A Conversation With Karen Talavera of Synchronicity Marketing

If you booked a lift ticket to go skiing for the first time ever, would you rather get an email pitching you on buying a ski condo, or one with helpful tips about where to park, the best route to walk with an armful of skis and gear, and a coupon for $5 off a bowl of chili?

The tactical view might be that one ski-condo sale would pay for the whole email department; the strategic view, Karen Talavera would probably say, is that the helpful email will bring far more condo sales in the long run.

Strategy, email marketing, and - yes - skiing were among the topics in this back-and-forth conversation about the future of email.

Karen is the principal at Synchronicity Marketing (and a ski instructor!); she helps companies across the spectrum with strategy-first marketing. With over 20 years of deep experience in email, Karen has learned how to harness technology changes for business impact.

This is a fun, casual look inside strategic thinking for your email marketing program. Don't miss it!

TRANSCRIPT

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Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of The Future of Email. My guest today, Karen Talavera, who I've been trying to coax on for at least a year. Karen, welcome. So wonderful to have you on the show. Oh,

Karen Talavera: thank you so much for having me as a guest.

Matthew Dunn: You run Synchronicity Marketing and, and dare I say, you're,one of the known greats in the email space.

Like you've, done a lot of stuff in this world, right?

Karen Talavera: I have, I, I got into this world when it was brand new back in 1999, I think. So, you know, you just stay long enough, Matthew, and crazy things happen.

Matthew Dunn: Some, not fresh out of, but not too, not that far out of, uh, out of Michigan. And I'm required by my wife to say, Go Blue.

Karen Talavera: Undefeated! I know, we're very [00:01:00] excited. This could be the year.

Matthew Dunn: Tell me a bit about Synchronicity Marketing. I mean, we've talked at conferences, but I don't think we've ever sat down and said, Hey, fill me in on your, on, on your, you know, clients and business and what your company does.

Karen Talavera: Yeah, thanks.

I mean, our mission is to make email marketing easier and better. So Synchronicity Marketing specializes in strategy. And, uh, yeah, I'm a strategist at heart. That's my wheelhouse. Um, work with a lot of the full service agencies are out there that do all of the other things that should come after strategy, you know, like the nitty gritty of email or the design piece or set up or whatnot.

But, you know, where I come in is. Is taking a look at someone's program and helping them understand how to get more bang for the buck, how to optimize performance and really like what, what to do, what should the campaigns be? How do we, you know, set up a journey and what does it look like? And what do we say in each message?

Matthew Dunn: How do you get there from here,

Karen Talavera: [00:02:00] right? How do you get there from here? And how do you continually make it better and better? And we've got so many great tools and technologies. That's what's kept me interested in this channel. If we even can call it an industry, but in digital in general, it's a constant evolution, right?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Constant, constant learning, learning curve. And what do you mean? I need to know how to do that. Really? Yeah, really. But,

Karen Talavera: you know, my ideal client is going to be a mid to large size B2C brand, established business across many different verticals. I mean, we all love to work in the retail, retail, DTC, you know, the fun brands that are doing a ton online and their email has a lot of personality, but I have a sweet spot for financial services because they've been, you know, Slower to the party, a little more regulated over the years.

It's been tougher for them and they're really getting there now. Um, travel, hospitality, some B2B and you know, [00:03:00] there's the occasional startup or, or small local business that gets in and, and, you know, needs what I do, but mostly it's, you know, pretty established France. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: When you look at the stuff that you're doing now, focusing, as you said, on, uh, on strategy, what is your top of mind that's, that's really different now from, say, five, six years ago?

What's changed a bunch?

Karen Talavera: Um, people are finally really getting on the bandwagon with automation. And, and putting the power of automated messages and journeys that has existed in a lot of the email and marketing automation platforms, hence their name, you know, for over a decade, but it's like, nobody had time to think these things through for the longest time, because, and, and I feel your pain out there, you know, brand side marketers, it was some CMO or CEO saying, you know, we need more sales.

So send more email. Here's a new [00:04:00] deal. So it was blast, blast, blast, or a lot of promotional messaging. And then we kind of got into some content marketing and messaging, which I think is a really necessary piece for most brands can benefit from that. Um, but finally it's, Hey, I can like nurture my leads. I can convert.

You know, cold, or

I can develop customer relationships over time with email. I can message my buyers after they bought the first time, the second time, Ooh, I can do some analysis on their buying behavior and come up with all kinds of cool campaigns that reach exactly the right person at the right time. So. That's great news.

Like that is the power that has existed. That's gone on tap. It's finally, um, you know, getting done, but that's where there's a dark side. That's where somebody loves to play and come in and [00:05:00] say, Oh yeah. Have you thought about this one? Or have you tested, right? How many touches does it take to get that second purchase?

What are we going to say? What's the cadence? But Yeah, the dark side. If you over automate because you think you can just forget about having to do anything yourself ever set and

Matthew Dunn: forget. I was going to bring up that phrase. We got sold set and forget, right? Like, no, don't do that.

Karen Talavera: Set, but don't

Matthew Dunn: forget. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Set, set, but watch and measure and pay attention and revise. And yeah, yeah. The temptation with automation is always to assume and automation of almost any sort is, is, is to assume that, that it means full automation. Like just, just let it, it means hands off. And if it's going to go to a human being or a bunch of human beings sooner or later, you need to pay attention and come back to it [00:06:00] and freshen it up, revise it, change it, improve it like that, which is, which I, my opinion, a lot of the, um, sort of previous generation of.

They sold themselves as set and forget tools, you know, triggers, automation, journeys, like too, too many of them made it opaque. Like it was relatively easy to get something in place, uh, reviewing it, watching it, changing it, updating. It's like, Oh, you want to do that? Uh, yeah, I really want to do that. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the, the vendors had, uh, uh, had to recognize that they've, that they've got a role in that. On that strategic thinking about automation as well, right?

Karen Talavera: And, you know, set and then revisit set and put reminders on your calendars or in your Asana or, you know, wherever your team is using to own this.

Who's the owner? Who's going to be the owner? You know, to come back and constantly look. [00:07:00] Um, and that's one thing I love doing for clients. It's like, let's do a monthly report card, right? Let's take a look at how are these things performing? Right. Right. You know, what do you do next? What do you, what do you like, do you spend your time, money and effort optimizing or doing a new journey?

Because they're, they are time intensive to set up, you know?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. A ton of work.

Karen Talavera: Yeah, I think that's why we want to forget them because it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I just finally got through putting this together. Do I have to do another

Matthew Dunn: one? It has gotten a bit easier though, hasn't it? To, you know, to sort of stitch together your, your term customer journey to go, all right, this should happen.

Then this should happen. And maybe after that much time, this should happen if the right conditions are met and so on. It's better now. Than it used to be. It's better. Yeah.

Karen Talavera: I, I, I, I really got to tip my hat to the platforms for starting to bake this stuff in more and saying, you [00:08:00] know, Hey, we've got sort of a pre templated flow for you, you know, I mean, and they have a ton of self learning information.

Again, how many people have time to really get into that and is your account manager. You know, that's the thing. A lot of the vendor side providers, SAS providers, we know and love and have seen over the years have gotten out of the professional services business, you know. And and good, better and different, you know, makes more opportunity for the agency and consultant side.

So I'm not complaining about that. But, you know, they used to have an account management or customer success managers checking in and saying, Hey, we noticed you're not doing this in the platform and the platform can do it. Yeah, you know, we

Matthew Dunn: help you on slightly off topic, but it'll get us back here. Um, yeah.

I've, I've fired up and used HubSpot for various functions at various companies over the year, [00:09:00] years, and I've noticed that they're very dialed in. At paying attention to where, where you are and nagging you to do more. Cause eventually it means you're going to upgrade, subscribe, something like that. And like pretty, pretty successful platform.

And there's, there's gotta be something to what they spend their time on. Right. They're paying someone to nag me. Oh, Hey, have you looked at this? Yes, I did. Thanks very much. I,

Karen Talavera: I gotta give them props too, because look, they carved out a great. Um, presence in the B2B, you know, first of all, B2B space. So they understand and they, they practice what they preach, content, marketing, nurturing

Matthew Dunn: drips,

Karen Talavera: you know, yeah, they do it themselves, but that's the platform for B2B marketers.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, absolutely.

Sorry, Karen. I got a wonky net connection. But, uh, it's a great one. [00:10:00] Yeah. Sorry, my, my net connection went hiccup. So, uh, hopefully, hopefully it doesn't freeze.

Karen Talavera: Oh, great. I think we, I think we froze up for a tiny bit there. You're back.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. Miracle at all works. Well, something else you alluded to there that I think is one of the realities of, uh, for folks that work in any piece of the marketing space, email particularly, man, you better sign up to keep learning new stuff.

Cause there's no end. to that stack of responsibilities. Every platform you adopt has documentation this deep. And yeah, you must end up working with a bunch of, I mean, you're more strategy, but you've got to end up with your hands on a lot of, uh, a lot of different pieces of the puzzle.

Karen Talavera: Well, you know, it's tambered off in the last five or six years, but for a huge part of my journey in email, um, I was an educator and have done a ton of, you know, live training, [00:11:00] virtual in classroom, online, great content, it's all out there.

Look, I mean, now, you know, 2025 years after email started that exist in abundance. So there's plenty of places to go, but you're right. We need to constantly refresh mindset and skill set, and the skill set piece is a little easier, you know, to get your head around because it's a lot of time in a platform, hands on, you know, using the training resources of the provider that you're with, the mindset piece can be a little bit trickier because what worked 5, 10, well, let's just take it down, you know, 3 years pre pandemic, right?

5 years, 10 years ago constantly changes. Because Behavioral economics changes. That's another area I'm passionate about. How do we make decisions, right? How do, as consumers, we manage the constant flow of impressions hitting us [00:12:00] in all these different ways and places? This is the spaces and ever growing devices.

You know, it changes the way we think generationally. So there's been a lot of studies of younger generations doing things differently than their previous counterparts.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and, and new things sneak up and we're all, you know, we've got 24, roughly 24 hours in a day. Right. And, and, and only so many minutes of, of energy and attention and every new platform is trying to grab a, a piece of that, you know, we wouldn't have been talking about Tik Tok five years ago and we should, you know, we should figure out where that fits in the universe.

Now, if we're working with a company on their marketing, broadly speaking, and I've never fired up TikTok

Karen Talavera: and I listen, I mean, I don't know if it's a big secret or anything. I'm not a huge TikTok fan. I think it's got its place. It's entertainment. I don't, I don't have a lot of time for it personally, but it illustrates an incredibly [00:13:00] important point in the way their algorithm works.

You know, gets people really hooked is that if we have not been in a state of digital ADD before, we are absolutely there

Matthew Dunn: now. Right, right. And think about TikTok laterally for a second, right? In a funny way, it's a, it's a, it's a customer journey automation customer of, you know, customer set of one. Oh, he watches these, feed him more of these.

Try some of those. Oh, he watches those. Okay. Now mix these and those, and then like a, like an endless bowl of potato chips. Half a day would've gone by and you've done nothing but swipe like a, like a monkey with a tree full of bananas. It's a little scary. . Like Pavlov's dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Woof woof.

Ding ding. Oh man. Yeah. It's uh, yeah, it's, and it's easy to poke fun at and kind of, you know, rail about, but it's also realistically part of the cycle of the day as is checking your inbox, part of the [00:14:00] cycle of the day for, for a lot of people. Well,

Karen Talavera: and I know I've seen it myself. What happens is there's more things to check.

And then let's take those of us like, you know, that are that are working in this space. We've got slack going off left and right slack groups. You might be on Reddit. You might be on sub stack. You know that it's impossible. It's almost impossible to find some hub for everything to come into. So the time that email gets.

Yeah. I think it might be shrinking, but the way people process it, I'll just say, like, kind of mentally get through it. Yeah. I think it's shifting. I know I've done a variety of crazy things just to, like, absorb the sheer amount that I get. Yeah. The way they sort, the way they filter, the way they move things, you know, between tabs, that's an option.

Um. What's going to stand out? Let's think about like how the consumer is going to resonate or connect with what you're sending. They are looking at subject [00:15:00] line, preheader, first couple of words that show up in a preview in like sub second response time and the brand name. And if they love you in the brand name and, you know, and why you, then you better be like, you know, really visible and just get to the point of what do we see in now with holiday, we should probably talk about.

Holiday.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I, I am curious your reaction to this and it's, it's, this is going to be like a true confession time for someone in the email space, but you know, like, like people in almost any profession, particularly email marketing, I'm, I end up on a ton of lists, subscriptions, et cetera. I don't even remember where they come from.

Right. And some of them I want, and some of them are too hard to unsubscribe. So increasingly. My morning routine. I know the keystrokes like by heart, uh, in my client of choice is like inbox on view inbox unread. And then I'll select all for an entire screen full of messages [00:16:00] and unclick. Based on who? And nuke the rest of them.

It's like, subject line is a second filter. Who the heck is this from? Is a primary filter. I don't even get to the subject line on probably 50 percent of the messages that come to my inbox. Cause it's like, uh, yeah, sorry. Too much email. Boom. Most of it's gone. And, and the, the brands and people that have been consistent enough to go, Oh yeah, I do want to read what they said.

We'll survive that, that, uh, that cleanse in the morning and I'm not in box zero by any stretch. You think people are going to get there? Uh,

Karen Talavera: I try for inbox zero. Wow. And, and I've got, I don't know, like six or seven inboxes, but they're not all overflowing. I've got a couple consumer, you know? Yeah. Inboxes.

Yeah. It's so funny you mention your process because in my consumer inboxes where I am intentionally subscribing to, to [00:17:00] consumer email from brands I may not even buy from, but you know, in the course of you wanna see what, what they're doing. Want to see what they're sending or, you know, and then, I mean, I get into like rules and folders where I can archive all of that and come back to, oh, I need an example for what blah, blah, blah, or I want to see what so and so sent for Mother's Day, it's still going to be there.

So most, I'm going to admit most of those are Gmail accounts because, you know. Yeah, you can keep the trash,

Matthew Dunn: uh,

Karen Talavera: but yeah, I'll go in and sort alphabetically by sender name, by from name and do the, the kind of mass delete knowing that I can always get to that later. Cause it's going to be archived. I can search, I can find it, but Hey, if it's a brand like right now around holiday that I literally might want to buy from, you know, I'll undelete just like you.

It's like, wait, what am I actually going to look at in this particular session while I'm in my inbox? [00:18:00] Yeah. And then I got to process it or whatever, deal with it now or later. Now, if it's a notice from my bank or, or I don't know, an order confirmation, I want to save. Yeah. I'm going

Matthew Dunn: to deal with it. Yeah.

You're going to deal with it. Right. And that That, that dance of not losing the stuff that's actually, you know, what's, what's the Eisenhower quadrant, you know, urgent and important versus urgent, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, oi, it's, it, it never stops. It just never stops.

Karen Talavera: It does it is and we used to say this about social media when it was new back in the day.

Um, and still true today. And I think it's, it's even more true of the inbox than it used to be true of the inbox. It's just an ever flowing river. And I think that's a great mindset, um, uh, point for brand marketers to think about if you are not in the river, constantly visible to where your [00:19:00] customer on the bank is standing, if you're not constantly floating by giving them a chance to jump on board, you know, you're missing.

Yeah, yeah, you're, you're, you know, literally missing the boat. Your boat is missing.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, which goes to what you said earlier about cadence, doesn't it? Right? Are you, you know, are you at least regular enough for the go? Oh, I know who that is, but I've read something else from them. I will actually, I might pay attention to this one.

Karen Talavera: Are you staying top of mind, right? So when they're ready to, to buy or do the next step and whatever your conversion process is or consideration process, you're there because these days your absence will not be noticed. Right. You know, it might have been at one point, but your absence will be like completely forgotten.

So, yeah. That's the argument for a lot of social media is I have to be omnipresent. I have to constantly be visible and get engaging people. I would say, yeah, you got to be visible in the inbox to

Matthew Dunn: consider. [00:20:00] Yeah, that makes makes a ton of sense. And it means that it means that a brand signing up for an email program needs to recognize they're signing up for a constant thing.

Not an occasional thing. Yep. Yep.

Karen Talavera: I'm uh, I mean, we may not see it too much because like I mentioned earlier, I don't work with a ton of, of really small businesses, you know, the main street USA corner store kind of thing, but I'm still amazed by how many sites I'll come across in a decent mid sized business that are not doing everything they can.

To monetize their traffic into an email list. They're not capturing new subscribers. Yeah, absolutely. And they're missing the welcome. And it's such low hanging fruit now that, but it's so important.

Matthew Dunn: It pays off. Yes. So yeah, absolutely. The, the, um, the last guest on the future of email, in fact, that, that episode will go up hopefully soon.

It was a, a gent who, uh, founded a, [00:21:00] a golf club manufacturer. and built it and eventually sold it, um, mostly on the strength of how much and how smartly they used their email list, which I found really, really interesting to talk with him about. Like he recognized that not only was that capture that way of contacting people, uh, vital, but he, he was diligent about using it as a two way medium.

He said, every time I think we should bring out this club versus that club, I'd ask the list. Oh yeah. And a lot of times. I was wrong, but by listening to the customers and asking them. Instead of making a million dollar bet on something that wasn't going to sell, he made a million dollar bet manufacturing the one much more likely to sell.

And, you know, you kind of go, duh, of course, but a lot of people don't do that duh, of course thing, right? Well,

Karen Talavera: here's another mindset shift, you know, and I used to cringe. I still cringe at the word blast, you know, and we talked for years and email [00:22:00] about batch and blast and, you know, kind of one size fits all messaging and trying to move people away from that.

Um, and I think we've been pretty successful again, more automations, more journeys, more thinking through point in time messaging, but yeah, what about making that shift to how do I make it more two way? Am I asking my customers more than just an automated post purchase trust pilot review

Matthew Dunn: thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, really actually asked me something because surprisingly in the mantra of Provide something of value. Asking my opinion reads as something of value. Legitimately is something of value. Oh, like you actually care about my vote on, you know, what I'm likely to put in my golf bag. Okay, you know, this one, not that one, right?

Boy, that's a hand that's going up in the rankings in my head automatically. Absolutely.

Karen Talavera: And I have just recently designed a couple of, uh, wind back and reactivation campaigns. So another great automated journey for that point in the life [00:23:00] cycle where a customer might be really getting inactive, you're seeing some attrition, you're not sure if they're well, a couple of things could be happening.

They're just not buying. They're not transacting or they're no longer interested in the channel and you want to reactivate interest in both. And a great touch in that process is a survey. You know? Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us more. Like, what do you want? What do you want to hear about? What are you not getting?

Could be just two questions. Three questions. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Great source of info. And on the front end as well. How about in the welcome and onboarding?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I like that a lot, actually.

Karen Talavera: Yeah, I think we forget some of those touches. They're still in a marketing stream or marketing campaign, but can be research oriented.

Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and, and not so much sell, sell, sell, which is refreshing when you don't get sell, sell, sell relief.[00:24:00]

Oh, video froze again. I'm gonna give it a second.

Karen Talavera: Um, yeah, we, we, I always say, you know, it's, it's hard for, it's hard for B2C brands. Ecom brands, right? Yeah, but I always say don't be the friend who only calls when you need something And we know you constantly need money to come in the door. We know emails, you know huge contributor to that Um when i've looked at you know, a lot of like Ga dashboards, it's often Number two in revenue generation, next to paid and sometimes organic search, you know, so of course the temptation to just constantly send buy, buy, buy messages, promos and deals is really tempting, or it's really tempting, but break it up, you know, what can you break it up with?

You could break it up with content. You could break it up with, yeah, survey.

Matthew Dunn: [00:25:00] Yeah. Something, or, you know, send me something related that you think is of value. Yeah.

Karen Talavera: Games, trivia, gamify, some stuff. Um, yeah, all of the above. This

Matthew Dunn: is a, it's a bit of a segue, but. I'm curious your take on how text messaging is starting to fit in into companies cadences and communications because here's my segue takeoff.

I've got a couple brands that I bothered to say yes to text messaging, but what they do. is sell, sell, sell. And what they've really done is train me to wait for the sale, right? It's like, okay, it's going to go on sale sooner or later because you only have so many, so many things. And I know I'm going to get the every other day this is on sale.

So if, you know, if I need that, eh, I'll wait a month and sooner or later. You'll sell it for less and I'll, I'll, I'll get it then. Um, how does text fit and how are you seeing it fit? And how do you tell [00:26:00] clients to make it fit?

Karen Talavera: Yeah, that's a great question. Um, supplement and compliment would be my advice about SMS plus email.

Don't just completely like,

so it's a great, um, it's a great follow up. I think there are things you can do. This has always been the case with email where you can do channel exclusives. Whatever that might be. Access, discounts, it could be early bird stuff. You could do that with SMS, you know, but do it differently for each because there's got to be some unique value prop for somebody to start getting marketing texts.

And I know I've done it. I've signed up for SMS from a couple of brands. I, you know, I siphoned it off to my non primary phone number. Yes. Whatever. Yeah, I've got my little. Containers and buckets. We're dealing with all of this, but, um, [00:27:00] I, I, I like, you know, I like watching what happens as a study and how people are using it.

And so a lot of times it's, it's tight if it's promos and, and, you know, for selling purposes, tight deadlines, category exclusives. Yeah, you know, things are not promoting on the website and they're not going to push through email. Yeah. And that's, that's the value add of getting the text. But I think we got to be careful because it's more expensive

Matthew Dunn: to send those texts.

It's much more expensive. Yeah, it's much more expensive. And I think it's, I think it can backfire. More quickly because it's such a high priority. Yeah, high priority interrupt. Sorry, I may, I'm dating myself by saying that, but Right. Like, ding, it's interruptive, right? I'm gonna look right. Yeah. And if you, if you, if you nag me every day with stupid stuff, boy you're like, you're gonna get a joke.

Karen Talavera: I've done it. I, I, yeah, I've already ejected and unsubscribed from a couple of the brands I've [00:28:00] subscribed to just because the volume is too much. It's not what's, you know, the expression, um, it's, it's not relevant enough. It's not urgent enough. You know, and what they're selling, I don't need enough that I'm going to be in there all the time, but I'm glad that you brought up, you know, that we condition people.

This has been going on an email since, like, the, the beginning days of cart abandon and browse abandon, you know, you just wait for the discount. We condition people. It's just like, oh, well, I'll just. Stick it in my cart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get 30 percent off or free shipping or whatever. And then brands finally got wise to that and said, well, all right, now we're going to change up our cart abandon strategy or browse abandon.

Yeah. And, and, and, and some of them got really smart and said, yeah, we're going to clear your cart. You know, like we're not going to let you just. Keep this as your personal, personal wishlist and pray that, you know, you send you a deal and then you buy. So [00:29:00] that same thing is going to play out with SMS. You know, if, if, if brands start seeing that people are only buying and some, listen, some brands have this and it's a real problem.

All they have are discount shoppers. That's it.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And I suspect we're probably thinking of some of the, some of the same companies, uh, like, come on, don't you have a better story than this? Cause I actually do buy stuff from you regularly, but yeah. Um,

Karen Talavera: yeah. Again, back, back to thinking strategically, just about your promotional strategy across the board.

Yeah, you know, it, it doesn't have to be, you know, site wide 20 percent off sale every month, right? It should be segment specific. It should be category specific. It should be seasonally

Matthew Dunn: specific, seasonally specific. I, I, I have to say, and I'm very curious your opinion about this. I'm increasingly sanguine about whether or [00:30:00] not the first party personalization that's such a common paradigm.

is actually particularly effective. Most companies I talk to don't have enough data to know much about their customer base because they're looking at it purely through the lens of their interactions, you know, email, website and purchase, which by no means tells them about me.

Karen Talavera: Time for, you know, boy, if there's ever a heyday for data scientists and data analytics, it, it should be this decade because that's true, whether you can collect some of the demographic psychographic information about a person, first party, or you can, you, you can get it from third party sources. Yeah, sure.

Get it, get it, you know, do some overlays and send your file out, you know, and. And, and get it back with all of that, [00:31:00] um, the ba some of the basic demos, but also some of the persona data that's available out there to learn. Yeah. You know, is this person a, um, on the forefront of like they're a new tech adopter or they're, are they early adopter?

Are they a late adopter? Right. Are they um, yeah, a discount buyer? Are they a luxury buyer? Yeah. I mean.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. One of the, one of the, We're going to miss it in society. Yeah. One of the reasons Facebook has been. Let's call it a successful competitor for marketing spend to email. Yeah. As a closed ecosystem, they're, they're, they're generating that kind of insight all the time and monetizing it.

Very, very, very adroitly pay over and over. Try to get in, you know, get in front of my eyeballs and I don't go on Facebook. So we'll leave that aside for a second. It's like, right. But we're competing with that level of personalization with what we're trying to do in the inbox. And if we're slowly [00:32:00] looking through the Venetian blind of what we happen to sell.

It's a pretty, that's a pretty scanty view of the customer, my humble opinion.

Karen Talavera: I agree. Yeah. You can make inferences, but you might not be able to draw conclusions and they might not be accurate. And they might not be

Matthew Dunn: accurate.

Karen Talavera: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, some businesses again, B2C, Ecom, right. You, you got a good, like, If you are a, um, a go to place for gift buyers and some categories more than others are going to fall into that, then yeah, you can identify, you know, people that only buy at holiday.

As a gift rather than themselves, right? Right. Just say there's going to be pretty accurate there because you can look at timing and you can look at, you know, the shipping us and and all of that. But yeah, other than that, I mean, you could see somebody buying. Jeans over and over when you also sell jackets and shoes or [00:33:00] subject near and dear to my heart, you know, they're buying ski

Matthew Dunn: apparel, right?

I was going to ask you,

Karen Talavera: what about a helmet? What about the skis? What about poles? What about, you know,

Matthew Dunn: we'll tie, we'll tie this into email. Or marketing somehow, but I just read an article about I worked in. I actually worked in the ski industry for about 4 years, oddly enough. So I understand at least a little bit about it, but.

I saw an article the other day that said Vail has announced, uh, I think it's, yeah, VRI, they own like half the resorts in America now, right? They've announced a pretty disruptive approach to equipment rental. Oh, yes. They're going basically Uber, Uber for skis, boots, and, you know, skis, boots, boards, and binding, you know, and they'll deliver it wherever you want them to meet you.

Uh, on the day that you want to ski and I'm thinking, okay, that's an app [00:34:00] and text messaging and all sorts of other stuff neatly wrapped into taking the headache. Out of stumping through the parking lot with, with the big boards over your shoulder in ski boots. Like, wow, this may really take off. What do you think?

Well,

Karen Talavera: I'm going to be careful what I say because as both a marketer and a part time Vale Resorts employee. Yes. Um, yes, you know, Matt and I were chatting ahead of time that I'm a recent full time resident of Colorado and coming up on, I know, so excited. I live up by Keystone and Breckenridge Resorts, um, for anyone familiar.

So coming up on my second year of being a part time ski instructor, which is if you love to ski or, or, or ride snowboard. Greatest side hustle ever because the minimum gig is only 17 days for the whole season, so you could easily fit this into weekends and, um, there's boy, there's a ton of systems stuff that veil [00:35:00] has going on.

They are definitely going through a digital transformation process, both from the guest side and the employee side. I just got an email. Like now we have a new time card system and we're going to have a new scheduling system. So. I can, I look at this through the Martech lens. I put my Martech glasses on and I'm like, what in the holy hell is going on behind the scenes because it looks painful to me.

Yeah. Outside. But yes, at the end of last season, they announced, um, our pass is going to be now available on a mobile app. Sweet first time ever. You could just scan your phone. Don't have to have a plastic hard card pass. Yes. And equipment rental. And a lot of us instructors sort of rolled our eyes and said, Oh, boy, this is going to be really interesting.

Because, you know, what happens when you have first time or newer beginner skiers. Possibly renting equipment for the first time. They don't know how the boot's gonna [00:36:00] feel. They don't know what length of snowboard or skis or anything else to get. Um, for the experienced guest, I think, yeah, it could be awesome, right?

Have it right delivered to your door. You know what you need, you know what you want, how it's going to play out across the spectrum of this customer base. I'm holding my breath. I'm not exhaling yet.

Matthew Dunn: But, but think of it in the context of our, you know, conversation about marketing, knowing the customer, customer journey, you know, won't work overnight.

There'll be all sorts of teething pains. But there's a good, there's a good argument to be made that eventually VRI is going to know a ridiculous amount about the customer. Like they already, they already do.

Karen Talavera: They already do. Yeah. And they're going to learn even more. Um, so you're right. There's going to be growing pains.

There's going to be kinks to work out, [00:37:00] you know, they're there, but they're trying to move in that direction. And.

Matthew Dunn: Economic building,

Karen Talavera: right? And honestly, you know, boy, okay, who knows is going to see this. I'd love to have them as a client.

Matthew Dunn: Wouldn't that be fun? Right? It's a challenging industry to be sure.

Karen Talavera: Just the messaging, you know, when I look at what I, and I know I'm, I'm not seeing it all because of course, you know, I've been a, uh, I've been a long time Vail Resorts client. I mean, I was my current client now as a ski instructor. I was the student. I was. The guest, you know, as a once a week, a year, twice a week would be a bonus vacations here.

All I got five or six days of like, Oh my God, I got to be on the hill every day. And I'm in lessons every day and that kind of thing. And, and I'm signed up for email from, I don't know how many of their different resorts, but a lot of it's pushing lodging [00:38:00] reservations. Yeah, lift tickets and all that. But there's so much that they can do that.

I don't think they're doing as much as they could in the education side and the helpful like, Hey, you know, you, you just signed up, you just bought your first lift ticket ever, you know, here's how to make your day. Here's how we're going to make your day easier. Here are some shortcuts. You just signed up your kids for lessons for the first time ever.

You know, five step plan to make sure they get the most out of their day. What number one would be, please make sure they eat breakfast. Yes. Like Peter's child.

Matthew Dunn: Right? We won't get into that, but

Karen Talavera: this is a

Matthew Dunn: choice for opportunity. Oh, huge opportunity. And huge opportunity to get it right. You know,

Karen Talavera: because the guest experience better because a lot of any skier knows or anyone who's even tried and it has bailed on.

It knows how difficult it is to learn. It's a heavy lift when you're a newcomer. [00:39:00] Yeah. Just like walking from the parking lot to the base with your skis. You're exhausted by the time. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. We will digress into skiing all day, but, uh, but no, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a great microcosm of how, how could you do it differently and better?

And, and arguably it would actually have a positive business outcome because it's hard to get people back. It's hard to get people to go beyond that first, usually crap experience. To become habitual, which is what you're, you know, long run. That's probably what you're after 3 percent of the American population skis or boards of that 3%.

A third will do it in a given year. We're talking about literally 1 percent of the market. You're trying to get as your customers. You really want them to have a good time.

Karen Talavera: Uh, and you really want them to come back. But, but repeat, look, repeat business is the name of the game for everybody. Whether you are, [00:40:00] you know, cosmetics and personal care, um, apparel, yeah, uh, hello, fresh, you know, meal delivery, consumables.

Yeah. Yeah, it's always, you know, you've got to keep that share of wallet share of mind. Yeah. Um, but what great opportunities, you know, to tell customers how to use your products better. How to anticipate what else they might, what might, you know, what their needs might be, anticipate their needs, but also how to help them consider what else might compliment their purchase.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, or buying shoes for kids. Kids are going to grow. What do you, what do you, how do you think ahead? How do you get them to think ahead and make the repeat experience? easier for them and ensure that they, that they have it, that they come back.

Matthew Dunn: I'm thinking that, I'm thinking my, uh, my, my, my friend with the, uh, who ran the golf company, um, companies of a certain size kind of need a court jester to keep the customer hat on and say, no, no, [00:41:00] no, this is what it's actually like.

To do business with you. This is why I bought it or subscribed or whatever. This is what I did, but this is what, you know, this is what I need you to do differently to make it better. Cause it's pretty easy to get like the ski companies, right? It's easy to get in the myopia of everyone knows how to get to the lift in their boots.

Now they don't write the court. Jester would say, Oh God, that was awful. Right? Make that better. Please. Yeah, yeah,

Karen Talavera: absolutely. So, I mean, I don't know where this is the future of email, right? And emails been around for, I mean, we start the clock lots of different places easily quarter century now still not going away.

Still the original killer

Matthew Dunn: app. And the one that people will reach for when they need to express themselves. Happy, unhappy, whatever else. One of the things I find myself chewing on more and more is, Wait a minute, this is a two way channel. So much of the marketing [00:42:00] stuff I get is basically, We don't want to hear from you.

Which I think is kind of dumb. Like, yeah you do. You really do.

Karen Talavera: So, so give them a way to do

Matthew Dunn: it. Yeah. So give them a way to do it. Right. Like you said, surveys, you know, ask them questions, whatever else. Yeah. Not going to, not going to go away anytime soon. Well, you're liking Colorado. I take it. I love

Karen Talavera: Colorado.

Yeah. Awesome decision. Best playground ever.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Beautiful state. And, and if people haven't been there to, to realize how amazing it is in the summer, cause it's easy to get the cliche sort of ski cliche in your head, but Colorado in the summer, it's pretty darn special place.

Karen Talavera: Well, when I first came out in 2020, um, yeah, despite the pandemic, I spent a summer and I heard from a lot of people, people come for the winter and stay for the summer.

The summer is kind of what clinches it. But yeah, I'll just say, I mean, it's [00:43:00] Denver's a growing tech hub. Yeah. Lots of us are virtual nationwide, you know, professionals in the mountain towns. I work nationwide. We see each other at conferences, you know, around the circuit and so forth. So, um, yeah, it's, it's pretty great.

If you can, you know, have a lot that lets you live. Where you want. Yeah, I figured

Matthew Dunn: out how to make all of, make all of that, uh, work. So, you know, kudos to you for doing it. Well, Karen, let's wrap up. I didn't, I didn't get to tie up your whole morning, even though I, I'm sure we could probably talk about this stuff all day, but it's really been a, it's really been a delight.

I knew it would be. Thank you. Thank

Karen Talavera: you so much for asking me. And likewise.

Matthew Dunn: Where does someone hunt you down if they say, Oh, wow, we need her help with strategy.

Karen Talavera: Synchronicitymarketing.

Matthew Dunn: com. There you go. Synchronicitymarketing. com. Karen Talavera. Karen, thanks a lot. We are out.

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