Key Takeaways:

1. You can’t do 1:1 personalization unless you’re doing ‘message automation.’ This isn’t just automating the sending of emails, but also the content within it. Too often, the BAU loop — business as usual — prevents us from ever getting this deep in the first place!
2. Don’t let BAU cripple your creativity! This occurs when, say, you’re building an email, while meanwhile your design team is working on  a component to be placed within the HTML, you begin testing, but you find that something’s not quite right. You go back, have things re-designed, re-coded, re-tested, and all systems are go! You’re set to send, and then you see that the offer changes or that the product just went out of stock. Matt’s seen cases where it  took three weeks just to send one email. Don’t let that be you any longer!
3. Email is alive and well. It’s only becoming more timely, accurate, and effective! Don’t try to personalize everything all at once, though. Matt mentions the ‘marginal gains’ mentality — where you build one bit of personalization, get it out the door, see its effects, and go from there. If you commit to this progress, by the end of a year, you’ll be looking at a completely different email program than when you began.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/email-is-not-dead-matt-hayes

Key Takeaways:

1. Gather your team. You’ll be most successful with RFM modeling if there are a couple of you working on it together – someone to help you dig into the data, someone to craft the content, etc.
2. Then, get to scoring and automating. Using Caren’s model, start scoring your customers based on the recency, frequency, and monetary values of their purchases. Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to start crafting messages for your segments and monitoring to see what works and tweaking what doesn’t.
3. Just do it. Dive in. Take the plunge. Caren and her team at Benjamin David Group spell out all the steps for you so, if this sounds like it could help you retain your customers and improve your bottom line, download the eBook and just get started.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/rfm-modeling-caren-carrasco

Key Takeaways:

1. What does your marketer plus machine blueprint look like? Are you there yet? Well, I’m here, as is Chris, to let you know something you shouldn’t forget: it’s OK if you’re still working on learning about how machines can complement your marketing. You’re NOT in the minority if you’re still working on integrating AI, ML, and automations. All good things take time! So long as you’re making progress, don’t worry about anyone else.
2. Maybe you don’t need ultra-advanced, super complex automations, algorithms, and AI across your arsenal. Sideshow knows that building trust with customers in meaningful ways is critical, so they focus mainly on areas their audience hangs out, on social listening and Facebook advertising. No need to jump into the deep end if all of your fish swim in the shallow.
3. Make authentic connections – whatever that means for you. Chris shared one of the most inspiring quotes we’ve heard from any guest thus far – and it’s a mic drop moment, so I’ll leave you with this thought: “The most effective marketing is marketing in which you really touch someone’s heart.”

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/authenticity-chris-pirrotta

Key Takeaways:

1. Are you on Amazon? Should you be? How is the mega marketplace best suited to help you meet the objectives of your unique business? Or maybe it’s not? Could it help you sell more products or help you raise brand awareness?
2. What channels are you using to not only market your business and interact with customers but to also actually sell your products? That’s a massive question and it’s not to be taken lightly. However, it’s an important one to continue to ask yourself. What do your customers want? Don’t overshoot, but do aim to meet them where they are.
3. It’s a lot. A whole lot. So keep your expectations in check in regards to what’s possible, what’s needed to best serve your customers, and to innovate along with the rapidly changing opportunities in the marketplace.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/amazon-ecommerce-brian-beck 

Key Takeaways:

1. As Sandra says, we have to “think about what the right channel for each person is, along with the right content, context, time, and frequency… as she said “the number of possibilities increase a ton and it becomes hard for the marketer to figure all of that out if they don’t have the machine to rely on.” So, use machines to help you where it makes sense.
2. How can you break through and be more customer centric? If they want to, WorldRemit’s app users can sign up for daily push notifications to see daily transfer rates instead of typical emails. These notifications alone drive nearly 8% of their app traffic. Find what your audience wants, and deliver it!
3. Not everything that matters is measurable, and not everything that’s measurable matters. This is the second time I’ve heard this in the past week, and for good reason: the data explosion can create a mental construct that “if we can, we should.” But it’s not that  simple, and not always feasible to measure everything under the sun. Identify the activities and key results you’re looking to drive, and focus there.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/worldremit-marketing-sandra-wroe

Key Takeaways:

1. To any marketer still feeling skeptical about AI: as Maria says, “demystify it!” AI isn’t like Terminator portrays it, nor will some robot come take your job. Educate yourself and learn all you can. Then, find a specific use case based on one aspect of your marketing process you want to resolve, optimize, automate, or improve.
2. Using AI is a choice. Instead of spending ridiculous amounts of time sorting through spreadsheets, choose more time for strategy. Where you once manually created marketing messages for each customer, choose machine learning. In lieu of repetitive tasks that ring you dry by day’s end, choose automation. These are all byproducts of using AI.
3. Third, as Maria alludes to, AI is a double-edged sword. It can help detach us from our very human laziness and biases… butttt we also have to be careful, collectively, to make sure our algorithms are processing all of this data in an unbiased way. We have to collect, manage, and store data – and write and program our machines – so that they avoid bias in any way, but still achieve what we need.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/artificial-intelligence-maria-flores-portillo

Key Takeaways:

1. It helps you see opportunities to create master templates. What common elements could you combine into one or a few templates to use instead of creating so many custom emails?
2. Consider adding basic stats about performance to your "wall of emails." This will help you test assumptions about which emails worked and which didn’t.
3. Start tracking some stats around the process. For example, how long did it take from start to finish to create and ship an email? How many people had to be involved? Include that on your wall with each email, too. This should help you see what designs, layouts, content types and formats were faster to create and which were most cumbersome.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/email-power-user-elliot-ross

Key Takeaways:

1. First, you have to know every customer’s buying stage, which brands they have an affinity for, what they’ve bought in the past, and recent purchases, and then use the right tools that enable the kind of targeting that you want to do in alignment with your overarching goals.
2. Second, don’t shy away from the seemingly scary stuff. Data, AI, machine learning, voice, and even developing working partnerships with your IT team to bring it all together are a reality that needs to come to fruition if we are to truly advance, adopt, and adapt to the rapid pace of marketing today.
3. Third, lifecycle marketing can’t be overlooked. Don’t know where to begin? Start with customer journey mapping – even basic historical data like who you sold something to and what you sold them can tell you a lot. Then, when you’ve got the right tech, you can start to look at and act on things like propensity to buy, AOV, loyalty status, and more, bringing it all full circle.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/customer-data-chelsea-mueller

Key Takeaways:

1. Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts. Yes, data is critically important. Yes, you should measure as much as you're reasonably able. And yes, it’s imperative that you analyze results. But these components don’t tell the entire story. You still must interpret this information, decide what it all means, and get creative with what it’s telling you.
2. Give yourself a break. All the pressure you’re putting on yourself -- or that others may be putting on you -- to do more, be better, implement all the technology, get into all the latest tools and platforms, build up your tech stack... EVERYONE is feeling it. That includes those that have larger teams and budgets than you, your competitors, and even industry leaders. Everyone is struggling to get ahead of the curve. Just keep swimming.
3. Branding, authenticity, experiences, strategy, content, and creative all matter, perhaps now more than ever. In a world where we're surrounded by technology that can do more and more, it’s up to us and our uniquely human brains to deliver meaningful human experiences. It’s up to us to create resonance and win over the hearts, wallets, and algorithms of consumers.
   

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/ecommerce-trends-tyler-sickmeyer

Key Takeaways:

1. 73% of consumers prefer direct mail over other advertising methods, and just over half of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy marketing vehicle. Print marketing -- or direct mail -- is a "cheap" channel, as Rob puts it, but there's a lot of ways to use and integrate it with your other channels. Print/direct mail no longer has to be siloed, either, and is becoming more easily integrated within the overall CRM system.
2. As a performance channel, automated, personalized direct mail -- like cart abandonment or post-purchase mailers -- breaks through the clutter and grabs attention where other brands just aren't reaching out. What's old is becoming new, again.
3. Application of customer data to direct mail campaigns -- as part of an omnichannel approach -- can create a new revenue stream and works to reach to all demographics across virtually all use cases.

Full Shownotes:

• https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/podcasts/direct-mail-robert-rebholz