If this were a Friends episode — which is becoming a recurring premise in these show notes — this would be "The Other One About Writing." Guest Grace Aldridge Foster shares her passion for that most essential element of email, writing!

How would it feel to face a room full of Green Berets and tell them their writing needs some work? Grace sheds quite a bit of light on that, as she's done it repeatedly! Even top-notch soldiers, according to Grace, often need to work on their writing skills — including email. BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front — doesn't always do the job.

This conversation wanders as much or more as the average email thread, but at heart it's a couple of people who value and care about the power of language comparing notes on the challenges of using language effectively and well in now-mostly-digital channels. Are reverse-threaded email messages just DUMB? Why do we still do that? If you use the right emoji, did you just make a faux pas that tells everyone you're out of date? How the heck would you know?

Fair warning — if you listen to this conversation, which you should, you'll probably end up thinking "My company should hire BoldType to help everyone write just a LITTLE bit better. That would pay for itself 100x in a month."

Super-fun, super-smart, super-interesting guest. Don't miss this one.

Want a little glimpse of the future? About halfway into this conversation, Renards Skutels describes a recent experience that his agency Chatsmart engineered for a client. The client's customers engaged live with a WhatsApp GenAI chat agent — the example Renards gives is “I have dry skin in the winter.” The chat agent sent the customer a catalog of applicable products to solve the problem, and the customer purchased — all within the WhatsApp app.

In some countries — most particularly, China/WeChat — a complete in-app transaction cycle like this is commonplace. It's pretty cutting-edge for the EU, though. While WhatsApp appears to have the user-preference edge, Meta is playing catch-up to WeChat on the supporting technologies required.

For North America, it's like a peek into a multiverse future, where the winning reality isn't set yet. Is Renard's story an example of

• How Amazon will function in a few years?
• How Canadians — and perhaps Americans — will use WhatsApp in the near future?
• Or — wildcard — how RCS might seize the pocket as Apple and Android play cyber-detente / cold-war?

What does this have to do with email?

Well...everything. Email isn't going away, but it's less and less the first-habit communication channel. Chatsmart is working on the front lines of app marketing in the EU market(s). Market dynamics and culture are different there, to be sure, but ask yourself this...do you check your messages or your email first? Which do you look at immediately, and which later?

This conversation will make you think about how things might look in a few short years.

If you're growing a midsize business, and need to focus your team's time on the business rather than social media...give Wendy Pace a call. Wendy had the courage to be a guest on The Future Of Email when she's not really a big fan of email!

Pace Setting Media handles social media for companies; they're immersed in helping clients learn who their customers really are, and how to reach them (cost-effectively) on a wide range of social-media platforms — including email :-)

AI comes up a lot in the conversation, with divergent opinions on the probable outcomes. Will AI make credible, compelling video content — or more drivel? Will copy and writing get better? Wendy's clearly paying close attention to the space.

It's been said that email is the original social media. This conversation tends to suggest that opposite, at least in terms of social media as it operates circa 2024. The heavy hand of algorithms and filters in the social media space don't apply (at least, not as much) in the inbox. From Wendy's perspective, that's bad — too much email. From Matthew's perspective, that leaves the person in control albeit with an additional workload.

If you're starting to think that you're under-utilizing social media and/or email to grow your business...give this conversation a listen!

If The Future Of Email were 'Friends', this episode would be titled "The One Where They Talk About Music A Lot". Guest Cloé Luv is a serial entrepreneur with considerable experience in (among many things) the business of music. Cloé is also a CEO, influencer, brand expert, success coach and Forbes Coaches Council member.

Cloé is her own best example of the importance of passion, focus, leveraging one's strengths but keeping the important stuff in mind along the way. (Cloé's first job dusting the video-store shelves is also a pretty good story!)

"I always urge people trying to make a name for yourself, make, make a brand. That's all branding, whether it's music or business. That's why I take it everywhere. It's the same foundation, create a brand for yourself."

There are plenty of gems in this conversation about business, and branding, and even email, to be sure.

To be candid, if you're looking for "email marketing tips", this may not be the best Future Of Email episode. (See Ryan Phelan, Kath Pay, Chad S. White episodes for that.). But if you want to hear two people with passion and expertise for both business and music explore the current and future state of that field together...this is definitely the conversation for you!

" Don't fall in love with the paycheck, fall in love with the client." That's one of the bits of sage advice from Sam Saifi, founder of Revenue Labz.

Sam shares his journey into email by way of copywriting in this email-and-marketing focused conversation. While Sam operates from the UK, the majority of his clients focus on the US market as well. Revenue Labs "with a zed" specializes in e-commerce DTC (direct to consumer) clients, particularly those based in the Shopify ecosystem.

Sam's got a refreshing enthusiasm for email — given that it's older than he is, that's kind of fun! He and his team focus on the trackable, scalable, measurable and own-able aspects of email. Sam and host Matthew Dunn also delve into text messaging for marketing purposes.

The "Labs with a zed" label isn't accidental; Sam shares some terrific advice about a testing-centric, data-centric approach to scaling a DTC brand.

If your company is in the DTC space...this is a great conversation for you!

When’s the last time you just picked up the phone and called someone — no calendar appointment, no text-first? If that thought makes you kinda jumpy…you need to listen to this conversation with Mischa Zvegintzov.

Mischa is — his description — ‘old school’. He made over a million phone calls and pounded the pavement. Now he helps companies capture the value of -their- conversations — with customers, with podcast guests, and as podcast guests.

Does email come up in the conversation? Absolutely! Even though he’s completely conversant with social media channels, Mischa is 100% keen on the value of the you-own-it relationships in an email list.

This is also a refreshingly personal and non-pitchy conversation — about being a parent as well as an entrepreneur.

Anna Levitin of Powtoon is the 2nd guest to Zoom in from a bomb shelter! Anna is the super-active email face of the super-cool company Powtoon, a visual communication platform.. (Editor's note - host Matthew Dunn is a Powtoon super-user and fan :-)

Anna made her way to email from traditional media and digital marketing. Running the email arm of a global SaaS company like Powtoon has some distinct differences from consumer marketing. Powtoon has a loyal (and opinionated) customer base of over 40 million users, spanning many languages and cultures. Powtoon itself has team members in multiple countries. English, as she observes, is not a perfect solution!

That puts Anna and her colleagues at Powtoon in a funny position — at one of the leading visual communication platforms, communicating through a distinctly not-visually-centric channel: email. (Anna notes that they create a LOT of gifs!)

If your company has "a user base", and email is one of the main channels for connecting with them, you'll find this a terrific and useful conversation — one of the two best bomb-shelter conversations on The Future Of Email so far.

Like most people “in email”, Melanie Balke, the CEO and founder of The Email Marketers, found her niche in email along the way. The Email Marketers is an agency focused on email and SMS marketing for ecommerce and B2B SaaS companies. They function as an outsourced email department, and also help companies build in-house email teams.

For Melanie, good email marketing comes down to being a "good sender" - providing value to subscribers, building community, having a strategy, thoughtful segmentation and targeting. Bad senders spam, blast everyone, and ignore feedback.

As is common these days, Matthew and Melanie end up talking about SMS and messaging. As it grows, restrictions will come just like email has faced, and brands need to use it to actually add value to consumers' lives. For now - Wild West!

Melanie has the experience marketer’s take on personalization — it’s TOUGH! Personalization and segmentation is best when tied closely to a company's own data about customer behavior and preferences.

Because of the ecosystem (Shopify + Klaviyo) used by so many of her customers, this conversation goes farther into how effective email marketing can be when “all of the silos are connected.” Want an invigorating look at best practices? Check out this conversation!