Take that, rewind it back - Season Recap and Email Camp MessageMania

00:00:00

Eric Trinidad: Welcome to Email's Not Dead. My name is Eric and this is Jonathan.

00:00:09

Jonathan Torres: Hello.

00:00:10

Eric Trinidad: We're a couple of geeks here to talk to you about email, as we do whenever we host these things. This episode, we're here to talk to you prior to Email Camp about the things we've learned this season and what we're excited about for the future.   

00:00:26

Jonathan Torres: Well, I feel like we need to go to the past to get to the future. Back to the Future, right?

00:00:33

Eric Trinidad: Thank you, thank you. I feel like that's completely on-theme for Email Camp that's coming up, with Message Mania being the whole thing, kind of leaning into the wrestling theme. I don't follow it, so I'm sorry if I'm out of reference.

00:00:53

Jonathan Torres: That's okay. I think the only wrestling reference I really know is Nacho Libre, and that's like 15 years old. So I feel like if I lean into that, we'll be okay.

00:01:02

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, I agree. That's going to be totally fine. But with Message Mania coming up and the whole Email Camp thing, I know it's been on my mind. We haven't really done a final episode for season five. So let's do that. I think it's a good way we can get back to our roots, the whole first season where it was just you and me sitting in the room talking email, putting good word out there.

00:01:31

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, exactly. Let's look into what that's going to lead us into or what we assume will be the new topics coming up and how the current topics are also influencing those kinds of things.

00:01:47

Eric Trinidad: So part of the stuff that we talked about in the past, just with Allison Grudy from Braze and Nick Schafer, our own deliverability daddy, was the deliverability report that came out late last year. We have another one coming out soon, and I think that's part of the panel that we're going to be speaking on this year, speaking directly with Google and Yahoo.

00:02:14

Jonathan Torres: Looking back at the report that was previously put out, some of the things that we saw that were exciting, or not exciting but surprising, was how honest folks were in there just telling us like, "Hey, yeah, I think we purchase our lists." You know, doing the wrong thing, just throwing it all out there, just doing it wrong and just proud of it.

00:02:45

Eric Trinidad: And that's fine, you know, but I think that's part where we come in, right? We want to talk about being better people and being good citizens of the internet. You know, just cleaning your list, making sure you have permission to send to those individuals that you got on your list. And how did you get those folks? Not purchasing them, because you don't want to do that. But of course, having them sign up either through your form, through your website, or if you have some kind of event that they've agreed to receive your newsletter and any type of documentation that you want to put out there.

00:03:22

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, and I think it's one of those things too where when we look at that past, we look at the history, there were a lot of people reporting throughout the past years what they had been doing and what their emailing practices looked like, or you know, what they were just doing and not improving on any practices when it comes to best practice type stuff.

00:03:44

Eric Trinidad: And I think that was, yes, 100%, it was nice to see honesty. It was nice to see them saying, "Hey, this is what we're doing. This is what's going on." You know, if we were to break that down even further, it's one of those things where it felt like they were practices or behaviors that were being done without any experience on what should be the right thing.

00:04:05

Jonathan Torres: And I think that's also a big thing, and I'm pretty sure we talked about it on the actual episode. Foggy memory, it feels like it was, you know, 10 years ago, I'm sure. But it's one of those things where it needs to be focused. If you're sending email, if you're doing anything within the email space, you probably want to talk to somebody, you probably want to seek some advice, you probably want to do some things that are going to allow you to find out what's the good and right way to do it.

00:04:34

Eric Trinidad: And those things are two different things. There's a good way to do it, there's a right way to do it, there's a best practice following way to do it, and there's definitely a wrong way to do it. Unfortunately, even most recently within the last couple of days, I talked to somebody who was doing exactly the wrong thing, and you know, it's like a hand-waving thing. Like, don't do this.

00:04:51

Jonathan Torres: They were well into their business, well into the way that they're doing things, and it's wrong. And now to backtrack from their whole entire business model on how they're doing things and how they're sending email and how they're collecting email addresses, it's much tougher to be all the way down that road, be in a spot where you're already fully integrated into your systems and everything you've built. And now say, "Oh, I got to rip it all back up because this is not going right. I'm getting blocked everywhere. I'm getting throttled everywhere," and you have to tear it all down and start from step one again.

00:05:28

Eric Trinidad: So future forward thinking part of this is definitely to say, talk to somebody, listen to somebody, listen to something, listen to this podcast. We're not super experts all the time. We try to be experts as much as we can be. But we love bringing in people who are the experts and who are, you know, people that we've seen do really good things in the field.

00:05:49

Jonathan Torres: And I think that's something that everybody should look to do. If you have the ability to do it, talk to them directly, listen to things, look at those blog posts. There are so many resources out there, and it's just a matter of where do you fit, where are you at? You know, if you have the budget to hire an expert to do that, great. If all you can do is listen to podcasts, that's free and downloadable everywhere. Great. We're here.

00:06:10

Eric Trinidad: So, but do something. As you start building into those things and as you start getting bigger and as your list grows and you start getting further reach, be proactive about it. Don't wait until the last minute because then you can end up in a much worse spot.

00:06:24

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, absolutely, man. And if you're interested to hear what we said or how things went down, especially with Allison - she was great, hilarious, new friend that we've met. So excited to see her back in the community and hopefully we'll get to work with her more in the future here.

00:06:41

Eric Trinidad: But speaking of professionals, we had our next guest from Yahoo come down and talk to us specifically about the enforcement that happened with Google and Yahoo, their collaboration with the DMARC policy, with the one-click unsubscribes, and I'm forgetting the other one. What's the other one?

00:07:00

Jonathan Torres: Authentication.

00:07:04

Eric Trinidad: Authentication, there you go. Authentication all the way around. And then also managing your spam threshold to 0.3%, making sure you're under that as well.

00:07:16

Jonathan Torres: We had Marcel Becker. He came out to kind of talk about the collaboration and explain what's actually going on. It was kind of a big shock for a lot of folks on the sending side of the community where they kind of dropped the news, this is going to happen and you have six months to really kind of get on the ball before this is going to happen.

00:07:45

Eric Trinidad: So it was great to have him come on and be part of the community and explain a little bit further about what was going to happen and it's not as scary as, you know, a lot of people thought was going to go down. I think a lot of that had to do with some of the conversations that we've been having, the conversations that we've had in the past regarding how to just be a better sender overall, and it was just more enforcement of the things that we've been talking about for years, right?

00:08:13

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, a long time. And speaking of which, you know, that was episode two and it was a long time ago, it feels again, and we've been talking about it ever since and the conversation has not gone away on what this means for the email community and then how that's going to evolve. I think that's the next part of it, right?

00:08:30

Eric Trinidad: Yes, we have something that is today. We got to talk to Marcel, and please, you know, Marcel is not just a Marcel out there, but he's the Marcel. He's the Senior Director of Product Management at Yahoo. So he's somebody who's really ingrained into how they were doing this, what they were going to do, implementing the whole thing. That's the right people to be talking to about that.

00:08:53

Jonathan Torres: And I was very happy that we were able to get him to come on to the podcast and explain a lot of those things and really talk about what their thoughts were. I think in conjunction with all the exact verbiage of what this is and all the different things that they're going to have to do. But I know that the primary thought behind this and one of the big drivers I think from within the email community to do this is authentication, authentication in a way that's going to help protect systems from being bombarded consistently with spam.

00:09:22

Eric Trinidad: And I know it's a stepping stone. It isn't the end-all-be-all. Spam will exist till the day I die. I feel like I don't think it's ever going away in any significant way. It's gonna be around, it has been around, and all we can ever do is help combat it. Authentication to help prevent spoofing and help prevent abuse in that way is already step one, and that's DMARC and DKIM and SPF. All that's going to help really filter out you being the sender that you say you are.

00:09:54

Jonathan Torres: But then it also helps filter behaviors, right? If you're not doing the right thing, you're gonna have to be authenticated. You're also going to then have to not spam people. That's the key. Identify yourself as you. If you're not doing that, if you're sending bulk email without any identification, that's already a step further or a step greater into better identification or helping identify those bad actors.

00:10:19

Eric Trinidad: And even if they do authenticate and do authenticate correctly, then that spam threshold, you know, being able to see and correctly attribute the spam scores to the right people is definitely another step. And I think that that's super, super helpful.

00:10:30

Jonathan Torres: So the future then is kind of coming in with the one-click unsubscribes. We're already seeing different businesses do different implementations. Specifically Google, who wasn't necessarily on the panel, but they are definitely one of the people starting to do this whole DMARC authentication. I know it's been given a lovely name of "Yahoogle" in the community.

00:10:53

Eric Trinidad: But yeah, whenever you come into the DMARC authentication protocols, Google's already using some of that to their benefit and helping people really see what's coming into their mailbox and then helping people identify. "Hey, I don't want this email, let me properly unsubscribe." And I know that's a scary thing because as a sender you want to send, you want to make sure your email is out there.

00:11:14

Jonathan Torres: You know how much of an impact that has with the number of emails you send out and then how much is returned back. But it's also one of those things that you do want people to unsubscribe if they're no longer interested because it's better to have them out of your list, you know, and still have the potential of keeping them as a customer through other means rather than them just seeing your emails as unimportant, letting it go to the junk folder, letting it go to a folder that they're not checking anymore.

00:11:38

Eric Trinidad: And then what's another topic for conversation whenever you talked about a folder inbox, you know, a divided inbox. Definitely one of those things where we want to make sure that we're respecting the recipients on our list and if they don't want it, they don't want it. Let's remove them, let's concentrate on the people that are there and that'll usually help increase in a better way with more visibility, it landing in the correct folders.

00:11:58

Jonathan Torres: It being in front of the right people so that we're getting that return on investment still, right? And of course, like what he was stating also was that the system, of course, is not perfect, but we're trying to get it there. And if there are some false positives or anything like that, his team is there or the support staff is there to assist through the new Sender Hub that they've been developing.

00:12:18

Eric Trinidad: So if you meet all your requirements, you're doing all the right things, but for some reason, you still get tagged for some of this, there's a way to reach out and get in contact with them over there and so they can help adjust that reputation or remediate any of those issues that you're seeing. So really great to have Marcel on there. And hopefully, actually, we will be talking with him again soon. So really excited about doing that.

00:12:38

Jonathan Torres: Heck yeah. And then we start dipping into episode number three. That was with Chad White, the writer of the Email Marketing Rules book. It was another great person to have and I know we've talked to him a lot, I think in the recent past. And I know Nick really wanted to get involved and they joined us for that episode.

00:12:59

Eric Trinidad: And it's one of those things where it really has become such a great resource in many different ways to many different people just to know and understand what it is you need to do as a marketer within the email space. And I know he helped clearly define a little bit about how to use the book and how to use the information within the book to help yourself improve as a sender.

00:13:19

Jonathan Torres: Because this is the entire theme of the podcast. You're not surprised by what the content of it is. We want to make sure that you have the resources in the right places. And if it's something where this is something you can invest into, if you're getting started with it, if you need help within your organization, like he clearly outlined what that means, what each one of these volumes means within this fourth edition of the Email Marketing Rules book.

00:13:41

Eric Trinidad: And we encourage everybody to go out there and check it out if you haven't already. If you maybe listened to that episode and thought about doing something like that and checking out that book, now as a reminder, go do it if you haven't done it. Not that we're getting any payment for this because we're definitely not.

00:13:55

Jonathan Torres: But it's one of those things where we can definitely point to this as something that has helped a lot of the people that we work with, that we know, to be able to look and reference and see what's going on and how to do things correctly and how to do things within this space correctly. I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that, Eric. I know this is part of the ones that, you know, it was a focused episode for sure.

00:14:13

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, no, you said everything correctly there. You know, Chad White is a good individual overall. Not only was he great to talk to, but just a good guy. And again, really glad that we were able to get him on. Really great resource. Definitely if you have a chance, follow him on all the socials.

00:14:27

Jonathan Torres: So, right on. Well, we'll jump on the next one here. We had Ash Moore from The DMARC Advisor. I don't know, I'm very confused on the name sometimes.

00:14:35

Eric Trinidad: I think I thought he said it as "Deer" on the episode. I know I've always said "Demartian," but I'm the least person to be an authority on this.

00:14:43

Jonathan Torres: So yeah, Ash Moore from DMARC. And then he kind of talked about it from his perspective too as their support staff helps implement DMARC policies and getting companies and businesses big or small up to compliance.

00:14:55

Eric Trinidad: And that's kind of like where he and his team will assist with reviewing reports or just going back and breaking down how to get things implemented and set up correctly. So, Ash was like, really, really awesome to speak with. We've had him on several times before, so it was great to talk to him and see kind of what he thought about, you know, the big changes that were coming up and his kind of experience in speaking with folks about that.

00:15:22

Jonathan Torres: I didn't mention this when we talked about the stuff that we talked about with Chad White, but it was definitely a theme with Marcel with the implementation of the Yahoo and Google changes. We definitely talked about that a little bit with Chad and broached the topic, but it was the focus here, right? Is those changes on authentication, how we're doing it, what you need to think about, the steps that it takes to get there and there's always so much to talk about.

00:15:48

Eric Trinidad: It's a recurring theme with Ash. We brought him on a lot to talk about DMARC and how DMARC is going to be in the future and where that's gonna go and how things are going to be processed with it. This was an amazing chat to see how that had evolved into something more practical where we had just guessed at some point in the future people were going to want to require this.

00:16:16

Jonathan Torres: People are going to want to say, "Hey, this is gonna be the thing that we're gonna do," and now we're in a world where this is reality. They have implemented some more stricter requirements on who can do that and who needs to do that. I enjoyed that conversation from that perspective on it and I'm sure we'll have Ash on again whenever there are new updates and stuff to the recommendations that are out there and the requirements that are out there.

00:16:39

Eric Trinidad: Now, one of the things that I know is that we know that this is not going to be the end of it, that there is more coming. I think it's inevitable. I think it's one of those things that will happen that we're going to have to keep an eye out for because maybe it is stricter enforcement with the DMARC policies. Maybe it is going up to a quarantine or a reject policy.

00:16:59

Jonathan Torres: Maybe it's something a little different, maybe there's something new that's an authentication protocol, or maybe it's showing up in other parts of the authentication protocol. But I think the theme there, no matter what, is to make sure you're paying attention to things out there in the world that are going to help guide you on how to do those things, help you to implement those things now so that you're ahead of the game and not trying to catch up.

00:17:24

Eric Trinidad: One of my favorite quotes was in there from Ash saying that for companies that are trying to see about exceptions to this rule from Yahoo and Google, what Ash said about it is, "I'm just going to say this: exception is just putting off the work till later."

00:17:40

Jonathan Torres: And it is one of those things like if you get an exception today, if you're getting a pass today, if you don't think you need to do this today, eventually something's gonna catch up to you and you're going to have to do some work and invest into those things.

00:17:50

Eric Trinidad: So yeah, our recommendation is always invest now, make those changes now, do the work now so that it's easier when it comes down the line.

00:17:57

Jonathan Torres: And you know, there's the companies who had never done it before, never implemented before and now they're trying to scramble to catch up simply to the point of compliance, instead of being further ahead of the game. And you know, instead of just reviewing blogs, reviewing information and making simple changes and making sure that things were completely shored up for it. You don't want to start at step one once something has been implemented.

00:18:17

Eric Trinidad: So just a heads up on that again, future thinking, you know, forward thinking and that's what we're trying to do here today.

00:18:23

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, I remember just kind of starting off in email and initial conversations about how to get things going. And if we were seeing some of our customers having issues with Gmail, one of the first things that we would tell them was, "Well, hey, let's get your DMARC policy set up. Let's make sure that you're saying who you are and also what to do if somebody is trying to spoof you and protecting yourself," and how much weight that carried with Gmail.

00:18:47

Eric Trinidad: So to see that enforcement now is just kind of further establishing the practices that we tried to push in the past.

00:18:54

Jonathan Torres: And speaking of the past, like, how did we get here is one of the things that we talked about in our diversity in email episode. That episode was essentially about where we came from and where are we going. We spoke with Jaina, the Head of DEV at Action Rocket, and Megan Boshuyzen, the Senior Email Developer here at Sinch Mailgun and Email on Acid.

00:19:19

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, so kind of like an easy conversation with us, just kind of hanging out and giving our backstories here. You know, we talk a lot with these folks and sometimes people want to know how we got started and how we got here.

00:19:31

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, I don't think there's a whole lot to review in that episode for sure. The big part of that is how we ended up learning things or the things that we learned, the life lessons that we picked up along the way to get us to the spot where we are with email.

00:19:44

Eric Trinidad: I think there is definitely a lot of that and I think there are so many things that seem like they don't apply, they don't necessarily correlate to life within email and applying it to this direction. But through that episode, I think that's what we ended up exploring - all those things that we thought, "Hey, never going to be something that we're going to translate into a career in email," but it's possible.

00:20:03

Jonathan Torres: So, I mean, I feel anybody listening to these episodes is already in email or adjacent to email or very close to being within email. So, you know, and understand, I think it's one of those things where it's things to think about. If there's anybody that you're thinking of bringing into the fold, you know, in there with you doing the whole email thing, those life lessons are super important and the diversity within the group is also very important to see different sides of it and to do different applications of things that you're trying to do within email, whether it's marketing or design or deliverability, even to make sure you're gathering that perspective and putting it in a good way.

00:20:43

Eric Trinidad: And one of the things that I think we should consider and I would like us to consider, and maybe we can do this, maybe we won't - I don't know - I would love to have this kind of conversation again and to really help highlight that there are different perspectives, different points of view and how we all come together within this space.

00:21:01

Jonathan Torres: And I think technology is a wonderful place because it brings in so many different people in so many different ways. And yeah, I would love to kind of throw it out there. I'm throwing it into the universe that we can have another conversation like this with, you know, maybe we bring in Jaina and Megan again, maybe we'll bring in new people to talk about this kind of topic and to talk about these kinds of things. But definitely one of those things that I think would be pretty awesome to do.

00:21:18

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, and I think also we'll throw it out there to the community. You know, if y'all are interested in knowing the backgrounds of some of the folks, definitely let us know, throw it out there, you know, we're down.

00:21:27

Jonathan Torres: Definitely. And this last episode, man, actually, I missed this episode unfortunately, but it seems like y'all had a good time.

00:21:35

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, it's another one that's very hyper-focused on one particular thing. But it was a good time. I had a great conversation with all these people. I'm sorry you missed it. I really, truly am because it would have been fun having you there. And I know you would have enjoyed this conversation also.

00:21:49

Jonathan Torres: But yeah, it was the M3AAWG Brand SIG that we had on for this episode. We really went over a few things. I know there were a few different people here and by name it was Mariska Calabrese, Sharon Kent, Melinda Plumb and Rafe Zeid. Good convo with all of them.

00:22:11

Eric Trinidad: We really went over just what it means within M3AAWG to have that Brand SIG and what we're really trying to do or what they are really trying to do. I'm not going to include myself with that group, some really great people that are doing some great work.

00:22:33

Jonathan Torres: And really it is about brand and we have had that conversation about brand and what a brand means and how you put your brand out into the world. And that's super important. We know that it is one of those things that if you're doing it correctly, if you're thinking about it cohesively, it can be something that works for you in a great way.

00:22:53

Eric Trinidad: And if you're on the fringes of that and you're not maybe doing something that's really great or you're not doing things to protect your brand, that's when it becomes a problem. So they're doing the good work, they're putting in the documentation pieces to do that.

00:23:04

Jonathan Torres: They had mentioned a public document that was going to be available within the M3AAWG website. So we'll link to it if that resource is available now. I think it got delayed and it still wasn't on the site just as of yet, but we're looking for it. We're trying to make sure that we can get that out there so that you can take a look also for yourself and see what it is that they're talking about brand and how to protect it and how to make sure you're doing the right things with email from your brand so that you don't get into trouble and you don't get your brand into trouble because I think that that's also the important part.

00:23:37

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, for sure. I think we should link just to M3AAWG in general, like just to make sure that people are aware of the organization at large and if they're interested in anything like that or becoming a member, they know where to go.

00:23:47

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, that's a good call out. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:23:51

Eric Trinidad: Well, that brings us to now, and here we are.

00:23:54

Jonathan Torres: And here we are. I know again, the episodes focused a lot on the DMARC, you know, authentication policies that were coming up and we're going to be talking about that yet again at Message Mania for Email Camp. We can definitely get in that convo. I'm excited to get in that convo again. We're bringing in again the experts, the people implementing, the people that are doing the work behind the scenes to make sure that that's working and working correctly for the customer base, for the consumers, for the recipients of this.

00:24:26

Eric Trinidad: But then also collaborating with people like us that are on the sending side, the marketers and the people that are trying to get email and messaging out into the world. But we all need to collaborate to make sure it's done right. And we're doing it in a way that protects the people that we're sending to because at the end of the day, we don't want to offend, we don't want to alienate that audience and if we're not doing things correctly, then it can become a problem.

00:24:49

Jonathan Torres: So I think it's a great conversation and I'm super excited to have it. So, yeah, I'll leave that at that like, you know, kind of looking forward to Message Mania and then hopefully a season six eventually. What say you, Eric?

00:24:57

Eric Trinidad: No, for sure. Definitely that and then some. I think that I'm excited for the future of what's coming up. AI is really big right now. I think I haven't seen anything but AI updates for all the things, you know, so excited to see how email fits into that world. Apple stuff that's coming out, you know, all those changes that are happening with the inbox with Apple and their AI policies and how that's going to affect senders and recipients.

00:25:28

Jonathan Torres: I don't know the next generation of Google and Yahoo changes, you know, and who else is implementing that or who else is also enforcing those policies or pushing that. Well, we know at the time that that came out, Microsoft was already thinking about doing the same kind of thing. So we need to wait to see what word comes down if they're adopting the exact same policies or what they're doing in a different way. But we know that that's something that they were thinking and considering.

00:25:54

Eric Trinidad: Yeah, so I think it'd be good to just get started now, you know, if you're interested or if you have any questions, reach out, let us know if we can help out in any way or if you have any questions in regards to any of the episodes. Definitely check them out. Let us know.

00:26:04

Jonathan Torres: And I think the big thing of course, set up your DMARC policy, remove people that request to be removed, keep your list clean. What is it saying, Eric? Be... be mindful? Is that what the kids are saying?

00:26:13

Eric Trinidad: I don't know, I just started saying "Bling, bling." So I think I'm way behind.

00:26:17

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, yeah. So definitely, you know, just be a good citizen of the internet and get authentic. Not only of course, get authenticated but get permission, you know, keep those lists updated.

00:26:29

Eric Trinidad: We'll be back. Our plan is to be back, just a matter of when. But we'll definitely be back for Email Camp Message Mania. Don't miss us there. We'll be posting hopefully again soon after that once we map out a season six if you want.

00:26:43

Jonathan Torres: Yeah, I guess until then, we'll throw it to Thomas to tell everybody where they can find us.

00:26:48

Thomas Knierien: Hey, thanks, Eric and JT. You can follow along with us over at mailgun.com/resources/podcast and you can digest any of our podcasts anywhere you listen to Spotify or Apple Music. Make sure you listen to some of those amazing episodes they talked about this past season. I also want to give a big shout out to all of our speakers that came on this season. So grateful you were able to join us. And last but not least, make sure you join us for Email Camp. That's gonna be September 24th to the 26th. You can sign up over at hello.mailjet.com/email-camp. Make sure you sign up. I'll be hosting, yours truly. Make sure you join us for that Email Camp Message Mania. It's gonna be a blast. This wraps up our season. So we want to thank you all so much and we'll see you pretty soon.

00:27:30

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