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Speaker/s name

Tom Blijleven

Description

What’s happening in the (email) field anno 2021 and how can we prepare ourselves for 2022 when we’re talking about email delivery?

Key Takeaways:

– How email marketing platforms will evolve these years and what to expect as a user

– What sets email delivery apart and how business can perfect this in their current / future martech stack

Speaker
Tom Blijleven

Skip Fidura, MC

Marketer, Flowmailer

With years of experience in the email (marketing) industry, Tom Blijleven about various topics within the industry, covering both marketing as transactional email. In his role as marketer at Flowmailer, he specializes in email
deliverability and transactional email best practices.

Video URL

https://vimeo.com/536523520

Transcript

Skip Fidura 1:17
Good morning, America. Oh, oh, I thought share that that through. Good morning us How are y'all doing? So as you may Oh that's a that's a fail. Good morning us right there. Sorry about that, listen to myself twice. Let's try it again Let's start over Good morning how you doing America Welcome to the NET Core inbox Expo 2021 hosted by email expert I am skip Fedora fractional cmo and event host for your morning, my afternoon. And we're we're gonna have a lot of fun. So I'm sure all of you have been in hopping platform before, but just in case you haven't a few add many bits to go over. First off, over on the right hand side of your screen, you're gonna see the chat, you're gonna see polls, places to interact. So during the sessions, please take advantage of that if you want to ask the speakers any questions, throw them in the chat if we have some time at the end happy to to ask the speakers the questions. If we don't have time. At the end, there is a speaker breakout area where you can go ask them the question yourself. On the other side of the screen, you're going to find all the good stuff, you're going to find where the stages are, you've already already found that because you're here with me, you're gonna find the breakout areas, you'll find the networking now the networking is thing is is really cool. It sounds really horrible. Basically, it's speed dating. It's random. So you go in there, you say yes, I want to network and you will be matched with one of the attendees. You only have to be you only have to chat for like 30 seconds, I think that's the bare minimum. And I think it's it caps out at three minutes or five minutes, something like that. So look, anybody can talk for five minutes. It is so much better than networking at a real conference. Because if that conversation drags a little bit, that conversation gets a little boring, you don't have to come up with an excuse to leave. You're in it, you're there, you're good to go. And then it ends, it just ends. Right. So makes it a little bit more convenient, then, you know, necking your beer so that you have an excuse to go to the bar saying you have to go to the men's room or whatever. So it is a lot of fun. If you're from this side of the pond, you find it really awkward, and really quite cringy. But you Americans I've used this with with American audiences before love the stuff. Also, right below the networking area, you'll find the expo hall now, the expo hall, as you would expect at a conference is where you're going to find all of our sponsors. And before we go any further, check out check out the list of sponsors the list of sponsors that the email expert, folks, Nelly and Andrew have put together is pretty epic. And you don't miss the opportunity to go talk with those folks. And you know, if nothing else, just say thank you for putting up with some of their hard earned cash so that we can put this truly global event on for you. Obviously big thank you to netcore the headline sponsor, but all the sponsors big, big thank you. We really really do appreciate it. I think that's all the Add many bits. I've got a couple of couple of other things. You'll notice that there are things going on all the time, and things going on concurrently. That's the beauty of a conference. Sometimes you just have to pick and choose but unlike a real conference, a physical conference You don't have to pick and choose, you can get the videos. Now depending on the ticket you have that may be included in your ticket package. But if you didn't get that ticket, don't worry, you can upgrade and still get access to the videos after the event. So take advantage of that. Now, what else can I tell you? I guess, I guess we'll just talk for a couple of seconds about email marketing, or about the year we've had or both. Let's talk about both. So I don't know if you know how big a thing this has been in the US. But today is exactly one year since the UK went into lockdown.

Skip Fidura 5:45
Last week, we celebrated one year since we all were asked to leave the office. So I haven't been back to my office in 53 weeks. Which is pretty, pretty amazing. Pretty crazy, if you think about it. But there have been some other big anniversaries. This in the past week that I think went a little bit unnoticed. For example, we didn't throw the big 50th birthday party for email last weekend. So not this past weekend. But we can before Saturday was emails 50th birthday. Now not email marketing. we all we all know the story about email marketing didn't actually start until 1978. And the first email marketing eat or the first marketing email that was sent was spam. And the person who sent it did get in trouble. I learned some interesting facts. So they had a deliverability rate of less than 50%. Which is interesting. And Rumour has it that they made some sales. So early proof that email marketing works. And that's really what we're going to be talking about for the next couple of days. So I know it's early in America. Depending on where you are, it might be very early, although I have to say been quite impressed. Looking at the chat. Some Americans have been on already. Some turned up early to see delas keynote. We've had some brilliant presentations already this morning. And it's going to continue on throughout the rest of the day. So that's about it from me for now, in about five minutes, we're going to have Tom Bill shovin I hope I didn't mispronounce your name Tom. up to to kick us off for this afternoon. And you know, if I was on top of things, I would actually know what he was going to be talking about. But that note has slipped away. He is going to be talking about the role of email deliverability in your 2022 marketing strategy, not just 2021 he's jumped right ahead to 2022 he's gonna be talking about what's happening in the email field, and how you can this year and how you can prepare yourselves for 2022 in the world of email delivery and deliverability. So grab a cup of coffee and join us back here in about five minutes. We're willing when Tom will be on stage to to kick us off

Skip Fidura 13:14
There we are. Okay welcome back. Thank you for coming back and welcome again to the morning session. I've been asked by European friends to maybe tone things down just a little. But you know it is it is what it is. As I did point out I'm sitting in southwest London and it's a beautiful beautiful day here. So a great a great day for an event great day to be happy. Now next up we've got I'm just gonna say Tom, because I've been alerted in the in the chat the private backstage that I probably butchered his name quite badly during that introduction. So as I said, Tom is here to talk about delivery and deliverability what's going on this year and how you can plan for 2022

Tom Blijleven 14:03
All right, thanks a lot. Skip for the intro.

Um, I can't hear you.

Oh, let's see. I'm not muted.

Skip Fidura 14:11
Okay, that couldn't be me. Bear with me. Just one second.

Tom Blijleven 14:15
All right. Up, it's okay. On the producer side.

Skip Fidura 14:22
Yeah. Okay. That is that is going to be that is going to be me. I will fix that. Tom. I tell you what, why don't you go ahead and get started. We'll have a bit of banter about how I butchered your name after all right, sure.

Tom Blijleven 14:41
All right, let me Okay, are we? Sure. Thank you very much. All right. So, welcome to my session about the role of email delivery in your 2022 marketing strategy. My name is Tom Blijleven. And I work with Flowmailer. And I'll get to my last name in a few seconds, so don't worry, I'll explain. So a bit about me because this is my first time well ever to present live on stage. So the first time on the Inbox Expo as well. So I figured I might introduce myself a bit. My name is Tom, like I said, leiligheten. And I'm responsible for marketing at flow air, which is an email engine from the Netherlands. So I'm based in Rotterdam. And if you follow me on Twitter, you probably find a lot of office gifts or gifts, depending on what you prefer. And my last name is it's actually quite funny, because it literally translates to happy life, if you put a spacebar, between blight and labour. So yeah, if you have any issues with the pronunciation of my last name, just call me happy life. And I will, I will respond probably. So with that said, let's get into the session the topic of today, which is email delivery in a marketing strategy in 2022. And for that, we have to look at trends that influence delivery now, an email deliverability now and see the role of email delivery in deliverability in a strategy in 2022. So we're going to look at the things that are happening now and email that'll continue to happen four years ago, and how that info influences the role of email delivery. And during this session, I will point out a few great sessions that will be hosted by good friends of mine on the inbox Expo as well and give you some good tips to read. So what's happening in email is 2021. And beyond, there is a few things that I would like to point out in the session. And I've written about it and upwards 29 extra zoning and marketing trends. So if you want to read more about it, please go to this link. And I'll and I've listed it for the wrong so you can check it later on. But you'll be good. Anyway, there are four things that I wanted to discuss its interactivity, and email. It's an outgrowth, new new tools and platforms, and authentication and legislation. So let's let's get to interactivity. First. interactivity is, well, it's been around for a while, and people have talked about it a lot. But what's really exciting to see is that they well, stuff like ANP, for email accessibility, it's become more of a hot topic in email. And it, you might not directly see how that influences delivery. But in a sense, when people open your emails, and they interact with your email, because you have some fancy interactivity in it, it will influence the way people perceive their email. And that indirectly, influences the way inboxes seeing you as a brand. So that's something that we have to keep in mind, there's a few things that I would like to point out about the interactivity piece is that we have more and more data available these days.

Which leads inevitably to unlimited creativity, and focus on transactional emails. And the thing there is that transactional emails have been neglected, I'd say, for quite a while. And the interactivity part really boosts that. And like I said before, the interactivity where people interact with your emails, influences the way inboxes see you. And transactional emails have been neglected for a while, but it's still the Well, basically the most sent email ever and the most open email ever. So if you can get people to interact with that email, well, it's it's only better for your rates, right? And it has more and more data available. And the images that I'm displaying here is the living my passion. It's it uses user generated content, and lets people just share what they did with the items they purchase. So there's a lot of creativity in there. And the one I'm not sure if you can properly see it, the one left down corner, it's about an order confirmation, which really says Well, this is the state of the delivery now you've ordered, it's been shipped, and it's been done. It's been done. Deliver. And that kind of interactivity is more and more implemented in emails, email marketing, and transactional email. So that's really something that we're going to see more University film. Um, the other thing is agile growth. And I know there's a bit of a love hate relationship with work agile, but there's evidence pointing to that it's being loved more and more. And I say love because, but people, people just when there was this hype, there was all about all in one platforms going on my channel, stuff like that. And people are, the people love that. But the prophecy, well, they those platforms never really fulfilled the prophecy, right. So they all on one platform also lacked deliverability, they lacked technical stuff, or they didn't fulfil the expectations that uses out of it. So over the years, and that continues to go on is that we plan to move to a on one person's best of breed. So we're, the smaller companies still use. All along, platforms are cheaper to use, obviously, it is best of breed, use five best of breed versus one or one system. And, oh, there is a cost difference. But what's really interesting to see is that a lot of people will go and use best of breed solutions, and the only one solutions saw that happen. And so the ecosystem economy, it Oh, it arose and platforms like HubSpot, they started the marketplace, and our own platforms as well. So really well to have a third party do the best of breed, say like deliverability, for instance. And the thing about agile growth is that we wanted to improve real time. So you need real time analytics, real time, everything. So that is something that will really influences the way marketers and email people as a whole perceive platforms, and well, email. And the other thing that is obviously leading, or obviously evolved from that is the the amount of tools and platforms that we have, like I said, all in one platform that it was, well, there were quite a few Long, long platforms, but the best of breed platforms are actually more. And this map, it's it's from April 2020. And it shows all the marketing software that we have all the all the tools that are available, and I can't zoom in. But you can imagine this is quite a lot.

And the tools and platforms that saw this happening, and well embrace the marketplace ID they kind of moved to where we're all and we are still moving through that world where the only one well embraces the best of rate platforms life engage, for example, they let you choose the doesn t provider you want to and switch between them. So we're engaged, is this only one platform for email marketing, they let you choose between, let's say sendgrid and flow metre for your European and your American customers, which Well, obviously it has some technical difficulties, but also challenges that are interesting to follow. Because what are you going to do when sendgrid or another? Well, SMTP service that doesn't? Well, it doesn't fulfil the the the expectations that you have it, you can just switch to another without having to go through the whole development process and all the technical problems with that. And the API first economy really helps with that if API first economy comes down to what I told you about on gate is that you can just easily switch between platform a platform B if you don't like platform a you switch platform B and vice versa. And something that really well makes use of that as a customer data platform and customer data platform is one of the the trends that I'm I'm surely watching for the years ago and it's basically comes down to creating a 360 degree customer profile from your customer which makes it easier Well to maintain your preferences to send them relevant emails. But it also allows you to set sources and channels and change that. So you have this one CDP. And it allows you to well input data from your website, from your CRM, from everything that collects data. And let you use that data in email service a, and if you don't like email service a using service B, and so forth. And discussing the data platform you collect all the data you have about from this one customer. And this is basically why I'm talking about 2022. Because the customer data platform is still on the rights. If you notice, on the left, you see the the Gartner infographic of the trends. And you see this where the customer data platform is expected to be on the plateau in two to five years. Which means that in a year or two years, it'll be almost there, you know, the slope of enlightenment, people will embrace it more. And you see that on the right already. There is a lot of cdp's available already. And I know of a lot of cdp's that are not on this jeetu contender, high performer chart. So there's already a an interesting battle happening between those cdp's. And a lot of investment investors see this happening as well. segment has been bought by Twilio. emarsys has been acquired exponent has been acquired. So this is the one that people are going to watch out for it. People are going to use it people are Oh, well basically built their email strategy on this. And another thing that I wanted to talk about this, this session, really interested to just let you know what is going to happen in email. And one thing of this is that it's it's a bit of a boring subject compared to the others is legislation. And it comes down to the raising Privacy Awareness of consumers and well, the brands on itself. We've had a lot of customers, or leads naturally coming to us with the question, can you guarantee GDPR compliance is a lot of customers that we have are raising questions about our GDPR compliance. So can you help us with that? So whereas GDPR has been around since 2018, the awareness is rising. And with this has to do with two things. There's a stricter enforcement meaning that fines are being handed down. Businesses, car businesses get fined for not being GDPR compliant.

And it's pretty simple legislation equals equal delivery. If you comply with the law. People welcome. Well, complete and spout, they won't follow us back claim against you, or they will they know they opted in for your emails. And well, you won't have an issue there. So legislation, especially GDPR and lgpd, equals email delivery. And I think about Privacy Shield, there's a thing about Privacy Shield that is that has happened last year, which banned all EU to the US data transfers, which opened a new discussion and really let businesses scan their operations now. Well, gracious, you're allowed as European companies to send data to the across the Atlantic. And now it's not forbidden, actually. So people are looking around for GDPR alternatives and this old GDPR thing? Well, it raises awareness about privacy laws and privacy equals inbox placement. You know, if, if you concern if you're concerned about people's privacy and are GDPR compliant people or inboxes are more likely to know or your Wait, your recipients are less likely to report your spam or such and are willing and happy to receive your emails. There's a thing about authentication as well. I see that I've been talking quite a lot, and I still have a few slides ago. It's about authentication. And there's two things that I wanted to discuss here. One is transformational leadership. We've all known we've all heard about fpfb consumer If you have not, you should listen to a few sessions today. One is from me, and I'm sorry. And the other one is from Vanek. I know they were talking about image deliverability. So if you don't know what this pod comm demark is, well, you should go watch their sessions, where transformational leadership is really about providers taken action to let their customers be authenticated, or their users. I mean, there's there have been a few issues. Last year and years prior, that email vendors have not taken the appropriate actions to let their customers authenticate themselves. So they really lower the bar for the customers to send emails. And that led to a lot of spanking, it's obviously a lower IP reputation as well with which affects not only you, but pretty much every business on the same IP. So in the past few months, there has been a raising concern about this. And I think that in the coming year, in the years to come, vendors will take the responsibility and really transformed the way we think about email deliverability. And another thing that, that really influences the way people are going to see authentication is Baby. Baby is well basically a logo in the inbox, which increases brand trust, and it's based on GDPR, or demark compliance. So if you're deemed compliant, you can actually share the logo and the inbox. And this makes authentication way sexier for email marketers, so they will be way more concerned about it than they used to be. And with the implementation of baby, well, you'll get the implementation of SPF Deacon demark as a gift, because marketers didn't really care about even authentication, but with baby, I expect they will. So this will really influence the way well, email marketers perceive deliverability we did a session about it with a sixth grade expert on this, if you want to rewatch it, there's a link in here and on my last slide. And well, now that I have only a few minutes left, I'm going to talk about the role of image delivery. Um, and it's, and I've mentioned it a few times, but marketers get involved now, the things that that are happening, the CDP, which really gets McKesson in control of preferences. People that want to remote that don't want your email lists, cleaning. All the things that evolve around sending better email are being supported by by the by the idea of a CDP legislation, beaming it all, it all comes down to this idea that evil marketers are going to find email deliverability sexier than ever before. And what I mean with concerns or separated is that the marketers itself don't necessarily need to know how to implement demark or anything. But that's where your transformational leadership comes in. If the email marketing automation software just tells you Okay, this is the way you set up SPF, the QB mark, this is your domain compliant, it shouldn't be that hard. And even if it is, other platforms, or other people can can tell you how to get your deliverability in order. So, um, the authentication legislation, the interactivity as well because well, people will interact with your emails, that's interactivity equals contract. So a lot of things that I've mentioned here are going to influence the way we think about email delivery, email delivery, and influence the the email delivery rates that we are going to have, basically, so if you do a lot of interactivity in your emails, people will interact. If you authenticate your emails, you'll be good. But that leads to fewer things. So maybe the legislation and a lot of things that will influence how we how good the role of email delivery will be happy. And I think that will conclude my presentation. I have a few resources here that I think could be helpful to Understand the things that I've just said. One is the interactive email elements, something, a few things about Privacy Shield. I see that I mentioned email experts blog twice, but that's okay. Because if you read about it twice, so remember Annabel baby, because I think Amy and the cdp's are the main things that are really going to give authentication a boost. Both making authentication sexy and easy. Baby for Well, the sections and the CDP for making it easy to to know where you can send it to what he knows bounce, a lot of other things that will help you improve email delivery. So with this, these things in mind. I think I'm done. So back to you skip. I guess.

Skip Fidura 36:08
Hey, Tom, there we are. Oh, listen, I'm just checking in the chat to see if there any questions for you. But while I do that, would it be possible possible for you to take that list of resources, copy it, and drop it into the chat so that people don't have to feverish Lee try to write it all down? Could you do that for me? And folks, if there any questions that you want to pose to Tom, young Yana just wants more. Now, that was that was a great presentation. And yeah, if I if I'd known about your intro there, then I would have butchered your name much worse. But the big learning for me is, you know, I went straight to Google, had I gone to LinkedIn, the pronunciation is right there in your LinkedIn profile. So I missed a trick there. A couple of things. So let's let's start there. Let's start with your last name. Chris Byrne would like you to pronounce your last name again.

Tom Blijleven 37:12
Blijleven.

Skip Fidura 37:13
Blyleven. Yes. Okay. Google has that really, really wrong? Alright, a couple of things she touched on that I absolutely loved. I love the notion of sexy authentication, and making authentication sexy. If this was a live in person conference, by tomorrow, somebody would have produced 1000 t shirts that said something about sexy authentication, and we'd be making a small fortune and selling them kind of dining at the back door Well, there you go, here's an idea for you. And I also like the best in breed versus all in one what what I thought was interesting is you kind of came at the all in one from a you know, smaller companies using providers that built themselves as an all in one solution. versus when you started talking about best in breed and versus all the one I started thinking about the Franken clouds created by the evil doctor merger, you know, those platforms that were good, but then because of, you know, business, businesses business, they got, they got mushed in, in together. But let's, let's take a step back on that for a second. You know, as a marketer, it you know, it's a real, it's a real big trade off, it's not just about the deliverability side of things. And it's not just about the function, the functionality of the platform, you know, managing four or five or six different providers versus managing one, you know, how do you when you work with clients, how do you balance that trade off?

Tom Blijleven 38:58
Well, we see it happen that example for example, we have a Swedish customer that sends email to their European customers via us and since Well, they're your American customers emails via another provider. And they they set that up in a way that engage set it up, I think, but maybe with separate email marketing tools, I'm not really sure but they they made sure that everyone receiving or that yeah, that everyone receiving these emails in the EU got their emails via us because of GDPR compliance and stuff. So I'm not sure how they did it, but I know it happens and I see it happen well, through platforms live on the edge. That allows

Skip Fidura 39:54
that's, that's that's really interesting. It's a it's a flip. flipside of the take on it, one of the things that, you know, I talked a lot with people during the GDPR process was, as a business, you had two choices to make, you could you could apply GDPR to your entire customer base, regardless of where in the world they were, even though that was a much higher standard than might have been required in in the country where they lived. Or you could, you know, segment your database versus GDPR and against non GDPR. And, you know, I think, interestingly, well, I don't know, in my experience, a lot of companies just went will do everything. GDPR because it's just easier. Yeah, I did. Did you see that? And, and the follow up to that, and then we can, we can wrap up and I'll let you go. I'll stop, stop pestering you with questions is, you know, we're two years on from GDP, well, almost three years on from GDPR. Do you think businesses have sort of forgotten about it? You know, they have they have they just stopped paying attention after the pandemic? Well,

Tom Blijleven 41:05
for the Netherlands, I know that they the attention for GDPR. It only came back to life when I posted something about the Privacy Shield on a major blog. And people start asking questions. Oh, GDPR. Yeah, I kind of forgot about that. But apparently now you can't even send data across the Atlantic anymore. So yeah, it's been, it's been quite quiet, around GDPR for two years. And then in the summer, when the srams judgement came out. It got some attention again. But we see it happen for for governments and larger companies now that they really require GDPR compliance. And I think that'll well slowly get to the smaller companies and midsize companies that see larger companies get fined for not being GDPR compliant. Because that is the thing that I mentioned in the in the slides is that the enforcement is well, it's getting stricter. So a lot of that's true for this. And I think that that the scary part of that, that that works for GDPR compliance over years.

Skip Fidura 42:32
Fantastic. Now, I just want to say one quick thing, because I can almost hear Matt Burnham shouting from from Toronto. When you say you can't send data over to America, you can't send it under Privacy Shield, but obviously there are other legal ways you can do it with. Well, sorry, the word just went away. You can.

Tom Blijleven 42:59
sec. But that depends on how, what pricing measures were taken. So it's a case by case basis per case situation now, there was this thing about his Privacy Shield that covered all of it. And now

Skip Fidura 43:15
and now that it's not there, it's my guess. Gotcha. He's on with you. Okay, excellent. Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate your presentation. Thanks for taking the time shot me today. And folks, we've got coming up at one o'clock. So in about 15 minutes. We're back on the kind of the deliverability theme. We've got Matthew stiff, and Tobias Connect. Here to talk about mitigating abuse, secure your data, your network, IPS, domain and reputation. Matthew is the industry liaison with Spamhaus. So that'll be interesting. And he'll be talking with Tobias, as I said, who's the CEO of abusix. So join us here in 15 minutes and we'll kick that off.

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