We first crossed paths with Michael Barber during not one, but two, sessions and workshops he led at Digital Summit Los Angeles. There, we saw him host a four-hour workshop on email marketing that kept us riveted and again for a workshop on marketing lessons from his mum.

We enjoyed him so much we asked for more and invited him to be our guest on the Heart of Business. We talk marketing agencies, what makes great content, the importance of email marketing and more.

I think [email marketing is] one of the most under-served, less respected, least sexiest tactics that we have at our disposal, but it’s one of the most impactful that we have. And I think for many, many years, it has been the one that marketers have just forgotten about and I worry, because it is an owned channel, that not only real people continue to be engaged in, but it drives an incredible ROI when you are very strategic and thoughtful about the campaigns and strategy that you produce around that tactic for your customers.

Andy Shore: Hey everybody welcome back to The Heart of Business. I’m your host, Andy Shore here as always with my co-host Daniel Miller and he’s not here with me while I’m recording the intro, but he’ll be here for the episode, I promise, and we’ve got an incredible guest. We say that every time, but this guy was so great when I saw him at Digital summit not once but twice that I had to invite him out of the podcast afterwards. We talk about being a marketing firm about email marketing, about creating gory content about speaking also. It’s awesome things. He’s a really great… Yes, we had a really good time talking to him. Before we get started, I wanna remind everyone about the Benchmark Starter Plan. If you’re just getting started with email marketing or your list is small, you can do your email marketing totally free. And what’s great about Benchmark is that as you graduate into a Pro Plan because email marketing is helping your business grow, all the tools are right there for you, you’re not gonna have to switch another service, whether it’s marketing automation, CRM, it’s all there for you on the Pro Plan Check it out, benchmark email dot com. Let’s get rolling.

AS: So how do you doing today, Michael?

Michael Barber: I’m well, just wrapping up, what is… What was a very, very long week, but a good one, so… And my mother is in town for Mother’s Day. So that makes it even the better … very exciting.

AS: Yeah, I’ll ask you more about her later. I got to see your great session at Digital Summit LA that was all center around her. And I definitely wanna talk to you about that. But… I wanted to talk a little bit about Godfrey and everything you guys do there.

MB: Yeah, so Godfrey. We are a team of 90 people we serve, mid-market industrial manufacturers and help champion the world-changing work that they do. It sounds about as un-glamorous, is what it is as an agency that’s dedicated to B2B industries that are not necessarily the most sexy, but certainly super intriguing and gets to a variety of big initiatives with them to help bring both their products services and ideas to life.

AS: Yeah, and you say It’s not sexy … just reading the copy on your website you never know that I loved… We’ve been really into the whole story, brand story telling of your marketing and just the line your industry is our purpose. It’s how we make the world a better place, it’s like, “Oh these guys are great, they’re doing awesome things.” So it’s both the first gate it’s just maybe not the sexiest things but we’re championing that. I mean, it’s great. It’s all about marketing, you’re helping people be the heroes that they need to be.

MB: Yeah, that’s absolutely cool about the people that I get to spend my time between 8 and 5. it is that we are all… Not necessarily communication professionals at our core. Or should I say that I never probably… What motivated us to get into the communication space? We were builders, were developers. Some of us have a background in science and engineering, and we just happened to also be good at story telling. And so that provides a really interesting combination of people under one roof that do some pretty incredible things for the team of people that we serve.

Daniel Miller: Do you guys have any specific focus? You focus more on branding you focus more on specific marketing channels.

MB: Yeah, we are full service. But I will tell you that our bread and butter is strategy is really helping to understand the human truths and insights that we can pluck from better understanding our client’s customers for 70 years. We’ve done that. It’s where clients come back to us we keep the team pretty lean in terms of execution, ally being able to work within all the different tactics or facets of what is a modern day marketing mix, if you will. So, some of our clients, we are executing full-service from PR, all the way through execution elements but for most of our clients, it begins with a strategy initiative, and then grows from there, depending upon what they decide to work with us on our work internally with their own team.

AS: That’s awesome. And you mentioned everyone in the team coming from different backgrounds. What led you to Godfrey?

MB: This is a really interesting question. I actually was a consultant for Godfrey for a number of years, and then in late 2017, the team there, the ownership team. Stacy and Aaron “Stacy-wise and Aaron Mitchell at came to me and said, “Hey we’d like you to do this more often and work with us on different projects and I said, “Okay we’ll look at next year, and see what that looks like. We had a team of three working at the consultancy that I had founded many years ago called Barbara and Hewitt and Stace and Aaron on said No, no, no, we’d like you to do this full-time here. And I said, “in Lancaster?” because at the time we were based in Southern California and Lancaster Pennsylvania is a very obviously different place than sunny downtown LA, where we were based, and within about a month, we had figured out a structure for how we were gonna combine the teams, and went from there. And I have been in a Lancaster for almost 18 months now.

AS: That’s awesome. And what’s that transition like going from growing your own business and consulting firm to transitioning to not being your own boss all the time?

MB: I think the best way to answer this question is sort of why I decided to go from owing to helping a team and that is “as I truly enjoyed the work I found very quickly within the first two years of owning my own shop that while I loved the work, and I love working with clients and figuring out the nuances and challenges of how they are connecting with their customers and clients. What I hated, and what kept me up at night, and what had me worried was legal, HR, accounting, and while I had two parents who had retired at the time that could help me with those challenges, ’cause they had owned a business for almost 30 years. I just didn’t love all of the operational side of the business and I wasn’t good at it, and I also didn’t wanna grow the agency to a place where I would need to sort of add that operational layer to the team. And so this was just the right decision at the right time. And I love the fact, I loved the ability to work with the team on a day-to-day basis, and that’s why I have found myself why I think I found myself wanting to make this a reality two years ago, was the ability to come in and continue to do work really did work with a team that I had respected and had the chance to almost date before we got married, so to speak.

AS: Yeah, I totally get that, right out of college, I had started a music blog that ended up taking off a little bit and I got to do that for four years and it was amazing and when I started at Benchmark, I kind of balanced both for a little while but having a creative team around me and not having to do all the stuff that stresses me out and everything like that. I mean, it was such a much better experience and also helped me to grow in ways that I probably wouldn’t have had a note. I’m sure that would have been its own growth experience but it’s nice to be around people that push you and inspire you and make you do better work

MB: Exactly. As an owner-operator, you are challenged with, How do you split your time where do you invest that time given just how valuable time is these days? And I would just prefer to spend my time in the place that really drives me and excites me. And the good news is I’ve got two other executives as a part of Godfrey Stacy and Ron who are the other sides of the brain, if you will stay leads the operational side of agency and are leading our account management and strategy teams, so, it’s really great to have three individuals that split, get to split their time on focus and focus their effort on the teams where they have expertise and the areas that they enjoy working in on a day-to-day basis

DM: That is so important. I think a day we were watching, I think it was a TED talk or some like that, and somebody was explaining the value of time and how they were trying to book Richard Branson to give some sort of a talk and they offered him a certain kind of money and they said no, and they came back again, with a higher amount and they said No. And it came back again and he said, “Hire just kept saying No, and they finally say like, Why do I… This is an absorbent amount of money. Like, why won’t you take… They said Look, it’s not part of the three things that I need to do right now. This is what I know to be focused on you. This can be handled by somebody else, but it’s not me. And just having that resistance of nothing pulling back, nothing taking a way no fame no money, no nothing, but staying so focused. I think that’s what creates the success. And as a question to some of our listeners, here, I see that the chief creative officer what does that mean for the company, and for what you do with clients?

MB: Sure, if you look around, first of all, I think it’s a completely nebulous and ridiculous title. I just want to preface the answer to this question with that answer. It’s a very fancy title. We love fancy titles and agencies. I will tell you, you can go look up what Chief Creative Officer means and the industry will look at it as, you own the creative voice of your agency. And that being the strategic and execution aspects of the creative that come out of your shop. I will tell you my role at Godfrey is just to help the 36 people on my team produced the best staff possible and that means one thing. Understanding what is the best thing that individually that those 36 people can contribute and helping make sure that they’re the ones that are contributing that to all of the ideas to the concepts, to the tactics, and pieces of creative that we’re bringing to life. I have zero background in creative, I am not a designer by trade, I spend zero amount of time in creative type positions in my 15-year career in this space. And so as a chief creative officer, my role is solely to ensure that they all have the tools and the needs met so that they can produce extremely, amazing, creative, innovative work for our clients. Do I get to play a loose role, and what things look like or how they feel? Sure, I tend to be the Mom test, if you will, the last person that they bring those concepts and ideas too, and I get to say yes, I sometimes say No and they say Yes, but… And they convince me otherwise, but my role is Chief Creative Officer is simply to ensure that 36 people inside that building on my creative team have everything they need, and the process in place and the right people on the engagements on the right clients to make sure we’re bringing really strategic, the impactful work to our clients and make us the most sought after B2B shop in the world.

AS: I. Know that roll all too well. Daniel plays that role for me, he’s my boss, and he gets to hear my first worst ideas, all the times are the ones I know that I’m almost pitching just to get a laugh out of him but from those seeds come the actual great ideas that we get to present to other people, and that’s an important role to have. There is just like that last guard, that is gonna push you to get your best, make sure you have what you need and get the best out of you. It’s,

MB: Hey, worst ideas of the best idea is possible. And that’s funny that you share that example because our executive creative directors who are near and dear to my heart, Scott Trevaw and Cliff Lewis they celebrate our greatest worst ideas on a regular basis, inside the agency. And what’s funny is sometimes those really bad ideas are actually end up circulating something or germinating something amongst our team that actually ends up being something that is pitched. We literally just had this happen the other day. We have a new client and this is public knowledge. I’m not sharing anything that is under NDA or anything, but e-Corp, which is a manufacturer of floors, industrial commercial floors, largely within the athletic space. These are floors you’d find it and gyms or hotels, or in commercial gyms, big brand gyms and such. We are just going through concept phase with their team, and the way that we produce concepts is a very structured format has a specific process of how do we get to a concept that becomes something they’ll be pitch in front of a client and Cliff and Scott lead that effort, and we bring disparate groups of people together to help develop those concepts inside the agency that could be a web developer and a copywriter that could be a designer and a strategist. It’s typically two to three people from different parts, agency and they have a traditional creative brief and we give them them some time to start to turn on their ideas and we use cards to initially come up with what these ideas going to be, and then we all throw them out on the table, we start talking about them. And there happened to be one card sitting on a table, a week ago that literally turned out to be our copywriter in said Jen Marie said. Oh, it’s the worst idea possible. It’s X, Y and Z. and Cliff, you could see the light bulb turn. He’s like that is definitely the worst idea ever. But it could be this. And it ended up becoming a concept that was pitched to the client two days ago, and they picked that concept. So I, the worst, best ideas are often the ones where it’s celebrating and we do. I think some really interesting thing is to not only make sure that they’re celebrated, but ensure that they potentially become something tangible because sometimes you can find really good ideas in bad places.

DM: Yeah, …too often. So I think you can see the memes online all the time, of client expectations versus their budget kind of thing. How do you guys manage that? I’m sure we have a lot of listeners that they manage their own clients that I’m sure we all run into that problem to where client says I want this, this masterpiece build, but have a very small budget. Any tips on how you guys handle that to try to steer that conversation and always meet those expectations?

MB: Sure, well, I think the first thing is that you have to be very transparent about what your expectation is an agency or a service provider is to your client, you have to say This is our expectation of the investment you’re gonna make into our agency and we’re very explicit about this, we have a number… A spend that we expect our clients to work with us for and we’re trying to grow them, towards… If you can’t make that number, you’re not a fit for us because we have a very specific type of client that we’re looking for. So I think it’s about understanding you as the service provider, you as the business what is your ideal client and making sure that that client can meet those expectations. Now, that doesn’t mean that things aren’t gonna change in the relationship and that means that we as an agency do have to get creative about how we produce things, but that means we also have to be very transparent of what it takes to produce those things and I think that’s where coupled with just the disasters that to cure the procurement team has done to the agency-client relationship, but we also, as an agency and as a client didn’t do a good job of pulling back layers, and providing a little bit of an open promo of What does it cost for certain things to be produced. And so, I listen I can… We could spend all day on the procurement side of the conversation, so I’m not gonna address that but what I can tell you is that the way that we have handled these sorts of situations when it comes to MS expectations and dollar value is simply to be as transparent as possible. It’s one of our cultural touch stones. We try and be as transparent, we try and be completely transparent inside organization, we do the same for our clients, so we line item, here’s why, and here’s what drives those costs or Here’s why the investment level is at the level that it is and if a client says listen while we only have this budget, we just have to get very aligned on Well what can we do within that budget? What are the things that can or cannot happen? There’s no secret RESP… That making that success happen but what makes it easier? What makes the conversations abundantly less stressful is the transparency between the relationship of that client and your customer in this case our agency.

DM: I think that’s the philosophy of life.

MB: This is true. This is true. This is very true.

AS: We mentioned at the start that I got to see you speak, actually, not once, but twice, at Digital Summit LA. When did the speaking opportunities come into play for you? And is that something you enjoyed doing?

MB: I love doing it. And I’ve said for many years, that if I could afford to live on a teacher’s salary, I would be a teacher. I love teaching, I love helping people get better at what they do because I was so abundantly lucky, the moment I was lucky from day one, my mom and dad moved to the United States in 1980, and then, promptly four years later had me so I’m giving away my age at this point, but I I also I even I grew up in one of the greatest public school programs in the world, at was abundantly lucky enough and had parents that could help me go to college, at the University of Arizona and then just stumbled into a job opportunity with a guy, a little known guy at the time. name Jay Baer. And if you’re not familiar with Jay one of the most well-respected marketers and maybe one of the best guys on the planet in our industry. Hay has written New York Times best-sellers, and just as an absolutely stellar human being. And I would not be where I am in my career and I think in life without the impact of him on my career. But that impact comes purely from a teaching perspective. If you worked for Jay. you understood one rule and that was… You were always a lifelong learner if you’re not learning your diet. And I think he instilled that in every single one of his team members. And I just love that aspect and I just happened to always end up in a place where I had great leaders that were also teachers and so I take that very seriously and given the other path of me is that I love a very nice lifestyle. I know that I couldn’t afford at the lifestyle that I enjoy on a teacher’s salary, so I figure, Hey I can combine the best of those, both worlds by helping people get better at what I know best and also continuing to be able to afford that lifestyle. So the speaking thing really came out of this passion of loving the teaching aspects of the knowledge that I’ve learned over the past 15 or so years and getting on stage, was just really by no fault of mine a happen-stance where Jay could not make a very small opportunity in Phoenix and just said, “You should go talk to these people because I can’t do it and… And you’re really good at this stuff. So go, go do something on the stage. And I was like, “Go do something on the state. What am I gonna talk about?” And that was 10 or 11 years ago, and I’ve been doing it ever since and I just love being on stage and bringing a life, something that is, is equally entertaining, I hope and in forming at the same time.

AS: Yeah, I have to give you credit. The reason I was in your email workshop is I’m a content manager for an email marketing company and it was almost curiosity to the point of how someone gonna get people to sit through four hours of an email presentation, and you excelled the point that I wanted to come see another one of your presentation so I do have to give you compliments there … when you’re planning for that long of a session, what goes into that planning of How am I gonna carry people’s attention for this amount of time?

MB: Yeah, this is a really structured process, so for me, when you’re doing a workshop there a couple of key components and that is why does this matter? You always have to start. This is a very like Simon sent driven conversation. You always start with why, because if you don’t give people a reason to sit there for four hours, they are not going to care. And let me tell you, literally the first thing that you could say that would be the worst possible thing is your own opinion, of why people should stay there. So I you have to back up that why with a global well-known resource or set of research that says this is why you should be spending time here. So the beginnings of that of any workshop for me are all ways setting up that why I then try and mix in. Usually here’s everything that’s wrong with what’s happening with X thing, if you will, and I think you can start to see the pattern because you’ve sat in that workshop. So start with the Y inject here’s what’s wrong, here’s the problem, the challenge, that we’re having and then here’s my view. And here’s why that new matters? And here’s all the things you do to get to that view. This is not an unknown sort of framework. This is a very traditional TED-style framework, that’s just stretched out. Thampson, Webster, who is another delightful, amazing speaker and also the former executive producer at TEDx Cambridge which is one of the most well-respected TEDx in the world. She talks a lot about this framework features of content on stages and it has everything to do with allowing people to understand why does this matter setting the problem of showing the problem than saying Here’s the solution, and backing that solution up with Here’s all the items that go with that solution. And so there’s a very strategic framework to building out that workshop and I use it whether it’s four hours long or whether it’s something like that. You saw on your second session in LA, whether it’s something that’s 30 to 35 minutes long, yeah.

AS: I don’t know if you got to see a Fishkin’s keynote at the LA but the title is Four Horsemen of the Marketing Apocalypse in the first 20 minutes. Literally made you feel like… Alright, let’s pack up everything and go home marketing dead, it’s over, we’re done exactly and then it’s just like… But here’s how you can survive and what’s gonna be okay or how we got back. So just in terms of creating compelling content bring people in. You mentioned your mom’s there for Mothers Day now, your entire session was lessons you’ve learned from her and what other people can take from her where you’re sitting down to create a session like that, and it’s something so personal how you work that in. Did you talk to your mom about it? And I mean, just what’s that ideation process like for you?

MB: So I set this is an incredible question, I and I think you guys know the answer is already this comes from story. What makes compelling content is great stories, and I think too often we forget that fact, that is a fact. And I have always approached the work that I do on stage in that way, I try and source stories from my life and then build them into something, a framework, an idea and muddle around them and eventually, hopefully something percolates out of it. And by the way, there’s been hundreds of ideas that I’ve starting with stories, and I’m like, “Oh this is gonna be great this could be fantastic, I can see it coming to life and as soon as I get put some meat on the book that’s like “Oh that just falls flat. So, you’re gonna throw away a lot of it. A lot of those stories that you start with or that you think are a germination for an idea that you bring to stage. But the mom idea, I think it’s just something that works incredibly well, because it’s relatable. My mom… My mom, not only brings the life lessons that provide this I think really nuanced framework to how we can think about customer experiences. But back it up with everything that she does, in life, and so it’s a very honest, raw framework that she has that she has brought life in any number of life lessons through my life. But again, this comes back to this idea of what makes great content is great stories that serve that content. And so when I think about what’s gonna come to stage regardless of whether it is a pitch we’re doing for a client or whether it’s something that I’m gonna do in front of a marketing conference, it always starts with just thinking about things that are happening in my life and how that becomes relatable and then how can it be educational, and help people get a better grasp of what you’re trying to say, or the point that you’re trying to make and how it can impact the work that they do or the goal that they’re trying to reach.

AS: Yeah, when I first started creating content for benchmark and I’m writing things like lessons from Game of Thrones or Mad Men, or all these things I definitely got different eye roles and I was like… No, that’s… That spoonful of sugar that helps the lessons go down. And I mean you’re using videos or your mom and I mean, teasing jokes and all those things that it certain what you’re like. Oh, I’m also learning something, I go. It’s almost surprise attack people with the education, but just like you said, doing the storytelling I’ve… I think I managed to hone, that a little better. We just had a really fun Email Marketing Lessons from Star Wars, for May. The fourth.

MB: Oh, I love that, I love that.

AS: Yeah, I got to let my internet out quite a bit. It was about 7-000 words,

MB: So it’s got some meat on the bones.

AS: Yes, yeah, quite a bit. I was just like, “Oh man, this one might have gotten away from me, but I’m here for it.

DM: Yeah, I so when it comes down to giving talks is email marketing, something that you normally give talks about or do you tend to vary the subject, depending on… On the different type of event?

MB: It’s very by event. I focus solely on customer experience and email just because that’s where my bread or butter is. Email is just something that’s been in my life since the start of my career, and I’m just a sponge for it. I love the tactic. I think it’s one of the most underserved less respected least sexiest tactics that we have in our disposal, but it is one of the most impactful that we have, and I think for many, many years, it has been the one that people, the marketers have just gone about, and I worry, because it is an own a channel, that not only real people continue to be engaged in, but it drives an incredible ROI, when you are very strategic and thoughtful about the campaigns and strategy that you produce around that tactic for your customers and given the fact that we have the ability to integrate this, our data as organizations, our first party data and all these different tactics, we’re doing from social and beyond, and content and understanding how we recognize existing and known users, that are coming back to our sites or apps and personalizing that experience. It all comes back to knowing who that individual is and behaviors of that individual is doing around and own piece of data like an email address. And I, over the last couple of years, we’ve seen this renaissance happen and I just continue to be a huge, huge fan, and so, very often, in my day-to-day life, I’m more concerned these days, with experience for the organizations and clients that we serve. So typically, I love to talk around those two core ideas experience and email

DM: That’s great. So I think you hit something really important. We always tend to say that Your email list is your most valuable asset. Without that you can’t really bring in sales you can, but it… It’s one of the underserved most just forgotten about things. And I think it relates to as well, if we think about relationships, the new relationships are the exciting ones like, “Oh a new sale, a new customer blah blah blah and then you kind of forget about all these other people that already purchased from you that maybe probably had a good experience that one single email can get a large percentage of those people to come back to the store experience new products and services. And I agree with you 100% that a lot of people tend to forget about that or they have it as the thing in their mind like let’s say everything else up and then let’s send out the email blast as they like to call it. Hate the word, blast anyway, and we talk it and we compare ourselves now a lot to social media, we tend to see that a lot of businesses do split their time between social media and email marketing. And one thing that we try to highlight here is that your social media list, your 20.000 Likes on Facebook, something happens to them tomorrow, they’re gone. If you don’t have that email is You don’t really own that I’m gonna say, “Oh you don’t really own the email list either the relationship is as far as the subscriber wants it to go if they describe that’s it, but the power you have with that is, so underserved. And my question to you is, I guess, what do you see beyond that, the most valuable part of the email marketing that you think business is kind of put aside?

MB: Oh man, I mean. Let’s start with the topic that you just sort of chewed off there, which was on social. It just the connection to social itself, largely because we exactly as you said it, you’re on rented land, when you’re on social media, right, your likes, your followers, your those individuals that are falling, you across those profiles that’s rented space. If they go away, they’re gone now, I think we’re all being a little bit blasphemous when we say that if they’re gone, we’re probably in an era where Facebook and the like, are not going away in a sort of a matter of moments, if you will, especially given just the pervasiveness at least Facebook by itself. I think in other social networks we could probably see that happen, but the connection to social is one of them. The value that you have when you have a relationship with a subscriber with a human being in their inbox and then the ability to connect the behaviors that they’re doing inside that impact two things that you’re doing within social is one big opportunity that I think that businesses don’t understand. We’re spending an inordinate amount of money on the ecosystem that is Facebook and Google’s ad ecosystems, right? So Facebook’s got Instagram app, the whole platform, WhatsApp, deepening that experience in the messenger and more of the private areas of Facebook and then under the ecosystem on Google, you have obviously all of their display media empire, the search Empire, all the retargeting empire Mentos. And he likes right? We can take the… Not only just if we have a relationship with that a subscriber and understand the impact of what they’re doing or what they may not be doing with our email campaigns and then target them with very specific messaging in those two platforms based on those behaviors. We can also ensure that we are not marketing to people that are already our customers, right? So we’re spending trillions of dollars a year, on marketing, new customer messaging to people that are already our customers when we could do a really good job of excluding them from those paid promotional messages because we have an understanding of who they are. So just the connection to social and email itself is just one area and of value. The next is just experience with your business and how you can personalize conversations with an individual, like a sales rep or you can customize a personalization aspects, on your digital property is like your app at or your website, right? By understanding and knowing that person is a logged in, logged out user or cookie-ing that you with some sort of tracking right? And then understanding the experience that you bring to life or a known subscriber, is going to be very different because you know the activities that they do in the behaviors that they take. So you can not only have the value from Social, you can also start to deliver an incredible experience with real-time face-to-face conversations with customers when you have that subscriber relationship and the digital experiences that you’re creating for customers on your website, on your app or these experiences that you may be creating. So the value is so much more than just the relationship inside the inbox. It’s also about all these different areas that we are seemingly trying to reach potential prospects, but also reach our current customers and make sure that, that conversation or that experience we’re having with them is timely targeted and relevant and personalized for that individual.

DM: I can totally see where you’re the chosen one to give seminars and talks, and stuff like that. Your answers are complete. Wonderful… Good to hear. I agree, 100% and yeah, thank you for your support towards the email world and sharing that.

AS: I was gonna say listening and being like, “Oh we gotta pull some of these quotes and put a giant mega phone on top of the car Blues Brothers style and just drive around blasting them. But the good thing is, this is a podcast and everyone’s gonna get to hear it anyways.

DM: Something that you mentioned that, I’m just kind of curious about changing gears completely. Keeping your paid customers your existing customers outside of some paid ads they may want. I know there’s probably some specific ads especially, it’s like a first time special like, Hey save 20%, off on your first purchase. You definitely wanna keep your existing customers out. But I’ve read a lot from Amazon and some other marketing blogs that a lot of companies tend to show the same product, multiple times after the customer buys and that does encourage multiple buys or sharing of that product later on to friends and family. Do you have any experience on that or any take on that?

MB: Yeah, I mean it is, it’s purely I think especially from a sharing angle, I’m not gonna say that I think the experience of re-targeting, for the sake of getting people to repeat purchase is something that we should be championing, because we are a society that is just driving they want of things and I’m not a big proponent of that, so personally I would say I hope we’re not doing that by driving things, but again, we have to run businesses, so I totally get it, and understand that it’s a tactic that will provide value on this idea of sharing. I think that is an incredible insight. And I’ve been reading some of those same articles and certainly something to me on is this, the power of word of mouth, and obviously Jay being my former boss and a guy who’s written a book on this, right? It is second to none, it is the thing that is driving purchase right now. And so, yeah. Is it an interesting tactic to consider for how you drive board of mouth? I think yes, I just hope that we aren’t making we are intentionally doing something to create that sharing mechanism to hit to create Tenali for that customer to share versus simply trying to drive them to repurchase ’cause I think there are much more smart ways we can be doing that without showing them the same ad that we should be showing to a net new customer.

DM: That’s a gold nugget right there I agree, I hate it … I’m it’s not gonna hate it but it just bothers me seeing the same the… So, that I purchased it makes me show it shows to me that that company was a little bit lazy with their marketing and their segments

AS: I think is kind of the idea of the flywheel is almost been like jargon du jour lately, but as that’s becoming people’s more focus in terms of their marketing strategies, I think they’ll learn what to do and not to do, from all of that and where the client is gonna get value from all of it.

MB: Yeah and even worse, it not even what’s hard is when you already are a customer seeing a product or service that you bought before and you do that eye roll motion of why am I seeing this ad? What is even worse is when it’s a potential coupon or it’s a promotion or something, and it’s more than you got off potentially a couple of days ago, or a week ago, or six months ago, right? And we’re so lazy that we can’t even exclude customers, that literally just bought our product got less of a discount on that product and now you’re showing them, if they just would have waited a week, they would have got potentially two times more of it. That those things… I’m like how do we… How do we get that lazy that that’s even a thing but it is… So just things that we have to tackle as marketers.

DM: Yeah, I was at a conference where we were talking about AB testing pricing pages, and they were talking about the horror stories of pricing page that had huge totally different as something 50% different ’cause they were trying to test pricing out and customers that we’re seeing both of them, because somebody screwed up in the ads and the email marketing. That is not a fun game for customer service will tell you that a…

MB: No, it is not not at all.

AS: Well, Michael, I really wanna thank you for spending some time and chat with us day liable marketing “narain could probably to or up for hours but we won’t. ’cause you’re on the east coast, and it’s Friday, so we just wanna give you a chance to let everyone know where they can find out more about Godfrey, and you yourself.

MB: Well first I really appreciate the time and getting to spend a Friday afternoon with you two regardless of if it is Friday, afternoon and we’re gonna go get drinks after this, but if anybody would like to say Hello, I’m pretty much at MichaelJ. I am at MichaelJBarber. Pretty much everywhere online, so Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, you can find me by just using those URLS and then ending them with MichaelJBarber.

AS: Awesome. If you’re ever an event that he speak can’t recommend going to see him enough. Thanks everyone for listening and thanks again to Michael for joining us bye guys.