Episode 3: Beyond the Search Bar- Chad White on Owned Audiences and the Inbox as a Search Platform

(upbeat music) The podcast has a new name and that earned it. For the last couple of years, the conversations on SEO success stories have changed. We've been talking about other platforms outside of Google. We've been talking about LOM visibility. We've been talking about marketplace optimization. We've been talking about optimizing content on social. We've been talking multi-platform, growth visibility, organic growth, overall. So we've already been talking about it. The conversations have been heading there. The user behavior, our bio behavior, is very much in a place well outside of Google. So now the show is called up. Beyond the search bar is the new show. Same feed, same deep conversations, but a much broader range of guests, not just from within SEO traditionally, but content marketers, strategists, ads, gurus. We're going to have them on our show, and we're going to be talking about this new world that we're in right now. I can't wait to share it with you. So if you're really interested in seeing where search and marketing and advertising in general are going, you're in the right place. Let's get to it. (upbeat music) Now welcome to an episode of Beyond the Search Bar. Now our guest today is Chad White from Zeta Global. Good day, Chad. - Good day. - You're great, nice to see you. Chad, do you want to just quickly give us a brief understanding what Zeta Global is? And then we'll get into yourself and we're going to start having a conversation around just this era of Beyond Google SEO. So tell us about Zeta. - Sure. So I'm the GDP of CRM strategy at Zeta Global. And we are an AI powered marketing platform that brings together email marketing, SMS marketing, advertising and lots of other channels with really, really deep AI integration. Like we are AI at the core. It's we just launched Athena by Zeta, which is a super agent that orchestrates the entire platform, which allows folks to get at functionality that perhaps they weren't aware of more easily because it makes suggestions. So we are very, very AI forward, but can do anything and everything in the marketing space, including having a CDP underneath. So that's sort of the gist of what Zeta Global is all about. - Got it, cool. And now you're not currently a search marketer, but what would be your hot type on search marketing in 2026? - Yeah, so my hot take is that it's absolutely changing. I don't think I'm telling anybody anything they don't already know, right? Like searches fundamentally changed. And I saw a quote just the other day about how Google transformed into a traffic referral platform into the largest publisher in the world. And that is a C change that affects everybody who is a publisher. And so that's really the big big change that's happening. And so my hot take is that with the world of search changing that brands have to find alternative ways to become visible. And there are a variety of ways that you can do that, right? I think there's really kind of like five ways. The first is that you have to be so awesome, so amazing, have so much powerful word of mouth that people seek you out. You can also be on all the places where people are already searching. And you already mentioned multi-platform search. All right, it's not just Google anymore. Amazon is an amazing search platform, Reddit is an amazing search platform, Pinterest is an amazing sort of, for like they all have their niches, they all have their spaces. And so being in those places that are the pre-imminent starting points for searches for whatever category is really vital. Creating your own search platform, which in many ways you could argue that like Amazon for instance has, but you could do something similar. Your own search platform, your own agent that becomes ubiquitous in a certain field, that's really important. Also, you can have permission to reach out to people directly. That's the thing that I love, my roots are in email marketing. I think you can't overlook that as a strength. Like in many ways, the inbox is like the original like search field, but people go to their inbox and they search for stuff all the time. So you can't ignore that either. So those are all like really powerful ways of being able to make sure that you are visible and present to folks when they go looking. And so it's really not like pick one thing. And of course, you know, being president L.A. That's the fifth one. That's just it. So those are the five things. And it's not about like, oh, like pick one. It's really about like pick lots of them, maybe even all of them to be successful. So I think searches would become like a much, much broader thing. You can't make up for the losses. Like we have a lot of publisher clients at Zeta Global. And quite a few of them are seeing like their organic search decline by like 40%. Like you can't make that up by just doing like one thing on the side. Like that's multi-pronged, you know, attempt to like to claw back that disability that really everybody is losing. And certainly a lot of the smaller publishers are losing even more. So it's even more tired for them. So that's my hot talk. My hot take is that it's changing so radically that you need a multi-pronged approach. And certainly one of the ones that I hope that we get to talk about quite a lot is about owning audiences, first party audiences. And what do you do there? Well, I think that's the thing that you talked about. The publishers just hemorrhage in traffic. And you've probably got SEO professionals out there going, I can fix that for you. You know, let me get that search traffic back. But guess what is not coming back? It's not. You need to be diversifying your channels. We'll talk about one of those today. It's like you really need to be looking at other ways to get in front of your users or your readers, your customers, your advertisers. So that's the huge shift which is happening right now. Before we get into that, let's just get a bit of context on yourself. So you mentioned, so you and Emo marketer, was that where you started in marketing? Like how did you get into this world? Yeah. So no, I did not start in Emo marketing. Like most Emo markets don't start in Emo marketing. So I'm a journalist by training. I have a master's in journalism from NYU. I spent about a bit of time in New York City. I worked at Condonast in Dow Jones for a number of years before pivoting into the marketing space. It happens. I think kind of oddly, this was back in the mid 2000s. My brother started a blog, like a personal blog. This is like the era of like all these blogs starting up. And I saw him do that and being a competitive younger brother, I was like, well, if my brother can start a blog, I can start a blog. Yeah. And I started to think like, oh, what could I, what could I blog about? And as a journalist, I was covering technology and I was covering retailers. So that intersection. And I was already subscribed to a bunch of retailers, Emo marketing programs because that was a great way to stay on top of what brands were talking about. And it says again, the early 2000s, so they would frequently launch or announce like new web improvements and things like that. And so it was a great way to get leads for stories. And so I started blogging essentially six days a week about what retailers were doing with their email marketing programs. And it was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. And that was my entry point. And from there, I joined the email experience council, which didn't get acquired by the drug marketing association. And it was onward and upward from there. And I've since worked for a lot of the biggest email service providers in the world. Responses, exact target, Salesforce, Oracle, and now Zeta Global. And it's been fantastic. Yeah. So I was a, I mentioned I was a copyright. I was kind of part time music journalist. I've had a lot of jobs. That I was a music journalist as well and early late 90s, early 2000s. And I do recall, so I find an interesting thing you went from journalism and you started blogging. So then you started understanding the power of like, you know, my marketing and that sort of stuff. So you kind of got into it organically. I do recall a lot of my colleagues, music journals, when the writing started to dry up because they just start syndicating. Instead of sending out just as an example, CDs to every single city in Australia for reviewers. All of a sudden you just write the one review and then it's indicated across the whole country. So there's a lot less writing out there for, you know, features and reviews and all that sort of stuff. So we had some, you know, colleagues who would head into marketing and that was like, they were not doing it because I had a passion for marketing or because I stumbled into, wow, this is really cool. I was just doing it to pay the bills. Some of them frankly, if I think back, this is early 20s, kind of lambasted for, you know, for selling out, which is so ridiculous in retrospect. But many of them now, not many of them are full time journalists now. Let me put it that way. So it's definitely going to be. You're talking about the changes to the search field. Yeah. Obviously journalism has had equally seismic changes. Yeah. But no, I really love the digital marketing space in a particular that you know, marketing space. It's constantly changing. Yeah, sometimes it sometimes you know gets this bizarre wrap that like it hasn't really changed much It has changed so much over the past 20 years that I've been in the space like the changes are really Massive and there's constant changes and currently right now So like there's changes on multiple fronts, right? There's technology technology changes on the vendor front like vendor capabilities are always Increasing certainly here at Zeta Global. We're we're making like pretty I think astounding, you know progress and capabilities at the same time The inbox writers and mailbox writers they I think right now ever since Mail privacy protection was introduced by Apple We've been in this period sort of like Renaissance period of investment in email inboxes and email mailboxes We've seen Google Yahoo Apple not so much Microsoft there. It's been like a little bit more behind the scenes but like heavy heavy investment and I wouldn't say that all of the things they're doing are great for marketers Hmm, I wouldn't say that however it is a huge endorsement of email as a channel as a platform that again Apple Google Microsoft yeah, like these are huge huge companies that they're investing a lot of money in their their email platforms That's a that's a huge endorsement and any wood who you know, hopefully no one I Haven't heard this much in a while, but it was a period of time where everyone was like oh email's dad socials killing email and all this stuff And I haven't heard that in a long time and I feel like we're really in this like sort of Renaissance time where Everybody really recognizes the value of email as a channel along with SMS and push and everything else Yeah, I actually want to talk to that in a moment. I mean, that's very similar in the SEO world SEO is dead every time there's an algorithm change right now people are saying SEO is dead But like I think SEO is just evolved and it's just a lot broader a skill set and broader a playing field now Because you mentioned marketplaces and this SEO required there. I was talking to someone last week about The Amazon SEO that they were doing that shifted a lot this year because of I'm gonna Is it redol for a roof is what's the AI Roofus so they're actually calling it our SEO like it's a specific Tate cool like playbook that they're using for visibility within that so I think I mean it's all SEO It's a me it's just you know becoming a much broader space to play in um, but I am Got spoiled right you got spoiled with it just being Google right yeah, yeah, it was like Google was everything yeah, and so like it was just like a singular focus on Google and now The landscape has really broken up yep, and it looks a lot more frankly like the email marketing landscape does where you have to pay attention to Apple and they have their way of doing things You have to pay attention to Microsoft. They have their own way of doing things and you have to pay attention to You know Google because they all because there's no standards So welcome to our crazy crazy world of multi-platforms no standards and you have to like address each of these channel each of these Subchannels individually as part of your strategy, so it is really interesting I had not thought of that take at all the fact that email marketers have been doing multi-platform Strategies for years because you've had different you know email service providers you've had different gateways To people's inboxes that you had to try to navigate with different rules Interesting really interesting. We touched on SMS and push and and um, you know previously and and I think When those channels first started I mean, I know because I was involved in some implementation of these There was a lot of thought that okay Well, you've got the email database. Just you know, we've already got their phone number just run the same strategy Let's just push it out across a different line a different you know different channel Tell me about like the evolution of that kind of approach. Yeah, talking about you know when that sort of came in and then that the evolution of that approach Yeah, so I think it's very tempting right like you know was the first channel right it was the OG Like everyone got really good at that and then SMS came along and they have a lot more like laws there They're a little bit tricky to navigate In terms of like permission and such But like SMS was the next big channel and then push came along And like all three of those channels are very different have different rules have very different expectations Certainly the mobile ones obviously much more immediate way louder right like interruptive Can really and because of that their frequency tolerances are much lower than email which is Generally non-interruptive or not nearly on the same level especially like on the consumer side of things And so like the expectations are incredibly different in all of those channels And if all you're doing is Taking your email strategy and just replicating it in these other channels It just becomes duplicative and redundant and you're just like echoing and Honestly, it completely destroys the incentive for people to opt-in to multiple channels which you want people to do We recently did some research and we found that consumers customers who are opted in to two or more of those three channels email SMS or push or any or worth anywhere from two to nine times more than a single Channel subscriber So you want folks to be opted in to SMS and push and email and SMS now all the combinations or all three That is very very good for your business. You absolutely want that to happen And there's no way to make that an enticing proposition if you're treating all of those channels exactly the same Yes, you can have some reinforcement right like everybody has like their big tent poles Right and you you want to echo some things but You want to talk about things you know the same thing in different ways come at it from different angles And so that it doesn't seem so redundant like you want people to be in these these channels And you want to lean into their strengths again, especially those mobile channels which are like really fast yeah, you can do like flash sales and things like that that don't really make sense in email Yeah, that's interesting That's really interesting especially around like I love the thought of that like the more engaged they are with you know two or three of those channels as an owned audience The more value they are to you so To keep them sticking in that you really need yes, there needs to be a tone of voice and a consistency of messaging obviously Be needed to be delivering value in a different way on each of them otherwise, what's the point? Otherwise, it just gets annoying. I already got this email. Oh, you got that notification. Why are you telling me this? I was um when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago It was a I won't name the brand but there was a really big brand Tech forward I thought tech forward um at delivery brand and up until last year their notification strategy was a mirror image of Oh man was it email or rest of mass like it was just one of the other ones replicated across and this person was had to you know Basically head up a digital transformation and go look this is actually a very different Type of marketing message and it needs to be structured differently I'd said that I told a friend. This is just like me try not to name job because I don't want to drop anyone in I told a friend who runs the notifications team and a really big music platform That story and he could not believe he talked about actually about different data integrity for the different things He actually went over my head when he talked about that but Interesting that there are still big brands out there that are doing the kind of mirroring replicating as opposed to differentiating across those Yeah, and consumers expect that when something happens in one channel that all the other channels know about it right? Like everybody hates it when they go on a website and Maybe browse but then they come back and they put something on their car then maybe they leave and then they come back and then they buy it And then they're just like they're haunted by that item that they bought everywhere they go They see ads for the thing that they already bought everybody eats that right and so like that is like a great example of Brands having disconnects between their channels and that case between their You know, they're like they're marketing and they're they're advertising channels Those have to work together too. That's that's certainly one of the things that here is data We feel very passionate about is that advertising is really just like another marketing channel in many ways like these things should be working Very tightly together. So yeah, it's about Centralizing data treating your customer like a single individual Not splitting them into different individuals who are operating independently across different channels You have to like unify all of that so you can treat these people like the singular individuals that they are And be able to respond quickly when they do something in one channel make sure that it's reflected in another channel Yeah, so what do your thoughts on how This owned audience space now overlaps with with earned media and search and everything else that's out there like how how is that evolved in a way where You know, a really strong owned media strategy helps support things like You know geo a.o. You know all the acronyms sure, so I mean the power of owning an audience, you know having a Relationship and I don't actually like the word on I knew we call it on media I'm not a huge fan of that. Yeah, because don't really own it at all right. It's like it's like being able to like own a handshake agreement Like yeah, just walk away whenever they want to yeah, you know, I like to I like to refer to emails like granted media like it's being granted to you being like welcomed into their space So anyway, so so I There's incredible powerful - Well, incredible power in having those kinds of relationships. And again, I mentioned how the inbox really is another search platform. And that actually, like, this is a little side note. Like that also changes how marketers, how brands need to go to market with their email messages. If you're optimizing for search, you're building your messages in a slightly different way. And some of it is slightly sad to me again as a former journalist, we used to have amazing fun headlines. And then SEO came along and it was like, we don't understand your amazing fun headline. Why don't you come up with a nice straightforward boring test line? And that's what we'll send you traffic soon. So email is sort of in that same place where now it's rewarding straightforward subject lines, straightforward copy. It doesn't mean that you can't have some fun, but really is a ton of value and just being straightforward and direct about what you're doing. Have your brand personality, but being straightforward and direct. Also, like, you know, people are incredibly time crunch. So clear communication almost always wins, but that's also great for sort of SEO in the inbox. - Yeah. - The other thing that's super important is that graphical text and emails is not good. So when text is embedded in an image, not great. You want to have HTML text. That's what allows inboxes to read it. And strangely, alt text, if you have alt text tags on images, oftentimes those are ignored. I hope that that's not always going to be the case because I think that's great content. It could be easily mined. And it is actual text in the code. But right now it's ignored by most platforms. And it's also ignored when inboxes are doing AI summaries of emails as well. So HTML text is the way to go straight forward subject lines, straight forward titles and making sure that like yet you have HTML text associated with the things in your emails. There are some brands that do an awful lot of, like personalized content in their emails. And a lot of that personalized content does not come with HTML text. It is, and oftentimes that you become with alt text. It's just images. And so it's completely invisible to search in the inbox. So that's something that I think will evolve over time. But that's the current state of that. So that's important. But there are lots of other really interesting things beyond just like having a loyal audience that kind of turns to you by default. And when they're in the shopping mood are going to go search up your emails and say, "Hey, I'm going to buy at this brand. What are the latest offers? Let me check my email." Ah, okay, now you see. The thing that's really getting interesting is that all of the players, all of the big players in the email mailbox space and inbox space, they're also the leaders in AI. Google. I mean, Apple's not so much, but by proxy Apple is there, Microsoft, and then Yahoo, it's a little bit not so much. But certainly with Google and Microsoft, but like huge, huge players in AI. And the thing that they are doing that I think is super fascinating is that they realize that email inboxes are full of valuable content that can inform the answers for their AI searches. So for instance, we here at Zeta, we were a Microsoft shop. So we have Copilot and Copilot is, we have like two modes. We have like the web mode and we have the work mode. And the work mode looks at everything across the Zeta network, all the word docs, all the Excel docs, all the emails, all the teams, communications. And so when you are trying to find information, it will use all of that as rag to give you the best answer. That's pretty amazing. And that's for everything else is headed to. That's the secret. And so Google is starting to do this very same thing and the consumer side of things. So like, obviously Microsoft is very focused on B2B businesses. So then that's great. I mean, that's super, super powerful what they're doing. Google clearly recognizes that this is also like a fantastic place to be. And so they've done a couple of things. And checking my notes, going to make sure I call it the right thing. So they have this thing called marketing content usage. This is a thing that they launched last year. And essentially what they did and what they're doing is that they want to know what brands are sending to their subscribers. And so they allow you to subscribe Google to your email marketing program. And then they will see what emails, what email content comes to them. They also are signing themselves up. So if you're a big brand, you probably, you probably don't have to do anything. They've probably already subscribed. Now, I think the idea is really good. Like the spirit of the idea is very good. This particular execution, I think, is actually pretty horrible because you're looking at a single persona that is the Gmail persona. And any sophisticated email marketing program is treating all their subscribers quite differently. Certainly looking at different buckets of subscribers. Like, is that Google account, is that Google email address going to be opening and clicking all the time? What are they going to be clicking on? Because if they're not opening and clicking, then they're going to quickly become inactive and they're going to get very different messaging from everybody else. If they are clicking on certain things, that's going to be seen as an indication of interest in those things. And therefore, they will get more things related to that, which will be very different potentially from what other people are getting. So it really ignores where we are as an industry, that your marketing industry has become very good at segmentation and personalization and automation in the form of triggers so that people really are getting-- oh, it's not like a one-to-one, but they're getting a pretty bespoke experience. And your experience with a brand in the inbox is likely different from somebody else's because you're different people. And you're interested in different things and you're taking different actions. So I think this program, again, the spirit is good. I'm incredibly misguided because it just doesn't recognize how much email marketing has changed. This was a great program when I started an email 20 years ago. It would have been perfect because everybody was getting the same thing. 20 years ago, everybody got the same thing. It would have been fantastic. It would have been great, but that's not the case anymore. But the good thing is they've launched something that I think is not only in the same spirit, but waste smarter, called personal intelligence. And their personal intelligence program asks you to opt in to connect with Gemini, your Gmail account, your Google images, of course, your Google calendar, which is part of Gmail and YouTube. So it connects all of these platforms together. I think the Gmail one is actually sort of like the hidden gem. I mean, there's definitely a lot you can learn from someone's interest by looking at their YouTube, their YouTube viewing habits. Certainly, at their Google images, like what? Vacation photos. Like you can do-- you can learn a lot from it. But I think Gmail is really the gold mine. Because there's so much amazing stuff in your inbox. The first thing is that there's a whole landscape of all the brands you care about. All the brands you care the most about are in your inbox. All of your purchases, everything you've ever bought since having that Gmail account, there is a receipt in there. Yeah. That is a gold mine. That really helps Gemini understand who you are as a consumer. What kinds of things do you buy? So I think just to kind of segue in there and think about this, like the application for this across other channels as well, we talk about with ads, paid ads, like a conversion profile, that the ad platforms will build up over time. And the ideal situation is your product has a certain AOV or a certain hero product or range of products that it would like the conversion profile, your ideal customers, to center around. And over time, as you get more and more of those sales, the ad platforms get a better and better idea of the signals to know that, OK, the conversion profile for your sweet spot customer is right here. And this is where you get the right ones. What you're talking about right now is the nth degree of that. It's not signals to this. It's receipts over time. And it's actually amazing when you think about the power in that information to then retarget to prospect not cold anymore, because you've got some really strong beyond signals. They're actual purchases. That's great. Yeah. I mean, a lot of signals, there's also a lot of intense as well, which is something we talk about. It's a lot. It's great to have profiles. But like, being able to see intense signals, that allows you to pivot quickly and seize limited time opportunities. Well, it tells you the difference between someone who loves sports cars and someone who can actually afford a Ferrari. Like, they're different people. But they-- No, for sure. For sure, yes. An enthusiast versus a qualified buyer. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, so-- All right. So again, this is like the tip of the iceberg. The receipts I think is just absolute gold. But also, I talked about how marketing content usage at Google was not a good program because everybody's not going to get the same things. Well. But if you have access to, if Gemini has access to your Gmail account, they can see all the emails you're getting, including all of the personalization that's in there. So now, you're essentially, like Gemini is relying on all of the AI that's running personalization for all of these brands that are orbiting around a particular consumer, and they're ingesting that intelligence as well. That's super powerful. Being able to understand seasonal buying trends, that's in the inbox. You don't have to guess. Like, you can see that pattern over the years of like, "Oh, okay, this person vacations every year in July in this place." Or they're always buying their niece this thing every March, whatever it might be. Like that seasonality is super important. And I've always already kind of alluded to it. Also, there's social graph information in there. Right? You get emails from your friends, from your family members, and that also is intelligence that you can then pull together to understand not only the person, but also all the people that are important to them. That's crazy valuable information. So I think that again, like the being able to connect Gemini to Gmail is just amazingly powerful. And I feel like it's kind of like not sneaky. I mean, it's totally above board. But like, it's bundled in with like, Google Photos and YouTube and like these other things where you're like, "Oh, it's just like a bunch of things." But I think that thing, Gmail, that's where all the gold is. That's super valuable. So the other things valuable, absolutely, 100% valuable. But I think the gold is absolutely in the inbox. And I think that's going to be just incredibly valuable as we start to get into AI commerce. Yeah. When you start to have agents that are constantly making purchases for you, suggesting purchases for you, bringing things to your attention. Ooh, man, that's the kind of information that takes AI commerce from like, okay, but I always have to kind of like redirect it all the time. To like, wow, this thing knows me. This thing knows what I like. It doesn't waste my time. And at that next level. And the action, you know, it could be a click. It could be an audio. Okay, purchase it. And the agent to commerce just says it's why it's really into that transaction. So frictionless. Really? And so obviously that makes email super valuable. So for brands, like to bring this back to brands, like if that's how consumers are going to be affected by LLMs, like ingesting this information, that makes the inbox a really important place to be. Yeah. Now there's a lot of conversations happening about like marketers serving machines and machines and machine communication and stuff. And I think it's like, I think it makes some people uncomfortable, but I think we need to get over ourselves a little bit and like understand that, you know, when we're emailing, you know, a subscriber, you know, one of our customers, that information that we're sending them could get ingested by a machine and agent on their behalf. And that that's just as good as if that person actually read it and click through and explored. So there's value there as well. So, you know, there's a, again, there's a lot of a lot of hand-rearing about, you know, AI in the inbox, including by myself. It's definitely changing things, but being able to have information feed the agents that serve your customers, that's incredibly valuable. And that is, that is a very, I think a very powerful way of like getting around this loss of search visibility. For sure. For sure. Man, Chad, so much gold there. I hadn't even thought of SEO of the inbox. The idea around the messaging having to become less and less kind of creative and more and more standardized sort of for a search, you know, that's as a writer, that's a little bit sad, but like it's also, you know, it's the commercial reality if you want to get found. So super fascinating around, you know, the Google personal intelligence, even just machine to machine. We've been talking beta, same beta B for a long time, but, you know, 8 a or m to m, like is this, you know, where things are heading? Fascinating, Chad. Thanks so much. I've got two more questions for you and then we're going to wrap up. One question firstly, when you think, or when if anyone asks you around visibility within Chad, Chippity and Gemini and the LLM platforms, what is the term that you personally use to describe that? Is it, I'll give you some options and you can use your own. Geo, AI search or something else. Yeah, I'm very aware of all of the acronyms. Yeah, I think I've been like just defaulting to kind of AI search. Yeah, I think that's the one that's going to win. I really do. I think it's the bigger umbrella. I understand that like each of those is like a certain kind, like a certain angle of it, but I feel like speaking more broadly, I think AI searches. Yeah, that's a term that I like. I agree. And I think that from mine, you've got SBRs fighting, and I've a generative main sense, answer main sense, LLM, and they're so worried about the little finicky things, but SBRs make up such a tiny portion of the marketing world. The rest of the marketing world, I'm sure is heading towards AI search, is like a catch-all. So I think that's going to win. Sorry. Yeah, I will confess here at Zeta, we talk about answers all the time. Okay. And I do like the construct of that. Like that's the thing you're looking for, right? So, you know, especially, you know, in business, like you're not, I don't like the term data driven. I feel like for a long time, everyone's like, "Oh, I'm data driven." And that's like, that's, that's how I do things. I let the data guide me. All right. Data is, data is not the thing that should guide anybody. Insights, insights should guide people. And yes, insights come from data, but there's a lot of data that's just, that's not useful, right? This is a lot of junk. Everyone's swimming in data. Yeah. Everybody just got oceans of data around them. And the goal is finding the insights in there. Or, as we like to say, like finding the answers, the actionable answers. So, I feel like we're transcending data at this point. And we're going to a better place of it is all about finding answers, finding the next best action to take and finding those insights that allow you to understand your customer and your business in a smarter way. So, yeah, I like to focus higher up there. Got it. Love it. Last question. What do you think some us underrides in the marketing channel or tactic for brands this year? Yeah. So, I prepared for this question. So, I just wrote a column for CMS wire. I write for them every month. And my most recent column is about Mother's Day opt-outs. And why I think that's a good thing. And so, essentially, Mother's Day can be a very sensitive holiday for folks who have lost a parent. Yeah. Or lost a parent figure. So, allowing people who were not interested, because it's sensitive to them, to opt out so they don't get those messages. I think that's a really powerful thing because it respects where they are as people, respects their feelings. And allows you to pivot to something else that they're going to care about more. Because if someone feels so strongly that they're going to say, "Hey, they're going to raise their hand and say, "Hey, I really don't want messages about Mother's Day or Father's Day or Valentine's Day or whatever it is," not this year. Then they're not going to, if you just send that messaging to them anyway, they're going to be tuning you out. They may tune you out well beyond the Mother's Day season, for instance. And so, my underrated tactic is not Mother's Day opt-outs, but it's empathy. Like, I think in this age of AI, being able to make sure that we're recognizing that our customers are people, I think that is becoming significantly more important and really being able to put ourselves in their position. Our capabilities are becoming really vast and it's getting much easier for us to respect things like a Mother's Day opt-out. So, and there's lots of other opportunities to be empathetic as well. I felt like we did just a rock star level job during the early months of the pandemic and really understanding what people were feeling because I think we were all having a very communal experience. And we've sort of like been slipping away from that. And I know that there's been like toxic and pinning recession for a very long time now and certainly right now with this war that we've started. Like, that's causing a lot of consternation and a lot of worries. But I think always kind of centering the customer and centering their feelings. Again, I think especially now in the age of AI, I think that's super powerful. So, that's I think my like top tactic for this year is to like always kind of bring yourself back to thinking like a human. Because that's the thing that marketers, we can do that better right than AI can. - Love it, love it. Chad, thanks so much. Great conversation. You really appreciate your thoughts. Lots of great shares, a lot of thought-provoking shares as well. What's the best way for anyone wants to reach out to you and continue the conversation or just wants to pick you Brian? What's the best way for people to catch you? - Sure, so you can find. me at emailmarketingrules.com. I've written a book, you know, marketing rules. You can find me there. You can also find me at LinkedIn at chatSWite, also on Macedon and X and Blue Sky also at chatSWite. So feel free to find me on any of those platforms. Excellent. Thanks so much, Chad. Well, that's been another, another, that's been an episode of Beyond the Surge Bar. Another episode of just fascinating marketing conversation, fascinated beyond the search conversation. Lots of really interesting tidbits there. I've taken a bunch of notes that I'm just going to dig into a bit more and chat to the team about because it's a fast-changing world and Chad's just shared a whole lot more that I didn't know and I'm hoping and I'm sure a lot of our listeners didn't know as well. If you did enjoy this podcast, I would love especially as we're going through this process of just broadening out the topics and the conversations and the speakers. I'd love you to put a five-star review on us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. They're the main platforms that we're looking for those. And they are committing to get back to you on these every two weeks. So subscribe, write us some feedback and I'll be back in your ears in two weeks time. That is Beyond the Surge Bar with Rosma Cumber. Thanks everyone.