New technologies can offer users many advantages and speed up their work processes, but they also pose dangers for everyone who uses them. Will GenAI be able to replace email marketing consultants, and are best practices and advice from all opinion leaders equally useful? These are the controversial topics we raise today.
We continue to recap the webinars that Stripo holds with experts in the email marketing industry. In addition, today, we present important thoughts on the webinar shared by Kath Pay, the renowned author and visionary behind Holistic Email Marketing, and Dmytro Kudrenko, founder and CEO of Stripo.
Let’s dive in!
Interview Expert
Interview Expert
Watch the full version of the webinar on Stripo’s YouTube channel and/or read the recap below:
Holistic Email Marketing: A continued journey
Kath Pay’s book Holistic Email Marketing has been influential in the industry. The book emphasizes the importance of adopting a people-first approach over prioritizing technology. Combining email as a tool with email marketing as a philosophy is the compelling idea of the book.
The author emphasizes putting people over technology, which we discussed last time as much more critical. I love the name and how it sounds like “holistic human marketing.” The book stands out because it focuses on approach and communication, which don’t change as fast. In this book, you mention that an email marketing program should follow steps from goals and objectives to strategy, tactics, technology, and measurement.
Dmytro Kudrenko,
Kath Pay shared her plans for the book’s second edition, which will incorporate significant updates and new elements such as authentication, revised Gmail rules, and exciting case studies. The book’s core philosophy remains the same (as it still works): email marketing is ever evolving. The second edition aims to align the work with current trends and technological advancements.
The importance of strategy in email marketing
Kath Pay emphasized the significance of strategy over tactics in email marketing. At the same time, many marketers focus on campaign-driven metrics such as conversion rates. Kath advocates for a goal-driven strategy that aligns with business objectives. A cohesive strategy ties all campaigns together, ensuring they work towards common goals.
It’s important to step back and look at the cumulative effect of all campaigns. When overarching strategies don’t connect campaigns, they can deliver mixed or conflicting messages, thereby confusing consumers.
A strategy ties everything together, aligning with your objectives and business goals. When I create strategies, I call them “living, breathing documents” because they need constant updates and reflections on what works and what doesn’t.
Kath Pay,
Best practices: A need for personalization and testing
While implementing best practices first is tempting, starting with a strategy that considers each company’s unique aspects, audiences, products, and goals is crucial.
Only about 10% of Kath’s clients come to her starting from scratch—a great place to build strategies. Most companies execute ad hoc campaigns without a strategy just to make money.
Each company is unique because its audiences, products, and goals differ. While welcome and cart abandonment emails for e-commerce or onboarding series for SaaS can be considered basics, how you construct these elements is bespoke.
It’s not just about following articles that dictate a one-size-fits-all approach. Companies are unique, so they must find out what works by testing and learning from their audiences’ responses.
That resonates with my experience. I once implemented a five-day welcome series for marketing automation with daily educational emails. But it didn’t consider real-life scenarios like starting on a Friday and sending emails over the weekend. Understanding the audience and timing is crucial, as you said. It’s not enough to write a sequence without a strategy.
Dmytro Kudrenko,
This is why you should understand that best practices often fall under data collection and authentication. Everything else is a marketing practice that needs testing to determine if it works for you. People frequently follow advice, such as short subject lines, blindly and without testing their validity. Short subject lines are often generic, while longer ones are more specific and can attract a smaller, more likely-to-convert audience.
Some best practices can be damaging, so always test them and see if they work for you.
GenAI in email marketing: A junior partner with potential
GenAI is rapidly becoming a key player in email marketing. Kath Pay shared her perspective on its role as a junior partner in the industry.
Why GenAI is just a junior partner
GenAI is a valuable tool for tasks such as generating text, predictions, and recommendations; however, it is not yet a substitute for human experience and creativity. Kath and the team at her consultancy, Holistic Email Marketing, are developing their own GenAI and integrating their intellectual property and methodologies to enhance their GenAI’s capabilities.
While GenAI is promising for creating hypotheses and running A/B tests, marketers should retain control and oversight. GenAI is a talented junior assistant who requires guidance and supervision to ensure strategic alignment.
GenAI’s potential lies in its ability to enhance personalization and automate routine processes. Despite this, it requires human guidance and insight to reach its full potential. As GenAI becomes more accessible and affordable, it will become essential for brands to leverage this technology to remain competitive. Personalization will be key to brands resonating with customers and differentiating themselves from competitors.
Regular marketers might find AI helpful, but our experience still surpasses its current capabilities. We’re training AI to match our level, hoping it will grow beyond being just a junior assistant.
Kath Pay,
How GenAI influences thought leadership and creates the danger of “bad best practices”
Kath Pay highlighted the challenges posed by “bad best practices” and the proliferation of bad-quality content in the industry.
While AI can assist in generating content, it often relies on existing information, which may only sometimes be accurate, helpful, or suited to the desired context. There is a concern that reliance on AI-generated content could lead to a prevalence of mediocre advice—this emphasizes the need for genuine innovation and critical thinking in the industry.
Here’s a quick synopsis of Kath’s definition of thought leaders, of which there are three types:
- The first is what can be called the “regurgitator.” They read something, absorb it, and then regurgitate it into an article to move up the ladder.
- The next type of innovator adds their findings, thoughts, case studies, and experiences on top of what read.
- Finally, there are the innovators who bring something new to the industry that hasn’t been seen before. These innovators are very rare.
If we go back to the regurgitators, anyone can ask ChatGPT for an article on list growth for email marketing or subject lines, and the chatbot will regurgitate the most common information, which often turns out to be bad.
Instead of having more innovators and those who add their own insights, we’ll have more regurgitators because GenAI helps them write blogs without having to do the work. This results in a lot of bad information on email marketing being spread—this the only information GenAI can use to advise you on writing subject lines and copy.
I totally agree with you and have the same concern from martial arts. In Aikido, there are three levels: first, follow the rules; second, break the rules when you have your own experience and experiments; and third, create something completely new. AI is excellent at the second level but just follows the rules, which can be very generic.
Dmytro Kudrenko,
What is GenAI great for?
GenAI is great for test—it’s all about mastering and guiding the prompt with a solid hypothesis. You can have ChatGPT help you create a hypothesis and then develop a control and variant to support it. We have yet to train GenAI well enough to deliver 100% accurate results, but it’s off to a good start.
While GenAI can effectively analyze data, you still need to understand testing and scientific methods. You, as the marketer, are still in control. That’s why I treat GenAI like a junior assistant—it is talented and well-informed but still needs supervision. I might change my mind in a year, but for now, I wouldn’t leave it to run an entire campaign alone.
GenAI has become exciting, especially in the field of personalization. However GenAI tools are currently not affordable for someone whose budget can only afford MailChmp. Usually, only big brands with big budgets can afford GenAI integrations. Eventually, personalization will become essential, as competitors who personalize campaigns will stand out.
About five years ago, I gave a keynote speech at the DMA conference in Amsterdam, where I talked about AI. I was preparing everyone for the changes AI would bring, like stealing some jobs. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be out of work; we’ll just be doing more strategic work, understanding our consumers, and doing more real marketing rather than campaign management.
Kath Pay,
The future of email marketing consultancies
Kath Pay envisions a shift in the role of email marketing consultancies as GenAI continues to evolve. While GenAI may automate routine tasks, strategic guidance, and human creativity will remain essential.
Email marketing consultants should learn from client work, identify patterns, and build upon insights to develop new strategies. It’s essential to publish findings immediately and validate them through multiple experiments and rigorous analyses. This approach ensures that the insights shared are robust and valuable.
If I see something interesting with a client, I look for similar patterns with other clients to build a solid understanding. I’ll gather data, find examples online, and ensure they are valid before publishing. I’ll explore it further if it’s a unique insight before writing about it.
For example, I noticed a client losing revenue due to reporting only within four days. Extending the reporting period showed that emails were used over six weeks. By adjusting the reporting process, clients could better attribute their revenue. I started writing about this when I saw it happening often.
Kath Pay,
Training new marketers and consultants also comes with its own challenges. A manager should provide initial oversight and guidance and encourage their team to contribute their unique perspectives and specialties. This approach allows consultants to grow and develop their own skills while adhering to the fundamental principles of email marketing. Your goal as a leader is to enable your team to provide clients with unique and valuable insights.
We have basic processes and onboarding training, but I like to give consultants a wide leash to bring their flavor and specialties. They typically come up with fantastic ideas I wouldn’t have thought of. As a consultancy, staying fluid is beneficial.
We have basic processes for audits and strategy, but I let them adapt to their strengths. We organize our insights and data into folders and share articles and case studies. My team knows where everything is, and they can access the information they need for clients.
Kath Pay,
To speed up and make teamwork more efficient for agencies and companies, we at Stripo have collected tips from email marketing teams and prepared a guide.
Kath plans to launch online courses to supplement her book. These courses will cater to individuals of different levels of expertise and incorporate GenAI elements. They will focus on providing specific, up-to-date insights tailored to marketers’ needs at various stages of their careers. So, follow Kath Pay on LinkedIn so that you don’t miss the course lunch.
Email marketers need to evolve, and so do email consultancies. Although there might be less need for consultants because of GenAI, they will still serve a purpose.
Wrapping up
We’d like to thank Kath Pay for the insightful discussion on this webinar with Dmytro Kudrenko. Kath provided almost an hour of valuable insights on the state of the industry, the evolving role of GenAI, and the importance of innovation. Kath emphasized the need for marketers to evaluate best practices critically and continually seek new ways to engage with customers.
By focusing on personalization, continuous learning, and strategic thinking, marketers can navigate the challenges and opportunities in the evolving landscape of email marketing.
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