• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, March 2, 2018

George DiGuido has just landed in a big job: as executive director of email at Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM), a digital content agency that sends 1.8 billion emails per year for clients. Here’s what he says about the challenges facing email marketers: “The challenges and opportunities are one and the same.”

For one thing, DiGuido is impressed by “a lot of the great technology in kinetic email and video in email.”

Kinetic? “It’s a new way of development that allows you to click through and not have to go to a landing page on a browser,” he says. Historically, this has been a big challenge -- most platforms don’t allow for JavaScript.”

The stumbling block is “where the action is for the audience in relation to the technologies.” For example, “60% of recipients open emails on a mobile device.” That’s a imitation, he says — “while everyone wants to move toward kinetic email, it hamstrings brands that want to do that.”

Won’t Google’s new AMP email facilitate that? Only up to a point.

“Google AMP is an interesting development,” DiGuido says. “But there definitely are challenges when you’re looking at the traditional email services providers.”

He explains that there are three different email versions: html, text and rich text. AMP may or may not be a fourth, but “you need to support it, and it’s just for Gmail,” he notes. That said, AMP is “another piece to add to the equation.”

The next challenge (or opportunity)? Relevancy. And that means brands have to “get their data ducks in order.”

Studies show that “even younger consumers still use email, but they want to give them what they want and need and ask for. Brands that send the same thing to everyone are going to lose footing there.”

He continues that “the emergence of the marketing cloud suite is a move in that direction.” You can use the sufficiency of data to recommend content. But there’s a fine line between being relevant and being creepy.

DiGuido has a long background with high-profile email marketers. He was VP growth and email marketing for Dotdash (formerly About.com), driving 300% growth in the newsletter business, he says. He has also served as head of email marketing at Airbnb, and as VP, CRM and email for Zeta Interactive Corp 

At MXM, he works with an email team with over 20 people, and while no hires are on tap at this moment, it’s likely that they will be going forward.

“Within our email team, we have analytic folks, data folks, creative folks, production folks,” he says. And their functions are well integrated, he states.

MXM serves a number of key verticals, including healthcare, beauty, financial services and automotive 

In conclusion, DiGuido says that “it’s 2018 and you need to be sending email,” he says. “Let’s send email that is smart and has great creative and aligns with the key goals of the brand moving forward.”