Dave Shrest (2:15)

How you doing Ryan? Pleasure to be here with you. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Alford (2:18)

I appreciate your time. Appreciate you for coming on. What's cooking Dave? Where are we Today, let's tell all the deets. I know Constant Contact. I've known that name for a long time as a small business owner. Where are we physically now, Dave? Where we located?

Dave Shrest (2:30)

I'm in the Boston area. Constant Contacts headquarters is in Waltham, Massachusetts, about 20 minutes from Boston. I'm in a little town called Muan about 30 minutes north of Boston.

Ryan Alford (2:38)

Nice. We've been with Constant Contact for a good skinny minute here. Is that right?

Dave Shrest (2:42)

Yeah, I've been at constant contact over 14 plus years now.

Ryan Alford (2:45)

Congratulations on the longevity. I mean in today's corporate world, like bouncing around, it says something about you and them.

Dave Shrest (2:51)

I'll take it. We were talking about still having hair. Same situation here, knock on wood. I'm happy to one, be at a place for so long, but two also be at a place that I want to be at for so long and to be able to do that and you know, still have a mission that I really believe in in terms of just helping small business owners who are often business owners first marketers by necessity and use the skills that I have to help them make sense of all that has been a great opportunity and something I've been happy to be a part of.

Ryan Alford (3:15)

I have small business owner but marketer first did for other people for 15 years and then became a small business owner. I've used small constant contact quite a bit as an owner and using it myself and then for clients that either had it when they hired us or did others always respected the platform. And I can say this honestly, we keep it straight here, Dave, for good, bad and the other. I've never as a marketing agency owner tried to talk someone off of it. That's the highest compliment I can get sometimes because half the time people come to me with like their marketing or something and I'm trying to talk them out off the ledge of something that they're either thinking of doing or a platform that they shouldn't be on. That's the highest compliment I can give you.

Dave Shrest (3:51)

I know, I love that. I'll take that. That's amazing. We have a great partner program as well for agencies who use it and use constant contact with their clients as well. It's really a tool built for small businesses and the businesses that don't need to be overly complic located where you actually do have to have a marketing degree or something like that to actually make it work for you. Hey, we've been around for 30 plus years here, so something's working.

Ryan Alford (4:12)

Yeah, for sure. Sometimes the product is the topic. The topic is the product. And it's an interesting one with what constant contact means to the marketplace for small businesses. You know, I want to take it through a broader lens of what are small businesses facing. I know you're talking with them every day, but maybe through the lens of your role and what you're hearing and what you're seeing on a broad sense. And then we can talk specifically around AI and things like that, that they're probably intertwined.

Dave Shrest (4:37)

I think they definitely are. Particularly where we are in this moment in time, constant contact. We regularly are doing these what we call small business now reports. We do these on a consistent basis to really just kind of keep a pulse on what's happening out there with small businesses. And our most recent survey has found, and research has found that right now, small businesses are actually doubling down on marketing. When you think about where they are in terms of their top concerns, inflation is a big one. And this is back in February when we kind of fielded this study. Although they're concerned with that, it's not stopping them from showing up. In the majority of the businesses that we spoke to, somewhere around 70% are actually planning on spending more on marketing. I'd love your point of view on this too, because oftentimes where things feel like they're tight or there's some uncertainty, historically, you would typically see marketing be one of the things that people want to cut because it just feels like that's an expense we don't need to worry about right now. And particularly when you start to think about the change that happened during the pandemic times. Right. So if we go back to 2020, I know that was a period in time where a lot of people really started to understand the benefit of these digital tools like email marketing and social media and all of that, because it was really the only way they had to communicate with people. Since that time, they've seen that investing in those tools is even more important. When things are kind of a little bit unstable or you're not sure what's going to happen, it's because staying visible matters, and that's what's important. Because when things do come around, particularly when consumers are being more specific about where they're going to spend their dollars, it's those businesses that are top of mind. That's where they are going to spend them. That's what we're seeing here. They're actually interested spending more, which is a little bit surprising, but also exciting because it's not typically what you would see.

Ryan Alford (6:17)

What's up, guys? One of the fastest ways to grow a business isn't some big marketing play. It's tightening up your communication across your team. Missed calls, scattered text threads, team members not seeing the same conversation. That stuff quietly costs you time and revenue. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The smarter way to run your business communications. We realized that at my new card shop Collector station. Between customers calling about card inventory, grading submissions, trade offers, and even trade nights, things were moving fast. And when communication wasn't centralized, things got messy quick. I also like that it works wherever I am. Phone, laptop, doesn't matter. And it even logs calls and creates summaries automatically, which saves us time and keeps everyone aligned. Make this the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com Ryan that's Q U-O.com Ryan Quo no missed calls, no missed opportunities.

Commercial Announcer (7:26)

Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the Name youe Price Tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates Price and Coverage match limited by state law.

Ryan Alford (7:58)

We're trying to be talked into a recession. Expensive gas and a lot of other things are real variable. I'm not diminishing that, but I do feel like four years ago, three years ago, we couldn't be trying to talk ourselves into negative sentiment. We're really good at that sometimes in the media. Regardless of that, small business prevails rises above sometimes just sentiment. What you also have is AI revolution happening, which is greater than anything. It might be the single most impactful thing to marketing that has ever happened. If you really think about all the tenets of what it's doing we've had, I mean, don't get around the Internet was pretty impactful. It kind of played itself like it had an impact, but it was over 15 years. AI is having an impact over 18 months, 9 months, 8 months, 2 months, 1 month. The iteration is incredible. Small businesses that are in it to win it and ambitious and driven. The reason they probably want to spend on more on marketing, or at least continue to spend, is they're excited because their dollar goes further, they could do more things, and they have these capabilities and companies like constant integrating these capabilities that were never at their fingertips until now. We've got some things that are making things a little negative, some real, some not. Frankly, small businesses are going, hey, this is a good time to be nimble. It's a good time to have these tools. I want to put them to act for my business.

Dave Shrest (9:12)

A couple of things here. Let's just say regardless of what it is, every year, every month, every something is different for small business owners in terms of the adversity that they're going to face. So regardless of what that is, it's always something. Time and time again, they prove that they are a resilient group of folks that can maybe feel sorry for themselves for a little bit, but then it's roll up the sleeves and figure out, all right now, how do I make this work? Because this is the thing that they need to make work. That's the big thing that we see time and time again with small business owners just out of the gate. To your point about the AI piece, this is incredible what people can do with the tool and how quickly it's evolving. To help you do more, we did a previous study on the state of AI, where early on it was really about like, okay, what's this thing like now? This is a thing that people understand and know that is available to them, and it's about, how do I use it? We've seen just in general terms, not even getting to the specifics of it, and I have a theory on why this is. But ultimately, the folks that were implementing AI, no matter what the channel was that they were using and what they were doing for a marketing activity, they were seeing better results across the board. A couple of things I think come into play here. We talk about all the responsibilities of a small business owner, particularly one that is not a marketer by trade. This is the shop owner, this is the restaurant owner. The folks that want to do the thing, not necessarily spend all their time getting the word out about the thing and telling their story. Those folks have the opportunity to actually get something completed instead, something out the door. And my theory is that in any of this stuff, doing something is always better than doing nothing, because even if it doesn't succeed, you've learned something that you can take with you into the next thing. AI is really helping small business owners get stuff done and get stuff done. That's enough to learn something from where AI comes in. It's about efficiency. It's not about necessarily doing more, it's about how do I do things smarter and more efficiently. This is where really AI is really helping people move in this direction and get things done.

Ryan Alford (11:00)

Yeah, 100%. Sometimes when you were speaking Dale, thinking like might be a choice of deciding what to do, when to do it because it does enable so many things and choosing the right things because I've done this myself, being semi technical already, being a marketing guy, I go down some rabbit holes and I'm like this is interesting but I don't know how productive it is. Like because the tools enable you to do so many things. It's probably like choosing kind of the 8020 rule and focusing. And I know that's what constant contact does so well with marketing is still really damn effective. And especially if you do it right and you personalize it do all these things. Sometimes the blocking and tackling isn't sexy, but it works. They're doing the basics. Talk to me Dave, what is the sentiment here in the first quarter, beginning of second quarter of most small businesses that you hear from? What is that tenor? The current. What says you on that?

Dave Shrest (11:51)

I feel like I've seen this a lot just in terms of over the years. Small business owners in general are a cautiously optimistic group and this is what we're seeing here. Again, I don't think anybody starts a business thinking they're going to fail. You have to be an optimist and believe in the thing that you're going to do. That's kind of built into the backbone of that type of person who takes that step. It's the reality of like look, I know as an owner there's going to be challenges. I know there are things that are going to come in the way and try to keep me from doing what I want to do. The idea of getting to being your own boss, not having to answer to other people, the financial rewards that come to you versus doing things for someone else, all of those things outweigh the idea of having to go back to work for someone else. And I think that's it. And cautiously optimistic is where people are. There are challenges. I know if I believe in myself and do the things I need to do that I can make this work.

Ryan Alford (12:40)

I read an interesting article this morning that said all these sort of fear mongering of AI taking all these jobs and there being no jobs, it's actually leading motivated people. More small businesses are being started today than anything else. It's like the fastest growing because people are going well I got to take my job because I'm going to go start my own. It's sort of leading down that path, which is exciting on some levels and should be good for constant contact.

Dave Shrest (13:02)

This takes us back to the pandemic. That's where new business applications really started to go through the roof. Record breaking numbers and the numbers are the last I look for this year are down a little bit, but still up in those millions of job applications being started anytime in history where there is some type of adversity or something, it is the people that start to think about, okay, what is the solution to that problem? And that's what entrepreneurs do, is they solve problems. And right or wrong, the more problems you have, there's more ways to start to think about it and what that could potentially mean. And so there's always an upside, historically speaking, that's going to change what the market looks like. And I think it's just a regular evolution of what's available just in terms of even just taking jobs. It's really about how do you embrace this and use this to accelerate your thinking. Last year for me was a big year where I just personally was like, all right, how do I start to incorporate this into my day to day? How do I use it to help me so I can kind of get back to doing the things that I really love to do and enjoy? For example, I'm more of a content creator type of person. I don't need it to help me necessarily. I'll use it to help me kind of get ideas out and maybe structure them and think through them. But like, I can do that. And so I don't need it to create content for me necessarily. But someone else who doesn't have that skill set, that may be the thing that they needed to do where they'll lean into it more heavily. And of course, as more people adopt it, we're in this stage now where there's going to be a lot of they calling it AI slop is out there that's valid. But at the same time, the people that figure out how to make sure that it does sound like them, that has the uniqueness and the point of view that they offer that colors the output in a way that the good stuff is still going to rise to the top. It's just at an accelerated rate. We just talked about like just the AI in general. It's those folks that really use it to get it to work for them that are going to rise to the top and have the advantage because there is a uniqueness to it.

Ryan Alford (14:42)

The AI police is what one of my least favorite trolls on the Internet right now. It's like, and don't get me wrong, there is some slop out there and there is and not again, if you're putting out nothing of value or if it truly is slop, whatever that means, and that is the common term, then sure. But if you're using it to actually advance things at 20x the rate, there's a fine line here between slop and efficiency. As long as it's value. I'd rather my favorite writer put out 10 more blogs that's in their voice that may have been AI generated, but it's concepts and ideas that they had and me to get that knowledge and insight or laughter or whatever it might might be than for them not to use AI and me get one a year. It's an interesting thing of scale. Where is AI saving the most time for small business owners?

Dave Shrest (15:24)

It's in a few areas. One of the things that we maybe overemphasize is this content creation piece. This is great for the people that need it and maybe don't know how to get there. They suffer from the blinking cursor problem where it's like, okay, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to talk about. There's that piece of it. It's saving you time there. But I think the piece that we often don't really talk about as much and I think we're moving to that point. But it's what AI can do for you in terms of just processing information. This is where the real opportunity comes in. Because like even let's say, okay, you're sending emails, you're doing your marketing, you're doing things on social to be able to take that information and then feed it to AI and tell AI, like, hey, help me figure out what I need to do next here, and this is the world that we see in constant contact is like, how do we start to take the information that you have available to you based on the things that you're doing? To say, hey, here's an opportunity, here's something that you should try. This is the best time to send this for your audience. These types of emails seem to be performing really well. These types of posts to be able to take that information. And in many ways you're going to get to this point where it's coaching you through what to do next. That's exciting because one just in terms of data analysis, not everybody has the money to hire data analyst to then find the things that you need to do and then extrapolate that into something that you can actually take action on. This is where we're going to see AI really have a huge impact on small businesses in particular. Because to be able to get into that in a way that reality is you just don't have the time to be able to do all of that in the role as the owner because you're doing all of this other stuff. To be able to have that and to be able to hey, do this great right now I know what to do next and I can run that and I can get back to what it is that I'd rather be doing. That's where AI is. We're at that precipice right now where it's starting to push over directly into that and that's an exciting prospect.

Ryan Alford (17:04)

I love where you took this because if you're a small business owner and being the position I am, I'm talking and smart people like you every day and processing all of this and having come up, I spent 15 years working in the ad agency business on some of the largest brands in the world. And remember the research reports and analyst reports that we would do and get because the brands we were working with could afford the time, energy and money that it took to get it. And big billion dollar decisions being made. And now me as a small business owner, it's like meta on some fronts talking about these things. Having been on both sides of the fence, corporate side, small business side, the ability with which we can. You would have never done these things as a small business owner because you'd have never spent the time, money and energy to do them because it just didn't. You didn't have them. But now with AI you can run these analyst reports on okay, looking at your sales extracting data points in these one of one scenarios that the time, money and energy just would have been feasible. But can glean insights that the big huge corporations spend it because they're making billion dollars. Well, you might be making thousand dollar decisions which is the equivalent for you, but it can be guided by more data that's distilled in a way that is useful and that is a really impactful thing. If, if small business owners can take that ball and run with it. Not getting too caught up. Sometimes the data can get too much data. Yes, but man, there are some really important things and some key data points that could guide decisions better that's now more attainable than ever being able to

Dave Shrest (18:26)

be pushed in the right direction. Many times. And I think, you know, you have inflection points in your business as well, where at one point it's about getting to a certain level and then that changes and then it's about getting to another level. And having in many ways a thought partner and push you in the right direction is just hugely valuable.

Ryan Alford (18:41)

Everybody has a co founder now, right? Yeah, in a way.

Dave Shrest (18:43)

Right. Like I was trying to think of the way to personify it.

Ryan Alford (18:47)

Right.

Dave Shrest (18:47)

And I think that's a good way

Ryan Alford (18:48)

to got a third one. With constant contact. I mean.

Dave Shrest (18:51)

Exactly. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, that's really, in many ways when we think about what our mission is. And it's to be the marketing partner for small business owners to provide them the tools that they need and more with. And I think that even just opens up for a company like ours the ability to use all of the information that we have and what We've learned over 30 years in the business to share that and put that directly in the hands of our customers so that they can use it to grow their businesses. It's just exciting times to be in this industry.

Ryan Alford (19:16)

Where are small businesses maybe over complicating AI or where is it not working or being overhyped? Maybe sometimes, I always say, sometimes not. What you choose not to do is as important as what you choose to do.

Dave Shrest (19:29)

I'm going to look at this from a marketing perspective, maybe not necessarily specifically to have to do with AI. We're all connected here with all of those things. There's this overwhelming sense because of the world that we're in now with the devices and the constant barrage of media and feeds and all of this, that there's a feeling that all times you have to be everywhere. And there is some truth to that. But there's also sometimes doing that when you're not ready to do it. And what I mean is you're spinning your wheels. You're trying to be here and there in this place, in that place. You're putting out a whole bunch of stuff, but nothing is actually grabbing. And the big mistake is we'll see people over index on trying to be everywhere versus saying, you know what, let's just use Facebook. I'm going to work on Facebook and I'm going to come up with a plan specifically for Facebook and I'm going to commit to that so I can get it working for me. And getting working for me means something that we often overlook because we get seduced by the metrics that the platform itself wants you to pay Attention to that makes it feel like you're doing something. You have to be very clear, is it, what am I trying to do for my business on this platform and working toward that goal and figuring out, okay, is this where my audience is and am I comfortable being here? I'm going to invest time to get this to work. Then once you start to gain that traction, then you can start to think about, okay, I'm going to add something else to the mix. Because each of these platforms are a little bit different. And what we end up doing is because of this, I have to be everywhere. It becomes like a copy and paste and then nothing really works very well. And then you're wondering, like, oh, I'm exhausted, right? I'm doing all of these things and nothing's happening. And I think this is why it's okay. If there's any small business listening right now, I'd say you have permission to not do everything all at once. Start someplace and get that working for you and then add to it what we see. This latest study tells us that social media, email marketing are the two channels that are driving the most value for people. Social media, of course, that's a box to open because that could mean different things. Gets finding one of those things and then remembering to partner that with email. And this is really important because where you have social media for the reach and particularly how, if you think about how social media works right now, it's a lot different than maybe 14 years ago where it was like it mattered when people followed you, it mattered. Not that those things don't matter anymore, but it's different because of the algorithms are now trying to put your content in front of the right people versus the people having to find your content. The reach is a little bit different, but what hasn't changed there is that you don't control what happens on that platform. They make a change or your reach is still really limited in many respects based on what it is that you want to do. That's where email comes in. Because you are getting somebody to raise their hand to say, I want to stay connected with you. And that gives you the control to say, I want to communicate with these people at this time based on this type of activity.

Ryan Alford (22:07)

I have to make this statement every now and then. We've been doing this show for eight years and now's a good time to put this disclaimer in for everyone. There's a lot of videos out there where I've said this and never forget that social media is rented land and your Email list is what you own. It's own land that you control. Proceed accordingly. What does that mean? Dave's talking about it right now.

Dave Shrest (22:27)

Make sure you're not just putting all your eggs in that social media basket. You're doing the things that allow you to move those people to what you're saying, the places that you control, that you have ownership of. Because that's your, that contact list. What's the phrase? The money is in the list, the people that you have direct connections with. Let's just say all the sites went down and this has happened. I mean people have had their pages taken away, sites have gone down. What if you didn't have a way to contact those people directly? This is why you need to be thinking about how do I move those? The rented land is a great way to think about it because yeah, no one's saying don't use social media. Use it, but use it to your advantage. Not to their advantage because if it was up to them, you would never leave the social media platform.

Ryan Alford (23:03)

Exactly. Anyone listening this a small business owner today, Dave. To recognize that point, we will solve the mission. But I will say that how to use AI potentially it can help anything when people are doing all this kind of doing all these things. Never forget you're doing all that so that you gain a customer or you gain a relationship that you can carry forward. And the only way you do that is with first party data, name, email or phone number. And are there ways that you're seeing the AI open up the ability to maybe scale that more quickly, getting first party data or using maybe tools that constant contact has in gathering that opportunity?

Dave Shrest (23:40)

Email marketing, this works so well and historically has worked so well. It's because it's what we call an opt in channel. Somebody raises their hand to say yes, I want to be connected with you. You're not going out and scraping the Internet for information and then sending cold emails to people. You actually have people that have raised their hand to say yes, I want to hear more from you and more from your business. You stay connected with your customers. This is another place where you can go to AI to say what is the commonalities between these people? These are the types of people that I'm speaking to. You know, these are the main pain points that they have. An underrated thing to do is have conversations with your customers and through those conversations, this is what get me is you can really take a conversation. Let's say you take a conversation, you record, you transcribe that conversation and then you talk to AI about that conversation. Okay, what were the top pain points that this customer was having? What were the solutions that they would like to see to help me solve that? If I could create what we call a lead magnet so I could get more people like this person onto my email list, what would that resource be that I could give away for free in exchange for that email address? These are all ways you can start thinking and talking to the AI through the conversations you're having with real people and the knowledge that you have coupled with your expert expertise. Now you're really scaling what it is that you're able to do to get more people to you as a marketer. That's where I get excited about it because it's like, oh, okay, I can get into the weeds of this. And again, this is where, when we think of, like, constant contact is. How do we do a lot of that work behind the scenes? We're helping the small business owner who may not be geeking out about marketing like you and I would be, that just wants to. I want to go bake some more cakes, please. That's our job to kind of fix that problem. That's where I think it's really interesting.

Ryan Alford (25:10)

It is. Dave, how about a couple of rapid fire to close things out? Best use of AI you've seen in a small business.

Dave Shrest (25:18)

Business.

Ryan Alford (25:18)

Have you seen anything crazy or anything like, wow, that was resourceful.

Dave Shrest (25:21)

I don't see anything crazy. What I've seen is the adoption. And I know that sounds unsexy. I've learned time and time again after talking with small businesses is that it's the unsexy things that actually move the needle. And so it's showing up consistently. And I think just using AI to show up consistently, that's kind of the best thing that they could do because that's what brings the money in.

Ryan Alford (25:40)

Yeah. One tool every business should try that's maybe more attainable now than it was in the past.

Dave Shrest (25:47)

My short answer is constant contact.

Ryan Alford (25:50)

Maybe a tool within constant contact. Like, what's old is new again? Like, yeah, yeah.

Dave Shrest (25:55)

Well, here's what I'll say. So we have a feature that's called resend to Non openers within Constant contact. And this can boost. We've seen this boost open rates for people up to at least 10% in terms of what they do. And all that is is checking a box that says, I'm going to send this on this day, two days from now, if somebody didn't open it, send it to them again. And we've also done Some work to weed out those false opens I'm sure you've heard of like Apple privacy rules and things like that where it kind of opens the email but it's not a person opening the email. We've weeded those out so you're actually getting true open rates. That's just a great way to click a box and then get more people opening and consuming the content that you send them.

Ryan Alford (26:28)

I love that. Hey there. Some tips and tricks too. Thinking about my own email list, 76,000 people on ours for this show. I'm like, we should be doing that.

Dave Shrest (26:35)

We should talk afterwards.

Ryan Alford (26:39)

Dave, where can everybody learn more about what you're up to? What Constant Contacts up to all those details?

Dave Shrest (26:44)

Yeah, definitely. Check out constant contact.com and find all the things that we've got going on there and tools we have available in the programs that we have have. Again, if there's anybody that's a marketing person out there too, we have a partner program that we'd love for you to check out so you can find all the resources there@constant contact.com you can find me on LinkedIn. Dave Shrest, if you have any questions or any thoughts. Love to connect with you there, Dave.

Ryan Alford (27:03)

It's been fun. I really appreciate you for coming on and look forward to doing it again.

Dave Shrest (27:07)

Yeah, right. Pleasure. Great to see you.

Ryan Alford (27:08)

Hey guys, you're to find us Ryan is right Dot com. Find all of the highlight clips, the full episode links to Contact as well as Dave's information. Hey, it's all about what's happening right now. It's important. Now is today. AI is changing the game. It's making things more attainable. It's not scary. It's a winning formula. And again, we appreciate Dave and Constant Contact for coming on today. We appreciate you making us number one. See you next time. Right about now, this has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening, Sam.