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Stephen Carl: Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina Hagopian: Thank you so much.

Stephen Carl: It is great to have you to talk about email.

Christina Hagopian: I'm always excited to talk about email. I geek out on the email stuff.

Stephen: Yeah, and I'm just, you know, trying to rewire my brain to get more and more excited about email because of just how effective it is for companies. So how did you and your company. What's the origin? How did you create a specialty in email?

Christina: It really was an evolution. It happened by accident, really. We were already specializing in branding and Web design for eCommerce, and we realized there was a white space in the market for a high-end solution for email. Our clients were already asking us to do it. And the fact that email has always been the largest ROI for eCommerce, especially and the main driver of revenue. It was just a natural progression. And there's very few design firms that are really good at email. There's a lot of specialty email marketing companies, but not necessarily great design. So, we really saw a niche and were able to compete against some really big agencies against it and acquire some larger clients. So that's kind of how it all happened. We already started developing a portfolio of work, and it's exciting.

Stephen: Yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah, it's just funny how, I think you and I have actually hit these parallel paths where you're working with clients and you're feeling their pain and their problems. And, you know, you see when clients say to you, "Oh, I can do email, I can help you out with this problem" and their eyes perk up.

Christina: Exactly.

Stephen: It is a little bit of a beast in terms of managing all the different responsibilities with email.

Christina: It is. It's funny because when we first started, I found it as such a relief against, you know, all these big web projects that we were doing. Because email's quick, you know, It's one-off. Campaign-and-send. Campaign-and-send. Whereas websites we were building our month long and multiple months and iterations and revisions, and you won't have that and you know, But I used to think, "Oh, email is so easy." And now the more you know, the more you know how complex it is and the automation and segmentation and the analytics and everything else that goes with it, it's actually more complex than just building a website in many ways. So it's definitely, like I said, been an evolution and a discovery. And the geeky analytic side of it is where the fun happens.

Stephen: Yeah, exactly. And is that, like in the segmentations, where you find out who's engaging and where you can enhance it?

Christina: Exactly Who's opening, who’s clicking, who's unsubscribing and why? And really digging deep into those analytics is where you start to get smart and where email starts to get smart. And that's why every marketer loves it because of the analytics and the fact that you own your own list. You know, when you own your own list in a situation of talking to your customers. It's truly where the magic happens. And it's not like you're just sending it out into an abyss of Google where they're trying to find you or not, you actually can communicate with them directly.

Stephen: Yeah, I agree. I think it contrasts with some other channels, like, we see this on Instagram,

With Instagram, however many followers you have, they're not all seeing the message when you post it because the organic now it's you have to pay to get a higher percentage and the organic reach could be. I even heard it was like 10%. So if you had even 100,000 followers on Instagram, only 10% of that are actually seeing the messages for all those hard fought campaigns to get more followers and stuff. So that's what's awesome about email, because you actually are getting through to these people that want to hear from you.

Christina: Whether you can get them through the junk box and get them through the filtered messages and whether they could open it. Yes, but absolutely higher percentages and same thing with Facebook. The metrics between social and email, email always win. It's email, then it’s pay per click. Then it's so maybe social is third or fourth. '

Stephen: Okay, so with email, what are most brands doing wrong in their email campaigns?

Christina: Uh, where do we begin on that one? There's a lot of common challenges. Brands often believe that subscribers are willing to read a lot more content than they actually do. We often recommend short and sweet. We're constantly telling clients, "Can we trim this copy? Can we shorten this? Can we break this up into two messages?" Scrolling is fine, but we also want to get to the meat and the call to action really quick and get people engaged much more quickly in a message. It's a blurb, not a novel.

And we often recommend that, you know, bulk sends are also a common problem. You know, the whole batch-and-blast where you're just sending to one giant list and we really believe in, like I said, the metrics, the personalization, the learnings, you know, who's opening. How can you segment, how can you segment people that have bought before or not bought before or return customers or specific interests that they have?

We highly encourage that behavior-based learnings so that you can really attribute and create a much more robust program that way. There's so much that people do that we really recommend them steering away from a lot of times, people are not optimizing for mobile. I feel like there's a huge part of our program is making things mobile, first making all of their emails mobile first and every single year, the metrics of mobile device opens are more and more so making sure that their messages are designed for mobile device before anything else.

Stephen: Yeah, I guess. With the full-file blast, we call it "spray and pray" where you just send to everybody. And there's just this. I noticed this, too, no matter how many times someone has purchased in the past, if they haven't opened or clicked on an email in a couple of years, the odds of you sending a random message to them and them opening it are pretty small.

Christina: Absolutely. We recommend cleaning those lists and getting rid of those and giving them a last incentive to stay on, because most of the time it's just not reaching their in-box or they're just choosing not to. The whole "we miss you" emails. Those are intended to trigger you to either open, give them an offer, give them an incentive, or get them off your list because it really does affect deliverability over time. If they're not opening, it's weighing down your list.

Stephen: Yeah, even in the spam folders, I'm seeing big companies appearing there. Yeah, I'm seeing more of that strategy of the "We're gonna take you off the list unless you respond to this email." It kind of positions you well, because you're like, "We don't really need to send you endless messages, especially if you're not gonna open it."

Christina: Yeah, I mean, brands want the dialogue. Brands want the action. And as an email company, you're ruining our metrics! You're ruining our open rates. You're ruining our performance. So what, More importantly, it's not just vanity. It's truly about deliverability. If you have a certain percentage of your list that's continually not opening, it's dragging down the rest of the list to actually deliver properly. So we really look at that when we are analyzing the strategy behind our messages.

Stephen: Right. Because the automations when you send to a proportional list that's much higher engagement that opens and clicks than you're sending. Deliverability like I want to get your take on this. But I see that as you're sending positive signals to all the email clients out there. The Gmails, the Outlooks because people are opening and clicking. People are not marking as spam.

Christina: Correct.

Stephen: Yeah, and then. Is that the full take?

Christina: That is, that really is. It's very simple. It's the more people that are opening the email service providers will rank you as higher, and your email browsers will rank the emails at a higher percentage of deliverability. So it's your reputation. It's your reputation score. It's saying, your subscribers wanna read these messages. We're gonna make sure that they do and then the more that you don't have a positive reputation, that score starts to hinder those messages from being delivered.

Stephen: Got it. Or your position in the deliverability.

Stephen: Yeah, I think in terms of brands what they're doing wrong in their campaigns. Here's a hot take. So it might be I want to see if we think the same thing on this.

Christina: Okay.

Stephen: This is about win-back campaigns. Sometimes I see people talk about "spray-and-praying” to previous buyers and their eyes look like dollar bills. But I think win-backs are not necessarily if it's win-backs from over a year ago. I mean, they can get a few sales . . like they're worth sending, but they're not huge revenue generation as a percentage of where your money is coming from in email marketing.

Christina: Well, it all depends, you know, we've seen and we love to try to find out why they unsubscribed, why they stopped using the service, you know, usually win-back when we start talking about subscription companies or some past purchases that went astray.

Find out why, if you can, or having some sort of exit surveys of people, why they're no longer engaging with the brand. If there's a way to address that. For instance, we found out on a service company that we were working with subscription, that they felt the clothing brands were lacking or the value was lacking. Or, you know, the speed of service is lacking.

If you can identify that you've made improvements in those areas that could be part of your win-back strategy and address them head on "previously, we know that, and actually being really honest, you know that this was something of a concern. Before we've taken care of it and it's no longer and we welcome you back."

Of course, it's written in a way that's much more engaging. But there are ways that percentage gets a lot higher when you're addressing the real problems, why they left to begin with or you're giving them some sort of major incentive. That is like an offer you can't refuse where it's like either one month free or whatever it is, the incentive is to come back. And then it really started to snowball from there.

Stephen: Got it. That's a great point of win-back that'll get to in a sec. The survey is, How are those conducted, like, Is it using… there are a couple companies out there like Typeform or SurveyMonkey.

Christina: Right, Right.

Stephen: Like you send an email survey or...

Christina: We have done multiple either third parties or directly on the website where radio buttons are our friends. Starts to deliver some metrics. Every brand is different on how they wanna handle that. But we really do love those exit surveys or when, especially one of those description companies they have to call up customer service in order to cancel that data point is entered into why they canceled, and then we have to just start to address that we start to see a huge trend.

Stephen: So an exit survey would be, when they exit the website, you ask them one question about why they left.

Christina: or if they are in our world, were very high in the subscription company. And so if they are receiving a service every month or having a product every month, they have to either write an email to cancel or cancel it on the website. And we always give a form field of why you're subscribing or why you're leaving and you start to tally up what those trends are.

Stephen: Yes. It's a great point because you want to know why there's churn. If it's a mystery, you can't do anything about it.

Christina: Exactly. Acquisition for a new customer versus an existing customer. That's why those win-backs are still low hanging fruit. Even if it's a very small percentage of the canceling wins, that percentage is still easier to win than somebody new.

Stephen: I liked your take on win-back for this because I think traditionally win-back was "Let's throw them some money and see what they do." But I think your additional angle on this is that "I could do that. But if I know why they left and if I know their pain point, Let's address that head on and try to tell them we hear you. And this is why you should come back."

Christina: Exactly. Or you start to really think about the benefits of the product or the service or... and really start to communicate that in a way that's like, "Huh? I need to give this brand another chance or let me take a second look. Or maybe I dismissed them too quickly." The psychology of buyers. It's really important to just kind of get into their heads and really think like them.

Stephen: Yes, definitely. Okay, so now you know, we were talking about you mentioned Subscription eCommerce and you've worked with multiple clients in Subscription eCommerce. Have some experience. So what's happening in that space right now?

Christina: Oh, gosh, Well, the world of subscriptions, you know, started, I think, with several big-box companies like we talked about BirchBox previously, and it started to become a wave and a trend for the subscription boxes. But the service, especially its digital services is a huge market for email for subscription service is and products delivered digitally and that cycle. That customer journey can be tracked digitally through email and in such a natural way, whether that's the acquisition, the retention, the winning-back, that following that customer journey is really, really important. Like I said, acquiring a new customer costs 25 times more than retaining one. So having that subscription customer over time is critical. So lead nurturing, making sure that they sign up, finding out what's gonna make them stay. That's so important and essential for the subscription companies.

Stephen: I think everything is. Things are moving more towards subscriptions because that idea of, well, it kind of it lowers your perceived cost when you're only paying for something on a monthly basis instead of one-time. But I think even for….for digital services, I have a language learning app that I pay for monthly. It's just…I use it. It's not a one-time purchase and I find it and getting me back. It's works on both sides.

Christina: Right? I mean, even, you know, Adobe everything turned cloud. And we were forced to have cloud-based software versus downloads, so I think the world is turning subscription and having that specialty, and having that understanding of the customer journey through subscription is super important.

Stephen: Yeah, even things like AfterPay, where it's not a subscription, but it kind of resembles the structure where if you want to buy something, if you want to buy an expensive product, you can stagger the cost over a number of months.

Christina: Right? Right. Or, for instance, we just started work, or we did a pitch, at least for a company with water filtration. And the real crux is the actual device isn't where the money is. It's the repetition in the filters. It's more about buying once. But the real money is how many times can they order those filters. So well, having that mentality for any business for repeat purchasing is really where email shines.

Stephen: Yes. Yes, because one of the biggest problems in eCommerce in general is buyers that are one-and-done.

Christina: Exactly, you know, and in our business, in any business. Yeah. You know, you want a long-term relationship with your customers.

Stephen: Yes. So it is why every business needs to have that retention mentality. You know, even something... one of the hot topics right now is Casper, because they just did an IPO profiling.

Christina: Yes.

Stephen: And one of the critiques of the business and the thing. One of the things that they have to overcome is you only buy a mattress once a decade or once a number of years. So that's why they added additional products and why they're trying to position themselves as a ... the world of sleep – because of that reality. But because repeat purchases, you know, are so critical.

Christina: And that's what we call a "considered purchase". Because you're only buying it, after however many years. And because it's a high value, high-priced item. It's not a luxury item. It's a necessity, but it's not necessary. You know, it's a considered purchase.

It takes a little bit of time to decide which one you want, which brand and that lead nurturing is really, really important from a product standpoint, even more so with an email customer journey of how you educate the client, educate the customer on that product to make that purchase. How many touchpoints does it take?

Stephen: How many does it take? What's the Over/Under on that? There used to be that. there was this old saying that, "you need to hear something seven times to want to buy it." And I've even heard 15 touchpoints before.

Christina: Right? Right. It really depends on the product, you know, impulse buys or how much it costs or what incentive or isn't an emotional purchase, is it a considered purchase? All of those things is a luxury purchase.

Stephen: So a nurture campaign when I'm earlier in the buying cycle . . .

Christina: Right, that real sales funnel right when you look at that customer journey, you know, we often look at from the moment they subscribe for the moment they've entered into your field.

What message comes first? What kind of welcome do you give them? It's that first touch point for the brand. We often recommend three welcomes, at least and timed in a sequence so that that first touch point is that real warm welcoming.

The 2nd one is a little bit more education about the brand, a little bit behind-the-scenes. The 3rd one might go a little bit deeper and offer incentive to keep exploring, so that little wave and little drips is why they call them drips. And that's just the welcome series. And then we come up with education series and then offer series, and the content is endless, and the content is the most important thing for you.

Stephen: All right, so let's see. So with welcome, right? Like someone signs up to the email list and they get. If we're going through a three part welcome, that's you know, when they sign up, they get email #1 and let's say, three days later, they get email #2, and four days later they get email #3

Christina: Exactly, and then we kind of wave them into the master campaign list and then starts segmenting from there based off behavior. That's the real. That's when email gets smart. half of it is automation, and half of it is figuring out those customer journeys.

Stephen: All right, so let's map these so welcome #1-3. Like, let's say one is kind of a quick like, "yeah, you sign of the list. You've joined the family" or is....

Christina: Exactly, and we often encourage them to connect on social because statistically, those that follow both email and social start to a stronger connection to the brand, so we immediate invite them like….

"Can't wait for your next email? Don't forget to follow us!" and, you know, have that little nudge. That's a big CTA (call-to-action) for us.

Stephen: I like that. That's a good time to send them. They're already signed up on email. So they're like, "Hey, I'll follow them on Instagram."

Stephen: That's better. Like I remember in the past, there used to be separate messages on "Follow Us on Social" and those didn't really work that well. So sounds good. Email #1.

So then email #2 – "Is that like maybe a letter from the founder or something branded?”

Christina: We've done that more for email #3. The 2nd one we've often done an education series. Is it a little bit about the ingredients of the product? Or is a little bit about behind the scenes or having some testimonials and all of that education and nudging. The third one we've often done a letter from the founder or a little bit more about the company.

We really see a drop off on 1st, 2nd and 3rd emails. That 3rd one doesn't get opened nearly as much. We want to get the kick off, that first welcome is the highest open of all series because you've got a very engaged audience member. You've got someone that literally just signed up, and sometimes they've been given an offer to sign up. So they're really warm to buy or they want that code or whatever it is that you're offering them or the download work, whatever incentive you've provided that for that emails to their hunting in that in-box to look for it. But that open rate for the 1st one is critical. So making sure that first touch point is super valuable, we often recommend and then the 2nd one and so forth. So the 3rd one is less. If they don't open it, it won't kill them.

Stephen: So you're targeting future campaigns based on their interaction in that welcome?

Christina: We target based off of multiple campaigns after that. After that they maybe start to get some regular messages. You know whether that's content, whether that's information, that education, it all depends on the content calendar, but you know, Is it a holiday? Whatever they'll go into the regular cycle. But then when we start to segment based off of behavior from that.

Stephen: So I was wondering, on a technology side like first systems and platforms that you're using. But which email service provider? And if there's any other tools, like the main tools?

Christina: Yeah, I mean, we're platform-agnostic. A lot of our more enterprise clients are on their own servers, or they're on more enterprise level servers. Salesforces of the world. Experians of the world.

Our smaller clients are in the MailChimp or Klaviyo, you know, HubSpot. We work with all of them. We don't like to be a referral source for one platform because honestly, if it's working for them, we don't want to move ESPs. It's actually a really big headache to move them. If it's not broke, we don't recommend moving unless it's absolutely necessary.

But as for tools, we use a lot of testing tools, either Email on Acid or Litmus, so that we can predict how our emails are going to behave in certain browsers, and we do a lot of pre-testing in those platforms so that we check and balance and preview everything before we hit "Send". And I feel like that's a critical right tool to have. It's kind of, you know, baseline for us. So we always use those.

Stephen: Right. So Litmus and Email On Acid. They are testing platforms for when you create the email. Then you can see how it renders on Outlook, Gmail and all that. Because it will look different on definitely than what you might expect.

Christina: Exactly, and also simulate mobile and tablets so that you could see how things are breaking. It's essential. All my developers use it and send me the pre-test link to preview. And there are some browsers that just are wonky and a lot more work, and you can preview it before.

Stephen: What's your least favorite browser? Your least favorite client? Let's not pick favorites, but like what is difficult to?

Christina: Well, you know, Outlook has always been one where they don't render animation as easily or not all of the updates updated browsers if they're a legacy browser. We love using animation, and it's always like [charlie brown sound] if it's like, you have to use your static GIF.

So and I think like anyone on Yahoo and AOL should consider moving on from their inbox because they're really missing out. It's our job to make him look good and everything, so we really we really just have to bear it. I think the world is moving in Outlook and Gmail. Those are and the Gmail promotions tab is. You know, there's a lot of discussion on my email geek groups about getting out of promotions.

And how do you get into the main inbox? And there's a lot of opinions where we don't belong in the main inbox. You know, we are a promotional message, and it's okay to live there as long as we're not getting into Junk or Bulk, because what you have to do to strip town to be in the main message and not have images, and it becomes so non-branded that we almost say it's okay to be in the promotions. You just have to make sure they're opening it within the promotion.

Stephen: Got it. Let's go quickly to education campaigns because those don't get as much headway. You're doing email. I guess you're not necessarily having a discount. So what does that encompass?

Christina: So we always recommend that brands look at email as this two-way dialogue and not this one-sided conversation where you're just throwing out information, right?

So we try to discover what are the frequently asked questions about your product and begin to develop a content strategy around that. And think about that journey that we've been talking about, that custom journey.

It's really the exact same thing when you're trying to sell something through either your website or through the phone or through the mail or any other means. Email is just your tool. So you have to replicate that sales cycle and address every point through email.

You know, what are the questions that are asking? What are the pain points like you mentioned? What problems can we help them to solve quickly and lead them to purchase it on in a very natural progression? And that's not pushing or what incentive can you drive them to make that final push? So we really just have to think in the minds of the customer.

Stephen: What are the frequently asked questions? I come up the most with the products, and that's those questions and objections are what's gonna fill in the education campaign?

Christina: Exactly. Exactly. And it's different for every product. It's different for every service. Yep, it's so unique to you or what makes you special. What makes you different from the competitors? What differentiates you? It's all the same sales as what you and I do.

Stephen: Right? Yeah, I see what I see. What you mean with education, because that will get them over the hurdle.

Christina: Right.

Stephen: It's not always the incentive or the offer that…

Christina: Right.

Stephen: That stops people.

Christina: Right.

Stephen: It's the value. What they think they're getting.

Christina: Right exactly.

Stephen: Okay, so you know. So the tough mission is everyone's inbox is a complete cluster and it is a mad mess. So how do you break through the noise with emails like a really crowded in box to get your message through?

Christina: Well, I would think I read somewhere. What is it? The average person receives 90 emails per day. I don't even know if that's in every account. Every bulk folder. You know, that's the older messages. So you need to think about your brand and know that you're not the only ones sending that message, right?

So people forget that so much you need to think about whether you are delivering value, whether you're delivering any bit of excitement.

We can't forget that subscribers are people first. They're not just email addresses. So putting yourself in the shoes of that subscriber is a really important aspect about what they need, what they want, is it a value play, is it an exclusive just for them.

We talk a lot about attention grabbing subject lines that you are begged to be clipped on versus just there. There's a lot of psychology that goes behind a subject line that gets open. Is it shouting at you? Does it have an emoji or some sort of exclamation or some sort of punctuation? You know there's certain statistics that certain combinations of words will bump up the open rate or decrease the open rate.

It's all testing. Whether you can break in that inbox, whether you can break in the sampling, getting in the inbox, but getting open to getting clicked on. What call to action are you asking them to do that's going to compel them to act? So you want to stay in your inbox. we often say You have to behave like a friend that's at their welcome door, not annoying sales guy that you want to avoid. It's about giving.

Stephen: Right? It's about them. It's not about you.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. It's that you have to be a giver. You have to think it's like, "what's in it for me?" You know "what's the for them? What's in it for the subscriber." And if you're always answering that, then you're gonna come up with some good emails.

Stephen: Yes, yeah, I agree. Yeah, it is that, right? It goes into the marketing psychology, which is overcoming objections and really communicating benefits, too. Like it's about them. It's about what they're going to get out of whatever you're offering and how it's gonna make their life better. simpler. whatever on the list.

Cristina: Agreed.

Stephen: Cool. So we will wrap up soon. This has been amazing. It's great to have your perspective on this, especially with all the big brands that you've worked with and different systems. I think surprise and delight. That's a cool point where you want a surprise and delight your audience. When they don't expect it, give them something that enhances their relationship. How did they, can they surprise and delight their audiences?

Christina: We love this side of email. You know, the everyday messages get really tired, but this goes back to what value are you bringing into your inbox and give them a reason to stay year after year.

I get certain emails from brands on my birthday where I am waiting for them. It is a little bit of either they're giving me something or they're just surprising me. We know we created a branded message for Pepsi's birthday messages where they actually got sent on everybody's specific birthday and that had to have a data point where you collected date of birth, at least the date not necessarily year, and had created this very branded very cool animation. And that got their second highest open next to their welcome messages.

And it wasn't selling anything. It wasn't doing anything other than giving a feel good message. It's wishing them a genuine "happy birthday!"

And people remember those things. They remember the brands that give you that feeling of. . . It's not just about the sale. And we did something similar for a jewelry company that we were pitching as well, where we thought about that customer journey and when people are buying the most and an anniversary for sending in those reminders for the anniversary or if they have passed purchase of a specific collection.

They already bought the bracelet. Are you giving them the matching earrings? And it's genuinely trying to help them create the perfect gift. So making sure that you are giving them something they love and need and want and when your email start getting smart with that data and with the clicks of the metrics. That's when it when it starts to shine and that's when it delights. We're always looking for that type of message to create and sent.

Stephen: Yeah, I was thinking with birthdays. That is, I can't think of anyone on the planet that I wouldn't mind if they said “Happy birthday!” to me.

Christina: Right.

Stephen: It's just like, "Oh, you remembered!"

Christina: I know!

Stephen: So everybody loves that message. I think even anniversaries are nice to where it's you know, if someone purchased something, It's a good. Anniversary in a way has a kind of, has a better spin than just win-back, like you purchased a year ago Or you put, you know, you purchased at this interval.

You know, that's intriguing with the data component of it. Where you so when you deliver special offers, is it like . . . so if I look at click data and I finds it's a clothing company and I find that the customer is always looking at jeans.

Is it that sort of scenario, where I'm gonna show a lot more jeans emails to that audience?

Christina: Yeah. I mean, I give this example when I give talks about email and smart email. And it’s preference centers, it's behavior, it's predictability of clicks. I signed up for Saks emails, and they know that I have a certain affinity for specific brands, and they'll start to serve me emails that it's like a curated just-for-you message. And it will be all the brands that I clicked on and the new items in the collection. And it's brilliant because guess who's always clicking on it.

They know I'm gonna click on this same brand. Oh, there's a new season of Joie and there's a new season of certain cashmere companies that I'm constantly clicking on that they know I'm going to click. It's data that's already proven, you know, however many times previously, and so they started to serve those brands back to me. And that's smart email.

Stephen: Yeah, and I think it is very smart, cause even the rules on that are not so complex.

Christina: It's not.

Stephen: Right. They know what brands that you're clicking on so they can... pulling brand data is not too hard.

Christina: Right.

Stephen: And then serving the newest arrivals in that product category. I like it. I like that type of automation because it wouldn't take a month to create that.

Christina: Right. And a shoe company I was following is M.Gemi. It's a beautiful Italian luxury shoe, they have gorgeous emails. And they'll send you a message. It's just in your size, you know, find your size and you're gonna click on your size. Well, then, that's a data point that they can have served and say, you know, these are shoes available in your size now. Any brand who's starting to do that is smart.

Stephen: Yes, totally agree. Totally agree. And I guess quickly. Just wondering what you were thinking about SMS as a form of marketing. Because I know sometimes with the email, SMS is compared to it in some way.

Christina: I mean, look, if you can have someone's email and it's, I think any cross channel messaging is always more effective if you get it, you know. And if you get a direct mail piece that always performs higher than just one channel. I personally, in such a visual designer, obviously someone was biased to the visual vs the copy in the text.

We are all our married to our devices, right? So if it's coming in through the then I believe it'll be effective. But I also believe it's more effective with in conjunction with another channel.

Stephen: Yeah, that's a great point because it's not picking favorites, and that one is gonna take 100% of the business, and the other is gonna completely go away. It's a lot of it's just the game of . . . Often times, it's that everything is so tribal these days, and shoppers are married to different devices or direct mail. Different ways to interact with brands. So it's just the whole mix.

So, this is great. Thank you so much for coming on, Christina.

Christina: Oh, my gosh. Thank you for having me, Stephen.

Stephen: We don't get to talk about email as much as we should. Now, I know what to talk about with you next.

Christina: We'll have a lunchtime conversation.

Stephen: I will think very hard about what subject line to send you.

Christina: There you go. I appreciate that.

Stephen: So if someone wants to learn more about you or your company Hagopian Ink, how can they find you?

Christina: We have a lot of work and information on our website to get to see some past projects and our email address, H-A-G-O-P-I-A-N Ink with the k dot com. I wouldn't have named my business ‘Hagopian Ink’ again. I didn't think about spelling back in the day, but we're almost 20 years old, so we're staying with it. But I'd love to set up a call and talk to anyone about email. I do truly geek out on this stuff, So if I could help any organization facing some challenges that could be solved through email would love to talk.

Stephen: Perfect. And congratulations on 20 years in the business. That's a great milestone.

Christina: Almost almost. We're at Year 18. It'll be here before you know it.

Stephen: You're coming in close. Thank you so much, Christina. Great to talk to you.