Resources

Jessica Best

Jessica is a speaker, strategist, and digital marketing evangelist at Emfluence. She’s a one-to-one marketing nerd, now taking that passion to the masses through her public speaking efforts.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT YOUR INCREASED SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS?

I love that I’m able to tell people the “secrets” of how to make money at this stuff. Email marketing is a unique industry and you never really learn it in college, so I love the look on people’s faces when I tell them something that will increase open rates by 10% or increase their email return on investment by 25%. Plus, I’ve met some seriously smart people on the conference circuit. It’s cool to be part of such a great group of nerds.

WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED AND/OR CAN GIVE ON PUBLIC SPEAKING?

Be real and tell your story. If speaking terrifies you, it’s not for you. But if you’re just not sure how to approach it, remember that marketers are all storytellers. Especially in a world where ‘content marketing’ is the buzzword of the year. So, sharing your story on stage is just another way to tell it. Talk to people like they’re your peers, your pals. And be transparent. (If you haven’t learned that lesson already thanks to social media, the stage will certainly teach you.) People learn from people they can relate to! That means the bumps, the failures… and what you learned from those experiences.

Jessica-Best-Talk

DO YOU RUN INTO ANY COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT EMAIL AND DIRECT MARKETING’S ROLE?

All the time. Direct marketing has a major reputation problem. To some marketers it sounds like colorful, wasteful junk mail. Very unhip. Direct marketing is marketing in 2014. Using data to target your customers better and send more relevant information. Then use data to measure a campaign’s effectiveness and learn what your customer enjoys best. There’s nothing cooler. Email practically seems like a traditional medium these days – again, not super hip – but that’s because there aren’t a lot of companies that don’t do it anymore. Email makes the best return on investment and drives/nurtures the most high quality leads of any medium. Digital or otherwise. Now, try to tell me that’s not sexy…

HOW WILL EMAIL MARKETING CONTINUE TO EVOLVE?

Email is going to continue to be influenced by social media and become a “permission-required” medium. In social, you win with great content and a genuine community. You can’t force yourself down the throats of your audience, they have to come to you, to like you. That has major implications on how we acquire new email addresses — better be asking permission — and on what we send to keep the reader engaged.

The past 3 years, we’ve said that “this will be the year of mobile,” but I think 2014 is already the year that mobile infiltrated the email marketing discussion. Accessible, timely content that arrives in customers’ inboxes and looks great, appeals to them right now. That’s the way great email marketing is going to happen.

WHAT IS YOUR LATEST EPIPHANY?

A small personal touch goes a long way. Just got complimented on a small-batch email campaign to our customers who have Canadian customers on their list, letting them know how many of their contacts may fall under Canada’s new anti-spam legislation and offering them suggestions on how to reach out to gain “express consent.” It took a little bit of work to pull out the information, but then variable data made it easy to reach out to a lot of customers at once with their own counts. It was cool to see how appreciative people were that we might be saving them some legal trouble!


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