This week I spoke to Mr Deliverability, Andrew Bonar. A founding member of the first ever free email address service in the world, Andrew has been a pioneer of deliverability in the global email marketing industry. Andrew is widely respected and a well known veteran member within the industry by both vendors and brands. He has recently re- launched emailexpert and impressively launched Inbox Expo – a gathering of email marketing leaders from across the globe – in the shortest amount of time known to any event organiser!
Please introduce yourself
Andrew Bonar, born in the Middle East (Amman,Jordan) and moved around lots before settling in the UK at 10 years of age. I started working online as a founding member of the UK @Pobox team sometime in 1994, the first provider of a free email address service anywhere. Amongst many failures and some success’ I was the founder of eBanx an online payment gateway, launched an ESP MailPhoenix in 2003. I joined Emailvision as the Global Director of Deliverability a few years later and by 2012 I had overseen the successful delivery of over 100 billion emails.
In 2013 I moved to Australia for Campaign Monitor to head up their deliverability. Since then I have relocated back to Europe and have provided strategic advice and services to over 2 dozen of the worlds leading ESPs and other enterprise org’s and high growth startups.
Over the course of my career it has been my privilege to include many of the leading figures in the email space I engaged with Amazon in Seattle. Taking a team on a mission to China to meet leading mailbox providers Tencent, Sina, 163.
emailexpert.org a community site and blog launched in 2008 was the first publication authorised to publish an interview with a member of the Gmail Anti-Spam team, it was my honour to interview Sri Somanchi for that piece. I went on to facilitate the first forum where commercial senders had the opportunity to pose questions direct to Google. Introducing the right people at Google to the ESPC facilitating and moderating that session personally from Palo Alto.
Most recently at Inbox Expo in 2020 I brought together leaders in the global anti-spam space offering email marketers the opportunity to ask the leaders in the anti-spam space including founders of Spamhaus, SURBL and senior representatives of other blacklists such as Cloudmark for their advice and support. Raymond Dijkxhoorn of SURBL described it as a world first.
Please tell us about your business
A marriage of all the things I love the most, at its heart emailexpert is connecting people. We have been providing a space for the professional email and CRM community to network, learn and share their stories since 2008. Recently emailexpert.org relaunched at emailexpert.com
Now as well as industry news, blogs and insight the website offers to connect business with leading vendors, agencies and consultants in the space. Alongside this work we provide select enterprise clients email vendor selection and email vendor management and liaison. Helping brands maximise the benefits of their chosen vendors, identify gaps and opportunities is something we excel at. In the spirit of connecting people we have long organised events of all sizes online and real time. We have held networking events in New York, London and Sydney over the years.
What have been the main challenges facing marketers in 2019?
Legislation and Privacy challenges were something that took up time in every marketers diary in the past year.
What in marketing or business inspired you this year?
Komal Helyer has been a genuine inspiration to me, the energy and enthusiasm exuded is infectious. A truly genuine individual who has caring and supportive approach to all her business relationships. (Komal promises Andrew wasn’t paid to say this!!)
As far as campaigns and brands go, Gillette dared to be different.
What should marketers be focused on in 2020?
You can seize opportunities. You can try things previously considered too risky. The world is changing rapidly, more than ever it is going to be essential for your brand to be genuine and communications to be honest. Consumers expect
Who are your marketing heroes?
Jay Conrad Levinson, Seth Godin, Tim Ferris
If you could give a tip to marketers at this time during coronavirus what would that be?
Be bold. It is a time of significant and sudden change. Whilst finding your feet in the current landscape can be daunting I would strongly advise against waiting for this to be over and would start adapting now.
The change was sudden, the road back to normality will I fear be far more gradual.
What piece of advice would you give to aspiring marketers?
Read and network. Remember the essential principles of good marketing learned and espoused by pre-digital marketers generally apply across all channels. Learn the essential basics of marketing and apply them online.
You are sent to a desert island for 12 months – You can take 3 business books, 3 records and 1 luxury item – what would you take?
Business Books:
- Tao of pooh
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
- Guerrilla Marketing
Records:
- Straight out of Compton, NWA
- Blackbird-Deluxe Edition, Fat Freddys Drop
- Any meditation record or something from Cat Stevens
My luxury item would be a vape.
If you would like to follow Andrew on the socials you can do so here:-