This transcript has been lightly edited by AI
Sean: So take us through that. In some of the conversations at SEAT, I spent time in the SEAT data track – everyone's on a different part of the journey. No one has put up their hand and said we've got it right, you are the holy grail of marketing automation from new customer to highest value customer. There's always work to improve. So early on with mass marketing and sending emails and creating audiences, what were the first things you had to look at? Because a lot of people just send the same email to their whole list.
Spencer: Exactly. I was very much a batch blast operation at the beginning. Focusing on segmentation was very important. Getting the right audience even if it means a smaller segment of people and having conversations with business leaders at the club saying if we do this segmented list you're going to do better and spend less resources to achieve our objectives. Some conversations were difficult, especially with sponsorship – they were attracted by that big number.
Sean: Exactly. We know you've got 100,000 people there. Please blast them. It makes your skin crawl when they say can you just send out an email blast. You've got to tell me who you want it to go to because I can't sell tires to a 14 year old without a car.
Spencer: It doesn't make sense and saying no is not usually an acceptable answer. You have to come up with a good alternative. We've moved in the right direction with segmentation where I don't get asked that question anymore of “send this to our newsletter list” – they say “can I be included in this?”
Spencer: Or “do you have a segment that would be right for this?” I had a great conversation with a colleague about our camps and clinics segment that we send information about soccer camps and tournaments to. They said we have this company that's really geared towards families and children and parents, and we'd like to include them in the segment. It was a good conversation. The mentality has definitely changed with the company and probably a lot of other teams can say the same thing.
Sean: But you have to get those wins to earn that trust of saying look I'm going to send it to ten percent of that list but I can get the right result. Once you start having those wins of targeting the right people and getting the open rates and clicks they want then you build that trust over time.
