← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
AI-Powered Email Tactics for Smarter Engagement & Search Synergy
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- [00:00]
A
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Tyson Stockton.
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B
In 2025, AI powered email campaigns achieved open rates 50% higher and click through rates 41% higher than traditional email campaigns. How can we better leverage these emerging technologies to maximize returns? And how can our efforts in email marketing support SEO efforts? This is the Voice of Search Podcasts. My name is Tyson, and joining us today is Patrick McKenna, CEO at DMI Partners, which helps businesses create innovative digital marketing campaigns. Today, Patrick will be walking us through tactics that unify AI enhancements in email marketing and how that intersects with search. Patrick, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Thanks, Tyson. Good to be here.
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B
No, when I saw the kind of topics come through, it sparked my interest. Personally, I haven't had a ton of experience in email, so I thought this was a really interesting kind of angle and I'm looking forward to kind of just learning a little bit more about email marketing and how that overlaps with.
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D
You know, what we're doing within SEO.
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C
Yeah, I think it's going to be a great conversation. You're not alone and not paying attention as much to email, but it's definitely incredibly valuable resource that we're leveraging for our clients that drive a lot of value to them. So, except excited to dig into it.
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B
Here and maybe just to start things off, like, help us kind of like.
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D
Set the stage for what is the state of email marketing today? Like, how is it progressing? How has it changed from before? Like, where, where are we at?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I founded DMI Partners with some partners 22 years ago. And I would say that, you know, probably not right away, but within the first 5ish years, people were predicting the downfall of email. And so we've been predicting that every year for the last 15 or so years, but still it continues to be a valuable resource for all of our clients that we're working with. And so it's one of the core assets that a brand can build and be able to engage with and be able to communicate directly with our customers. For us, it's as strong as it's ever been. And really the advent of some AI backed technology as well as development of platforms and really brands getting smarter and more robust with how they think about their data and different engagement touch points and behavioral touch points just has really kind of enabled us to continue to lever up the channel to drive more and more beneficial engagement and revenue for various products and services.
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D
So we're not alone in SEO as far as like it feels like every few years there's the conversation of is SEO dead? Is SEO dying? So it sounds like, you know, we're not alone in that. And other kind of channels have similar conversations.
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C
Exactly, exactly. We can commiserate on that. Yeah, I mean, like, I think, you know, we've been predicting the death of these channels for, for too long at this point and we continue to see the value even as the ecosystem continues to evolve.
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D
And how is that evolution? Because I assume similar to SEO, all the advances in LLMs, generative AI, I would assume that that's giving you a whole new breadth of tools and levers to pull when it comes to email.
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C
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think two biggest areas, I would say that AI is impacting email today, that you know, we're kind of leveraging is really on hyper personalization. Getting the right message to the right person at the right point in time. That's been a goal for a long time and kind of really AI is just kind of making that happen quicker, easier, better. And I think really the bar for personalization is just being reset. It's no longer good enough to segment by broad Personas. And really what we're using kind of some of those, you know, language, you know, learning models and you know, different kind of AI and machine learning learning based solutions to really craft predictive models that can micro segment layers and layers below what we did five, certainly 10 years ago. So that's really exciting. And then the second area is really just kind of optimization and experimentation and scale. 22 years ago, all of our digital marketing was really based on a B testing and that was really kind of useful, but only useful to a certain extent. And so as we're thinking about how we can test control groups and control patterns of behavior and kind of we can get that into way more robust experimentation which drives more optimization. And as we can predict future performance, we're able to do that quicker with smaller pools of data. So those are the kind of two key areas where we're seeing the best opportunity today of leveraging those advances in technology within the email Ecosystem.
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D
So with that it sounds like, I mean logic is right there on why customization would be a value I would assume within that the starting point of it is how you're able to segment and kind of cluster different users Personas. Is that your starting point is looking at how can we segment and kind of further group the customer base instead of a one size fits all approach.
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C
Yeah, I mean I think certainly forever our solution has started with the customer is like the singular piece that we look to reach. And then it's really kind of instead of just segmenting based on you know, demographics or usage or purchase history or just simple engagement, it's really like taking micro levels of that and looking at different behavioral groups and different purchase patterns over time and segmenting by non apparent kind of sets of data. So like when we're looking at a set of data, there's lots of things that are going to be apparent. Like we can segment off of this, we can segment off of this, we can segment off of this. But then once you kind of like just leave it to the computer effectively to do that segmentation, you're segmenting off of things that you didn't even see with your kind of naked eye. And so you're segmenting off of layers of engagement and marketing. You know, like what stage in the marketing funnel did they enter? What stage in the marketing funnel are they at today? And so you're able to see things that like aren't visible really to the naked eye. So that's what makes it really exciting. But again it does always start with the customer first. Like we're always starting with who am I trying to reach, what messages are compelling to them, what is like what that I've developed as a brand. Should we resonate with this audience best? It's really kind of staying true to that is like the first step and then kind of going from there.
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D
Interesting.
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B
And then I feel like most people.
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D
Probably would go towards like oh yeah, within email you have now added ability around like content creation for it. But it sounds like really a lot of the application of emerging technologies is beyond just like what the written copy is and more in going through and defining those kind of like potential subsets of how you can be targeting different users.
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C
Totally. And I think also like time is an interesting piece too. Right. So as you think about some of the dynamic content you can leverage in email, you can open, I can send let's say the same email to you and my brother. And that email can look the same today, but if you open it today and then my brother opens it up in two days, that email will look totally different. Because what's happening within that brand or within their ecosystem or whatever, their products, services that they're promoting could be totally different. There's a lot of ways that we're leveraging that point in time. Like if you put a paid search ad out today, you know that that's going to be served today. And if you want it to be different tomorrow, you can just change that copy tomorrow. An email, we send an email today. It could be open today, immediately. It could be opened up tonight, it could be open up in the middle of the night, it could be opened up a month from now. And so the time element of email too, that's a, that's dynamic within one delivered message is another element that we have to continue to play with over time and really maximize the value. So some of the, like, exciting things we're doing there within emails, like really beneficial, where your intent as a customer can change too. Right? So like, let's say you're, you receive an email today, you click on that email and you buy, but then you come back to that email in a month. Well, when you got that email, the message that was in there was really intent on getting you to buy that one time. You're now a different person from our perspective. Let's say that was the first time you bought. So now you're an actual customer. We know a lot more about you. We know more about where you're going, what you're trying to do, what you're interested in, how likely you are to buy more than maybe what you initially added to your cart. And so we're able to layer all of those data points the next time you go back to that very same email to deliver different content to you.
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D
Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's a different unique angle because I mean, obviously within search and SEO, we wouldn't have that ability to, you know, change what someone's looking at in that frequency.
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C
Although at SEO, you are building for that long term, right? Like, you're not building content today to necessarily get visibility today. You're look, you're building content today that's going to have visibility for a long time. So in some ways it's the same game of really thinking about the long tail engagement with customers that you're able to do with an email. And then with SEO, that's like very not true in other media channels, whether it's search or social or affiliate or some of the other direct media channels.
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D
Interesting. And I mean, with that too. I'm already starting to see parallels, whether it's from like a mindset approach of continually testing experiments that area, but then also customer questions, problems like in your perspective, how much overlap and like what's the intersection between email efforts and SEO?
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C
I mean I think there's a lot of overlap. I think there's a lot of overlap across all channels and I think some of that overlap is often like ignored to the detriment of all channels. But specifically within SEO and email, I think there's a lot of data that you can leverage. So like I think like mirroring search intent in email content is like really valuable. So search, there's a lot of data as you know, in search data. So it tells us what audiences want to know and how they will phrase that. And so using that intelligence will help us guide our emails through keyword insights or various copy that is being engaged with more effectively. I think also reinforcing organic content in your inbox. So like thinking about like what is an amplifier for SEO content? So you know, like what is like our top ranking blog posts or guides or videos, like whatever content you as a brand are investing and developing, we can amplify that through our email efforts. I think that's like incredibly useful and helpful. And thinking about the internal linking elements within CTA that help to optimize, help to drive more traffic to those SEO optimized. SEO optimized landing pages I think is incredibly helpful. And then I think also like landing pages is really valuable. I think landing pages for SEO are really useful. Thinking about what are the pages that we're going to optimize to get ranked for certain key terms and then leveraging those as like effective landing pages within email. Obviously like conversion optimization and se, you know, search engine optimization don't always exactly align. I'm sure you can talk more eloquently about that than I can. But like still you have to like when you're layering that like search intent with your email content, you've got to really think about when, okay, what's the best landing page from someone who's searching for this is going to come to this page, then how do I leverage that page to be an effective landing page when I'm driving that content over email? So I think those are like three areas that I would think about. But I think also like search trends is like incredibly valuable. So like looking at search trends, looking for themes and various timing messages, I think that's like useful as well. So there's a wealth of data within SEO that is really useful as well for email and thinking about that messaging.
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D
Content effectively so you have value. It's like a two way street in that sense where not only do you have potential for benefits from search or SEO activities, but you also have it going the other direction where SEO teams can support teams that are maybe executing on email. Now I feel like oftentimes we'll discuss of how SEO can partner more with paid and that's kind of the obvious area. And a lot of times, you know, you find talking to companies and organizations, there's not a lot of collaboration going on there. I mean, even for myself, I probably wouldn't have thrown out there as like an initial target for like partnerships kind of looking towards email. Like, would you have any recommendations for SEOs that are listening of how they can be a better partner to teams that are responsible for running like the email campaigns?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I think the best place for teams to start around collaboration across email and SEO is really around content. I mean both groups, the principal element to their success is content development. And so all of the best segmentation and personalization in the world isn't going to get engagement if you don't have the right content to deliver value to the customer. And the same thing is true with SEO. You can have the greatest keyword list in the world, you can have the greatest partnerships, you can have the greatest relationships with the rest of the Internet. And if you don't have the right content, that's going to want those folks to talk about it. If you're not going to get people interested in what you have, you're not going to have success. And so it has to start with content. And I think as you're thinking strategically about the right content to develop, I think those teams working together to come up with the best ideas, to think about how those ideas can be tweaked across email and SEO, the ways that they can kind of leverage an idea on the SEO side to help with email and vice versa. From email to SEO, I think like content is like the principal place of development that are critical to both teams. I think they can really be helpful to each other because I think they're also really good SEO folks are think differently than really good email folks. And so having those two sides of the brain probably kind of on the same side of the brain, but those two different angles that the brain is working, coming together to kind of develop content, I think will probably be a more useful group to work together to help develop the best content because they'll Kind of come to the table from a different perspective.
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D
So yeah, like, like further on that point, like how would you characterize some of the, like, more typical or stereotypical strengths of someone that's a really strong email marketer in comparison to someone that might be a really strong like SEO? Like what would be some of those inherent strengths that you see?
- [16:03]
C
Yeah, it's a good question. I think they're similar in that like you kind of need cross functional expertise to do well in both areas. Like both SEO and email need some development capability. Like you need to be able to do some development within both areas. Now in many places that function is kind of outsourced to third party teams who are doing the development to assist with the SEO or doing the development to assist with the email. There's copywriting obviously essential in both. So those are two things I think are fairly similar. And then the execution is really where there's like slightly different work that's being done. So within email you're really thinking about the technological capabilities and how you're able to leverage the segmentation that exists within the database to create, you know, multitude of messages that are going to be able to leverage this piece of content or this concept, or this release, or this kind of moment in time to provide some value to the customer. Whereas an SEO needs to develop a piece of content that's going to live longer in reality. Right. So it's going to be invested in and developed today and it's going to go out to the Internet and it's going to hopefully get some traction quickly. But it also is going to have to live for to get true. I think SEO value is going to have to live for a good amount of time on its own. So it's going to have to stand the test of time. So I think that's the perspective. I think there's more kind of quick winning content opportunities for email than there is on the SEO side, which is going to have to be kind of a longer tail to the development of the content.
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D
So we have this intersection, we have this collaboration potential. Content seems like the kind of logical like starting point. I would also assume that through like the email activities, like, there's probably a fair amount of like audience insights that can be pulled from it. Like, is. Do you feel like there's more opportunity to have additional findings or understanding of audiences through like email activities?
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C
Totally, yeah. I mean, I think one of the areas that I still think we see under leveraged by our clients is we spend so much time on the email side pulling Insights out of the data to use in our email marketing. But we probably could do a better job of funneling that data back into the front end on the other channels, especially probably within SEO to share kind of where we're seeing engagement trends, where we're able to impact behavior by creating kind of new messaging cues, new messaging touch points, new messages like what are people resonating with now versus what they resonated with them a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. So there's so much of our work around insights is really built on like a flywheel of like let's take this data out, let's fuel it back into the system and let's use that to get more engagement, let's use that engagement to get more revenue, let's pull more insights out and we just keep like flying on this flywheel, which is very useful for email. But I think there's insights that we can pull out of that to kind of funnel other marketing channels that would help, you know, each of the channels think about the audience a little bit differently, think about the engagement points a little bit differently, think about the content that's like relevant and then just tracking that over time I think would be really useful. It is a point of, I think, weakness in the space today where we're not doing as much funneling that data back into the front end channels. Because I think on email our job is to like get as much out of the pie as we possibly can. All of the other channels are really trying to make the pie as big as they can.
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B
Right.
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C
And so their job is critically important. If they can do better at their job, we will do better at our job. And so the more insights we can provide to those groups to make the pie bigger so we can get more folks coming into the funnel and then be able to message them and kind of gather more data about them. I think the better off we're all going to do. So I think that's a really insightful point.
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D
Now like with all this, I feel like the value, the potential, like it's all right there. Like to me, the way you're describing this, it's like pretty obvious how this can assist and have like more of a, I don't want to say just like holistic approach, but it's like the opportunity's there. Yet I feel like most organizations aren't taking advantage of it. What do you feel like the greatest barriers of people actually taking advantage and actually building from this, Is it general understanding, awareness or just kind of the, you know, we get caught up in our day to day and there's only so many hours. And so people tend to overlook things like this. Like, what do you think the biggest barriers are of why more companies don't do this?
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C
Yeah, that's a good question. And I, you know, we certainly haven't solved that to be able to give you definitely the answer. I think, you know, as with anything, it's prioritization. You know, there's company, any company has only so many dollars to spend from budgetary standpoint, they have only so many resources they can dedicate to different channels. I think the challenge is that email has kind of, while it has evolved, it's like the same delivery point as it was 20 years ago. And so it's not fun and new. Even if the way that we're delivering messages or the way that content changes or the way that we're creating engagement or gathering insights, it's not as exciting as some of the other channels. It doesn't also grow the pie. And so that's also a challenge. But I think, you know, we've obviously consistently demonstrated for the clients that we're working with that we're able to really drive a significant amount of incremental revenue for them through the channel. But it definitely continues to have its challenge of getting the kind of priority I think that it should from, you know, if you were to like lay the revenue out on the table and say how much revenue can we get by investing in our email marketing? It would be pretty significant and certainly you'd have a stronger case to make there than other channels. I think. Additionally, I think some, I think many companies feel like they can make progress within email, within with their existing resources. And they're not wrong in theory, but it's just so cross functional the expertise that you need to do well in email that it's really hard to like have that exact right team in house able to do all of those things. And when you don't have that whole team together kind of dedicated toward making that work, then you just fall down because like you're waiting on a developer for a month who's prioritizing some other project which is higher organizational priority. And so then you can't really get that piece done. And so all of the work that the strategy folks or the platform folks are doing or the copywriting folks are doing kind of gets like lost or you can't get copywriting help or you know, like they're like every step in the funnel needs to be working together in order for you to actually make an impact. So I don't think folks are wrong to think that they have the capabilities in house sometimes to do that work. But you know, it's hard to like actually harness all those resources together to like make the, the improvements you need and then continue to do that over time because it's great to do once. It's much more effective to keep doing it, you know, month after month.
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D
And I would assume with that too that, you know, a lot of organizations for those reasons kind of end up just treating email as a static, not a ton of innovation, just kind of going through the motions.
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C
Yes.
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D
Rather than something that they're really actively looking to elevate and improve.
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C
Yeah. And I think they would all smart enough marketers to know that there is improvement to be gained there. But it's about prioritization and trade offs and it's like, can I take this bulk of resources, whether those are humans or dollars or relationships, and like move them from being dedicated to this to this. And I think it would be a prudent economic decision for them. But it is continues to be a challenge to get that priority internally.
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D
And I mean as SEOs, we often like to talk about how great the ROI is on search investments. And you know, we always like to kind of do the comparisons with paid search. Email I assume has to be like one of the stronger ROIs from like a marketing channel. Like how does it kind of stack up in your mind if you're looking at like, hey, I have a limited budget, where am I going to get the biggest impact?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think SEO and email are probably the two greatest ROI channels for brands. The challenge when it comes to email is again, it's a little bit of a derivative channel. So it depends on how you're doing attribution of like what costs go into building that database. But once you have the database once, that's like really a sunk cost. All of the dollars that go into the technology and the resources that help to really leverage the technology to drive the most value, it's a huge roi. And really in from what we have seen, it's always pretty much the number one ROI channel. Again, it is leveraging the pie that's been built to generate the most revenue. So it's not really building the pie, but it is hugely valuable from a revenue standpoint on an ROI basis. So that usually makes the case from our perspective. And SEO is right there. I mean it's like generally the second most valuable from an ROI standpoint. But those are and Again, like I keep talking about, those are two channels where you're really making an investment in technologies and content and solutions that are going to pay dividends for a long time as well. So you can't like stop doing SEO, you can't stop investing in email. But you know, a lot of the work that you're doing builds on itself to help you continue to get better over time.
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D
So and it really plays into just that kind of like old marketing principle where you're going to spend more money to attract a new customer than re engaging a previous customer. And so leaning into how can you maximize that lifetime value of someone that you've already spent the money to acquire? Kind of. Yeah, it just seems right there totally now with this. I think beyond the benefits that each of these channels can have by playing with each other for the reasons that you've kind of laid out, it seems like we also have, you know, similar challenges of being dependent on cross functional teams. So it's like we even can relate to maybe some pain points that we're facing. When you look ahead in like email or even the intersection of email and like search, what are you most excited about?
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C
Yeah, I mean I think the evolution of search with the kind of in development of LLMs and thinking about how that's going to change kind of Google being the doorway to the Internet. I think there's a lot of work that we're doing to think about how those user behavior patterns are going to change over time. And I think that's another good place of overlap where we're going to be able to share a lot of data across teams to say this is what we're seeing from multi touch kind of engagement point with our customers that we're, you know, deciphering from, looking deep into the data. And what are you seeing on your side from an SEO standpoint? Where are you seeing traffic trends coming and going and how are you seeing people think about our solution, our offerings, our products different than what they were when they were going to Google? Because I think the, the entry point is so much different now. Right. So I guess as folks are going to ChatGPT or whatever and kind of trying to do some brand discovery or product discovery, I think that how they're doing that is different than how they used to do that a year ago in Google. And so how do we take that data and think about those behavior patterns and that content that's relevant and really layer that back into the front end for the SEOs on the content development side and for on the email side for how we kind of create that, you know, intent based content that we can kind of disseminate in kind of periodic messages that are getting to the right person at the right point in time.
- [28:40]
D
So yeah, the audience segmenting too, like I feel like that feels like there's so much potential with the direction that search is heading and you're having more variance in queries or prompts and so you have this need to kind of further speak to those like kind of niche use cases, applications or you know, kind of like sub solutions of a product to then show up in a wider variety of queries. And it feels like there's a lot of potential within the two from that.
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C
Yeah, I think what we're seeing, I don't, I mean you might be able to provide some insight here too is like we're seeing a trend a little bit more from transactional searchers to informational seekers. Right. And so like that as we see that happen, I think that's happening as we've seen kind of a little bit of a shift in traffic origination from Google to kind of the LLMs. And so as that happens, I think we as marketers have to lever the way we deliver content and the types of content we deliver to like meet those customers where they're at. So if they're looking more for information we have to send more educational content. Whereas when they were looking for more transactional information we were sending them more promotions or product focused email. So it's like that, that's kind of lifting a little bit of the data that we need to be sharing and looking at together to be able to make sure that we're getting the right, that right content to the customer.
- [30:07]
D
So yeah, I mean and anecdotally to that point like the content that we're seeing in search that's being picked up and cited or kind of featured more, whether it's in aio, AI mode, chat, GPT, whatever it is, is predominantly more informational editorial. Like those systems at least currently aren't tending to cite and kind of pull from product pages but it's more of like those informational pages. And I feel like more and more, you know, if before it was hey, what are the best running shoes? Now there's more personalization or nuance into the prompt that's going to be what is the best running shoes for Planar fascia, someone that has. Yeah, yeah, like some arch or whatever specific. And then you're going to get a totally different output because of that niche.
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C
Kind of aspect yeah, exactly. And that again, funneling that into the email, then a step later is like, okay, I now know this person has high arches or plantar fasciitis or is a runner and not a walker or whatever the case may be. So leveraging all that data to like inform how we communicate with them once they've come come to us, I think is really important and valuable.
- [31:31]
D
So absolutely.
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B
Well, with that, that's going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search Podcasts. Thanks again to Patrick McKenna from DMI Partners for joining us. If you'd like to contact Patrick, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show Notes, or you can go over to his website@dmipartners.com if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button on your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed soon with that. That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by and we'll see.
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D
You in the next episode.
- [32:12]
C
Sa.