S7E9 'Beyond the Cloud' with Aub Wallace of Dandelion Branding 🌼
Welcome Environmental This
Aub Wallace:is a really special episode of both Environmental with Dandelion and the EcoSed Podcast. We are your co hosts, I am Ob, the co founder of Dandelion Branding
James Gill:And I am James, cofounder of EcoSen. I am very excited to be here. It's, I know we're doing something very different today. Different. It's it's quite fun, though.
James Gill:We're both very focused and dedicated to sustainability, and we're in the world of communications. So I think it's gonna be a fun podcast, lots of stories, and I think we're gonna try interviewing each other. Right?
Aub Wallace:Yeah. I think so. It's gonna be I'm really excited to be here. We kinda came up with this idea and it's gonna be great. But as you guys all know, the algorithm doesn't always love the topic of sustainability.
Aub Wallace:But we are rebels refusing to censor what is arguably the most important topic on the planet. So if you're into inspiring sustainability stories, help us spread the word by liking, subscribing, and sharing both the EcoSend podcast and the Environmental podcast with all the people you know who lean a little eco.
James Gill:Amazing. You're so much better doing that than me, Ord. So thank you for sharing.
Aub Wallace:I've had a lot of practice. Oh, and I have I have no shame in being absolutely just the cheesiest person.
James Gill:No. No. It's great. I I could learn a thing or two. I already am learning a thing or two.
James Gill:I feel like I should have said maybe I should have explained better to anyone who normally listens to EcoSend podcast that you we both have podcasts, and and this is just a a fun it's probably my fault for for for being I I don't know. It's probably my fault. I didn't even realize what we were gonna do. And and I thought, yeah, I thought this sounds fun. This is gonna be a fun way to to chat and learn from each other and ask each other questions.
James Gill:I'm I'm actually looking forward to it. Do do you wanna get stuck in? Do we wanna get do you wanna Yeah.
Aub Wallace:Let's go.
James Gill:Okay. Let let's go. Let's go. Maybe or do you wanna who are we speaking with? Who who are you, or tell us all?
Aub Wallace:Okay. I'm Abuelas. I'm the co founder of Dandelion Branding. We are a content marketing agency that specializes in sustainability stories. And our mission is really to bring sustainability and ESG into mainstream conversations.
Aub Wallace:They are still bubbles right now. So our focus has always been since 2019 to kind of raise that and elevate that the impact of businesses that are doing cool things in the world.
James Gill:Amazing. I
Aub Wallace:love it. Yeah. And you say it was your turn.
James Gill:We'll we'll get the hang of this by the end of the episode.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. We're
James Gill:gonna do
Aub Wallace:I think so.
James Gill:Yeah, for those of you who don't know me, I'm James. I'm co founder of a company called Ecosend, and we are an email newsletter tool. So you can use us to send your newsletter. Our mission is to make email a force for good in the world. So it's about 350,000,000,000 emails are sent around the world every single day.
Aub Wallace:Really? Yes.
James Gill:A lot. It's quite a lot, isn't it? A lot of them seem to end up in my own inbox, but too many.
Aub Wallace:I like that. Yeah.
James Gill:But, yeah, we we really believe there's a real opportunity for every email to carry a positive message and enact change in the world. We also know that email, the rest of our digital lives, also has a climate impact as well, a carbon footprint. So EcoSend was really started with a mission to kind of change all of that. For the brand.
Aub Wallace:That's incredible. And I am fully on board. I'm gonna actually transition some clients over to EcoSend as soon as possible. We met, we only met in like what, a couple months ago?
James Gill:Yeah, I think maybe month.
Aub Wallace:At a sustainable marketing conference.
James Gill:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Aub Wallace:Yeah. Learned about EcoSend and I'm really excited about it. I think you have really incredible values that are kind of along the lines of send less, send lighter. I really appreciate that. That's like one of the things that we focus on with our clients too.
Aub Wallace:Please don't send these long crazy emails. Let's do it short and let's keep them
James Gill:Amazing.
Aub Wallace:To keep people interested.
James Gill:Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. There's so much. Happy to chat more about EcoSend if you like. But maybe I would love to hear more about what you're up to and your own journey into the world of sustainability. Why do you do what you do?
Aub Wallace:Yeah, so I get this question sometimes and I don't have like a spicy answer.
James Gill:That's fine, we're all friends here. Yeah,
Aub Wallace:I'm sort of just like one of those people whose friends parents started calling me a hippie in middle school. I had super long hair and I just didn't I don't know. I was the same of like let's talk about the trees. I was just that person and I think it was just a self fulfilling prophecy that I always would incorporate earth stewardship into everything I do. So, I don't yeah.
Aub Wallace:It's not like a I didn't have like an moment that a lot
James Gill:of
James Gill:people
Aub Wallace:I
James Gill:don't think you need an moment. I think that sounds wonderful. If anything you're like deeply excuse the pun, rooted in the world of nature. But like from an early age, like that's that's wonderful. That's I would say that beats anything I would say.
Aub Wallace:I don't know. What about you? Like, did you have this? Did you have an moment? Did you
James Gill:The honestly, I'd I'm I didn't think about sustainability very much at all or the climate even. I've always loved technology, which is I've always been a bit of a geek, and I've and I I think, you know, even when I was at school, was, building websites and tinkering around with computers and stuff. And and so I never really thought about I always thought I was doing stuff that had honestly, I didn't really think about the environmental impact of anything at all. I felt very removed from it and that did change that changed. Would say our kind of moment was a couple of years ago and we were in London as a team and we were getting together.
James Gill:We were chatting about ideas for things all about where we could take the business and it was a really hot day. Think it was the hottest day on record in London and everyone was like oh my goodness this is not normal And I think it just so happened that there was basically someone shared an article about climate stuff, climate change, was very stats. But in this article, it it mentioned about, like, the Internet having a growing, impact on the planet and needing energy, and, it referenced email as one of those factors. And and, like, I think we all looked at each other and were like, is that right? Really?
James Gill:Does that does that have an influence? And I think from that point onwards, I'd become once it was aware once I'd made myself aware that like actually our digital lives are not, as with anything we do like still have an impact. Yeah. I think it really changed my attitude. And I think since then I've sort of I think once you enter even dip your toes in the water of the world of sustainability and climate, you sort of Yeah.
James Gill:You get sucked in and I think you start realising your whole life, like all of these decisions you make, the things you buy, the way you live, like these all have consequences that maybe you don't necessarily think of until you start down that route.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. It feels really like and then and then sometimes, I don't know if you get this, sometimes I'll like walk into a store. I live in The Netherlands and it is so when I walk into a store, everything is in Dutch. And this hit me when I moved here. So when I moved here is when I started Dandelion.
Aub Wallace:Because what I do, marketing for sustainability, didn't exist. So at least not where I live now. And I was like, well, I'm not gonna change my career path so I'll just start a company. And it hit me because I walked into a store and I saw all the products and they are all in Dutch. And then you walk into a store in The UK or in California or anywhere and it's the same products or the similar products and all the labels are in English.
Aub Wallace:And something about that kind of makes me feel like I'm drowning. It's this feeling that every part of your life and every decision you make just has an impact. And when I see all of the shelves and shelves and shelves of just stuff and junk and junk food and everything. I just feel a little bit like, oh shit. We are really like, everything has to change.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. Everything has to change.
James Gill:Yeah. What I I'm curious on that. So what was it do you think about seeing the Dutch product? Was it was it the the realization that, like, every country has this, like, huge, like filler sort of product and just realizing the scale? Was it that?
Aub Wallace:Yeah. I think so. I think coming from The States where everything is always in English, it just like I had worked in a company before starting Dandelion that was international so we put labels on all of the ingredients in different languages. So I knew about it and so I was already sort of primed for that. But then showing up and seeing it I don't know.
Aub Wallace:Something about it just clicked. Then I started learning about packaging. I think one of Environmental's first guests was an environmental packaging person. Packaging is so problematic. So I think it's just sort of in learning about that and kind of everything it just sometimes it feels really overwhelming.
James Gill:Yeah I certainly share that sense. Felt I feel like individually aside from business like individually I felt increasingly very conscious of like even if some it's like even if something is cheap that doesn't mean you should buy more of it or buy it.
Aub Wallace:Especially? Yeah.
James Gill:Yeah arguably especially but then you see sort of everything the world has done to train most people's brains on buy more stuff trying to know trying to wean yourself off of that mentality and thinking about the consequences of those actions of yeah it's it is overwhelming.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. Yeah I think one of the biggest things in sustainability is that it is largely a mindset shift.
James Gill:And
Aub Wallace:like you can't shift, It doesn't happen overnight for anybody.
James Gill:Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:So what would you say is like the number one thing that people should know about the digital world, the email world?
James Gill:Yeah. I mean, you've you've made it slightly easier for me there because you've you've limited it to my space, which I appreciate because there's
Aub Wallace:Or the sustainability world.
James Gill:Or the the world. A lot of things I'd like to know. In the digital world, think the key thing, and it's easy for me to share this because it's what I went through, which is that our digital lives, even though they feel very clean, in that you don't see smoke coming out of your laptop or your phone, your digital life has a very physical representation and manifestation and most of our lives using digital devices involve some form of cloud service, cloud computing software. That's the piece that no one really thinks about day to day. Like, when you ask most people on the street, like, how does Gmail work?
James Gill:How does YouTube work? Most people think of the maybe the cloud, but the cloud is such a it it's by a definite by that very word is very, like, fluffy and nice. Yeah. It's up there in the sky somewhere, but in reality, it's just giant giant buildings filled with computers that run all the time. And they all need making and building.
James Gill:They all need powering and they need cooling. And and and that that need for cloud computing, data centers, servers is growing faster than ever ever thanks to the growing demands of AI. And so this whole our digital lives absolutely basically yes our digital lives have a very physical reality. Yeah would be my
Aub Wallace:Yeah I like the idea that like it's in a cloud but actually that's just over there. Just a big building over there.
James Gill:I
Aub Wallace:This is something that we think about a lot in Dandelion too. With our clients, we want them to create less and create better.
James Gill:But
Aub Wallace:AI, I think we could probably both talk about AI for a long time. AI is a really interesting tool and it's really helpful but I actually struggle to know the line of around, like, what what is safe when it comes to AI and, like, what is too much AI usage and and what does that look like? What do you think about
James Gill:Yeah. Are there
Aub Wallace:Like, I'm not trying I
James Gill:don't wanna,
Aub Wallace:like, I don't wanna, like, dip I kinda wanna, dip into the AI conversation. Otherwise, we'll be here for three hours just, like, conspiratorial bullshitting about.
James Gill:No no no I think that there is so much and yeah we could easily spend the rest of the day talking about it and not even cover a tiny fraction of what what we could discuss but I would say first of all, like, there's there's actually a really great piece that came out a few weeks ago that maybe we can link in the show notes that the MIT put together basically trying to understand the climate impact of AI and kind of outlining like how do you even go about calculating this, how do different models and different, uses impact energy consumption, you know, it's text, video, photo, generation and and all of this. I think that's like that sums a little bit up far better than than I could do justice on the podcast. I think I think overall, I don't know, I guess the main thing I'd say with AI is that it is this incredible enabler that I think on one side. I think in terms of that enablement, there's actually tremendous potential at a grander scale to impact some of our climate challenges. When you think about scientists and entrepreneurs using AI to solve some of our biggest challenges.
James Gill:I think AI has phenomenal potential, but then you also have to weigh that against, well, yes, AI also needs enormous amounts of energy And a lot of the most of the AI providers right now are just trying to keep up with the demand. And so they're not necessarily as open as anyone would like in terms of, well how is this thing being powered, like how much energy is being used for using this thing and where is that energy coming from. And so there's a lot of questions there and I think one could only assume that it's very energy intensive compared to a lot of other comparable, usage of the Internet, and due to those demands there are a lot of sacrifices being made in terms of climate goals by big tech companies and, and so you know, I think I think that's worth bearing in mind. There are some companies that are developing models that have much more of a strong focus on sustainability. But yeah, I think it's just it's such a rapidly evolving space right now.
James Gill:Yeah. It's very hard to be certain of anything.
Aub Wallace:I know. It kind of is a big question mark. And from a business owner standpoint and a content creator standpoint for businesses, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't rely on AI sometimes. Yeah. Which is hard to say.
Aub Wallace:Like but, like, we we could very easily be outcompeted if we aren't using services like AI.
James Gill:Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:So we're trying to figure out how to balance that without going overboard and having it run our company because Yeah. We're the experts and
James Gill:Yeah.
Aub Wallace:You know, how yeah. So finding that balance is I think challenging and meeting a lot of other sustainable entrepreneurs or content creators, it's a challenge throughout the entire industry.
James Gill:I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, in some ways there's elements there that are similar to anyone in building a sustainable product or service offering in that you're always trying to balance being usually you're trying to balance being very sustainable and doing things right, but also making sure that you have a business that is competitive people want to do business with you. We struggle with that a lot with EcoSend, when you're trying to do things with more thought and care and with more of a responsible approach, you know, sometimes that takes a little bit longer than just build it and damn, you know, don't give a damn about anything else.
Aub Wallace:It always takes longer when you have values. Yeah. You know, always. Because that's the thing. You're like, I need to build sustainability or whatever value you have into the brands that you're building.
Aub Wallace:And the reality for sustainable businesses is that they're held to a higher standard. They have to be at least as good or better as their non sustainable competitors and their accessibility and user experience has to be better. Their communications have to be better because they're held to a higher standard and it's not really fair. People who put so much time and energy into building their product and putting care into their product, that's what they do. That's what they're doing is they're building a product that isn't harmful to the environment or it gives back or it only works with fair trade and gives enough money.
Aub Wallace:So yes, it is more expensive because it doesn't use slave labor. Those types of things are very challenging to do but then they have this extra expectation put on there. Your website has to be absolutely perfect. Nothing can be a red flag. It has to be totally trustworthy and all of your communications have to align and be exactly the same or else somebody is gonna point fingers at you.
James Gill:Like Yeah.
Aub Wallace:It's tough out there for sustainable brands.
James Gill:It is. It is. I feel like maybe that tees up nicely for me to ask you the question back of what's the number one thing people need to know. Because I realized the guy never asked you.
Aub Wallace:It's alright. I think the most important thing for everyone to know is that everyone, most people, I can't say everyone, are worried about sustainability. I just read a report from Springer Nature that says that 89% of people are concerned about climate change and sustainability and most people are silent. They're just scared in silence. So I think the number one thing you can do and to know is that everyone around you also has this fear, this eco anxiety somewhere sitting in you and the best thing we can do to combat that is raise awareness and build inspiration, make sustainability more mainstream, more accessible, and support the brands and the businesses that are doing good in the world.
James Gill:Yeah that's it's so interesting that that stat and that most people are in silence about it because people get very vocal about a lot of other topics and
Aub Wallace:Anything yeah. I think there's still this stigma around being a hippie, being a tree hugger. We started this episode, you asked my journey to sustainability and I just have never had shame about being called a hippie. But a lot of people do and a lot of cultures. I know the Dutch culture is fit in to stand out and I think that's really common and people who feel like their concern over the environment is different than their colleagues or friends or family members feel afraid that they're going to be looked down upon if they start to make sustainable choices or choices based on the climate, which is stupid and unreal and unfortunate.
Aub Wallace:But I think that When
James Gill:you zoom out it's crazy isn't it? Like how are we like we're all just basically ants on a big planet. Big
Aub Wallace:rock and I think that all the time. Good job. Love that. Yeah we're all just ants.
James Gill:And it's like we we kind of got a bit of a responsibility here to kind of look after the the rock that we call home. And you know for a long time we didn't do too much to damage it and in the last one hundred one and fifty years two hundred years we've kind of ramped up a bit on what we're doing to maybe not look after it as well as we used to.
Aub Wallace:No we're we've
James Gill:been pretty
Aub Wallace:piss poor.
James Gill:Yeah we've been quite bad if I was gonna rate our approach.
Aub Wallace:We're embarrassed. Like we're embarrassed that we we're embarrassed when we wanna do something better or different.
James Gill:Yeah.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. That's unfortunate to me.
James Gill:It it well, I guess the hope I have is and, you know, the optimism I have is that I I don't know. Maybe I am talking to more and more people who share this view, but, like, it feels like there are more and more people that do care. Even in the world of, you know, in the world of business, I look to I look to movements like the b corp movement as something that that gives me hope because seeing the b corp movement grow seemingly is quite a good indication that more people in the world of business care, more consumers care enough to make a buying decision. Like, these are all still, I think, far too small and probably far too niche. But, like, that I think the world's a better place with them than without them, would be my my take there.
James Gill:100%. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:I totally agree with you.
James Gill:We each have a role in the world of sustainability to sort of make an impact. Do you wanna talk a bit more about about yours?
Aub Wallace:Yeah. This is my favorite question in environmental podcasts is to understand and ask about the role that our guests and the businesses play in sustainability. For Dandelion Branding it's to tell those stories and to share the people and the businesses who are forwarding that transition and who do care because you're totally right that it's still too niche, it's still too small, it's not accessible enough. And the way to change that is by talking about it, by educating it. And we also found that we saw this a lot during COVID that people trust and listen to the brands that they care about or that they've been reading.
Aub Wallace:When we can use business as a force to promote things like sustainability, peace, and positive growth and regeneration then we see more people feeling safer to sort of come forward and say, yeah, I'm interested in sustainability. And we see more businesses able to say, even if I don't care about the environment, like it's good business because people care, my clients care, and my customers care.
James Gill:So
Aub Wallace:that's our role. What about it?
James Gill:I love that. I love that and I think there's so much power in a good story that can really you know I think it's sometimes easy to underestimate that like sometimes I think the world of business especially marketing can get really watered down with numbers and trying to crank numbers up but when you have a good story to share and tell, I think that can transform. Yeah, if you can tell it well, then I think that can be transformative.
Aub Wallace:Yeah, That's how people grow and learn. That's how the human species has always grown and learned from each other generationally. But I mean, EcoSend is a vehicle for storytelling. So, yeah, I'm curious about your role in sustainability and and how it's going for you guys. I actually didn't even talk about that.
Aub Wallace:No,
James Gill:appreciate you asking that. I think our role has honestly evolved. I think when we got started it was very much a sort of a almost like an a reaction, a knee jerk reaction to be like, e like, have a carbon footprint and need energy and, like, our digital lives need energy. Let's just try and build an email tool that tries to reduce that as much as possible. Let's think about all the ways we can make an email as small as possible.
James Gill:Let's think about all the ways you can send your newsletter out and reduce that carbon footprint and think about that as a very kind of almost like a technical like an efficiency level like how do we think about it at that level. But the more we pursued that the more we started working with people that are, know, at least at the time, like were just really teaching us so much about sustainability and the climate and the planet. And the more we went down that path, more I think we realized that not just email has a carbon footprint but every email is that opportunity to send a message. And I think that to me now is if anything the more exciting aspect that like, you know, our customers are marketers, are people that want to tell a good story, that are responsible for how a business communicates. They're using us to talk to millions of people.
James Gill:In the way we develop EcoSend, we can help those people send the best message possible and communicate more effectively at a really big scale. So by impacting maybe thousands of people ourselves, we can ultimately influence millions of people which I find incredibly, it's a big responsibility but I think it's an incredible opportunity and you know people can you can do that by, you know, you can choose to like influence millions of people in lots of different ways. And I think there's a lot of tech companies and organizations that are trying to influence people in maybe not the best ways for society and the planet. So I'd like to think that we can make a little dent and do things tip the scales the other way a little bit.
Aub Wallace:I love that. We're 100% on the same page. Sometimes it does feel like a lot of responsibility and it feels really humbling is the word that comes to mind. Because we use email and we use social media and we use websites and we use these vehicles to share these stories but in general we are also the vehicle
James Gill:for
Aub Wallace:sharing a story and it's important to get it right. And it can be really like, don't know how to say this, because sustainable brands are held to such high standards it can feel really scary sometimes because one wrong thing and that brand can be canceled or they could have fingers pointed at them or make enemies in the industry. There's a lot of infighting in the sustainability world unfortunately. I'm sure you see it too and that's frustrating. Luckily, knock on wood and fingers crossed, that we haven't ever had a huge issue like that but yeah it's humbling, it could be a little scary.
James Gill:Yeah it really can. I think it was only after being on this journey for a bit that someone told me about the phrase green hushing and where it's sort of, yeah, you're just so afraid to say anything that you don't say anything at all. Yeah, I think increasingly that feels like more of, a I don't know. At least it just seems like a growing a growing issue and
Aub Wallace:A 100%. I think it's more insidious than greenwashing. Mhmm. Because if I should say we are openly vigilantes against green hushing. And you can join our club too because people use you to tell their story, which means that they're not green hushed.
Aub Wallace:But if people who are doing the actual work don't stand up and tell their story, people who are lying about doing the work get to control the narrative and that's not okay. I think personally that greenwashing is such a big issue because green hushing is such a big issue. If we had people actually standing up and not infighting with each other and being scared over being called out over saying the wrong word or something then everybody could get together and use collaborations and use like, you know, like compromise and and make actual change in the world to go after the people who are destroying it by lying.
James Gill:Yeah. Hey, hey. Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:You have some pretty strong feelings about this.
James Gill:Passion. I can build a passion. It's it's it's very inspiring.
Aub Wallace:It's really important. It's like, we we have a podcast, right, to talk about these types of stories and to share this so that the people we talk to don't get piled on or pushed under the rug, you know, so that their stories are told. And that's what we're doing here, really, is fighting that hush. We're fighting against the tide of a lot of blah blah and distraction, but we're out here doing it. You start here.
Aub Wallace:I actually wanna hear you talk about what you think the biggest misconception is in our communications industry or digital world.
James Gill:Yeah, happy to. Think I've heard this one quite a bit, especially from people that already especially from people that are already doing quite a bit on the sustainability front fact and I think your point on sort of inviting and things in the industry probably resonates a little bit here in that every now and again, we'll have a conversation with someone who's maybe doing quite a lot already in their business to think about their environmental impact. And when the topic of digital comes up, sometimes the feeling is like well it's not that much impact compared to everything else and so well maybe we don't need to change and we don't need to do anything now, it's not a priority. And I can understand within a business you always are juggling priorities thinking about to best use your time but I think the digital side of things from what we've seen, small changes there can actually have really they can lead to really profound impact. I think that can be multiplied out in big ways.
James Gill:And I think this sort of effort one needs to make on digital is often dramatically less than comparative things in many physical businesses. About whether you have a video or a photo on your home page or thinking about how you could improve your email template. Like these things are in the scheme of like versus changing from air freight to shipping or something like that, you know, or I don't know, thinking about how you change your physical product. Like, are very, very easy changes for most organizations to make. Yeah.
James Gill:And and sometimes the impact of those isn't necessarily best to be measured just in c o two saved. It it can be the the implication, the signaling, the communication aspect of that as a company, you you go to all that effort with your product, but then can you communicate that better to more people? And I think there's just so many opportunities there. And I think it's also a bit of a mixed message as a team. Like, we wanna do the right thing for the planet, but not too much of the right thing.
James Gill:Like, you wanna if you care, like, you not care about this top to bottom? And and I think when you get everyone in the organization caring, even about the small things, then it doesn't become like a debate. Like, oh, we care about sustainability on this aspect but not on this aspect and it's just like if it's baked in then I think that is the you know just a better way of working and and then on top of that I think just all of the aspects of, at least from a digital perspective, pretty hard to say that making things approaching things with a sustainable mindset, does anything other than improve the experience for your users. Like
Aub Wallace:100%.
James Gill:Sites load faster, you're probably gonna appear higher up in Google, accessibility standards improve usually. Like, you'll probably focus more on your content and what really needs to be there, which can lead to conversion improvements. Yep. All of those things. So Yep.
James Gill:Yeah. Those would be It
Aub Wallace:it becomes a lot about data. Right? It comes a lot about, like, what works, what doesn't work. If it doesn't work, we're not doing it. Like, period.
Aub Wallace:If we're not doing it, then we're doing less. Mhmm. Simple.
James Gill:Mhmm.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. I have a have a very real question for you. It's about email. A client of mine has an automation. Overall, the the automation I think has like 15 emails in it.
Aub Wallace:I wanted to pare it down because I didn't think 15 emails were necessary, it wasn't hitting the goal. I removed being sensitive to the goal, I reorganized it and in that reorganization with the audience in mind and what their journey kind of looks like. And with that reorganization I was able to actually get rid of five emails. Now this client's average email open rate is above 50% and their average click rate is between 58%. And these emails that I removed were also in that realm that I suggested we remove.
Aub Wallace:And the response, while I don't disagree, I struggled to yeah. For me it always comes back to digital sustainability. This is an automation which means it goes to everybody that signs up for a certain thing. And my clients didn't want to remove those five emails because they kind of do okay in open and click rate but again, the goal is sales and those emails don't convert. How would you kind of approach that kind of conversation where you're like actually I want not from a client standpoint but from a digital eco and email situation?
James Gill:Yeah, mean, there's always so many factors to any kind of conversation like this. I mean I would probably start by asking a lot more questions but if I wasn't allowed to I would just come back to ultimately the goal and I think this is something I find myself having conversations with a lot of marketers about. People get really attached to their list size and their open rates and their click through rates. And the reality usually is that none of those are actually the thing that ultimately is the goal. The goal really is we want people to read our article or we want people to actually buy the thing we are making and focusing on and I think that's why we've been quite deliberate in the product.
James Gill:We've always thought like a lot of people go and just send an email without necessarily aligning on why. And so to really emphasize the purpose of a campaign. It's amazing, I'm saying we talk to people about that a lot, but we need that advice ourselves. We're all just human and sometimes you just have these behaviours that are almost instinctive like, yeah, I'm going to send an email or I'm going to run an automation with 15 messages in it. It's so easy to sort of do that for all sorts of reasons, sometimes the actual purpose and ultimate goal can be pretty murky.
James Gill:I think generally, when you get clearer on that, everything gets better. The copy gets better, the call to action gets better, can cut things back more confidently. So that would be my high level take but
Aub Wallace:can simply
James Gill:try and help more.
Aub Wallace:No. I just wanted to kind of hear like, am I weirdly off base and like caring about these five emails? But in my mind, it's like, if 50 people sign up to get this automation a month and there's five emails and there's 12 every month, now you're looking at thousands of extra emails that are HTML, so they have imagery, the imagery is big. I guess it's not really like an actionable question, it's more along the lines of if we're going to make this thinking more common which I think is your goal and mine that we can agree on. What do we need to especially in the world of business because we're not just talking about like one Email to another Gmail account.
Aub Wallace:That's something that like we have to remember People who are listening also have to remember that we are talking about automations, businesses, thousands of emails that are heavy and just sitting in inboxes forever now. You know?
James Gill:I also think like there's sort of the energy usage but then there's also something we've talked I remember thinking about early on in the days of EK Send and perhaps haven't talked about it for a while, but there's this weird thing with email for marketers where email's free. Email's considered free. It's like free to send an email. You know, you may maybe you pay for your tool but you're not like deliberately paying for every single email you send. Yeah.
James Gill:And I think that has a consequence in terms of how people send so much email. And I think when you think about the cost of an email maybe financially it is easy to round it down to zero but you also think about like yes that energy piece but also the interruption and disturbance to someone's day. Is it helpful? Is And I think factoring in that cost is like someone's time to consume that Is it the best it can possibly be? Does that one need to be sent?
James Gill:I think about that quite a lot. And if you were making the same decision with should we run this Google ad, Should we pay for this radio commercial? I don't know. Like you'd probably have a different calculation on it.
Aub Wallace:Yeah I'm laughing because marketer like on the other side, I actively want to disrupt someone's day. I don't wanna be part of like the morning email purge.
James Gill:Yeah.
Aub Wallace:So so one of the things we do is we definitely think about like what is the goal of this email and what do we want people to do and can we keep it small and you know. But we also think about like what's the off peak that's gonna interrupt someone's day so that they read this or it's gonna show up in their inbox right before lunchtime so that, like, they read it over lunchtime and it is, you know, or totally just or at 03:00 when they're having their dip and they're easily distracted. Like, those are the kinds of things I am definitely Yeah. Prioritizing.
James Gill:Got a job to do. Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:It works. I
James Gill:I know we have been speaking for a while but I want to make sure you have time for you. What's the biggest misconception on your side?
Aub Wallace:Thank you. Yeah, this is a longer episode.
James Gill:Yeah.
Aub Wallace:Than either of our normal podcast episodes. I like it though. I think it's nice.
James Gill:I agree. I think
Aub Wallace:the biggest misconception out there is that people, like humans, are both to blame and that they have to change their behavior in order for businesses to change their behavior.
James Gill:So
Aub Wallace:in a lot of places, people actually don't know that there are alternatives available and they don't know that they're supporting a brand. They go to the mall, they make a purchasing decision. They don't actually know all of the repercussions of supporting the brands that they do. Or they don't have access to sustainability measures. Like, I'm from a place that still to this day doesn't have a recycling center.
Aub Wallace:It it it's actually hard to recycle. So and And then we blame people, everyday consumers for not making the change because they're not demanding it so businesses won't supply that. It's like somehow in ESG, in sustainability world, we've added altruism to business. They have to care. We're like oh, the business or their customers actually have to give a shit in order for them to make a change.
Aub Wallace:Or they don't actually care at all so we don't have to make My customers don't care so I don't have to make a change. But I think personally that that's bullshit. You and I both work a lot with sustainability focused brands. We know they're out there making the difference and nobody has to force them. And in a lot of ways it has nothing to do with whether or not they care about the world.
Aub Wallace:It's just good business. And for those businesses who don't want to make a change, they didn't care about unions or giving the forty hour work week or equal pay for equal work or any of that. They were forced to make those changes by policy and labor laws and union reps showing up over and over and over again. And somehow that isn't what we're doing with ESG. We're not demanding in that way in the sustainability world.
Aub Wallace:And I think we can and I think we should and I think businesses should not wait for their consumers and their customers to demand that change to make a difference because to make the change because they don't have to. Does that make sense?
James Gill:Absolutely. And I think the more I've learned about the whole world of sustainability, the more that totally resonates. Know, even there you mentioned recycling and how much that is almost like a kind of a an aspect of, like, trying to address the fact that so many companies produce products that that need to be thrown away. And, like, how can I I think I think there's there's a lot on all sides, isn't there? And and I I think individual consumers so much of that is about the communication and education piece to make smarter decisions but ultimately more companies giving a damn would be Talk about it.
James Gill:Great.
Aub Wallace:Make it accessible.
James Gill:Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:It's low hanging fruit.
James Gill:Yeah. Yeah.
Aub Wallace:You know? Even like, I've talked about this before on the podcast where like how how simple, it's not, I don't wanna say that simple because it is expensive especially for a smaller brand but for big businesses, how easy is it and how low hanging fruit is it to just change your packaging to be something that is actually recyclable. So many things are not recyclable or do not fit with the infrastructure and recycling is not even close to the perfect solution. But the infrastructure that we have, that's what's accessible to most people. And then this is what's accessible to people but we have big businesses in the world and lots of businesses in the world that just do something totally different.
Aub Wallace:And how simple would it be for them to just say, You know what? I'm going to make my packaging recyclable. Or I'm going to be a supply, a value chain in the recycling industry. So not only are my packaging recyclable, but also I'm using recycled materials. It's not rocket science.
Aub Wallace:It is it is just commonplace and simple now, stuff you can just do. You can just literally just do that.
James Gill:It would be nice to see more of that happening. Yeah. Do we wanna talk about the future?
Aub Wallace:I will never wanna talk about the future. It seems pretty bleak to me. I try to stay positive but I struggle with it. But I'd love to hear your future.
James Gill:No, mean it'd be nice to finish on a high note wouldn't No, I think I think there is a lot of stuff in the world that needs to change, of course, but I I do I do have hope, and I I think the world of technology is changing at just this incredible pace, and I think that poses huge risks, but there are chances and there are opportunities there for technology to have some immensely positive change. You know, I think a lot of challenges at the moment are that we are we are almost like slaves to the machine that that that Yeah. We look at our we spend a lot of time in our phones. We spend a lot of time indoors at computers. I think there's opportunities where AI and related developments from that could mean that technology for humans goes into the background a little bit and maybe maybe could be more of an enabler.
James Gill:And I think it could transform how how we approach nature and how we spend time in nature. I think there are so many third, second, third, fourth level consequences of of what might happen. It's so hard to predict, but there there are some wonderfully optimistic and hopeful and positive potential ramifications of the way technology is changing and you know we're in a time where that could be influenced by anyone listening to this or yeah.
Aub Wallace:That's so sweet. I really love that. I kinda feel like the AI kind of going into the background also. I I kind of wonder if it allows us to sort of when I imagine it, I imagine it in the cloud which I know is just as we've already discussed big buildings over there but like I'm imagining it up here in the cloud then we're all sort of on the planet and going back to in person local events and word-of-mouth and really communicating together face to face while all of this other stuff is happening around.
James Gill:Potentially. Yeah. I tend to find it easier to sleep at night being optimistic but you know.
Aub Wallace:Okay I like that. I really like that. Wonderful. Oh my gosh I feel like we agree on so many things and we can talk for a really long time but can you I I wanna leave it on a high note. And I want you to say, like, where people can find you?
Aub Wallace:Where can they connect with you?
James Gill:Very, very simple on my side. Just just look up EcoSend. You're at ecosend.io. If you wanna check us out, that's the place to go. If you wanna connect as well, I'm I'm on LinkedIn, James Gill.
James Gill:The the link will be in the notes. But, yeah, EcoSend. Go check go check us out. It'd be wonderful to for even to get your feedback. But if you if you wanna send a newsletter, we I'd love to to welcome you on board.
James Gill:How about you? Yeah.
Aub Wallace:I'm really easy to find. I think Aubrey Wallace on LinkedIn. It might be Aub. I go by And you can go to dandelionbranding dot com. It's easy to find.
James Gill:Yeah. There we go.
Aub Wallace:Yeah.
James Gill:Is that a show? Do we have
Aub Wallace:a That's our show.
James Gill:That's a show. What a pleasure speaking with you today, Orb. I've generally enjoyed it. Thank you.
Aub Wallace:Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for joining Environmental Podcast, and I'm really glad I got to be on the EcoSend. It's still a combined show.
James Gill:Thank you for having me on your show, and thank you to anyone who's listening or watching to either of our shows, it's been a pleasure.
Aub Wallace:Thanks for sticking around and see you next time.
James Gill:See you next time. Bye!
