A Conversation With Chris Arrendale of CyberDataPros
Chris Arrendale brought years of experience in email, data and security to this in-depth conversation about email, data and security :-).
As the CEO of Cyber Data Pros, and privacy chief at Inbox Monster, Chris has lived in the tough jobs of balancing the needs of marketing against customer privacy and data security.
He drills into this privacy-vs-personalization dilemma in depth in this conversation. Will people provide their data? In return for clear value, yes — IF they trust you.
Chris and host Matthew Dunn also delve into the challenges of law in this area; is CAN-SPAM due for replacement? Would GDPR work in the US? Will the death of 3rd-party cookies — IF it happens — make things better, or not? A great conversation for anyone interested in data, marketing and privacy.
A Conversation With Chris Arrendale of CyberDataPros
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[00:00:00]
Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email. My guest today, Chris Erindale of Cyber Data Pros Inbox Monster, and more than a couple other hats as we were just discussing. Right. Welcome,
Chris Arrendale: Chris. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this intro.
Matthew Dunn: I introduce yourself
Chris Arrendale: to the world, man.
Uh, so Chris Adel, I've been involved in email technology, privacy security for, oh gosh, over 22 years. Yeah. started my first, um, uh, business right in, I would say, right at 2001. I was working with lawyers on their, it, their software, and started actually sending out emails for, for a lot of lawyers. Um, they wanted to, they, they wanted to do, you know, of course they had the TV commercials, they had the billboards, but they started to finally realize [00:01:00] that email was, um, relevant.
inexpensive and actually, you know, had a really good roi, right? Yeah. And so I started to do that. Eventually started working, uh, sold that business, started uh, working for, uh, silver Pop at the time, an email service provider, which is now acoustic,
Matthew Dunn: which was, uh, silver Pop, was acquired by IBM and then spun back out, right?
Chris Arrendale: Yeah. Spun back out. Yeah. So that was. met my wife there. Uh, we worked together there, which was great. Um, you know, I've worked for a lot of email agencies, worked for a lot of E S P startups. Yeah. Um, I've started a few more companies. I sold my, uh, email deliverability business in 2018, Uhhuh , uh, and then of course in 2021 started Cyber Data Pros, where we worked with, you know, businesses of all shapes and sizes on data privacy, compliance, cybersecurity, uh, and, and really kind of protecting the data that they have, right?
Because if you can imagine, , you know, email marketers, agencies, email service providers, they collect a lot of data and store a lot of data. Mm-hmm. , you know, is it, is it safely protected? Who has [00:02:00] access to it? All these things that we kind of, you know, review. And so we do a lot of internal audits, risk assessments.
Um, we help clients and companies get prepared for things like iso, soc, hipaa, p c, and so it's, it's busy, uh, but we're having a lot of fun doing it. What's the, what's the
Matthew Dunn: top. Couple of, uh, let's call 'em mistakes that you expect to find when you walk in and work with a new email marketing.
Chris Arrendale: I'd say a few things that really kind of come up are data over collection, right?
So again, if you think about progressive profiling, if you think about the forms that are on these websites, yeah, they're collecting a lot of data that really is, it's not relevant for what they're doing, right? Do they, do they need job title? Do they need, you know, company revenue? Do they need, you know, all the different particular areas of pii, things like address and phone number, right?
And, and once, once you have that data, , you know, it's sitting there maybe let's say in Marketo or in, you know, uh, a platform, Salesforce, [00:03:00] um, you know, then other people have access to it. They can download it. Mm-hmm. , let's say your login were to get hacked. Now people can, you know, use that information maliciously.
So we do see a lot of that Right. Data over collection. Um, We also tend to see that the data that is stored, it's saved on somebody's laptop, right? , it's not encrypted. Right. ? Yeah. We see that quite a bit. Yeah. You know, when you think about it from like a disaster recovery perspective, right? So if that laptop were to crash, all your data's gone.
But if the laptop were to get lost or stolen, somebody has access to that. So a lot of times it's about data over collection, data minimization, uh, principle of lease privilege, privacy by design. A lot of those sort of terms that we use a lot because, you know, doing these audits, we find, uh, just a lot of those gaps, right?
You know, you can take a look at infrastructure, you can take a look at, you know, things like IPS domains, DNS records, right? Dmar right, or they have dmar set up. But honestly, it's, it's getting back to the basics. It's understanding what data's being collected, how it's stored, who has access to it, um, and, [00:04:00] and, and really how you're, how you're securing it.
Uh, we find that a lot, you know, and honestly, Most of the time it comes down to training. A lot of individuals just don't, they weren't aware. They just assume that, Hey, if I put it in this location, then you know it, or somebody has already configured it to where it's properly set up. Right.
Matthew Dunn: They, they will have taken care of it.
Uh, I'm sure training's a piece of it. How often do you find that orgs are actually. Properly budgeted and resourced for the level of execution they should do with their data they're collecting.
Chris Arrendale: Yeah, it's very minimal. You know, we were working with a client recently that. I was really impressed with. Um, you know, again, they had budget, uh, they had the, the resources, uh, to actually do, to really kind of, I would say be about 60, 70% there.
Mm-hmm. , which is great, right? We'll work with clients, you know, we're talking 10, 20%, right? , but things like, they don't even have policy documentation, they don't have [00:05:00] training, they don't have acceptable use policies, right? Uh, you know, data classification policies, there's a lot of that that's missing. Uh, but oftentimes you'll find that one, one in a.
That may have a little bit more set up and are are ready to kind of, uh, kind of move forward, which
Matthew Dunn: means most likely there's someone with some experience at one of the other kinds of orgs who's now running things there and says, no, no, no. We, we cannot do this on a shoestring. The risk is too great, it won't actually work, et cetera, et cetera.
Absolutely. Um, I'm curious about your reaction to something. I wanna flip data. To a different perspective for a second. Um, I, I worked on a post recently for, uh, for one of the email orgs I'm, I belong to. Um, and I was trying to think through this puzzle of personalization and in particular the tension between personalization and privacy.
Your guy, the guy in the street, if you ask him, Oh, I wanna be [00:06:00] treated personally. And then when you say, will you fill in one more field on the form? He goes, no, no, no, no, no. I'm too busy for that.
Chris Arrendale: Yep. And yeah, it's interesting, you know, I did a webinar recently, uh, a few weeks ago called Privacy versus Personalization.
Yeah. Uh, primarily because, you know, again, as marketers, you know, they want to again, collect data person. give individuals, uh, you know, again, a good sort of experience based upon the data that they've collected, right? Yeah. Because again, you know, as a, as a, as a data subject, right? When I give my information, when I give my data up, what am I getting in return?
Right. Am I getting some sort of value, right? Whether that be a webinar, maybe it be a PDF download, maybe it'd be a giveaway, something. What am I getting in return? Right? And so you gotta think about, you know, again, third party cookies going away. Mm-hmm. , you gotta start thinking about first party data. You gotta start thinking about, you know, browsers with the do not track piece coming up.
Right? Especially Google Chrome coming up next year. Um, so all that is, it really means like, We, we want [00:07:00] personalization. You know, it's also scary when you get that, uh, email from Amazon that's like, you know, dear, so-and-so, you know, I see, you know, your address is this. Thank you for the subscribing save.
We're gonna be sending you some toilet paper because, you know, as of our algorithm means that hey, you know, uh, uh, it takes you two weeks to go through eight roles. Therefore, it's a full personalized experience and. . Whoa. You know, , that's, that may be too much. Right. But at the same time, you know, it's, it's, it's what you're getting in return.
Matthew Dunn: It's what you're getting in return. Do you open an interesting door there? Um, my Amazon, my Amazon login is well over a quarter century old. There I said it. Mm-hmm. happened to, I happened to live in Seattle when Amazon first, uh, sort of showed up in the world. Yeah. Plus, um, Amazon in email, at least in their.
In, uh, quite a, quite a light touch on personalization. Um, less than they used to do. Right? Yeah. And, [00:08:00] and I, I find it intriguing that the company that I am sure has the most data about me just because of the, frankly, purchases and history. They, they don't use it as much as, as they used to. As they used to, and, and, and as a personalization enthusiast might say they should.
Now maybe that's cuz they got me anyway and I'm not going away. Maybe, I don't know. I know with, uh, like with package, uh, package notifications, you know, Hey, you. , they don't even list what it is anymore. Right, right. Intriguing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like you'd think the personalization you want is, well, I wanna know what thing is in, you know, that is being referenced here.
They don't even tell you what's in the package. And I'm like, Hmm. It also puts 'em in a locus of control. This just occurred to me. I gotta go back to Amazon and find out what, what's actually coming to the door. ,
Chris Arrendale: they're getting that traffic, right? They're getting that [00:09:00] traffic back to their site, to their app.
Yeah. Right. That's key. I think the biggest thing, you know, thinking about the consumers, especially in the United States, right? What the reason why C C P A really started was due to data breaches, right? Or data being sold, or data being shared to third parties. You know, if you, if you look at, um, these state.
none of them go into that explicit opt-in consent for email, right? It's more about, you know, privacy by design, data protection, security, storage, all that. And so, sure, privacy is really concerned about what you're doing with the data, how you're processing it, what you know, how you're storing it, you know, et cetera.
But, I think the biggest thing on that is that consumers still want that personalized experience, right? Dear first name, last name. You know, they want that experience, but to what level? Because you're right. Once you hit certain, you know, notes with certain people, they stop. Right?
Matthew Dunn: Right. The creepy, the
Chris Arrendale: creepy threshold, right?
Yeah, exactly. Because like, why are you asking me about company revenue? Why are you asking me my salary range? Why are you asking me my age, [00:10:00] religion? What are you going to do with that data? Right? And how are you gonna market it to me? Because that information's not relevant to what you're, what your
Matthew Dunn: company's doing.
Well, and then there's the category of data that, I mean, you, you'll know better than I do, but there's the category of data that, that, that comes with the interaction on a website or an app. That could be captured, could be useful, isn't in, uh, the consumer's mind necessarily as something that they're exposing.
I mean, the obvious example is, uh, is location to a, to a reasonable degree. Right? Someone goes and fills in a web form, you probably know where they are. Yeah. Pretty close, right? A hundred percent. And did I, did, did you ask me about recording that? Is it actually of value for. A value to me for you to keep track of that.
All of these are open questions, right? And then there's the, and then there's the end run of this, which is, oh my word, like the form is gonna be so long. And the [00:11:00] permission, uh, agreement is gonna be so arcane that everyone's gonna go, ah, I just don't wanna deal with this. You just don't wanna do it. Yeah. I just close, close the, close the window and.
It feels to me like we're living, uh, we're, we're living as we're sort of starting to arc over. It was a wild west grab anything you want for quite a stretch, and now we're starting to say as a, as a culture broadly. Right? Hang on a minute, , maybe we need some, uh, guidelines and rails and rules and things like that.
Chris Arrendale: Right. Because I mean, you think about, you know, just again, sites that scrape your cookies, sites that scrapes like your location data. Yeah. Right. You know, what's, what's the relevancy there? Why do you need it? Um, yeah. I mean, if you notice now it's, you know, accept all cookies, deny all cookies, allow functional cookies.
What about these cookies? Right. All of that. That's now, you know, kind of permeating like through our society. Mm-hmm. . Um, and you gotta think about, you know, just the, the existence of things like GDPR and Castle that have been happening in other countries. Yeah. The United States has finally been around to it, [00:12:00] but again, it's about the data protection.
Don't sell, don't share my data. Um, Without the explicit opt-in consent. Right. Cause we all know that can SPAN is still the law of the land in the United States, whereas things like GDPR and Castle have used that explicit opt-in. Yep. You know, to, again, I think, uh, depending upon how you look at it, right?
From a privacy professional, the explicit opt-in's great because I'm physically having to do something in order for you to communicate with me. Mm-hmm. . But the marketing side is like that limit. the number of interactions and how we can work with people.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Do we, do we need, uh, national law of the land to address these issues?
Is can SPAM due for
Chris Arrendale: replacement? I think can spams due for a review? Absolutely. It's been too long and I think there are a lot of things that have changed. Technology. Technology has changed. Uh, the, the, you know, the privacy culture of the world has changed. Uh, I think there needs to be some review and things like how you can communicate with people, uh, right.
I mean, unsubscribe is great. Header matching, the, you know, the email [00:13:00] subject line match the body. All that's great, but the consent side may need a little bit of work. Right. But I think on the flip side, you know, with a national privacy law ad P P A, which is currently sitting in the house, Something that kind of intersects all these states that are doing their own thing, having something more on a national level that's like, we care about privacy, we care about your information, we care about how it's being used.
We need to kind of do this on a national level versus just all these states doing
Matthew Dunn: things. Quick sidebar. Chris, I'm not sure if this is the cause, but there's a scratch in the audio on your side. Oh, and I think it may be the. I'll hold it down rubbing a little bit. . I was like, I wanna wanna try what he saying in here.
Sorry about that. Just trying to see if it correlated with your motion at all. . We're fine. We'll, uh, we'll actually I will actually run the audio through an AI processor. We'll see if it catches G
Chris Arrendale: PT .
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Deeper an update and, and the other. , [00:14:00] just the, the pervasiveness of digital and data in our lives is so different now from when Yes.
Hand spam was passed. It's like now you carry your life on a supercomputer in your pocket everywhere you go, that's a big deal, and that's a lot of data and and so on. Yeah,
Chris Arrendale: nobody's. , nobody's reading the terms of use, the privacy policies, that's just accept and move on. Let me install whatever app, allow it to do whatever it's going to do.
Mm-hmm. , and I think it's all about that customer experience. Right? Because if you think about it, let's take Uber for instance. Uber, you know, again, you got your credit card, saved your home address, saved your work address, saved location, data enabled, all of that stuff. Yeah. What would the experience be like if you didn't save.
Matthew Dunn: Right, right, right. And I mean, granted, they're in the job of of, of moving my carcass from point A to point B when I want 'em to. Sure. So it's useful to the thing of value, they do the job to be done that I hire them for and yeah. I [00:15:00] wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna let gone. Sure. What I want someone outside Uber.
to get access to that. Probably not, right? Mm-hmm. probably not good. You know, Google has a really good idea. I spend way too much time in this one place, right, .
Chris Arrendale: Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, the interesting thing is, the other day I was, uh, eating at a restaurant and left and it was like, I had a little popup of my phone that said, you know, your reviews are, you know, there's a lot of people that like your reviews.
Would you like to leave a review for? Insert the restaurant that I was at. And it's like, whoa, that's interesting. Really? How, how did that get turned on? How'd that get enabled? Right. So,
Matthew Dunn: wow. Wow. Yeah. That's, uh, that's, that's more, that's more forward than I would've, would've expected. I mean, just getting asked for review, you know, the someone somewhere knows you left the restaurant is one thing, but to connect that with, uh, you know, with your influencer rating, so to speak.
Sure. Out in the world. ,
Chris Arrendale: it was interesting. Believe me. I was like, whoa, that's a little too far. So, yeah,
Matthew Dunn: it feels a, it feels a little too far. [00:16:00] And, and isn't it funny that the part of the threshold that concerns. is emotional and not necessarily easy to articulate, crisply or put into policy language, right?
Feels sure X is a big deal and and should be a big
Chris Arrendale: deal. , but what's that limit for everyone, right? Yeah. Yeah. And what's, what's too far? Because if you ask somebody again, like company revenue or location data, religion, everybody has a different, like, it hits different. And so understanding your audience and knowing, again, again with progressive profiling, with, with the web forms, everything else.
Mm-hmm. , understanding where that limit is for your audience is key for marketers.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah, it is. It is. I, I think marketers, Wearing, wearing a fairly horrendous set a hand of handcuffs in, in some ways they are in, in trying to, to do the job of know the customer and know the market, uh, within the [00:17:00] constraints of law, within the constraints of how much time we'll give them, how many forms we'll fill in within the constraints of do the is, is there data.
in perfect order cuz nobody says right. , right? Yep. You're like, ah. Oh. And then about the time that you've got a halfway decent picture of me, I'm going to, I'm gonna unsubscribe and blow that record up for you.
Chris Arrendale: it's, or write in and say, delete all the data you have about me, or what information do you have?
And then Yeah. You know, and I think the, the marketers are really being constrained with having to be C C P A experts, having to be GDPR experts, having to be d a experts, right? That's true. All these things that they're Mimi, right? Like they're being experts in all these items and areas and it. , you know, they have a job to do as well.
They need to, you know, again, be . Yeah. They're, they're, they're just being piled on with all these other responsibilities. And so that's where we find a lot of times, like, you know, we'll come in and help ease that burden by [00:18:00] being that expert. Yeah. And helping to kind of guide the process along. But we do see that a lot when marketers, well,
Matthew Dunn: marketers, marketers.
Now you've seen that MarTech landscape diagram, right? Mm-hmm. with all the MarTech systems on it, like. The MasterCard in the CMOs pocket is, is the, is the gateway to a shadow IT organization of gargantuan proportions. Oh yeah. And it's not like all of that stuff comes, preassembled, all the stuff off that MarTech landscape doesn't come preassembled.
No. And I find a lot of marketing orgs and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna bet you're gonna shake your head. Yeah. They're very under gun in terms of the technical knowledge and talent they should have on the.
Chris Arrendale: Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think they're sold a lot of, Hey, this, this technology is easy. It's point and click.
It's, yeah. You click a few buttons, API integration data just flows, and it's like, that's not the case.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, and you start [00:19:00] multiplying and you get geometric confusion of, of, of all of those easy to connect
Chris Arrendale: and, we'll, we'll go into, we'll go into clients and they'll. 2, 3, 4 email service providers and you start to wonder like, why is, why is that right?
Well, you know, um, this person left, this person came in and they prefer this platform over the other one, but we still keep that one. And it's like, well, there's needs to be some consolidation. You gotta understand and figure out why you have each technology, each platform to do the job that you need to
Matthew Dunn: do.
Well, sometimes it's because, , they literally don't know how to turn it off. Right? Right. It's doing Job X and whoever set it up is gone. Right. And uh, we need to move that thing it does into this other box, but we actually don't know how it works . So we'll leave it like, Hey kids. Learn cobalt, I guarantee you'll get employed
Chris Arrendale: Exactly. But we see that all [00:20:00] the time that, you know, it's like this system is still going. Yeah. And you know, we work with clients on Dmar C as well. So again, when you turn Dmar C on, you start to see the sources that are using your domain to send email. Right. And you're like, who's using this product and this product and this product.
And we worked with clients where we actually had to go to procurement and billing. And say, you're signing off on these Exactly. So you can start to, to work your way to shut that down. Well, it's like
Matthew Dunn: going through your own credit card statement to find out what am I subscribed to again?
Chris Arrendale: Netflix, Hulu, and all these things.
You're like, the bill keeps getting larger. Yes, it does that. So yes, it, yes, that's exactly what Dmar does. I
Matthew Dunn: hate annual renewals there. I said it out loud, . I'm like, what? What? You expected me to remember that? No .
Chris Arrendale: Oh yeah. Automatic renewals. That's, uh, gets you every time.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah, man. It makes, and also sort of makes the, makes the world or the economy go round in some, some sectors
Chris Arrendale: is we're, we're helping out
Matthew Dunn: Now let's go on [00:21:00] a, let's go on a tangent for a second. My word, we're piling up a lot of data in the. We are, it's a mess too. Yep. And I keep thinking, I mean, use your own hard, you know, your own hard driver inbox as the, as the stand in for the world's problems. Like I should go clean up that other inbox, but I haven't gotten to it yet this year or the year before.
The year before this, like open, I opened an inbox the other day and I forget how many tens of thousands of messages were in. Right. And oh yeah, blame Google if you want for making the storage look like it's free. But you know, aside from select all, delete, which I wasn't quite willing to do, It's like, eh, I don't, I just don't have the energy or interest in grappling with the thing.
And then what looks like the nominal cost is so low. The closing the tab is an easier solution.
Chris Arrendale: Right? Yeah. And a lot of [00:22:00] people will actually just close the account too, right? They're like, okay, I'm just gonna close the account, as opposed to going through and trimming and they'll just create another one.
That's one way to do it. That's true. Yeah. You know, but, but it's, but you're right. It's like I find especially. Um, during certain parts of the year where unsubscribes tick up, right, because people are like, they're spending a little extra time maybe during the holidays or maybe during the summer. and they're actually going through in, in unsubscribing from brands or unsubscribing from certain, you know, companies.
And it's interesting to see those trends cuz you know, you'll see things like complaint rates spike up and block list spike up during the holidays as well. Right. Because really, you know, this, this, this, you know, why is this company trying to sell me something when I haven't heard from them in five years?
In 10 years? Yeah. Yeah. And then it's like, that's abusive behavior. Right? Right. And so that's, we think about that during, uh, during the holiday times, but. , you're right. When it comes to the data that we have, the data that we're collecting, it is piling up and it's, it's piling up in a way that makes a lot of professionals uncomfortable, a lot of marketers [00:23:00] uncomfortable.
But it's also about like, you know, what are you, what are you doing with, with that data? And, and where is it being stored and who is accessing it? So it kind of comes back to the fundamentals of, um, over collection of data, data forms, things of that nature. So think from that perspective, you gotta also look at things like Google.
right. Or Microsoft OneDrive. Mm-hmm. . And when you are collecting that data, where, which folder are you putting it in? Hmm. By the way, you shared this with a client that is no longer a client. Right. Or you shared the top level folder. Now they have access to all those sub-folders. Right? Right. So it is a, it's having that button down and training for employees to understand what they can and can't do as it relates to that data.
Mm-hmm. You see that all the time. And including things like implementing DLP rules, right. So data loss prevention. So if. , somebody were to receive an email that had PII in it. Mm-hmm. , that attachment would be stripped out. Mm-hmm. and putting pre pretending, uh, words in the subject line that's like risk or p [00:24:00] i risk or security risk or something.
That way it's in front of the, the person that's actually opening the mail. Right. So, , it's, um, I, I still see clients all the time. They'll email spreadsheets of p i I back and forth. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, it's like sure. Gmail has, you know, great encryption and, and I'm sure, I'm sure everybody's password is very secure, right?
Where nobody's gonna be able to go out there and get hacked. But, you know, these, there are a lot of fundamentals that just aren't being done. You, you
Matthew Dunn: know, who the worst at trusting email as, as if it were secured? In my experience, the worst at that are lawyers. They are. Yes. They're funny. Like, oh no, don't put it in the cloud.
I'm really security conscious. Email it to me. Do you know what you just said,
Chris Arrendale: buddy? ? Yep. And then, and then think about it, right? Like how often do you go back and you say, I'm gonna delete that file from my inbox. Hmm. It never happens. It just stays there. It just stays there. Yeah. It just stays there, you know?
And, and, and then again, [00:25:00] who else has access to that mailbox?
Matthew Dunn: Yeah, you wanna scare yourself. Uh, hop in, hop in your search engine of choice and put in your name. And then something like file type, uh, yeah, PDL X XLS or X L W. You'd be surprised how many places you turn up, how many lists you're in. Yeah. It's.
Chris Arrendale: it's nuts. We, we do a lot of that for clients, you know, dark web scanning. Sure. We do a lot of those Google searches and show this, there are multiple reasons why you should not be doing this and here are the reasons why. And once they see that, it's then like, okay, we have to get serious about this.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
Yeah. And serious in part because the, in part because of the risk, which is like, that's what you're, one of the things you're helping 'em address. Sure. Is there a, is there an efficiency in, in addition to risk reduction, is there an efficiency. , like it actually costs less to do this well
Chris Arrendale: than to do it poorly.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because you gotta think about, you know, not only buying too much software or, um, you know, again, thinking about [00:26:00] training from a, uh, you know, overall security perspective, but I think it's about, um, you know, there are efficiencies and, um, hey, we can automate the offboarding process. We can automate the onboarding process.
We can. , uh, you know, categorize data by group so that, that way if somebody comes on, they get added to a group mm-hmm. , they, they'll have access to everything as opposed to piecemealing stuff. Right. Um, you know, there's a lot of systems out there that are, again, are are single sign-on, right? Mm-hmm. , single sign-ons great because if the person leaves, you turn off their account, which also disables their single silent capabilities right across the board.
So there are a lot of efficiencies that can be gained. Um, And we do work with clients on those because I like to show, hey, it's not only protecting the data that you have and your employees like from data breaches and all that, it's about actually saving money and actually introducing efficiencies. And they're, yeah.
Yeah. Like, wow. Really? Because when I hear data privacy and cybersecurity and, and all and, and deliverability Yeah. That, [00:27:00] that's a cost center, right? Yeah. Where most people think it's a cost center. Yeah. It's like not. There are a lot of ways that you can actually save money.
Matthew Dunn: Well, and, and, and, and lever yourself to make more of what you're spending.
And I'm thinking specifically there of deliverability, right? The company that doesn't, doesn't invest a little bit in getting deliverability, right? A little bit or a lot is could be sending email into a, the black hole. that does nothing for them.
Chris Arrendale: I, I, well, I've seen, um, not only that, it's so funny because you'll, you'll work with somebody like, I'm, well, I'm good.
I'm not getting any spam complaints. Well, that's because all your emails going in the junk folder, right? , you can't hit the spam button if you're in the junk folder. Right. Uh, but I also would say that, you know, uh, I still see marketers that don't look at their campaign metrics. They may, they may say, Hey, our deliverability is 99%.
That's not deliverability, that's your delivered rate, right? Cent minus bounced equals delivered. So you're delivering [00:28:00] 99%. Um, but they don't look at, dig into the details. They may just look at the open rate. You know, they may just look at the click rate, but they're not looking at bounces. They're not looking at unsubscribes, they're not at complaints.
All of that is very helpful, right? Because in a bounce, You may see that you're blocked at Proofpoint. You may see that there's a issue at Microsoft. Dig into those bounces. That's where the, that's where the gold is, right? You can use, um, C testing you can use, um, you know, all these different tools. Combine that with the goal that you have in those metrics that really paints the picture of what's happening with your
Matthew Dunn: email.
Except that nobody's looking at open rates since Apple decided to market. That's true. Goes
Chris Arrendale: right. That's true . Yeah. And, and now they're, now marketers are saying, what should I be looking at? Right. And so, you know, you'll hear. You'll hear answers from experts that'll say, Hey, goo, look at Google Analytics.
Right? Because then you can track your UTM codes and see what the traffic looks like. And then you, you know, you see, you hear all these things and some people are like, well, now I'm looking at click rates and yeah. Or now I'm looking at this. And it's, you know, it's, it's across the [00:29:00] board.
Matthew Dunn: Uh, yeah. It's a, it's a mess is what it is.
I, I had to make a face when you mentioned Google Analytics, cause uh, it le leave, leave how you contextualize Google aside for a second. , it drives me nuts that email marketers tend to live inside of their E S P. and not actually in that larger bucket that most everyone else is using. Like, why are we not passing this through to one analytics platform?
So we're all talking, when we're arguing about attribution, we're all actually talking about the same, like records in the same pie that we're trying to slice up and so on. Like, uh, and, and I mean, every, every field's guilty of myopia, right? Every field's guilty of. , this is what matters. Cuz this is what I work with and I don't understand what you work with.
And it's
Chris Arrendale: too much. It's for, it's for my KPIs are right. My KPIs and goals are here, my KPIs are here. Yeah. Yeah. . So you get that. But I think it's, you know, just looking more at bounce logs, looking at the different records and [00:30:00] the, and the data that you have, we'll help you because you know, we go in and we'll see you maybe, maybe a 20% bounce rate, and then you're like, well, what happened?
Well, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't know. What do you mean? I don't know, like , you know, so
Matthew Dunn: well. in, in, in some ways. In some ways. I think that problem, those, that set of problems, um, we, we do a lot of, we do a lot of selling people into that problem without telling 'em what's gonna show up.
Right? Uh, uh, company that starts small, gets their MailChimp account, realizes this is, you know, key and then starts getting bigger. and doesn't realize that you gotta, you've gotta act an instrument differently at a certain scale. Well, of course they didn't know that that was gonna happen when they were starting with their little MailChimp account, right?
Yep. Like, and then all of a sudden, wow, this is a mess and we're blacklisted and none of it's working, and ah, why didn't somebody tell us this? Uh, yeah, I don't know.
Chris Arrendale: and, and [00:31:00] scale, right? Because then you start to think about like, okay, well now we, we have enough traffic for dedicated, I. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe we were on a shared IP before, or, you know, custom domains and branded tracking and landing pages and all those things that happen and, you know, it's, it's, you know, I, I get it, you know, small business and you grow and you kind of graduate to like different levels of, of providers, but,
You know, I think there's a lot of things that marketers need to think about from a growing perspective that oftentimes, again, you're kind of blinded into what you're currently doing. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn: yeah. That's true. That's true. And blinded and, and handcuffed earlier conversation about Sure. Technical talent, data, uh, data complexity, time, stress, budget.
Like all of all, all, all of. Factors. And you can't just outsource it, right? You can't no. Say, Hey, someone else deal with this problem a hundred percent for me, cuz I don't, I don't think that's actually fully
Chris Arrendale: possible. No. I, we were working with a client that, uh, a marketer that was asked to do a data mapping exercise, right?
And so our marketer client was like, I have no idea [00:32:00] what to do and how to do that. Right? , so it's, it, it's, it's having the right people. Doing the job that needs to get done. Right. And then being a, being in a partnership. Because oftentimes, you know, you hear like marketers say, well, I don't get work, work well with the IT department and I don't work well with legal and I don't work well with sales.
And, and it's, it's having, it's having a voice at the table, but getting everybody to the table Yeah. Is, is important.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, you know, I, I wore the hat of it guy at one point and realizing now that I do other things, realizing the, the degree which everyone doesn't like you, , the IT guy, , is, is a little humbling,
Chris Arrendale: trying to, trying to lock you down and trying to, and just saying no and.
You know,
Matthew Dunn: it's, I understand why that's the job. I, I mean, I really do understand why that's, that's the job and that's sort of gotta be the culture and, and the mindset because, you know, all the stuff that we're using to, to live life and do business now was [00:33:00] designed to be monkeyed with and, and open and, uh, malleable and changeable.
Sure. It's like, yeah, the world's not just full of Boy Scouts. Yeah. . No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. It's, it, yeah. It's, it's daunting. You know? You wanna secure a computer, unplug it, stick in the closet. . Yeah. A hundred percent right?
Chris Arrendale: Yeah. That's about it. That's about it. Yeah. Yep. Turn your
Matthew Dunn: phone off. Turn your pH right, turn your phone.
Yeah. Really right. Uh, especially in today's time. Talk it, talk to me about mobile for a second, cuz that's gotta be a a, the world of mobile has to be a, a. Both a big source of, uh, activity for you and, uh, a difficult one? I would think
Chris Arrendale: it, it can be. Absolutely. Especially when you're dealing with, um, with apps, right?
You know, the, the, the apps that track, yeah, the apps that collect data. Um, you know, we were talking earlier about, uh, cookies, you know, um, um, there's, there's been a lot of talk about, um, you know, [00:34:00] essentially hipaa, uh, as it relates to when you log into a. and you're providing data, that information is being scraped by third party cookies.
Right? Your, your, your symptoms. Let's say you've got a cold or sneezing, things like that, so that's really important. Even for apps, you think like a Teladoc or you think like a CVS and things of that nature. Yeah. When you're providing all that data back. What's happening with that data? Who, who has access to it?
Yeah. Um, who are they selling it to? Right? Because it would be really easy for some of those companies to say, Hey, we have all this data on people that live in this geographic area. Right? That maybe they're getting allergies earlier than others. That's a target right there for allergy medication, right?
There's a lot of Right. There's a lot of those conversations happening that, you know, we work with clients on how to protect themselves. Um, and how to design things so that, that way, again, the data that you're asking for is being used properly, but also you're giving people prompts [00:35:00] to say, are, you know, are you sure?
Do you want me to track? Do you wanna turn location on all these things? Which I know can be very annoying. Uh, but it's also important from a privacy perspective that the consumer understands what's happening with that.
Matthew Dunn: I, I will, I will admit to being a longtime kind of Apple centric guy despite having time spend, spending time working at, at the, uh, at the Borg, uh, at, at, uh, Microsoft.
Um, but I can step aside from that and say, I think Apples move with app, app trans tracking transparency, what, a year and a half ago now. Mm-hmm. has been pretty beneficial to people at large. It has. I think they joked off. , uh, a, a fairly appalling ecosystem that had grown up around sort of really everybody could keep track of anything they flip and want to because you're carrying a supercomputer in your pocket.
And I'm glad they stuck those rules in place. It's
Chris Arrendale: actually made a difference. I think a lot of [00:36:00] consumers now. appreciate that. Because again, you look at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, I mean, all these companies have so much data about us. Yeah. And they're selling it and sharing it. But now I have, I kind it feels like from a consumer perspective, you know, it's now back in my hands.
Yeah. Right. And so I think a lot of people are like that and
Matthew Dunn: the def, and to put the default. To, I have to say, yes, you can do that. I, the consumer have to say, yes, you can do that. Seems like a little move's a big move. It's played, it's played absolute havoc on, uh, Facebook's business. I know that for sure.
Oh yeah.
Chris Arrendale: And advertising .
Matthew Dunn: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Which Okie Doki. Ben Ben Thompson at Strater, who I end up. Quoting about every, uh, third conversation I think with guests on this show here, Ben Ben Thompson said one way to look, one way to think of Facebook pre track tracking transparency was it was a, a bit of a commons no, no smaller, medium business could, [00:37:00] could do the data gathering to understand their customers on their own.
So all of them sort of outsourced that into the Facebook pool and then bought back out of that pool in the form of advertising and abstract tracking transparency kind of blew that up, like. . Okay, Ben, I think you're a smart guy, but I also think someone was profiting mightily from that pool. Oh, a thousand percent.
Yeah. So that's the problem. I'm, I'm okay with that going away personally. Yeah.
Chris Arrendale: Well, again, I think the consumers, it's back in, it's back in their hands. They feel better about providing the information as long as they're getting those prompts right. Mm-hmm. . And, um, I think it's, you know, again, from an app perspective, when you build an app, it's understanding what data you need to do your.
Yeah. Right. And then building it with that privacy transparency, I think is really key for, uh, for app
Matthew Dunn: developers. Yeah, for app developers. Um, where, where do you see, let's talk broadly data and privacy and we'll narrow in on email. Like what, [00:38:00] what, put on your futurist hat for a minute. What are some of the things you expect to happen in the next few years?
Chris Arrendale: I think that hopefully the, uh, national A D P P A will come to fruition. Mm-hmm. , uh, they're struggling right now over the private right of action or the P right. So, um, if you're in California, you have a private right of action, or you can sue directly where the other states, of course, you gotta go through the States's ag.
Right? And so there's conversations about that. I think that. Tr you know, tremendously for every, um, you know, resident in the US to know what's happening with their data, how it's being shared or, or sold, or, um, you know, what rights they have, right. To really. really kind of clamped down on data breaches.
That's still, you turn the news on and every day you hear about this data breach and that data breach and uh, you know, then the companies are like, oh, sorry, we'll pay a little fine. Um, and here's, here's six months of, uh, credit monitoring. Right. So. Right, right. That's not, that's not the case. Um, I think that, um, Uh, I think that, [00:39:00] uh, web browsers are gonna be smarter about, um, access to, uh, information that's collected for, for these companies.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I still feel that, um, um, webinars, events and forms are gonna be relevant. Of course, third party cookies going away. first party data, of course, reign King. Um, and again, continued. Um, as you mentioned that the supercomputer in your pocket, I think the continued focus is gonna be on bats. Um, I still think that, um, you know, chat G P T is going to, uh, change the world.
I know we'd go there lot of, lot of different ways, right? And so, uh, you know, again, the data's on the, what you get out of it is only good enough for what you put. . Right. And so, uh, you know what information you're, you're, you're asking it, you know, you think about all these, you know, devices that are, that are out there, the home devices and asking it questions, but, you know, there's a lot of, um, A lot of concern now, especially in the US after c CPA a and after these states are [00:40:00] doing what they're doing about the data that is being given up.
And, and it's interesting to have conversations with people that aren't in the privacy or cybersecurity field, understand now that, wow, the information that I'm providing company X or what I'm putting on Facebook or what I'm searching in Google, that information is being shared and sold and, and I think it's now finally come to light.
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. We're, we're, we're. We're realizing what we gave up and saying, I don't know if I want to give quite as much that up. And, and to be fair, we've been much more willing to do that in the us other countries Sure. In national domains. Way ahead of us on, uh, hang on a minute. No . Right, right, right. Which is, you know, we're, we wanna, wanna, wanna set those rules for ourselves collectively.
That's nature of a nation. I guess what. If you were given advice to. A perspective [00:41:00] client, you know, they're like, gee, maybe better call this guy. What, what are things they need to start thinking about that might eventually lead them to calling you, but things they could do better on their own too.
Chris Arrendale: You know, I think having policies and procedures in place for understanding, um, again, data access, data, um, mapping, uh, diagrams, I think that's important.
Right. What are these systems doing? How is the information being sent back and forth? Who has access to it? Yeah. Um, you know, we do a lot of training around data privacy and cybersecurity. , um, you know, do you have a training program? What are you teaching people? Do they understand what a fish is? Uh, do they understand social engineering, all those different tactics.
Um, you know, I think it's also important for, um, clients and businesses to do, um, an audit, right? To do an assessment to identify gaps and risks, and what can we do to fix those Oftentimes, . We work with clients that want to do it, but they want an expert to come in. They want that external, you know mm-hmm.
auditor to come in and say, Hey, let's look at this from a different lens, as opposed to somebody [00:42:00] internally doing it with that blind eye that's like, I know about that over there, but I'm not gonna talk about it because that's, that's work. Or that's a risk that I don't wanna tackle. Um, so we do a lot of that kind of work.
And I'd say that, uh, you know, reviewing, uh, and, and working with your legal, your compliance, your it. Understand what everybody's doing, get on the same page. I think this is really important. Um, you know, the, the marketers can't be legal experts and the lawyers can't be marketers. , and I say that all the time because, you know, oftentimes it's, you know, the marketers will say, well, I'm in charge of C cpa, I'm in charge of all these rules.
And it's like, no, you're not. You know, what's your charge of is essentially, you know, again, your KPIs, your metrics to get those emails. And so, um, I think having that conversation and being relevant is important. So lots of, lots of areas to dig into. I think, um, you know, a lot of, a lot of our clients, uh, do read a lot of things like I E P P, international Association of Privacy Professionals.
Yeah. Uh, you know, of course they're active in, um, you [00:43:00] know, dma, um, a lot of different organizations that are important that relate to, um, privacy and cybersecurity for market.
Matthew Dunn: It is just it. It's a side comment and if someone's listening and not watching the video, , I'll see if I can give it, give it a sensible connection.
As Chris was talking, his camera on its own panned back and out because someone walked in the room and then did a really smooth Hollywood pan back in on Chris. That's then that was. In action, right? As, as part of this relatively normal conversation we're having in this case on Zoom, it AI's top of mind.
Now it's had its Netscape browser moment in the last month or so, Chad, g p t, blah, blah, blah. A hundred million users in a, in a month flat. Cool. Interesting. We'll be unpacking that for a long time, but the truth of the matter is we're already [00:44:00] using this stuff. It's built into your camera.
Chris Arrendale: Yep. Wow. It is, and it, it's, it's interesting because it is, it captures the movement.
Yeah. And, and you, and essentially it wants to make sure that the focus is still. You know, the presenter, but at the same time what's happening around
Matthew Dunn: you. Right, right. He was trying to do a, i, I mean, in a cameraman sense, a good job. Mm-hmm. of capturing this, and it did a good job of capturing the scene. I mean, the person walking out of the door, right as we were saying this , right?
Yep. The camera shifts focused for just a second, but then the, the, the pan back in on you was really smooth, smooth. It wasn't, you know, if it. programmed in a linear way. That would've been a very jerky thing. Right. And it was actually a really, it was a tasteful capture. It's like Apples
Chris Arrendale: Apple Studio display.
Is it
Matthew Dunn: really? It is. Oh, cool. Oh cool. I got, I got, monitor me now, man. . . Are you using a built-in camera or No, that's gotta be, it's built in. That's the built [00:45:00] in camera. That's built in. That's impressive. That's really impressive. Wow. Oh, cool. . I mean, that's the thing as, as, as we're at this Nets, the an scap browser moment for AI be because of the, I think because of the language and human-centric feel of those chat interactions.
everybody wants to talk to me about AI and I mean everybody, not just professionally, but you know, friends over for dinner. Absolutely. The topic. Absolutely the topic comes up now, but I keep thinking, you know what, we've got pieces of this that have been in place for a long time already. I mean, I'm glad we're, we've got a visible moment to focus on it and talk about it and hopefully have some, uh, policy control kind of discussions.
But the genie already. Jeanie's, plural, have already been out of the bottle for quite a stretch
Chris Arrendale: now. It has. Yeah. Yeah. I think now it's just a, everybody sees it. It's like, oh, I can [00:46:00] type in this box and it'll tell me exactly what to do. It's like, yeah. That kinda stuff's been around for a while
Matthew Dunn: too, so. Yes.
Yes. It's, yeah, it, it, you know, you and I both lived through the internet, gone, kaboom. Oh yeah. And this feels like the, this feels like the closest to that kind of explosion that I've, that I've seen. Hundred percent. This is gonna change pretty much
Chris Arrendale: everything. It will, it is, it is changing everything. Yeah.
You know, I talk to people all the time that are like, oh, well I can, you know, um, maybe not hire the other developer and just use chat G p T, or maybe I don't need, maybe I don't need a copywriter. Right. I could just use chat G p T or, yeah. So there's a lot of, a lot of conversations happening around that and yeah, you're.
Yeah, changing the
Matthew Dunn: landscape. , I, you know, every time we think a machine is gonna take away our job, whether that was boom, you know, weaving stuff or steam engine or whatever, like every time we think that's gonna happen, A few years later, you [00:47:00] go, ah, now I've actually got more work to do, but at least some of the dumbest stuff I don't have to do.
Right. I don't have to go out and, and, and knock off a cow to have dinner tonight. Right. I'm okay with that. Right. . Yeah.
Chris Arrendale: offload that to somebody else off.
Matthew Dunn: Well, yeah. Yeah. Something. Yeah. So, uh, we'll, we'll put these pieces, we'll put these pieces in place and then we'll look back at some point and maybe there's dumb stuff we won't have to do.
Fine with that. If, if an AI can make sense of CSVs talent Yeah. I don't wanna do it.
Chris Arrendale: Z lookups and all that, right. .
Matthew Dunn: Yes, exactly. . Oh yeah, exactly. Hey, Excel, would you just like figure that out? Yeah. Okay. Got it. Boss .
Chris Arrendale: Yeah. I'll be back with you in five minutes. I'll be back with you.
Matthew Dunn: Right. I, I do think we're gonna see, uh, I do think we're gonna see, uh, processor war.
Feed up again because have you really needed to upgrade the hardware on your desk or in your pocket because the CPU [00:48:00] wasn't working hard? Not for a while, but as we start stuffing more AI engines in these things, We're gonna have a whole new generation of, oh, this thing's too slow. And know Chad g p t in my pocket is too slow.
I guess I need a new fill in the blanks, . Yep.
Chris Arrendale: It could ha Exactly.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Nvis and, and videos in a good position. Well, Chris, I knew this would be, I knew this would be fascinating, but even more than I thought. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah. It was a real, real pleasure to connect and talk and, and I love talking with people who've got a foot in email.
and a foot in other spaces. Cuz you know, email's, email's really an interesting thread on its own. But it doesn't exist standalone. It's not an island. No,
Chris Arrendale: no it doesn't. I think, you know, again, for those that are listening, email is just, it's still relevant. It's still very important. It's still gonna, it's, it's stood the test of time and I think that, yeah, you know, again, it's, it's something that, uh, is gonna.
Matthew Dunn: So if someone's listening, you go, Ooh, I want to [00:49:00] talk to this guy. How do they get in touch with you?
Chris Arrendale: Uh, cyber data pros.com. Uh, contact form there. My email is chris cyber data pros.com. Uh, or on LinkedIn if there's uh, anything that you wanna chat over LinkedIn as well. Happy to do so.