A Conversation With Matthew Holman of QPilot

Subscriptions might seem mundane, but as Matthew Holman shares in this conversation, subscriptions are a complicated dance. A subscription is a mutual commitment, out into the future. Whether it's truck tires or carrots — both of which come up in this conversation — there's an intricate cadence to making it look easy.

As the marketing force behind QPilot, helping ecommerce companies move from single transaction to subscriptions, Matthew is kind of the dance coach. He's taken a rich and — for lack of a better word — humanistic approach to challenge of bringing QPilot's subscription technology to their B2B market, by focusing on community and content.

Matthew's response about the future of email is quite thought-provoking — "personalization", but not necessarily the simplistic kind. This is a great conversation for marketers.

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With Matthew Holman of QPilotlot

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[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of email. My guest today, Matthew Holman, head of growth at QPilotlot. Matthew. Matthew. Hey, welcome. .

[00:00:21] Matthew Holman: Thanks Matthew. It's great to be here.

[00:00:22] Matthew Dunn: Where? Where are we? Where are you talking to me from? Utah.

[00:00:27] Matthew Holman: Yeah.

[00:00:28] Matthew Dunn: Salt Lake City, Utah. Salt Lake City, Utah. Any snow

[00:00:30] Matthew Holman: yet?

Yes, actually we had some, we've had some snow just the last few days. Oh, it's pretty hot. Diggy. Here we go, right? Yeah, exactly. We're off to the races, man. Fall last of two weeks. Summer went long and fall was two weeks. Fall was two

[00:00:43] Matthew Dunn: weeks. Yeah. Pacific Northwest where I am, it went from sort of endless quasi summer cuz it never gets that.

Right. And then someone flipped the switch and the water started pouring from the sky. And

[00:00:55] Matthew Holman: I was actually in Seattle last week. I was in in Seattle up until Sunday. Up until Sunday. So we got [00:01:00] the, the first rain, like apparently you guys had, had in a while up there. So yeah. Yeah,

[00:01:03] Matthew Dunn: First rain and cleared out, cleared out some of the nasty smoke, but Yeah, exactly.

Hey, Phil, people in a bit on, start on QPilot first, but I also wanna talk about the community stuff you're involved in, but just just for orientation, what are you, what are you up to?

[00:01:17] Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. So QPilotlot is a B2B SaaS platform tailored for e-commerce companies, which essentially means we make a software, specifically subscription software Yeah.

For e-commerce companies selling physical goods. Our kind of differentiator elevator pitch is that when you need subscriptions that. Can see delivery and shipping options where things can change and it's more flexible at the, at the end use as well as easier on your operations. We're definitely a great option worth looking at.

And as a, as a marketer for me, a little bit of my story, my journey is you know, a little over a year ago I started, you know, it's, we're a small company, we're bootstraps, so it's not like I'm managing a massive team or anything like that, and I just kind of started feeling a little bit. [00:02:00] Man, who do I go to talk to about other marketing ideas and stuff?

Yeah. And so a couple of my friends just started, we decided just to do, start doing some breakfasts and next thing you know that starts to turn into a group and then somebody says You should be doing some bigger events. Cuz the way we would do it is just try to be really engaging and helpful and useful.

Get real tactical. Yeah. And a lot of people really love that. So next thing you know, I'm doing events with rooms of 50, 60 people in 'EM and Oh yeah. And so earlier this year, Of my other friends were trying to start a building e-commerce community and you know, the marketing stuff I've been doing was really fun and I love marketing, but e-commerce is also a big passion of mine.

And so, you know, I kind of pivoted a little bit and moved some of my group in with them and we started Share House, which is an e-commerce community. So Okay. We do events, we have a Slack channel with about, with over 400 members. We do, Yeah, very engaged. Like it's, Oh wow. It's the kind of thing where, this is the thing that I love, Matthew.

If I have a question, where do you go to ask it? Yeah. And you can Google stuff. You can look at YouTube. If you have a friend who [00:03:00] knows, you ask that friend. Yeah. And if you don't know, Yeah, it's nice to have a group so you can hop onto our slack and just say, Hey, what's a good three PL in Kansas City? Like, what's, Who's doing Amazon?

Well, and you know, over here, anybody ever work? With this and you get tons of responses and advice and introductions and, and, and from other people that are doing it or know all about it. So that's kind of the in intent and spirit of it is to be really helpful. And so, yeah, that's a lot of what I'm doing is managing those types of things and I love education as well, so a lot of what we do at QPilot is education and content focused to try to help people figure out subscriptions

[00:03:34] Matthew Dunn: a whole bunch we're gonna spend, Yeah.

that was a lot. No, no, no. We're gonna spend some time unpacking all of 'em cuz they're all fascinating avenues to go down. I did wanna go back to QPilot for just a second. Do I have it right that. That the essential proposition is if, if you're already selling widgets, QT will help you do subscription to widget sales?

Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. You [00:04:00] already said Amazon, so you broke the ice. I'm gonna say kind of like the. The, the bag of mixed nuts that shows every month shows up every month to annoy my wife from Amazon. Exactly, exactly. One of the things, I mean, it's a sidebar, but it's actually, you know, legit entry point to talk about QPilot a bit as, as a, as a software guy.

I, I find myself in conversations with you know, with ordinary people saying, you. Time is actually a, a booger to handle time and calendars and recurrence. And they're like, Oh, it's easy. I'm like, No, it's actually not. It's actually really, really complicated. Like, who designed this? Some Roman Emperor.

So you help handle that,

[00:04:43] Matthew Holman: right? It, I mean, it really is. I mean if you think about without getting two in the weeds on it. Yeah. Most order management systems. So if you're doing Shopify or even a point of sale system at retail Yeah. They do the transaction right. Yeah. They, they, they don't have to think about it or wait, they do the transaction.

[00:05:00] Yeah. You either have the inventory or you don't. Yeah. You either, you chart, you figure out shipping right then or there. It all happens right there. Yeah. And subscriptions are hard because it's something that's happening a month from now, six months from now, you know, maybe somebody's planning something two years in the future.

Yes. So you have to have a system that can. Into the future. Yes. And be able to change and be flexible and, and it's actually more complicated than you would think. The reason a lot of people have subscriptions that are really inflexible is not because, well, most brands don't wanna be inflexible . It's because it's hard to do that.

And so we, that's kind of like, yeah, it's very difficult to implement something like that. So that's kind of the, like the mission behind what we're doing is making things more flexible, giving merchants more control. And there's a lot of development and product features that go into making. Scene easy.

[00:05:45] Matthew Dunn: Well, and, and, and there's an artificial economy that, that you're, you probably bump up against if, if you're doing recurring subscription of digital stuff, you don't have to worry about Yeah. You know, inventory. Do [00:06:00] we have it on the shelfs? Like, Oh, make more bits. That wasn't that complicated, I guess it was.

No, but yeah, , when it's peanut.

[00:06:07] Matthew Holman: It's just about access. With digital, it's, I have this stuff listed and even if I'm rolling something out new Yeah, I need to make sure I've got like an email or an account where you go to get your stuff. You know when you get it in the text. Yeah. But it's really just about the access and the communication.

If there's a physical good that's getting shipped, it's like I have to plan that inventory out in the future. I have to make sure that schedule's there. What happens if you wanna move it up or move it back? Right. What happens if you're gonna be on vacation in Colorado for a month? Like, am I gonna care?

Can I make it so that it shifts or adjusts and, and that. Tip of the iceberg. It's one of those things I, I, I joke about a lot with Matthew that like, if you've done it, you know how hard it is and until you've done it, you really, it's a lot. I mean, it's one of those things like until you've actually done it, you, it's really hard to imagine how complicated it's,

[00:06:48] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, it, it sounds, sounds super simple.

so Customers that, that jump on board and work with Q Pilot, they're coming from Shopify stores. They might be [00:07:00] doing their own WooCommerce.

[00:07:01] Matthew Holman: WooCommerce is where we cut our teeth. Woo. We Shopify now. Yeah. So, And doing Shopify and, and Yep. Absolutely. Hop gonna move upstream. Some bigger we really like some of the more complicated issues with B2B and a lot of other aspects, which is kind of how our platform's built.

So we're gonna go be moving into some other verticals as well. How long have

[00:07:19] Matthew Dunn: you been at this?

[00:07:21] Matthew Holman: The product itself has been around for about five years. Our founder made it several times as one-offs and then decided, you know, hey, this is a SaaS opportunity. And I joined about two years ago as co-founder to lead marketing

[00:07:32] Matthew Dunn: and growth.

Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah, it's a, that's a, i that's a great niche in that there's only going to be. I think there's only gonna be more of this is, it is absolutely subscription in general on the rise.

[00:07:47] Matthew Holman: A hundred percent. Yeah. It's, I mean there's, there's certainly a lot of subscription fatigue with, with streaming platforms and, and some things like that.

But, but the idea, I think, you know, pilot's not the only company that's innovating in e-commerce and delivery and [00:08:00] customer experience, right? Like, there's obviously a lot of people that are working on that. And so I think it's just getting better and more improved and, and, That continues to improve, you're just gonna see more and more adoption.

I think a really good example is fresh food delivery. You know, a couple years ago, the idea that you would actually have somebody drop off fresh food at your house was just totally foreign to everybody. And, and even though it happens a lot now, it's still just a drop on the bucket. It's just still a small amount.

And usually it's just big companies like Walmart that are doing it well. But now you're seeing all these smaller brands, fresh, fresh kombucha to your door, like twice a week and, and, and as that continues to innovate, right, we're just talking about more and more companies wanting to create a better like end user delivery experience.

You can order it online, get it same day, get it within the hour. That's just continuing to roll out. And subscriptions can be a big part of that because if I'm selling you fresh food fresh for delivery once a week. I'd love to have on a subscription because then I get all this other extra kind of hooks into the customer and being able to offer other value as

[00:08:57] Matthew Dunn: well.

Yeah, Interesting. I had a, [00:09:00] had a conversation with another guest just a couple days ago and the, she's mar marketing agency and the, the client of hers that we ended up talking about a bit was wasn't as a. With a cooperative share agreement at csa, which, you know, subscription for carrots, basically

Right. And some of the, some of the challenges, I guess in that case, you're like, Bring me a box. I don't know exactly what's going to be in it, but sign me up for the box. Right, right, Exactly. It's still fundamentally that sort of pre-commit thing, which helps the farmer and probably helps the, the cook in, in that case.

What, what have been, what's been the biggest surprise in the last couple years? Learned the space and grown the company.

[00:09:42] Matthew Holman: . I mean, that's a good question. I mean, from the actual like business owner marketing side, it is been, you know, really interesting trying to you know, create, you know, a go to market product from a, from a marketing side of things.

Subscriptions is something I think everybody would like to do because they like the current revenue, but there's always other things. [00:10:00] And, and not everybody does them, but people that feel like it might be a good fit, but it's often far down the list on priorities, right? You have your Facebook ad problems, your inventory, sourcing problems, things like that.

Yeah. So that's been a little bit tricky finding, trying to figure out how you, of course, like think like any business, trying to figure out how you stay top of mind, get people to see you differentiate. But I think within the space itself, what's maybe not, what's surprising is just how many entrepreneurs are out there, like innovating around something.

I was just talking to somebody, Y. In Canada selling vape products and they're doing local same day delivery and like nobody else is doing that. That's how they're innovating. The, the, the f the CEO himself will go out and do deliveries if, if the other drivers are busy. You know, it's like, you know, they're not necessarily, they're not necessarily huge, but they're doing a few hundred orders a week.

Right? And so that's, that's significant. And so, Thinking about all these different businesses that are just doing something a little bit different. It's pet food with a vet where they survey your dog and give you personalized, like recommendations like that. I think that [00:11:00] kind of like engagement and personalization is just, it's just starting and I think it's gonna be incredible to see where we are two years from now.

[00:11:08] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, Yeah. Well, I, I've been around e-commerce. a lot longer than I probably should have. Like , try try mid nineties. When we had to build that stuff from scratch and rubber bands and stuff like that. and what's, what's the phrase from Newton? I, if I've seen farther, it's because they stood on the shoulders of giants.

Like we're, were we, we keep, we. Building up the, you know, the, the starting point. So if you are, you know, if you're doing eCommerce now and you're like, I wanna sell, fill in the blanks bait Okie dokey. You're not starting with notepad , right. And an HTML page. And going from there, you're gonna go to WooCommerce or Shopify, something like that and go.

Okay, that part's done now. Oh, subscriptions. Okay, you guys, that part's done right [00:12:00] now, what can I, what can I do on top of that that makes it better, different, faster, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. In, in innovation on top of the shoulders of all of those giants. I do wanna ask you a question now, and this is particularly jma to what you're, what you are doing at QPilot.

we're in the B2B space as well. Couple couple of things. I'm involved in B2B space as well. I find it really hard to get through the blast screens to even converse with customers drives me crazy. Yep, yep. Yeah. And, and I'm one of 'em, right? I've got people reaching out to me. I'm like, Oh, would you stop emailing me?

Right. I don't have one of those. And then, Right. I, I'm, I'm sometimes baffled at, at, at the traction c. It's,

[00:12:45] Matthew Holman: it's incredible and really it's, it's been an interesting journey for us because it's, what has ended up happening is we've tried a lot of direct outreach ads and other things last year and, you know, and, and ultimately we've come back to what is actually my strength, which is content education.

[00:13:00] So, mm-hmm. for us, we're just trying to figure out how can we stay top of mind, be helpful, just be there so that when somebody's. Indicates just a little bit more interest. They know that they can come talk to us and they, that we can help them figure out. Right. So that's one of the reasons I like that.

But it does take a lot of time and saturation to do that. Right? Like I had a, another call yesterday with somebody who said he's been following me on LinkedIn for a while and he's just really appreciated my content and wanted to learn more about how he can do better at subscriptions with his business.

Nice. And with his CBD company. and, and, but me, he's never liked to post. Right. Like, like the, the moment he liked to post is when he commented he wanted to talk. And so you have all these people that you just don't know that they're, they're lurking, they're watching, they're paying attention. Mm-hmm. , we will regularly get people that come in, say like, so since we're so, or we'll regularly get a developer who comes in, looks at our docs or is looking at our page.

Yeah. Maybe for weeks at a time. Yeah. And then suddenly, Somebody from the company comes in, registers, installs, and starts using a product. Wow, interesting. All, all within like an [00:14:00] hour. And I, and, and we're just like, Wow. Yeah. So the signals is sometimes hard, right? Yeah. Like it's hard to sell. It's not like I've got this really long sale, Like if we do outbound and we have a, you know, a demo process, Yes.

That can sometimes take a long time too. But the, but those ones can be also equally as frustrating. I could have the most incredible call where a perfect. They seem like they're perfect for fit for us. Yeah. Nothing for six weeks. Yeah. Yep. Don't respond to any of, and, and I don't, I try not to be too naggy.

Right? Like, I'm sending an email every couple of weeks just to, just to like, you know, see what's going on, bring up some of these points, try not to be too annoying, and then all of a sudden it's like, Okay, we're ready to go. Like let's do the install. We wanna happen within the next blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, Yeah, you know, you didn't wanna tip me off two weeks ago that you're about ready to, Anyway, , that's just the way it is.

That's the way it is in b2b, is people are gonna do it on their own timing and you have to figure out, and every niche is a little bit different. Our industry's a little different. Just have to figure out how your customers are interacting with you and how you could be helpful and Yeah.

[00:14:55] Matthew Dunn: Tell at that.

Yeah. Well it, I mean, it's a re recursive topic to bring up. [00:15:00] One of the reasons that I spend the time on this podcast, like I like the email space, I, I think it's actually surprisingly innovative. I noticed like what wasn't talked about as much, Oh, email, that's olds. I'm like, talk with people who are doing some of the really cool stuff in this space and share those conversations with other people, and I don't actually know what effect it's having.

I honest to God don't so.

[00:15:27] Matthew Holman: Like, it's really hard. It's hard to tell, but I think it is can be really useful. It's helpful. Yeah. I will say one of my favorite things I hear all the time is that email is dead. I just laugh. , even in e-commerce, like, you know, tech, even with an e-commerce, you'd be start surprised to see how many people are not texting.

They're still just doing email. They're reliant on it. It works. Yeah. Anyway, it's, it always makes me laugh. .

[00:15:49] Matthew Dunn: Well, so, okay. We, we, we agree on that, but let's flip it. Flip it around. Look in the mirror. Why is it such a common knee jerk thing? to, [00:16:00] to, to, for someone to say, Oh email's dead. Like, where does that come from?

It's

[00:16:04] Matthew Holman: just, it's just hot takes. It's like, for me, I feel like a lot of times, like, you know, there's ways to craft social media posts so that they're engaging, Right? It's all about the hook. And so you say email is dead. That's your hot take. That's trying to get people to be engaging and stuff, and, and it's also a good way to juxtapose new products or features, ideas, I think.

Yeah, that's right. You know, when I, the people that I follow that are really, I think are pretty smart and reasonable is like, you know, email. Is it just a part of what you should be doing? Right. Yep. Like, you know, in fact I walk, we did one of my marketing events earlier this year was a company called Via, and they do SMS for, for e-commerce brands.

And they were showing that the best actually isn't email or text. It's email and text together. Yeah. When you do those two together, you get the best result. Right. So it's another tool you should be using and leveraging, especially for things like abandoned cart and newsletters and offers. But anyway.

Yeah, it's, it's just kind of funny when people say . Well,

[00:16:58] Matthew Dunn: it's it's, [00:17:00] it's highways in railroads. If you want, if you want a, a, you know, metaphor for, for better, worse emails, kind of the, the op still the open road communication channel and, and still still doesn't have a big cost burden and critically it doesn't have a gatekeeper, Right?

Yeah. So all of those things add up. Well, I, I, I have had a number of. Conversations where we ended up focused on, on texting and how that's. Sort of finding its own feet as a channel and a complimentary one texting factor in. Does texting factor in the Q pilot platform, is that part of what

[00:17:37] Matthew Holman: we do? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So we can, because the way our, our API and web posts work, you can put us in a text chat bots. You could even put us in a slack if you wanted to. In fact, our old, our old website, Has a widget of somebody texting to like change their order of hops for a, for a, yeah. You know, I want to get this product now instead.

And it shows that kinda interaction. That's actually, we've been able to do that for several years. It's kinda nice.

[00:17:59] Matthew Dunn: [00:18:00] Nice. Yeah. Lots of channels to manage. Switch. Switch gears and talk about the community work. What's grown into a share house?

[00:18:07] Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, for me, I've always found that community is the most useful place for me to go to for resources, whether I'm in e-commerce or marketing communities.

And so it's something I've always been really passionate about. I kind of felt like I fell backwards into it, into doing it. Yeah. And. I, I, I do love kind of creating that engagement, the education. And for me, for QPilot, it's certainly useful to get myself in front of more and more people in the space, right?

Sure. I'm the subscription guy that does cool e-commerce events, right? And so it has definitely opened some doors that I wouldn't have gotten to or would've been a lot harder to get into with some really. Good customers and prospective customers at this point? Cuz we're not on the, the, the interesting thing is with not being on Shopify, there's a limitation with how much marketing you can do, right?

Because you have to be really targeted with W Commerce. The thing Shopify's everywhere, those community, so, you know, within our Share House community, I'd say like 90% of the people that are are [00:19:00] on Shopify. So so yeah, so that's one of the reasons that, like from a selfish standpoint, I guess is, is what's motivating me to do it is it's good for exposure.

It's good to get me more in front of people, and I think long term it'll be good for, for Q Pilot. But, but ultimately it's something that I just enjoy, I love doing. So the idea is we did a. Yeah, we did an Amazon event Tuesday. I don't make money off Amazon. I don't, nothing QPilot does, has anything to do with Amazon, but it was just a great event bringing in speakers, you know, letting people know about it.

We had over a hundred people come out and learn and had a little half day session. So yeah, like that kind of thing. It's just, it's just really, I mean, it's a lot of work at times, but it is something that I just love doing. Yeah. . I have a partner that, a partner that helps me do it. She's, she's she's pretty incredible.

Madeline Van

[00:19:46] Matthew Dunn: Hoff, she's just, You said you've, Slack channel as well. Yeah, yeah. For, for that community. Yeah. I Community management's its own it it's own art form because there are human beings involved usually Right. In communities and they do [00:20:00] some of the goofiest, most unpredictable stuff. And you gotta figure out how to go, Yep.

This is okay. This is not okay. And yeah. I, I, I salute you. Not everybody can manage that .

[00:20:11] Matthew Holman: So far it's been okay. I've been in other ones where it gets pretty bad and or people start to stop to see value or it's all spam. Yeah. Ours has been pretty good. We get occasionally get somebody who comes in and there's just like, Hey, this is what we do.

Come talk to us. Yeah. And you know, there's usually crickets and the people that are coming in there trying to offer help and or ask for help are the ones who see the most immediate response. Interesting. So it's only very rarely where I have to say, and it's usually I try to just be helpful. It's like, Hey, if you actually phrase this more like, this is the type of people we can help and what we do to help.

Right, Right. Instead of just. You know, we're awesome at this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:20:47] Matthew Dunn: There's a, there's an active, very active Slack channel called email geeks. Okay. For, for guess what? Email geeks. And you know, I'm a member. I don't spend a lot of time on it, but when I go, go [00:21:00] there, you see the stream of people introducing, you see the missteps?

I made a misstep once and it got smacked by the committed administrator. Oh, okay. I guess you gotta kinda learn the rules for this new one. It's not like you when you walk in a room, right? Right. You see who's talking to who, how they're comporting themselves and so on. You've got some, some cues. Slack group, the social cues are pretty thin on the, on the ground, right?

So it takes a while. Yeah. A room. Room for growth there. Back to Amazon for a second. This is intriguing to me because it is such a, Presence for almost any field that's selling stuff. Mm-hmm. . Right. And as you said, you don't coupon doesn't necessarily get anything out of Amazon at, at the same time.

Boy, oh boy, do we all learn from them? I, I

[00:21:47] Matthew Holman: mean, that's, Yeah. As you're saying, that's exactly what I would want. Yeah. They're, they're educating people on what, what things are, and in many ways, I actually get to say, Hey, we have a better subscribe and save experience than Amazon does. So your customers are gonna love that.

[00:22:00] Nice. But yeah, they're teaching people. They launched b2b. Subscriptions earlier this year right there. Yeah. Yeah. So they're leading the way in a lot of the innovation and implementation, and I think what, how people are seeing delivery Yeah. Is what's shaping a lot of this. The idea that people are open to getting something for same day fresh food or next day with a, with a food order.

Yeah. Is, is because they, Amazon has taught them that this can go well if it's done right. Can't

[00:22:26] Matthew Dunn: go well if it's done right. Yeah. That's, that's true. They've almost single-handedly, they've almost single-handedly. Connecting the household to, to a more digital what? Rhythm, cadence, something like that.

Right? I, I, I, I, I live a few miles out of town in a very rural spot. And what, A year ago, the Amazon Prime struck truck started roving around. Right. I'm like, Wow, this is real Amazon Prime truck in my neighbor. Everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere. And then you go through Seattle. You were just in [00:23:00] Seattle. Yeah.

Fleets of Amazon Prime vehicles zooming down the road, kind of. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's been something to watch. I was, I was a very early Amazon subscriber. I think my idea is almost 25. Oh wow. Yeah. . That's cool. Yeah. That's really cool. Well, cuz they started, they're like, books Sign me up. Right. Okay.

Books. Is that what you sell? Sign me up. Great. No problem. Back when we were all petrified about entering our credit card , in, in web forms you said you'd pivoted share house started in sort of marketing, broadened it, broadened to e-commerce. Do you think continued growth for that or maybe additional sectors?

I

[00:23:39] Matthew Holman: don't, I think it'll be probably e-commerce. For the, for the near future. I don't see it necessarily changing. It might change how we offer it or how we help. You know, we're trying to figure out should we be doing like smaller groups and connecting people more directly. There's a few other things, but I don't know.

Marketing's one of those fun things where I don't necessarily see myself as somebody who should be educating or teaching. And yet when [00:24:00] somebody starts asking questions, I find myself answering. So that's something I. I do enjoy, but so I might go back to it at some point. I feel like if I can continue to do well with Q Pilot, I might be able to say I know a little bit about B2B SAS marketing , but right now I still feel like a total newbie, even though I've been doing it a few years.

So anyway.

[00:24:18] Matthew Dunn: what? Look by the by, by the time you feel I got it nailed down. The gravel had shifted. Right. And, and yeah. When, when, when someone says, You know, the way X works is this, I'm almost like, Yeah, maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure we know. Right, right. I think we're, I think we're trying continually testing.

One of the things I like about email folks, like they get that you gotta sort of just keep always trying, measuring, testing, refining. It's not like there's a final answer or something. Absolutely. Like that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, fa, fascinating journey. Pilot itself. How four or five years old, you said founder, founder built, built the first first one or first one or [00:25:00] two.

Are there substantially big markets that you expect to open up, like additional countries or something like that? But we're fairly,

[00:25:06] Matthew Holman: we're fairly active internationally, but cuz of, cuz of the WordPress community. But for us, like the, the, the future for Q Pilot to kind of geek out on this a little bit is, you know, we, we talked a little bit about this, but the, the idea.

The Internet of Things has been around for a long time, this idea, but its adoption has taken I think a lot longer than in many ways what people expected. And, and, and I think it's gonna continue to shift. And, and I'll give you an example. We've been in talks with a really, really big company that sells on Salesforce.

And they've implemented a subscription program where they know so much about their product that they could just tell you what to do based on where you live and and the rainfall you've seen, and they're gonna send you the product you need. That was their idea. It's very similar to the Internet of things.

The thing knows better than you do, when to replace the filter, what to use. Right. Okay. What they found was a ton of pushback from people who did not [00:26:00] believe that some big company could tell them how to take care of. Their thing better than than anybody else. And so where I think the future's really going is not total customer control or total machine driven.

It's actually something in the middle where there's a mix of people. Some wanna trust this. Maybe you believe your car knows when to replace its air filters better, but you don't trust your AC unit. Because it's really s windy where you live. And so it's this idea where we're gonna have different levels of control.

And so what QPilot is, what we're really fascinated by is this idea that we have so much data around change and permutations around and about repeat orders that are, that keep happening have happened and that will happen. So like one of the things that we think is really exciting is, say like truck fleets, right?

So trucks, fleets invest millions of dollars into the specific types of products, tires airs. They they. Fill. They have sensors all over the truck to track everything. They have all this data. . And so they know like at 30,000 miles you have to replace this at 40,000 miles, you have to replace that. Well, what [00:27:00] happens when the tires are in New Jersey, but at 30,000 miles you're in Vegas, What happens?

You know? And, and you need to make that happen. And by the time you end up, you either have to shift the, you have to shift the tires out there, which can be incredibly expensive. So for us, we we're getting into, and again, I'm going a little down the rabbit hole of, It's interesting thinking. The predictive, the predictive nature.

being able to, when something will be, need to be changed and where it will be, because we see delivery in shipping so much. Yeah. We'll be able to tell that tire company weeks in advance, Hey, your truck's gonna be here. The tire needs to be freighted here. Right. That, that kind of thing. Yeah.

[00:27:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Fa okay.

Fascinating. So you're really backing into a bit of a digital twin scenario, aren't you? Mm-hmm. . Wow. Yeah. on the, on the note that you touched on about the, the, the pushback when, you know, a widget says you're supposed to maintain me. Right. Right. Or, or you, you're supposed to use this one, not that one.

Right, Right. It's, it's [00:28:00] very akin to the community boundary thing we were talking about. Yes. It's like we, we want, we, we, we still want some control. If you, if you said, Hey, I've got a helpful suggestion, maybe this model would be, And I still feel like I'm making the yes no decision on it. It, it, it might go over better.

We're, we're gonna keep running into this though, because digital twins, ai. Predictive analytics you know, the machines are gonna start telling us Yeah.

Right.

[00:28:31] Matthew Holman: But you're gonna get that notification saying, Hey, it's time to change your air filter. Yeah. Yeah. It should be yes or no. The idea that it's just gonna be automated out of the box is people aren't gonna like that.

But the idea that you could opt into that, yes, you've been right so many times. I'm good. Just you don't need to ask me anymore. Just send me. Right. Yeah. Maybe I have a personal assistant that's managing this. The idea that I'm gonna go on vacation and. My shipments that are hitting this, my address while I'm gone.

I, it'd be nice if something were to telling it, No, send it to my hotel in Colorado for this thing. Let [00:29:00] this thing get my garage. It's okay. Right. But yeah, it's, it's definitely, I think, and that's what I think is exciting is the idea of how that personalization, that engagement is gonna be crafted, whether using email in-app notifications, texting.

Yeah. There's so many different ways you can layer that and nuance that and how people can have that control of whether they're saying yes, no, or I'm gonna let you know when I. That kind of thing is just really

[00:29:21] Matthew Dunn: fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It, it does feel like it, it does feel like we need to keep groping towards the the human interface side of that, because even now it's overwhelming, Right?

Like, even now it's like, Oh man, I'm not keeping track of that. And what do you, what do you mean I've got a subscription for, Huh? Like, I completely forgot about that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick on it cuz it's an obvious example, but did you track the. The kerfuffle about a month ago with bmw. Said we're gonna, Yes, that's the bring with all the Eat.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:29:57] Matthew Holman: Oops. . Yeah, that's the, the joke I like to [00:30:00] make is like, I don't think they actually talked to anybody to get any real feedback. I feel like that was a very much a top down Yeah. Directive. Make more money. This is how we think you can make more money. And the irony is, is, is, I was talking to somebody else about this, who's a huge.

Actually BMW fan? Oh no. They were a Porsche fan and they said if Porsche offered me a subscription to talk with an engine, one of their engineers every couple of months, like on a Zoom call to ask questions around development and driving and handling, yeah, I would, I would pay a hundred, 200 whatever dollars just to be able to get access to that.

And, and that's the thing is like if you, and we literally like thought of that in 30 seconds. It's like, how much, how much time should a big company be able to invest in doing research? They could, You could validate that idea so quickly. Like Right, right. You talk to your existing customers. What are other things you, we could be offering you or that you're not seeing?

Like, we have some of these ideas. Would you want to do this? Would you want to do that? And then you could actually start rolling out beta groups and charge people and see what happens. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And, and the funny thing too is like I get, I get. Soapbox a lot with, with brands is they're trying to [00:31:00] figure out, Oh, I'm gonna buy gift products and add them to subscription boxes, or I'm just gonna discount things more.

And while there are times when I think that can be really useful or applicable, like a lot of times it's like, well, no. Do you have a really compelling, like, founder story? Do people subscribe because they love the influencer? Whatever that drove them there. Like what, what other things could. Could you just do a Zoom call?

Could you do a personal newsletter? Could you do, Yeah. Something that from a roi, a cost standpoint is actually really, really cheap to offer. It's just maybe just a question of time, but the value you'd see from everybody else that would be getting that would just, would, would love it. Right. And so that's how we should be.

I think when I, when I talk to a lot of subscription brands, cause we do so much like, you know, consulting and education is is that, it's like what are your customers like and love or what are they not getting or what do they want more from you? Like they're probably telling you already, like, and if. You should be facilitating that.

That's why community is so great if you don't have a Facebook group for your product or if you don't have a Facebook group of people that are your, your type of customer, right? Where you can go in there, even if it's [00:32:00] not yours, you could just go in there, ask, Hey, we're working on this stuff. Does anybody wanna try this out?

Or does anybody have ideas? You're always gonna find people that are gonna say like, No, that's a horrible idea. Or, Yeah, I'll try that. You know what I mean? And, and then, and then you iterate from there, you start to develop and implement and, and test it again. Yeah.

[00:32:15] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. The, that, the. The, the human side feedback mechanisms, which, which to be fair, that blast screen problem.

Yeah. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Is is it like, it's a factor there? Like we're, we're I'm launching. Something new with a partner and I just put out a quick note in an email group only influencers that I belong to for, for a number of years. Like, Hey, we're looking for beta testers who wanna do blah, blah, blah.

You know, try to keep it short. And sure enough, half a dozen people like, sounds interesting, sign me up. And a couple people said, Well, just on the description, maybe that's not a good idea what you. Right. . Right, right. But thanks. I mean, honestly, the, the sort of cautionary input was just as useful and I hadn't really considered how it landed when I [00:33:00] phrased it that way.

So you gotta get, you know, gotta get out there. I, I envy having live cuz you do face to face as well, right? Right. Yep. Live, live groups for conversations like that. between pandemic and you know, an office eight miles outta town. I don't have as many live conversations with people in similar businesses as I used to absent Zoom

Right. Yeah, there's there's no substitute for that really. There really isn't. Yeah. There, there really isn't. Yeah. And, and it's fun. I, I think it is the two year lock in made us realize that it's, To actually hang out and talk with people, but whatev connect with people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Connect with people.

Well, fascinating journey. I suspect the community stuff is gonna gonna run away with you if you're not careful. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. What what thoughts about the future of email, my closing question.

[00:33:56] Matthew Holman: Oh, awesome. Yeah. I think that we're gonna continue to see [00:34:00] a disparity between people that invest in personalization and value adding, and people that still keep things just very transactional.

So the difference that I see is people that just see like, Oh, I'm sending you an email, letting you know your order's coming, versus somebody who's. Creating an unboxing experience almost with an email when your order notifi order notifications happening. Right. Nice. This idea that you're, you know, you're, you're seeing more engagement even within newsletters more interesting things.

A brand that I love they do gluten free bread and their newsletters just so incredible cuz it's always re it's recipes. Gluten free stuff about, you know, community and engagement and, and if you're, if you're gluten free, if you're trying to live, you know, a celiac or gluten free, like that kind of community, and that is such a positive thing.

And you're getting it from an email. From a brand, From an email. Yeah. Yeah. So, so for me, that's where I keep, I'm gonna, I keep seeing like the future is, I think that it's, it's far from. People that just see it as a transaction will continue to just get that kind of value out of it. [00:35:00] But the brands and the companies that are seeing it as an opportunity for me, I love, We have a weekly news email newsletter called Subscription Prescription, and it's all about just diagnosing and helping you with subscription problems.

Yeah, and I don't get too, too, Crazy or too, like, you know, fancy with it, but I try to keep it simple and personal. Yeah. And people like that. People like being Yeah, I read it myself. Yeah. So it's, it's, I think that's where we're gonna continue to see a change. People are gonna continue to innovate and how we they communicate within the email because of personalization and the value add they're offering while everybody else just kind of just lets it just run because it's something that they need or use.

[00:35:38] Matthew Dunn: Does it? You hit on a very profound. Tension, for lack of a better word, there in, in this respect, one definition of personalization and it, it tends to be technically skewed. Definition is sorta, I've gotta give everybody at the other end of that, send their [00:36:00] particular thing, right? They're, you know, their product, their location, their weather reports, something like that.

Perfectly valid. We've got a bunch of technology to help do. But you also articulated a different Yes. Definition, which is, I'm gonna be authentic and I'm gonna be me. Right. Personalization, you, you write the thing I'm betting, it's, it's got your voice, you know, what you're passionate about, what you learned last week, et cetera.

And you're not necessarily saying, I've gotta do a different version of this for every. At the other end, right? It's like it's personal and there goes, there goes that, that cotton picking zoom blur. This is the most vexing thing. . One sec. Sure. And, and there you go. That's, if, that's, if that, that personalization the other way, like, I'm gonna go ahead and be me.

It's, call it authenticity versus personalization. Right? That's a right. It's like very, very effective and often forgotten, particularly bigger.

[00:36:56] Matthew Holman: Well, and if you think about too, just it's simple. Something simple. I've, [00:37:00] you know, advised is if you're, if you're trying to come off as a brand, that's fun, then is your email, Are your emails fun?

If you're trying to come off as a little bit edgy or dark like you should be, like that should be across your communications. Like if you're buttoned up, if you're just serious or professional, like that's fine. Like if it's people are just buying your product because they know it works and that's it.

Cool. But yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's how we should be approaching all of our communications. Q Pilot, we were getting very little feedback on our newsletter. It was a Q pilot, company driven newsletter, and we decided to pivot. We, we spun it off as subscription prescription. And it's from me, instead of being from Q Pilot.

It's from, from Matt Holman. It's, yeah, I'm still the same person writing it, but now it's more personal. It's more authentic. It's personal, it's, it's something relatable. And now people will reply to the email and ask questions. Right. They'll engage. It's part of your community, isn't it? Right? Yep, it is.

It's definitely is.

[00:37:50] Matthew Dunn: That's That's, it's quite, quite ingenious and I suspect a whole lot more effective. Absolutely. Or it's for its and business purpose, but it [00:38:00] it's got, it's got a, it's got some challenges and burdens. Like if, if if you won the lottery tomorrow, you'd be hard to replace writing them.

Sure. Yeah. And, and it's a leap for a brand. You can do this as a small company, but it's a leap for a. to seed control of company voice to an individual. Which is effectively what you're talking about,

[00:38:23] Matthew Holman: but I do think at larger companies it's easier to replace because a larger company is, it's not gonna be driven by just one person.

It's gonna be driven by a couple people. Yeah. You know, maybe a designer here, some researchers, but I, cuz I, I, I'm in one of my favorite marketing communities is Exit five with Dave Gehart. And, you know, he works and has worked at and Works, has other marketers that work at really big companies and they get into this debate, like, how do you see control of that?

And yeah, I just. You know, a CEO is a lot more likely to relate to a personal letter from somebody who's doing it, even if it's at a Fortune 500 company, as opposed to just the Fortune 500 company talking about how

[00:38:57] Matthew Dunn: cool they're Yeah. In that abstract brand [00:39:00] voice with that. Right. Awful, stilted pros that Right, Exactly.

Exactly. , Exactly. Yeah. The, the example that comes to mind of that, for some reason, I, I'm not the grocery shopper in our, in, in, in our household, but I think the trader. Paper newsletter is flippant. Brilliant. Mm-hmm. . Every time I, every time I page through that, I'm like, I laugh, I'm delighted. I, I kind of want to go to Trader Joe's and I know that's the point.

But they do great job, Pretty good size company. They do a great job. Of, of, of keeping a snap in that thing. And I would love to get behind the scenes. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll reach out and say, Hey, who does your, who writes that? Can I have 'em on the podcast? Talk about how that's a great idea, how you keep that voice, right?

Yep. Yep. Fascinating. Well, we could probably do this all day. Matthew Bishop, probably free you up to get back to your day. Appreciate, it's been really fun, Matthew. Yeah. So if someone's interested in, in Q Pilot, cuz everybody's going to subscriptions, right? So they Right QT dot.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Matthew Holman: We actually just updated QPilotlot.

Do. So you can find us@QPilot.com. Yeah. Did you? Because the do why the.com. the.com com came up. The guy who was saying you wanted, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for it came down to an actual normal price and we, when we pulled the trigger

[00:40:17] Matthew Dunn: and then you get all that Oh my gosh. Do we have all that on our website?

Cuz porting that over's not necessarily trivial. I. Cool.

[00:40:23] Matthew Holman: It was good. We were launching a new one, so it was a good time. And then I, I'm really active on LinkedIn, so I'd love for anybody who's interested. You are. You got like

[00:40:29] Matthew Dunn: 6,000 followers. I was like, Wow, this guy's, this guy's got a, got an audience.

That's terrific. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Well, we'll share, share the episode of this conversation when I Oh, I will, I

[00:40:40] Matthew Holman: post it for you? Okay, I will, I'll have it in my email newsletter as well. Don't worry. Perfect.

[00:40:44] Matthew Dunn: All right. My guess has been Matthew Holman from Q Pilot. Thanks time. Thanks much.

[00:40:49] Matthew Holman: Thank you.