{"id":82643,"date":"2020-12-15T15:58:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T13:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/?p=82643"},"modified":"2020-12-15T15:58:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T13:58:39","slug":"etienne-garbugli-e-mail-marketing-is-about-understanding-intent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/etienne-garbugli-e-mail-marketing-is-about-understanding-intent\/","title":{"rendered":"Etienne Garbugli: E-mail Marketing is About Understanding Intent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On November 24th<\/sup>, Tehnopol Startup Incubator hosted a B2B email marketing workshop for the incubants. Etienne Garbugli from Canada, author of \u201cLean B2B<\/a>\u201d, \u201cThe SAAS Email Marketing Playbook<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSolving Product<\/a>\u201d; a three-time startup founder and a five-time entrepreneur shared his tips on how to better market products or services to other businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What drew you to\nwriting, consulting and the startup world? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time, it was\nexciting that suddenly you could do whatever you want with technology. It\u2019s\nthat drive of changing the world \u2013 you\u2019re suddenly in a position where you can\ndo pretty much everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my second startup, I decided I was going to try and educate myself. I spent a year interviewing founders that had succeeded in B2B. I spent a lot of time reading everything that was available and ended up writing a book based on that, which I think is a great way to learn, but at the same time do something with the learning and share it back. I was very pleasantly surprised with the response. That gave me a different perspective on things as well as it got me to\u00a0work with a bunch of different startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have been\nworking in both B2C and B2B marketing. How do you think that both of these\nfields have changed since you first entered marketing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think initially,\nthings were very much one size fits all. I remember we were doing e-mail\nmarketing campaigns for a bunch of people whose names or location we didn\u2019t\neven know. We would try to push a product, a different campaign or different\nconcepts on them. It worked or it didn\u2019t work \u2013 we didn\u2019t necessarily know what\nhappened specifically to the segments. I think the idea of really segmenting\ndifferent types of business was there, but most companies were not necessarily doing\nit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually there\u2019s been this evolution of how by better understanding the types of people within your list, you\u2019re better able to craft the right types of messages and the right types of offers. I think that\u2019s evolved more on the B2C side. On the B2B side, depending on the type or size of businesses, it also went into a deeper understanding of the buyer\u2019s and customer\u2019s journey, as well understanding the inner dynamics in the target organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the entire marketing industry has changed a lot over the last 10 years, because social media, among other things, has transformed it quite a lot. What do you think is the role of email marketing at a time when social media marketing is much more popular?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think what\u2019s so great\nabout email with regard to social media, is that there\u2019s a level of\ncommunication that is more personal. Depends what you\ninclude in social media marketing, but there\u2019s a level of personalization and\none-to-one-ness that is greater with e-mail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think one of the core\nthings as well with email is that you own the relationship, so to speak.\nWhereas a lot of companies are struggling with Facebook, because they force\ncompanies to pay to play, they get less visibility\namong their own audiences, because Facebook wants them to pay and that\u2019s\nhappening on LinkedIn and other platforms as well, gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think email in that sense has become a more reliable way to reach your audience as well as craft and control the messaging. Beyond that, I think it\u2019s a way more effective medium, because there\u2019s a lot of stats that you can look at that tell you the ROI with email. Plus, I\u2019m seeing a lot of revitalisation of the value of email \u2013 repopularisation of newsletters is really becoming a thing. I think people are realising more and more that being able to have a direct relationship is a very valuable thing because it increases the stability of your business model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think\ncompanies and organisations have realised that e-mail enables to approach audiences\nmore individually? Do you think they\u2019re using e-mail marketing to its fullest? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do think there\u2019s still a gap in terms of understanding how much you can actually tailor your communication to the audience or just specific people within your list. If we want to talk about the evolution of e-mail marketing specifically, then that\u2019s exactly that. It\u2019s what you can do today based on the type of data that exists. The tools that are available at your disposal are 60 times more advanced than what it was when I was starting out. But a lot of people still, for lack of knowledge, desire, time or whatever, are closer to what people used to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could you bring\nout some myths about e-mail marketing? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I think part of the struggle is that people view whatever list they have as just that. They view people as one entity, and not as a bunch of different individuals on their list, with different facets, realities, contexts and understandings. A lot of people will start approaching them, thinking that the more e-mails they send, the more chances they have to get the customer to do whatever they want. What they don\u2019t realise is that a better understanding of the context of what people are trying to achieve or where they are, will actually allow the marketers to understand whether that can work at all. Even when we\u2019re talking about technology products, if you are forcing people to use your product so hard that people just use it because they want to get rid of you, it\u2019s not going to lead to the positive outcomes, because chances are, they\u2019re just going to stop using your product after they try it or they\u2019re just going to move on and not see the value. I think the idea of sending a lot of e-mails or acquiring lists is a crutch to understanding the people on your list and adapting to their reality is really a cop-out for the real work that you should be doing in terms of understanding the people in your audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you think that e-mail as a communication platform has changed over the last 10 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re looking at e-mail\nmarketing, I think it\u2019s a little bit like how train systems have developed, to\nsome extent. Initially, people maybe built one train station in Tallinn and one\nin Tartu. They assumed people get to the train station, catch their train and\nthat\u2019s it. But over time they realize that not everybody wants to go specifically to Tartu and there are cities in between,\nwhere people might want to get off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, when people get\nto Tartu, they don\u2019t all want to go to this train station. They also need to go\nto different places within the city \u2013 the network expands. And then, gradually,\nit\u2019s also about understanding how people get to the first station in the first\nplace. How do people get to the Tallinn train station? If you view this as a\ntrajectory, where people come into your e-mail program with different states of\nknowledge and backgrounds \u2013 I come from this specific city I got here that way,\nI want to get off at that specific place. This is what people wanted to do back\nthen, but they were at that one size fits all model, where you get on the list\n\u2013 I treat you the same way as everybody else on the list. It didn\u2019t matter\nwhether you had bought my product before, have a lot of knowledge about the\norganisation, you\u2019re just browsing or you want to buy. They were trying to push\npeople to Tartu no matter what they were trying to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, gradually, we\nstarted to get companies that were doing more. We have people from different\ncities that want to get to Tartu. We use different paths to get people to Tartu,\nbut with different origin points. Gradually it evolved into a situation, where\npeople want to get off at different stations. There are different objectives\nthat e-mail marketing was able to cater to and adapt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually people\nunderstood that people don\u2019t always necessarily want to go to Tartu \u2013 there are\ndifferent destinations and objectives. When people get on your e-mail list, they\nall have this context that\u2019s completely different. This impacts what they\u2019re\ntrying to achieve, but also impacts which outcomes they seek from your company.\nI think as it evolved, people got better at understanding and responding to\nwhat people are trying to achieve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing automation is better at helping people achieve different goals with e-mail marketing. I think the evolution now is even more going up front about understanding intent, why people are thinking about taking the train in the first place, why people are signing up to your e-mail list and then using that as a way to drive the best path to your destination. I think now it\u2019s even more about understanding intent and using that as a way to dictate the relationship \u2013 taking a bunch of different people at different stations in your network and getting them to the places they want to get. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you think\nemail will develop in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think right now what\nyou\u2019re already seeing is that there\u2019s a big gap between the people that do this\nwell and people that don\u2019t \u2013 some are doing personalised marketing beautifully\n\u2013 overperforming \u2013 and some far from that \u2013 underperforming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the ability to\ncreate a personal one-on-one experience that takes into consideration who you\nare, where you were, what you\u2019re trying to achieve, what value you\u2019re seeking,\nwhat outcomes you\u2019re seeking from working with an organisation is just going to\nbecome more and more refined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a company called Drift that uses AI to develop a self-learning system that helps improve the way they approach all these complex relationships. If they have ads that they\u2019re running, they look at what that specific customer did when they saw these ads. Did they click on them? What pitch was in the ad? They look at landing pages that they checked. They look at the full path of discovery or search that the customer had before they even engaged with the company and they use that as a way to tailor the experience. I think that\u2019s definitely where e-mail marketing is going \u2013 you\u2019re trying to create that relationship with a prospect as early as possible. And then take the customer to their specific outcome that they\u2019re trying to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You also mentioned\nthat you have been in Estonia a few times. What were you doing here? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m super curious about the startup ecosystem. I think it\u2019s fascinating that you have five unicorns for 1.3 million people. I\u2019m also curious to understand what drives ecosystems and what are the success factors beyond that. I\u2019ve been fascinated by the ex-Soviet block, who got more independence in the nineties and how they evolve and now they are tackling the idea of startup ecosystems and innovation in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did you find\nwith your research in Estonia? Why do we have so many unicorns?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was interesting, one\nof the co-founders of Pipedrive wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about what\nhe thought were some of the success drivers. I\ndefinitely think Skype drove a lot of things, like wanting to increase the\ntalent pool. It created that drive where people saw that it was possible. And I\nthink you clearly had a government at that time, that realized that there was big opportunity there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I see from a lot\nof founders from Estonia specifically, is that there\u2019s a lot of help between\nfounders and there seems to be a lot of people,\neither investing in other Estonian startups or working, connecting or\nmentoring. And since it\u2019s a smaller country, it\u2019s probably easier to do that.\nPlus, I think the relationship you have with the Nordics probably helps as well\nin terms of bringing in investments as well as good relationships, trust and\nall that stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is just an\noutsider\u2019s perspective, but I do think that there are a lot of great things\nabout what I\u2019ve seen from people from Estonia. think\nthere\u2019s a lot of not settling type mentality, which I\u2019ve seen from Estonians. I\nthink there\u2019s a mentality of optimisation or improvement, not taking things for\ngranted that you get from smaller countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On November 24th, Tehnopol Startup Incubator hosted a B2B email marketing workshop for the incubants. Etienne Garbugli from Canada, author of \u201cLean B2B\u201d, \u201cThe SAAS Email Marketing Playbook\u201d and \u201cSolving Product\u201d; a three-time startup founder and a five-time entrepreneur shared his tips on how to better market products or services to other businesses. What drew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":82647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82643"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82649,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82643\/revisions\/82649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}