers are born a right, because we need send email guy or whatever. They, they learn by making mistakes.

[00:04:21] Matthew Dunn: Right. You know, it, it would intrigue me. I don't know if there's a way to do it, but. It may be a poll. I don't know the, the, the set of people who stumble on or listen to this podcast where I get to talk with people who are deep in the space.

I'd be very curious to know. How did, how did they come to be interested enough to put an hour into listening to our conversation at some point, You know, because most of the time it seems like an accident, where someone fell sideways and like, Oh, I, I, I guess I'm doing email now. I tripped over that thing and you know, five years later, 10 years later, I'm doing,

[00:04:58] Chris Donald: Yeah.

It'd be [00:05:00] interesting to see how people got there as email marketers. Right. I think, I think there'd be some great stories for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I mean, I got into it early. It's not a curriculum, right? Like you said. No, no,

[00:05:12] Chris Donald: no. You know, I got into it early and I sent my first email marketing campaign in 1995, back when the internet was low and ugly.

Right. Wow. So, you know, I created key west.com, Florida keys.com, and we started doing email

[00:05:26] Matthew Dunn: newsletter. Right, okay.

[00:05:28] Chris Donald: and, And that was on, I think when we started, was like, I don't know, 9,600 bottom modem or something. Yeah. You know,

[00:05:38] Matthew Dunn: not exactly with AOL at that point. Oh,

[00:05:40] Chris Donald: yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. That was the, You've got mail era, right?

For sure. . But you could, you know, you could do anything in the nineties and even early two thousands. It was the frigging wild west. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, you could send flash in an email, you could send a form and an email. You could, Yeah. You know, [00:06:00] it, it was, it was, it was crazy. But I think nowadays it's, it's, so, I, I actually, I rarely prepare for these things, but for you, I did, I actually made a few notes which is something I rarely do because I just, you know, you do it so long is you usually have some opinion about everything, Right.

Whether they're right or wrong or indifferent, you tend to but I was trying to think of if, if we stay on the topic of future of email mm-hmm. . And not that we have to, although I should say something interesting, something I learned about Southeast Asia and email, right? So email is not very prevalent here.

Mm-hmm. it is for transactional and to have an account to sign up for things and stuff like that, right? System messages, password resets, certainly receipts from eCommerce, stuff like that. But they are, first of all, they're very social. Right. Very, very [00:07:00] socially, I mean far more than we may think. We're social, They take social to a whole another level.

And I think the reason they're not as connected to email is they sort of got into and mask, got into the internet later when, when it, the mobile phone became the internet. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that allowed everybody in, in far off reaches of whatever, even in Thailand. Right. So, and because they're very.

People. And because Facebook and my space back you go and all the social channels were there by then. So that's what they attached to. Right. So, And they will put anything on Facebook in other, I mean, stuff that we would never do. Interesting. Right. Interesting. Whether it's personally, or to give you an example, when it's their birthday, they post their checking their bank account.

On Facebook so people can send them money.

[00:07:58] Matthew Dunn: Wow. That's [00:08:00] Wow, that's different. Yeah. Yeah. ,

[00:08:02] Chris Donald: right. So, but it's email is actually starting to gain a little traction. Interesting. Right. But social is where it's at for here. Right. But I think for, for the future of email, I. We talk about the machine learning, right?

And I think there's validity in that to a point, right? So the question is, will the computers be smart enough to really identify consumer behavior with intent through actions, postings, whatever, all this data that they can gather. But the problem with that is privacy. . Right. So the changes we see in privacy and no tracking and all this machines can only do what they can do, right?

Based on the data set they have available to do. Mm-hmm. , if you take that away, that slows down the machine learning part of things to a point, right? [00:09:00] You can sort of make some assumptions and things and, you know, it's, it's, it's, the question is, can we. Privatized data enough, whether it's through, through encryption or other type of masking that the data's available but not visible almost, right?

Mm-hmm. . Yeah. You know, that machine learning can actually dig its teeth into it.

[00:09:28] Matthew Dunn: So,

[00:09:29] Chris Donald: yeah, that's, you know, that's, that was, that was my, my, that's always been my main fight with the ai. Part of this is is, I think now there's enough data, it's usable, It's can and, and, or do we lose our privacy for that? Are we willing to opt in or opt out of privacy?

Right? Yeah. Which is a little bit what's happening now, right? Because on, you know, even on the, with the Apple mail stuff or, or that stuff where you, you opt into, you. Privacy. Right, Right. But you know, you can word it [00:10:00] in a way that you want privacy or do you want your data str about the world? Right.

I mean you can. It depends on how you

[00:10:05] Matthew Dunn: ask the question, right? Yeah. It depends on how you ask the relatively short question. Cuz no one's gonna read the 24 pages of terms of service right? Or not right .

[00:10:15] Chris Donald: So, you know, there's that right. Because mobile is such a big part of what we do now, right? Mm-hmm. , I mean, it is, it is.

We're all attached to it, right? Yeah. And, and here in Southeast Asia, it's literally, I mean, everybody is on their phone all the time. I mean, it's all the time. Interesting. You think the US is crazy, but here it's

[00:10:36] Matthew Dunn: unbelievable. Is it I'm just curious is side question, but from what I, from what I know about global markets, it's you're gonna more far more.

Pre predominantly Android devices. Yes, Yes. Although,

[00:10:50] Chris Donald: although a lot will, Apple is sort of a status thing, right? Yeah. Here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's just, it's a, it's a definitely a status thing. Cause it's more expensive, but more [00:11:00] people, far more people have Android for sure. Yeah, for sure. You know, I've got, I have the Android flip, right?

The, Well, you can't see it, but anyway, cool. Oh, there you go, dude. Yeah. But, and I bought it because it's got a bigger screen and of course I wear glasses, so it's a little easier. Sure. But when I have that and I open it up, it's like, Oh my God. Right there. Like, oh my, wow. You have, It's like, so big deal.

Right. I bought it for utility more than coolness. Right. But yeah, no, it's, it's heavy Android for sure. Right.

[00:11:33] Matthew Dunn: It's a, it's a perception or a framing challenge. If you work in front of a computer all day and ac you know, like a real computer, Sorry, smartphones are real computers. Right. But if there's a monitor and a keyboard, in my case six monitors and keyboards, , it's like people, this is not how people experience most of it.

Right. The, the predominant, you know, communication computer device is in your [00:12:00] pocket, not on your desk. Yeah. Yeah. No,

[00:12:02] Chris Donald: and it's, I mean, 55, almost 55% of all emails are opened on mobile device. Yeah, yeah, Right.

[00:12:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. It is the main. Yeah, I

[00:12:10] Chris Donald: mean, push notifications, sms, those are all, I mean, push is a little behind.

SMS is a little bit front of push, I think, because getting people to opt into push is that

[00:12:21] Matthew Dunn: problem, right? Yeah. Well, to your note about privacy, right? When, when there's a popup that says, Do you want notification? You know, general reaction is, I already have. I already have one. Thanks. . Yeah. 1000. Honestly, I cannot.

[00:12:36] Chris Donald: Remember a single time I opted into a push. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that might be because of my age too. I don't know. Right. It's, it's a factor. I, I, I think age habits all just take to look at that. Yeah. Be, you know, because you know, for most people, you know, I mean, I'm 63, I don't know how old. You're not quite.

Okay, . Fair enough.[00:13:00] Most people my age are not super technically inclined. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. They, you know, the internet to them was really more of the, of the two thousands and nineties. They didn't, I adopted early because I, I stumbled onto, I opened a computer and. Made sense to me. Right. I don't know why it just did.

Yeah. You know, I looked at code, I looked at built websites and did all that stuff. And I did that in my thirties. Right. So but I think most of, you know, internet, if you, if you remember the nineties, most people are, the internet's gonna stay. It's gonna go away right there. It's a fad. It's a fad, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It literally, you know, my favorite thing about the internet, I say, is it made the world smaller. Hmm. Right. Because I know you have friends in other countries now that you never would've had before without the internet. Right? Absolutely. Me too. Right? Absolutely. And I wouldn't be working in Thailand if it wasn't [00:14:00] for the internet.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. It's just a different world or, or even have, you know, clients in other countries. Yeah. We just would not have happened that way.

[00:14:08] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Do do business with, be part of someone else's, you know, whatever. Yeah, some of my, yeah, some of our longest running customers have, have never physically met

No.

[00:14:22] Chris Donald: No. Wow. It's, it's the case, right? Yeah. In fact, we probably, now we're, we're in Texas, right? So we have far more. Companies in other states and in other countries. And we do have in

[00:14:37] Matthew Dunn: Texas, in the, In the nation of Texas. Right. In the, Yeah.

[00:14:40] Chris Donald: Yeah. The nation of Texas. Right. Well, it's funny, you know, when you go someplace and you, and people don't realize really just how big the US is or, or even how big Texas is, right?

Yeah. I mean, you can almost put three UKs in Texas. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy, right?[00:15:00] And that's not even the biggest thing. Right? And our friends

[00:15:02] Matthew Dunn: in Alaska go, Yeah, right, Exactly. Don't bother me with that. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. There's six of you, so don't bother me with that either. .

[00:15:11] Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah. You know, But the other thing I, I see, and I wanna see a leap in this, and I'm not sure how we get there, is interactive emails.

Right? So, I

[00:15:21] Matthew Dunn: gotta tell you, I would like to see it as, But on, I don't see the technical underpinnings there. No. There has to be a leak. Yeah. And it runs smack dab into the privacy issue that you already raised. Right, right. You know go, Google's been pushing AMP for email, supporting it in their client.

Apple and I, I said this at a recent conference, like Apple, Apple won't switch on AMP for email. There's no way they can square. With their privacy stance about something as humble as a pixel, it just doesn't work. Yeah.

[00:15:55] Chris Donald: No, no. And and, and that's a problem is what's right. You know, [00:16:00] there has to be a big shift Hmm.

One way or the other. Right? Yeah. And having privacy is gonna kill a lot of innovation, I think. Yep. And, and, and the other way, we'll, we'll spark innovation, but we're giving up privacy.

[00:16:15] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, and, and you know, we're talking, we're, you know, we're both, we're both Yankees, so we're, our context to some extent is informed by US practice where we're far more likely to sign over privacy for convenience.

And I think it's probably enabled some degree of a faster innovation in, in the markets. So when someone whs about privacy in the us I'm like, Yeah, did volunteer ? Yeah. You did sign up for this, right? You knew. You knew that. But as we put on some breaks on that, at at least to the extent of that ecosystem is, is powered somewhat by knowing more about customers for advertising marketing, fill in the blanks.

It's gonna slow it. I, I agree with you. [00:17:00] I think it's gonna. Some of those innovations down, AI and ML need the signal, as you were saying a few minutes ago, right? Yeah,

[00:17:10] Chris Donald: yeah. And you know, apps kind of fix a little bit of that problem, right? But little bit there's that. How many apps can you install, right? So my question is there eventually.

You know, is an app like a mall where there's rarely multiple apps in an app or multiple stores in an app, or there's an app for you, a city or, or a state or where something, Right. That's because the problem I have is I install apps and then I go, Man, I've used this app in six months, all I'll install it.

Right, right, right.

[00:17:44] Matthew Dunn: Which makes you statistically typical, right? It's like average app gets used about one and a half. , Right. And

[00:17:51] Chris Donald: then, yeah, and there's only a few. And even like apps like Lyft or Uber or whatever, I use them when I use 'em when I travel. And I, you know, occasionally, but not all the [00:18:00] time.

Right. And that's always what I talk about apps. If you cannot keep them engaged for that first 30 days where they use it, Yeah. Then the chances of them never opening it again. Yeah. Are extremely high. Yeah. They're pretty, Yeah. Pretty, pretty

[00:18:15] Matthew Dunn: mind numbing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because you know, it's one of the affordances of the smartphone as it evolves.

Like you, you can make this into a Swiss Army knife and buy as many blades as you want. , but which one do you reach for habitually? Which one? Which one becomes like sticky for your, your own uses? And there there aren't many of those. E email, I believe email is still one of the top X 2, 3, 4 open on mobile devices.

[00:18:49] Chris Donald: It's the, it's the original killer app. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. I mean, it, it people, I mean, how many times over the years that, Oh, you know, RSS is gonna kill [00:19:00] it, or this is gonna kill it, or That's it. It's, it's, you know, it's like a zombie. It, you can't kill it. Right. Yeah. And it's so integrated into the internet experience Yeah.

To get the logins and registers and all that stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I think. because the apps that are most used are social apps. Right. But what I call the look at me bitch and moan apps. Right. , Which is, because that's really what most of what, what's done on them, right? Yeah. Either the complainant or they're, Yeah.

And, and I guess it makes sense, you know, you know, TikTok obviously is, has grown incredibly. Yeah. And what's really interesting is the average age of the user on TikTok has gone way up. Is it? Yeah. Way, way

[00:19:49] Matthew Dunn: up. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, it'll follow it'll follow a curve. It'll be very interesting to see five years from.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:20:00] What's the age? What's the viewership? What's the participant?

[00:20:02] Chris Donald: Well, so something else is gonna come to make things easier, to make more live. You know, they already have live on there, but I think that is part of, Hmm. You know, it's that instant gratification thing, right? Yeah. But you know, I, I still look at email as a, you know, it's still about how do we put better tools and features.

Into the hands of the users, right? Whether it's to use data, whether it's the esp, the CDPs, the CRMs, whatever you wanna call it, all the stupid acronyms. We love to use and, and use data be better and actually give users value. Right. You know, that's always been my take is, is when you send an email or any type of message, It should have value for the person who receives it as well as the company sending it.

Right? Right, right. Because if it's why [00:21:00] I tell, you know, B2B clients, Oh look, you know, we've put out this email that we won an award, or we did this, or we closed all this business. You know what? They don't give a credits ass about that . They just don't. Right. Yeah. You know, give them something of value, give them some knowledge, give them something.

We'll make them open the next email. Right. You know, in eCommerce right now with, with recession and all that, it's all about deals right now. Right. , you know, Amazon having the second Amazon Prime Day. Yeah. Prime day. Yeah. Well, because, The, you know, people aren't buying a lot. Hmm. So the, the non-essential stuff has gone down.

Yeah. You know, Walmart went and had big discounts on electronics and home goods and, and other stuff. Their food and their essentials were fine, but they were just way overstocked. And then they canceled like billions of dollars of orders. Oh, really. [00:22:00] Interesting. Which was, which was eye open.

Right. So that's what I, I always look at Amazon, Walmart, those guys, you know, because they have a lot more data, a lot more information than, you know, will ever Yeah. And, and it's, it's the early and often sales right now. Right. So I tell people you need to. If you're e-commerce, you need to start your stuff now, right?

Do an early Black Friday. Hey, the same deal we're offering on Black Friday, we're offering you today because you're a valued subscriber or whatever. Right? Because I think there's gonna be a lot more buying from week to week, paycheck to paycheck as we get to the holidays. And I think people aren't gonna necessarily hang their hat on Black Friday, Cyber Monday as much because of that.

I could be. Yeah. But that's sort of what I'm seeing the other guys do. So,

[00:22:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And it's, it's it, you know, you've got the big, the big dogs, like you mentioned, Amazon Prime Day, like stealing, stealing [00:23:00] some of the sense of urgency out of that, spreading it out a bit more. I'm imm curious since, since you mentioned Amazon, I'm curious about your reaction to the, the news that broke last week about Amazon essentially saying, If you're an Amazon merchant, if you sell through us, guess what?

You we're within some controls, you can start emailing other people through Amazon. Like they've kind of gone into the quasi e s p with the, the ridiculously huge list of folks who are Amazon members. Yeah.

[00:23:36] Chris Donald: And I, I almost think, you know, I was waiting for that to happen off. Yeah, right. So, Cause they, if you're an, if you sell on Amazon, you don't get that.

Right, Right. But I think maybe what, what Amazon is seeing is that the company is better at addressing the consumer than they are for all the different products. Right, Right, right. [00:24:00] So they can't be content people. They can send up picture, hey, yeah, you looked at this or you bought this before. You know all that crap.

Right. Relationship building, that's not their, they can't do that. Right. You know, they can't give that information out. They, they don't know when new products are being released. Yeah. And I think, I think they're probably seeing the value in giving that ability. Right. Right. Yeah. At least I think so.

[00:24:26] Matthew Dunn: It, it, it intrigued me. , Amazon expanding the email reach for their merchants came within a week or two of Shopify, putting a hundred million dollar investment into Klaviyo, which is the dominant p email platform for Shopify merchants. You're like, Oh, very similar pattern going on in those two, really two big competitors.

Shopify, Amazon, I would argue.

[00:24:55] Chris Donald: Yeah, it's, it's interesting cause Cleo, you know, Cleo's a great little platform, [00:25:00] right? I mean, i's not a little platform anymore. , you know,

[00:25:03] Matthew Dunn: our Frank Chris Marriott calls it cheap and cheerful. . Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:25:07] Chris Donald: It is. It's, it's inexpensive. It's a month to month play. Know, I, I, I used to call it MailChimp on steroids.

Right. But they're, they're going in a different, very, they've, you know, they're, I believe they've launched their sort of enterprise version. Right. Which is Klaviyo one. If not, it's coming soon, I think. Interesting. You know, part of what made Klaviyo grow so quickly there was when MailChimp and Shopify had that little fight, Right.

About the security or API or something. Yes. Right. And they and, and they, so MailChimp cut 'em off, right? Oh, or shop one of the other Shop.

[00:25:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Shop. Yeah. That was, that was quite a sort of an epoch ebook event in, in

[00:25:56] Chris Donald: it, it made no sense. Right. I mean, how does not [00:26:00] get there ? Because it, it, it didn't help either one.

It just hurt them both. Right.

[00:26:06] Matthew Dunn: Made a opening for Klaviyo though, as you

[00:26:08] Chris Donald: said. Well, yeah. All those Mail Champ users really just gra gravitated over it. Right. And it gave them a huge boost.

[00:26:17] Matthew Dunn: I, I just looked up Klaviyo when it is on the market. Klaviyo clavia com slash on E. But here's, here's the, here's the log line pitch.

Finally, a unified customer platform that delivers personalization at scale and it's email and sms.

[00:26:33] Chris Donald: Hmm. Yeah, and I think they, they have, they have push as well, probably. Yeah.

[00:26:38] Matthew Dunn: I'm not mistaken. Yeah. But it's, it's, it doesn't surprise me to see SM. In the list. Right. But boy, talk about aspiration. We're a cdp, we're a personalization platform.

We're an email platform. We're a texting platform platform. That's a few things to do. .

[00:26:54] Chris Donald: Yeah. I mean, and honestly, they do it relatively well. Yeah. Right. That's good [00:27:00] to hear. You know, because I, you know, we run into all types of clients and sometimes we see clients that were sold in E S P. That they just don't need.

Yeah, yeah. Right. And I'm not saying anything bad about any of them, but you know, because God bless them, their sales people are really good. Right. It's a fit thing. Yeah. It's a fit thing. And it, but it's also a cost problem, right? Mm-hmm. , , not only because, you know, somebody buys. Salesforce or Marketo, You know, usually it's the marketing manager or somebody else who makes the purchase and then hands it off to these poor people that have to run it and they have no frigging clue.

Right. Because, you know, both of those platforms are great platforms, but they're difficult to use. Right. It, it'll take you, you know, 10 more steps to do things than it might do in, say, a Klaviyo or, or, Right. You know, some of the others. Right. It's, it's a man hour problem, right? Right. So they say, [00:28:00] Oh, the platform costs this, it says, No, the platform costs 10 times that cause the man hours you're using.

And then of course the people can't get there. So, and, and I said I should plane, they call people like us or consultants or, Yeah. You know, and, and, and I always, Bad decisions on buying ESP drive a business for us, unfortunately. Right? It's true for most agencies. It drives business. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it's a, it needs to be easier and they really need to educate maybe on the front end, or I guess an ESPs job isn't to.

It is to a point I think, and they do try. But you know, there are still far too many ESP that say Yes to purchase data. Right.

[00:28:47] Matthew Dunn: Purchase list. Well, yeah. The, in the first part of that sentence was also true. There are still far too many esp I , period. No. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's a little it's a little bit unusual [00:29:00] to see a space.

That doesn't have a dominant player, but that's absolutely true of the platform side of of email. There are no hundreds and you can't go. Yeah, those guys own most of the market. There is no, there is no those guys and it, you know, numerically was MailChimp, but small to medium business. Now owned by into it.

So I would not argue that they're 800 pound chimpanzee or anything like that. Really.

[00:29:30] Chris Donald: Whatever. . Well, I think, I think that was a smart move for Intuit, right? Yeah, me too. They were integrated already. They're probably gonna integrate better. Yeah. You know, into it had what, six, 7 million small business users and MailChimp had 11 million.

So Yeah, that made sense, right? Yeah. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think that was the main thought behind it. And then shortly after they bought it, they reintegrated with Shopify.

[00:29:56] Matthew Dunn: Right. Did little deton, new ownership, all that [00:30:00] stuff. Yeah. It was also to me, that acquisition of MailChimp buy into it was, was another big email ain't going away, flag being waved cuz into it.

If you look at their, their history and track record. They go in sectors where, where it's gonna stick around. Right. QuickBooks. How old at this point? .

[00:30:23] Chris Donald: Oh my God, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and adoption everywhere, right? It's not just US adoption, it's every Right. It's everywhere. It is pervasive.

No, it, it makes sense. . But yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing for email is to continue with innovation wherever we can, but I think the privacy issue is gonna be the problem. I really do. I think that's gonna be the disruptor in all of this, is eventually it's either gonna go one way or the other.

Well, one of the, one of the

[00:30:55] Matthew Dunn: puzzles there that, let's call it privacy [00:31:00] versus per personalization and innovation. that, that, those two things bumping up against each other. I'm looking at the Klaviyo one screen that you prompted me to open. They've got a whole story about personalization told visually on the homepage, but it's absolutely predicated on data about Cara, Kara Garland,

They're, they're prototypical person, right? Subscribing. Yeah. Like more data they've got about Cara, the more they can personalize her email Fair equation. But what if Cara. I don't wanna tell everything about me. I just wanna buy stuff when I feel like it and tell you nothing. Like, dang, those two things, they don't work very well together.

If, if Klaviyo one has nothing about subscriber X personalization, at least in its current paradigm, not could be much of it. Oh,

[00:31:51] Chris Donald: yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I, You know that, that's the wild card in all of this. Yeah, yeah. You know, because I love the [00:32:00] idea that we can, , we can use data better. I, I, I love the idea that a lot of the platforms make it easier to do that.

Mm-hmm. You know, whether it's, whether it's you know, creating dynamic segments or triggers or whatever it is you wanna call it. Yeah. And one of my pet peeves, by the way, so I, I always, I'd like to get this out of the way is an email we love to. Same thing, like 92 names . Yeah. I mean for automations, I mean we've got, we've got flows, we've got journeys, we've got triggers, we've got drips, we've got, I mean, and, and, and, and it's funny, somebody will call and say, all, you know, I watch you create a drip for us.

I said, Yeah, we can do the automations. I don't want an automation on a trip. Ok. Okay. I can do that, right? Yeah. . And, and so yeah, it's, but we do it to ourselves, right? And, and the acronym stuff is the acronyms [00:33:00] are detrimental to the conversation.

[00:33:03] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You know, though, it, it, it's not, This particular space?

No, it's every,

[00:33:10] Chris Donald: It's everything, right? It's everywhere. Everything. We love to put

[00:33:13] Matthew Dunn: them on, right? Talk to a school teacher and listen to the, Listen to the acronym salad. That a public school teacher will rattle off and it's like, what are you talking about? You know, the world's becoming world, the complexity going up, specialization, branching off, and yeah, we, you know, we end up making up these these short-term Chris, married, who I mentioned, Mutual, mutual, acquaintance of ours mm-hmm.

Made I thought a brilliant long term call. The customer data platform and the email service provider headed the same direction, but when you go blah, blah, blah, e p, cdp, like 99 people in the room. No idea what you just said. No. Yeah, exactly. No idea. Right.

[00:33:57] Chris Donald: And, and, and, and CDPs [00:34:00] exist because ESP didn't do a good

[00:34:01] Matthew Dunn: job with data.

Couldn't agree with you more. Couldn't agree with you more, Right. Yeah. Simple

[00:34:05] Chris Donald: as that. Yeah. It's really, And it was funny because it was the ESP saying big data. Well, you know what? We suck at small data. Why don't we get that fixed first? Yeah. Really? But, but the CDPs, that's why they exist. Right. ISPs didn't do a good

[00:34:19] Matthew Dunn: job.

Well, it's, it's, yeah. It's part that, and it's. Well, it's part of a bunch of things. I, I think the the technical model of a lot of the email platforms on the market is, is kind of antiquated. It's like import a list to do this, import a list to do that, like time out. I got the same guy on both lists, and I don't have any way of seeing the connection between those two things.

That's why the CDP exists. Yeah. Right. It's, I mean, and yeah, and, and it's hard to reengineer that stuff, especially when you've got an installed base who likes their list or figured out how to manage it. So [00:35:00] it, it's, well in the CDPs

[00:35:02] Chris Donald: are morphing into Yes. Theyre, Yeah. Yeah. They bring those abilities into the platform.

Yeah.

[00:35:08] Matthew Dunn: Both the cloud MTA on the side and, Oh, look, you're, you're almost there. And then the, the, the sort of API. Consolidators Twilio. Twilio obviously comes to mind, right? They're getting all of the pieces lined up and assembled. It just isn't called a platform. Right? But could you make it one? Hmm. Not that much work, maybe?

Yeah. Yeah. Message Bird slash Spark post heading the same way perhaps. Yeah. How does, how does that, Technical mess, factor for your business? I would think. I would think being on top of it puts you in a good position. It, it

[00:35:47] Chris Donald: does, it helps us a bit. Right? Yeah. I mean, in any given month we have clients on over 40 to 50 platforms.

Wow. Wow. If you can imagine, Right? Yeah. Whether they're platforms or [00:36:00] CDPs or, or whatever. Yeah. You know, it might be a. You know, the, the problem, a lot of times we see companies that have, you know, they'll have like attentive for their, for their sms and then they have their, their p and then they have, you know, something for social and they have all these things integrated, right?

They through APIs, whatever. And it's, it, it's, it's like the old day with all the old phone cords running around or whatever, , right? It's kinda. It's just looking to break, Right? ? Yeah. Yeah. Because the more connections you have, the more chances you have to break, which is why I think the holistic platforms, if somebody can get there, Make them usable without it looking painful and hard and, and insane.

Yeah. You know, if somebody can get there, I mean, look, you have, you have Salesforce flows down the the social studio. Right? Part of that. You know, different things [00:37:00] just weren't enough to make it work. And, and I love Salesforce, great platform, but it's, it's, it's difficult, right? Yeah. It's difficult.

That's, that's, you know, I always, my, my, my description was Salesforce is they built their exact target, built a really nice house with, you know, 50 bedrooms, right? And really good. And then, then they came along and put on, you know, 2000 additions and now you can't get. Here, they're there going outside through tunnel and up,

[00:37:28] Matthew Dunn: you know, Where's the kitchen man,

I,

[00:37:31] Chris Donald: it was a little like that. I mean, maybe I'm not being fair to them. And I love, I love Salesforce. So we

[00:37:37] Matthew Dunn: drive to serve very different markets in very different sizes of companies, which Salesforce has done successfully. It's is, it is a daunting job hub, I would argue HubSpot. Going down that, you know, same road I've watched HubSpot grow from.

Yep. Wow. Killer, sleek CRM to. This is, this is [00:38:00] Frankenstein's monster, man.

[00:38:00] Chris Donald: Like, Yeah, no, same thing. And that's the problem when, because it's never done holistically, it's done as, let's put this on, It's a Frankenstein, right?

[00:38:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Which is, which is, which is kind of nature of Evolution of digital

[00:38:16] Chris Donald: artifact wells, speed to market.

It's a speed to market problem,

[00:38:18] Matthew Dunn: right? And squeaky wheel. And, you know, what do we think's gonna help us close the quarter and, and, and that kind of stuff. I, I'm, I'm backtracking in my head a little bit in the conversation, but when I when I was early on in college, I got a summer job at a, at a motels, is in a tourist town, and they had a switchboard.

For the phones in the room. Remember we had phones in the room and it was an actual patch cord switchboard, right? Someone in a room would call would buzz. We'd go, Oh, you want an outside line? Hang on a second and plug the cord in. I'm like, I didn't realize it was training for training for the tech space.

with that. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it actually works.

[00:38:59] Chris Donald: It's, [00:39:00] it's Well, remember we, you know, we used to have the well, when, all the way back into the seventies we had the phone acoustic couplers to connect to game frame Right. And stuff like that. Yep. Yeah. But even then, even with modems, you know, you'd be online and it would go offline cause somebody picked up the phone, tried to make a call.

Right. Yeah. There was that problem cuz you had to tie up the phone line

[00:39:21] Matthew Dunn: to be on the, the, the, the phone line. Well, part of that, part of that leapfrog that's led to behavioral differences is that you talked about at the beginning, about about Thailand. Where you are now is I, I think Thailand's one of the countries where the wired telephone infrastructure.

Didn't necessarily go everywhere, so they leapfrogged and said Absolutely wire less everywhere. Cuz it's a lot cheaper than, than string and barbed wire. Lot faster. Absolutely.

[00:39:51] Chris Donald: Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt about it. Right? No doubt about it. Interesting. It, it, and it and it moved them quickly as well. Yeah. So they [00:40:00] adapt incredibly well to technology.

Yeah. Right. Nice. Surprisingly so. Right. But yeah, the social drive of it is, you know, there's a lot of things about Southeast Asia that I love food people, the things, the way they do things. Don't get me wrong, I love America. I still, it's my home, right? Don't get me wrong. It is. I don't know if they'll ever get away from the social driven part.

Right. I see email making a little pay, right? Yeah. And it's certainly used in business to a point. But APP is, they pay for everything a lot of times with their phone, with their bank.

[00:40:41] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. Is there, is there. Is there a predominant app or series of apps used for PayPal? Well, they your

[00:40:48] Chris Donald: bank app, right?

So, Oh, okay. Interesting. Everybody has, like all these little street vendors, they have a little QR code, so if you buy something, you put it in, they tell you it's 650 bot or 10 bot. [00:41:00] 20 bought whatever it is you put it in, you'd send it to 'em, you show 'em the thing and like, okay, take your food. Right. Wow.

And it's, and it's, it's done like that all over. And these are just little shops, little markets street vendors. Yeah. You know, street food in Southeast Asia is amazing. Right. Nice. So it, it's, it's just the way they do it, they send money to each other and that's why all you need is the account number.

Right. That's why they post it on Facebook. You can, if you have the account. In the bank, you can just send a money. Right.

[00:41:29] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. Where whereby contrast paying, paying with the smartphone in the US is still relatively unusual. I, I use, I use, my wife has, my wife has the Apple card in her, her pocket. So I use, I use the phone and it's still hit or miss.

To say Yeah, it is.

[00:41:51] Chris Donald: You don't see it sometimes you see it in places. Yeah. Sometimes not. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't even work well either. Right. There's that. Yeah. I mean, even though [00:42:00] you know the smart cards, we should be able to just put it down. You put it down, then read it, you still gotta put it in.

Right, right, right.

[00:42:05] Matthew Dunn: Which is another one of those leapfrog innovation cycle things. The credit card itself was invented, was in, was like first came into. Functional use in the us It was Sea First Bank in, in Seattle that actually started the thing called that we now call the credit card. So we stuck with swipes and then mag stripes for a lot longer than other countries.

That went to Chip Absolutely.

[00:42:31] Chris Donald: Cards earlier. Absolutely. We did, right? Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we push ahead on some things and we fall

[00:42:38] Matthew Dunn: behind on it and we fall behind. Yeah, we fall behind badly on others. Kenya has. SMS based payment system called M Pesa. I think e m dash p e s a, like astonishing, move money all over the place and it's SMS based, but it practically runs the economy there.

It's like you don't have to have [00:43:00] terabyte bandwidth and, and a zillion apps to make this work. You have to have, you know, trust and, and some institutional stability and, and sort of build a habit. at a national level to make something stick and then changing it hard. Right. right hard. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:19] Chris Donald: And, and I think, I think because these countries are more apt to make that leap and make those decisions, you know, there isn't all the, as much bureaucracy to.

Interesting, right? Yeah. I think that's why sometimes they just, they adapt or, or adopt very quickly, right? Adopt and adapt. Adopt and,

[00:43:40] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. A little faster. Yeah. And, and, and un you, you said it, I'm just plucking it out. Culture is this. The culture of a place is an underlying factor that very much influences what sticks, what doesn't, how it evolves in, in actual use.

You know, you're in a, you're in a nation. Highly social [00:44:00] people. This is not gonna change. Like technology will have to fit or it won't get adopted, I suspect. Right,

[00:44:05] Chris Donald: Right. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:44:08] Matthew Dunn: And us different, different, less social, if that's a single axis that we can describe less social in a way.

Yeah, maybe more capitalist in a way. So we'll adopt things that suit that culture. To some extent, no doubt. What's been the other big surprise about living there?

[00:44:28] Chris Donald: You know, some things that I, I don't see here. Interesting. So and I think this is a, a family centered thing. There are no old folks homes.

There are no retirement villages. People stay with their families,

[00:44:45] Matthew Dunn: Grandma, grandma's with the family. Yep. Nice. Absolutely nice. Yeah, I like that.

[00:44:50] Chris Donald: You know, food eating is a social event for the most part, right? It's friends and family all the time. All the time. Nice. All the time. [00:45:00] Yeah. And, and the street food thing is a big deal for me because they are fanatics.

Clean and safety and, and you know, I've eaten more street food here than you could shake a stick at. Knock Got sick once. Right? Always delicious. Always inexpensive. You know, the exchange rate here right now is really great, right? I mean, it's like 37, almost $38 bought, I mean, bought to a dollar. And, and things are inexpensive here anyway.

Wow. You know, just, just cost wise. . I mean, I can have a full American breakfast with bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast. They always have a little salad on plate for some reason. Anyway, , you know, and it costs me like, you know, a hundred bot or 120 bot, which is, well, a dollar is,

yeah,

[00:45:53] Matthew Dunn: three, three bucks,

[00:45:54] Chris Donald: 3, 3, 4 bucks.

Yeah. Three, four bucks with a drink, right? So, Interesting.

[00:45:59] Matthew Dunn: [00:46:00] Yeah, I, I lived in, I lived in France for six. My family and I lived in France for six months, where they don't eat American style breakfast. I get it. It's a cultural difference. But we were, well here, they don't eat. We're at the door of the diner going, Let us in.

Where's the bacon? When we got back .

[00:46:15] Chris Donald: Yeah. I mean, I've had, you know, rice soup with pork? Yeah. For breakfast because it's one of the, one of their deals you know, they have fish and they, they eat chicken for breakfast. I mean, they just, you know, it's not, it's just a meal. It's not. And, and I have a friend here who says well, he's from way north Northwest or Thailand.

And there's two things. He said If it, he says if it's not hot, it's not good. And if it's, if there's not rice, it's not food. There you go. So he'll say, Cuz I'll say, Hey man, you just. No, I didn't have any rice. I didn't just eat .

[00:46:55] Matthew Dunn: I'm like, man.

[00:46:56] Chris Donald: But yeah. And, and the other thing here is all the [00:47:00] vegetables, fruit, and everything are, are just so much tastier.

There's so much more flavor in them. Now some of them, some of them are smaller because probably not GMO to death, Right? Yeah. But yeah, the flavors and their fruits and their vegetables here are, I mean, I imagine this is what they were supposed to taste like before Right. Ever happened to them.

Right. But yeah, in a lot of the country, You know, a large part of the country that's way out in the country is they literally live off the land. Right, Right, right. They usually have communal rice fields that they all work and, and all work together to, to grow the rice. And then some raise chicken, some raise cows or pigs or, or, and they eat everything.

[00:47:45] Matthew Dunn: I mean everything. So out in, out working the communal rice field, smartphone in every pocket. Yeah.

[00:47:53] Chris Donald: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you something that was really funny. One of my first trips here I went to [00:48:00] I was with a client and they said, Hey, you, you wanna go out to lunch? I said, Sure. And he said, There's a, there's like a, a small little mall over here.

We'll go over here cause they have a bunch of food places and you can pick something that you like. Right? I'm like, Okay. He'd being nice to me. Cuz a lot of everything's fear spicy, right? A lot of it's, So we walk in and I'm looking around, I'm like, Oh. And I said, How about Kentucky Fried Chicken? And he says, I don't think we.

And I said, Yeah, it's right over there. And he looks, he says, where? He says right there, kfc, and he says, KFC is Kentucky Fried Chicken.

[00:48:35] Matthew Dunn: Interesting.

[00:48:36] Chris Donald: Yeah. Because it does not say Kentucky Fried Chicken anywhere. Right, Right. Well, first of all, Kentucky Fried wouldn't mean anything to Sure, yeah. Right. So he was like, Wait till I tell people nobody.

No. Right. He thought that was just like coolest. Right. But interestingly, Swenson's is here. I don't know if you've ever heard of Swenson's Ice Cream Place? Yeah, yeah. Sizzler [00:49:00] Steakhouse, which, you know, pretty much died in the US as far as I know. I think maybe there's a few Midwest somewhere. Cuz I was joking, I said maybe this is where brands go to die or after they die, this is heaven for brands or something.

Right. Cause it's all, you know, Day of Dairy Queen and Burger King and all the, you know, everything. Right. Interesting. But different. Like Burger King has, you can choose pork patties or beef patties. Hmm. A lot of spicy options. Almost all the hamburger place sell fried chicken as well. You gotta be

[00:49:32] Matthew Dunn: sold on the street food.

I think I'd skip all of the chains. Thanks very much. Oh

[00:49:36] Chris Donald: yeah, no, I haven't been to a fast food place. You know, I was, I had been making a ride up to Bangkok and so I had a driver stop just to get a quick pig McMuffin so we could just go fast. And I think that was the last time I had one about ago . But yeah, no, I, it, it's, it's that, and I cook, I do cook here and stuff, so You do okay.

But, but it's so inp. [00:50:00] It's easier just to go out. Really? Wow.

[00:50:03] Matthew Dunn: Wow. Wow. What a, what a, So you're, you're sitting in, in Thailand, which is not email centric, guiding this global organization that does email stuff for, for customers all over the place. Like you're a human juxtaposition. It's really kind of cool.

Yeah. It,

[00:50:22] Chris Donald: it's, it's, it's, it's interesting, right? And. The internet makes it possible. Yeah. It, you know, you have all the digital nomads. I see them here all the time.

[00:50:33] Matthew Dunn: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. The fact that I, I'm blown away by how seamless this video conversation is. We haven't had lag dropouts. Stutters like it's, it's,

[00:50:49] Chris Donald: No, no, I have, I have fiber here.

[00:50:53] Matthew Dunn: Do you? Wow. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah,

[00:50:56] Chris Donald: yeah. I'm in an area, so I'm in [00:51:00] Jo. Some call it ties tend to call it JohE. JohE. It's so it's three hours south of Bangkok. It's a city, but it's not, it's not. Tourists come here, but not like, you know, Pettet or Bangkok or even Cheang Mai or Pad or some of the Koo that are big draws.

Right? Lot of expats live here, so a lot of expats in, you know, US, Europe you know, come here to retire. Interesting. Because their dollar goes father. Right.

[00:51:37] Matthew Dunn: And you said digital Lomas there as.

[00:51:39] Chris Donald: Yeah, lots of digital, not as many. I mean, in Johan, I see them on a regular basis, but if you go to Bangkok or, or.

They're all over. Yeah. They're in all the coffee shops and the coffee shops. They go use the free wifi, Right. ? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the backpackers certainly, But the digital, digital nomads are, it's a thing. It's a bigger thing than [00:52:00] even people understand. Right.

[00:52:02] Matthew Dunn: Well, it was already starting to happen, but then you throw the, you know, pandemic and the shift in, in remote work, permissibility and habits and infrastructure and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, it's.

Go. If I were right, 20 something, I'd be like, See I got a, you know, got a laptop in the backpack. See ya. Why

[00:52:23] Chris Donald: not? Yeah. Yeah. When people were saying all these people, Oh, they're quit their jobs and they don't wanna work. Well no, they actually became consultants and freelancers and all those type of things.

Cuz they realized they're independent pandemic. They could do that. Yeah.

[00:52:34] Matthew Dunn: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have any of, do you have any remote like nomad folks as part of the inbox team?

[00:52:43] Chris Donald: Not really. Okay. You know, we have some, but not a ton. I mean, we probably have maybe three or four. Okay. Which is really low percentage, so.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm sort of, you know, and you know, I, the nice thing about being here, like next month I'm gonna go to Singapore for, for a [00:53:00] week. Right. Just, Go check out Singapore. I'll make a trip to Cambodia and, and, and to Vietnam because it, they're quick trip. I mean, it's like I can go to Vietnam for like 60 bucks or, or a hundred bucks round trip.

Right. I mean, it's,

[00:53:16] Matthew Dunn: And it's, it's not that many hours away. No,

[00:53:19] Chris Donald: no. It's an hour, hour and 15 minute flight or something. Right. Yeah.

[00:53:23] Matthew Dunn: Back back to what you said about one of the, the, one of the shifts about the US. And not the only country like this, but certainly one of them like, Wow, it's a big sucker, right?

Yeah. I tell people, the county I live in was, I live in Washington state and I say the county I'm in is bigger than the state of Delaware. The just the county.

[00:53:42] Chris Donald: Right. Just accounting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's hours and, but, and that's the thing, like, like Europe, right? The nice thing about Europe, you can visit all those countries pretty easily.

[00:53:54] Matthew Dunn: Right? Relatively, relatively compact. Relatively, Yeah.

[00:53:57] Chris Donald: Yeah. Together. And so you can see all these different [00:54:00] countries, you know, we are, while we're big, we're relatively isolated. Yeah. We have Canada and Mexico.

[00:54:06] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Those are our only neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. And a long ways away from most parts of the states.

[00:54:13] Chris Donald: Yes. Yes. That, and Americans don't travel internationally enough. No. Most don't even have a passport.

[00:54:22] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, we, I, I, I see Canada, literally I see Canada out that window. And so British Columbia, which is beautiful, is really. people going from here to there, astonishingly small number. It's not, It's like, look, if you're in Seattle, BC is two hours away.

Ah, we didn't get around to it. Right. It's like, yeah, it's not so kind of not, not in the habit, not part of the culture. Back to that word.

[00:54:47] Chris Donald: Right. Yeah. It's the same thing, you know, live, if you live in Maine and you know, you can make a trip to Nova Scotia or Montreal. Yeah. Or they don't.

[00:54:54] Matthew Dunn: Right. We don't, Yeah, we don't, Yeah.

Just, yeah. No. I don't

[00:54:57] Chris Donald: know why I, I, Right. And the [00:55:00] other thing is, you know, in the us, and again, I'm not beating up on the us, please don't think I am. We have this, this English only issue, right? Yeah. Whereas in every other country I've been to, everybody speaks multiple languages.

[00:55:12] Matthew Dunn: Always. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a, that's a, that's a real a, a real shortcoming. And I don't think it'll necessarily change, although Spanish is becoming, Much more a viable second language at least in some parts of the us but yeah,

[00:55:29] Chris Donald: because we, you know, part of it is there's not been a need. Yeah. You know, when you are, when you're a smaller country bordered by a lot of other smaller countries, there's a lot more interaction.

So there's a lot more learning that happens. And, and I think I, I think that probably hurts. America bit in that Yes. Understanding other cultures. Yes. Right. Agreed. Yeah, because we, we don't understand other cultures. Well, hold on. I'm getting a, I gotta check my calendar. Well, yep. I got a sales call.

Gotta run. [00:56:00]

[00:56:00] Matthew Dunn: Let's, let's wrap. See, I knew we go. All I knew go all over the place. Well, it was wonderful, Wonderful to talk to you. Enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Great. I I'll tell the tale maybe in the show notes about how instrumental you were and how kind you were in helping helping campaign genius start into this space.

So,

[00:56:18] Chris Donald: oh, no problem. No, I dunno that I did a lot, but you did. Maybe I did help you. That's good. Awesome.

[00:56:25] Matthew Dunn: Well, my, my guest all the way from Thailand has been Chris Donald of Inbox Army. Chris, thanks so much for making the time. My pleasure, buddy.

[00:56:33] Chris Donald: You have a great day. You too.